Resonance, J. B. Everett [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

pulled together.

 

They made it to the terminal just as loading was beginning and joined all the other fliers funneling themselves down to the gate like so many cows to the slaughter. Once they were at their row, he made Jillian give up the window seat, arguing that she had slept through every single flight the last time. He didn’t add that he had never gotten to fly until he was an adult paying his own way. The window still held a kind of magic for him that had worn off most middle-class kids by the age where they could read the take-off time on cartoon watches. And sure enough, even as he watched the houses and freeways below getting smaller and smaller, he felt the soft weight of her head settling on his shoulder, and the swish of her hair, unbound, falling across her face.

 

Becky’s eyes adjusted to where Aaron swung the highbeam, lighting the whole area in front of them to ghastly shades of bright and black. All the shadows of midnight remained, just thoroughly delineated by the overpowering light. It became even creepier when they entered the woods at the back side of the field.

 

She started talking just to quell the feeling that she was walking where she didn’t belong and where she was unwanted. “So how has-”

 

So did Aaron. “How do these frogs do-”

 

They laughed together, then she let him finish asking about her catch. “These are rana. A genus that really includes all your garden variety frogs, no bullfrogs though. They’re indicator species - really sensitive to the environment. They’ll mutate, like my little guys, really quick, if anything is off. You know, radiation, pollution, that kind of thing. Or magnetics.”

 

“So, what is this then? We’re visiting a polluted frog spot in the middle of the night, that might be loaded with radiation from the power plant?”

 

“I thought of Oak Ridge, too. They actually do grow some creepy frogs out that way sometimes. But they’re on the other side of the town from us, and they tend to hop down towards Chattanooga.”

 

“How comforting.” He muttered.

 

She maneuvered around behind him, disliking how her own shadow gave her such a case of the creeps. “I checked them all out at school with a Geiger-counter and got nothing. Like almost zilch. I mean you would register on these meters, they’re that sensitive.”

 

“All right.” He raised the light, letting her decide which path to take, and even though it didn’t look anything like it did during the day, she instinctively knew which way to go.

 

“So, anyway, other than the fact that they have spare legs, and are all from this one spot, I’ve got nothing.” She took another long pull on the coke she carried with her. “That is, until tonight I had nothing.”

“But what is it? Are all frogs magnetic and yours are just backward?”

 

“Nope, I’ve never heard of it in frogs.” They were getting close, the tiny creek making burbling noises even at this late hour, and the local frogs raising their voices in a hellish chorus.

 

“So why would these frogs be magnetic?”

 

“Other animals are.” She raised the compass in her palm, angling it to catch the light, and read it. Still in the right direction. No worries there. Yet. She kept up her chatter with Aaron, they were getting close and she was nervous about what she might find out. “Bees are, and so are homing pigeons.”

 

“Not enough to stick to the refrigerator.”

 

“You’re sooo funny - Aaron, look!” She held up the compass. The needle had flopped to the opposite direction. She stepped backwards retracing her steps out of the area where she had first found the freaky little frogs. The needle swung back to the correct orientation.

 

“Sweet Jesus.” As she walked back and forth, it changed. To exactly the opposite direction. Sure she wasn’t seeing it right, she lifted her head to ask her brother to shine the light over her way and was met with a blinding glare. For a moment she had visions that the sheriff had found them and was going to haul them in, cuffs and cruiser and all. Although they were on their own property and all they could be cited for was leaving the car by the side of the road.

 

In a second Aaron was at her side and the blinding glare was gone, directed down at the face of the compass, leaving her completely unable to distinguish anything beyond the borders of the light. Back and forth they walked for a minute or two, mesmerized by the swing of the needle. Then Becky pulled him forward to the edge of the stream and the spot where she and Brandon had caught all the frogs.

 

The needle stayed reoriented. North was south and south was north. “This is where we caught them.”

 

She shoved up her sleeve and slowly bent over, sinking her hand into the cold water. The forest around them was now quiet, except for the wild trickle of the creek. It had no instincts and didn’t know that something was amiss with all this bright light in the middle of the dark. But the frogs knew, and Becky could spot their shapes under the edges of the bumps and eddies. Their little noses and eyes stuck up above the surface, trying to catch a breath, and yet be still enough to thwart the predator.

 

But Becky got lucky, and in a moment she had reached down and slowly wrapped her hand around one of the little guys thinking he had it made by being motionless. She held up her catch, even as the nearby frogs scattered away from the site of the latest loss of their brethren. “Look Aaron, four back legs.”

 

When she finished pulling up several six-legged frogs, she wandered the area using the compass as a guide, certain that some large object was buried here. Sighing, she was grateful again that Aaron was a lawyer.

