The Shadow Over Lone Oak (Evils of this World Book 1) Page 5

  Finch rubbed his forehead. “Unless you want to learn everything there is to know about intestinal worms, we aren’t looking in the right books.” He watched as Mason leaned against a shelf, tome in hand, face hidden betwixt the pages. His head faltered and then lolled downward onto his chin. He was asleep.

  Donahue smacked the book away, startled him awake. Finch fought back a chuckle. It was childish, yet somehow the interaction seemed appropriate. Not making any headway in the search, he determined that now was the time to get some much needed candor from the sheriff and the deputy.

  “So, how long have you and your brother been working in the force together?” The question had nagged him since before they had come inside.

  Not taken aback, the sheriff said, “About ten years between the two of us. Dad retired a few years ago, and I took over after divorcing my ex. Rick was the senior officer but I was chosen to succeed. I don’t think he’s gotten over it, but I do my part to remind him so that’s not a surprise.” Deputy Mason did his best to ignore them as he picked the book up off the floor and set it back onto the shelf.

  Cracking his knuckles, Finch said, “Yeah, I think the signals are coming in clear on that one. What astounds me is that you would keep your husband’s last name.” She shot him a look, so he added, “I just figured you for the strong, independent type. Not keen to latch onto anything that isn’t your own.”

  She shrugged. “I loved my dad, but I never liked the Mason name. Too mundane. Now Donahue: that attracts attention.” The freckles around her nose scrunched up as the sheriff laughed. Charming. She reminded him of a less-masculine Peppermint Patty.

  Fruitless wasn’t a word in Finch’s vocabulary, so they resumed their search. He elected to expand their queries to include the occult and anything else the investigation into Jane’s demise might have turned up as evidence.

  A book entitled Rooted in Lone Oak: Religiosity in Our Community drew his eye. He combed the pages with a fervor befitting an aspiring scholar, bookmarking where and when various philosophies had taken up residence in the small town throughout its history. Lutheran Christianity went as far back as the founding of the town in the late 1800s. A fraction of orthodox Jews made Lone Oak their home in the mid-1950s. There was a contingent of Buddhists in the area for the past twenty years, a rarity in this area of the country.

  No mention was made of a Church of Divine Promise.

  A handwritten scrawl in the corner of a section on the Mormon origins in Lone Oak enticed him. The words were etched in cursive by a red ink pen. They were evenly spaced with flourishes on the ends of the F’s and T’s. Whoever had written them was obsessed with the looping curves and exact slopes of calligraphy. Interest piqued, he read aloud, “Let not the whims of temptation guide the unclean further into filth. Should the evils of this world breach their flesh, a Purge is necessary. The Lord shall free them and they will Rise anew.”

  Documenting which words were capitalized, Finch flipped the page over to the back. Nothing was written on the other side and the ink had been too thin to bleed through. The strokes made by the unnamed graffiti artist had been light but precise as if he had practice inscribing them. P, L, and R; those were the letters he or she had chosen to command the reader’s attention. Perhaps Lord wasn’t a strange word to capitalize; Finch still remembered reading the bible in Sunday school. That still left P and R. In his dream, the cultists had sang the words “pray” and “reign” as if they should be capitalized. He’d never had to take a leap this far to solve a case before, but it looked like that needed to change.

  He had the sudden urge to slam the book into his forehead. Maybe the answers would come tumbling out if he hit himself hard enough. A woman had been murdered, a cult was on the loose, and he’d wrapped himself up in a guessing game of pointless conjecture about a comment in a book. The chances that it had anything to do with the investigation were slim at best.

  Yet as Finch peered once more at the words, he experienced a sensation not unlike the one he’d received from the message in his dream. These letters, they signified something; they were either initials or an abbreviation or valued tenants of a group that could be the Church. Or they could be a red herring, a false vision designed to throw him off the trail. Once he’d thought a cat’s mating call meant a perp was a veterinarian. Turned out that the man was a janitor working at the zoo who had an irritating voice.

