Carl nodded and smiled. “Frank, what do you think I stole from you?”
“Not from me.” Frank stood up. The ceilings in the cells were eight feet high. Carl knew that for a fact. The man didn’t quite scrape the ceiling, but he had to stoop to stand comfortably. “Not from me. You stole it from my Meemaw’s grave.”
Meemaw. It took him a second to remember the word he hadn’t heard since elementary school. It was another variation of grandmother. “Frank, I never even went near your grandmother’s grave.”
“You lie!” The man did not talk, he roared, the sound loud enough to vibrate in Carl’s chest. Despite himself, he backed away a step. He wasn’t scared so much as startled, but he’d have been lying if he said he wasn’t happy for the bars between them.
“Hey! I’m not lying to you, boy! Don’t you dare start calling me a liar in my own office, you hear me?” Carl made sure he yelled right back and Frank blinked uncertainly. He was not used to being yelled at, apparently. That was okay, neither was Carl. He stared long and hard at Frank and finally the much bigger man nodded his head sullenly and sat back down. “Now all you told me so far is I stole something, but you haven’t told me what you think I stole. How can I tell you where it is if I don’t know what it is? Tell me what you think I stole, Frank.”
“It kept her safe! It’s supposed to keep her safe.” Frank’s voice was low and thick and he looked for just a moment like he wouldn’t have minded breaking into tears and crying. The longer he dealt with the man, the more Carl was convinced that Frank wasn’t all there. Low level mental impairment, possibly, or just a very poor education. It was hard to say.
Frank aimed one last angry glare at Carl and then settled down and stared at the floor again. He had nothing more to say after that. But as Carl started to leave the area the man looked his way once more and a tiny smile ran across his face and a knowing glint burned in his eyes. It was only for a moment, but Carl knew that expression clearly enough. It was the same look that Merle Blackbourne got on his face when he thought he had the upper hand.
Carl shook that notion away. There wasn’t a cunning bone in the big boy’s body.
He headed back for his personal office within the complex and stopped when Nichole waved him over. “Wade Griffin just got into a little scuffle with Ben Randall and Stuart Carter. Ben wants to talk to you.”
He sighed and took the receiver from her. “Ben? You got into a fight with Wade Griffin?”
“What?” He could see the kid’s red hair and freckled face in his mind’s eye. He tended to look like a startled rabbit whenever you asked him any question at all. Lord, but some day he wanted to play poker with the kid. “Aw, no, Carl. We just ran across him when somebody was shooting at him, and now he said I should call you to see if it’s okay to let him go.”
“Put Wade on the phone, Ben. Will you do that for me?” The pressure in his skull was trying to come back with a vengeance. Ben was much smarter than Big Boy, but sometimes he liked to hide that fact.
He listened to Wade’s side of the story and shook his head. When he was done talking to the investigator, he called for Ben again and gave his instructions. “I want CSI back up there and looking for that spike. You let Wade show you where it’s supposed to be. I’ll be on my way up there in a couple of minutes. Bag the damned teeth, bag whatever blood you can get, and hold everything for Jason and the rest of the CSI guys. Keep a look out for any possible shooters, obviously. And give me back to Wade, will ya?”
“So the guys were telling me you had a little bit of a fight yourself.” Wade’s voice as no nonsense as ever, but there was a thin layer of good humor over everything else.
“Apparently the Son of Kong lives in the area and he thinks I stole something of his.”
“We need to talk, I think. Maybe compare notes?”
“Yeah. I’m with you. I’ll be heading over there in a few minutes. Show the boys where you saw that spike, okay? Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Could happen.”
“Yeah, I’m not waiting on it either.” He killed the call and then reached for his cell phone. He still had to get Siobhan Blackbourne on the line. She still had to answer a few questions about how she knew about Jerry Wallace’s murder. He wanted that taken care of.