 

“What if whatever’s here is government? Can they keep me from publishing my findings?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“If this is a dump site, you know, for some magnetic ore, or there’s a secret lab under the ground,” Okay, now she was getting really farfetched, “well, would they be able to stop me from writing this up and letting the world know?”

 

He thought for a moment. “No, we’re on our own land. I don’t think they have any legal recourse. But if you have skeletons in your closet that they might blackmail you with, who knows?”

 

She laughed with him. “I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t even steal paperclips from the school, and I’ve never made one of those freaky sex tapes.”

 

“Don’t let Mom and Dad even know that you know what those are.”

 

“No joke.” She crossed the stream on large stones that she had put there years ago and wandered through the woods, crashing through underbrush and sounding much like the Jolly Green Giant. She was half trying to convince herself that it was just the unearthly silence that made it sound that way. If Satan himself rose up before her, she couldn’t say that she would be too shocked. But just then the compass needle jumped.

 

Becky startled, then walked back and forth a few times, using the sway of the thin red magnet to get a feel for the edge of the spot. “Aaron.”

 

“Hm?” He looked up from his musings. “What?”

 

“We need to go get stakes and a … that yellow police tape stuff. There’s a clear boundary here. We can mark it.”

 

“But not now.” He refused, and once he shined the light back the way they had come, she had no choice but to follow or be abandoned to the noise and the blackness.

 

“Oh we weren’t expecting you.” It was Maddie, according to her nametag.

 

Jillian just smiled. She wasn’t half bad at this lying. “Really? I’m sorry. Our secretary was supposed to let you know that we’re following up the interviews done by Drs. Smith and Webber.”

 

Maddie was Maddie Levinson. She and her husband owned and ran the Levinson Home for the Aged.

 

The round-faced woman just smiled and stepped back, holding the door open for them.

 

“Well, you’re here now.” She seemed perfectly content to let them come in and reassess the place. Which clicked in Jillian’s mind as a good thing. If they were trying to cover up elder-abuse or something, the case for a new disease would never hold.

 

Jordan trailed her in and she introduced both herself and him to the woman’s husband, who was just as round and polyestered as she was. They had the same pie-faced smiles that ultimately seemed kind and gentle. A visual sweep of the area made it clear that this was a home that had been converted to a care facility. She’d read beforehand that these two lived here, twenty-four seven.

 

“We would love to comb through your patient records, if we could. Maybe we could just stay out of your way.”

 

But she had barely gotten the last word out when Jordan started speaking over her. “We just think that there might be something new here, and we want to be certain that it gets identified and stopped. I know the last CDC team suggested a staph infection-”

 

And for the first time the sweet moon face looked disgruntled. “I just don’t know how that could have happened. We’re so… . it sure hasn’t happened again, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

 

Jordan stepped close and put his arm on the woman’s shoulder, leading her to sit at her own breakfast table where he pulled a seat a little closer. “When Dr. Brookwood and I reviewed the file, we didn’t feel it was a staph infection at all. There wasn’t any evidence of it; they just couldn’t find anything else.” His hand covered the older woman’s, calming her immeasurably by that simple, unforward touch. Jillian watched the changes in her with awe. “Jillian is right.”

 

She couldn’t believe he had used her first name. Not that she was angry, but she didn’t understand. It was all about being professional, right? And having no clue where he was going, she decided to step back and let Jordan ride the wave he had created.

 

“We’ll want to go through all the old records like the other team. But beyond that, we’ll need some time to talk to you. Maybe you can tell us something that isn’t in the records.”

 

Maddie balked a little, “We keep very thorough records.”

 

Jordan didn’t even try to argue that one. “I’ve seen them, they’re some of the best in the business, but there are other things that you’d never think were medical, things that only a close caretaker, like yourselves, might notice. Any information you can give us would only help.”

 

Arthur Levinson, ‘Art’ by his nametag, finally spoke up, but only to talk to his wife.

 

“Honey, why don’t you help them get the files and I’ll serve breakfast.”

 

And with that Maddie led them down the hall and unlocked a large, very neat office with mauve frills above the windows and ducks walking around the border at the top of the room. Walls of cheap, black file cabinets surrounded them, each carefully labeled and clearly locked. Mrs. Levinson let them know they were welcome to anything they wanted to peruse and, smiling at Jordan, handed over the small key ring labeled ‘office’ and asked what she could bring them to drink, or if they wanted a danish?

 

God, that was Jordan for you. Five minutes and any woman would be eating out of his hand. Look at the way he had worked over Anne at the front desk. Jillian was glad she wasn’t that kind of girl. But here they were - in the office, with all the files at their disposal. And coffee on the way. Sweet deal.

 

She took a deep breath. “Let’s get to work.”

 

“Roommates?” Jordan asked, not looking up from the labels on the file drawers.

 

It was Maddie’s voice that answered. “The roommates of our members who got sick? Well, there’s Mildred Hartford. She’s still here in the green room.” She