Devil's Kiss d-1

by William W. Johnstone

  Sam, suddenly angry, got out of his truck to face the cowboy. "I've known Paul Merlin for years," Sam said, not realizing he was balling his fists. "I've fished with him. If Paul wants me off his range, let him tell me."

  The cowboy was a small, wiry man, his face burned the shade of old leather. But his eyes were strange—dead-looking. The cowboy stood his ground.

  'I've told you what I was told to tell you, Balon. Now, git! We don't need your kind around here."

  "My kind! I'm a minister, man. What do you mean?"

  "That'll do, Davy," the words came from behind Sam.

  Sam turned to look at Paul Merlin. He did not know where the man had come from, and Sam Balon was not an easy man to sneak up on.

  "Paul," Sam spoke a greeting.

  "Balon," the rancher spoke the word harshly. "You're not welcome here. Leave now!"

  "Paul, I—"

  "Get out!"

  Something about Paul was out of kilter. Sam realized this as he studied the face. His eyes, like the cowboy's, were dead-looking, the voice flat.

  "All right, Paul," Sam said. "I'll leave. Tell your hand to move his jeep."

  "Go around it."

  Sam resisted a quick impulse to give the rancher a short right cross to the mouth. "Very well, Paul," he fought back his temper. "As you wish."

  Sam listened to the men laugh at him as he backed out and around the jeep, almost getting stuck in a ditch. Sam did not know what was going on around this part of Fork County, but he sure intended to find out—soon.

  He drove straight to the Crusader office, where he knew Wade often worked on Saturday mornings, on personal business.

  "Sam!" Wade said, surprise on his face as he answered the knocking on the front door of the newspaper building. He looked at the truck. "You trade cars?"

  "Yesterday."

  "I like it." The editor smiled, taking in his minister's casual dress and the unshaved stubble on his face. "You going fishing, Sam?"

  "Hunting might be a better word, Wade. Can you spare me a few minutes of your time? I need to talk with you."

  "For you, Sam—anytime. All the time you want. Hunting? I didn't know you hunted." He paused in his locking of the door after Sam was inside. "There is no hunting season open around here, Sam."

  "The season on this animal never closes," Sam said dryly.

  Wade gave him an odd look as they walked into his office. But he said nothing about whatever his minister might be hunting in the middle of summer.

  "Sit down, Sam," he pointed to a chair facing his desk. "I just made a pot of coffee. You take yours black, don't you?"

  "Black as sin," Sam smiled, but there was no mirth in his grin; no humor in his eyes.

  Wade picked up on his minister's seriousness. Something is very wrong, he thought. Has Miles's alarm drifted over to Sam? I won't open the ball, though. I'll let him tell me.

  Pouring them coffee, Wade stole a glance at Sam. The man never ceases to amaze me—never ceases to bring out the curiosity in me.

  Sam was the only minister Wade had ever known with a combat background, although Sam never talked about his time in Korea with UNPIK. Whatever in the hell UNPIK was! He doesn't look like a minister. Big man. Barrel chested; thick, powerful wrists. Big hands, flat knuckles. Tattoo on his arm. Boxed in college, some say. I can believe it, looking at the size of those arms.

  To lighten the mood of the moment, Wade abruptly asked a question he'd been wanting to ask for years. "How many fights did you have, Sam?"

  Sam grinned boyishly. "I had too many, Wade. I enjoyed boxing, even though I felt it best to quit when I went into active ministry. Your next question will be, how many fights did I win? I won all of them." He tapped his head. "Thick skull; hard to knock down," his grin widened. "My trainer was appalled when he learned I was a theology major. He couldn't quite correlate boxing with the Bible. Thought it wrong somehow."

  "You were a minister while you were in the service?"

  "Yes. But the guys didn't know it. Let me clarify that. I had my degree, but I had not yet held a church. I wasn't sure until after the war—or sometime during it—that I really wanted to be a preacher."

  The speculation of whatever it was lurking around Whitfield entered Sam's mind, fading his grin. He did not know how to bring up the subject to Wade. Or what to do about it when he did.

  Wade watched the changes sweeping his minister's face. "And you didn't think boxing wrong?"

  That grin again. "No, I didn't. God liked his warriors."

  "You do like the Old Testament, don't you, Sam?"

  "Yes, I do. Our nation—the world—would do well to go back to some of those hard Old Testament rules."

  Wade arched an eyebrow—a habit he picked up from watching George Sanders movies. "A lot of people—ministers included—might disagree with you about that."

  "Good," Sam said, sipping his coffee. "I enjoy a fast debate. I'm a very opinioned minister, Wade. I've been called a maverick more than once, by my own peers. I really don't care, since I know for a fact that many ministers are notoriously naive about worldly ways. I think going back to the Old Testament might make a better people out of us. Myself, included. I know I could use some hard discipline from time to time."

  Interesting thing for him to say, Wade thought. Wonder why he said that? Jane Ann, perhaps. I know he's in love with her.

