his muscles. His eyes, unnaturally black, were staring hard into Jim's. Jim noticed a black-bound Bible under the man's arm.
'Brother Elias!' Carl said excitedly. 'I got a call about a disturbance at Valley National, and I found him preaching out there!'
'Good,' Jim said, keeping his voice calm. 'Bring him back to the conference room. I want to talk to him.' He led the way down the hall, forcing himself to remain stoically detached though the adrenaline of excitement was coursing through his veins. He used his key to open up the conference room door and flipped on the lights. The fluorescent bars in the ceiling flickered into existence.
Carl led Brother Elias into the room and sat him down on a hard metal folding chair. The preacher looked at the deputy and smiled slightly. His eyes were cold. 'Get out of here,' said Brother Elias quietly.
Carl looked toward the sheriff.
'He's my deputy. He stays.'
'Then I cannot speak.' Brother Elias folded his hands on the table in front of him and stared at the bare whiteness of the opposite wall.
Jim looked at the preacher. Brother Elias sat staring with an expression of endless patience on his face. The patience of a true believer. He had seen that expression before--too often before-and he knew there wasn't a damn thing he could do to wipe the infuriating complacency off the man's face. If Brother Elias said he wouldn't talk, he wouldn't talk. The sheriff sighed heavily and motioned for Carl to leave the room. 'All right,' he said. 'We'll have to play it his way for a while. Stay outside. I'll call you.'
The deputy glared with hatred at the preacher as he walked out of the room. The door closed behind him, and Jim turned to Brother Elias.
'Well,' he said. 'You've been pretty busy the past week or so, haven't you?'
The preacher turned to look at him, examining his features. 'There's a lot of family resemblance,' he said finally.
'What?'
'You look an awful lot like your great-grandfather.'
Jim stared at the preacher, unsure of how to react. Behind the man's cold black eyes, he could detect an inner insanity. He forced himself to smile benignly. He'd let the preacher determine the course of the conversation. 'My great-grandfather?' he said.
'Ezra Weldon,' the preacher replied.
Jim's polite smile faded. Ezra Weldon had been his great-grandfather's name. But how could Brother Elias know that? He stared into the preacher's unflinching black eyes and felt the first vague stirrings of fear inside him.
'He was a good man, and a good sheriff,' the preacher said.
Jim stood in front of Brother Elias. 'Who are you?' he demanded.
'What the hell are you doing here?'
'I am Brother Elias,' the preacher said calmly. 'I have come to fight the fight of the good. I have come to repel the wicked and do battle with the forces of evil. For the evil one is here.' He looked into the sheriff's eyes. ''And the adversary also came among them.'
Job 1:6.'
'How do you know my great-grandfather's name? And how do you know he was a sheriff?'
Brother Elias smiled. 'I knew him,' he said. 'He was with me the last time.'
Jim began pacing around the room. The man was obviously crazy. He had gottenahold of Ezra Weldon's name somehow, and now it happened to come in handy. There was no secret to it, nothing mysterious. Any one of the fifty-odd members of the county historical society could have given him detailed information about theWeldons , theMurphys , the Stones, the Smiths, or any of the other local families who had lived in Randall for several generations.
But why would any of them talk to Brother Elias about Ezra Weldon? Why would Brother Elias ask about Ezra Weldon?
Jim stared defiantly at the preacher. 'What do you know about the First Southern Baptist Church?'
'It was consumed by fire.'
'And the Catholic church, St. Mary's? And the Presbyterian church?'
'They, too, were burned by the unholy flames of hell.'
Jim glared at him. 'And didn't you predict that they would burn?
Didn't you know they would be set on fire?'
Brother Elias nodded. 'All is as it was foretold. I have seen this in a vision of the Lord. The Lord came unto me and told me that here the adversary would be. He told me that first there would be sacrilege, then fire, to the houses of God.'
'And you don't know how these fires were started?'
'I know,' the preacher said.
'How?' Jim demanded.
'The minions of Satan started these fires. They are preparing for the coming battle against the forces of the Lord.'
The sheriff pressed a hand against his forehead. Jesus. How come he always ended up with this kind of crap?
'There will be fires,' Brother Elias continued, his voice chanting in a monotonic cadence. 'And the lightning will turn red, signifying the coming of the adversary. There will be flies. There will be earthquakes.'
Jim opened the door in disgust and motioned for Carl, standing directly opposite the door on the other side of the hall. 'Lock him up,' he said.
Carl grinned, pleased. 'What's the charge?'
'Suspected arson,' he said. 'Disturbing the peace,harrassment . Have Gordon Lewis' wife come in here later and sign a complaint.'
'Will do.'
Jim watched as Carl walked into the conference room and escorted the preacher down the hall to one of the holding cells. Part of him wanted to believe that Brother Elias knew what was going on, but the police training in him was too strong. The man seemed to have really gone off the deep end. He heard Carl slam shut the iron door to one of the holding cells. He had no proof to back up the arson charge, but he refused to admit that McFarland was right, that Brother Elias was just a crazy who had crawled out of a hole and who really knew nothing of what was going on. He wanted to keep him in incarceration for a few days at least, to see if he could discover something. Anything.
He shook his head in frustration and walked down the hall to his office. He slammed the door behind him.
They finished delivering to the town stores an hour earlier than expected, despite the heavy afternoon rain, and Brad decided to call it quits for the day. Tomorrow they were delivering to the outlying areas and they'd be starting early. Gordon declined Brad's offer to stop off for a beer at the Colt and headed home instead. He was half-tempted to drop by the sheriff's office and talk to the sheriff about Brother Elias, but he knew he should drive home first and pick up Marina. She was the one who would have to identify the man and press charges anyway, if there were any charges to be pressed.
The Jeep sped past Char Clifton's 76 station, and Gordon was surprised to see that it was closed. As far as he knew, the station had never closed this early in the day before. Come to think of it, there had been quite a few places in town that had been unexpectedly closed today. He wondered idly if there was a flu going around. Or something worse?
He pushed the thought from his mind, concentrating instead on the narrow road curving through the trees. Ahead, through the ravine, he could see the flat-topped outline of the Rim and a curling wisp of smoke coming from somewhere on its top. Lightning from the storm must have hit up there and started a minor forest fire.
A few minutes later, he pulled off on the small dirt road that led to their house. Marina came out of the kitchen as the Jeep rolled to a stop. The air was still slightly chilly from the recent rain, and she walked toward him slowly, avoiding the puddles in the drive, her hands buried deep in her jeans pockets for warmth. She kissed him
