Extracted - Chapter 26 – Aliens Explains Everything – Part 2 of 2

 

Extracted

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 26 – Aliens Explains Everything – Part 2 of 2

 

“How was the drive?” Tom Nolan asked as Ellen got out of her car at the police station.

“Fortunately, not bad,” Ellen told him.  She reached up and planted a kiss on his lips.  “Missed you,” she told him.

Tom kissed her back.  “Missed you too.”

“Okay, business first.  Where to?”

“I guess, Doctor Faucet’s house,” Tom replied.  “Let’s take my car.”

“Good!  After that drive, I could use a break.”

Faucet’s house wasn’t difficult to find, especially since Nolan had spent a good part of his life driving all over Philadelphia.  The two of them went to the front door and Tom knocked.  The door was opened a few moments later.

Chris Faucet immediately recognized both the woman and the man on his doorstep.  It was the same FBI woman and the same cop who had been with her at his office.  “FBI and police?” he asked.

“Special Agent Rosenberg,” Ellen told him.  “And this is Detective Nolan.  We met at your office a while back.”

“I remember,” Faucet told them.  “I didn’t remember your names.  I take it you want to hear about what I discovered?” he asked, slurring his words more than a bit.

“Yes,” Nolan replied.  “May we come in?”

“Of course,” Faucet replied as he moved from the door and led the way into his living room.  “Drink?” he asked as he held up his whiskey glass, despite it being late morning on a Sunday.

“No thanks,” Rosenberg told him.

“We’re working,” Nolan added.

Faucet nodded.  “I’ve been doing a lot of drinking lately.  Far more than I should.”  He took a seat and motioned toward the other seats in the room, but neither Ellen nor Tom sat.  They elected to stand to question him instead.

“I was told that you had further information concerning Stephen Marsh’s abduction,” Nolan told him.  “Can you elaborate?”

Faucet saluted him with his whiskey glass.  “Not too many details about how the abduction was carried out, but I can certainly tell you about what caused the difficulties that those two kids, Stephen and Nancy, are faced with now.”

Ellen shook her head.  “Doctor,” she said.  “We already know they’re very confused.  All mixed up.”

Faucet looked at her like she was crazy.  “Not just mixed up, but they’ve actually become each other.”

“We know…” Ellen started to say.

“And I know why and how it was done!” Faucet interrupted her.

Both Rosenberg and Nolan could only stare at him for a moment.

“Interested?” Faucet asked, then took another sip of his drink.

“Very,” Rosenberg admitted, wondering if she needed to take a seat so she wouldn’t fall over.

Faucet took a large sip of his drink, then said, “Okay.  Before I begin, I need to warn you that I’m going to be mentioning a few subjects that you’re not going to want to consider as being part of it, but trust me, by the time I’m done, you’ll understand it all.  I hope anyway.”

“Go on,” Nolan told him, wishing that he wasn’t so drunk.  “We’re listening.”

“Good!”  Once again Faucet took a large sip of his drink.

“I have a hobby,” he told them.  “One that some people find unusual, but believe me, there’s more interest in it around the entire world than you might think.  And that hobby is hunting ghosts.”  He held up his glass.  “Don’t laugh and don’t scoff!  This is important!”

He paused for yet another sip of whiskey, then said, “I recently got an invitation to join a group of…I guess scientists who I thought were also interested in ghosts.  The thing that impressed me about them was that they’re all PhD level men and woman, and trust me, very smart people.  The only thing is that in our discis…discussions concerning the theoretical aspects of ghosts, they kept using the word souls instead of ghosts or spirits.  But as far as I was concerned, that was nothing more than a matter of sem…antics.  I mean, what are ghosts but the remains of some poor soul who has refused to leave this earth, for some reason or other.  I thought, ghosts, souls…it’s all the same thing.”  He waved his glass around.  “How wrong I was!”

Both Nolan and Rosenberg were beginning to believe this was nothing more than some insane ramblings of a drunk.

“Before me, there was only five people in the group,” Faucet told them.  “But three of them don’t matter.  I’m not even going to bother telling you their names.”

“Who were they?” Rosenberg insisted.