  Optimism won out. The sheriff and the deputy listened as he made his proposal. “Deputy, see if you can find religious literature in here by anyone with the letters P and R as their initials, in that order.” Mason started to object but relented when the sheriff shook her head. As he perused the catalog for his task, Finch asked the sheriff if she knew much about the history of the Mormon faith in Lone Oak. He doubted the sheer coincidence that the writer had chosen that particular section to ply his craft.

  “No more than what is in that book, I’m afraid. Actually, there hasn’t been a practicing Mormon here for at least a couple of decades.” A dead end.

  No, there were more leads. There had to be. He wasn’t thinking with the clearest frame of mind, had too much coffee broiling in his system. Parasite, cult, murder, burning, purge, rise; these words drifted through his mind like sky writing in the clouds. McAlister, Harley, PR, names that meant everything and nothing. He had scraps of a greater mystery, yet the necessary pieces of the puzzle remained elusive.

  Sheriff Donahue snapped her fingers, shaking him loose of his thoughts. “The spores,” she said, excitement glistening in her eyes, “the spores found at the crime scene. I remember that they can only be found in Farspit Quarry, just outside of town.”

  Finch frowned. “That does sound promising. Any reason you didn’t mention this to me when we were at the scene?”

  “Agent Finch, if I had thought it had anything to do with this before, I’d have told you. The fact is that, while the spores are generally only found in that mining area, some of the more colorful locals−well, the moonshiners, really−have found other uses for them. I just figured it was the remainder of another drunken project, not tied to her murder.”

  He understood her lack of foresight and couldn’t fault her for it. He’d forgotten the spores, pushed them aside as irrelevant dressing on a more titillating and bountiful salad. But it wasn’t a salad, he could see that now. It was a four course meal, in which the cult, parasites, PR, and the spores all brought spice and flavor to the table. He’d taken a bite and needed time to digest. Now his investigative stomach was growling again and spores were on the menu.

  “Can you take me to this quarry you mentioned?”

  “Of course, it’s not that far. You want to follow or just ride-along?”

  “A ride-along would be great, actually. You know that feeling you get when you’ve jogged five miles after binging on clam chowder and Oreos?” He paused to let her answer. Negative. “Well, that’s how dog-sick and exhausted I am of driving. Let’s go.”

  The two of them stood up, chairs creaking as they scraped across the floor. Finch motioned for Mason to follow. He saw that he had a small stack of books in his hands so he slowed to let the deputy catch up. “Is that all the books you could find?” There were five, each authored by a person with the initials P and R.

  “Yeah, Sherlock, that’s all of ‘em. I narrowed them down to just authors from the tri-county area. Figured if this lead meant anything they’d have to be from around here.” Impressive deduction.

  “Good work, deputy,” Finch said. Grabbing the bundle, he carried it outside where Donahue leaned against the car. He handed the books to her, then rooted around in his pockets for chewing gum while she stowed them in the backseat behind the cage. He found the spearmint stick as the sheriff revved the engine. She drummed her fingernails on the dash.

  Popping the gum into his mouth, Finch cast a glance back at his Jeep as apprehension overtook him. Driving this last week hadn’t made him ill, but old anxieties threatened to dredge themselves up as he second-guessed g
etting into the sheriff’s car.

  His heart raced, his palms dripped with sweat, and his head whirled with thoughts of death. Images of mangled arms and legs coiled in glass and protruding with metal came unbidden to his mind. Eyes that had seen the void glowered back at him, unflinching. He was falling, down, down, down. The screech of tires, the smell of burnt rubber, the metallic taste of blood, he wished he could vomit through every orifice.

  Fatigue overwhelmed him and he collapsed.

  BURIED

  Finch awoke to the faint crackle of static. Blinking, he scanned the room for the source of the sound. Best he could tell, he was in the rec room of the police station. There was a stainless steel fridge beyond the comfortable bed he lay on. Adjacent to him he noticed a walkie-talkie atop a mundane plastic table. Doubled over in a nearby chair was Deputy Mason, asleep. He must have been told to keep an eye on him in case his condition changed.

