Roswell Fanatics

5:50 PM Chaves County Sheriff’s Office, Roswell New Mexico

Jim Valenti was finally leaving the office with no real clue as to the whereabouts of the missing Liz Parker. He and officer Lambright had interviewed Isabel Evans who confirmed her brother’s story that they’d gone home together, but she’d them taken a shower. By the time she’d gotten done with that and dried her hair, it MIGHT have been possible for the boy to return and abduct the girl. The boy claimed he’d been in his room working on homework, but no one had really seen him until almost 11PM….more than adequate time for him to have abducted Liz Parker. But even Jim Valenti admitted that case was pretty thin…they just had nothing else. All officers were briefed about the case, an all points bulletin issued, and Jim Valenti concluded there was nothing to do but wait…wait until another lead presented itself.

8:00 PM Isabel Evans’ room, the Evans Residence, Roswell New Mexico

“Max….we really shouldn’t get involved. I’m sorry, but people disappear all the time. Their pictures fill the backs of milk cartons. This has nothing to do with us. If we get involved, we’ll give ourselves away.”

“This isn’t just anyone, Isabel. It’s Liz.”

“I know it’s Liz, Max. And I know you’ve been obsessed with Liz since 3rd grade. We can’t do this, Max. We can’t use our powers to get involved….neither of us can. We’ll be discovered and wind up in some government lab somewhere. I really am sorry, Max, but …no.”

“Please Izzy, I’m begging you..”

“No Max….I won’t. I won’t get involved.”

“You have to. You know I can’t…you tried to teach me…even with Michael, I couldn’t find his dream orb….not even with you. You have to, Izzy.”

“I do not either have to, Max. And I’m glad you can’t…that’d be risky for all three of us. We can’t start doing this, Max. Not for Liz,…not for anyone.”

Isabel knew her brother was upset, knew he was emotionally attached to Liz…somehow he’d always been emotionally attached to Liz, but she was pretty sure the argument was over…..until he did something real dirty…..

“So…if it was Alex Whitman that was missing…maybe hurt in an accident, dying in a ditch somewhere…you wouldn’t try to dreamwalk him…to help him? Is that what you are saying, Izzy? Or is it just Liz…?”

And Isabel had to admit to herself finally that,….yes, if it had been Alex Whitman….there was nothing that could have kept her from trying to help. Suddenly she felt very ashamed. “Give me the yearbook, Max. I’ll see what I can do…”

“Thanks Izzy…”

8:30 PM 8 miles outside of Roswell on Silvermine Road

Four times during the day she had had to give short blasts from the oxygen cylinder, but each time she had lit the small flashlight it seemed that the walls were closer and closer. She was terrified while awake, but in her sleep it was even worse. Nightmares came then….nightmares of suffocating….suffocating in the small box, with the sides continuously coming closer, nightmares of clawing through the lid of the box, and being suffocated by tons of dust that would filter in, nightmares of sand and dirt clogging her nostrils…flowing down her windpipe, filling her lungs. Even in her sleep she cried out in horror and her mind was filled with screams.


8:35 PM Isabel Evans’ room, the Evans Residence, Roswell New Mexico

Max had been sitting by her bedside watching as she nodded off, the yearbook open to Liz’s ninth grade picture. He was going to wait for any indication that she’d learned something..hoping once she had he could wake her up. It wasn’t necessary as Isabel came wide awake, leaping out of bed and collapsing to her knees on the rug.

“My God, Max…….I think she’s been buried alive…”

“Buried alive, Izzy? Buried ALIVE? Where is she, Izzy? How can I get to her…..who did this?”

“Max, I don’t know. She’s not even rational, Max. It’s just one horrible unending nightmare of plywood walls squeezing in, of dirt and dust and sand going into her nostrils and down into her lungs. I tried to let her know I was there…tried to get her to talk…but she’s …she’s like someone going through Hell, Max. Nothing I can do even gets her attention. Max…even if they find her…I’m not sure that her mind is even still there. She’s so scared….I just caught the least bit of her terror…but it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen, Max. I’ve dreamwalked a few people when they were having nightmares…but Max..I’m not sure anyone can recover from this.”

“Izzy, I’ve got to do something. Maybe if the Sheriff’s office knew she was underground..?”

“Max,…there’s a lot of ground out there. I think the Sheriff already suspects that you are involved somehow…asking where you were that night. We need something more that just telling him she’s underground. That’d just make him more suspicious and not help Liz..if she can even BE helped. God, that was terrible, Max. I’ can’t believe someone could do that to someone.”

“Maybe if they’ve done it once,…well they might have done it before. Or if they haven’t, maybe we could see why people do these sorts of things….get some idea of who, or where she might be. I’m going to do some research, Izzy, ... use Dad’s Lexis-Nexis program…..see if I can’t get more information. You go ahead and sleep…I’ll see what I can find out….what information that might lead me to her.”


“Max..let me help. I couldn’t sleep tonight…I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep for weeks after feeling her terror. And Max..I am so sorry…so sorry for how I acted. You shouldn’t have had to force me to help. God, Max, no one deserves to die like that…I am so sorry.”

