The Duce of Pentacles

by S. A. Gorden

  * * * *

  Shermon was dazed as he walked from the police car to his house. He entered the cold empty house. Frank was gone. His uncle was the only person in his life that he ever depended on. When his mother had been killed by her husband those many years ago, he had not felt fear or anger. He had felt a loss. Who would take care of him? Who would make his meals? Who would make sure his clothes were clean? For some reason, the loss of Frank was even worse than the loss of his mother. Back then, Frank had been there when his mother died. Now there was no one. No one!

  Where was Nicole? He checked the house. Her things were gone. Outside,

  her car was gone. She wouldn't leave him. She couldn't without money! He checked his watch. He could just make it to the bank before closing.

  They had already transferred most of their ready cash into Nicole's account to protect it from a possible seizure by the lawyers of the teachers or the school board. The bank accounts had been emptied. Most of their remaining assets had been in bonds and certificates in their safety deposit box. They had been planning on a quick getaway and had consolidated everything for easy transfer. The only thing remaining in the box was his birth certificate. He read again the words on the document. Jefferson William Jenson

  ... born 8 lbs. 5 oz____ mother Julie Lynn Jenson ... father William Joseph

  Jones...

  Shermon screamed. He threw the empty box against the wall of the bank cubicle. He sat, ranting, on the floor meticulously shredding his birth certificate. That was how the bank security guard found him.

  * * * *

  Henry sat in his living room easy chair. The sun was setting through the window. The blood red glow darkened the silent room. Frank, Al, Pike, Jenny, Kawalski, Frank, Al, Pike, Jenny ... They had missed the killer. Would they get Billy before another was added to the list? Frank, Al, Pike, Jenny, Kawalski. Henry closed his eyes trying to erase the sight of Frank's mutilated body, the way his face collapsed in without a jaw. The setting sun came out from behind a tree and a shaft of light hit the lids of Henry's closed eyes turning everything blood red. In complete exhaustion, Henry fell asleep to the encompassing red glow.

  * * * *

  _The hands turn over a card._

  A naked woman kneels, pouring water from two earthen jars. Her right hand pours the water into a pond while her left pours the water onto the ground. Seven white stars fill the sky of the upside down card. In the center of the card's blue sky is a large eight-pointed yellow star.

  _Darkness engulfs the hushed room. The only sound, muted steps leaving._

  CHAPTER 18: The Star reversed

  Makinen woke with a start. He had started the night watch as usual but the tension of the previous nights was gone. Everyone knew that Jones had to be hiding. At three, James had come in for a cup of coffee. After drinking half the cup, he had slowly collapsed in stages while sitting on the couch. It took ten minutes from when his eyes first closed until he completed laying in a fetal position on the sofa. Jeffrey placed a blanket over James. He and the rest of the VFW gang finished off the watch.

  Lori's lips changed from a slight pucker to a grin as she backed away from the startled sleeper. She saw Jim's innocent aspect as he slept and had to bend down to kiss his cheek. The startled man and smiling girl looked at each other, enjoying the momentary intimacy. Their smiles changed to worry as they remembered what was happening to them. What would happen next? Where was Billy Jones?

  * * * *

  Henry woke in his easy chair to the red glow of the morning sun. He moved his tired body in stages. Each limb woke in its own time and way. His left leg woke to an ache from a break when he was twelve. His knees crackled and popped as the arthritic joints moved. The back straightened in sequence as each vertebra fought to align with its neighbors. A good five minutes after his eyes opened, he hobbled his aged, crippled body into the kitchen to brew a cup of coffee.

  As the aroma of brewing coffee filled the kitchen, Henry fought his boiling anger at the gruesome deaths of his friends and tried to probe for the next actions of Billy Jones.

