The Travelling Man (19 page)

“Sheriff!” Will said, flicking his butt aside as soon as he saw her. “Got a moment for the press?”

If the situation hadn’t been so dire she might have found a smile at the idea that Will Daniels and The Granton Post were “The Press”. He was a tall wiry man, clean-shaven with a ring of ginger hair and a bald pate. He was in his early fifties now and was one of only three employees at the local paper. Most of their duties consisted of relaying local events to the community and the occasional snippet of actual news.

“Hey, Will,” she greeted him in a friendly tone. “I’ll let you know what I can when I can.”

“Give Tom my best,” he replied, “...you know, if you can.”

The receptionist pointed her in the right direction, thankfully without her having to ask. She found Kevin pacing back and forth on a second floor hallway. “How’s he doing?” she asked.

“Not good,” he sighed heavily. “Doc Stewart is going in and out of the theater to keep me updated. I think that the surgeon is getting pretty pissed off with him but he hasn’t quite got the balls to say so.”

“The doc’s a tough old buzzard.”

“Let’s just hope that Tom is,” he said sadly.

“You know he is Kevin; he’s going to make it,” she said strongly.

“I keep praying.”

“Do we know what happened yet?”

“Someone shot Tom; outside of that, I don’t have a clue. I mean, who the hell would want to shoot Tom, for Christ’s sake?”

“Were there any witnesses?”

“I don’t know, boss. I mean, there was just so much blood and…, well, I couldn’t think of anything else other than getting Tom in the ambulance.”

“Was it just the doc on the scene?”

His broad face crinkled as he tried to think through the fog. “Yeah…, no wait... there was another guy there, he seemed to be helping.”

“Who was he?”

“That was the odd thing, I didn’t recognise him, never seen him before.”

“Did you get a name?”

“Yeah, yeah the doc called him…, shit what was it…, Kravis, that’s it. He called him Mr Kravis. Do you know him?”

“Not yet,” Cassie growled, wondering just how much coincidence was too much. “Not yet.”

“What the hell is going on here, Boss? I mean, the whole world seems to be falling apart around our ears. Nothing happens in Granton for like a million years and then suddenly, we’ve got bodies stacking up in the morgue and some son of a bitch shoots Tom!”

“I can tell you two things with certainty, Kevin,” Cassie said with a low firm voice. “One - I don’t know what’s happening, and two - I’m damn sure going to find out.”

CHAPTER
13

6:27PM

6:27pm

Will Daniels hung around the hospital long enough to find out that the deputy was out of surgery. Word was that Tom Lassiter’s fate was now in God’s hands and time would only tell.

The Granton Post may have just been a small paper, but hey it was a small town. There was little that happened in Granton that he wasn’t plugged into, in spite of the fact that there was never much in the way of action to speak of. That was, until the past week had exploded.

He had gone to work at the paper straight out of college and had never before seen as much activity as he was currently involved in. There had been deaths, murderous and otherwise, involving both locals and even a celebrity. Normally, the Post’s once a week edition covered the occasional bar fight, a little petty vandalism and a whole boat load of local announcements. They sold barely enough copies to keep the lights on and pay the three of them almost a living wage, but now the demand was far outstripping their ability to produce enough copies.

He made it back to his small office to find himself alone. Clarence, the new photographer, was out and about snapping away with his digital camera that Will still found difficult to understand.

He had once dreamed of being the next Woodward or Bernstein, a crusading journalist setting out to change the world. He had almost come to terms with the fact that he never had anything important to say, when suddenly he was starting to find a voice and Granton was starting to matter for the first time in its history.

His office was little more than a broom closet and he had chosen the space as a way of self-inspiration, a cramped and uncomfortable workspace for him to find the constant motivation to get ahead, get noticed and to get out of his home town. Unfortunately, it had now been over 25 years and he was no further along the road than when he had started his journey. Someone had once said that every journey starts with a single step, but for Will his own journey had ended with that same small step.

He flipped the computer on and, not for the first time, wished that he was able to work with the sound of clacking keys and the smell of fresh ink ribbons, but it just wasn’t practical. He couldn’t help but feel that modern technology had taken a little of the soul of writing for expedience’s sake and couldn’t help but a feel a little sad about it too.

He started to write up the piece about Deputy Tom Lassiter’s shooting. He had called the station and Jeanne Rainwood had furnished him with sparse details on the attack. Cassie Wheeler was a decent person and to date had been an excellent Sheriff. The post had endorsed her run for office when her beloved father had passed away and Will liked to believe that he had played a part in her election victory.

