Ben moved his head through a frustrated gyration as he grimaced, closing his eyes and then opening them again as he came back to face me. He settled his stare on me with a thin-lipped frown cutting a deep gash beneath his angular nose.
I continued to watch him as he held the obvious question in his eyes.
“So you ARE going to answer the phone, Gant.” Porter’s voice poured out of the speaker, blended throughout with self-righteous arrogance. “I was beginning to wonder if you had run back to Hell where you belong.”
I gave my friend a quick nod in the affirmative to his visual query.
“Without you?” I asked into the handset, my tone a fountain of dark sarcasm. “Never crossed my mind. I want to make sure you don’t miss it.”
He actually chuckled, something I hadn’t expected. The very sound of his voice was already sickening to me, but the theatrical measure of forced laughter made me want to turn and vomit in the sink.
“Well, Gant,” he replied. “When I am finally called by the Lord, unlike you, I will have the pleasure of living in his divine presence.”
“Yeah, well, we will have to see about that,” I snarled. “So while I’ve got you on the phone, why don’t you answer something for me.”
“She’s still alive,” he returned. “For now.”
“Slow down, Eldon. That wasn’t even the question.”
“Really?” He seemed almost surprised. “Okay. I’ll play along. What did you want?”
I watched Ben carefully as I spoke. “You see, what I want to know is this: If I’m such a big, bad minion of Satan like you say I am, then what exactly makes you think that I am going to give a damn about some insignificant woman’s life?”
My friend’s eyes widened, and he glared at me as he made a grab for the phone. I had anticipated the reaction and easily ducked his hand as I stepped backwards.
“You see, I should expect you to say something like that. It’s exactly what Satan would say. But, it’s not her life that I think you are worried about,” he replied with undaunted surety in his words.
“Sounded that way to me,” I prodded. “Maybe you should explain it to me so I understand.”
The fact that I still had Porter on the line appeased Ben for the moment, and he started to calm even though he still kept a suspicious eye cast in my direction.
Porter chuckled again. “Be serious, Gant. We both know that it’s her soul you want.”
“You think that’s what it is?” I asked.
“Of course. Tempting the weak is what you do-corrupting their souls and recruiting them into Satan’s army. This is what keeps you in his good graces. If you can’t succeed then you will fall from favor with Satan.”
“What? You actually think that I am recruiting a satanic army?” I returned. “You’re crazier than I thought you were, Eldon.”
“So you are admitting your allegiance to Satan, then.”
“No. I don’t even believe Satan exists, Eldon. Not that you are going to believe me, no matter what I say.”
The speaker on the telephone issued a forlorn plink then shifted into the hollow thrum of a disconnected line. I stepped forward and dropped it carefully into the wall cradle.
“He says that Millicent Sullivan is still alive,” I said as I leveled my gaze on my stoic friend.
“He hang up?” Ben asked.
“Yeah,” I returned.
“Row, I asked you not to go ape-shit on the SOB,” he began to admonish.
“He didn’t hang up because of anything I said, Ben,” I told him. “And he’s going to call back any minute.”
“That’s not exactly what I mean,” he said. “Hold on a sec.” He frowned hard then turned away from me and called back into the living room. “You get anything, Mandalay?”
“He was using the Sullivan woman’s phone,” her voice echoed back to us. “They’re tracking the… What?… Hold on for a second Storm… Okay, go ahead…”
She shifted attention back to the conversation on her cell phone once again.
Ben twisted his head back to me, “Listen, Row, you’ve got to calm down. If you antagonize the sonofabitch, he just might kill the woman.”
I shook my head. “No. Not yet.”
“How can you be sure of that?” He cocked his head to the side as he looked back at me. “This ‘effin wingnut is just about as off kilter as you can get. You don’t know what he’s gonna do.”
“I won’t dispute the first part,” I told him. “But the fact that she’s still alive tells me that she is his bargaining chip. He’s got my attention, so now he’s going to use her to get me out in the open.”
“How do you know she really is still alive?” he pressed.
“Because he would have gloated about it if she wasn’t.”
“I dunno about this, white man. You’d better hope you’re right.”
“We’ve got him crossing between two cells,” Mandalay’s voice came from almost immediately behind Ben.
My friend stepped to the side and turned to look at her. “Where?”
“Near Interstate Two-Seventy and Highway Forty,” she answered.
“Troop C headquarters is just west of there off of Forty.” Ben referred to the highway patrol.
She nodded briskly. “The field office has already notified MHP and County. I was just getting ready to call in to the Major Case Squad and let them know what’s going on.”
“Good deal.” Ben reached up to his neck but caught himself. Judging by the look on his face, he apparently managed to do so just before flexing his hand enough to bring on any real pain. He dropped his hand back down and continued. “Maybe we can put an end to this whole thing right here and now.”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” I told him as I shook my head.
He held up his hand to stop me and then huffed out a breath as he stared at my face. He was looking for something in my expression but wasn’t finding it. “Look, Row,” he said. “Do you think that maybe you just might be wrong this time?”
“You have no idea how much I’d like to be,” I retorted. “It’s not like…”
My sentence was truncated by the telephone pealing for attention once again. I snatched up the handset and brought it to my ear.
“What took you so long, Eldon?” I chided. “I was beginning to think you’d lost my number.”
“I am her absolution, Gant,” he said in a measured cadence, but this time his voice held more distraction than arrogance. “And you will be witness when she is released from her darkness and given unto the glory of God Almighty.”
“Let me talk to her,” I demanded.
He continued, ignoring my assertion. “You will know when it is time. Vengeance is mine.”
Flat resonance issued from the speaker for yet another time as the connection was unceremoniously ended.
I took in a deep breath and let it go in a heavy rush as my shoulders dropped. I rested the handset back onto the hook and looked up at Ben and Constance.
“Well?” Ben appealed.
“He wants me to see him kill her,” I answered.
“Jeezus…” my friend muttered. “He give you a place or somethin’?”
I shook my head. “No. He sounded a little preoccupied. I think he knows he was on the line too long the first time around.”
“He’s probably going to try getting off the main roads then,” Mandalay offered as she began stabbing at the buttons on her cell phone.
I could feel the icy breath of the Dark Mother on the back of my neck, and I shivered inwardly. She was waiting in the wings for someone, and I had a bad feeling that the someone just might be me. There was simply no way that this was going to play out well.
Ben stared at me and furrowed his brow. “I know that look, Kemosabe. Whaddaya got chewin’ on ya’ now?”