  By the time Henry stepped behind his office desk, he was coolly and calmly in control. It was the aloof control most people associate with

  Scandinavians. People living in the far North all seem to have a reserve, a control foreign to the passions of the people of the warmer climates. The control is mistaken as a lack of feelings. The harsh endless cold of northern winters is unforgiving of any mistakes made in passion. The survivors learned to control their emotions. But the emotions are only controlled. Nature knew that in times of distress, passion and emotion could mean survival. The rest of the world only vaguely remembers the passion of the Northern Peoples in the form of a few words and stories left over from the time when the Vikings swept through Europe, North Africa, and Eastern Asia. Now their descendants waited and studied as their passions grew, waiting for the time of release.

  At his desk, Henry studied the accumulated paperwork. The tox screens and final forensic reports were in from Billy's first victims. Henry found no new useful information there. He did find some grim pleasure when he read the revised FBI psychological report. He easily found the patchwork phrasing and sentences the behavioral psychologists used to repair their original report to match Billy Jones's profile. The one thing that caught his eye was the statement that Billy would run and hide. He would only start his killing again after he established his life in another location.

  When Henry saw in technical gobbledygook those words, he knew they were wrong. Billy had moved here because of his family. Jefferson was his son. He had murdered for pleasure but also for some warped sense of family. Jefferson had said that Jenny resembled his mother when she was Jenny's age. He had killed all the others except Al for some obscure family-related reason. Pike was Jenny's pimp. Kawalski was a partner with his son. Frank was Billy's brother-in-law. Al had been in the way. In the way? In the way of what? Did Al see something? Was he in the wrong place? Where was Al before he disappeared? The school parking lot. Who or what was in the parking lot at the time Al was murdered? What was Billy doing? Henry somehow knew Billy wouldn't leave until his son was gone. Henry knew the psychologists were wrong again. Billy wasn't finished here.

  Henry reviewed the trophies, the missing body parts, trying to find a link there. He sent police to every place Billy was known to frequent to interview everyone he had talked to. By the end of the day, the Governor had pulled the highway patrol out of the investigation. The neighboring counties had also claimed their deputies. They all thought Billy Jones had left the area. The station almost felt deserted after the bustle of the last few days. All that were left were a few BCA agents, the county deputies, and the local town police.

  Henry talked to Vernon and all the others left on the task force before the end of the day. He told them that no matter what anyone else said, Billy Jones was still out there. Frank Jenson and Al Gallea had been killed when they confronted Billy alone. No one was to go after Billy without backup.

  It was six o'clock and there was one final name on the list of Billy Jones' acquaintances to be interviewed, Pastor Tom Peterson. Vernon was processing paperwork at a desk down the hall and Nancy was still at dispatch. Henry told them both where he was going and to contact him immediately if anything happened.

  Peterson's wife answered the door.

  "Hello. Mrs. Peterson?" A small nod was the reply. "I'm Deputy Sheriff Henry Hakanen. My office called earlier about asking your husband some questions ... about one of his parishioners."

  In a small voice, the woman replied, "Oh, yes. I remember the call. My husband has not been feeling well. Do you have to talk to him?"

  "I'm sorry, but it is very important that I speak to him."

  She paused to think and with a slight nod she said, "He's in his office. I'll take you there." She turned and walked to the back of the house. Without looking to see if Henry was following, she continued. "He's not been feeling well. I've talked to the district office. Reverend S
harpton talked to Tom yesterday. The district is making arrangements for Tom to visit a retreat in Arizona for a few months. We'll be leaving before the end of the week."

  By the time she finished her ramblings, they were standing at a closed door. She looked up at Henry then knocked on the door. "Honey, Deputy Hakanen has stopped by to talk to you." She turned to Henry and whispered, "Go on in. I'll wait for you in the living room."

  Henry entered the darkened room. A small desk lamp at the table was the only illumination. Henry stood in the doorway waiting for his eyesight to adjust to the dark. A voice from a chair in the corner rambled in a strange cadence.

  "Mr. Peterson." After a pause Henry repeated in a slightly louder voice, "Mr. Peterson."

  "Who is that? Did God send you? Have you come to bring judgment on those sinners, Lori Waithe and James Makinen?"

  "I've come to ask you about one of you parishioners, William Jones."

  "Who?"

