The Invisible Hand - A crime novel

Chapter 129

        

No one in the house makes a sound. Even the wind quiets down for the call.

"For those who don't know, my name is Jane," the voice says. The tone shifts from robotic to a regal female. "My thanks for disposing of Red, Gus and Mary earlier. Their usefulness had expired."

So Gus did kill my mother. Hard to say how I feel about that.

Sam's eyes scan the room. "Are you calling from inside the house, Jane?" she says.

"No," Jane says.

"So where are you calling from?" Sam says.

"Be quiet, Sam," Jane says.

"You know my name?" Sam says.

"I know all of your names. And I have you like flies in a jar," Jane says.

Les remains silent. Unlike everyone else, he stares at the floor.

"So who are you, Jane?" Sam says.

"Let's say I'm like the wind. An invisible hand that guides what needs to happen," Jane says.

Sam doesn't let up. Only one thinking clearly.

"Still doesn't answer my question, chief," Sam says. "Who are you working for?"

"You don't need to know the specifics," Jane says. "I'm done talking to Sam. Now I'll address Les."

Les could hang up the phone. The defeated look on his face lets everyone know he won't. Somehow finds the strength to address me.

"Remember how I said around the fire that in the beginning there were the raiders? The ones that eventually formed governments and pulled the strings with invisible hands? Well, Jane is it," Les says. "We can talk about the invisible hand guiding the economy. Write off things like the oil boom as a happenstance of that ghost in the machine. Except the invisible hand isn't just a concept. It's made up of real people directing events for their own purposes. And unless there are people like me, trying to wrestle control away and restart civilization on our own terms, the invisible hand gets to do whatever they want. That was my vision. And I'm sorry you can't be a part of it."

Les sounds as delusional as every other out-stater that comes here expecting to change the world. Always pushing a vision instead of making the money they came out to make in the first place. Even if he's right, so what? Doesn't change anything. I'm still festering in this clusterfuck of guns and cold sweat.

"Nice to finally catch up with you, Les," Jane says through the phone. "Let me clarify for everyone. Les came to the Bakken as an eco-terrorist. Tried to blow up oil rigs. Kidnap prospectors. Wore that Navy veteran hat to avoid suspicions. Not that he ever served. Of course, this was when he could still walk more than five steps at a time."

Les stays silent. His little dissertation on conspiracy theories drained him.

"My, shall we say, employers were alerted to Les's presence. They weren't too happy. I used the late Sheriff Red to coordinate a response," Jane says. "Les got away somehow. But not before Red put him in that wheelchair.

"Red owed me one after that. So I had him focus on the contract that wasn't getting signed at the Reynolds household. The one you're standing in right now. I needed the father, the stubborn one, out of the way if he didn't choose to sign.

"Everyone thinks they have a choice. Sign or don't sign. Do this or don't do that. Go here or go there. Rich or poor. But it's just an illusion when the end has been predetermined by people like me, the ones who present the choices in the first place. You exist in my world."

The guns in the room shift in their respective hands. Itchy trigger fingers don't mesh well with philosophical diatribes.

Sam fires out a question.

"So was Wil and I running into Les's Man Camp just a coincidence? Or did you arrange for that, too?" Sam says.

"Individuals who don't pattern well, like Wil, are harder to contain. That the two of you wound up in that Man Camp was just a pleasant coincidence. One that we'll be happy to bring to a conclusion in a moment," Jane says.

"We?" Sam says.

The word barely escapes her lips. The room swims in a flood of gunfire. But it's not coming from inside the house.

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