“You still there,” Doc asked. “Did you hear what I said?”
“I’m here,” Deacon answered with a shaky voice. “But look, there are murders in the city all the time, probably every day.” He said hopefully. “This doesn’t mean it has anything to do with me, or the first two for that matter. Does it?”
“You’re right. There are crimes in the city every day. Probably a lot more than we hear about, but they don’t all seem to follow a particular pattern.”
“What pattern? Are you sayin’—you talkin’ decapitation?”
“No, this one had biblical significance.” Doc paused. “It was another woman.”
“How do you know it was from scripture?”
“D, let’s finish this in person. Please, can we meet somewhere?” Doc sounded anxious.
“Sure, we’ll meet, but you know I’m not hangin’ up or movin’ from this spot ’til you tell me the whole fuckin’ story.”
“Okay, whatever, fine, fuck! It was a stripper from PT’s. A cop checkin’ the parkin’ lot for drugs found her.” Doc began to speak rapidly. “She’d been raped, shaved bald, and beaten.”
“No fuckin’ way! Where was her hair?” Deacon asked without a pause.
“Hell, what the fuck, I don’t know. I guess it was still in the fucking car. Who cares? We’re lookin’ for a psychopath. He took it with him, or it was all over the car. There’s no tellin’.”
“Doc, why’d you say it has something to do with the Bible? No offense, but you’re not exactly a Bible scholar.”
“I just think it sounds like the shit your old man made you memorize when he shaved your head.” Doc paused, several seconds passed. “Deacon, what did the Reverend do with your hair?”
Deacon ignored the question. “We’ve gotta find out what happened to her hair. It makes a big fuckin’ difference. Meet me in an hour.” Deacon heard his own voice change. It was cold and matter-of-fact. “Can you make some calls, and see what else you can find out?”
“I’ll try; I’ve got a friend at the Post. I’ll see if she can help. Where do ya wanna meet?”
“Remember the place south on the river, the place where I used to go to think?”
“Yeah, I know where it is. I’ll be there in an hour.”
*****
An hour and fifteen minutes later, Doc found the deserted rock quarry. To the east, loaded barges were creeping up the Mississippi. He pushed his Harley through a gap between the fence and the end of the locked gate.
Deacon, stretched out on top of his motorcycle, had his eyes tightly closed against the bright fall sun.
Why in the hell is Deacon ridin’ Widowmaker? Doc wondered. Does he wanna get caught? This is too fuckin’ risky. He rode closer, and was relieved to see that Deacon had switched license plates. Widowmaker wore the borrowed Illinois plate. Doc recalled the first time he had seen Deacon lay on top of his motorcycle. He’s a biker’s biker, born to the wind.
Deacon cradled himself, comfortably, in the concave leather seat. His buttocks rested on the base of the gas tank. His legs, crossed at the ankles, extended across the handlebars. The lick-and-stick buddy-seat supported his neck.
Doc rolled to a stop and killed his engine.
Deacon lifted his right leg, bent his knee to ninety degrees, and rolled to the left. He landed gracefully on the firm, powdery surface of the quarry floor. “¿Que pasa?” He nonchalantly asked.
Standing, Doc balanced his upright machine between his legs. Anger welled up, and his face flushed. “Deacon, what in the hell is the matter with you? Do you wanna get caught?”
Deacon opened his mouth to speak; his face flushed crimson. “What, what have I done now, Doc?” He asked sadly.
The look on his face and the sound of his voice softened Doc. “It’s your bike, man. Why are you ridin’ Widowmaker? The cops are bound to have a description. Hell, everybody knows your bike.”
“Shit, Doc, I’m sorry. Don’t be upset with me.” He gulped down a breath. “It’s just—it’s just that—” he stammered. “I felt so alone. I needed something familiar. I know it sounds stupid; ridin’ Widowmaker comforts me.”
“I overreacted. I’m sorry.” Doc said with compassion. “I’m just worried about you gettin’ caught before we get this whole fuckin’ mess figured out. If you have to turn yourself in, I want it to be on your terms.”