  "William possibly Billy Jones."

  "Oh, yes, Billy Jones, a true man of God. Deacon Shermon told me how strong a Christian brother Jones is. You know, he tithes every paycheck. I stopped by his home once. He had his bible in the living room. We talked and prayed. He fixed us this beautiful little lunch. We talked about God's wrath and the coming tribulation. It was joyous ... What was it you wanted to talk about?"

  "I would like to find out more about what Billy Jones said to you."

  "Oh, yes. Billy Jones, a wonderful man of God. Did you know I felt the hand of God touch me when I prayed for damnation on those sinners, Makinen and Waithe?"

  "We were talking about Billy Jones."

  "I felt God's hand touch me. The power threw me across the sanctuary. I woke with the red vision of God's judgment in my eyes. Hallelujah! Praise Jesus! Thank you, Lord, for your blessed vision! Would you bow your head in prayer with me? Thank you, Lord ... Thank you, Jesus... "

  Henry looked at the kneeling man and backed out of the darkened room.

  In the living room, Henry asked his wife, "What happened to him?"

  "It started when the congregation walked out on him during his Sunday sermon some weeks ago. Then a few days ago, he came back from praying at the church with a dazed look on his face. He's been talking about God's judgment since then. He's spent most of the last two days shut up in his office. He won't come out and he won't let me turn on the lights or open the curtains. He just sits in there praying for judgment and damnation." She then quietly started to sob. Quick intakes of breath were followed by a nearly inaudible moan.

  Henry touched her shaking shoulders whispering, "I'm sorry. Would you want me to call someone for you?"

  The penitent head shook 'no.' Henry let his hands rest on her shoulders for a minute, then left the stricken home.

  * * * *

  _The room seems to be bathed in greater darkness when the lamp turns on. The single spot of illumination fails to hold the blackness at bay. Mysterious shadows from the light accent the tendons and veins of the hands, making them into talons that scratch at the deck of cards, turning over the next._

  _On the foreground of the card, a man and a woman are chained. A large figure is perched on the post they are bound to. Curling goat horns come from the large figure's head and bat wings sprout from his back. A pentagram is etched on the creature's forehead. His right hand is raised in greeting and his left hand carries a lighted torch. A closer look at the two in front discerns that a set of horns issue from their red hair and tails come from behind their backs.

  CHAPTER 19:

  The Devil Billy slowly rocked back and forth in the chair and waited. He felt a

  slight breeze from the window he had forced open in the back of the apartment. He liked this room. It had the close, dark feel of an animal's den. His left hand went into his pants pocket and pulled out the small piece of jaw. He caressed the bone lovingly. Finally, he put the trophy back and removed his keys from his other pocket. He jingled the keys in time with his rocking but finally his playful hands reached for his talisman at the end of the key chain. There the hands stroked the polished white three-inch long piece of bone. When questioned by his drinking buddies, he told them it was a portion of rib bone from the first deer he had ever shot. He rubbed the bone against his cheek and lips remembering when he first got it.

  It was after he killed the driver of the wrecked car. An uneasiness came over him. He couldn't sleep. He didn't eat. Finally, he loaded a case of beer in his pickup and drove. He found himself in Sioux Bluff. He had always known where Julie had died. This was the first time he had an urge to see her grave. He drove to the cemetery. There he walked past the stones, reading the names, one by one. Then he saw it, Julie Jenson Shermon. He sat by the graveside through the afternoon drinking beer.

  A man drove up with a backhoe. He dug a grave at the far corner of the cemetery. Another man arrived in a pickup. Together the two men spread green astro turf over the mound of fresh dirt. They pulled the backhoe to a small shed at the back of the cemetery and left in the pickup as the sun went down past the far hills.

