The Deadline

by Ron Franscell

CHAPTER FIVE

  July 26, 1996

  Dear Editor:

  Many times I have seen a flock of sheep devoured by wild dogs in the darkness, because they could not see where to run and because they were not smart enough to fight back. The smell of the slaughter, like the violent blue color of their entrails strewn on the ground, stays with you always.

  We are sheep. Our society is deteriorating and we cannot see in the darkness. We are the Supreme race — Supremely stupid. Homosexuality, AIDS, the explosion of so-called “knowledge,” pornography and wickedness everywhere, rampant crime in the streets, the New World Order: “All these are the beginning of sorrows.” (Matthew 24:8)

  The remnant People have been persecuted by our government and its Deathmakers in the ATF, the IRS and the FBI. They are like dark angels who come in the night to steal our God-given liberties. They are the wild dogs of tribulation and we must shoot them dead before they take our guns, our homes and our freedom. There will be no warning. We will not hear them coming in the night.

  Who will warn us then? Certainly it won’t be our liberal media. Even in our own humble town, we now have a liberal, big-city, Jew-loving editor. He is a journalistic Judas, a betrayer who was once one of us but who has been indoctrinated to serve New Zion. And as the Jew Judas betrayed Jesus Christ with a kiss, Jefferson Morgan has come back to Winchester as a tool of the New World Order to create unrest through his so-called objective reporting and censorship of our free speech!

  What proof is there of my words? Let me quote directly from the actual source: “‘The crucial key to our investigation was the work done not by a law enforcement official, but by Jefferson Morgan of the Tribune. I can’t give him enough credit,’ FBI Special Agent Carlton Wickes said at a press conference announcing the capture of (accused serial killer Phineas Dwight) Comeaux in Blue Island, Ill., on Monday. Based on materials found in his rural trailer home, Comeaux is also believed to have ties to a little-known radical Christian anti-government group known as the Fourth Sign.” (October 12, 1993, Chicago Tribune) I can send a copy of the entire news story to anyone who requests it so you can discover for yourself how our new editor is another pawn of the federal thugs and Christ-hating propagandists who have been sent to silence us.

  They are the sons and daughters of the false city of Edom! “They eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.” (Proverbs 4:17) The wild dogs are among us! We must see through the dark! Jesus Christ said “Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth!” (Revelations 3:16) We must be white hot as we strike out against our oppressors. If we do not rise against them, we will suffer the manifold curses of Yahweh (Deuteronomy 28)

  The Shepherd has come to warn us it is the time of the end. Only the Shepherd will warn us against the wild dogs of tribulation. He watches over us and protects us. He speaks Truth and is the Bringer of the Holocaust. You must follow the Shepherd or burn in Hell for eternity. May He direct our aim at the enemies of freedom and guide our bullets to their heart.

  A sign is coming. The Shepherd will show us His heat burns hotter than twelve suns and He will light the darkness so we may find our way to paradise.

  You have been warned! Prepare to meet thy God.

  Malachi Pierce

  P.S. to the Editor: Do not censor this letter. These words cannot be altered anymore than your fate can be altered.

  Morgan folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. He had no intention of publishing it. He tugged the napkin out of his collar and tossed it on the table. The evening wasn’t so playful anymore.

  “Can I see it?” Claire asked.

  “Nah, it’s nothing.”

  He forced a smile.

  “I can see by the look on your face it’s something,” she said. “Show me.”

  “Claire, it’s just a letter to the editor,” he said. “I’m the editor, remember? You can’t read other people’s mail.”

  “Yeah, but I’m the editor’s wife. And why would anybody send the newspaper a letter if they didn’t want other people to read it?”

  “Not tonight, Claire. Some other time. Let’s go get some ice cream. Just leave all this stuff here and we’ll come back for it.”

  Claire persisted.

  “Jeff, how can I help if you don’t share things? You always do this. I’m in this thing just as far as you are. Go ahead, trouble me.”

  “I’ll share a double scoop of rocky road. Deal?”