“She’s not dead yet, Izzy. And if I can help it, …she’s not going to die... not like that.”

“Let’s get to work, Max. We probably don’t have that much time. Even if her air holds out..I’m afraid her mind won’t…”

They worked well into the morning, pulling information from the computer. Max was sickened to learn that this happened fairly frequently. Generally girls would be abducted…raped…brutalized….their body dumped in some shallow grave while they were still alive to die slowly. The police files were full of such cases. Max was almost physically ill reading about those cases.

Isabel watched the tears running down her brothers cheeks, knowing his heart was breaking..knowing Max was hurting worse than he’d ever hurt in his life. She wished a thousand times she hadn’t kept them apart, wished a thousand times that instead of walking out with him from the Crashdown yesterday she’d told him to just go invite Liz out, or that she’d invited the girl over to watch a video…that she’d done any of thousands of things that might have avoided what was happening here and now. She wished it were her that someone had tried to aduct, feeling cold fury as she visualized how satisfying it would be to powerblast such a monster. But mostly she felt sadness…sadness for Liz…sadness for her brother.

“I don’t think she was raped…, Max. I really don’t. I think I would have felt that in her dreams if it had happened. Why don’t we concentrate on the cases that didn’t involve rape. There are a lot fewer..maybe we should just look at them.”

Max looked at her deeply, and she could read in his eyes what he was thinking.

“No, Max, I wouldn’t lie to you. I know how much this means to you. If there’s a chance…any chance at all…I think we should look at just these half-dozen cases.”

Max looked at his sister, but her eyes held nothing but concern for him…and love. Whatever her doubts were about Liz and him…they didn’t matter to her any longer.

“OK, Izzy. Let’s go over them piece by piece. Maybe a pattern will fall out somewhere..."

1:00 AM 8 miles outside of Roswell on Silvermine Road

The air hissed slowly as she turned the valve. She’d awoken choking, and had tried to sit up….the screw through the lid poking her again. She’d taken the upper oxygen bottle than, and beat the screw…beaten it unmercifully. She’d succeeded only in bending it of course, but at least it wouldn’t poke into her flesh everytime she forgot….forgot about the plywood cover..and the feet of choking sand and dirt between her and the open air.

She had left the flashlight off this time, and just kept her hands close to her body, knowing the walls were there..and the ceiling. She hoped if she didn’t actually see them, the terror could be managed for awhile…and maybe it was working…at least a little bit. She needed to think of something else…to put her mind elsewhere. She could do nothing here, she’d decided…nothing but try to endure. No action on her part was going to get through that plywood…and even if she did…the dirt….the terror built in her, just thinking about it…just allowing herself to accept the facts. She knew that she needed to put her mind elsewhere…to think of other things…or insanity would claim her.

She thought back to Max…still not really understanding. They’d been friends…friends from the first day she’d met him….way back in the third grade. But somehow when it was no longer a bunch of kids, when it became girls looking at boys and boys looking at girls…he’d just pulled himself away from her.

Liz found herself amazed that at this hour…in a situation this hopeless…this close to her death…what really bothered her was Max. ‘Why did he pull away, once we all started to think in terms of boyfriends and girlfriends? There was never anyone else. It wasn’t just me…he never went out with any of the girls…and there were plenty that would have liked to go out with him.’

But try as she might to be resentful…even angry at Max Evans for what they might have had, she was more bitter at herself. ‘For almost three years you were his lab partner, Liz. You could have asked him. Hell, Liz, haven’t you heard of women’s lib? Whatever fears drove him from ever asking you out.., where were you? Was being coy….being demure….being the ‘perfect Miss Parker’ more important to you than what you might have had with him?’

Her brain seemed almost schizophrenic now, shouting at herself in her mind, and then answering her own thoughts. ‘But it might not have made any difference,’ she told herself, trying to justify three years of passive watching.

‘But it might have made ALL the difference, Liz. You might have had a life with him…a real life…something to look back on as you lay here waiting for your oxygen to run out and for you to choke to death. You dreamed about him …fantasized about him almost every night for three years, Liz. Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you tell him how YOU felt? You might have had some REAL memories to comfort you, as you wait in the dark for death to come for you……’

As the terror reached out to envelop her again, Liz Parker sobbed again, shaking in terror, pain, guilt....and regret..

She had come to understand that Hell had many forms of torture. Perhaps the most bitter of those was…regret.

4:15 AM Max Evans’ room, the Evans Residence, Roswell New Mexico

It had been a long tedious seven hours of research on the computer but after Max copied the Lexis Nexis selections in to Microsoft Word and formatted them properly the Hewlett Packard printer spit out the three cases. Both Max and Izzy had reviewed the cases in detail individually, but now they compared notes.

“Case number one,” said Max. “Victim was an eighteen year old senior on her way to a senior trip. She was from Albuquerque. The body was found in a field near Stanley New Mexico. The perpetrator sent two notes. The first one gave such general clues that nobody could have realistically expected anyone to find her based on that letter. The second letter had enough information…but the guy must have known she didn’t have near that much oxygen. She was certainly dead before the second letter was sent….the murderer must have known that. He was taunting them….that’s all. The letters were cut out words from the local newspaper, pasted on to a sheet of copier paper.”