“You’re right.” Deacon visually traced the sheer white quarry wall three-hundred-feet to its uppermost edge. “It feels like any minute could be my last. My life is over; I’m just waitin’ for the end. If I have to go, I don’t want to go alone.”
Doc followed Deacon’s line of sight. A switchback construction road connected the quarry floor to the top of the pit. Deacon had once mentioned that when it was his time, if he could choose his own terms, he wanted to cash out in a ball of fire. A fall from the top of the quarry to bottom, man and machine, would definitely create a fireball.
“Deacon, you’ve gotta put that kind of shit outta your mind. We’re gonna solve this.”
Deacon dismounted and stood toe-to-toe with Doc. “I wanna believe that, but it’s more likely you’ve got more bad news.” His words were certain; his tone was weak. “What else do you know? It’s gettin’ worse, isn’t it.”
“I wish I could tell you somethin’ different, but I’m afraid you’re right. It looks bad.” Doc laid his hand on Deacon’s back. After a minute, he stepped back, removed his sunglasses, and looked deep into Deacon’s blood-shot eyes.
Deacon squinted against the glare of the sun. “Did you talk to your friend at the Post?”
“Yeah, she was workin’ on this story. That’s why I’m late.”
“What’d she say?”
“She had a few answers, the who and why are things nobody knows.”
“What about the hair, did they find it?”
“Not a single strand was found in the car. She was thirty-four, a single mom with a teenage son. Her stage name was Houston. Her real name was Tina somethin’. She lived somewhere out in the Ozarks—maybe your old stompin’ grounds.”
“Tina, thirty-four,” Deacon repeated pensively.
“When I heard about the hair, it reminded me of how your father punished you by shaving your head. Didn’t you tell me that your old man left your hair on a piece of plastic that he had spread on the floor?”
“Yes. Later he put my hair in the trash. The scripture he made me memorize says the hair was cast away.” Deacon staggered backward and steadied himself on his motorcycle.
“What else did your reporter friend tell you?” He asked winded. “When’d it happen?”
Doc helplessly watched his friend struggle with regurgitated emotions. “Sometime after midnight, night before last, she was completely naked in the back seat of her car. Deac, I have to ask. It happened during the only night you slept at the resort.” Doc posed the question timidly. “Did you leave there at any time?”
“No, I stayed in my cabin all night. You know, Doc, I havn’t slept well for a long time. With my history, who knows? We shouldn’t base anything on what I remember.”
“True, but we have to start with what you know.” Doc tried to sound convincing. “If you think you were there all night, that’s good enough for me. Anyway, the victim was a popular dancer. She left the club at midnight. Reportedly, as far as her customers go, there was nothin’ really out of the ordinary. The bouncer told Janice, my reporter friend, there were plenty of women and men there, some couples, mostly single guys. The manager said it was typical, a busy night.
“A minute ago you seemed interested in her name and age. Does that mean something to you?”
“I dunno, probably not. It’s just that a long time ago, I lost my virginity to an older married girl, Tina. We had a thing and she broke it off. She broke my heart. I haven’t seen her in eleven years. The age sounds right, and she had a little boy. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. What else do you know?”
“She was raped. They found traces of semen and
vaginal bruising.” Doc paused. “The most bizarre thing is that the killer wrote on her head in red lipstick.”
“What kind of writing?”
“I know what he wrote, but who knows what it means. It was just a letter and a series of numbers like a prison ID number or somethin’. Maybe he’s an escaped con taunting the cops. That might explain why he shaved her. You know, some guy gets deloused and shaved in the joint, and when he gets out, that’s all he can think about. It’s far fetched, I know. So is writing on a dead woman’s head.
“The cause of death, at least in the preliminary investigation, was from blunt force trauma. The cops are speculating that he used a club or a baseball bat, something like that.”
“Or a rod,” Deacon murmured.
“What?”
“You know, a rod, like in the Bible, spare the rod and spoil the child. My father used to say that to my mother and me all the time. What letter and numbers exactly?”
