When Frank opened the door, he looked terrible. There 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.