Night Talk (23 page)

Mr. Trent was in the house and she yelled for him. He came out and also saw the flying object before going back inside the house and getting a camera. He snapped two pictures of the UFO before the object left the area.

Like other pictures portraying UFOs, the Trents' pictures are not without their controversy, but unlike others, their pictures and they, themselves, have passed considerable scrutiny by skeptics, and their photographs are generally accepted as among the most telling shots of a UFO ever taken.

Their pictures are viewable at Wikipedia and the McMenamins UFO Festival site (ufofest.com).

 

44

As Greg drove toward UCLA, Ali asked, “How are we going to waylay Murad? Wait for him outside a classroom?”

They had already confirmed with a call to his home that Murad was on campus supervising a Saturday research project.

“Not a good idea. It would put us in the campus a long way from a getaway car we'll need in case Murad starts shouting ‘Murderer!' and yelling for the campus police. Considering the way violence is happening at schools, half a dozen people would pull out guns and start shooting. Even if we got away alive, it would cause a lockdown and we'd have every police agency for a hundred miles gunning for us. Not that they're not already.”

“Thanks for reminding me how weird the world has become. Getting shot at a mall or school doesn't sound paranoid at all to me.”

“I'm paranoid enough to have you keep the motor running as I get out of the car to lie in wait for Murad.”

“Then we need to lure him into the parking lot.”

“I think I have it. He drives a classic Mercedes. On his author's book cover picture he's sitting in it wearing sunglasses and a beret. Something about the picture made me dislike him even more.”

They drove around the faculty parking lot nearest to his office until they found a classic Mercedes. Being the only one in the parking lot, it had to be Murad's car by default. Decades old, it looked like it just came off the showroom floor.

“Murad treats his car better than he treats people,” Greg said.

Ali called the psychology department secretary to report that her car had made physical contact with the professor's car in the parking lot.

“It's just a small scratch,” she told the woman who answered, “on the door. I'm sure he won't even notice it.”

She hung up and told Greg, “You're right about the car. She said when she tells him I'll be able to hear his scream from the parking lot.”

Ali was parked on the street out of sight as an obviously agitated Murad hurried to the faculty parking lot. He found Greg waiting for him.

“It's okay,” Greg said, “it's a false alarm.”

“I see. You're being clever.” Murad's hand went to his side pocket.

“If you pull out that phone, we won't be able to talk.”

“Sorry, but my wife is waiting for me. I was just going to let her know I'll be a little late.”

A lie, of course. “You can call her afterwards.”

Murad shrugged. “Fine. From your tense body language, I suspect this won't take long. What did you want to talk to me about that's important enough to put up such pretense and an ambush?”

Murad had broad, heavy features, a flat nose and cheeks, thick lips, a boxer's cauliflower ears and a bad complexion. He combed his unruly hair with his fingers only because he believed wild hair added to his intellectual persona. Short, stumpy, like a doctor who knew he saved lives, he radiated impatience and arrogance without even having to open his mouth to tell you that he was too intelligent to have time for mere mortals.

“Rohan is dead,” Greg said. “So is Ethan Shaw.”

He raised his brows. “I understand Mr. Shaw left a provocative dying declaration about you. It would seem that people associated with your show have an unusually high mortality rate. Should I be worried?”

“I'm the worried one. Rohan said he spoke to you. Those were just about his dying words.”

“He was a crazy bastard. Excuse me for speaking ill of the dead, but the fact that Rohan has died doesn't wipe away the harm he's done in his lifetime. That he was besmirching me with his dying breath comes as no surprise.”

“How much does being murdered redeem him?”

“He can burn in hell for all I care.” Murad smirked. “How he got headfirst from a balcony to a street below apparently is something that the authorities want to discuss with you.”

“You must have an inside track on their sudden deaths. Neither Rohan's nor Ethan's deaths are being reported on the news.”

“One of my former students keeps me informed. He's with the police. But now that you've waylaid me, is there something I can assist you with? Frankly, I'm very busy.”

Murad pulled the phone out of his pocket and pretended to check the time.

Greg said, “Rohan called you.”

“Oh, yes, one of his usual rants. I change my number periodically but he has someone hack into phone company records to get the new one. And the call came through identified as my wife. Childish. Ditto for hacking into my computer.” He tapped his forehead. “Anything I have to hide is all up here.”

“You might try aluminum foil to keep out probes from satellites. What was he ranting about?”

“The usual, of course. He wanted me to talk to him about controllers, the grays, snakes, cockroaches from the beyond, whatever the kooks who claim to see them to get their fifteen minutes of fame are calling the things they imagine are controlling the world. He said he finally has the proof that I'm the procurer, whoremonger, quisling, whatever label he was pinning on me at the moment, for alien entities taking over the world. He said that that crazy old woman from the UFO program is going to help rat me out.”

He raised his eyebrows and smirked again. “I have to confess, if I had a choice between aliens light-years ahead of us and the miserable human beings of this polluted planet, I'd sell out.”

It was the sort of over-the-top assertion Murad liked to make during his speech circuit.

“He had Ethan Shaw hack you?”

“The hacker could have been Satan herself for all I know. I don't really care. There was nothing to get from my computer except poorly reasoned student papers and the well-reasoned bad grades they received. You know, you haven't done the world a favor by providing an outlet for weirdos.”

“I let you on the show. As for my callers who have seen, heard or want to talk about the strange and unusual, things that seem preposterous at one point of time in history often end up as the gospel later. People like you who deny solid evidence that we have had visitors remind me of the cardinals who refused to look into Galileo's telescope for fear they wouldn't see heaven.”

“That's not historically correct.”

