The Shakespeare Incident Read online

  The Shakespeare Incident

  Other Books by Jonathan Miller

  Rattlesnake Lawyer and Luna Cruz Thrillers:

  Rattlesnake Lawyer

  Crater County

  Volcano Verdict

  La Bajada Lawyer

  Conflict Contract

  Lawyer Geisha Pink

  Rattlesnake Wedding

  Navajo Repo

  A Million Dead Lawyers

  Luna Law

  Rattlesnake & Son

  Rattlesnake Funeral

  Other Books:

  Amarillo in August: An Author’s Life on the Road

  Law and Loves: Part 1

  Laws & Loves: Real Stories of the Rattlesnake Lawyer

  Twilight in the Twelfth; A Ruidoso Romance

  By

  JONATHAN MILLER

  ISBN: 978-1-951122-21-8 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-951122-29-4 (ebook)

  LCCN: 2021933844

  Copyright © 2021 by Jonathan Miller

  Cover Design: Ian Bristow

  Cover Photo: Jonathan Miller

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permission of the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  Artemesia Publishing

  9 Mockingbird Hill Rd

  Tijeras, New Mexico 87059

  www.apbooks.net

  [email protected]

  “The views expressed herein are not necessarily

  those of the author.”

  Arthur C. Clarke Childhood’s End

  PART I

  MUCH ADO ABOUT

  NOTHING

  Chapter 1

  Tuesday, July 7

  “Have I ever told you the story of how I got my name?” Denny Song asked Cordelia Dunsinane. A ritual between them, he always asked her this question when he was nervous. Almost midnight, they stood on a desert ridge, next to a cylindrical water tower, just south of Lordsburg, New Mexico. If they looked to the west, they could see the outline of the “ghost town” of Shakespeare, an abandoned mining camp. To the south, they overlooked a squadron of heavily armed sheriff’s deputies and a mysterious black van on her family’s property, the New Shakespeare Ranch. Hell, the small-town deputies down below were distant relatives and might as well be her family, and that made it much, much worse.

  Now was a good time to be nervous.

  Denny was twenty-seven but looked years older. Off the drugs for a few weeks now, tattoos of flying saucers adorned his lanky arms. He wore a black tank top that read STRAIGHT OUTTA ROSWELL. It recreated the famed album cover of the rap masterpiece, Straight Outta Compton, but sported aliens instead of rappers glaring at the viewer.

  He absent-mindedly played with an old Tek 9 semi-automatic handgun. Cordelia put her hand on his and slowly took the gun away from him.

  “You might as well tell me the story while we figure out how to get the grail,” Cordelia said. She wore a black western cut shirt and rattlesnake cowboy boots like a back-up singer in a country band about to go to rehab. Her phone tucked in her shirtfront pocket beeped, indicating a new message. She almost used her right hand to check on it, before remembering the gun. “This damn game has me messed up.”

  When the CEO of Cygnus Moon, an Asian tech conglomerate, set up the 24 Grails Contest, the players couldn’t predict it would become a matter of life and death. Initially, the world viewed the game as a cross between Pokémon Go and Forrest Fenn Treasure Hunt. For the silver grails that mysteriously appeared all over the world, the prizes were astronomical. And when Cygnus Moon announced that if someone, anyone, touched the Omega Grail—the one currently located on the Dunsinane family ranch—the sky itself could be the limit.

  “A grand prize beyond your ultimate desires.” Cygnus Moon’s company website specified few details on the contest. “Find the Omega Grail and have it verified.”

  Finding the grail was no big deal. Having it verified might prove fatal.

  No one knew how or when the final grail appeared on top of the boulder at New Shakespeare Ranch. No one knew how any of the other twenty-three grails magically appeared all over the world on random properties. And now the endgame had come here to the bootheel of New Mexico at the end of the earth.

  Denny and Cordelia had discovered the Omega Grail two days ago, but they had to wait until it was “verified”—whatever that meant. Probably they would have to touch it in the presence of whoever was in the black van parked by the grail.

  Leaning on a leg of the water tower, Cordelia looked at the dusty expanse of New Shakespeare Ranch. The cattle, the sheep and even the stray dogs were long gone. She wanted to touch the grail herself, more than anything, but somehow, she knew that Denny needed to be the one who did it. She sensed that touching it could kill her, but she didn’t quite know why. There was a lot about her past that she didn’t know or understand.

  The Sheriff’s office had seized the ranch the night before, her father’s corpse still warm. Sheriff JC Diamond had shown an alleged warrant for bad loans from the bank on her late father’s estate.

  “Your daddy owed a shit load of money to the wrong people before he died,” the sheriff said. “If you challenge the validity of the ‘warrant,’ you gotta hire a lawyer and take it down to the courthouse. And as you know, my county, my courthouse.”

  “But what about the grail?” Cordelia had asked. “What about the prize?”

  “You want to touch that grail and win that prize, you gotta go through me. Well, you gotta go through us.”

