The Travelling Man (20 page)

He opened his mouth, not knowing exactly what he was going to say, when they both looked up in shock as the siren at the mine streaked across the sky and both of their faces went deathly white.

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6:27pm

Cassie left the hospital after making sure that there was nothing left for her to do. The doctor had told her that Tom needed time now and her mind had shifted instantly to her job. Tom had been shot and his health had taken immediate priority, but now that he was out of surgery, whoever had pulled the trigger had to be her new priority.

She quickly rang home from her cell as she walked across the parking lot towards her car. She reassured her mother that she was fine and that Tom was going to be okay. She didn’t want her mother - and, by proxy Ellie - thinking that there was a maniac on the loose gunning down cops, so she lied a little about Tom’s situation.

Kevin had headed back to the station for a shower and a change of clothes; he’d seemed shaken but clear eyed. She felt her gut tighten with anger at the events which had befallen Granton in the past week. This was her town and it was her job to keep its people safe. She had them failed badly.

She climbed into the truck and sat behind the wheel for a few minutes to gather her thoughts and centre her mind. She was a woman ruled by logic and order and that all seemed in scant supply just lately. Her senses were screaming that something was very wrong here, her gut was churning with her own version of Spiderman’s Spider Sense, but she just couldn’t put her finger on any one particular thing.

She closed her eyes and took a trawl through her mind’s internal filing system. She opened the metal cabinet and started to leaf through folders, checking over names, deaths, and possible links.

Harlan Harris had been up to some kind of illegal production line and both Davey Mackie and Bud Burrell had worked for him. It was easy to picture a falling out between the three men, but the manner of the deaths was bizarre to say the least. Not to mention the fact that she’d found a grave out in the desert, near what looked like a mobile meth lab, and the grave looked like someone had dug their way out.

She then had a nationwide serial killer who’d topped the FBI’s most wanted list and had been living in their sleepy town all along. Marshall Dinkins had been a miner with little time or resources to be scouring the country, and yet Special Agent Harper had assured her that the evidence against the man was irrefutable.

Becky James had been a local girl who’d made it out to Hollywood and had become a famous actor, only to find herself dead on a secret visit back home at the hands of her ex-landlord and current obsessed fan.

She also had the sudden and unexplained death of Linda Jarvis, whose head had apparently exploded from within, according to Doc Stewart.

She needed a forensic team out at the grave site and the burned out Winnebago but everything was spinning out of control. They were a three man police department, four if you counted Jeanne, and Tom was now out of the game. The FBI had been an unwelcome presence to begin with but now she wished that they, and more importantly their resources, hadn’t left town in such a hurry. She was going to have to put a call out for help, however much she despised having to do so. She needed feet on the ground and a lot more hands than she currently had at her disposal.

She opened her eyes and stuck the key in the ignition. She was just pulling forward when she spotted Matt Kravis making his way across the sidewalk opposite the hospital; there was one man that she wanted a conversation with. The newcomer had been on the scene at Tom’s apartment when Kevin had arrived and it was time that they talked in a more formal environment.

She floored the truck and shot across the road to several agitated and angry glares from pedestrians and other drivers. She pulled the Sheriff’s truck up onto the sidewalk in front of Kravis, who almost walked straight into the truck.

She was out of the car in a flash and a part of her wanted him to run or fight. She desperately wanted to smash her fists against a problem that was simple and solvable, something that she could pummel into some kind of sense.

“Whoa, Sheriff!” Kravis said, holding his hands out in front of him. “If you wanted to thank me, you only had to say so, perhaps over dinner?”

She stared hard at him; his face looked calm and his manner was playful banter, but she could feel that he had little romantic interest in her and it felt like he was just playing a role. “I think it’s time that we had a little talk.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing now?” he replied. “Or do you mean downtown?” he said theatrically.

“Would you have any objections?”

“Am I under arrest for something?” he retorted.

“You are a potential witness to the shooting of a police officer, Mr. Kravis. If you are reticent to accompany me, it might just make me suspicious and then I would have to arrest you,” she said seriously.

“Well I’m not real big on police stations, Sheriff. What say we grab a cup of coffee instead?”

Cassie watched as the man moved backwards slightly, putting a little distance between the two of them. His tone was light and friendly, but his body language was tense and she felt her body twitch and her hand drifted to her holstered weapon. Kravis was all smiles and light-hearted banter on the surface, but now she felt an underlying hardness to the man, as though he might be in some way dangerous, despite his appearance.

They stood with silently locked eyes as people started to mill around them with curious stares. Cassie knew that she was going to have to decide whether or not to arrest him, and if she chose to, then the sensible part of her wondered if she should wait for backup to do so.

They stood that way until she opened her mouth, but her words were suddenly drowned out by the screaming mine siren.

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6:20pm (7 minutes earlier)

Jim Lesnar sat in his office with a comfortable aura of protection against what was about to come. It made no rational sense for him to believe that this was a safe place, but then again this was place where rational sense seemed to be no longer required.

Bobby Cohen was sat across the room in a reclining armchair with an odd look of previously unseen confidence burning in his eyes. Jim had only ever known the man to be a sniveling toad living under the thumb of his wife, but now Bobby looked like a man that you shouldn’t mess with. There was a dark stain on the front of his shirt that gave Jim pause for thought and he wondered just what the town manager had bought from Grange.

Thinking of Gilbert Grange brought a ghost of a smile to his lips. For all of his life, up until this point, Jim Lesnar had been lost, only he hadn’t known it. Grange had shown him his real purpose and his destiny. There was power within his misshapen body, more power than the world knew, and he was going to bring the thunder when it came his turn to be on the throne.