Doc pulled a roughly torn scrap of paper from his pocket. Crudely scratched on the yellow paper in blue ink were six characters:
J72829
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Deacon began. “I’ll be damned. I’ll be damned.” He paused. “It’s not someone’s ID number. You were right the first time, it’s scripture.”
“How can you tell? Aren’t all of the books of the Bible named after some disciple or somethin’?”
“For the most part, yes, and I know this one. I know it by heart. You hit the nail on the head when you associated the shaving with my father. He made me memorize that scripture, word-for-word. It’s Jeremiah 7, verses 28 and 29, J72829.” Deacon stopped, closed his eyes, and tilted his head to the bright sun; it canvassed his face. He appeared to be mentally searching for something. Doc noticed rapid movements beneath his eyelids as in the Rapid Eye Movement stage of paradoxical sleep.
Deacon began to speak in an unwavering monotone like the rote speech of a ten year old. “And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips. Cut off your hair and cast it away; raise a lamentation on the bare heights, for the Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.’
“Doc, this is too weird, it can’t all be coincidental. The only two people who could possibly do this are my father or me. I saw him yesterday. He’s not capable of doing anything, other than forcing his opinion on everyone around him. In fact, I think he’s nearly blind. That leaves only me. It can only be me.”
“Wait a minute, bro. You’re not giving up that easy. I won’t let you. True, it’s all pretty fucking strange, but other people believe the same as your father. You said yourself there were always many people around the church. What’d you move, five or six times while you were growing up? Even if there were only a hundred-fifty or so people in each church, that’s close to a thousand total. Some of them had to know about your relationship with your old man. It’s hard to hide that kind of dysfunction. Your mother is one. She knew everything, and what about the guy and his kid with the puppy? Your father threatened to cut it in half, didn’t he? Hell, Deac, maybe that girl grew up, became a psycho, and decided to ruin your life because you stole her fucking dog.”
“You’re really graspin’ at straws. For goodness sake, Doc, my mother,” Deacon said exasperated. “She wouldn’t even step on a cockroach. And, the little girl with the dog, shit, I never even knew her name. I doubt that she knew mine. I think we moved right after it happened.”
“Look, I know the easy thing to do here is just give up. For you to say, okay, I’m guilty take me away; I can’t let you do that. I believe in you, just as you believe in your mother. You couldn’t harm a fly. I don’t know who is doing this or why. That we have to find out, I won’t give up until we do. Now, let’s get back on track. There’s a lot of information which still makes no sense.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if it will ever make any sense. There’s just so much to process, and only two of us. You haven’t even told me anything about Cynthia Thomas. What did you find?”
Doc flinched at the reminder. “Gettin’ in the apartment was easy. Cops left the door unlocked. I had a good look around; even talked with a neighbor.”
“Good, so share,” Deacon demanded impatiently.
Doc told him about everything he had found. He succinctly described the talkative eye in the doorway. It made Deacon laugh. They discussed every point and what it could mean. He wanted to tell Deacon more about Bridget. He wanted to describe her. Deacon deserves to know all of this, he told himself as they discussed the details. He should know about her voice. Doc chastised himself for his reluctance to tell all that he knew. He looked past Deacon at the switchback road and the three-hundred foot drop, and he did not tell his friend everything.
“Doc, I feel like the last fucking man on earth. I’m exhausted; I’ve hardly slept, and the only news I get is bad. I don’t know how much longer I can continue to do this. I want out. I need out.
“Before you got here, I was staring at the walls of this man-made pit. I considered riding to the top.” Deacon pointed at the rim of the quarry, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “I wondered how fast I could ride before we cleared the brink. I imagined the whole thing. I saw exactly how far we flew before starting the trip straight down.”
“I knew that,” Doc said compassionately. “What stopped you, James David?”
