by Jim Laughter
Preach sipped at his coffee and forked a bite of eggs and bacon into his mouth.
“I can’t explain it, son. But God is dealing with me–leading me on a mission of apostolic importance. It’s a mission that if I can complete it in the timeframe that he has given me, it will change the face of religion forever.”
“What kind of mission, Dad?”
Preach glanced around the diner to see if anyone else was listening. “I can’t discuss it just yet, son,” he whispered. “God will make it all clear when the time is right.”
“And you can hear the audible voice of God?”
“I can hear him speaking to me as clear as I hear your voice right now.”
Simon nodded. He’d never known his dad to go off the deep end. He knew his father well enough to know that he wasn’t given to flights of fancy. He wasn’t sure what his father was talking about but he could tell it was something important. He had no idea that his father’s calling involved the murder of innocent people all across the United States. Nor did he realize that eventually his father’s mission would lead to his own front door.
“So I guess you’re not going to accept my offer as associate pastor?”
“No, son. I can’t. I’m on a much more important mission, and I only have a few more months to complete it.”
The two men sat at the Family Diner and ate their breakfast, drank their coffee, and talked about their family. Preach asked Simon what he could get Abigail for her birthday–something besides a new car.
Chapter Eleven
Duncan Morris’ head hurt. A dull throb started behind his eyes and turned into a splitting pain that exploded through his brain and neck then ran right down to his feet. He placed his right hand on his forehead if for no other reason than to confirm that his head was still attached to his shoulders.
Morris opened his eyes. The glare from the 4-foot florescent bulbs in the overhead fixture burned into his brain. He didn’t recognize the ceiling even though he continued to stare at it, trying to make his eyes focus. With a pain felt only during a hangover, Morris turned his head to his left where he spotted blurry images of Coke and candy vending machines.
“Lounge,” he muttered. His mouth was dry and felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls. “I’m in the damn lounge.”
Morris sat up slowly on the couch, coughed and cleared his throat, and placed his feet on the floor. His head swam with a fluid motion and he felt like he might retch.
“Where’re my damn shoes?” he mumbled.
He felt around until he found one of them on the floor where he’d kicked it over the arm of the couch. His other shoe was wedged toe-down between the couch cushions. It looked like the last throes of a sinking ship just before sliding beneath the waves of a green vinyl sea. He rubbed his back where it was sore and reasoned that he’d slept on that shoe.
After a few minutes, Morris tried to look at his wristwatch but his eyes still refused to focus. He felt his pockets for his glasses but they were missing too. He stood shakily to his stocking feet and stumbled toward the stainless steel sink set into a Formica countertop along the wall. He was sure the sink was at least a mile away, and if not, it should be.
After reaching the sink and splashing several double handfuls of cold water on his face and forcing himself not to pay the drunkard’s price into the sink, Morris looked around the room to see if Truck was passed out anywhere nearby.
The lounge was empty. Only the aroma of fresh coffee awakened his senses. “Carl. God bless ya, brother.”
Morris poured a cup of fresh coffee into an empty Styrofoam cup he found laying on the floor next to the trash can. He didn’t bother to rinse it out, and he didn’t care how long it had been there or whose lips it had touched last. He sat down at one of the small round tables near the counter. He didn’t think he could make it back to the couch until he’d consumed at least one cup of coffee, maybe two.
“Dear God in heaven,” a voice said from somewhere across the room. “You look like a fresh pile of horse manure.”
Morris turned toward the voice as if in slow motion. He recognized Truck’s blurry outline standing in the doorway but his vision still wasn’t clear.
“Good mornin’ to you too, dipstick.”
Truck crossed the room to the coffee pot, his personalized cup with the FBI seal on it in his hand. He poured the black liquid into his cup then sat down across from Morris. He looked into Morris’ bloodshot eyes.
“You look like shit!”
“I heard you the first time,” Morris replied. “I may look like horse manure, but I feel like a horse’s ass.”
Truck just shook his head. “You really tied one on last night.”
“There was only a half-bottle of Jack,” Morris protested. “How the hell...”
“It wasn’t the JD that did it,” Truck cut in. “It was the bottle of Weller Special Reserve you had stashed in your desk, which by the way you know damn well is against regulations.”
“Screw you, buddy,” Morris said. “But my question is, did we polish off the whole thing?”
Truck nodded. “What you didn’t spill, you swallowed.”
Morris stood and stumbled shakily back to the sink and splashed several more handfuls of cold water on his face.
“Can’t find my damn glasses either.”
Truck reached into this shirt pocket, extracted Morris’ glasses, and handed them to him. “You kept dropping these,” he said. “Thought I’d better hang on to them for you.”
Morris gingerly put on his glasses, the focus causing another stab of pain to dig behind his eyes. He spotted his suit jacket thrown over a chair in the middle of the lounge.
“How’d I get in here anyway?”
“You didn’t get in here,” Truck answered. “You passed out in my office and I dragged your big ass in here and poured you onto the couch.”
He took another sip of coffee. “You’re a sloppy drunk, you know that Dunc?”
“I need a drink,” Morris said.