“I sure wish we had the police records, not just the Lexis Nexis stuff,” said Isabel.

“Why is that, Iz?”

“Haven’t you seen any police shows? The police always hold something back…you know, some piece of information, so when all the freaks and weirdos confess, they can tell if they really did it. Usually it’s some piece of information that only the murderer could know.”

“Well, we don’t have that. We’ll have to make do I guess,” said Max. ‘Unless we get the Sheriff’s office involved.’

“Well the second case is definitely tied in to the first, even the people in Albuquerque thought that," said Isabel. “Margaret Peterson, seventeen years old. They almost got there in time. The first letter was worthless again…just generalities. Once again, the letters were cut out from the local newspaper and pasted together.. The second one arrived after she’d been found…probably mailed just before the news got out that she had been found. If they hadn’t found her until they’d received it she’d have already been dead….well, she was anyway really. She never regained consciousness.”

“It’s the third one that I’m not sure about.”

“Me neither…although the task force in Albuquerque decided they weren’t related.”

“It sounds like the same guy…except for burning her alive.”

“God, Max….what kind of a person could do that?”

“What kind of a person could kidnap Liz, Isabel? Or bury her in the ground……”

“Max, I’m so sorry…”

“Let’s just keep working, Izzy. Let’s find her. Here’s the obituary on the last one…Fort Dodge Iowa, Seventeen year old honor student Jenny Langley was buried at Dubuque cemetery. Miss Langley, an honor student at East Valley High School in Rosemount Iowa had been awarded an academic scholarship to attend the University of Oklahoma this fall. She was a 4.0 student, a member of the scholastic honor society, a state champion in debate, and a junior Mensa member. She is survived…I don’t know Izzy. I don’t know if this one belongs or not. But those other two…it sounds the same.”

“How do we put it together, Max? Albuquerque and Oklahoma and….maybe Iowa.”

“I’m not sure, Izzy. But we have to ….and fast.”

5:00 AM 8 miles outside of Roswell on Silvermine Road

The voices came again to torment her…even in her dreams.

“It all went to Hell, Liz…somewhere in the sixth grade.”

Liz knew that was true. Max had been her friend…as close as Maria or Alex, for most of elementary school. Sure, Isabel was a pain, but she couldn’t be there all the time. And in sixth grade, especially, Isabel had been in one sixth-grade teacher’s class, Liz and Max in the other. Liz had felt her feelings grow for him…throughout the year. But before summer vacation, he started drifting away.

“He didn’t JUST drift away, Liz,” came the voice. “You watched him drift away…and did nothing….you made no effort….it was your fault, as much as his.”

She started to protest…but stopped. When you are near death…what’s the sense of lying to anyone…especially yourself? The voice was right….the ‘perfect Miss Parker,’ wouldn’t demean herself by taking the first step….so she’d done nothing... and watched in silence as he had drifted away from her.

“So what did it get you, Liz..?” the voices asked her, “as you lay in the dark and wait for first insanity and then death to find you, what did you get for being the perfect Miss Parker? Did you think life gave you guarantees? Even babies sometimes die, Liz. Every day is a gift from God…and you squandered yours wishing and waiting…never acting. Sure, you might have failed…but at least you would have tried…..at least you MIGHT have had some joy before death took you.”

And in the end it was the pain of regret that she found even more fearsome than the fear of the nearness of the walls, and it was that pain which finally pushed her into the dream world.

• It wasn’t her bedroom or his, this time. It seemed more like a luxury hotel suite.
  
  Liz sat on the side of the bed, looking up at him in an outfit unlike any she’d ever worn. It went beyond sexy…a black lace top and black lace panties.
  
  And the look in her eyes was also different…no longer the look of the perfect Liz Parker.
  
  “Why did you pull away, Max?” she asked him.
  
  “You’d never understand, Liz.”
  
  “You never gave me a chance to understand, you bastard.”
  
  “I would have hurt you either way.”
  
  “Maybe….but at least I would have had a choice, Max. You could have given me that.”
  
  “It doesn’t matter, Liz. This is just a dream…it doesn’t mean anything. It’s not worth fighting over….not worth arguing about. Neither one of us is really here.”
  
  “Maybe you are right, Max. Maybe I should just forget about you…just go back to my box…just wait for the air to run out….I am going to die…I know that. Nothing can save me. Sixteen years of being the perfect Miss Parker, and what does it get me? A few days of regrets….a few days of wishing I’d lived my life differently. A few days of wondering what I might have had…if I hadn’t wasted my opportunities, Max.”
  
  “I’ll find you Liz. Somehow I will.”
  
  “Find me Max? Why? You’ve won. You’ve been trying to get rid of me since the sixth grade, and now you have. Why bother with remorse now? I used to think it was Isabel that kept us apart…but it wasn’t. It was you, Max…you and me. I’m just as responsible as you…because I did nothing to stop you. I let you leave me…and I didn’t even try to fight for you. The guy did us both a favor, Max. Hell, too bad he didn’t pull me into the alley before I got to the bank…He could have had the damn eleven hundred and eighty-six dollars, too, …he deserved it, Max. When he came out of the alley and used the ether on me, he was really just putting me out of my misery. Hell, Max, this will be over soon….it’s really kinder this way…kinder to die quickly, rather than seeing my hope die a day at a time.”
  