  Wade knew that Sam came from a religious family, but had been a wild one, well up into his twenties. A street fighter; he openly admitted that. Sam's father had been a minister in Kansas City, Missouri. The elder Balon and his wife had been killed in an automobile accident when Sam was fifteen. Sam ran away from his Uncle's home in Iowa, drifting around the country, raising hell wherever he went, until a social worker in California persuaded him to go to college. Then the army.

  "It amazes me how well you get along with young people, Sam. My oldest says you're a cool cat."

  But not "cool" enough, Sam thought. The youth department at the church has gone from bad to worse to zero. Again, the radio station came to mind. It had to be. Sam could think of no other way it could have been done. But, he recalled, every teacher in the elementary and high school was in that parade of humanity I saw last night, heading out to worship the devil. The radio station and the teachers—a good combination to mold young minds.

  "Wade, Jr. is a good boy," the minister said. "He just likes the girls, that's all."

  "Would I be asking you to violate a confidence if I asked what you told him that time he talked with you half the night. After you sobered him up, that is," he added dryly.

  "No. No violation of any confidence. I just told him if he couldn't keep it in his pants, at least put a rubber on it."

  Wade felt his face flush hot. He shook his head. "Sam, you're the darnest minister I've ever met in my life." He fought a losing battle to hide a smile.

  "Friend, in this day of blossoming sexual promiscuity among the young—and it's going to get much worse before it levels off—I'm not about to tell a healthy young man to go home and jack off. He'd think me a fool! I have to do what most parents won't or can't do with their kids, mostly boys, and that is tell them about the birds and the bees. It's a job most ministers don't want and are not equipped to handle. It's not our job, although a great many parents seem to think it is. Lucas Monroe told me, last year, a young man said to him that he didn't want to know about the birds and the bees; what he wanted to know about was pussy."

  The editor stirred uncomfortably in his chair, embarrassed at the minister's bluntness. "Damn, Sam!"

  "I'm telling you the way it is, Wade. I shudder to think what it's going to be like ten or fifteen years from now. If you think it's a sex-oriented society now, just wait a few more years. The movies, the magazines, the song lyrics, and the books are going to be full of nothing but sex. You wait and see if I'm not correct. But right now, we'd all better get ready to cope with it until we can turn this society around and get back to some plain old decency. And we're going to hit roc
k bottom before we do."

  Wade smiled, a smile many would take for sarcastic, but which Sam knew was not. "I'm getting a sermon on Saturday. What do I get to hear tomorrow, Sam?"

  "I haven't written my sermon for tomorrow."

  The men stared at each other, Wade thinking: does this have anything to do with the feeling I've had for several weeks? Dwindling church attendance ? The strangeness that seems to have overtaken this town? If so, Sam, get to it. Convince me, Sam. Tell me what's wrong. Come on, stop walking around what's on your mind.

  But neither wanted to be the first to mention it.

  Wade wondered if his minister knew his wife was running around on him with an elder of the church? He decided Sam did, but in his usual manner, was playing it close to the vest.

  "How's the paper's circulation, Wade?"

  The question caught the editor off guard, startling him. He shrugged. "So, so."

  "No one stopping their advertising with you?"

  Wade's eyes narrowed slightly. "It comes and goes, Sam."

  "Sure."

  "Terrible thing about John Benton," Wade changed the subject.

  "Awful. The funeral is tomorrow."

  "I heard about Jane Ann's trouble. It's very strange."

  "I guess you heard about the sheriff hiring George Best, then?"

  "The same day? Yes. I suppose Walter had his reasons?"

  "Right—whatever they may be."

  Wade let that lie for the moment. "Is it true about Chester's kids? Did they leave home last evening?"

  "Yes. Yes, they did. Hurt their parents very badly. Wade? Why did you suddenly send your kids to summer camp in Colorado last week? Wade Jr. told me he was looking forward to working here with you this summer."

  The editor sighed heavily. "Because Miles convinced me it was the right thing to do. His kids went, too, you know."

  "He wants to see me this afternoon. In private."

  "You're not going to like what he has to say, Sam."

  "I believe I know what he's going to say, and I agree with him."

  Wade slammed his hand on his desk top, suddenly angry. His face was flushed. He rose to stalk the small office, pacing restlessly. "I'm sorry, Sam, but I just don't buy it. I've had time to think on it, and I just don't believe it."

  "Miles obviously believes it enough to go against his own religious upbringing. You believed it enough to send your kids out of town," Sam reminded him.

  "I panicked. A moment of weakness, that's all."

  "Why didn't you or Miles come to me with your suspicions? Why wait?"

  The newsman stared at the minister for a few seconds, then sat down behind his desk. "All right, Sam—all right! Enough, okay?" His face was red, a combination of anger and frustration and entrapment.

  A minute ticked by while Wade attempted to gather his thoughts. "Miles doesn't know what it is," he muttered. "And neither do I, for that matter."