  Claire was tough. Morgan knew it. But the moment wasn’t right. He didn’t want her to be afraid of this strange new place where he fit and she didn’t. Tonight, he wanted her to talk about the baby growing inside her.

  “Not rocky road. I’ve got a craving. Something with nuts and caramel,” she said.

  The Garvis Creamery, on a narrow sidestreet two blocks over from Main, had fewer than thirty-three flavors, but its ice cream was hand-made every day. The teen-aged girl who worked behind the counter on this Friday evening was most certainly a Garvis, too. Like most of the creamery’s namesake family, she had frizzy, carrot-red hair and a galaxy of freckles strewn across her heavenly face. Her name tag simply said “Emily,” and at the end of her long day, Emily Garvis summoned a frail grin.

  “Hi, folks. Can I help you?” she asked, swirling her scoop in a kettle of cloudy, warm water.

  “We’ll have the specialty of the house, as long as it has nuts and caramel,” Morgan said.

  “In it or on it?” Emily asked.

  “In it,” Claire interjected.

  Emily balanced two generous globes of Powder River Crunch on a sugar cone and passed it over the counter to Claire. She held the teetering top scoop in place with her fingertip as she slid her tongue across the cold curve of it.

  Emily followed them to the door and flipped the “Open” sign to “Closed” as they left. She wiggled her fingers in a tired wave and went back to her clean-up.

  It was after seven. The sun was slowly sinking as they sat on a sidewalk bench outside the creamery. The carved stone facade of the old building, one of the oldest in town, reflected the day’s heat. Too soon, the ice cream began to soften, and little droplets of sweet cream trickled down Claire’s fingers.

  “We came down here on field trips when we were kids,” Morgan told her, catching a drip with his finger before it fell in his wife’s lap. “They’d show us how they bottled milk and made cheese, then every kid got a tiny little ice cream cone with about two bites of vanilla in it. You remember how exciting it was to come to class and see a film projector set up? Well, a field trip to Garvises’ creamery was even better. Those were really good days.”

  Claire leaned against him, but focused on staunching the ice cream that dribbled down the sides of her cone. Some of it clung to the lower rim of her sunglasses after she tried to catch a hesitant trickle with her darting tongue. She wasn’t licking the ice cream as much as it was licking her.

  Claire, a normally dignified woman seldom at the mercy of undignified circumstances, was fighting a losing battle with an ice cream cone.

  “If I eat any faster, I’m gonna get a brain freeze. You’ve got to help me here,” she begged.

  Mildly exasperated, Claire surrendered what was left of the dribbling cone to her husband and wiped her long fingers with a wadded paper napkin. Her tongue made a quick round trip around her chilled lips, which she dabbed at the corners with her napkin. Claire wasn’t dainty, but whether she had just stepped out of the shower or was preparing to go grocery shopping, she had a scrupulous way of making herself look fresh without much makeup or primping.

  Morgan did his best to finish the ice cream before it dissolved in the summer night, then tossed what remained of the soggy cone in a trash barrel chained to a nearby honeylocust tree.

  “Come on, I’ll walk you home,” he offered.

  He held her hand as they walked slowly, listening to children playing in the fading light. A meadowlark trilled from somewhere high in the trees until a teen-ager in a
bright yellow Camaro rumbled past them on the street, his robust stereo woofer thumping like an inside-out kettle drum on mag wheels.

  The pumping bass faded away and again the meadowlark sang a lilting soprano refrain.

  “Listen, Claire, I’m sorry I’ve been so wrapped up with the paper,” Morgan said. “I don’t know where the time goes. It seems like we just get the paper to bed and it’s deadline time again. I didn’t mean for you to share so much of me with the paper.”

  “Things will slow down,” she said. “I’m with you all the way on this, Jeff. You’ve got to know that. We’ll do just fine. Try not to bite off more than you can chew. Just one scoop at a time, okay?”

  Claire could be funny, even hilarious, but it took a good listener. Her humor was often cerebral where Morgan’s was frisky.