  Billy drank two more beers as night brought silence to the small town. The craving came over him to see Julie again. Billy staggered to the backhoe. The keys were gone but he had hot wired tractors before. He jolted his way through the cemetery, missing most of the large headstones, rolling over the smaller ones. He tore a small pinhole in the hydraulic line crossing over a headstone. A thin spray of oil came from the hose every time he used the hydraulics. The oil landed on the hot manifold of the tractor, filling the still air with fumes. Within a half-hour after getting to Julie's grave, the shovel on the backhoe bit through the rotted wood on her coffin. Going back to his pickup for a lantern and a beer, he sat for hours on the edge of her broken coffin, his feet resting on her corpse. The weak light of the lantern flickered across her rotted flesh, making the corpse seem to breathe.

  Billy talked to her about what he had done over the years. Then told her how he had killed the man in the car. Finally he relived with her the moments when he became a man in his own mind, his raping of her. As he talked, he became hard with lust. His anger flared as he watched the rotted corpse seem to move in the flickering light. He wanted her but couldn't consummate the act with the corpse.

  Billy flexed his hands, wishing he had been the one to kill her, to break her flesh, to see the terror in her eyes. He stood up and staggered. His feet had slipped through Julie's rotted flesh and to the bottom of the coffin. The body seemed to fold in about his feet trapping him. In panic, he reached down and pulled her ribs apart with his fists. His feet free, he climbed out of her coffin. Safe, he looked down on her corpse. The frenzy and the beer had worked on Billy's bladder. He opened his fly and pointed the yellow stream across Julie's face in retaliation. The weak lantern light and the haze from the yellow spray changed the features of the rotted corpse to someone living. To Billy's beer soaked mind the face behind the haze became a young girl, a young girl with large boobs. A girl he had raped before. A girl he would fuck again. Only this time, the girl had a different name, Jenny.

  On a quest, Billy climbed out of the hole, his hand clutching at the earth. Pulling himself up, he found he had a stick in his hand, only it didn't feel right. He brought it to his truck. In the cab light he saw it was part of a rib. He pulled the rotted flesh and cloth away until the white bone gleamed in the light. Billy placed the bone in the middle of the seat. This would be his talisman on his quest. The quest to completely possess Julie/Jenny again. He had to get complete and total control of her again and this time he would decide on how it would end.

  Starting the tractor, he filled in the grave. He backed the tractor up and headed back to where he had taken it. In the tractor's headlight, he saw another stone. He racked the teeth on the backhoe's shovel across the stone, putting three large gouges through the name Shermon. He left the backhoe there. Its shovel buried deep into the grave, the ground soaked with oil from a busted hydraulic line.

  The next day, the local
police released a report that drunken vandals, probably kids, had hot-wired a tractor and damaged some headstones at the cemetery. The police refused to believe what they found. It had to have been kids, anything else was too sick.

  Billy polished his talisman until it gleamed white. In a supply closet at the back of the school building, he would drink beer and rub his talisman against his body. He was there when he overheard Kawalski talking to Pike.

  "You know, Pike, we have a lot of old-time teachers in this school. First-year teachers are easier to control. They also miss more of what is happening around them. Don't you think it would be much easier if one of those teachers who always seems to be around checking on things was replaced by someone new?"

  "Sure would. Who do you want me to get this time?"

  "We can't do the fall down the stairs again this year and we can't set someone up with drugs, cause they just might check up on the whole school.

  Now, Makinen has been divorced for a few years. He's not dating anyone. Everyone would believe he fooled around with a high school girl. Do you think you could handle it?"

  "Easy. You'll get what you want but it's going to cost you..."

  Billy never caught the rest of the conversation that day but the next day, he saw Pike talking to Jenny. He saw Pike and Jenny watch Makinen while they talked. Their smiles and laughter told him what they were planning. The following day, he watched Makinen lust after Jenny from the balcony. Makinen's name was added to his list.

  Billy had to kill Makinen. He had to kill Lori. How dare Makinen change his mind, ignoring the beautiful Jenny to go after that skinny bitch, Lori?

  How could that small-breasted little bitch be more alluring to Makinen than Jenny? They both had to die in pain. If he could get them together, he could ... The talisman wasn't enough anymore. He reached into his pants. He masturbated in time to his rocking, until his white semen stained the white bone.