  “Liz…this is stupid. It wouldn’t have ever worked….You…you’re not even really Liz, this is a dream, Liz, all a dream. Just a subconscious mind wanting the impossible.”
  
  ”You’re probably right, Max, you usually are. But tonight it’s my dream and in a dream, anything is possible…and tonight…before I die, Max,….. I’m taking what I want.”
  
  Liz pushed him back on the bed, his clothes dissolving into nothingness as she touched him.
  
  “Liz…this isn’t the right time for this..not when you are buried somewhere…”
  
  “Not the right time, Max? It’s the only time I’ll have.”
  
  “This is silly…this is just a dream.”
  
  ”That’s right, Max…but it’s my dream.”,” she said as her own clothes dissolved into nothingness.
  
  “Only a dream,” he said as she straddled him. “Only a dream,” he said, as his body responded to her. “Only a dream,” he said, as she reached down and brought him to her entrance. “ Only a dream,” he cried out as she eased herself down over him, his hips thrusting upward involuntarily, spasmodically, as if his very body was no longer his to control. “Only a dream,” he said as he felt her tear as her body fully opened to his entry.
  
  She brought his hands to her naked breasts and her hips thrust downward rhythmically, repeatedly, almost brutally as their bodies gathered themselves for the final outcome. She bit her lower lip as her head thrust back as the convulsions came within her, collapsing finally onto his chest. His body seemed to quake as the muscles of her vagina contracted against him and he emptied himself into her........ his face a mask of pleasure...and of guilt.
  
  Liz put her right hand behind his neck and brought his mouth to hers, her tongue darting in and out of the lips, leaving traces of sweetness and spice. Her left hand pulled his pelvis tightly against hers as she rolled off to the side, pulling him on top of her, her contractions still holding him inside of her.
  
  He cried on her shoulder for long minutes before looking in to her amber eyes.
  
  “Liz..,” he said, but then his mouth was covered with her lips, and her hips began again their thrusting, her hands sliding down his back to his waist, to his buttocks, pulling him tighter in time to the rhythmic movement of her hips. The climax was slower this time, but deeper. There were no cries of ‘it’s a dream,’ from Max Evans, only the moans of a person so lost in passion that nothing else in the world mattered.

As the dream started to die and Max disappeared, Liz fought to stay in the room….fought to keep in the sheets that were still warm from his body and moist with the warm seed of the lover who had filled her to overflowing…but it wasn’t to be.
She knew as she awoke that the feeling between her legs was not the body of Max Evans, merely the second oxygen tank, and the feeling beneath her buttocks only the cold wetness of stale urine. It was all just a dream after all. She was in Hell, and part of that Hell was the regret of opportunities never taken and dreams never lived.

She knew she was starting to get dehydrated, but it couldn’t be too bad as of yet….her sobs still brought tears running down her cheeks.

5:00 AM Max Evans’ room, the Evans Residence, Roswell New Mexico

He lay on his bed, looking up at the ceiling. It was strange. He and Izzy had both dozed off a couple of times, reading through the reports. They’d decided that they needed to take a break, so he’d set the alarm for a half hour and Isabel had gone back to her room. But the nap hadn’t worked. He’d been watching the ceiling for 10 minutes, but all he’d seen was Liz…Liz buried in the ground somewhere…scared out of her mind.

He got up out of bed and walked over to the bookcase. He hadn’t touched it in three years, but he knew just where it was. He pulled the book from the bookcase and opened it, knowing what he’d see. It was a single 5 by 7 picture of a sixth grade girl.
He read the note on the back, ‘To my special friend Max, see you in seventh grade, Love Liz.’ He remembered that day…everyone had gotten their photo packages. Everyone had dozens of wallet size films in their packages, a half dozen 3 by 5s to give to your closest friends, and three 5 by 7s.

When she had brought him the picture, he’d seen it in her eyes…friendship, certainly…but more. No, not more, really, but the hope of more. They weren’t really kids any more…the changes had already started.
Their bodies were not yet mature, her young breast buds no doubt would have done fine without the training bra she was wearing, but he could see it in her eyes as he remembered her bringing him the picture. She wanted more…she wanted more than friendship. Her wants mirrored his own…but only because she didn’t know.

It was then he’d started distancing himself from her. It wouldn’t have been fair to her...he knew that. If he’d let it become closer…eventually she would have had to know…it wasn’t like he could really conceal what he was from her…not if he let it go that far. And when she knew…it would be all over. Oh, he trusted her not to tell…she wouldn’t have turned him in to the Sheriff….but she’d have known what he was…feared him….rejected him, and that he could not have borne.

He had hoped that he could stay her friend…to have that at least. But it tore him apart, now that she’d started dating others….and his own dreams of her….they tortured him. So gradually he’d put more and more distance between them, not really sure it had lessened his pain, but hoping it had lessened hers.