“You need a damn shower and a hot meal, that’s what you need. That and a swift kick in the ass for letting yourself go like this.”
“Me?” Morris protested. “Seems to me like it was you had the booze stashed in your desk.”
Truck only stared at Morris. He’d seen his friend like this a few times before, and always after a divorce or after failing to catch a criminal before he could kill again.
“You hangin’ around here today?” Morris asked Truck.
“Hell no! I’m going home. My damn head hurts too. Besides, I’m tired of lookin’ at your sorry ass.”
Morris nodded. His head still felt like Thor was pounding his temples with his mighty hammer. He started to say something clever then thought better of it. He only waved his hand as Truck pushed up from the table and headed slowly toward the door.
“Go home, Dunc,” Truck ordered. “I don’t want to see you again until Monday.”
* * *
George Benjamin stirred in his bed and reached for Latrice. She was gone. The sheets and coverlet on her side of the bed was pulled up neatly to the pillows. Benjamin looked at the clock on the dresser across the room. It said 8:20 a.m. He realized that Latrice was out on her morning run. There was a reason she stayed in such great condition, and it didn’t include lying around in bed all day.
Benjamin rolled out of bed and pulled his side of the bed covering up to complete their morning ritual. They’d decided at the beginning of their marriage only a few months ago that if they wanted to play in bed, they had to make the bed. It was a game between the newly-weds because more often than not they made the bed then climbed right back in for a morning moment together.
After a hot shower, Benjamin headed to the kitchen where he knew he’d find a pot of hot water already on the stove. He was determined to sort through the murder files and piece together a working model on the three unaccounted for victims.
He knew he was missing something. He just couldn’t see what it was, and he
knew he couldn’t rely on Morris to figure it out. Then again, he’d only had the files for three days. It wasn’t like he’d had six months to work on them like Keller and Morris.
Three days? Has that all it’s been? He’d been through the files so many times that it felt like he’d studied them for a month. But what was that one piece of information he was missing that would solve the case?
Benjamin remembered a movie he’d seen on cable some time ago. What had Hannibal the Cannibal said to FBI agent Clarice Starling? Something about everything she needed to catch the Buffalo Bill killer being in the file. She just needed to see it from a different perspective. Was it possible the clue he needed was staring him in the face and he just couldn’t see it?
* * *
Lynn Keller lay awake in her bed. Dixon’s alarm clock had awakened her when it sounded for his early morning tee time at the East Potomac Golf Course in DC. He played golf every Saturday and Sunday morning, weather permitting. It was a game Dixon loved to play, even though he wasn’t very good at it. She just wished he’d remember to turn the thing off instead of hitting the snooze button. But at least the house was quiet and she’d be able to stay snuggled under the comforter on her bed for as long as she wished. Mazie had lab this morning and wouldn’t be home until after noon. Until then, the house was all hers.
Keller rolled over and saw the half empty wine glass on her night stand. She’d managed to drink half a glass of California Merlot during her bath last night before Mazie brought in the greasy fish and chips and forced her to eat while she sat on a small settee and carried on a conversation about her class load and other trivial subjects that Lynn could have cared less about due to her long day at the bureau.
“You just don’t understand, Mother,” she’d said at one point during their conversation. “Professor Ellis insists the Mayan calendar is authentic and that the world will end in the year 2012.”
“That’s ridiculous, honey,” Lynn assured her daughter. “People have been talking about the end of time since, well, since the beginning of time.”
“Maybe so, but he’s adamant about it. He even broke down all of the time lines and astronomical calculations. It’s pretty convincing.”
Lynn hated it when college professors over-stepped the sensible boundaries of education. It’s bad enough they’ve kicked God out of education. Now they want to teach the rambling nonsense of a pagan society that’s been extinct for thousands of years.
“Tell you what, Mazie,” Lynn said. “You go ask Professor Ellis if he has a retirement savings plan. If so, you can be sure he’s full of crap and doesn’t believe what he’s teaching.”
Chapter Twelve
After Truck left the lounge, Morris made his way carefully to his office. His eyes had not yet focused and he was certain his head had grown at least two sizes. But he was determined to find the missing clue to the interstate serial murder cases. There was something the kid said that Morris was sure was important. He just couldn’t put his finger on it.
When Morris reached his office, he found the case files still stacked on the corner of his desk. He was sure the clue lay hidden somewhere in their pages. He just wasn’t seeing it.
“Can’t see a damn thing anyhow,” Morris muttered aloud. He had poured a fresh cup of coffee before leaving the lounge.
“Maybe I should just throw it in my eyes so it can work faster.”
Morris sat down at his desk, still hung over from his title fight with Jack Daniels and Weller Special Reserve. He didn’t remember the knockout blow but he knew he’d lost the championship round. And the office was quiet–too damn quiet. How the hell am I supposed to think with this damn much quiet?
The case files that had tortured Morris stared at him without mercy, daring him to open them and try to discern any useful information. They seemed to say, you don’t have it in you, teasing him with a label of inadequacy and failure.