His stomach growled and he remembered he hadn’t bothered to eat anything yet. It was almost noon and breakfast would have to wait a while. There was too much to do.
Nichole looked at him with a small moue of disapproval.
“What?” He couldn’t help feeling guilty whenever she started that crap. Like he didn’t already have a mother.
“You need to eat something.”
“I ate.”
“Liar. Your stomach’s making rude noises.”
“I’ll eat on the way.”
“Still a liar.”
“I’ll make Wade pay. It’s the least he can do for me keeping him out of jail.”
“Okay. Now I believe you.” She smiled brightly and waved her fingers in dismissal.
“You do know I’m the boss, right?”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Carl. You just go ahead and believe that if you need to.”
“You were a lot easier to get along with when you were still a smoker and not so damned self-righteous.”
“Don’t make me poison your coffee, Sheriff.”
He headed for the door. She was in a mood and he wasn’t going to win this one. He knew it deep in his soul.
The next time he saw Nichole everything was different in his world and he was identifying her body.
* * *
Griffin said, “What the hell have we walked into?”
“Got me,” Carl said. “But it seems to get weirder every time I turn around.”
The two men sat across from one another in a booth in a Waffle House on Highway 19. The late afternoon sun streamed in through the slightly dented blinds, throwing bands of deep shadow along the tables and making patterns on the floor. Griffin and Carl had spent the last hour comparing notes on their separate lines of investigation. The only things both inquiries seemed to share were more questions than answers and a definite bent toward the weird.
Griffin gestured to their waitress for more coffee, then said, “I think what amazes me the most is that you just let this Siobhan woman walk away after she mentioned the body. That doesn’t sound at all like you.”
Carl shook his head. “Don’t I know it. It was like I took one look at her and my brains just fell out. I didn’t even think about it until later.”
“Women can do that.”
“They can, but this wasn’t just lust or whatever, Wade. I mean, I know what’s that’s like. It was almost like she’d hypnotized me with her very presence.”
“And you still haven’t talked to her?”
“Not really. Frank Blackbourne kind of messed up my last attempt. But I will.”
“That’s another thing. I don’t remember a Blackbourne named Frank.”
“Neither did I, but if you saw him you’d recognize the Blackbourne look. Speaking of which, how about the guys that attacked you? Any of them look at all familiar? Could have been some more of the Blackbourne clan keeping an eye of things. Merle practically admitted his crew had been behind the meth lab.”
Griffin said, “Things happened too fast. I’d recognize either of the two who I fought now, but I didn’t get a good look at the shooter.”
“Hell, Wade,” Carl said with a grin. “Anybody would recognize those two boys now. One with his teeth knocked out and the other with his arm a couple of inches too long. You never did do things half way.”
“Someone comes at me with a weapon, all I want to do is get things over with as quickly as possible.”
“No argument there. So anyway, after all this gum flapping, what have we got?”
Griffin said. “Not much. Now that we know that Jerry’s murder was part of a series, it throws some doubt on the drug connection. But then every way we look we see Blackbournes, which puts us rig
ht back at the meth lab.”
Carl said, “I suppose one of the Blackbourne’s could have a hobby.”
“He could. Thing is, if we do have a serial killer working and we know that he or she tried to hide at least one of the murders, then there may be some other killings we’re unaware of. I told you how no one knew the identity of the victim in Carlton.”
“Yeah, I’m going to have some of my guys take a closer look at some missing person’s cases from the last year. Could be that some of those folks didn’t go missing by choice.”
Griffin’s cell buzzed and he checked the screen. Charon. He said, “I’d better take this.” Then into the phone, “Hey kiddo.”
“Don’t call me kiddo. You’re not that much older than me.”
“So you keep telling me. Okay, Charon, tell me you’re calling because you’ve deciphered those glyphs.”
“No, but I did notice something about them that could be a start toward learning what they are.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense. What is it?”
“Too complicated to explain on the phone. It would be better if you could see what I’m talking about.”