“Nobody worth knowing, except for their brains,” Faucet replied.  “The two people you need to be interested in are Ben…Ben…Benjamin Folley and Judith Rameriz.”

The name Judith Rameriz rang a bell for Nolan.  Rosenberg too.

“Why does that name Rameriz sound familiar,” Rosenberg asked.

Nolan ignored her question.  “Wait a minute,” he told Faucet.  “We interviewed a Judith Ramirez in connection with this already, because the ransom demand was all about her son, Joshua Rameriz.”

“Yes!” Rosenberg exclaimed, remembering that her team was still looking into the Planetary Eco Alliance group that he had been a part of.”

“Joshua Rameriz was one of the founders of the Planetary Eco Alliance group that’s been stirring up trouble all over the world,” Nolan told Faucet.  “When we questioned his mother though, we didn’t find anything interesting about her.”

“But you see, Det…Detec…Mr. Policeman,” Faucet slurred.  “That’s what it’s all about!  Her son!  Marsh stuck him in prison and Judith is convinced he’s innocent, so she and Ben decided to take a bit of revenge out on…somebody Marsh.  The D.A..  The boy’s father.”

“Revenge on Henry Marsh.  Stephen Marsh’s father.  The Philly D.A.”

“Right!  You got it,” Faucet told him before taking another large drink.  He worked his way to his feet.  “I need a…” he burped…refresher,” he finished.

Rosenberg grabbed him, grabbed his glass from his hand, and sat him down.  “I think you‘ve had enough!  More than enough.  “Tell us about Nancy.  Why was she taken?”

“Don’t…uh…remember,” Faucet replied, wanting his glass back.  “But I think it was kind of the same.  Revenge of some sort.  But mostly it was all about Marsh.  So anyway, they took him.  Don’t ask me how, they didn’t say.  Didn’t say about the girl either, so I don’t know.  How about another drink?  You two look like you could use one.”

“No!” Nolan said firmly.  “How could they possibly switch those two around?  It makes no sense.  It’s impossible!”

“Gh…” Faucet burped again.  “Ghosts!” Faucet said.

Rosenberg shook her head.  “Are you trying to tell us that some ghost or something possessed each of those kids?  That’s ridiculous!”

“Not quite,” Faucet told her.  “The process!  The system they built.  The water treatment system.  It was an accident.  And Hector got hurt.”

“Who’s Hector?” Nolan asked.

“What process?” Rosenberg asked.

“I seem to remember,” Nolan said, “when we looked into Judith Rameriz that she was the head of a team that had created some revolutionary water treatment system.  I don’t know beans about it though.  We were interested in the abduction.”

“Their water treatment system.  It works,” Faucet told them.  “A bit too well!”

“Too well?” Rosenberg asked.  “What are you talking about?”

“Years ago,” Faucet said.  “When they were first developing it, something happened to Hector.”

“Who’s Hector?” Nolan demanded.

“One of them.  Or he was.  Not around anymore.”

“You mean he died,” Nolan stated.

“No.  He’s fine.  A professor now I hear at…Temple I think.”

Rosenberg was ready to beat this drunk black and blue.  “What about the process?” she asked, trying desperately to get any kind of useful information.

“It doesn’t just produce clean water, it pulls everything in the world out of it.  Including gold.  But something happened to the prototype and there was an accident that happened to Hector, and he was in a coma for months!”

“A coma,” Rosenberg said.

“For months, until they tried an experiment on him, reversed the process with the machine and it cured him.  Completely.  He woke up.”

The machine cured him,” Nolan said.

Faucet nodded.  “They had no idea what had happened, until one of them suggested the solution as a joke.  Except it wasn’t a joke.  They actually did it.  Something went wrong with the machine and it pulled Hector’s soul right out of his body and captured it in one of the machine’s holding thingys.  And it stayed there for months until they put it back…proving not just the existence of human souls, but it proved they had a process that could extract them, and store them.  It’s the biggest breakup…I mean breakthrough in human technology!”

Rosenberg wasn’t so sure about that, but if the process did do that, then it was certainly momentous.  That is, if it really happened.  This drunk in front of her wasn’t exactly making a whole lot of sense.

