by Jim Laughter
Keller thought about Morris visiting his daughter in Richmond. Their relationship had been strained the last few years since the divorce of Morris and her mother. Keller hoped they’d been able to patch things up between them.
The case that had confused her and Morris for so long now seemed to have new life. She accredited it to George Benjamin. He had sparked something in Morris that she’d never seen before. She was sure new avenues of investigation would soon open up and they’d find themselves on the trail of the interstate serial killer.
The phone on her bedside night stand rang. She picked it up and read the caller ID screen.
“Damn!” she muttered. “What the hell does he want on a Sunday morning?”
The information on the screen said the caller was Duncan Morris calling from his cell phone.
“Dunc, why are you calling me this early on Sunday morning?”
“Get your ass up out’ta bed, Keller,” Morris said without saying hello or anything else to apologize for calling her at home on her day off.
“Screw you, Duncan! I’m staying right here in my bed until Dixon gets home from the golf course.”
“No you’re not either. I found a lead in the case. I need you here.”
“A lead? What kind of lead? And where the hell are you?”
“Just get up out’ta that bed and drag your ass to the office. I ain’t got time to explain it over the phone.”
“But Dunc...”
“Call the kid and get his ass in here too.”
“You’re at the office? What the hell are you doing at the office on Sunday? I thought you were visiting your daughter in Virginia.”
“Just get in here, Keller,” Morris ordered. “We’ve got a live one!”
Keller and Benjamin arrived at the FBI headquarters building at the same time, meeting on the front steps. Keller was dressed in simple slacks and a pullover sweater. Benjamin wore dress pants, long-sleeve button down shirt, sports coat, and highly polished wing-tip shoes. It was apparent that he’d just gotten dressed for church.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on, ma’am?” Benjamin asked.
“Not a clue, George,” Keller answered. “And would you please stop calling me ma’am? It makes me feel old.”
“Sorry, ma’am. I mean...”
“Just call me Lynn or Keller. Either will do.”
“No ma’am, I can’t do that. Sorry.”
“Why not? We’re partners now.”
“I wasn’t raised that way, ma’am.”
“If it’s a racial thing, George, don’t even consider it.”
“Race has nothing to do with it, ma’am,” Benjamin answered. “I was taught from early childhood to respect my elders, regardless of race. It’s just the way I am. Sorry, ma’am.”
Keller knew she wasn’t going to persuade Benjamin to call her by her first name. “Then how about a compromise, George?”
“Compromise, ma’am?”
“Since you won’t call me Lynn, and I sure as hell don’t want you to call me Mrs. Keller, how about you call me LK?”
“LK, ma’am?”
“Just LK. Leave off the ma’am. It’s what my brothers and sisters call me.”
Benjamin considered the compromise a fair one and workable for him. “How about Special Agent Morris? What should I call him?”
“You can call that old bastard anything but late for supper for all he cares,” Lynn answered. Benjamin laughed. Keller really did say what was on her mind.
“He sure calls me anything he wants to,” Benjamin said. “Anything but my name, that is.”
“Don’t let that concern you, George. He likes you. He really does.”
“Really?”
“Hell yeah. You’ve impressed the hell out of him. I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if he didn’t try to adopt you.”
“Or buy me,” Benjamin countered. Both agents laughed as they climbed the steps to the headquarters building together. Benjamin held the door open for Keller and they entered the lobby.
Carl Stanza had already gone home for the day. Trevor Smith, the daytime security guard, sat at the reception desk. He looked up and saw the two agents. “I’m sure glad you two are finally here,” he said, reaching for the button that released the lock on the hallway door to the elevators. “Morris has been calling every five minutes wanting to know if you’d arrived yet.”
“What time did he get here this morning?” Keller asked.
“Get here?” Smith answered. “He didn’t get here. Carl said he’s been here all weekend. Said he showed up here just after midnight Friday.”
“What?”
“I haven’t been up there, but Carl said he’s been upstairs tearing hell out’ta the place and that everything’s a wreck, and that he wouldn’t come out of the office except to go to the restroom,” Smith said. “He had Carl call out for pizza once, but that’s it.”
