The Travelling Man (13 page)

“You think that the FBI will be gone today, Boss?” Tom asked her.

“That’s what I hear, not that we’re exactly kept in the loop,” she replied.

“Damn Feds, you know that they’ve been strutting about town like they own the place?” Kevin growled, shaking his head.

“Well, Special Agent Harper did manage to find a few seconds to call me on the way in this morning,” Cassie said, pushing aside her coffee, which was in a lopsided mug that Ellie had made in art class. “According to him, it’s a cast iron certainty that Marshal Dinkins was the Herod.”

“Man, if that don’t beat all. A bona fide famous serial killer living in town and we all missed it,” Tom added, distraught that, in fact, he had missed it. He had designs on being a detective and the news about Dinkins had shaken his confidence badly.

“You guys
had
heard all about this Herod, right?” Cassie ventured.

The three of them looked at her like she was mad.

“You’re kidding, right?” Kevin said incredulously. “It’s all we’ve been hearing about for weeks now. Jeanne, how many bulletins have we gotten in the last week alone?”

Cassie turned to the dispatcher-come-office-manager who blushed furiously as Kevin addressed her directly. “About eleven,” she answered shyly.

Cassie walked over to where Jeanne kept the hard copy files and backup print outs from the mountain of emails that the station was sent. She started to sift through the various paperwork, her eyes skimming quickly over the gathered information. Everything on the surface seemed perfectly clear and the front part of her mind recognised the information; she even remembered seeing and hearing all about the case. The only problem was that the filing system in her mind where she kept everything that she needed to remember was empty. She had a mental notebook that she kept for everything of immediate use and a large metal filing cabinet visualized in her mind where she stored everything else. Despite her knowing on the surface that the Herod had been real, her internal system was empty of the information. It was a puzzlement that she didn’t understand, as normally her system was flawless and had been created for just such a purpose. Her memories of the TV news reports, of the emails and faxes that came through to the station, all seemed like fluffy white clouds devoid of real substance.

“Man, I still can’t believe that I missed the signs where Dinkins was concerned,” Kevin said, shaking his head again.

“I can’t believe that it was him and there were no signs,” Tom said quietly. “You’re sure that Harper is sure?” he asked Cassie.

“He seemed pretty certain and those Fed boys don’t tend to say anything unless they’re 100% sure,” Cassie answered.

“What about Harlan and Davey?” Tom asked.

“Well, there he was a little more sketchy, but he’s sure that Dinkins was responsible in some way, but between you and me I think that their medical people are every bit as baffled as old Doc Stewart is but don’t want to admit it.”

“So what do we do now?” Kevin asked with a shrug of his broad shoulders.

Cassie never got to answer as the phone interrupted them and started another bizarre day.

CHAPTER 9

turning it up a notch

Matt Kravis watched as the police car raced by. He threw aside the coffee that he had been drinking and jumped into the truck. He followed the police truck through town until it pulled up sharply outside of a rundown looking apartment block. He stayed an inconspicuous distance back and watched as the big Sheriff and her even larger deputy leapt from their vehicle and ran into the building.

It wasn’t a totally unexpected sight in town and it was one that he thought would become all too familiar before this was over. The sound of sirens and the thundering of running panicked feet would soon engulf Granton and, as much as it might stick in his throat, he knew that it was necessary.

Not long after, one of the FBI’s sleek black SUVs screeched to halt and two men dressed smartly in matching suits ran in after the Sheriff. The Feds were one complication that Kravis hoped to avoid. They weren’t from Granton and they would neither understand nor possess the desire to comprehend what was currently in residence in this small town. He hoped that the Sheriff loved her town and her people and would fight to keep them safe; in fact, he was counting on it.

----------

Linda Jarvis rocked back and forth on the porch swing, her eyes never leaving the boarding house opposite, and her ears twitching for any excessive noise.

She was thought of by most as a bitter old woman and she wouldn’t have disagreed with the description. She was 87 now and felt that she was well beyond the point of caring about what others thought of her. Her hearing had been fading to the point that she now lived inside a cocoon of fuzziness, where sounds travelled towards her but dissipated before reaching their intended destination. She rarely ventured into town anymore as her pride prevented her from seeking out any kind of assistance; her problems were her business and nobody else’s. Dr Stewart, or Dr T as he ridiculously insisted on being called, had offered her the latest in hearing aid technology, but despite his assertion that the implements would be small and unobtrusive, she knew better. She would not walk around with half a satellite hanging out of her ears to much mirth and laughter.  