“That's okay, it perfectly describes the attitude of self-serving ignorance that was used then and is still used to batter down anyone who dares ask questions that others find sacrilegious. There are unimpeachable sightings and encounters that get swept under the carpet because someone doesn't want the facts known. Anyone who has the courage to speak out gets ridiculed.”

“Ignorance cuts both ways. Rohan tainted an important scientific study of how sleep and dreams shape the mind and body because he had polluted his own mind with one recreational drug too many. I worked hard on that project and he made it a joke and got rich and famous doing it.”

Murad hadn't done badly himself, running around demeaning and ridiculing people.

Murad glanced at the time again. “I'm afraid that's all the time I have in which to enlighten you. Besides, the way things are going in your life, standing next to you I might get hit by a meteorite.”

“Did Rohan tell you what the proof was that he'd gotten his hands on?”

“That's what you're wondering about, isn't it? How much Rohan let out of the bag, whether he ratted you out? Well, there's no more honor among conspiracy theorists as there is with thieves. He told me that you had the secret file and were going to broadcast it to the world.”

Murad whipped around as he was walking away and tapped his head. “I just got a message from my pals from Planet X. You can save yourself by giving them what they want.”

He howled with laughter as he climbed into his Mercedes.

 

45

Ali was getting as paranoid as Greg—she was double parked and had the motor running when he got back. She got the car moving as he was still closing the door.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“Yeah. He says Rohan told him I had the stuff to blow the lid off of Big Brother. But it's okay, because Murad can broker a deal with the aliens if I just give them the evidence.”

“He said that?”

“Claimed he was joking, at least about brokering a deal. The only thing I really got out of it was that Murad knows more than he should. But he claims he has a friend in the police department. Also, he says he's been hacked by Rohan. I'm sure that Ethan did it for Rohan. One interesting thing. He said Rohan had teamed up with a crazy old woman to rat him out. I didn't dare show any interest because the woman might end up flying out a window if Murad is in league with the devil. Old woman, crazy or not, ring any bells with you? Something to do with Ethan?”

“Maybe. Ethan talked about a woman who was part of the government's UFO investigations a long time ago. I guess that would mean she was old, at least to someone his age. And crazy to Murad probably simply means she's allied with his enemies.” She thought for a moment. “Kaufman, Inez Kaufman. I'm sure that's her name. He was going to visit the woman after we talked, so she must be in the L.A. area.”

“Did Ethan say what he was going to talk to Kaufman about? Is she linked to an NRO program?”

Ali shook her head. “He said she was a UFO expert. A long time ago.”

“Nothing about her having a connection to what he'd discovered hacking into the NRO system?”

“No.”

“And he never told you what he'd found?”

“I already told you he didn't.”

“I don't understand why you weren't curious since you'd got him going on the God Project in the first place.”

“I didn't get him going—okay, maybe I did, inadvertently, by telling him about the conversation I had over drinks with that guy. And yes, I was curious. And worried he'd hack into something that would come back and bite me. But when I called Ethan and asked what he'd discovered at the NRO he wouldn't talk over the phone. Said he'd tell me later in person, but we never met up.”

“When was that supposed to happen?”

“The night he died.”

There had been a hesitation in her voice.

“What did he tell you about the Kaufman woman?”

“Nothing, really, just said she knew something about UFO investigations. Like I said, it got to the point where he was talking crazy more frequently, the kind of sound bites that came from whatever he'd been smoking. And he sounded exhausted. Said he'd been riding dirty.”

“Riding dirty is having illegal drugs in the car when you're driving.”

“He was talking about the illegal hacking.”

“Probably meant he was hacking while on drugs. Do you remember at least what the subject matter of the gibberish was? Some clue to what Ethan had found at the NRO? It seems incredible that Ethan would have told so many people that he was getting information for me without disclosing what it was—even to me. Ethan doesn't sound like he played things that close to the chest, especially when he was self-medicating.”

“What he said to me was all over the place. He said we'd been visited by aliens for thousands of years and that E.T. didn't have to call home long distance anymore. I know it sounds like a joke, but when he said it he was really worried, even panicked. Then he said he couldn't talk, they hear everything, and he hung up.” She threw up her hands. “It was so frustrating. It seemed like the deeper he got into the hacking, the more he got into bending his head with drugs, always going up or coming down, but never stable enough to get any real information from.”

To Greg it sounded like Ethan didn't completely trust Ali. But drugs could have played a role in that. The drugs warped his thinking about him, too. Greg couldn't think of any other explanation for the accusation that he had killed him.

“Ethan wasn't on anything when he first started calling into my show, at least nothing that showed up in what he said or how he sounded, but the last couple of weeks he was, as he put it to you, riding dirty when he called in. And he focused on the presence of visitors, just as he did with you. But that we had or have visitors doesn't ring any alarm bells for anyone who listens to my show. It's pretty much a given.”

“Did Rohan mention Ethan's UFO fixation?” she asked.

“No, but we spoke only for a few seconds before the doorbell rang.” He thought for a moment. “Sounds like we need to find out more about Inez Kaufman. Let's see if we can track down an address for her with Franklin. And hope he's right about this phone being untraceable.”

“Greg, you look bummed out. Like a man who has been running from demons all day.”

“My mind is too fried to sort it all out.” He rubbed his temples. “So far everyone I've run into knows more about this than I do and all of you believe I am much cleverer than I really am.”

He didn't care if she heard the suspicion and irritation in his voice that included her. She gave him a look but didn't say anything and he let the comment hang until she spoke as she pulled up to Sunset Boulevard.

“We need to talk.”

“Talk.”

“You're reeking with suspicion of me.”

“Really? I can't imagine why. You just dropped into my life from somewhere with a confession that you aided and abetted Ethan into breaking into a secret program, igniting a killing spree that's left me running from the police and murderers.”