“My Lord!” Keller said. “Damned old fool has finally cracked.”
The scene that greeted them when they exited the elevator caused both of them to stop and stare at Morris. “My God in heaven!” Keller exclaimed when she saw Morris.
Morris sat in the middle of the office floor surrounded by case files and hundreds of sheets of paper printed from the bureau printers. A half dozen computer terminals were running, each with a different image on their screen. Keller recognized a few of the images as database searches from around the country, and at different levels of law enforcement. One or two of them were from local sheriff’s offices from as far away as New Mexico.
More noticeable than the myriad of files and paper, and the mess that Morris had made of the office, was the incredible stench emanating from the room, and the disheveled appearance of Duncan Morris. His jacket and shoes were missing, and he wore only his pants and shirt—both of which were a wrinkled and stained mess. Coffee stains, and God only knew what else, spilled down over the front of his shirt and pant legs. An open pizza box lay on the floor with a half-eaten pizza still in it.
Keller and Benjamin examined Morris who paid no attention to them at all. He was concentrating on a sheet of paper he held in his hand.
“Duncan?” Keller asked, the concern in her voice masking the irritation she felt for being pulled from her nice warm bed.
Morris raised his eyes to meet hers. They were glazed.
“You look terrible.”
Morris didn’t answer. He just stared at her.
“And you smell like a damn distillery. Have you been drinking?”
“Who gives a shit if I’ve been drinkin’?” Morris retorted, sober now but weary from the many hours he’d spent digging through file folders and computers. His eyes and head hurt and he felt just a bit dizzy.
“I’ve been here workin’ for two days while you’ve been home screwin’ your old man.”
Keller reached down and grabbed Morris by his right arm and tried to lift the large man to his feet. Benjamin took his other arm and together they led Morris to a chair and sat him in it.
“Now, what the hell is going on here?”
“I found the missin’ link,” Morris said. His voice was weak from exertion. “One of ‘em anyhow.”
“One of what, sir?” Benjamin asked.
“One of those three missin’ victims on your list of names.”
He still wasn’t completely coherent.
“I found one of ‘em, and I’m damn close to findin’ the other two.”
“My God, you stink!” Keller said. “And this office is a disaster.”
“Screw that!” Morris answered. “Didn’t you just hear me say I found one of the missin’ victims?”
He waved the sheet of paper at her that he held in his hand.
Keller took the sheet from Morris and examined it. It was a report from a local police station in Tennessee detailing the hospitalization of a burn victim found on the emergency room doorstep. Keller handed the sheet to Benjamin.
“This is it?” Keller asked Morris. “You called us
in here on a Sunday morning for this?”
“Damn right for this!” Morris answered, grabbing the sheet back away from Benjamin.
Keller shook her head.
“Damn drunk!”
She turned as if to leave the two men and go home.
Benjamin lifted the police report out of Morris’ hand and skimmed through it.
“This could be a good lead, LK.”
“You’re damn right it’s a good lead,” Morris grumbled. “And you damn well better take a closer look at that report.”
He looked up at Benjamin. “Who the hell is LK?”
Keller and Benjamin read down through the report. This wasn’t a report about the death of a victim. This report clearly stated that Mr. John Dupont, a newspaper reporter from Murfreesboro, Tennessee was alive and being treated at the Vanderbilt Medical Center Intensive Burn Care Center in Nashville, Tennessee, a victim of having been boiled alive in oil during the second week of July.
Chapter Fourteen
The overhead projection system flashed images of forests, wheat fields, streams, mountains, deserts and other outdoor scenes of nature while music, if that’s what you wanted to call it, forced its way into Preach’s ears. He sat on the front row of interlocking chairs at the All Faith Worship Center, the church his son had pastored in Denver for almost twelve years.
People of every description stood around the sanctuary talking and shaking hands. Everybody looked alike. It was impossible to distinguish between saint and sinner. If this were my church, I’d have these people down on their knees repenting of their sins instead of walking around trying to sell Amway or Girl Scout cookies. He scrutinized the people that called his son pastor. No discipline. I know I taught the boy better than this.