  “I’ve been too pre-occupied to show you how happy I am about the baby, I mean, you and me and the baby. It seems like one thing after another ... the move, taking over the paper, this murder thing ...”

  Finally, he heard her little joke. “One scoop. I get it. Sorry.”

  Claire squeezed his hand and kept the conversation moving.

  “The murder thing. What’s new with that?”

  “Trey Kerrigan isn’t going to be much help. He’s pissed off because I won’t endorse him.”

  “You won’t? Why not?”

  “Well, I don’t know if I won’t. I just told him I wasn’t sure I’d be doing endorsements.”

  “Wimp.”

  “Hey, what the hell good does it do for some newcomer to start throwing his political opinions around as if he knows what the hell is going on? I just don’t think it would be credible. That’s no way to start off in a new job.”

  “That’s crap, Jeff,” she said. “You grew up here. You know these people. You know their politics. I just think you’re afraid you might rock the boat a little. You kicked ass in Chicago where nobody knew you, and now you’re chickening out just when you can make a real difference as a newspaperman. You need to loosen up and do what you do. Let the Force be with you.”

  “Thanks, Yoda,” he said sheepishly. “I notice how effortlessly you dispatched Darth the Sugar Cone back there. Do you think you can teach me that tongue thing?”

  “Watch it, Luke, or you and your light-saber will never see my tongue again.”

  They laughed together. Claire put her arm around his waist. She was tall enough to rest her head against his shoulder as they walked up tree-lined Lincoln Street toward home. Morgan rested his arm across her shoulder and held her close.

  “I’m thinking about making the workshed out back into a studio,” she said. “Someday, we could put in a bigger south window to gather light. Maybe I could offer a few art lessons in the afternoon, make a little extra money. I measured it off today and I think the room is big enough for two or three people to work comfortably. What do you think?”

  Morgan was pleasantly surprised to hear his wife talk about working again. She hadn’t painted in almost two years. If she wasn’t escaping the confinement of her grief, she was certainly looking for a way out.

  Claire grew up among the neatly trimmed lawns and shaded lanes of Winnetka, Illinois. Her father was a corporate accountant in the city. Her mother stayed at home, dabbling in sculpture and watercolors, selling occasional works for the benefit of local charities. They kept their lives safely distant from the city, hidden away in a place they called a “small” town. Their middle daughter was pretty, outgoing and far more serious about academics and life than her two sisters.

  After high school, Claire majored in art at Millikin University, a small, respected and expensive liberal arts college downstate in Decatur, but she drifted naturally toward history, toward what could be known and what could be found with a little effort. In her, the disciplines of art and history — of unfettered imagination and the precise synthesis of fact — melded perfectly, as if she were the dusk between night and day. Until Bridger became ill, she painted beautiful pictures, selling a few here and there, but she had learned more than light and shadow in her home and at Millikin: She was creative, studious, persistent, explicit, beautiful and usually correct. Ideas always flickered behind her brown eyes.

  “I think it would be a very good thing to do, Claire. Very good.”

  “It wouldn’t take much. I’ve still got my easels and brushes somewhere in that mess of boxes in the garage. You’ve got the attic space for your books and writing and all that strange stuff you accumulate. This will be my space, just for me. I thought about the second bedroom for a studio, but that will be the baby’s nursery ...”

  Claire was making plans again, and that was good. She was happy. She was telling him, in her way, that she was better now. She was almost dancing again, twirling in delicate circles in the space she fashioned for herself, breathing in.

  The house was locked when they got home and they were both a little abashed. They had relished the idea of living in a small town where they needn’t lock their doors or their car, but old habits die hard. Morgan retrieved a spare key from its hiding place under a rock beside the porch and opened the door. T.J. met them at the door, so excited he squirted urine all over the foot-worn hardwood floor.

  “I remember when I was that happy to see you come in the door,” Morgan said, embracing his wife.

  “Me, too,” Claire responded, standing on her tiptoes. “But I like you much better now that you’re housebroken.”