The paper wouldn’t be out for a few more days but the paper’s website had been set up a few years back and, much to his chagrin, it had turned out to be a success. The third member of the paper was Sera Gamble, who had embraced the modern age, and Will was constantly butting heads with her. Although she wasn’t even a year younger than him, she was a constant bleeping and flashing annoyance with some kind of electrical device in her hands at any one time. He wasn’t stupid enough not to recognise the constant bickering as a form of flirtation, but he also rather more enjoyed the whole “will they, won’t they” side of their working relationship than any definitive answer to the question.    

He wrote the story up quickly and efficiently, barely needing to concentrate on the words. He was, by nature, a dispassionate man, able to separate the real word with all of its confusing emotions and just let the words flow through his fingers.

“You get the details from the hospital?” Sera Gamble asked, entering his office silently as she often did.

“Yep,” he nodded without looking up.

“Is that deputy going to be okay?”

“The doc says maybe. The surgery went as well as could be expected but time will tell.”

“You get the story up yet? You want me to do it?”

He turned and withered her with a glare. “I think that I can manage. You know I was writing before you got here.”

“Hey, I was just offering, old man,” she grinned.

“I’m about 8 months older than you,” he said, exasperated. “If I’m old, then what does that make you?”

“Youthful and vibrant,” she said airily but still smiling broadly.

“You’re impossible,” he said, shaking his head and returning to the monitor.

“You know that you love me,” she said, starting to leave.

Will always felt awkward around Sera. She was a woman who confused and irritated him, and yet there was still an attraction. He often found his mind wondering just what she would feel like wrapped in his arms, how they would fit together within the confines of a bed.

He shook the distraction from his thoughts and concentrated on finishing the piece at hand. Granton had one more surprise to try and wrap its head around; he wondered just how many more she could take. Someone had attempted the murder of Deputy Tom Lassiter and an attack on a police officer always shook the public to their very core. Those who wore a badge were there to protect us and they held the line. To see them fall as mere mortals meant that none of us were safe.

He was pondering writing a more theological element to the story when the quiet town air was shattered by a piercing, wailing alarm cranking up. Sera ducked back into his office, her face full of shock and more than a little panic. Together they walked and looked out of the small window at the town below them. The old air raid siren started to rise and speed up as the antiquated system reached its potential. There was only one place that the sound could be coming from and only one reason why it would have been sparked into life: there was real trouble at the mine.

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6:27pm

Kevin got back to the station after the doctors had told him that Tom’s surgery had gone as well as could be expected. The surgery had managed to stop the internal
hemorrhaging and thankfully the bullet had passed cleanly through Tom.

He had broken up enough drunken bar fights to know that a bloody wound was often far less serious than the amount of spilled liquid would suggest, but Tom had been so pale and his skin so cold.

Kevin wasn’t a particularly religious man. He found it hard to believe that God would create man and then leave him to his own devices. He seemed more like a petty child staring at an ant farm through a kind of cosmic Plexiglas. His own father had subjected them to such grievous harm and anguish that Kevin felt abandoned by any sort of higher power. He had soon learned that everything had to be earned by his own sweat and fists. But, despite his skepticism of an omnipotent overlord in the heavens, he did say an awkward silent prayer of thanks that Doc Stewart had been on hand and that the new guy, Kravis, had also been there to play nurse.

He wandered dazed into the station and Jeanne looked up from behind the counter as his large frame passed through the doorway. Her face was flushed with anguish and her eyes grew large when she saw him.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.

He opened his mouth to say that he was fine, wanting to  hide behind his wall, but his mouth trembled a little and he suddenly felt perilously close to tears. Then she was rushing towards him and her small fragile body leapt into his arms and her face mashed against his chest.

He opened his mouth to tell her that his shirt was still covered in Tom’s blood, but instead he gripped her gently and they held each other.

They stood that way for several minutes, neither one wanting to break the comforting contact. That was, until they heard the alarm from the mine.

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6:27pm

Glenn Jordan looked out across the evening rush as it started to dwindle. The place was packed with the usual suspects and, not for the first time in the last few days, he found himself wondering why he seemed short staffed, as though he was lacking at least one waitress.

