The other half of the case contained a machine Dryden couldn’t identify. It was the size of a small cereal box, lying in its padded indentation. The machine was made of black plastic, with ventilation slats on its top and sides. Faint red light shone through the slats, from an LED somewhere inside. The machine emitted a deep, just-audible hum that rose and fell in its pitch. A slender wire, probably a USB cable, connected the device to the tablet computer.
For the moment Claire ignored the strange machine. She tapped an icon on the tablet’s screen, labeled ARCHIVE. A file window opened, displaying a long list of what looked like audio clips—the icons were all tiny speaker symbols. Claire scrolled to the bottom of the list and tapped the second-from-last file.
An audio program opened and the file began to play.
Dryden heard a woman’s voice speaking, indiscernible beneath a wash of static. It stayed like that for five seconds or more, and then it cleared just enough that he could make out most of the words.
“… have said they will not release any names until the families have been notified. A spokesperson for the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department told us they know the identity of only one of the victims, based on the 9-1-1 call that came in just after two in the morning. Medical examiners will attempt to identify the other three by dental records. I’m going to go back to Richard Amis, who’s still out at the scene. Richard.”
A second of hissing silence followed, and then a man began to speak.
“Tamryn, it’s still a very active scene out here. Any normal day, you could drive past this place and not see another car for miles, but this morning there are upward of a dozen vehicles on-site, local and federal officials, including arson investigators. Based on what I’m hearing, the evidence supports what the first responders assumed. The trailer’s owner, Harold Heeley Shannon, was keeping the four victims in a cage, and when he discovered they’d called the police, he set fire to the trailer and fled, leaving them locked inside. Tamryn, I have to tell you, I’ve seen a number of investigators at this site become outwardly emotional. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen in more than ten years of reporting.”
Another pause, and the woman’s voice came back.
“I want to give our listeners the description of the perpetrator again, Harold Heeley Shannon, he’s a white male, age sixty-two, long gray hair, gray beard, there’s a red Ford Fiesta registered in his—”
A burst of static drowned out her words for a few seconds.
“—come back to you with any developments on that story as we get them. For ABC7-FM, I’m Tamryn Bell. It’s eleven minutes past eight o’clock.”
The first notes of a commercial came through the static; Claire tapped the stop button and closed the audio player.
Dryden stared at the tablet screen, unblinking. All that he’d heard—and all that he’d seen at the trailer—felt both real and intangible at the same time. Like thumbtacks stuck to empty space where a wall should have been.
His thoughts went to the specifics: The woman on the radio had said it was eleven minutes past eight, and the reporter at the scene had described it as morning—8:11 in the morning. It wasn’t even 4:30 in the morning yet. The stars were still out over the Mojave.
Dryden stared at the time stamp on the file: 09:47 PM—08/07/2015.
That was last night, around a quarter to ten, a couple of hours before Claire had called him.
Dryden looked up from the screen and found Claire watching him, gauging his response. Dryden met her gaze for a moment, then simply shook his head.
I’m lost. Explain it.
Claire seemed about to speak but stopped. She shut her eyes, leaned back into her headrest. Then she opened them again and closed the list of audio recordings.
On the tablet’s screen, she tapped a program icon labeled simply MACHINE. It seemed to be the only other application the computer had. When it opened, Dryden saw a bare-bones program window featuring four labeled buttons: ON, OFF, RECORD, and STOP.
At the moment, OFF was highlighted in bold. Claire tapped ON.
For a second or two, nothing happened. Then the red glow inside the black plastic box disappeared, and a green glow replaced it. The deep, cyclic hum sped up, rising and falling through its frequency range at two or three times its earlier speed.
Like something waking up, Dryden thought.
Then, from the computer’s speakers, came static. Steady, hissing, like an aerated faucet.
“Give it a minute,” Claire said.
But it took only ten or fifteen seconds for the static to recede. A song faded in: ZZ Top’s “La Grange.” Almost at once it sank back into the hiss. Gone.
For more than a minute after that, there was nothing to hear. Claire kept tilting her head, as if picking up subtle changes in the static.
Then the distortion faded again, and a man’s voice came through, deep and measured, speaking calmly about something. Within seconds his words became discernible.
“… two and two on Almodovar, who has a four-game hitting streak coming into this one. Curve ball outside, that’ll make it three balls, two strikes. We’ve got one out and one runner on, top of the second, score is one-nothing San Diego.”
“Think the Padres are playing at four thirty in the morning?” Claire asked.