where she slapped Marsden on the shoulder as if they had been lifelong friends, telling him how much he had already helped them. His worn, tattered coat reacted to the slap on his shoulder by sending up a flurry of dust and mites. Jessica backed off, saying, “Now you just quit blaming yourself for any of this, Dr. Marsden. If you'd gotten involved any more than you had, you might be down in our morgue right now and unable to help us one iota.” Certain amount of truth in that, she thought. “As it is, you've put us onto the right track.”
“ I have done that, haven't I?”
“ Yes, sir, Mr. Superintendent. Now relax here, and one of us'll send in some coffee and a meal and be right back, Dr. Marsden.”
As Jessica hustled Keyes out and let the door close on Marsden, the man said, “You don't have to call me doctor no more, and I don't hold title to superintendent no more; I know it's just your technique to get friendly, but you don't fool me any, detective.”
Not smart like Millie at all, am I? Jessica thought and felt a moment's relief to be away from the strange giant she'd left alone in interrogation.
EIGHT
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.
Jessica felt as if she had been in a marathon run when she stepped from the interrogation room. She wanted to grab old of Richard and hug him, but instead, she told him, “Keep your eyes on this nutcase. He can't be allowed to waltz out of here.”
Richard stood alongside J. T., who stood beside Santiva at the one-way glass, where they had seen and heard the entire story. Santiva wore a smirk on his face.
“ What's so funny?” she asked Santiva.
“ Been a while since I've heard a good dog-saves-man story.”
“ I think he's mixed his milk toast with his rye once too often,” replied J. T.
“ Pitiful wretch, actually,” added Richard, his eyes still on Marsden.
Keyes got in Jessica's face and asked, “Are we sure Millie's really a dog, Dr. Coran?”
“ No… Guess we can't be a hundred percent.”
Santiva, biting his lower lip and shaking his head, re-plied, “Yeah, maybe somebody ought to contact authorities in Jasper, Georgia.”
“ Just to be sure?” asked J. T., a wide grin making him the Cheshire cat. “Did you get a load of that red scar along his neck? He's obviously been in some back-alley scrapes.”
“ Yeah, this dog will fight, but he didn't raise a hand to help the judge that night. Why?” asked Jessica, still angry with Marsden.
Keyes raised an index finger and said, “Something about the old man's demeanor. All the biblical talk may well have frightened anyone, and if he had an insane look about him, carting two coffins about with him… not sure I'd get involved, either. Would you?”
“ Damn straight I would.”
Keyes didn't blink. “I think Marsden may well have been half or fully blitzed at the time, and so that much more easily convinced that DeCampe's abductor was in fact doing the 'Lord's business,' as he put it, and with Marsden's pitiable self-esteem issues… hey, who's going to go out of his way to piss off God?”
“ Or his servant,” added Richard Sharpe.
Jessica bowed to this notion, letting Marsden off the proverbial hook for now. She then turned to John Thorpe. “OK, J. T„you're my main expert on rural America types. Look into Marsden's Jasper, Georgia, story. See how much of it checks out.”
“ Gotcha.” Jessica stared through the glass at the Rock Hudson- sized man inside. “Cleaned up, he might look like a Baptist preacher or a school superintendent.”
“ Yeah, Jack, why don't you check his story out,” Santiva, who liked calling J. T. Jack, piped in. “Keyes, see to getting the man some hot food and drink. Jessica, we need to talk.” Santiva asked Richard to cuff the strange man in the interrogation room to the table. For a moment, they all stared through the one-way window.
“ Yes, sir, Chief.”
“ I need a sketch artist inside with him, Eriq,” Jessica said.
“ Already called; she's on her way.”
Jessica nodded as he took her arm and guided her out of earshot of anyone. “I'm getting a great gob of loaded heat from upstairs. They want some bone thrown their way, Jess, something-anything-I can take back. How much of this guy's story do you believe?”
“ I think he's telling us all he knows.”
“ But he could have hallucinated the whole damn thing, right? I mean with the caskets, the cattle prod, all of it. Could be just filling in blanks you laid out, Jess.”
“ I don't think so. He's… he comes across as telling the truth, Chief.”
“ Murphy's Law at work, huh?”
“ I don't follow you.”
“ If something can go wrong, it will, right? So if I report what we know from Mr.-ahhh-Dr. Marsden in there, it could come back to clip me at the knees.”
“ We really don't have time for this kind of hand-holding with the politicians, Chief. Not with DeCampe's life in the balance, not with the time clock ticking as it is. DeCampe doesn't have the time. We don't have the luxury of holding meetings with lieutenant governors and deputy mayors and-”
“ Now hold on, Jess.”
“ We need to pursue this Iowa license plate on a huge dark van with two coffins aboard the thing. We need every field office between here and Iowa on it.”
“ You'd think such a thing would be obvious or at least curious to someone out there.”
“ I need more people, Eriq, to call every law enforcement agency in the goddamn country for anything smacking of such a report. Can you get me that kind of support here?”
“ I'll get you more people.”
“ When?”
'Today.”
“ As for someone out there seeing two caskets in a dark van with tinted windows, how weird is that, Eriq, in the grand scheme of things in the state of this nation? Besides, even if someone saw the caskets, say at a Waffle House stop this old man made, do you think the average John Q. Citizen is going to bother getting involved? I don't know why I was so angry with Marsden. He's just typical of all of us.” Eriq tried to calm her. “I know… I know, Jess.”
She relented. “People might simply take it for a hearse; after all, according to Marsden, it's black and the windows are tinted.”
“ I still need something to take upstairs. We're going to hold this guy for as long as we can, right?”
“ On suspicion he's somehow connected to the abduction? Are you really going to announce to the world that this poor bastard's the perpetrator?”
“ We need something, Jess. If it comes to that, yes.”
“ Damn it, Eriq, we need to know what triggered this old man's vendetta against the judge. We need to know who he is, how he is linked to her. And we don't have the luxury of time, so we really don't have time for any g'damn games.”
“ We're talking about keeping the fucking governor of the District of Columbia and the mayor of Washington apprised, Jessica, and now the governor of Texas and the mayor of Houston. They have all sampled party favors together with the judge on many occasions. Their interest is not purely politically motivated. They all genuinely