Griffin glanced at his watch. “I can probably be at the square in about an hour. How’s that?”
“That works. I’ll have the stuff together when you get here.”
“Okay. Thanks for staying on this, Charon.”
“Sure thing. See you in a bit.”
Griffin rang off. “Maybe something on the glyphs, Carl.”
“Better than the feds are doing then. Who you got looking into them.”
“A witch.”
“Like pointy hat and nose with wart witch?”
“More like hot twenty-five year old witch.”
“I like her already. She know her stuff?”
Griffin said, “She does. Charon has helped me with a couple of other cases that veered over into the Twilight Zone.” He slid out of the booth. “I’d better get going. I’ll call you if I learn anything of use.”
“Do that. Oh and Wade, watch yourself. I’d have bet money no one could have gotten past the locks on my doors. I’m a cop. I bought the kind it would take an expert to pick. If whoever it was who broke in knows where to find me, they may be watching you too, especially after today.”
“You have a point. I’ll go to yellow alert. I’m already impressed enough to go heeled until further notice.”
“Yeah, I noticed the cannon under your jacket. Later, man.”
Griffin dropped a twenty on the table and gave Carl a half salute as he went out.
* * *
Griffin parked in front of Baba Yaga’s and stood for a moment, giving the Gatesville square a slow look around. All the stores were decorated for Halloween. Well, all except Baba Yaga’s. Every day was Halloween for Charon. Griffin couldn’t remember exactly who Baba Yaga was. An old hag from some Russian fairy tales he thought. A witch or wise woman who lived in a hut that walked on chicken legs.
He found the shop locked but a couple of taps on the glass brought Charon to the door. She let him in and them relocked the door. Griffin said. “Did you close early especially for me?”
“Nah, I’m just lazy. Come on in the back.”
“Ah, the fabled back room. I feel honored.”
“You should. I don’t let too many people back there. That’s where all the real stuff is.”
Charon led the way and Griffin tried not to notice the twitch of her slender hips under her snug black jeans. She was also wearing a low cut black top and Griffin got the distinct impression she had freshened her makeup before he arrived. If she was trying to wear down his resistance she was doing a damn fine job of it.
Griffin followed Charon around the counter and through the beaded curtains. The back room was only a little smaller than the front. It was packed with boxes and containers and there were shelves and shelves of books. A modern style desk sat in one corner. It was piled high with more books and stacks of papers. Griffin noted printouts of all kinds of symbols, hieroglyphs, and letters. Charon had indeed been hard at work. A big computer tower of a type Griffin had never seen sat beside the desk. It was black and there appeared to be the head of an Area 51 type alien embossed on the chassis.
“What kind of PC is that?” Griffin asked.
“Top of the line gaming computer for my on-line games. It serves as a work computer as well.”
“I didn’t know you were a gamer.”
“There’s quite a bit you don’t know about me. Have a seat.” Charon slid in to the desk chair and pointed to a straight backed wooden chair next to her. Griffin sat. “I started with comparisons of various alphabets, current and ancient.”
As Griffin watched, Charon brought up images on the screen. Her slim fingers flew across the keyboard. Griffin recognized Egyptian hieroglyphs, a couple of Hebrew characters, and what he thought were symbols from the Greek alphabet. The rest of the images were meaningless to him.
“How about Klingon?” Griffin said.
“I not only tried Klingon but Tengwar and Sindarin from the Lord of the Rings. Plus ancient Phoenician, Sumerian, Proto-Sinaitic, and a bunch of other stuff you never heard of. None of it matched. But then I finally realized why the language looked familiar. In some way it looks like Arabic, though trust me, it isn’t Arabic.”
“You’re right,” Griffin said. “That’s what it reminded me of as well. I just couldn’t place it. So if it isn’t any of those things, what is it?”
