The Things We Bury - Part 1: In Anticipation of the End of the World [Completed]

Chapter 6: Digging in the Dirt (Part 4 of 5)

Human beings were odd creatures.  Mostly, they were tedious and dull.  They inched through their lives like automatons, too wrapped up in their own petty dramas to notice the ruts they were digging.  The ruts that would be dug so deep they would end up as graves.  But despite that, they constantly did the unexpected.  They persistently subverted expectations and made the world a very uncertain place.

Major Delgado drinking herbal tea was only the most recent in a lifetime of baffling surprises.

   "Coffee keeps me up."  His voice was low and his lips barely moved.  He kept the index finger of his right hand pressed to his temple.  The rest of his hand hung loosely blocking the side of his face in a casual manner.  He didn't need to do it.  A magazine rack and a poster blocked the window sufficiently to shield any view of him from the outside.

He was nervous about meeting her.  He hadn't wanted to do it at all, but Barbara Gracie refused to take no for an offer.  It was a practice, which served her well all her life.  But Delgado didn't yield to her completely.  He had held his ground on refusing to meet at her home, citing the risk of possible DTAA surveillance.  So she had accepted his offer of coffee in the anonymous space of a chain bookshop.

She'd waited for him as instructed in the DVD section on the second floor.  It was a deserted back room with little for her to do except flip through movies she had never seen and never would see.  Muffled explosions provided background noise as a film featuring giant robots flashed in strobing pyrotechnics on the wall-mounted TV screens.  The images, for all their hyperkinetic movement, had the same dull flatness of all fictional exploits—cardboard cutouts masquerading as reality.

Barbara hadn't liked waiting, but she admired Delgado's precautions.  Anyone who joined her, even if they only poked their head in, would immediately fall under suspicion.  But no one did until he showed up.

However, it seemed that no level of safeguards would put Delgado at ease.  Sitting in the store's coffee shop, he barely touched his tea.  He seemed to be waited for his employers to burst in on them and haul him away for insubordination and treason.

Barbara sipped her ice-tea, leaving a trace of lipstick on the clear disposable cup's rim.

Delgado was worried about discovery, but he must be even more concerned about Tray's murder.  He was here with her in spite of his qualms, drawn out by the lure of the possible conspiracy surrounding it.

That night in the apartment, when the two of them were alone with the corpse, he had said, "I don't like this. It's too neat."

It wasn't said as a revelation.  He was merely forcing words out as a way to deal with Barbara's theory, which must have come like a punch to the gut.  His eyes were strained and anxiety pulled the skin on his face tight as he reviewed the crime scene for himself.

"I agree."  Barbara was doing the math in her head but each calculation only lead to another string of variables and unknowns.  "It must be the work of the Agency?"

"No."  The reply came swiftly to his lips like a sharp yes, sir or no, sir while talking to a superior.  His next words came out with more care, while his brain tried to rationalize what was happening.  "The DTAA doesn't kill people.  Even if they viewed him as a monumental threat, there are other simpler ways of dealing with it.  But—"

"But?"

"I feel like I'm being set up."  He bit his lip as he made another pace around the room.

Simpler ways.  Delgado was right.  If they wanted him out of the way, the DTAA had the power and the reach to do it without this much trouble.  They could have made him disappear without a trace as they had done to Amy.  So why stage it and get their own company to clean it up?