She rocked back and forth slowly, no longer hearing the creaks of the chair as it would take something far more substantial than that to break through. She knew that Mrs. Fiorentino’s place was full of filthy miners and that they would be making enough noise to shudder the earth; it stood to reason - she didn’t have to actually hear them.

She made a complaint every few weeks or so to the Sheriff’s Department just on general principle; it was, admittedly, one of the few pleasures she had left.

She had never been married or had a child. She had been a cantankerous old woman, even as a young girl. Her mother had often remarked that she had been born an old soul.

She had taught English at Granton High School for over 40 years before they’d had to drag her kicking and screaming into retirement. Her hearing had already started to deteriorate long before she’d left the job and her students’ voices were whispers on the wind by the end.

Her one great love had been to listen to her kids reading poetry through their stumbling voices at the beginning of term until some of them started to grasp the patterns and nuances. She could hear it in their voices when the penny finally dropped and they started to get the likes of Bukowski, Brooks, or especially Lee. Poetry was her one great love above all others. It was a language of beauty and insight that she had never found in her own life and could only catch a glimpse it through the curtains of others.

Her bitterness only grew as her hearing faded and she was robbed of her only pleasure in life and she soon started to grow angry and sour. It got to the point where there was little outcry at her enforced retirement and only a small ceremony when she’d left on a wave of relief.

She looked up from her chair as the first minibus of miners pulled up outside of the boarding house. From this distance, they may have well been on the moon for all she could hear, but her eyes still worked fine and she could see their mouths moving with no doubt loud and colorful language.

She snatched up the cordless phone from her apron pocket and punched in the Sheriff’s number without needing to look at the buttons. The phone’s volume was cranked all the way up and set permanently to the speakerphone setting; the voice on the other end was just about audible.

“Sheriff’s Department,” the dispatcher on the phone answered.

Linda knew that the small mousy woman had murdered her husband and had somehow managed to end up working for the police, of all places. There was some talk around town that the woman’s husband had been abusive, but that was just a modern day term as far as Linda was concerned. In her day, men had worn the trousers and women had caught the occasional slap when they’d got out of line,. It was one of the reasons that she’d never married. As far as she was concerned, if you didn’t like the heat then you shouldn’t exchange vows.                   

“This is Linda Jarvis. They’re at it again and I can barely hear myself think out here,” she said angrily.

“Yes, Miss Jarvis,” the woman replied, with a touch of condescension as far as Linda was concerned.

“This is absolutely ridiculous. I really don’t know what the Sheriff is playing at. How many complaints do I have to make before she does something about this?”

“I can assure you, Miss Jarvis, the Sheriff takes this matter seriously and has already spoken to
Mrs. Fiorentino several times.”

“I can tell you one thing, young lady, she is not going to be able to count on my vote at the next election, I can assure you of that.”

“Well I’m sure that the Sheriff will miss your vote, but I’m afraid that she has far more serious things to be concerned with at present than some batty old woman who likes to throw her weight around!” With that, the woman hung up.

Linda stared down at the phone in shock. The dispatcher had yelled so loudly that even she had heard her clearly. For once, she had forgotten about the filthy miners and now took to another mission. She was going to have that murderer fired. How dare she yell at her like that. Little Miss Knife-Her-Husband was a town employee and obviously had ideas far above her station.

“Such a tragedy when the young lose their respect for their elders and betters.” A man’s voice startled her.

She turned to face him, wondering where he had come from. He stood on her porch dressed in a smart three piece suit that exuded elegance. His voice was clipped and accented with a lilting tone. His voice! She had heard him clearly despite the fact that he was standing several feet away. She stared up into his kindly face which was full of warmth and compassion.

“Such a shame, Miss Jarvis, such a shame,” he tutted. “May I?” He pointed to the swing bench next to her.

“Please,” she found herself saying.

She watched as he sat carefully, smoothing out the creases in his grey pants, preserving the lines. He removed his hat and took out a pristine linen handkerchief from his pocket, using it to dab his forehead even though it seemed quite dry to her keen eyes.

“Such heat,” he sighed. “Wasn’t it Hilda Doolittle that said: 
O wind, rend open the heat, cut apart the heat, rend it to tatters
?”

Linda loved to hear the man speak and his English accent seemed perfect for poetry reading. She didn’t know just how his voice was so crystal clear to hear and she didn’t much care either.

“It must be such a tragedy for such a lover of prose to find herself lost in the fog of silence,” the man said sympathetically with a tilt of his head.

“They have no idea,” she said looking at the floor. “It’s so unfair.” She shook her head and balled her bony fingers into fists.

“Thou call'st me POET, as a term of shame; But I have my revenge made, in thy name” he said coldly.

