Bard had made his money for the day. Now he was standing in a small trailer park about ten miles into the mountains outside Los Alamos.
“Yeah, I know Ernie. Why? You think he’s connected to all this?”
The elderly woman Bard was speaking with was a local named Edna who had lived in the trailer park for years.
“I’m not gonna say it’s impossible, but I’m not gonna say it’s definite,” Bard said. “He was evidently in the area last weekend and disappeared roughly around the same time as the sightings. So can you show me exactly where you were standing when you saw the light come down?”
Edna slowly made her way around to the front of her trailer with her cane. Bard followed.
She stopped and pointed above it.
“It was right there. Right above my trailer. Came down close enough that I could see it. It wasn’t just light. There was something metal, or something solid.”
“Did it have a shape?”
“Kind of. Sounds really weird, but it was almost like it kept changing shape. Actually, the light itself stayed kind of like an orb, changing from pink to red to green to blue. But whatever the light was shining off of kept shifting into different shapes.”
Bard pulled out his laptop and tucked it beneath one arm. He started the speech-to-text program, letting it capture what Edna was saying.
“So, in your opinion, what you saw couldn’t have been a man-made aircraft? No chance it was a plane passing through some kind of lighting effect? No lightning storms? Nobody over here working on the power?”
Edna laughed.
“Look, if you’ve lived around here long enough, and it seems like you have, I’m sure you’ve seen some shit. So you go ahead and imagine whatever you wanna imagine. I’m telling you plain as day, whatever that thing was, it wasn’t right.”
“Do you want to show me these horses that supposedly escaped and came back?”
“Sure.”
They walked some distance to the edge of the trailer park, where a large fenced-in field and a series of paddocks stood beside a small barn. There were about six horses, different breeds and colors, most belonging to residents of the trailer park.
“How long were they gone?”
“Three weeks.”
“And then they were just back one morning?”
“Yup. Just like that.”
“No signs they broke through the fence? Nobody saw anything?”
“Nope. Just the one boy down the road who claimed he saw one flying into the sky.”
Bard looked at her.
“Huh. Think I could speak with the boy’s parents?”
“Probably not. They’re not real friendly, and they were pretty upset about what the boy said to some of the locals.” Edna hesitated. “I’ll spare you the details, but he said the horse looked like it was turning inside out as it flew toward the moon.”
“Like its flesh?”
“Something like that.”
Bard gazed at the horses galloping playfully across the field.
A familiar black shape appeared at the entrance to the trailer park.
The same old police car from that morning.
“These guys again,” Edna said.
Bard watched the car turn toward them.
“They’ve been coming through here doing the rounds since the horses split, ever since that night those lights came through. Tried telling everybody it was helicopters.”
The car rolled closer.
It didn’t resemble any normal squad car Bard had seen. There was no obvious camera mounted on the dashboard. STATE POLICE was written along the side, but everything else about the thing looked displaced from another decade.
The car stopped alongside them.
Both doors opened.
Two officers stepped out wearing black, old-fashioned police uniforms. Both wore black aviator sunglasses, hiding their eyes.
Bard recognized them immediately.
The driver looked between him and Edna.
“Either of you know anything about the disappearance of the boy who spoke about the flying horse?”
Edna stared at him.
“What?”
“He disappeared last night.”
“Oh my God. No. That’s terrible. I was just telling this young reporter about it.”
The officer turned toward Bard.
“Reporter? Press?”
“No. I’m not a reporter. I do private inquiries on a basis of interest.”
“Well, that’s something.” The officer looked him over. “Look, we don’t need you writing up some kind of crazy story here, okay? People are already stressed enough about this whole thing. Probably the best thing for you to do is just keep your nose out of things.”
“Thanks for the input.”
The officer turned back to Edna.
“Look, Edna, I know we’ve spoken to you a couple times now, but we’re gonna have to find a chance this evening, when you’re done with this guy, to talk again. We’ll be canvassing for a bit, so we’ll stop in before dark.”
Edna nodded.
“I’ll be home.”
The officers gave them a brief nod and climbed back into the car.
As it turned around, Bard caught sight of the license plate.
Government plate.
JOKER.
No tag.
“That’s pretty fucking weird.”
He finished talking with Edna. Given the escalation, Bard decided he had gotten enough for now. He took one last walk through the trailer park, looking around the barn and watching the horses before returning to his Civic near Edna’s house. He had a shitty digital camera with him and recorded what he could, several videos and at least a hundred pictures of the trailer park and surrounding property.
On his way out, he passed the police car again.
Bard slowed.
He looked at the plate.
Still a government plate.
But it didn’t say JOKER.
J073R.
Permanent tag.
He snapped a picture of the car and the plate as he drove past.
Hmm.