He lay back on the bed, looking up at the picture of the young sixth grader. It had all changed then, when simple friendship had ceased to be enough for either of them, but when even a sixth grade Max Evans knew it could never be more than friendship.

He’d had these thoughts, felt this pain, a thousand times in the last three years. He closed his eyes, blotting out the picture in his hand. Reality was once more too painful, and his mind sought its release from that pain in his dreams…

• It wasn’t her bedroom or his, this time. It seemed more like a luxury hotel suite.
  
  Liz sat on the side of the bed. But it wasn't a twelve year old Liz he looked at now, not a child at all.
  She was looking up at him in an outfit unlike she’d ever worn. It went beyond sexy…a black lace top and black lace panties. Max felt the intake of his breath as he looked at her. Even in his dreams, he’d never seen her so desirable.
  
  And the look in her eyes was also different…no longer the look of the perfect Liz Parker. Her face was not coy, not sympathetic, …she looked at him like she was assessing him….assessing whether it was still worth it to want him like he wanted her.
  
  “Why did you pull away, Max?” she asked him. ‘How would I begin to explain that?’ he wondered. ‘Tell her ‘I’m an alien , Liz….? I’m probably not even the same species you think I am?’…how do you tell someone…that?’
  
  “You’d never understand, Liz.”
  
  “You never gave me a chance to understand, you bastard.” ‘Bastard…he only wished it were that simple. Did he even have real parents? Or was he some sort of hybrid…created in a machine?’
  
  “I would have hurt you either way.”
  
  “Maybe….but at least I would have had a choice, Max. You could have given me that.”
  ‘..and maybe he could have…maybe he should have. Maybe it would have been better for her…..but Max knew it would have killed him…to see her eyes fear him….to hear her exclaim in horror when she realized what he was. It had been to spare him that he’d done this…but he really hadn’t realized it might hurt her.’
  
  “It doesn’t matter, Liz. This is just a dream…it doesn’t mean anything. It’s not worth fighting over….not worth arguing about. Neither one of us is really here.”
  
  “Maybe you are right, Max. Maybe I should just forget about you…just go back to my box…just wait for the air to run out….I am going to die…I know that. Nothing can save me. Sixteen years of being the perfect Miss Parker, and what does it get me? A few days of regrets….a few days of wishing I’d lived my life differently. A few days of wondering what I might have had…if I hadn’t wasted my opportunities, Max.”
  
  “I’ll find you Liz. Somehow I will.”
  
  “Find me Max? Why? You’ve won. You’ve been trying to get rid of me since the sixth grade, and now you have. Why bother with remorse now? I used to think it was Isabel that kept us apart…but it wasn’t. It was you, Max…you and me. I’m just as responsible as you…because I did nothing to stop you. I let you leave me…and I didn’t even try to fight for you. The guy did us both a favor, Max. Hell, too bad he didn’t pull me into the alley before I got to the bank…He could have had the damn eleven hundred and eighty-six dollars, too, …he deserved it, Max. When he came out of the alley and used the ether on me, he was really just putting me out of my misery. Hell, Max, this will be over soon….it’s really kinder this way…kinder to die quickly, rather than seeing my hope die a day at a time.”
  
  “Liz…this is stupid. It wouldn’t have ever worked….You…you’re not even really Liz, this is a dream, Liz, all a dream. Just a subconscious mind wanting the impossible.”
  
  ”You’re probably right, Max, you usually are. But tonight it’s my dream and in a dream, anything is possible…and tonight…before I die, Max,….. I’m taking what I want.”
  
  Liz pushed him back on the bed, his clothes dissolving into nothingness as she touched him. Max looked up at her….the battle raging in his soul. He wanted to hold her…to take her…..he wanted it so much, even knowing it was just a stupid dream. But how could he do this…how could he let this dream excite him….arouse him, while the real Liz was going insane buried somewhere, perhaps gasping her last breath. What kind of a beast was he to even be here, when he should be out looking for her..
  
  “Liz…this isn’t the right time for this..not when you are buried somewhere…”
  
  “Not the right time, Max? It’s the only time I’ll have.”
  
  “This is silly…this is just a dream.”
  
  ”That’s right, Max…but it’s my dream.”,” she said as her own clothes dissolved into nothingness. ‘Make it go away,’ Max begged. ‘Don’t let me think these thoughts….have these dreams…while Liz is dying somewhere. Don’t make me know pleasure, while Liz is in pain..’
  
  “Only a dream,” he said as she straddled him. “Only a dream,” he said, as his body responded to her. “Only a dream,” he said, as she reached down and brought him to her entrance. “ Only a dream,” he cried out as she eased herself down over him, his hips thrusting upward involuntarily, spasmodically, as if his very body was no longer his to control. “Only a dream,” he said as he felt her tear as her body fully opened to his entry.
  
  He felt the warmth of her around him, the moisture, his joining hers against his will. He didn’t want this, it was beyond obscene…a violation of her memory…a violation of what they once had…a friendship that had been pure and true and untainted by desire. But his body was not answering to his mind, but to her body as it started to slide against him, bringing the feelings deep into his center…the sensations building ….building...toward what he had for so long only imagined.
  
