M Sellars - The Law Of Three

“No.” He shook his head. “Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger, I didn’t catch it either. I just found out on the way over here.”

“How?”

“A call from one of the coppers on the case,” he answered. “He overheard a phone conversation she had, and he thought I should know.”

“Recklessly endangering a civilian on purpose?” Mandalay sounded incredulous when she asked the question. “Have you gone to IAD about this?”

“That’ll be my next move.” Ben nodded. “But I want to make sure I can count on my source and get something a little more concrete before I make an accusation like that. Right now it’s just hearsay, plus there’s someone else involved, and I don’t know who.”

“Let’s give her what she wants,” I muttered.

“HELL No!” Ben stood and thrust his hand at me as he made the exclamation. “You just forget that shit right now! Hear me?”

“Look, Ben.” I focused on him with as much intensity as I could muster. “This sonofabitch is playing this out like some kind of contrived, low-budget movie. He’s going to torture and probably kill an innocent woman just to get me out in the open. I can’t let him do that.”

“We don’t plan to,” he shot back.

“You can’t stop him.” I shook my head. “He is going to keep killing until he gets to me.”

“You don’t know that we won’t get him, Row,” Ben said.

“Oh yes I do,” I nodded and spoke with absolute certainty.

“You wanna tell me how?”

I just stared at him. The silence in the room grew thick and charged with a frightening energy that made my skin prickle.

“Dammit, Rowan, stop this crap. Just get in there and talk to your wife.”

“I can’t yet,” I said with a disconcerting calm.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because that’s him now.”

Ben shook his head and gazed back at me with confusion creasing his forehead. “Him now what?”

The startling ring of the telephone answered the question for me.

Ben followed me all the way into the kitchenette, spouting instructions as he made himself my shadow. “If it is him, then don’t explode on ‘im, Row. You’ve gotta keep the bastard talkin’ until we pin him down.”

“I know, Ben,” I returned.

“I’m serious, white man,” he said as he continued to reinforce the mandate. “After this afternoon, I can easily see you losin’ it here. You gotta keep your temper under control.”

I rounded the corner of the doorway and turned, placing my hand on the telephone as I stared wordlessly back at my friend. On the fourth ring, I lifted the receiver and placed it against my ear, then spat, “What the hell do you want this time, Eldon?”

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.