  He drummed his finger tips on the desk. "Sam, Miles hasn't been to a temple or synagogue in almost thirty years. Since his bar mitzvah. He was laughing the other day; told me he didn't believe he was a Jew—just Jewish!

  "Sam, I'm going to tell you something in very blunt language, you're on the sheriffs shitlist—you know that?"

  "I know."

  "You've been snooping around behind his back."

  "I sure have, Wade."

  The editor sighed, slowly nodding his head in resigned agreement. He rubbed his eyes, then massaged his temples. "All right, Sam. Let's compare notes, okay?"

  "I guess my feeling that... something was—is—wrong started with Charlie Bell," Wade admitted. "Sam, Charlie and I go 'way back together. Grade school. Best of friends. We started playing golf back when we were— oh—freshmen in high school, out at the Club. Twenty-five years ago; little more than that, now. Then, about five-six weeks ago, he became a stranger to me. Cold. I went to him at the bank to talk about financing a new pickup. Over the past fifteen years I've financed six new cars with Charlie's bank. This time, Sam, he turned me down cold—flat. In so many words, he told me to get out of his bank and don't come back. I still haven't gotten over that."

  "And you have no idea what might have brought all this on?"

  The editor was suddenly embarrassed. "Well—Sam—yeah, I do, sort of. You see, Charlie, about a week before, had kind of suggested—well, talked around the idea of us swapping wives."

  The minister did not appear to be shocked. "Like they do out at the Club." It was a statement.

  "You and Anita still go out there?"

  "No! After I turned down Charlie's offer—well, I would walk in the Club door and conversation would stop. Anita was propositioned every time she went in there; pretty crude stuff, Sam. We resigned our membership." He was thoughtful for a moment. "As a matter of fact, so did Peter Canford, Jane Ann, Chester and Faye. That's about it, I guess."

  Sam remained silent, waiting for his friend to continue.

  "Then Art Holland pulled his advertising out of the paper. I'd been friends with Art for years—close friends: we were Frat Brothers at the university. Now he won't speak to me. Others began pulling their advertising out, gradually. Then, last week, my ads took a nose dive. Went from bad to zero."

  "Have you talked with other editors around the state?"

  "No."

  "Why?"

  "For one thing, Sam, I haven't been out of Whitfield in a month. For another, my national and state ads have been keeping me going—in a manner of speaking. For another, I guess—well, it's the reporter coming out in me." He thumped the desk with a fist, then blurted, "I want to know what in the hell is going on around here!"

  Sam told him of Paul Merlin's ordering him off his range that morning.

  "That's incredible! Paul is a good, decent man."

  Sam told him of the closing of highway 72, north and south, for a week.

  "What!?" Wade shouted.

  "The state highway department says the notice ran in this paper for weeks."

  "No way, Sam! It has not run in my paper. Closing down? Good Lord, Sam—we'd be cut off here—" The truth came staggering into his brain. "Cut off," he whispered. "Cut off!" his voice was stronger.

  "Wade, I want you to think back. Has anybody approached you to join any kind of club, or, oh, cult—that's what I'm trying to say?"

  He shook his head. "No. Some of us used to gather at various homes to discuss church business, things for the kids to do. Nondenominational meetings among parents. But we don't do that any longer. Haven't for—I guess a couple of months. You know that. My friends won't discuss anything with me; those people who used to be my friends, that is," he added sourly. He reached for the phone.

  Sam's hand shot out, grabbing his wrist, stopping him. "No!" the preacher said.

  "Sam? Have you gone crazy? Excuse me, but I want to find out what's going on around here."

  "It's too late," Sam's voice held a warning.

  Wade gave up attempting to free his wrist from Sam's viselike grip. The man was strong as a bear. He nodded, and Sam released him. Rubbing his wrist, Wade asked, "Too late for what?"

  "Do you trust me, Wade?"

  "Sure. You know that without asking. Of course, I do. Dumb question."

  "Then listen to me for a few minutes—answer a few questions, then make up your mind whether to call."

  "All right," Wade leaned back in his chair, a half-smile on his lips. "Sounds awfully sinister, preacher, but I'll listen."

  "First give me a cigarette."

  "I didn't know you smoked!"

  "I don't, very often. Come on, Wade, give me a cigarette."

  He tossed a pack of Pall Mall's on the desk. "Next thing I know my minister's going to tell me he drinks, too."

  "I had a shot of booze with Chester last evening."

  Wade rolled his eyes and grimaced. "Please spare me any more of your vices, Sam."

  "Just leave the pack where I can get at it, will you? Ready for this? Okay. Tell me everything you know about Dr. Black
Wilder and his crew."

  "That's easy. I don't know anything about them! Sam, I'm much more interested in this so-called notice that is supposed to have run in—"

  "Just bear with me a few minutes, Wade," Sam cut in. "Okay? What do you know about the Tyson Lake area?"

  "I might be able to help you there. It's been fenced off for years—as long as I can remember. It's full of caves, holes, lava pits."

  "You've seen these caves and holes and pits? Firsthand?"