  She brought his hands to her naked breasts and her hips thrust downward rhythmically, repeatedly, almost brutally as their bodies gathered themselves for the final outcome. She bit her lower lip as her head thrust back as the convulsions came within her, collapsing finally onto his chest. As the spasms of her vagina triggered his own climax it seemed like the entire universe exploded in his mind. He saw flashes in his mind…the first time he saw her in the playground, stepping off the school bus, Liz smiling in the Crashdown, talking to customers, Liz in a lab jacket looking over her notebook, slowly chewing on a pencil… He felt the spasms rack his own body…the warmth…the fire….the need that he had denied for three years…fulfilled at last. It was only a dream…he knew that….but it was a dream of heaven…of paradise. A dream where what he was really didn’t matter to her. It was a dream where the alien boy was finally…truly….accepted by the one he loved.
  
  She put her right hand behind his neck and brought his mouth to hers, her tongue darting in and out of the lips, leaving traces of sweetness and spice. Her left hand pulled his pelvis tightly against hers as she rolled off to the side, pulling him on top of her, her contractions still holding him inside of her.
  
  He cried on her shoulder for long minutes before looking in to her amber eyes. Even in a dream he felt grateful…grateful that he could know the acceptance..the love…even if it could never be real.
  
  “Liz..,” he said, but then his mouth was covered with her lips, and her hips began again their thrusting, her hands sliding down his back to his waist, to his buttocks, pulling him tighter in time to the rhythmic movement of her hips. The climax was slower this time, but deeper. There were no cries of ‘it’s a dream,’ from Max Evans, only the moans of a person so lost in passion that nothing else in the world mattered

He heard the alarm go off. As he awakened he saw the ceiling above his head. Then he felt the warmth within his boxers. He sat up in horror, the picture fluttering to the floor beside him.

'Great Max. Liz is dying somewhere, gasping for breath, and you are having wet dreams about her. God, you are a monster. She's better off where she is than she would have been with you.'

He went in to the bathroom and turned on the shower. 'I'm going to find her,' he promised himself as he looked in the mirror. 'Then I'll leave Roswell.....leave her alone forever. She deserves someone better...someone...human.'

8:00 AM Chaves County Sheriff’s Office, Roswell New Mexico.

The secretary looked at the envelope. It was neater than the others, computer printed….easy to tell by the barcode under the address. The lack of a return address was a little worrisome. There were a lot of crazies out there, and she’d been well trained to look for indicators of problems. It had gotten to be that kind of a world, with letter bombs…anthrax…you really couldn’t take anything at face value anymore.

She put it on the scale…less than a half ounce. She held it to the bright light…it appeared no more than a simple letter. She ran it quickly over the magnet, just to be sure…but it certainly didn’t seem to be dangerous.

She ran the letter opener over it and extracted the letter, surprised to see the cut out words from the newspaper pasted to the sheet as she unfolded it. She dropped it after reading only the first two sentences. She was well trained..until the lab guys had dusted it for prints…checked it for DNA, it would sit there on her desk. But it was still open, and she could still read it without touching it.

She grabbed the phone quickly. “Sheriff…this is Hazel in admin….I need you to come see something…quickly.”


Even before the crime lab people were done with the letter and envelope, Jim Valenti was on the phone to Albuquerque. They agreed to send the representatives of the governors task force. Their plane would be at the airport in an hour.

8:10 AM Chaves County Sheriff’s Office, Roswell New Mexico.

As Officer Lambright came into the back of the sheriff’s office Jim Valenti looked up at her from his desk. “Well Jenny,” he said, “there’s no longer any doubt that this case was an abduction. We have an anonymous letter and it appears from the postmark that it was mailed before any announcement had been made of Liz Parker’s disappearance…possibly as early as the same time she disappeared. Forensics has the original, but here is a copy…”


Officer Jennifer Lambright took the copy and started reading. At the second paragraph her mouth opened abruptly. “Well, that’s odd,” she said.

“What’s odd?” queried Valenti.

“Well Sheriff, it’s just that….well for the last 20 minutes or so I’ve been out front talking to this classmate of the victim. He was suggesting that we consider looking somewhere that someone might have buried her. Heck, I told him that we really didn’t have any solid evidence she’d even been abducted…., that we couldn’t just go around randomly digging holes, when she might have just run off. This certainly puts a whole new spin on the case though.”

“You mean he just…guessed….guessed that ;
a. someone abducted her, and
b. someone buried her?
Without even knowing about this note? What is this person…psychic? That sure strikes me as suspicious.”

“Me too, Sheriff….after reading this. Before it…well, he just seemed like a desperate friend, sort of panicky…just wanting her to be found…but now..?”

“Who was this person, Jenny?”

“One of the kids we talked to yesterday, Sheriff….that Evans boy.”

“Maybe we need to talk to that young man in a little more detail, Jenny. Where did you last see him? “

“Heck, he just left the office a few minutes ago, Sheriff…heading west on Main.”

“Toward the bank?”