  His neck ached as if a porcupine had reclined there. He wagered that the jaunt back to the station had been swift; the sheriff had to have driven through a red light or two. Finch imagined her behind the wheel, tires mounting the edge of a curve as she sped and the deputy held on in panic. He laughed a laugh that turned into cough. The metallic taste of blood passed through his mouth and sprayed into his hand. His eyesight blurred.

  The door opened, and he made out the vague outline of the sheriff strolling over to his bedside. Drifting in and out, he heard the door click shut as she sat on the edge of the bed. She nudged her brother. He snorted and remained asleep, so she kicked him in the shin. He yelped. Donahue instructed him to get the doctor. He muttered an affirmative. Cursing, he retreated out of the room.

  Shifting over to the seat her brother had been in, she said, “Agent Finch? You took a pretty hard tumble. How are you feeling?”

  Finch groaned, sitting up in the bed. He gritted through the pain as he said, “Like a buck-fifty.” He swung his legs over the side, massaged the back of his neck. It didn’t help. “I can’t believe I fainted.” He reached up to touch his forehead, felt a bandage and understood he must have busted his head open on the pavement when he landed. Must have looked worse than it was; head wounds always bled in the most dramatic way possible.

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Yeah, you don’t seem the skittish type. What happened? The doctor said he couldn’t find anything in your system, so you weren’t drugged. My guess is something triggered in your brain that the rest of you didn’t like.”

  “You could say that.” He drifted over to the counter by the fridge, washed his hands in the sink. Wiping his hands with a paper towel, he said, “It’s happened before.”

  “It has?”

  He flipped the lid up on the trash dispenser and threw the wet paper in as he answered. “This will get personal, so if you’re ready for some hokey, slice-of-life tragedy, just nod.” She did. “When I was a teenager, I didn’t have a license. I couldn’t drive anywhere on my own. I had no one to take and nowhere to take them to. I had to hitch rides with my sister and her friends to get to the movies or just to walk in the park. I was the brunt of jokes about as often as I had cereal in the morning. That was every morning except Saturday.”

  He took a deep breath before continuing. “Saturday was sausage biscuits, dipped in home-cooked gravy. We drank orange juice, not coffee, because mom didn’t want coffee drinkers in the family. So there was this old truck of my dad’s, an F150 that he gave to sis when she turned sixteen. She’d been driving it for a year, I was in a grade below her, and she decided to go drinking with her boyfriend. I tagged along and she didn’t care, just told me to stay out of the way. They partied. She was well over the limit. I didn’t say a word. We went back to the truck. She was all over the road. Her boyfriend was passed out, head in her lap. I was scrunched against the passenger side door, eyes glued to the solid yellow line as it slid underneath each tire. There was a semi-trailer in the oncoming lane. I don’t think she saw it. I opened my mouth to warn her but bile spilled out instead. The grill of the semi broke through the windshield. We spun off the road. She’s not even really there anymore, pancaked between metal and leather. The boyfriend laid broken, body bent backward over the dash. I looked down at my arm. The glass had left a gash that extended from near my shoulder to my forearm. Do I pull it out or leave it in? I passed out. When I came to, I was in a hospital bed. They’re telling me my sister is dead. I don’t think it registers with me at first. My parents never recovered. We didn’t have sausage biscuits on Saturday anymore.”

  Stunned, the sheriff couldn’t bring herself to speak. Finch rummaged in his jean pockets for his keys. He found them, yanked them out by the Bugs Bunny key-chain. Donahue recovered in time to catch the keys as he tossed them to her. “What’s this for?” she asked.

  He tilted his head back and gulped down the remainder of a soda he found in the fridge. The beverage was cold sweet nectar expunging the taste of blood from the inside of his mouth. He felt the haziest of pinpricks as he swallowed. His neck was getting better. “That,” he said, “is the ticket to my recovery. I need you to go get my car from the library. Sorry to say it, sheriff, but that ride-along is not going to happen.”

  She nodded, aware that he knew his body better than she could. “I’ll be back with it in a jiffy.” She flashed him a sad smile as she left. He gave her a thumbs-up in return.

