looked at the old man. 'I should have killed you, Billy, years ago.'
Frank's last conscious thought was that he had failed for a third time.
The old man was shaken. Who did he just kill? He had seen the car pull up in front of his house. He had recognized the man behind the wheel as one of the policemen that had come to the school. As he watched the cop stare out the windshield of his car, the old man got some duct tape, his twenty-two, and an empty milk jug. He was ready to kill the cop when he finally got out of his car. The old man had never been worried by the cop. He knew that the cop was trained to try to arrest a suspect before shooting. That's why people were so easy to kill. They always had to talk first.
But now the old man was worried. Somehow the cop had known him. The killer didn't like the idea of anyone knowing him. The old man got his Coleman cooler from the closet. Filling it with ice he went into the basement and loaded it with his trophies. He was about ready to leave when he glanced at the cop. Something bright showed from the dead man's mouth. The old man bent closer and saw that it was a gold tooth. The old man went to the closet. On a shelf in back, he found a claw hammer. Two blows with the hammer and the cop's jaw was broken. He reached into the mouth with the claw portion of the hammer. It took very little prying to pull the broken jaw from the dead man's flesh.
The old man giggled at the way the gold tooth contrasted with the piece of white jaw and the other remaining teeth. He whistled the theme from the _Andy Griffith Show_ as he packed the jaw into the cooler. The old man loaded his pickup. He drove to an old abandoned barn at the edge of town. He got comfortable on the bench seat.
The old man looked at his cooler. He could sense the ice already melting in it. He would have to find a freezer soon or everything would spoil. He forced himself to sleep through the night. He needed the rest. He also knew he had his best ideas in the morning shortly after he woke. There was more killing to be done before he left town.
* * * *
Henry called the sheriff's department of Sioux Bluff, South Dakota. The current sheriff didn't recognize the names of Frank Jenson or Jefferson Shermon but he promised Henry to call him right back after he talked to his father. He assured Henry that his father had lived in Sioux Bluff his whole life and knew everything about everybody.
Henry tried to make the time pass quickly by reviewing the other records to find more links. Instead of accomplishing anything, he only succeeded in shuffling papers. It was nearly two-thirty in the morning before he got a phone call from Sioux Bluff. The sheriff had called in to his night deputy with the information from his father. He had the deputy look up the old records that his father had remembered. After locating the records, the deputy had called Henry.
Vernon had followed Henry back to his office. Henry asked him to go to the main office and pick up the faxes the deputy was sending while he made a call back to the sheriff. Vernon read the faxes as soon as the machine spit them out. By the second sheet of paper, Vernon called another BCA agent and sent him to Frank's room.
By five o'clock, the sheriff's station was filled with cops as the news spread that another officer had disappeared. Groggy from lack of sleep, Henry tried to coordinate the search for Frank and plan the questioning of JW Shermon.
* * * *
Chris had driven through the town of Deer Lake Falls three times before the sun started to rise. He was nervous and a little scared. He had only been a town cop for ten months. He had taken the job because he needed the health insurance and the local union mills were not hiring. This killer had him scared spitless. He got queasy when he thought of what happened to Al. When he got off shift, he swore to himself that he would apply again at the union paper companies.
As the pink glow in the east faded into the long yellow shadows of early morning, the town woke up around his patrol car. Houses lit up and the streets started to empty as people left for work. Chris had not driven down every street but had stopped at the head of the occasional cul-de-sac to look down the side streets. The traffic slowed at seven forty as the first large group of commuters had already left for their eight o'clock jobs. As Chris pulled up to an intersection, he noticed a cul-de-sac empty of vehicles except for a nondescript tan car. Chris noted the state license plate. He pulled past the intersection and radioed in to the station that he had found Frank's car. Chris pulled his gun from his holster and prayed that backup would arrive before anything happened.
* * * *
The only reason Jacob McKinsie ran for county sheriff was that he wanted to be elected to the state senate. He knew that he was not a cop but a politician. He had let Henry Hakanen run the county's portion of the investigation, because he knew Henry was a good cop. He also knew that if anything went wrong, he had a readymade scapegoat. The phone call at four in the morning from the state headquarters of the BCA had threatened his plans. How could Henry let a BCA agent disappear? Jacob knew he had to fire Henry from the job but he had no idea who he could put in charge. He knew he wasn't able to do the job.
Jacob entered the sheriff's station and into a maelstrom of activity. The station had turned into a way station for the out-of-town cops working the case. Jacob vaguely remembered giving permission for the BCA agents and the state highway patrol to use half of his office space, but he had never realized how many people that would mean.
Jacob was only five feet, four inches. The average highway patrolman was six feet. A human barricade of waiting officers stopped him before the office area. From the other side of unwashed bodies, he heard Henry.
'I want you to quickly and quietly get Jefferson away from his surroundings and into the interrogation room. We need to find out what he told Frank. We get him on our turf. We give him no opportunity to get mad or oriented. We give him no reason to resist our questioning and no chance to organize any lies. Vernon will handle the interview. We need to have someone in authority that Jefferson is unfamiliar with. I don't want Jefferson to be left alone. If he goes to the bathroom, you go with him. Four of you will be going to his house. Two will go in and pick him up; the other two, Mike and John, will go in after he leaves for the station and talk to his wife.
'Now... '
'Sorry, Henry, but I think you need to take this call,' interrupted Nancy. 'Makinen is on line two.'
'Hello, James, this is Henry ... What! ... How do you know ... Thanks.'
In a loud voice, Henry shouted, 'Who's got the information on Billy
Jones?'
At nearly the same instant, another voice shouted, 'We got Frank's
car!'
The bodies moved, pinning Jacob's face into a smelly armpit. He tried to talk, tried to move. The mass of bodies surged around him. Suddenly the mass broke for the doors, carrying him with them. Outside, the gas fumes from the starting patrol cars settled into the same pocket that he retreated to. Jacob stood lost and alone, breathing the leftover fumes. Suddenly realizing who they were searching for, he took a breath and smelled death in the air. He left. He knew he had no business here. At his home, he called the BCA and in his most authoritative voice told the BCA 'We are doing our job and we're doing it right. Back off! Or we'll just have to see which side the reporters will take.'
Shaking, he poured himself a whiskey. He didn't know if he had done the right thing or not. He did know that he wasn't going to be out there with a killer on the loose. That is the job of a deputy, not the sheriff.
* * * *
James Makinen came in from his night watch. Unable to sleep, he started searching through the papers he got from the church. He found the church board's meeting notes. Every comment made by Shermon was studied. During the last year, the only comments Shermon made had to do with finances except for a recommendation that a wife's church membership be revoked for adultery. The year before that was the same, as well as the year before that and finally the year before that. On the second meeting after Shermon was elected a deacon, James finally found something. Shermon recommended a parishioner for membership. The parishioner, a William Jones, had moved from the town and church that Shermon had come from. The membership had been granted, although two other deacons had trouble remembering if Jones had ever attended a church service.
William Jones. William Jones. Why did the name sound so familiar? William, William, Will, Bill, Billy ... Billy! Billy Jones! The man who glared at him and then avoided his eyes when he confronted Kawalski and Shermon. The man, Jim remembered, who watched him from the shadows. Jim remembered watching the kids during breaks or hall duty and seeing the man with his faded blue uniform standing in the doorway or the side of the hall glaring back