”Yeah, I guess.”

“Let’s go..”

8:10 AM, West Main Street, Roswell New Mexico (alley between Roswell United Bank and the Crashdown Café)

Max wasn’t really sure why he was here. He remembered something from somewhere about an alley. Was that in something he’d read last night? Or was it only something out of that crazy dream. Whatever the case, he needed to look around.

The alley was empty except for one mangy looking cat which seemed to want to dispute possession of a small wooden box where it had taken up residence. The cat looked rather disheveled, but then so did the rest of the alley. There were trash cans behind most of the businesses, dumpsters behind a couple.

He went over the entire alley, looking for any sign of her. He carefully checked each trash can…looking for anything that would suggest she’d been there. The dumpsters he checked last. Both the trash cans and the dumpsters had apparently been emptied within the last couple days. None of them were more than a third full, most much less. The second dumpster seemed almost empty but the smell was distinctive. Oh, all of the trash cans and both of the dumpsters had quite a smell, but this one seemed to rekindle a memory inside him somehow. It smelled like ether.

As they turned the corner they saw the boy at the end of the alley, crawling in to a dumpster.

“Jenny, did we check this area?”

“We sure did, Sheriff. We checked everywhere between the bank and the restaurant, and several blocks on either side. She wasn’t here….nothing suspicious was here at all.”

“Except now, now we have one highly suspicious sixteen year old boy.”

They walked quickly up to the dumpster and looked in.

“Mr. Evans, there’s a reason the sign on these says ‘don’t play in or around,’ son. People have been hurt by these. People have gotten in these and had the truck dump them in the compactor. I think you need to get out of there. Besides, we’d like to talk to you a little more about your theory about Miss Parker being undergrou…..say, son, what do you have there?”

“It’s a rag, Sheriff. A rag that smells like ether, and an empty aerosol bottle of starting fluid.”

“Starting fluid, son?”

“Yes, Sheriff. It’s used to start cars and trucks when it’s cold.”

“I know what it’s used for, son. Why do you have it?”

“Well Sheriff, it’s mostly ether….that’s where it came from.”

“OK son, put the can down right there…don’t touch it any more, wait until forensics can check it over for DNA and prints. Why the hell did you touch it, anyway?”

“Well Sheriff, until I picked it up, I didn’t know what it was. I thought it might just be hairspray or something.”

“Well, let’s hope we can get some prints of the can…maybe some hair for a DNA analysis.”

8:50 AM, the forensics lab, Chaves County Sheriff’s Office, Roswell New Mexico.

“Sorry Sheriff, the only prints on that can belonged to the boy. The abductor must have wiped them clean.”

“Or the abductor forgot to wipe them clean, and then went back to wipe it clean….or at least handle it again to cover the original prints with later ones,” said the Sheriff.

“The kid? You think he might be involved?”

“He sure seems to be real good about guessing….too good, if you ask me.”

“Well are you going to pull him in for more questioning?”

“That’s going to be difficult. Right now I don’t quite have probable cause, and that’s important…since his father is a lawyer. But he’s making me pretty damn suspicious.”

“Are you even sure this spraycan was involved? I mean, the dumpster’s right out in back of an auto parts store…they must sell this stuff.”

”Oh, they do…but not this brand. It’d be one hell of a coincidence if that spraycan wasn’t involved, Jeb….this case seems to have an awful lot of ‘coincidences,’ and they all seem to involve Max Evans.”

“But Sheriff,” said Jenny Lambright, “..the kids just sixteen. He would have been thirteen years old at the time of the case up near Albuquerque…only eleven during the case in Oklahoma. That wouldn’t make much sense.”

“It would if this was a copycat crime. I checked the records on this kid, he’s an honor student…real bright. If he wanted to do something like this…I could see him researching something like this…trying to set up an alibi by pinning it on whoever did the other two. But maybe he makes a mistake…forgets the aerosol bottle and rag, drops the envelope in the wrong slot at the Post Office.”

“Well, I guess maybe, Sheriff,” said Officer Lambright. “But if so, does he want to be caught? I mean, we searched that dumpster, saw that aerosol can, and it didn’t mean anything to us. It’s almost like he’s helping us catch him.”

“Sometimes criminals do just that, Officer Lambright. Sometimes they do the crime for the thrill of it, sometimes they give us clues just to rub our noses in it, and sometimes they feel so guilty they just want to be caught afterwards. We don’t quite have probable cause to get a search warrant on Mr. Evans yet, but we are damn close to it. Especially with a young girl about to run out of air. Judges get real understanding when you tell them about things like that, One more ‘coincidence’ and we are going to be doing some serious interrogation of that young man, and a serious search of his home. As a matter of fact, call up the school. Tell them we want to do a random check of the school lockers for drugs. Make sure his is one of the ones randomly selected.”

“OK, Sheriff.”

10:00 AM In a black Jeep driving down the 300 block of West Main, Roswell New Mexico.

"That is NOT what I'm saying, Max. I'm not a monster. I felt how scared she was when I tried to dreamwalk her. My God, Max, she's buried alive. I'm the one who said that there's a lot of ground out there....I know we need help. All I said was that we can't let them get suspicious of us.