He stared with his usual displeasure at his clientele, knuckle-dragging, beer-swilling miners with filthy fingernails and coarse mouths. His dream of opening a real restaurant seemed further away than ever. He had been trying to get hold of Bobby Cohen all day but the man was proving to be unusually elusive.

Jimmy Galloon and Cary Borage were engaged in a heated debate about something. Galloon was a lawyer while Borage volunteered at the Town Hall and had been a fixture in Granton for as long as anyone could remember. The two men appeared to make strange bedfellows on the surface, but Granton had always had the ability to bring people together, at least until recently.

The mood in the diner was a heady mixture of sourness and excitement. Granton had never seen such days before and now everyone was on edge, wondering what was coming next.

The cranking air raid siren from the mine surprised them all.

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6:27pm

Delores Fiorentino stood on her porch feeling the welcome cooling breeze of the early evening. The house next door, whose previous occupant had been a burden for so long, now sat empty. Linda Jarvis had been a petty woman with too much time on her hands and Delores was well aware of what the devil did with idle hands.

Her neighbor’s death had been sudden, and the whisper around town was that it had been somewhat bizarre. Delores did not like to listen to gossip as a rule, mainly because it was inherently unreliable, but as she looked over at the empty house she couldn’t help but shudder slightly.

Her guests should have, by now, been in for their nightly feed and tucked up in bed, grabbing a few hours shuteye before the next shift started. However, for some reason the mine had called them in earlier than usual, to much grumbling amongst the employees. She didn’t mind the quiet time as it gave her time to think for once.

She had been a fixture in Granton all of her long life and the small town had suddenly started to feel alien to her. She didn’t recognise the place at the minute or the people in it. There was a strange air about Granton, as though some kind of toxic leak had settled over the residents, stealing their rational minds and clouding their thoughts with an acrid fog. The whole town seemed to be losing their collective minds and she still found it hard to believe the recent events.

For the first time, she was starting to wonder if it was time to consider the previously unthinkable thought of retiring somewhere beyond the Granton’s town limit sign. She had always naturally assumed that she would die here when her time came, but now she was starting to think that perhaps her last days could be better spent elsewhere.

She was pondering this when her heart skipped a beat, as the mine’s siren burst into life and, in a week of horrors, she instinctively knew that the worst was yet to come.    

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6:27pm

Father Bruce Luther was looking for his car keys when he heard the church door open. He checked his watch and was surprised at the sound and the visitor. He wouldn’t normally expect anyone at this time and looked out to see Toby Stewart, the town doctor, wandering in uncertainly.

“Doc?” Bruce said, greeting the man. The doctor was not a regular attendee at the church and Bruce had often wondered how religion and science could possibly coexist.

“Hey, Father,” the doctor replied, looking uncomfortable. “Quiet day?” he asked, looking around the empty church.

“Always a little quieter than I would like,” Bruce admitted. “Unfortunately, we don’t quite seem to be able to compete with video games and the TV. I have to admit that I find the appetite for spirituality is rather diminished sadly. What can I do for you today, Toby?”

“Sorry, were you on your way out?” Toby said, looking down at the keys in Bruce’s hand.

“I’ve got time,” Bruce answered. “I was on my way to see Deputy Lassiter at the hospital but visiting hours aren’t for a while yet. How’s he doing?”

“Not too bad. I spoke to his surgeon, a good man; he thinks that Tom has an excellent chance of pulling through. He’s young and strong and all we can do for now is to hope.”

“Or pray?” Bruce offered.

“Maybe,” Toby said, sitting down in one of the long pews with a heavy sigh. “You know, I’ve studied medicine my whole life, Father. I’ve been a child of science and a man of reason but right now nothing that I’ve ever learnt is helping me understand just what is going on here.”

“Sometimes, Doctor, faith is of more comfort than knowledge.”

“But isn’t that just a copout? Isn’t the whole ‘God moves in mysterious ways’ idea just a big bandage that can be slapped across any situation that we don’t understand?”

“Do you believe in God, Toby?”

The doctor stared straight ahead for a long time, pondering the question. “I think I’d like to,” he finally said.

“Well, he believes in you,” Bruce smiled kindly, “and he has enough faith for the both of you.”

“Then where is he, Father? I mean, right now, surely you must feel that something is terribly wrong here? Everything that is going on in our town right now and running unchecked, surely there must be a reason?”

Bruce did his own long and heavy sigh. He had been feeling increasingly uneasy and the doctor’s words hit him hard. While he considered his own faith unshakable, it was certainly being tested.