S. A. Gorden

by The Duce of Pentacles

  The hands flex, the figure sighs, the ambiguity of the card pervades the dark, silent room. Darkness.

  ––—

  CHAPTER 15: The Three of Swords reversed

  The morning briefing at the sheriff’s station was filled with silence.

  A few of the officers sat in a stunned daze, a hint of moisture formed along the edges of their eyes. The most profound change was in Frank. He had seemed to age twenty years over the night. His haggard face was filled with deep lines and lost sleep. He still held court over the assembled officers with professional control, but a lost, defeated essence emanated from him.

  Henry was obviously tired and worn but he still had full mastery of himself and the job. The other officers slowly begin to turn to him for leadership. When a lab report had showed blood residue had been found near one of the back entrances of the school building, the assembled officers paused until Henry commented that he and Frank would go back over the site. After the briefing was ended, the officers waited until Henry nodded before they left.

  As everyone left the room, Henry pulled Vernon aside. “Vern, I’d like to talk to you off the record?”

  “Okay, Henry. What is it?”

  “Frank is not holding up too well. I think we should keep an eye on him. Something happened to him when Al got taken last night. Maybe he’s blaming himself. I don’t know but I don’t think he should be alone. He could get in trouble. I could ask one of the deputies to keep an eye on him but he’s BCA. I don’t want any trouble between agencies now. It’s hard enough coordinating local police, three different county sheriffs’ departments, the state police, and the BCA without getting into any rivalries. If Frank doesn’t get his act together in time and lets something slip by, the whole investigation could be gone.

  “Vernon, I know I can’t order you. But if you could keep a BCA agent by Frank until he can get back up to speed, it would sure help.”

  “You’re right, Henry. Al’s disappearance and murder really threw Frank.

  I’ll keep an eye on him. If you could keep it between us, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Of course! That’s why I talked to you in private.”

  “And Henry … I want to be there when we get the son of a bitch. I want to be there…” Vernon ended with a plea.

  The old man woke with a splitting headache. He started some coffee brewing. He got a towel, wrapped the last two ice cubes in the refrigerator in it, and placed it on his forehead. It didn’t help.

  Stumbling down the basement stairs, he went to his new freezer. He opened the towel and threw the two half melted ice cubes toward the corner floor drain. He picked up Jenny’s heart, wrapped it in the damp towel, and rubbed it slowly across his head. He had hated to freeze her heart because he had loved the firm feel and resilience of the cool muscle. He had frozen the heart after he noticed a slight darkening to the compact red flesh. He had known that rot was only a few hours away if it wasn’t frozen.

  He took a deep breath of the cold freezer air coming from the small icebox. The relief of the cold compress permitted him to fully open his eyes.

  A smile played across the old man’s features as he viewed his prizes, the small package containing the testicles and shriveled penis of Pike, the equally small bundle containing the cop’s frozen eyes, and the larger mass of Kawalski’s tongue. There had been more bundles of frozen meat he had taken on whim from his victims but they had been cooked and now resided in the stomachs of the neighborhood pets. He had remembered hearing Reverend Peterson preach about Ahab and Jezebel being eaten by dogs. Somehow the preacher’s words about God’s Judgment on the two stayed with him. He had become Elijah rejoicing in God’s Judgment on the weak. The weak were sinners by their very being and deserved judgment. The feasting of the dogs was just retribution to the obvious sin of weakness.

  He had decided to keep only one piece of flesh from each of his pleasures. It had been so hard to decide on which piece to save. Somehow an inner voice had talked to him through his hands on which parts to carve off the bodies. It had been much harder to decide on what to keep after the frozen packages had been made.

  With his headache gone, he put Jenny’s heart back inside the freezer.

  Upstairs he drank his coffee. Closing his eyes, he traced Lori’s body with his hands. He could feel the tingling as, in his mind, he stroked her corpse searching for parts to save. Anyone watching from the window would imagine they were seeing an old man in the throws of an erotic dream, the slight smile and slow rhythmic hand motions. They would have looked around the room for a Playboy or an erotic video playing on the TV. Instead, all they would find was a Bible, a few newspapers turned to either sports or the business section, and ESPN playing on the TV.

  Frank and Henry walked through the back door of the closed school.

  Henry immediately noticed that the transition between the sunlit parking lot and the dark hall would blind anyone who entered for a period of time. The two men waited until their eyes adjusted to the gloomy hall. Henry saw the numbered yellow tag that marked the blood residue against the wall a few feet down from where they stood. Henry saw that the marker was opposite an empty doorway. The killer could have waited there for Al to enter the back door.

  Blinded by the dark hall, Al would have been easy prey.

  Henry continued down the hall with Frank following in silence. A few steps down the hallway Henry smelled ammonia. He followed his nose to an open janitorial closet. Inside was a handcart, a mop with a bucket on rollers, and a huge industrial sink that looked like everything from the acids of the chemistry lab to last week’s chili had been flushed down it. Once inside the closet, Henry saw the empty gallon container marked as disinfecting cleanser resting next to the roller bucket.

  “Look’s like this is where he cleaned up after ambushing Al back there.”