Morris opened the first file again, the one detailing the murders of Peter and Andrew Zewenski. He noted that the date was in May, exactly six months ago. He looked at James Fisher’s case file and saw that his murder had occurred in June, exactly one month after the Zewenski brothers. And now it was October and a kid playing hide-and-seek with his sister stumbles over the body of Thomas Waverly at an interstate rest area in Texas during the same week as the other bodies had been found in May and June. No other bodies had been found in July, August, or September that could be attributed to this interstate serial killer.
Why are these people bein’ killed in the second week of every month? Is this killer on some kind of a schedule? Maybe he runs a route. Does he have a home somewhere, or does he live on the road? Why did he skip July, August, and September? Who the hell can this bastard be?
Morris took one of his yellow legal pads and wrote the months in order down the left side of the page. He drew a line down the length of the page next to the months, creating a column. Next to May he wrote the names of Peter and Andrew Zewenski, and beside June he wrote James Fisher. In parenthesis he scribbled the name Perry Dennis. Moving down the page, he wrote Thomas Waverly beside October. He was certain the missing clue lay somewhere in the three vacant months, July, August, and September.
Morris drew another line down the page next to the victim’s names, creating a third column, and in that column he began to fill in the names of the apostles that George Benjamin had discussed. He wrote down the Apostles Peter and Andrew next to the Zewenski brothers, and the Apostle James next to James Fisher. Moving down the page again, he wrote Apostle Thomas next to Thomas Waverly.
Now he had three blank spaces staring back at him. Who the hell is missin’? What were the names of those next three apostles?
He tried to think of that Bible verse that Benjamin had displayed at the staff briefing? I knew I should’a paid attention in church when I was a kid.
Morris looked around the room until he spotted the office laptop computer that Benjamin had left on the table. He lifted the top, revealing a dark screen.
How the hell do I turn this damn thing on? He knew that if he could just turn it on, he could probably figure out how to bring up the PowerPoint presentation that Benjamin had created, and that the scripture and complete list of names was hidden somewhere on the infernal machine.
Morris examined the laptop, pushing first this key then that one. He finally settled on a small round button on the body of the computer under the middle of the screen. He pushed the button and lights began to flash and he heard what he assumed was the hard drive purr to life.
Damn, I’m good.
After only a short while, the screen lit up bright blue and displayed a number of icons. Morris studied the icons until he found one that said PowerPoint.
“Now, how the hell do I get into the damn thing?”
Morris spotted a mouse that Benjamin had left plugged into the side of the laptop. He moved the mouse and watched the arrow on the screen move around. He positioned the pointer over the PowerPoint icon and double-clicked the left mouse button the way he’d seen Keller do it at the briefing.
The laptop screen sprung to life, displaying the PowerPoint logo and menu. Morris looked at the menu but was unsure how to access the information.
“It’s just a damn file,” he said aloud. “Can’t be much different than lookin’ in a file cabinet.”
Morris spotted the word file at the top line of the menu. He placed the arrow over the word and clicked the mouse. A menu box dropped down and Morris saw the Open command. He clicked on it and a list of filenames appeared in a separate box. One filename stood out to Morris. It said Director Briefing. Morris knew he’d found the file he wanted.
It only took Morris another minute to open the PowerPoint presentation and find the list of names George Benjamin had created. The names of the victims appeared on the left of the screen, and the names of the corresponding apostles appeared on the right side. The fourth name down the list was John the Beloved, followed by Phillip, then Bartholomew. The next line show
ed the name Thomas Waverly, and to the right of it was the Apostle Thomas. Below Thomas was Matthew, James Alpheaus, Thaddaeus with Jude in parenthesis, then Simon the Zealot, ending with Judas Iscariot.
Morris wrote the names down as they appeared on the list, matching John, Phillip, and Bartholomew to the missing months. Then he filled in the names of the other apostles after the names of the remaining months.
“That’s it!” he exclaimed aloud. “That’s the missin’ victims!”
He looked around the room at the other computer monitors and file cabinets and realized this could take all day. He knew he was going to need help but decided to go it alone for a while.
“Computer illiterate, am I?” he muttered. “I’ll show those damn computer monkeys how real police work is done.”
He turned on two other computer terminals, not exactly sure how he’d access the information he needed, but determined to dig up a viable lead before the end of the day.
“You’re out there somewhere, John,” he said. “And I’m gonna find your ass or die tryin’”
Chapter Thirteen
Two straight nights of eight hours uninterrupted sleep revitalized Lynn Keller. She had spent all day yesterday hunkered down in her house, never even getting out of her pajamas. Well, not exactly. She’d gotten out of her pajamas for a few minutes when Dixon got home from his Saturday morning round of golf. But he was ten years her senior so that didn’t take too long.
Now she was determined to take at least one full day off from the cares of her job and family. She knew she should get dressed and go to church this morning, but she was still tired from the many hours she’d spent at the office the last few days. Mazie hadn’t come home from lab yesterday. She’d called to say she was participating in a study group and would spend the night at a friend’s apartment.
The house was all hers and she planned to enjoy it and not even think about work or the serial killer case. She’d let Benjamin do his magic and hope he’d come up with a good working profile for them to examine on Monday.