  Sheriff Diamond and his crew had set up a perimeter around the boulder, while the black van waited with its motor running, a few feet from the grail itself. When did that van get there?

  New Shakespeare Ranch was her family’s land, her birthright, but the other members of her family were dead or lost to the wind. Her father had always said that his family was “special,” but they were vulnerable to meth, opioids and alcohol, just like everyone else. Maybe more so. Still, losing the ranch was like losing part of her soul. She wanted it back.

  Denny reached up and put his hand on her shoulder. She was far taller, especially in boots.

  “You gotta listen” Denny said. “It’s important.”

  “You’re right, Denny.” She patted his hand. “You’ve told me the long-lost-sister-story like a million times but please, please tell me the story again if it calms you down.”

  “We were twins,” Denny began. “Before I was even born, my real mother asked her sister, my aunt, for naming suggestions. My aunt said it should Denise if it’s a girl...”

  “And De-nephew if it’s a boy,” Cordelia piped in on cue. “And your real mom said to just call you Denny. And that woman who took you overheard that and went with it. That’s how you got your name. But then you got taken away by that bad bitch before you even met your real mom, the saint.”

  “My stepmom said my real mom was so beautiful. If only we could have been together as a family.”

  “I’m sure your real mom would be proud of you,” Cordelia lied. “Your real sister too. If she’s still alive…”

  “I wonder if my sister looks like me—half Korean, half-Hi
spanic and half-something else.”

  Denny always made that same joke about his ethnicity. At least she hoped that it was a joke. Meth had ruined his math skills.

  The ritual over, Cordelia moved on. “That’s a great story, honey. Now we gotta figure out what to do about the grail. You gotta be the one to touch it in front of whoever’s in the van. I don’t think they can shoot us in front of the judges.”

  Denny wasn’t finished. “I don’t know what happened. I’ve got a feeling I’ll meet Denise real soon. Maybe my real mom even. I can sense that they’re on their way here. I’m kinda psychic you know. I’m sure Denise is a psychic too. Fifth dimensional consciousness and all.”

  “That’s the first time you’ve told me that,” Cordelia said. “I sure hope you’re right. We need all the help we can get.” She looked at her watch. It was her late father’s watch. It had stopped but the second hand was vibrating in place.

  “I should look her up like right now,” Denny continued, not noticing Cordelia’s distress. “I think she’s a lawyer or something. She must be really good, especially if she’s psychic like me.”

  Denise Song was a psychic lawyer? That was also new. “Uhm… can’t she just reach out to you with her mind, if she’s like psychic?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t know I’m alive. She doesn’t know where to look.”

  “Whatever. We got to worry about the grail.”

  “I still say that the grail was put there by aliens as a portal through that black hole, Cygnus X-1,” Denny said. He had now switched to another ritual between them—the grail-planted-by-aliens one. “You know Cygnus Moon probably has a connection to the Cygnus X-1 black hole.”

  “Aliens don’t offer grand prizes if you find their artifacts,” Cordelia said. “It was probably put there by one of those stealth drones you worked with on base before you got discharged. They dropped it down while we were asleep.”

  “Maybe we can get Denise to help us. Who knows, she might not be that far away,” Denny said. “You can look things up with your phone, right? Maybe we can find her that way.”

  He didn’t own a phone; he had traded it in for drugs last year.

  “Well, we got to make a choice right now,” Cordelia said. “We can stay up here and try to find your psychic sister, if she even exists, or we march down onto the ranch, you touch the grail and pray that the cops don’t shoot us.”

  Denny looked down at the ranch—at the grail, at the black van and at the cops. He then looked at Cordelia. Her phone in the breast pocket of her shirt was still glowing from the unread message. She held the gun in her right hand.

  “What should I do?” Denny asked. “Maybe I should just try to find my sister with the phone. What do you think?”

  Cordelia could hand him the phone or the gun. She took another look at the grail on her family’s ranch and at the vibrating second hand of her father’s watch. Time was an issue right now. A grail in the hand is worth a lot more than a Denise in the bush. “That bitch Denise probably doesn’t exist. Denise and De-nephew? Sounds like a bad joke your stepmom told you. If this Denise is alive and if she’s a psychic, she would have found you by now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Fuck Denise! Let’s just get the damn grail,” she said. “It’s not like they’re going to shoot you on my property in front of the prize committee, especially if you let them know you have a gun. Just don’t point it at anyone.”

  “You’re probably right. Give me the gun. Let’s just get the grail. I’m sure I won’t have to shoot anyone. Maybe Denise is just some silly-ass story my stepmom told me.”

  She handed him the gun.

  Denny took two steps away from the water tower. He held the gun in his right hand as his left hand curled into a fist of anger.

  Cordelia knew of Denny’s hatred toward the sheriff, his hatred toward this whole county. “Promise me you’re not going to shoot them,” she said. “We got to play this cool.”

  “I won’t if I don’t have to. I’m going to sneak around the back. There’s a ditch under the fence behind that boulder. I pop up from behind the rock, touch the grail and then we win the prize.”