Nolan was trying to put it all together.  “So you’re saying that something went wrong with the water treatment system they were developing, and Hector somehow went into a coma because of it when the machine pulled his soul from his body.  Then months later, they reversed the process with the machine and put his soul back into his body, and it cured him.”

“Yes.  Right!” Faucet said, pointing his drunken finger at him.  “You got it!  Good.  Judith Rameriz, and Ben Folley.  They did it together.  Wanted revenge against the D.A.  Cooked the whole thing up.”

“And where is this machine now?” Rosenberg asked.  “Rameriz…zez…house.  In her basement.  You need a drink!” Faucet stated.  “Let me get you one.”

They let him get up and head for his bottles of alcohol.  “What do you want to do?” Nolan asked.  “It sounds pretty fishy to me, but at the same time, Judith Rameriz was one of the people we looked into because of that ransom demand.”

Rosenberg considered it.  “Like it or not, I don’t think we’ve got a choice.  I’m going to pass this up my chain.  Before we go any further, let’s see what they think about this information.  On the one hand, I’d say we go break down the door of this Judith Rameriz and demand an answer, but on the other hand, not only is he sloshing drunk, but everything he said sounds completely bonkers.”

“True,” Nolan agreed.  “I say, pass it on and then let’s get some lunch.”

“Great idea,” Rosenberg agreed.  “She turned to Faucet who was sitting back in his chair, a fresh glass of whiskey in his hand.  “You!” she said.  “Don’t leave town!”

Faucet held up his glass.  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

“And dry out!” Nolan ordered.  “When we come back, we better find you completely sober!”

Faucet held up his glass to them, chuckled, then took a large sip.  “Ah…” he sighed before taking yet another drink.

“At the rate he’s going, he’ll probably pass out soon,” Rosenberg realized.  “Come on.  Let’s get out of here.  I’ve got a phone call to make.”

Rosenberg talked on her cellphone with her boss while Tom drove them to a restaurant.  Ellen was done talking by the time they got there.  She had relayed everything she could remember, especially including how drunk Faucet was.  Then the two of them went into the restaurant, intent on forgetting about Faucet and abductions and water treatment systems for a while.  Thirty minutes later though, her cellphone rang.  “Hello?”

Agent Rosenberg?” the man on the other end said.

“That’s me,” Rosenberg confirmed.

“This is Curmett, the National Security Advisor.”

Rosemberg certainly remembered him.  Not only had they met up in the Catskills, but he had been in her office just a few days ago giving her what seemed like an ultimatum over not letting anyone know what actually happened to those two kids.  “What can I do for you sir?” she asked.

“Are you still in Philadelphia?” Curmett asked.

“Still here,” she confirmed.

“Good!  Stay there.  Find a hotel for a few days, but whatever you do, don’t go near that Doctor Rameriz or her friend Benjamin Folley.  We’re sending a special ops team in to deal with them.  If they have the technology to do what they did, then there’s no telling what other things they may have set up to protect their machine.”

Rosenberg had gotten the impression from Faucet that the thing was just sitting in Rameriz’s basement, but she didn’t bother telling Curmett that.  The man probably just wanted to make a big show of doing something, even if in the end it turned out to be nothing at all.

“No problem staying for a few days,” she told him as she looked up at Tom.  “But what do you want me to do?”

“Nothing.  Nothing at all.  We just need you to stay in the area in case we need you for something.  That all.  And if you can, try to make sure that cop doesn’t go near them either.”

Rosenberg, still looking at Tom replied, “I don’t think I’ll have any problem at all doing that.  Trust me, I’ll keep my eye on him.”

“Excellent!” Curmett told him.  Then her phone line went dead.  She stared for a moment at it before putting it back in her purse.

“What do we do?” Nolan asked.

“He wants me to stick around for a few days and make sure neither of us goes near the case.  He’s sending some kind of special ops group to handle it instead.”

“More power to him,” Nolan said.

“Yeah.  In the meantime, I’m going to need a place to stay for a few days.”

“There’s room in my bed,” Tom told her.

“And where’s your bed?” she asked playfully.

“In my bedroom.”

“And where’s your bedroom?”

“In my apartment.

“And where’s your apartment?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”