David Wiltse - Into The Fire

Her remains had been found as a result of the discovery of the body of the first young woman, and officials indicated that they would continue to search the mine.

There was even less information than there had been with the first body, but less was needed. One woman somehow gotten lost and died from exposure.

Not two. Not in different shafts of the tunnel. The second girl had been reported missing three months after the first.

He found something that works, Becker thought. The killer had discovered a method that he liked, a means of abduction, a means of disposal. Why wouldn't he repeat himself If it works, use it.

Serial killers always stumbled a bit at first, learning by trial and error what worked best for them. The first attempts were usually clumsy and less than perfectly satisfying, reliant more upon dumb luck than careful planning.

Many of them were caught in the beginnings of their careers because they didn't know what they were doing yet, they made crucial mistakes before refining their methods.

But those who survived the early times learned quickly and soon mastered their grisly craft.

This one had begun his mastery, Becker realized. The newspaper was two years old, the girls' bodies had not been discovered for three years.

The cave could be stuffed with corpses. Becker could be receiving documentary evidence from his correspondent for weeks-but he knew he would not. His correspondent had said "i know why" this time. He knew who and he knew why and he was eager to tell Becker or he wouldn't take the risk of the coded messages.

Becker took an atlas of the United States from the library shelf and opened it on a table. Decatur, Alabama, was a long way from Hendricks, West Virginia. More than four hundred miles by road. Not that distance made much difference. The letters were arriving years after the fact. A beast could slither a thousand miles in that length of time. And of course he would have had to abandon the coal mine as soon as the first body was found. He would have located a new hole.long since. Another hole in the ground crammed with the decaying remains of someone's daughter.

You do have another hole, don't you, you son of a bitch, Becker thought.

No reason to give up, not while you're enjoying yourself, not while your heart is pumping fast enough to leap through your chest when you do whatever it is you do to them. Only now you've got a witness, don't you.

Someone close to you who knows what you're up to and is almost too scared to stop you. Almost.

For the first time Becker perceived his correspondent not asanother scum dweller trying to entice him into the swamp, but as a friend. A decent human being who knew what he saw and hated it and wanted to stop it.

Despite risk to himself, he was signaling Becker from afar, alerting him to the existence of a man-eater.

Using the length from his fingertip to the first knuckle for a measure, Becker approximated a radius of 30 miles and drew an imaginary circle with Decatur as the center.

He started to write down the names of the towns within the circle but stopped when he noticed Springville. There was no need to look further.

Springville was the location of the Alabama state prison.

Becker leaned back in the chair and studied the ceiling for a moment.

Behind the information desk, June Atchinson watched with interest.

Write again, my friend, Becker thought. Prison is a big place, help me find you. Help me find him.

Aural could sing a lick, too, damned if she couldn't, voice like a Southern angel, just enough twang to put everyone in the audience at ease. She didn't have what could be called a strong voice, but the Reverend Tommy R. Walker's Apostolic Revival didn't require an Ethel Merman.

They had microphones for power, all Aural had to do was hit the notes in that sweet, breathy soprano and electricity would take care of the volume. In Aural's case, it even seemed that less was better. If she was hard to hear, the audience would just lean forward and listen all the harder, like hummingbirds straining for that last taste of nectar.

No one ever strained to hear Rae, that was for sure; they didn't care.

The Reverend Tommy might have been amazed at Aural's command over the audience, at how easily she slipped into Rae's role and delivered an audience to him not only primed but panting for more spiritual uplift if it looked and sounded anything like Aural. It might have astounded him how quickly and easily Aural understood what the business was all about and how to work the crowd until they were so lathered up with a zest for redemption at Tommy's sweaty hands that they fought their way to the front, clashing crutches and all. Even more importantand most becoming in a woman, Tommy thought-was her grasp of the financial side of religious labor. They opened their wallets wider when Aural was around, no question about it-and what kind of a pissant peckerwood back-country farmer could refuse to give generously when the angel Aural was holding the plate, especially now that Tommy had her wearing the black-and-crimson robe during the offering. Might as well plead poverty to Gabriel, whatever the hell he looked like. Archangel or not, he sure didn't have anything over Aural in the looks department, except maybe the wings.

And, as if anything else were needed, she didn't cost much, All she asked for was a widow's mite to live on, and since she lived in one of the trailers with all the rest of the show, that was a mighty small mite at that. The Reverend Tommy could not have been happier-well, there was one little thing that troubled him, but he planned to take care of that soon enough if he could just find the opportunity without Rae sulking around in the background.

But if Tommy was amazed at Aural's skills with an audience, she herself was only mildly surprised at how quickly it had all come back to her after a hiatus of a decade or more. Her father had been a straight evangelist, content to merely get the sinners to their knees, crying tears of relief and redemption, and not striving for actual medical marvels, but the process was much the same. And it was still a rinky-dink operation, doomed to the smallest of communities and remotest of backwaters by the lack of charisma of the man in charge. Her father had never been very good at it, an assessment Aural reached in her early teens, and neither was the Reverend Tommy R. Walker. He could dream of going national on satellite television, but it was a dream he was having for himself; Aural wasn't joining in. There was more to religious healing than prolific sweating and a loud voice, and the sad part was that the Rev didn't know what it was.

"Funny name, Aural," Rae said after Aural had been with the show a week.

Rae had already been eased off the stage and Tommy had relegated her to befriending the audience as they filtered in for the show. Rae didn't mind giving up her spot on the stage, she had never been comfortable doing it in the first place, but she did mind being shoved to the back of Tommy's attentions offstage, and that was clearly what was happening whether the new girl was aware of it or not. And of course she had to be aware it-she was a woman, after all.

"I've heard of 'Oral' like in Oral Roberts, of course," Rae continued.

"But 'Aural' is a new one."

"It's my own," Aural said. "My given name was Aura Lee, like in the song," she said, pronouncing it as one word, Auralee. "I really liked it, so I just kept the part I did like."

Rae smiled. Aural knew the woman was trying to be friendly. They always tried to be friendly when their men were attracted to her, and Aural was always willing to be friends back, but it never worked out in the long run. The men always got in the way and the women ended up hating her even when she had not wanted the men.

Sometimes, she thought, it was because she had not wanted their men.