S. Gorden - The Duce of Pentacles

This time, he ordered a whiskey with a beer chaser as he planned amid the loud noises of the busy bar.

* * * *

_The light. The hands. The silent room. A barely audible_ swoosh _and a card turns over. The harsh glaring light from the lamp highlights the exposed card._

Rain clouds with a heart that has three swords piercing it points away from the shadowy figure behind the deck.

_The hands flex, the figure sighs, the ambiguity of the card pervades the dark, silent room. Darkness._

The morning briefing at the sheriff's station was filled with silence.

A few of the officers sat in a stunned daze, a hint of moisture formed along the edges of their eyes. The most profound change was in Frank. He had seemed to age twenty years over the night. His haggard face was filled with deep lines and lost sleep. He still held court over the assembled officers with professional control, but a lost, defeated essence emanated from him.

Henry was obviously tired and worn but he still had full mastery of himself and the job. The other officers slowly begin to turn to him for leadership. When a lab report had showed blood residue had been found near one of the back entrances of the school building, the assembled officers paused until Henry commented that he and Frank would go back over the site. After the briefing was ended, the officers waited until Henry nodded before they left.

As everyone left the room, Henry pulled Vernon aside. "Vern, I'd like to talk to you off the record?"

"Okay, Henry. What is it?"

"Frank is not holding up too well. I think we should keep an eye on him. Something happened to him when Al got taken last night. Maybe he's blaming himself. I don't know but I don't think he should be alone. He could get in trouble. I could ask one of the deputies to keep an eye on him but he's BCA. I don't want any trouble between agencies now. It's hard enough coordinating local police, three different county sheriffs' departments, the state police, and the BCA without getting into any rivalries. If Frank doesn't get his act together in time and lets something slip by, the whole investigation could be gone.

"Vernon, I know I can't order you. But if you could keep a BCA agent by Frank until he can get back up to speed, it would sure help."

"You're right, Henry. Al's disappearance and murder really threw Frank. I'll keep an eye on him. If you could keep it between us, I'd appreciate it."

"Of course! That's why I talked to you in private."

"And Henry ... I want to be there when we get the son of a bitch. I want to be there..." Vernon ended with a plea.

The old man woke with a splitting headache. He started some coffee brewing. He got a towel, wrapped the last two ice cubes in the refrigerator in it, and placed it on his forehead. It didn't help.

Stumbling down the basement stairs, he went to his new freezer. He opened the towel and threw the two half melted ice cubes toward the corner floor drain. He picked up Jenny's heart, wrapped it in the damp towel, and rubbed it slowly across his head. He had hated to freeze her heart because he had loved the firm feel and resilience of the cool muscle. He had frozen the heart after he noticed a slight darkening to the compact red flesh. He had known that rot was only a few hours away if it wasn't frozen.

He took a deep breath of the cold freezer air coming from the small icebox. The relief of the cold compress permitted him to fully open his eyes.

A smile played across the old man's features as he viewed his prizes, the small package containing the testicles and shriveled penis of Pike, the equally small bundle containing the cop's frozen eyes, and the larger mass of Kawalski's tongue. There had been more bundles of frozen meat he had taken on whim from his victims but they had been cooked and now resided in the stomachs of the neighborhood pets. He had remembered hearing Reverend Peterson preach about Ahab and Jezebel being eaten by dogs. Somehow the preacher's words about God's Judgment on the two stayed with him. He had become Elijah rejoicing in God's Judgment on the weak. The weak were sinners by their very being and deserved judgment. The feasting of the dogs was just retribution to the obvious sin of weakness.

He had decided to keep only one piece of flesh from each of his _pleasures_. It had been so hard to decide on which piece to save. Somehow an inner voice had talked to him through his hands on which parts to carve off the bodies. It had been much harder to decide on what to keep after the frozen packages had been made.

With his headache gone, he put Jenny's heart back inside the freezer. Upstairs he drank his coffee. Closing his eyes, he traced Lori's body with his hands. He could feel the tingling as, in his mind, he stroked her corpse searching for parts to save. Anyone watching from the window would imagine they were seeing an old man in the throws of an erotic dream, the slight smile and slow rhythmic hand motions. They would have looked around the room for a Playboy or an erotic video playing on the TV. Instead, all they would find was a Bible, a few newspapers turned to either sports or the business section, and ESPN playing on the TV.

* * * *

Frank and Henry walked through the back door of the closed school.

Henry immediately noticed that the transition between the sunlit parking lot and the dark hall would blind anyone who entered for a period of time. The two men waited until their eyes adjusted to the gloomy hall. Henry saw the numbered yellow tag that marked the blood residue against the wall a few feet down from where they stood. Henry saw that the marker was opposite an empty doorway. The killer could have waited there for Al to enter the back door. Blinded by the dark hall, Al would have been easy prey.

Henry continued down the hall with Frank following in silence. A few steps down the hallway Henry smelled ammonia. He followed his nose to an open janitorial closet. Inside was a handcart, a mop with a bucket on rollers, and a huge industrial sink that looked like everything from the acids of the chemistry lab to last week's chili had been flushed down it. Once inside the closet, Henry saw the empty gallon container marked as disinfecting cleanser resting next to the roller bucket.

"Look's like this is where he cleaned up after ambushing Al back

there."

Frank didn't answer. Henry looked and saw the emptiness in Frank's eyes. He repeated the comment and finally got a noncommittal, "Yeah," from Frank.

Henry continued down the hall to the front of the building. He walked slowly trying to decide if the new information had narrowed the suspect list any. Henry figured that the ambush in back of the school was a little too cute for someone just from the area. The killer would either have had to work in the building or had gone to school here. The school had been built thirty years ago, so the best the new information could do would be to eliminate the one or two on the list that had moved into the area in the last few years and never worked in the building.

"We need to go over the employee list for the school again and talk to Shermon. We need some answers from him." Henry glanced at Frank. His ghastly pale face and vacant eyes stopped him in his tracks. "Are you all right, Frank?"

"Fine. Fine. I'm fine. I think I need to get a little rest. I've been up for nearly thirty-six hours. Could you check the employee records? We could meet at my motel in a couple of hours. After going over the records together, we could then talk to Shermon. Sound okay, Henry?"

"Sure, Frank. I'll see you in a couple of hours."

Henry sat in front of the computer screen. He had spent the last two hours checking the school's employee records with the notes compiled by the task force. He'd had to run background checks on two of the names. The results were zip. He had been unable to eliminate any of the names on the task force list using the new information. Everyone had either gone to the high school at some time in the past or had done some work at the building. Being a small community, everyone on the list seemed to have a connection to where the bodies had been found, a cousin worked here or a neighbor over there. The task force hadn't had time to see if anyone had a strong match on knowledge about the logging site. Henry felt something picking at his mind every time he looked through the employee list at the school. Something that wouldn't come up to where he could see it. Maybe going over the records with Frank would jar whatever was picking at his mind loose?