“No idea. But, and this is a big but, the resemblance to Arabic made me fairly sure of two things. The first is that we are definitely looking at a real alphabet. The repetitions of certain characters makes me think there are a couple of sentences in what you gave me.”
“And the second thing?”
“I’m pretty sure the letters, like Arabic, are part of an abjad system.”
“You lost me.”
“An abjad is a system where the letters stand for consonants only and the reader supplies the vowels. It was fairly common in ancient languages.”
“Where did you learn all this stuff?”
“I have a lot of time to read because certain stupid men aren’t asking me out.”
Griffin ignored that. He said, “But you’ve still no idea what it says?”
Charon pushed a stray lock of her dark hair away from her face. Griffin was aware of her shoulder touching his. She really was a lovely girl. But young, he reminded himself, and that hadn’t turned out well the last time.
“If you want for sure, no. I have a vague notion of part of it.”
“I’ll take speculation at this point.”
“Okay but don’t quote me or base anything important on this. Most of these symbols appear to be phonemes. In other words, they stand for speech sounds. But I think a couple of them are logograms, meaning they represent a single word.” She picked up one of the printouts and pointed to a pair of characters. “I think this means blind or unseeing.”
Griffin’s reaction must have shown because Charon put her hand on his arm and said, “What is it? What’s wrong, Griffin? Can you still not tell me what this is about?”
Griffin said, “It’s some bad stuff, Charon. I don’t want you involved any more than you already are.”
“Maybe I could help more if you’d just tell me what’s going on. I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”
Griffin let out a long breath. “There’s been a murder. An old friend of mine. It hasn’t hit the news yet, but it will.”
“Oh Griffin. I’m so sorry.”
“It gets worse. Those symbols were found sliced into his body.”
“Oh my god.”
“Yes, and here’s why your speculation about the symbols struck home. My friend’s eyes had been put out.”
“Blind or unseeing,” Charon whispered.
“Exactly,” said Griffin.
* * *
Sometimes it was just better to knock on a door. So that was what Carl did. He pulled up to the front of th
e Blackbourne residence—the one that was outside of redneck paradise—and he knocked.
Instead of Siobhan Blackbourne, he got her daughter, Jolene. Also known to him and the rest of the force as Trouble—yes, with a capital T.
Jolene Blackbourne was a natural beauty. Creamy pale skin, a light scattering of freckles where the sun spent too much time touching her skin, the same light blue eyes that marked most of the clan, a cute little nose, full lips and a body that looked like it belonged in a gentleman’s magazine, only if he had to guess there wouldn’t be any need of an airbrush to remove the imperfections. As the girl was easily fifteen years younger than him, he pushed that thought out of his mind, though it took a bit of effort. She was wearing an Allman Brothers’ t-shirt that was two sizes too small and a pair of sweats that looked like they belonged to the same person. That didn’t help his resolve, but he was in business mode and intended to stay that way.
Jolene looked rather surprised to see him. In her defense, they’d never really had an occasion to meet socially. “Howdy, Jolene. I was calling to see if your mother might be around.”
The furtive look left her eyes. “Oh. No, I think she had some business in town.” She pouted very fetchingly while she considered the possibilities of where her mother might have gone. Carl reminded himself that most of the men who paid attention to that pout wound up in bar brawls, in a jail cell overnight, or occasionally in a hospital. Maybe it was her, maybe it wasn’t, but the men who courted the younger Blackbourne tended to get themselves in deep trouble.
“Well, maybe you can answer a question for me.”
She looked directly at him and smiled. He smiled back as politely as he could.
“What kind of question, Sheriff Carl?”
Sheriff Carl. Most of the kids who called him that had been introduced to him that way when he did his safety discussions at the local schools. It was a nice reminder of exactly how young she was.
“You know if you have any relatives named Frank? I have a fella in my lock up who says his name is Frank Blackbourne, and I don’t know if I’ve ever met him before. Big boy, I mean really, really big.” He demonstrated with his hand over his head. She frowned.
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