“You know what. At first, it seemed like the best idea possible. It would put me, and everyone around me, especially you, out of our misery. I got on Widowmaker and started her. We sat here idling. I thought about all the nights and weekends you and I spent building her. In those days, it was you and this machine that saved my life.” He paused, and touched the fangs of the airbrushed snake. “In that moment, because I couldn’t bear to sacrifice her life along with mine, I couldn’t do it. Sounds insane, doesn’t it? I’m alive because I couldn’t kill my bike.”
“It doesn’t sound crazy to me. It does illustrate my point. How could someone who can’t even smash a machine possibly hurt another human being? James David, we’re friends; we’ll get through this misery by working together, by solving the mystery, not by you sacrificing yourself. Listen, I’ve gotta tell you. Every time you mention hurtin’ yourself, you scare me. Please, for me, for my piece of mind, promise me you won’t do anything like that— promise me.”
“I don’t know if I can. It’s because—it’s just that sometimes,” tears filled Deacon’s bloodshot eyes, “sometimes, I feel so desperate. I don’t know what else to do. Suicide feels like my only way out.”
“Don’t you see, Deac, there are plenty of people who care about you. We all want to help you work through your problems. At least, promise me next time you feel desperate, you’ll talk to me first. Talk to me, and tell me what’s on your mind. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay, I guess so.”
“Not good enough. I want to hear you say the words. Promise me and make me believe you. Do it for me. Do it for our friendship.”
“All right, I promise. I won’t do anything until we’ve talked.”
Doc breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Thanks. That means a lot to me.” Now, tell me about your folks.”
*****
Deacon told Doc, in perfect detail, how he found the Joneses, and everything he had heard and seen. Reluctantly, he confessed that he had been unable to resist calling Star.
“That has to be how the cops found the resort.” Doc shook his head disapprovingly. “Your home phone must be tapped. I haven’t told anyone anything, not even Kat. The cops must’ve been listening unless you have another idea?”
“No, you were right. I shouldn’t have called. Damn it, what if I’ve implicated Star just by talkin’ to her. I should’ve listened to you.” Deacon paused and smiled sheepishly. “I’ve already put her in jeopardy. It would be best just to keep her with me. As long as the cops don’t know where I am, they won’t find her either.
Besides, I need as much emotional support as I can get.”
“Are you sure you’re not lettin’ your little head do the talkin’ for your big head? I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. I’m only trying to look at it from every possible angle. Maybe there’s somethin’ else to consider.”
“Doc, quit beatin’ around the bush. What are you gettin’ at?”
“Just that we’ve only known Star since May, and the trouble started about the same time she showed up.”
“That’s bullshit! I didn’t need a lot of time.” Deacon was irritated. “I know her; I feel her. I’m connected to her. Don’t you believe in love at first sight?”
“I do believe in love at first sight, and there’s probably nothing to this…”
Deacon cut him off. “That’s right, there’s nothin’. Star has had nothin’ to do with anything. Besides, the first murder happened a month before we met. Don’t forget, it was Kat who introduced us. Shit, Doc, even Kat says we’re the perfect couple.”
“I’m sorry, Deac, I don’t want to argue. If you want her with you, then so be it. Just be open to everything. That’s all I ask. Don’t completely trust anyone.”
“What about you?” Deacon shoved Doc’s logic in his face. “Are you sayin’ I shouldn’t trust you either?”
“Certainly, you have a point. Be assured, I’m on your side. However, I think you should be wary of everyone, including me.”
“Will you find Star for me and tell her to be ready? I’ll pick her up this afternoon.”
“I’ll tell her. Where are you headed? We should keep in touch.”
“South, some place secluded. I’ll know it when I see it. I need to get some rest. That it then?”
“Not quite. There’s one more thing.”
“More bad news?”
“I don’t know if I’d call it bad, more like odd. I reread your blood test results this morning, and I found something unusual. They found a chemical trace in your blood. A drug called Sodium Amytal. I’ve heard something about it before, but for the life of me, I can’t remember where. I’ve been rackin’ my brain trying to remember, but so far no luck. You haven’t been takin’ drugs, have you?”
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