  Frank didn’t answer. Henry looked and saw the emptiness in Frank’s eyes. He repeated the comment and finally got a noncommittal, “Yeah,” from Frank.

  Henry continued down the hall to the front of the building. He walked slowly trying to decide if the new information had narrowed the suspect list any. Henry figured that the ambush in back of the school was a little too cute for someone just from the area. The killer would either have had to work in the building or had gone to school here. The school had been built thirty years ago, so the best the new information could do would be to eliminate the one or two on the list that had moved into the area in the last few years and never worked in the building.

  “We need to go over the employee list for the school again and talk to Shermon. We need some answers from him.” Henry glanced at Frank. His ghastly pale face and vacant eyes stopped him in his tracks. “Are you all right, Frank?”

  “Fine. Fine. I’m fine. I think I need to get a little rest. I’ve been up for nearly thirty-six hours. Could you check the employee records? We could meet at my motel in a couple of hours. After going over the records together, we could then talk to Shermon. Sound okay, Henry?”

  “Sure, Frank. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

  Henry sat in front of the computer screen. He had spent the last two hours checking the school’s employee records with the notes compiled by the task force. He’d had to run background checks on two of the names. The results were zip. He had been unable to eliminate any of the names on the task force list using the new information. Everyone had either gone to the high school at some time in the past or had done some work at the building. Being a small community, everyone on the list seemed to have a connection to where the bodies had been found, a cousin worked here or a neighbor over there. The task force hadn’t had time to see if anyone had a strong match on knowledge about the logging site. Henry felt something picking at his mind every time he looked through the employee list at the school. Something that wouldn’t come up to where he could see it. Maybe going over the records with Frank would jar whatever was picking at his mind loose?

  When Frank opened the door, he looked terrible. T
here seemed to be a slight tremor to his voice. The lines on his face had gone deeper, outlining his eyes and mouth with darkness.

  “Henry, I need more rest. Could we put off seeing Shermon until the morning? It’s already getting late,” came the hesitant whisper.

  “Sure, Frank. Do you need anything?”

  “No. Thanks for asking, but all I really need is a few hours of sleep.”

  Henry went back to the station to make another run at the employee records.

  Vernon walked in at about midnight. “You need a break, Henry. How about some of the sludge your boys call coffee?”

  Rubbing the strain from his eyes, Henry replied, “Okay, Vern.”

  In the small break room, they sipped the coffee and munched on stale bars from the vending machine. Vernon asked, “What did Frank find out from Shermon? He hasn’t turned in a report yet.”

  “What! Frank saw Shermon?”

  “Yeah. The agent keeping an eye on Shermon saw Frank go into his house late in the afternoon. He had to have been inside at least a couple of hours.”

  “Damn!” The small thing picking at the back of his mind finally came to the front, Sioux Bluff! Frank had talked to him about growing up in a small town in South Dakota, possibly Sioux Bluff. It had been Sioux something or another. Frank had prided himself in how, living in a small town, everyone knew everyone else back forty years ago. Frank had just come back from a visit home. He had been depressed on how large the town had grown since the high-tech component company had started up.

  Henry hurried to his office, leaving a confused Vernon behind.

  Searching though the employee records, Henry found Jefferson William Shermon graduated from Lincoln High School, Sioux Bluff, South Dakota.

  Sandra looked up from her desk and stopped breathing. James Makinen stood in the doorway. She stared frozen. The pounding of her heart grew louder and louder until a final surge started her breathing again. She whispered,

  “Come in.”

  He moved into the chair across from her desk. With the insight she had from her last interview with him, she saw the lethal motions of a predator and not the shuffling of a middle-aged man.

  After her second breath of air, she had recovered to the point she could ask questions. “Is there a reason you stopped by now? You were scheduled to come in next week.”

  “I know the one doing the killing is going to try to get Lori.” When he saw Sandra about to speak, he stopped her with a shake of his head and continued. “I don’t know how I know this but I do. I know that Kawalski or Shermon had to know something about the killings, so I had a little talk with them a couple of days ago. I pushed them hard. Kawalski was murdered that night. I am not going to let the killer make the next move. I need to find the killer but … I … don’t … know … how?”

  He looked at Sandra. She turned away. She wished she could think of him as an average middle-aged man. Every time she looked at him, she saw beyond the facade, a spark of light behind the eyes, a small gesture that hinted at enormous power held in check. With her eyes focused on the notes scattered across her desk, she said. “You do it the same way you handle all problems.

  You gather everything you know about the problem. You poke at it. You shift it. You sort it. When an idea comes out, you try it. If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, you add it to what you know and start over again.”

  Sandra glanced up from her desk. Her eyes were caught in Makinen’s stare. Unable to turn away, she heard him say. “I need to see the information you have. I need you to poke and prod.” He held her eyes for a ten-second eternity and then looked away.

  James left Sandra’s office with barely more information than when he came. He never knew about the phone calls to the county and state attorneys.

  He never knew about the thinly veiled threat delivered to the school district’s attorney, Jack Andrews, by Sandra. He never knew about the forces released by her prodding.

