“ It’s got me this far.”
“ Where’s the letter postmarked from?” asked Nancy Yoder.
“ Yeah,” agreed Lawrence. “Last one was from goddamn Palm Coast.”
“ This one’s in our backyard-actually, our front yard, if you want the truth,” replied Merrick.
“ Where, damnit?”
“ Key Biscayne, across the bridge.” Merrick’s blunt reply sobered the editors. The bridge was right outside their window. “Christ,” muttered Lawrence. Yoder took a deep breath, grabbed for her water glass and gulped.
Blake began to grind his teeth, gnashing like an angry woodchuck before saying, “Isn’t that where that teen disappeared from the other night, Key Biscayne, out at Razzles?”
“ That’s right. We’re speaking to witnesses on that situation now,” Santiva assured them.
“ Eye witnesses?”
“ Anyone actually see this guy?”
“ Can we talk to the witnesses?”
The reporters’ questions rifled anew.
“ We haven’t as yet determined the reliability of those involved; they’re emotionally involved-young friends of the missing girl,” Santiva explained, holding his hands up as if under arrest. “But as soon as we know something worthwhile… useful, that is… we promise to cooperate with you as you have cooperated so generously with us.”
“ That’s our deal, gentlemen, lady,” said Merrick to his people.
While the chatter continued, Jessica carefully resettled the glassed-in note into her black valise along with the cellophane bag holding the envelope.
It was earmarked to travel, within the hour and by jet, to Quantico, where the psychic fingertips of Dr. Desinor would pass over the physically and psychically “clean” document before it was to be turned over to the Documents Division for further graphoanalysis and scientific analysis. Santiva had taken extreme care in his preliminary and cursory viewing of the note to establish its genuine nature, keeping it under glass the whole time. It was duplicated through the glass for Merrick’s secretary Sally, who’d created a single opaque replica.
Sally now closed the curtains, dimmed the lights and flicked on an overhead projector, the beam creating a square window of light against the north wall. She next placed the opaque replica of the letter onto the overhead and the alleged words of the killer were beamed against the wall. It read:
“ Whataya all make of it?” asked Merrick.
Lee Blake studied it and sighed heavily before pronouncing the little ditty, as he called it, in incredibly bad taste, “and even worse poetry.”
“ Looks like something maybe Jeffrey Dahmer might’ve penned before he was wasted in prison last year,” suggested Nancy Yoder. ‘“Cept he’d have said boys instead of whores.”
“ Wrong,” muttered Eddings, unable to keep silent a moment longer. “I know this poem, and the killer’s use of it is really quite… quite… ingenious.”
But Eddings was being talked over by the others, ignored by the others. Bill Lawrence had been visibly shivering in reaction to what he’d read across the beige wall. Merrick looked for responses from each of the three additional editors around the table, but none were speaking in sentences, just a lot of grunts and “jeezes.” Each followed suit until Merrick was left again to look to C. David Eddings, a man he’d been trying to build a case against so he might fire the twerp before any chance of a pension kicked in.
“ Well, damnit, what’re you trying to say, Eddings? Eddings?” pressed Merrick while he smelled blood. Eddings took a moment for a second glance at the enlarged document on the wall. Even Jessica and Santiva, outsiders, could sense the tension between Merrick and Eddings.
Bill Hynek, the sports editor, attempted to reprieve Eddings by clearing his throat and saying, “Looks like the guy’s a loony, Glenn, a real crazoid, if you ask me.”
“ You mean the author of this trash or Eddings?” teased Merrick in a cold and irreverent manner.
Eddings mouthed the words off the wall a third time, ending with, “I know these words… this poem. I know it, Glenn. It’s familiar to me…”
Merrick’s voice filled with venomous rancor now. “What in hell’re you talking about, Eddings?”
“ Hellering,” replied the small, balding man.
The others instantly attacked the little man.
“ Who’s hell-raising?”
“ What’s a hellering?”
“ Is that anything like a herring?”
“ A red herring in this case, no doubt.”
Lee nervously laughed and said, “Eddings is a hell- raiser, aren’t you, C. David? Eddings, you got to lay off those liquid breakfasts.”
“ What would you know about herrings?” Nancy Yoder nastily remarked, causing more laughter.
“ Hellering,” he repeated. “I’m telling you this is a poem, circa something like 1938 and written by e. j. hellering, who was first to use no capitals, even before our American counterpart, e. e. cummings, did it. He was what you might call a little-understood, little-read English poet, but in his day, he had a large underground following. His poetry was not considered fit for polite society.”
“ I can see why,” replied Hynek as the others stared down the long table at C. David Eddings.
“ A little-known English poet,” chanted Lawrence and Yoder together.
“ Oh, yeah,” chimed another as if he’d known all along.
Merrick said, “You mean this guy can’t even be original? He’s copying a poem out of a book?”
“ All I know is that it’s from an entirely lowercase poem by e.j. hellering, one I think entitled ‘all sacrifice to the stars.’ “
Jessica and Eriq were instantly interested in what C. David Eddings had to say, each on edge now, Jessica asking Eddings to continue. “Well… what I remember of it…” Eddings caught the look of pride in Sally’s eyes, glinting in the semidark- ened room. “I mean, I believe it has four verses, maybe five.”
“ You think you can get your hands on a copy?” asked Santiva.
“ Sure… sure, the library’s full of hellering.”
Nancy Yoder twittered again at this.
Merrick ordered, “Do it then, now.”
“ Try the Internet, Eddings,” suggested Blake. “It’s the quickest way to information.”
“ Not bloody likely,” replied C. David. “If they’ve got any of hellering listed, it’d probably be his more-favored poems. This one’s fairly arcane and a little too strange for even the ditto heads-the Internet dudes and dudettes.”
Eddings stiffly stood and marched from the room, daring only a quick glance back at Sally as Santiva and Jessica followed the little round man out, Jessica wondering if the romance was just blossoming or if it had been kindled earlier.
“ I was a student of e.j. hellering’s work and dark style when I was at the university,” explained Eddings.
“ Oh, and where was that?”
“ Northwestern, just north of Chicago… very elitist, snobbish place really, unless you happened to be in a fraternity or sorority, neither of which I qualified for, of course. At any rate, I studied modern British literature, which meant anything after 1899. Hellering falls under that umbrella, and I became quite enamored with the man’s poignant ability with words; quite lovely, really, and I suppose the use of the lower-case letters-which he’d come to be known for-piqued my curiosity.”
Jessica nodded, saying, “I remember now… e. j. hellering.”
“ Wasn’t at all hellering’s idea, you know…”
“ What’s that?” asked Eriq.
“ Using lower-case letters throughout his poetry.”
“ Really?” Jessica explained to Eriq that e. j. hellering had used lower-case letters in his signature as well as throughout his poetry as a kind of trademark, the same way that e. e. cummings had.