He had never felt any sort of kinship before, never had any real friends or family to speak of. He had spent a life alone and on the outside, but now Gilbert Grange had been sent to him like a guardian angel to show him the light. They had spoken on many occasions, sometimes facing each other and sometimes when Jim was alone or even asleep. Grange liked to hear himself talk and Lesnar wondered if the man was growing lonely in his old age.

They had wandered in the desert beneath the clear black sky, staring up at the billions of stars above them and for the first time, Jim had not felt insignificant.

“The world is an old and varied place, James,” Grange had said as they’d walked. “There are so many dark shadows that man has forgotten over time, so much knowledge lost, that it should be a crime.”

“I want to learn,” Lesnar had enthused.

“And so you shall, my child. I can feel your desire, not so unlike mine when I began my journey in the beginning all of those years ago. Such heady days with such promise before me; such power, too, all to be mined and wielded. I was a boy back then, just a child playing with cosmic forces beyond my understanding or comprehension. But let me tell you, young James, time is fleeting, however much you have of it. The hands keep on ticking and the tumblers fall before your eyes. No matter how many grains of sand you have in the hourglass, they will run out.”

Lesnar had allowed the man’s words to wash over him as they’d strolled. The cold night wind had not touched his bare arms and his short legs had not ached as they’d covered the red desert sands. It felt like a dream and yet it was also more real than anything he had ever encountered before.

“You know, even after all this time there still seems so much left to see and to do,” Grange had said wistfully. “I have crossed oceans and witnessed the birth of nations. I have walked on virgin soil and I have watched the sun rise and set on more occasions than a man like you could count in a lifetime. And yet the end seems to have drawn close in the blink of an eye.”

“I want you to teach me everything,” Lesnar had said, and immediately regretted the interruption. Grange may have been ageing almost before his eyes, but the man was still full of fire and brimstone and Jim had cowered beneath the man’s blazing eyes.

“It’s your greed that seems to be inexhaustible,” Grange had almost spat. “Mankind’s never-ending greed to consume life - like a Roman orgy of decadence, stuffing as much down your fat gullets before vomiting it up again only to stuff more and more down your insatiable throats. No matter what the cost, you will always pay the price and damn the consequences. It is why there will always be a need for men like me.”

Lesnar had wanted to add “men like us” but he hadn’t quite dared. Grange was proving to be difficult to read, liable to fly into a violent rage at any second and Lesnar still had so much to learn from his master.         
 

Grange entered the room and Jim was instantly struck by how much the man seemed to have aged and so quickly to boot. Gilbert Grange no longer glided. Now, he seemed to shamble. His clothes, which had once seemed impervious to the elements and creases, now hung limply on his empty bones. Grange’s face was now lined and leathery like an old catcher’s mitt that had been left out too long under the harsh desert sun.

Bobby Cohen looked up like an excited puppy upon his master’s return.

Lesnar had found the town manager sitting comfortably in his office, staring out of the window with peace etched across his face. Cohen had been a man temporarily wound down and resting, ready to spring into action once given his orders again. Lesnar could see the benefit of mindless drones and was glad that he was management. Grange needed shaved apes to do his menial tasks and Lesnar had a mine full of them; he was mentally drawing up a list of servants to take with him when he ascended. Let Grange wander the desert plains alone, Lesnar had no intention of travelling anywhere without comfort and style. It was easy to see the toll that the life had extracted upon Grange’s now slumped shoulders and Lesnar wanted his tenure to far exceed that of his predecessor.

“Are we ready?” Grange asked in a tired, gravelly voice.

Lesnar looked him over carefully. “Are you sure that you’re up to this?” he asked gently.

Grange spun around and covered the distance across the room in the blink of an eye. Lesnar was seized by the throat and lifted into the air with effortless ease. His head thumped back hard against the rear wall and for a moment he saw stars. Grange’s face was millimeters from his and the man’s breath was foul. His teeth were now stained a putrid brownish yellow; they were broken and uneven, rotting in the gums. “YOU DARE TO QUESTION ME, YOU MAGGOT?” Grange roared and Lesnar struggled to breathe.

Despite Lesnar’s precarious predicament, he still managed to see through the shroud of painful dizziness to see that Grange, up close, was in worse shape than he’d originally suspected. The man still had plenty of juice in the tank, but it was certainly running low.

Grange threw him absently aside and Lesnar landed hard against the solid oak desk. He felt a bone snap in his arm and the pain flared up his whole right side. Bobby Cohen should have been looking nervous and sickened by the sudden violence, but through the tears of pain he could see Bobby’s face and it was calm and interested.

“Oh, my dear boy, you seem to have fallen,” Grange suddenly said with concern and a little surprise in his voice.

Lesnar pulled himself up to a sitting position with his back against the desk and held his arm as gently as he could. Grange moved towards him and Lesnar couldn’t help but pull back slightly.

“You really should be more careful,” Grange said kindly as he knelt over.

Lesnar watched warily as Grange waved a hand over his broken arm and he felt an immediate cessation to the agony. He flexed his thick arm a couple of times and could feel no reaction; the bone felt healed into one piece again and he was grateful for that.

“There we are, my boy, good as new,” Grange smiled. “And now to business. If you fellows would be so kind as to remain silent for a little while, I have an important matter to attend to.”

Lesnar didn’t dare ask if the man was up to his promise, but he was certainly interested to find out.

Grange sat cross-legged on the floor. His eyes were closed and his face a picture of concentration. Lesnar felt the oxygen being sucked out of the room and the light faded around them. Bobby bounced up and down on his chair like an eager child desperate for Christmas morning.