  James walked the streets, trying to think. He wandered the blocks. He felt something important needed to work its way out of his mind. He used the physical exertion of his pounding steps to try to work it out. He stopped. His stomach growled from the scent of food drifting down the street. The sidewalk was filled with people drifting in and out of a corner church to their cars and back again. A basement window was open letting escape the aroma of a potluck meal and the sounds of dishes and voices.

  Shermon! Shermon in church! His mother had told him after they had left the church so many days ago that Shermon was a deacon there. A deacon had to earn his post. Records were kept by churches. Records that could mean something!

  Tom Peterson always took a few hours in the afternoon to sit and pray in the sanctuary. After his meditations he would feel strengthened, worthy of telling his flock God’s word. He never understood why so many from his congregation never came back after that Sunday a few weeks ago. He took a few minutes every day to pray damnation on the two that started the exodus from the morning worship service, the evil Jezebel that started the walk out and the Ahab that followed after her. Tom had always loved the Old Testament. He understood and worshiped the power of absolute evil and the complete judgment of the ancient prophets. He prayed to God every day to give him a prophecy, a calling down of destruction. He wanted to experience the burning fire of God’s wrath delivering destruction to sinners. He understood the pain felt by Jonah when after prophesying the destruction of Nineveh, they repented and God spared them. He needed to feel the power.

  Tom knelt by the altar and prayed out loud God’s wrath on Lori Waithe and James Makinen. Still enraptured in the ecstasy of prayer, Tom felt a force grab him and throw him against the wall. Tom laughed aloud. God had answered him! He was one of the prophets! He controlled the wrath of God on earth!

  Tom opened his eyes. At first, they wouldn’t focus. His breath had been taken away when the heavenly energy had thrown him against the wall. He smiled to himself. When his vision cleared, he would be looking at the face of God or one of his angels. He saw the face and tried to scream but not enough air had filled his lungs yet. Hands, filled with a force Tom had never experienced before, held him against the wall. The mouth on the face opened and through the enveloping blackness of shock Tom heard the words. “Fool! Trying to use God to fulfil your own petty desires. Well, learn about the real world!”

  James looked at the unconscious preacher. The idiot had fainted.

  Something had snapped in him when he entered the church and heard the preacher praying for Lori’s death. He was glad he had been able to stop before hurting the fool. James searched the preacher’s pockets for his keys. He went to the office and unlocked the door. Another key fit the file cabinet. James had to admit the fool was organized. He found files on all the deacons and on Jefferson Shermon nearly immediately. There was a photocopier in the office, so he copied the information and put the files back.

  When James got back to the preacher, he was curled on his side snoring.

  He slipped the keys back in his pocket and left. Back at Jeffrey Waithe’s house, he started to call the churches that Shermon had previously gone to asking questions. As darkness fell, he left the papers and prowled the neighborhood.

  Click. The silent darkened room echoes. Hands remove a card from the deck.

  Upon a white horse rides a skeleton in black armor. His left hand holds a black banner with a white design in its center. His right hands hold the reins of his red eyed horse. The horse stands over a crowned body, preventing a holy man and two children from touching the corpse. Although the foreground of the card is bright, the sun is setting between two towers in the distance.

  Click. The card and the room plunge into blackness.

  ––—

  CHAPTER 16: Death

  The first time Frank saw death on a person’s face was when he was fifteen years old. His parents had left for a foreclosure auction in Sissiton.

  They had planned on staying overnight, spending one full day before the auction to examine th
e equipment for sale. It was twelve-thirty at night that the phone rang. Groggy from sleep, he had tried to answer it. None of the words said over the phone made any sense but finally he realized his sister needed help.

  He drove his old rebuilt motorcycle to his sister’s. When he got to her house, all the lights were on and the front door was open. Inside he saw his four-year-old nephew, JW, standing in his pj’s with his eyes wide open and his thumb in his mouth. Frank asked his nephew where his mother was. He never answered but just stared with his wide-opened eyes.

  He found Julie lying in her own blood on the living room floor next to the telephone. Her left eye had swollen shut. There was a deep matted depression on the side of her head. Small trickles of blood flowed from her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. When her good eye focused on him, she started to talk. He bent down to hear her whispers and heard a terrible wheezing in her labored breath.

  “Take care of JW, Frank.” Frank looked up and saw JW still sucking his thumb watching from the hallway.

  “I’ll take care of JW, Julie. Right now we need to take care of you.

  Who did this?”

  “Timothy,” was the faint reply.

  “Take it easy, Julie. I’ll call for an ambulance.” After making the phone call, Frank cradled her head in his lap. When he looked into her green eye, he saw death. He felt a rasp in her labored breathing. He found himself counting slowly to five between each painful inhale and exhale. Then the air went out of her body and everything stopped. He looked into her eye, it was already starting to haze.

  The ambulance crew and then the sheriff’s deputies showed up. After Frank was questioned over and over, everyone became busy doing their jobs.

  Frank was pushed to the side of the room. He finally noticed, in the far doorway, JW standing with his thumb in his mouth. Before Frank could go to his nephew, he heard yelling from the front door.