  They kissed. Morgan slipped his hand down the back of his wife’s jeans as she unknotted his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. Without their lips parting, they edged toward the living room couch a few feet away, shedding clothing as they went. They made love there as if they were horny teen-agers again, like kids copping furtive feels on the basement sofa while mom and dad watched TV upstairs. Their lovemaking was more playful than lusty, more relaxed than deliberate.

  When they finished, Morgan sat naked on the floor beside her, curling her soft, blond hair around his finger while she lay back on the couch. Her eyes were closed. He studied her body in the soft light, and decided she was perhaps even more beautiful as a mature, fully blossomed woman than the young girl he’d met fifteen years before. And it wasn’t just her body. He was captivated by the strong woman inside.

  He let his hand drift across her naked belly. Their child floated under his palm, safe and warm.

  “That was nice,” she said. “We should go out on dates more often.”

  “Yes. That ice cream must have had something special in it.”

  “I’m sure you’ll go order a gallon of it to be delivered every week now, but next time it’ll take more than an ice cream cone to charm me, buster. Maybe a whole sundae,” she teased him.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” he said. Quite naturally, the next thing out of his mouth was, “I love you, Claire. Did you know?”

  “I know.”

  Morgan laid his head against her breast and drifted. He heard Claire’s heart surging beneath him, bringing him back into rhythm with the world. In a few moments, maybe longer, he began to dream. Claire let her fingers skim lightly across his shoulders and he awakened with a start. He didn’t know if he’d slept for seconds or hours; time had fallen out of rhythm again.

  “I’m tired,” he said. He rubbed his eyes and groped for his pants. “I should go back down to the paper and get the stuff. It’ll only take a few minutes, then we can turn in early. We’ll go for a drive tomorrow, up to the Sun-Seven. We’ll visit Aimee’s grave and see the place where she lived.”

  Claire covered her nakedness with a small pillow and blew him a kiss.

  Morgan dressed again, minus the tie, and walked back down to the paper. It was only five blocks but his legs felt heavy, his eyelids stiff. The front door was locked but the alley door was open.

  He stacked the plates, silverware and leftovers in the cooler, then began to fold Claire’s checkered tablecloth.

  Malachi Pierce’s letter fell to the floor.

  Morgan picked
it up and slumped into his chair, weighted down by it. He tapped the torn envelope against his knee and studied the coarse handwriting on it, but didn’t open it again.

  As a police reporter, he’d spent much of his professional life in close quarters with bad people who got what they wanted through intimidation. Most of their threats — menacing phone calls, hateful letters, petty vandalism, almost always anonymous — were empty. Morgan knew every crime reporter was a lightning rod for the simmering contempt of the people he covered. It came with the territory.

  That’s why Pierce’s letter disturbed him. He’d only felt real fear once before, that Halloween night in 1993 when the phone rang at his home in Oak Park.

  P.D. Comeaux was on the other end.

  “Trick or treat, Jeffie. This here’s your favorite boy comin’ ‘round to see what kind of sweets you’ve got at your house tonight,” the unmistakably voluble voice of the serial killer drawled over the line, as clear as if he were next door.

  A jolt of ice-cold adrenaline surged through Morgan’s veins. It had been more than a year since Illinois extradited Comeaux to South Dakota, where he was convicted and sentenced to die at the maximum-security prison in Sioux Falls. The last time Morgan heard P.D. Comeaux’s voice was at his sentencing, when the remorseless killer told the Hispanic judge to “kiss my lily-white ass.”

  Now Comeaux seemed to be in the same room. Had he escaped and come looking for the man who helped end his malignant life on the road?

  Jesus Christ, he could hardly breathe as the fear tumbled through him, Claire had taken Bridger trick-or-treating and hadn’t returned.

  Comeaux’s voice undulated smoothly through the receiver, like the ripples on warm water.

  “Sweet things you got, too, Jeffie. That pretty wife of yours, so blond. I bet she’s a natural blonde, too, huh, Jeffie? Like that bitch I done in Sturgis. You remember her? Her pretty blond snatch was the best I ever ate. First a trick, then a treat ...”