When the Sky Fell on Splendor(20)

He used to love baseball. Before the accident, he’d played in the church league and everything. Mom didn’t know anything about the game, of course. Once, when Mark, Arthur, and I were playing Mario Kart in the living room, I’d overheard her pretending to give Dad advice on an upcoming game.

“You see, Rob, what you gotta do is . . .” she’d said from the next room.

“What, Eileen?”

I remembered glancing over my shoulder and seeing him through the kitchen doorway, leaning in close to her, his face dead serious. “Tell me, honey. How am I gonna win this game?”

“Well, listen. You’ve gotta take that ball, and throw it, right into the end zone.”

Dad fought a smile. “The end zone is a very important place in baseball.”

“Oh, the most important,” Mom had agreed, and their laughter had bounced around the yellow-lit wallpaper of the kitchen, a Carole King record softly playing under it all.

I’d hardly cared that they were happy. Back then, it had all seemed very normal, the five of us in that house.

The smell of onions and baking garlic that meant Dad’s potato-chip-topped green bean casserole was in the oven.

The spread of Arthur’s superhero comics across every surface in the living room.

Mark’s mix of art books and science journals stacked neatly on the bottom step so he’d remember to take them to bed with him.

The high-pitched yodel of Mom’s laughter filtering into the living room.

“No one’s accusing Arthur or Frances,” the sheriff said, yanking me out of the memory. “To be frank, Robert, at this point, we’re not quite sure what we’d even be accusing anyone of. There’s been significant damage to some crops, as well as the little electrical plant down there, not to mention the cows and the birds in the area are a bit agitated by whatever happened, and, well . . . confused.” He seemed resistant to saying that last part.

“With all due respect,” Arthur said, scooting to the edge of the couch to mirror the sheriff’s confident yet casual position. “They’re cows. Isn’t being confused part of their M.O.?”

The sheriff chuckled, but there was something uneasy underneath it. “Can’t argue against that. But the property owner is pretty upset. He’s concerned the cows might have been tormented.”

Did he see us? I thought again and again, like a skipping record.

“They’re beef cows,” Arthur said.

I shot him a pleading look he ignored. Lying to the sheriff was one thing. We didn’t also need to be assholes.

The sheriff sighed. “Look, under different circumstances, I wouldn’t be here, but we’re getting a lot of pressure to put a face on all this.”

Dad pulled at his flannel collar. “I see.”

Arthur cleared his throat. “Sheriff, where do we come into this?”

I’d texted the others to tell them what Remy had said (minus the part about needing to meet me), then ridden straight home and walked into this interrogation.

All I could do was hope Arthur had seen the message, or at least was still committed to keeping his UFO under his jurisdiction. He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt that mostly hid his scars, at least.

“Look.” The sheriff thumbed his hat. “I know you all didn’t burn Mr. St. James’s field, but I don’t know where you were that night—”

“At Levi’s!” I volunteered. “Watching The Shining.”

The sheriff held up a hand and continued. “—but from our cursory look at the substation’s security footage, the cameras malfunctioned twelve minutes before midnight.”

Arthur and I exchanged a look. The possibility of security cameras hadn’t occurred to me. I hadn’t stopped to wonder why no one had come running out when the disc hit the tower. “Malfunctioned how?” I asked.

“Stuttered and then froze,” he said. “To the security guards, it just looked like all was calm. Which is one reason we have to treat this as a criminal case until we know more.”

Arthur crossed his arms. “And we’re the criminals?”

“Arthur,” Dad warned, but the sheriff gave a warm, Remy-esque smile.

“I highly doubt it. But we went ahead and pulled the footage from the new traffic camera. Just to see who all might’ve been headed that way before the incident.”

So St. James hadn’t seen us.

Splendor’s one traffic camera, fixed to a two-way stop where three people had died in the last four years, had. Nerves fizzed in my stomach, but Arthur quickly said, “We had to pass through that on our way to Levi’s.”

The sheriff nodded. “That’s exactly what I told St. James. We’re following up on every lead, checking for alibis, and for now, we have no reason to doubt yours. But, Arthur, Frances . . . I need you to understand: Whether you actually had anything to do with what happened in that field, if anything turns up to suggest you were there—for example, any of the missing debris—it’s going to look bad.”

“Missing debris?” Arthur and I said in unison. A wild flare of concern, or maybe something more territorial than that, flashed in my brother’s hazel eyes.

Sheriff Nakamura’s dark gaze probed us for signs that we were acting, pretending to be shocked by what he’d said. “The top of a tower. Some pieces of transmission lines, a metal coil.”