It's not going to do Liz any good if we are locked up or something. If I thought it would help find her, I'd turn myself over to the Sheriff...let them put me in some laboratory. But it won't help, Max. You just need to use a little more discretion on how you tell the police. An anonymous phone call would have done just as well."

"I'm sorry, Iz...I just had this dream and...well I've been feeling so damn guilty about this ever since."

"Max, you didn't do this. You shouldn't be feeling guilty. If anyone should be, it's me. I keep thinking that maybe if I'd just let you stay there until closing...maybe you'd have walked with her to the bank and back...maybe then none of this would have ever happened."

"I'm sorry, Iz. I'm just so upset...I guess I don't know what I'm doing right now."

Isabel turned the Jeep toward home. Today wasn't a day to worry about school or anything else. They had a different problem to solve. She was closer to her brother than she was to anyone else in the world, and she'd never seen him hurting so bad. He had always been the sensitive one...the one who would put baby birds back in the nest, and heal broken wings. 'This is killing Max,' she told herself. 'I wish it had been me,' she thought, with a coldness she'd never before known.

Isabel had never harmed anyone...never even been in a fight. But this person....whoever he was...had hurt her brother. Isabel wasn't really sure what violence she was capable of...it had never come up. She was surprised to find herself hoping that it would...hoping that she'd get to meet the person that did this to her brother....her brother and Liz Parker.

10:15 AM Roswell International Air Center, Roswell New Mexico

The New Mexico State Patrol twin engine aircraft touched down lightly and taxied in to the small terminal. The Sheriff was waiting as the two people stepped down the airstair. They were very different from each other, the woman was barely five feet and likely not much more than a hundred pounds. The man was probably two hundred forty pounds, but tall enough that he still managed to look lanky. Both were in their late twenties or early thirties, and both looked deadly serious as they walked up to the police van.

"Hello, I'm Sheriff Jim Valenti."

"Hello Sheriff. I'm Lieutenant Humboldt...just call me Bob. This is Dr. Sandra Fowler, our profiler."

"Pleased to meet you. Doctor Fowler."

"Sandy will do fine, Sheriff.."

"And Jim will be good for me too..., sorry we are meeting under these circumstances."

"Well, I'm sorry about the circumstances too, Jim," said Bob. "But we've been after this guy for awhile. At least we know he's close."

Sheriff Valenti looked a little bit troubled, and both of them noticed it.

"What is it, Jim," Doctor Fowler asked.

"Well, Im not sure it is the same guy. I'm starting to suspect this may be a copycat."

Bob and Sandy looked at each other, then Sandy shrugged. "Well, maybe we can help you with that too, Sheriff. A criminal's a criminal. Either way, we're here to help."

12:00 Noon Chaves Superior Court, Roswell New Mexico

“You expect a search warrant based on that?” asked Judge Ortega.

“Look, Judge. Somewhere we have a 16 year old girl buried in a box running out of air. First, the Evans kid comes in and tells Officer Lambright to look for her underground….even before my secretary opened the letter. Next, the boy goes right to where the abduction likely took place, and retrieves the aerosol spray can that held the ether that was likely used to abduct the girl….and forensics can find no fingerprints on the can but his…”

”That may not even be the can, Sheriff. Or it may have been wiped clean by the perpetrator. And you admit that your officers saw it, and didn’t even realize the significance of it.”

“That’s true, your honor. But once we did get the letter, we certainly would have gone back and searched the area again for clues. He may have just been correcting an error he made before we could catch it.”

”Jim, I’d like to help you on this, but that’s thin, son…..very thin. Now I know the victim, that cute young waitress over at the Crashdown. She’s always had a smiling friendly face whenever I go in for my morning coffee, but I know this boys father, too. Hell, I signed the papers when he and his wife adopted those two kids. Philip Evans is not going to sit still while you play fast and loose with probable cause here for a search warrant here. Unless you’ve got more, I just can’t do it.”

“Well how about this, Judge. A statement by the girl’s best friend, Maria DeLuca, that the boy has been continuously watching the girl when she wasn’t looking…and doing this for years?”

The judge still looked uncertain.

“And Sheriff….we were doing a random drug check of lockers at the High School and happened to find these in Max Evans’ locker.

The judge took the folder and it opened spilling out on his desk. In it was every picture that had appeared in the local or school newspaper concerning Liz Parker for the last three years, as well as clippings of every article about Liz, from her being on the honor roll to her being science club president….to …well, every single thing that had been written about her since the seventh grade.

“The boy is obsessed with her, Judge. She turns up missing, and he knows what happened before anyone else. You want more? I can’t give it to you without a warrant, Judge. And the time is running out. Somewhere that little gal is frightened to death, just waiting for her air to run out. Am I sure Max Evans is guilty? Hell no, Judge. But right now, he’s all we’ve got.”

”OK, Jim. A warrant to search the premises, and nothing more. At that I expect to have Philip Evans jumping down my throat 20 minutes after you serve it, but if you really think it might help that young girl….well, I’ll stick my neck out, I guess.”