  Finch listened to the overhead fan spin. The noise was soothing in its repetition, like the steady drip of rain on a window. Though he stood alert, his eyes closed. Her image danced in front of him, a whisper in the darkness. Brown hair. Green eyes. He could see her laughing, smiling, dumb face. He extended his hand, hoping to catch a handful of her hair. Gone. He grasped nothing but an illusion that deigned to taunt him.

  He shook his head, cleared his thoughts. It wouldn’t do for the sheriff or Deputy Mason to see him clutching at shadows.

  The doctor entered the room, puzzled to see his patient up and walking. “Well, Mr. Finch, you seem to have recuperated.”

  “Doc,” he said, shaking the man’s hand, “your diagnosis is a bit late.”

  * * *

  Bursts of gunfire rang in his ears as Finch descended into the basement. The shooting range of the station contained a pair of booths each occupied by a member of the Lone Oak Police Department. Both men were armed non-standard equipment. The taller of the two, an unshaven man with broad shoulders, wielded a pump-action shotgun. It was better suited to an antique gun rack than any kind of firefight. The smaller, baby-faced man used a Glock. It held more rounds in its magazine, sure, but it lacked efficiency.

  Neither spotted him approach, intent on getting confirmed kills on their respective targets. He slapped muffs over his ears and waited for the two men to finish. He watched as they emptied their firearms, guessed that this must have been more than a tune-up. It was a competition between the two of them.

  The man with the shotgun threw his hand up in victory as the targets were reeled back in. The handgun specialist groaned when the sight of less confirmed kill shots than his rival greeted him. “Pay up,” the larger man said, his palm extended. The loser thrust a crumpled wad of cash into his opponent’s hand before he took off his gear and stomped back up the stairs. The winner followed, pocketing the money with happiness brimming on ecstasy. Had to be a heck of a bet.

  Signaling for a clean sheet, Finch stepped up to the booth. He withdrew his personal weapon of choice, a modified fifty caliber Desert Eagle. The magnum, much like the officer’s weapons before him, wasn’t a standard issue. His agency had told him on numerous occasions to upgrade but he insisted that it was important that he be accustomed to his sidearm on an intimate level. The more a man knew about his equipment, the better practiced he was when the time came. It was an argument they cast aside with reluctance.

  He emptied eight rounds, the entire clip, into the black silhouette atop the white sheet. The target returned with an equal amount of holes. There was a tight cluster around the head and between th
e eyes. Four confirmed kill shots. He’d also fired once into each arm, once in the stomach, and a final round into the groin for his own pleasure. Satisfied that he’d not lost his touch between lack of practice and hitting his head, he sat the earmuffs back down and left the stall.

  Waiting for him at the top of the stairs was Donahue, his key-chain dangling between her thumb and forefinger. “You’ll need this,” she said, pitching it down to him. He snatched it with one hand and joined her as they strolled back to his car. Not a scratch and no sign of vandalism. He was grateful for that. Although the sight of it didn’t recall the most pleasant of recent memories, it was his baby.

  Finch walked around to the back of his Jeep, reached in the compartment and pulled out his suitcase. He decided that if he was going to experience delusions and fainting spells, then the least he could do was have other folks around as a contingency. Finch ventured a glance at the sheriff in front of him. He appreciated the company too.

  After arranging his belongings in the rec room, he met up with the sheriff by the front desk. He couldn’t help but recognize Deputy Mason’s absence. Scratching at the stubble that had manifested under his chin, he said, “Can’t help seeing we’re short a man. Your brother not coming?”

  “Said he was going to spend the night looking into those books,” she said. When that answer didn’t satisfy him, she added, “He’s claustrophobic. The mine we’re going to ain’t exactly the widest interior this side of a grand foyer.”

  The deputy had his sympathies for that. He wasn’t a big fan of narrow corridors himself though it came with the territory of exploring all possible avenues in an investigation. If he hadn’t been willing to duck and crouch his way through glorified cat flaps and ventilation shafts he would’ve never become an agent. Besides, a little one-on-one with the sheriff could breed a better relationship. One less distraction. They might even solve the case while they were at it.