Jonathon King - Shadow Men

"You former law enforcement or military, Mr. Freeman?" he asked.

"You have a preference, Sheriff?"

"Sorry, just the way you carry yourself," he said. "No offense meant."

"None taken," I replied. I was actually intrigued by his slightly bulldog bearing. "I was a cop, up north. I'm working as a P.I. now, mostly out of West Palm and Lauderdale."

"You're on business then, up this way?"

"Just checking on an estate matter, for an attorney," I said.

He nodded as if he understood and reached out to touch the side of my truck.

"Nice truck," he said. "You a hunter, Mr. Freeman?"

"No, sir. Never have been."

"Then there wouldn't be any firearms back behind the seats there, correct?"

"I do have a permit for a concealed handgun, Sheriff. And that's in a bag behind the seat." I wasn't sure where this was going, but I did believe O. J. Wilson had his reasons and I really was in no mood to rile him.

"Would you like to take a look, Sheriff?" I said, and reopened the driver's-side door and folded up the seat.

"I would, thank you," he said, and bent in. He was short enough so that the floorboards were above his knees, and he reached in and gave my backpack and the sleeping bag I kept there a thorough going over. While he was bent inside, a couple parked their car and walked past us into the cafe. They did not so much as look back, as though the sight of the local constable going through a stranger's vehicle was as routine as the Sunday paper. When he was done he arranged the bags back the way they'd been.

"Thank you, Mr. Freeman. I appreciate your cooperation," he said, stepping back like some baggage security guard at the airport.

"Mind letting me in on what this is all about, Sheriff?" I said.

"Well, sir. I can't really," he said, dismissing me. "Let's just say it's a precaution and leave it at that if you don't mind, Mr. Freeman. Like you said, it's a beautiful and peaceful Sunday morning."

"No, sir. That was your description, Sheriff," I said, but the little man had already turned and headed into Mel's, leaving me to stand and simply wonder a bit before I finally climbed the stairs and went in to have my breakfast.

I was still frowning when a bell hanging on a curled piece of soft iron rang as I opened the door. The waitress actually said, "Howdy." A middle-aged man with a rough and mottled complexion tipped the bill of his John Deere cap as we passed and I nodded back. I sat at an empty table in the corner that was covered in a red and white checked cloth and decorated with a single plastic geranium. The waitress was dressed in jeans, with a string apron and a flowered western blouse. She smiled as if I were a friend.

"How you doin' today, sir? Can I get you some coffee to start?"

"You read my mind, ma'am," I said, and then asked about the special. When she came back I hooked my thumb at the front of the room and said, "Your sheriff always so attentive on Sunday mornings?

She put a wrinkle in the side of her mouth and shook her head like a mother who was just told her son was teasing the girls again.

"Don't y'all worry about O. J.-he don't mean nothin' by it," she said. Then she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Truth is, he's like a protective daddy. The man got the worst luck with them gunshot killin's, and he thinks it's his fault they can't solve 'em.

"Killings?"

She smiled again and said, "You're not from around here, are you?

"No ma'am."

"Well, sir," she began, her voice dropping even further, "we might be the smallest place in the state with a real-life serial killer out there." I could see John Deere pulling the brim of his hat farther down, and I guessed he'd heard the town gossip doing her thing before. "He's been knockin' off the bad boys of Highland County for more than fifteen years now. Every couple of years or so, another one drops, an' everyone gets themselves all in a fuss about how we ain't so far from the big city after all. Poor ol' Sheriff Wilson just took on the chore of finding him. Likes to frisk every stranger that comes through here."

"Annette?" John Deere had held off as long as he could. "Can we order over here, please?"

The waitress rolled her eyes and winked at me. I grinned back, friendly-like, and ordered the breakfast special-eggs over easy and biscuits with brown gravy.

I ate without interruption and gave the waitress's gossip little thought. Every little place has something, and violence doesn't have boundaries. Who isn't capable of it? You don't have to be a cop for long to find that answer: everybody. When Annette brought my check I asked if she could give me directions to Pastor Jefferson's Church of God.

"You really ain't from around here," she said. She told me the way in lefts and rights. I tipped her like a city boy at 20 percent and got a big thank-you in return.

The white frame building was set well back off the road in a slight gully. There was no sign at the road entrance, but several cars and trucks were already parked on the brown grass to one side. I turned down the worn dirt drive and like the other early arrivals, parked in the shade of a stand of century-old oaks. The Reverend Jefferson's church reminded me of the plain, clapboard Quaker buildings in central Pennsylvania. The steeple was canopied and slatted at the top to vent hot air. The windows were tall and narrow, and none held the adornment of stained glass or anything more fanciful than simple double molding. I sat in the truck and watched folks arrive for the 10:00 A.M. service. They were a democratic group. A middle-aged white couple, he in a western string tie and tan sport coat, she in a patterned dress and a white embroidered sweater. A black family, the parents in clean, pressed white shirts and dark trousers and skirt, their three matching sons trailing behind, the top buttons at their necks done tight. A group of what I guessed were Seminole Indians climbing out of a big, club-cab pickup, the men in polished cowboy boots and the women in large, brightly colored skirts. Their hair was pulled back, black and glossy, and their stoic faces carried the classic flat and sharply angled forehead and nose.

I waited until near the hour and then got out and slipped on my navy sport coat and went in. I nodded and politely smiled as I found a seat in the back. The interior was as understated as the outside. The plain wooden pews were worn, the lacquer rubbed dull in some spots by years of wool and canvas, cotton and polyester. The ceiling was beamed and the highest windows let the morning sun streak through, illuminating lazy drifts of dust in the air. The altar was small and white and the expected dominant feature was a floor-to- ceiling cross behind it. The place looked like it could hold fifty congregants at most. There were some thirty-five this morning, and they all rose at some signal that I didn't see.

Pastor Jefferson looked young for fifty. His hair was dark, full and conservatively cut. He was slightly built and it was difficult to judge his height, but his face and shoulders were all angles and sharp corners.

"Good morning."

"Good morning, Reverend," the congregation returned.

"God be with you."

"And with you."

Let us pray.

I was the only one who did not lower my head as Jefferson recited. As he scanned the room, he picked me up in a second, a tall stranger in the back pew of his church. His voice was clear but not strong. He depended on the words themselves and not his performance of them. He was as plain as the physical structure. I was too far away to discern the color of his eyes.

"Please, be seated."

The service was informal and simple. The pastor's sermon was personal and grassroots. He came across as patrician and neighborly at the same time. He kept the Southern drawl out of his diction during his readings, but let it slip through when he turned a phrase out of the Bible. I saw him stop his eyes on several of the congregants during the sermon, though he seemed to avoid mine. When the offering plate got to me I noted that it was filled with envelopes, all of which, I assumed, contained member tithes. I slipped a twenty under them.