She nodded, wiping at her eyes. “That’s what happened, yes. They just weren’t there anymore. Just gone. Like . . . vanished,”
“Why were you here?” McClellan asked. “Do you usually meet your brother…”
“No,” she cried. “Somebody came to my place late this afternoon looking for him,” she flushed, not wanting to mention the FBI, “and I said I’d … I’d let Carlos know.” Actually, the FBI man was now standing over by the fence, talking rapidly into a cell phone and waving his free hand in frustration. “I know he has a late phys ed class, so I thought he might be here . . .”
“What about this smell?” asked McClellan. “What did it smell like?”
“Like welding,” said one of the male students. “I heard her screaming, and I came out from inside, and I smelled it. Like welding. Kind of a hot smell.”
Another of them said he’d smelled something also, but he couldn’t identify the smell, though he said it reminded him of blood.
“Show me where people were,” McClellan said to Mack, leading the way down the stairs at the center of the bleachers. There Mack turned to the left and walked about thirty yards to bring them even with the starting blocks.
Mack said, “Here! Right here. The three guys were at the starting blocks of the three inside lanes, Ron Turley on the inside, then Carlos, then McClure. Coach Jensen was standing in the next lane, leaning over, telling them something.” He turned to his right. “The girl was twenty or thirty feet that way, walking along the outside lane toward the bleacher stairs.”
McClellan turned, peering in all directions. Concrete posts had been set into the slope with canted steel els protruding from them. Thick wooden slats making up seats and backs were bolted to the els. The rows were separated by flat, graveled paths. There was no place to hide, everything was wide open. You could see every gum wrapper. There was nothing below but the starting blocks, the lines marking the lanes, and the hurdles set up at intervals.
McClellan moved across the track onto the grass at its center to examine the pole vault uprights and landing pad, one designed to be inflated during use but currently flat and wrinkled. He heaved up a corner, finding it was laid directly on the earth. The landing pit for the long jump had been freshly raked. There were no prints in it. The oval track was separated from the grassy slopes beyond by chain link fences with gates at either end and in the middle of the far side. McClellan trudged to each of them in turn, finding them securely padlocked. This entire area could be locked off by closing the gates on either side of the building, and anyone wanting to leave would have had to go through those gates. Or fly away.
He returned to Burton and the witness. “Did they all go at once?”
“You’d have to ask Angelica,” Mack responded. “They were all gone when I turned around.”
“And when you called to the woman you thought was Angelica, you called by name?”
“Yes. I called out, ‘Hey, Angelica.’“
“And you hailed her brother by name, also?”
“Yeah. I yelled ‘Hey, Carlos!’“
“So, whoever or whatever took them might have thought he was getting two members of one family?”
Burton shook his head. “Then why take the coach and the other two guys?”
McClellan stared at his shoes. “Maybe we all look alike to them.”
“Them, who?” asked Burton.
“The ET’s,” said McClellan. “Maybe they can tell male from female, but we all look alike. Like we were deer or elk or something.” He beckoned. “Let’s look over in those nearest trees.”
Since the bottom gates were locked, they went back up the bleacher stairs, across the terrace, through the open gates and around the outside of the fence. The first grove of trees was a hundred yards down the hill, a clump of oaks with shadows lengthening eastward, toward them, trees that had been planted when the college was founded, if not before. The trees were big and old and created a welcome shade.
“Tracks,” murmured McClellan, pointing at an area of bare earth. “Remember the TV broadcast. The predators. That’s what one set of tracks looks like. Wulivery. Like elephants.”