“Ben Johnson,” she replied. “Oh, I would give my heart to death, to keep my honour fair; Yet, I'll not give my inward faith, my
honor’s name to spare.”

“Ah, Miss Bronte of the Emily variety,” he smiled. “Always a favourite of mine.”

“Will this go away?” she couldn’t help but ask, raising a finger to her ear.

“I’m afraid so,” he replied sadly. “This is a little bubble, if you will, a little secret between you and me but I can’t stay long, I have other business to attend to.”

Linda started to panic as the man stood, linked his hands behind his back and began to move away. She could feel the fuzzy silence returning as he took a couple of steps. “Please!” she shouted louder than necessary as her own voice was starting to fade in her ears.

He stopped and turned. Now his face seemed a little colder than before and his smile made her wary, but she didn’t want to lose her hearing again.

“I’m sorry? I didn’t quite catch that,” he said, leaning forward, and she couldn’t help but feel like he was mocking her now.

“Please, don’t go,” she begged for the first time in her life.

“Are you really that desperate?”

“I’ll do anything.”

“Would you now?” he grinned wolfishly.

Her mind reeled with the implications behind his expression.

“Oh, dear lady, I have no interest in what happens below the belt,” he said distastefully.

“Then what
do
you want?”

He lifted a bag up off of the floor, a bag that she was sure hadn’t been there before. His hand dipped inside and took out a piece of pristine white paper. He indicated for her to sit back down as he returned to the swing.

“I can give you what you want, what you desire more than anything else in this world, Linda. You just have to sign here,” he pointed.

She took the paper and saw now that it was covered in writing. She wondered how he knew her name when she had not offered it and even if what he was offering was possible. Maybe he was a doctor or a special surgeon; maybe he had some kind of experimental procedure. But another part of her, a far deeper and more primal part, knew that the man was far from normal and neither was his offer.

She was barely aware that she had taken his pen and didn’t feel the pinprick in her finger as she signed.

The next thing that she knew, he was gone and she was alone wondering if she had dreamt the whole thing. That was until she started to hear again. The noises were soft at first, distant rumblings of varying pitches somewhere in the distance. The noises grew louder and closer, a tweeting bird, a car’s engine and tires crunching on the road.

She leapt up and ran out into her back garden as the wind blew and carried the sounds of the world on the breeze. She could hear the rustling of a paper bag, the flapping of clothes on the line. She could hear a siren somewhere way off in the distance and even the huge boring machines winding down at the mine. She could hear grains of sand blowing across the desert and marveled at how acute her hearing was. Then, suddenly, everything started to grow louder in volume. Her hearing had returned in full, but it wasn’t stopping.

She threw her hands to her ears as the sounds rained down upon her. Some rodent was burrowing in the ground and it sounded like a thunderstorm overhead. A bird chirped and the high pitched sound felt like it was piercing her brain. Her head suddenly felt too small to contain the noises and she sank to her knees, vaguely aware that her palms were now wet and sticky. She trembled and quivered, bucking wildly as she fell face first onto the ground as the volume of the world exploded louder and louder. Her eyes rolled back and she started to jerk her head back and forth feeling the sides expand like an over inflated balloon until it burst.

Linda Jarvis’ feet kicked a few more times in their death dance as the crimson mess that had once been her skull continued to spout onto the earth, until eventually she lay still.

----------

Cassie found the scene in chaos when she reached the apartment. One of the garbage men, who had been collecting the trash at the rear of the building, had managed to stop making a racket with the metal bins long enough to hear a scream from inside. The guy had enough sense to call it in and here she was.

She knew that Dean Singer was the landlord because she’d had to cite him a few times for the conditions of his apartments. He was a skinny rat-like man who gave her the creeps anytime that she was unfortunate enough to have to deal with him.

She took the stairs two at a time, her long legs making short work of the distance. The caller had only suggested that he’d heard a single scream, but Cassie’s gut was full of dread as she reached the second floor. She knew every inch of her town and every soul in it, but now she sensed something unfamiliar and dark invading Granton. The three deaths in recent days would have worried anyone, but she could feel something bubbling beneath the surface and she always listened to that little voice.

She reached Singer’s apartment as denoted by the directional signs on the walls and the plaque on his door. The door itself was hanging open and she flapped a hand behind her to indicate for Kevin to hug the wall.

She drew her gun in anger for only the second time in her tenure as Sheriff and heard her deputy do the same. She inched her way along the wall opposite the doorway until she could peer around the door.

“MR SINGER?” she called out loudly. “POLICE!” she announced, to no reply.