  Denny took a third step toward the ranch and seemed to cross an invisible tripwire over a fault line. The earth rumbled beneath them and then intensified when he took another step.

  “What’s going on?” Denny asked.

  “Look!” Cordelia said, pointing up. An object in the sky appeared directly above their heads. There was a blinding flash of light and then a pink glow in the darkness. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust. Blood now trickled out of her nose and ears. Whatever was up there now floated directly over the water tower and focused a spotlight on the grail.

  “I told you it was a UFO!” Denny said. “It came through the black hole from another dimension.”

  “Not even. It came out of the ground,” Cordelia said. “Like from right under the water tower.”

  “It could still be a UFO.”

  By definition, the thing above them was a UFO, as it was unidentified, flying and an object. It didn’t matter where it came from. The object wasn’t a flying saucer, more like a globe with stingray wings. It was impossible to tell its size in this light or whether it was metal, fiberglass or something extraterrestrial. The UFO was emitting the pink light, a pink from beyond the normal spectrum—not ultra-violet, but ultra-pink?

  It made a sound like a dog-whistle that was barely audible to the human ear. The grail shimmered in the vibrating pink spotlight, like a mirror ball in Satan’s disco.

  “He’s up there!” The sheriff was pointing right at them.

  “We’ve got to do this now!” Cordelia said to Denny. “The cops know we’re here!”

  The lights above them grew brighter.

  There was another flash. Lightning emerged directly from the grail, then ricocheted around the canyon. Cordelia heard a high-pitched noise that sounded like a dog whistle—for a dog from another dimension.

  Denny screamed. Had he been hit by lightning? He froze.

  Cordelia’s whole body ceased to exist and then reappeared. Had all the pieces come back together correctly? Everything felt a little bit off. She fell to her knees and vomited. When her vision cleared, she checked her father’s watch. The second hand was now rocking back and forth between twelve and six. At least she’d stopped bleeding…

  While she still felt insubstantial, Denny now looked more solid, bigger even. He began walking directly down to the entrance of the ranch.

  Cordelia stared at Denny and saw even his walk was different, like a zombie. He had “broken bad” before, and drugs made him do strange things, but now he might as well be someone or something else. While he had been hesitant to seek out the grail, now his eyes were locked on it.

  Or maybe he looked so different because she felt even lighter, like she would float away at any moment. “Denny!” she yelled.

  He didn’t reply. He continued heading toward the cops.

  “Denny, stop or we’ll shoot!” the sheriff shouted. “We’ll take out Cordelia too.”

  Denny kept walking. He lifted up his gun stiffly, as if he was a marionette and someone—or something—above was pulling the strings.

  Damn. Instead of the gun, she should have given him the phone.

  Chapter 2

  “Looks like we got air support.” Sheriff JC Diamond frowned at the flying object hovering over the big water tower on the ridge above New Shakespeare Ranch. He always claimed in public that he didn’t believe in flying saucers and offered “logical” explanations to the press. He kept his real beliefs to himself.

  He was the old-timer here. He could pass for a muscular fifty but was much older. He wore his standard crisp desert khaki. His shiny silver star badge was so sharp that it could draw blood. And of course, even though it was night, he wore his usual sunglasses.
/>   “Did you call that in, Sheriff?” Antonio, one of his deputies, asked. “That sure don’t look like one of ours.”

  “Maybe it’s like military or something, sir,” Beatrice said. “They got drones like that over at the missile range.”

  “Should we shoot at it?” Claudio asked.

  The sheriff turned around and frowned at the three twenty-something deputies in their ill-fitting khakis and dull badges. The new generation failed to live up to their potential, that was for sure. Drugs, video games, modern permissiveness. These deputies weren’t much different from the criminals they were supposed to be arresting.

  Antonio Smith was the youngest. He had been hit in the head with a football a few too many times. Beatrice Baca was supposed to be the smart one. She was hoping to transfer to a higher paying job at Border Patrol once her twin daughters were a little older. And then there was Claudio Johnson, the only one who’d actually been in combat. He still had PTSD. Sheriff Diamond never knew whether Claudio would shoot the perp or shoot himself.

  The only person he could really trust was Earl, the German Shepherd sitting calmly on his right.

  “We’ll just have to wait and see,” the sheriff said. “And hope that it’s on our side.” His deputies didn’t know what was really going on, and he wasn’t about to tell them.

  This unidentified object above the water tower was a wrinkle he hadn’t been expecting on this night of all nights. Did that change anything? Somehow, he knew that it would change everything.

  All of a sudden, his deputies shimmered in the lightning, covering their eyes. He was glad he wore his sunglasses. Then the three of them vomited, as if on cue.

  “I’m bleeding,” Antonio said.

  “I don’t feel so good,” Beatrice said.

  Claudio said nothing and threw up again.

  “Damn rookies,” the sheriff said. “Man. The. Fuck. Up.”