Preach thought back on his early years when he’d first started his ministry. He’d only been fifteen years old when he experienced the call of God on his life. He knew at that early age that God had something special for him to do. There was a stir down deep in his soul that assured him the end of time was near. He just knew that if this generation were going to be saved, it was going to take men dedicated to the cause of eternity to bring about the kingdom of God. He had no idea at that time that his eventual calling would include a mission of great apostolic importance.
He remembered one time when Simon was a young man asking him how he knew he was called to preach. He knew Simon was feeling the same calling. At least he hoped he was feeling the calling from God, not just a vocational prompting because his dad was a preacher. He’d seen that a number of times too, with the sons of prominent men that pastored large congregations, their sons waiting in the wings to step into their father’s shoes once he died or retired, not having to pay the dues of sacrifice required by the Lord. Mama called and Papa sent, he called them. He looked around the large sanctuary again. At least the boy built this church himself.
But the question still remained. How did he know he was called by God to minister? Was it a feeling? No, that’s not it. A burning desire or need? Not exactly.
Preach reasoned that he knew he was called to preach because he didn’t see any other option; he just knew it. It was more than a feeling or desire. He gravitated toward ministers when they’d come to his hometown. He’d emulate them and try to be like them, walk like them, talk like them, dress like them, comb his hair like them. When he’d hear powerful sermons that moved the hearts of men, he’d feel just the slightest twinge of envy because he wanted to be the one delivering the word instead of listening to it.
He knew his day would come and he was determined to be ready to hear the voice of God. He’d take careful notes of great sermon texts then go to the woods near his home and preach the same sermon to the trees, building up a fervency that if the trees had souls, they too would be saved.
The other kids in his school called him a religious nut because he spent all of his time reading the Bible, praying, or going to church. He’d drive or walk for miles to attend a revival service, tent or brush arbor meeting. It was the kids in his school that tagged him with his nickname–Preach. They’d done it as an insult but he accepted it as an identifier. Somehow, it defined him. He knew it was what he was, a preacher. There was just no way around it.
And he loved camp meeting—an annual gathering of saints and ministers from around the state that joined together for a whole week of worship–a never-ending 24/7 time of basking in the presence and glory of God.
Anointed men of God preached powerful sermons that stirred men’s souls, bringing them to the brink of eternity before pulling them back crying and repenting into the family of salvation. They’d lay hands on people and cast out demons that would lash out and scream, running into the night on their way to eternal hell.
It wasn’t like these fake television preachers today who go on the air and spend twenty minutes of a one-hour show begging for money so they can fly around the world in their private jets; or who pray for the sick and the people are required to fall down. A courtesy fall he called it, somehow giving credence to the power of the preacher. Back then preachers had the real power of God, not just hype, bright lights, manicured finger nails, and two-hundred dollar salon haircuts.
It was at his first camp meeting that the power of God had overwhelmed Preach and he’d been filled with the Spirit of God. The power had so engulfed him that he’d been entranced in its presence, speaking in a language that he didn’t understand. It was the same baptism of fire poured out on the original disciples in the second chapter of Acts on the day of Pentecost fifty days after Passover, not this modern day patty-cake-for-Jesus just-love-the-Lord watered-down, weak-kneed, accept the Lord as your personal savior foolishness his son and others like him were preaching today.
What happened to the power of conversion–repentance and tears, all night prayer meetings with people languishing in the throes of eternity while the fires of hell licked at their feet? Now all people had to do was make a public confession of faith and say they believed in the Lord.
Even baptism isn’t required any more. How can you tell if someone has been converted if you don’t baptize them? Weak! Just plain weak!
Preach remembered preaching his first sermon when he was 17-years-old. It was in a small wood-framed country church not too far from his hometown. The old pastor had been at that church for fifty years. He remembered that he had sixteen pages of notes and finished the whole sermon in eight minutes flat. He was so nervous.
The church had a dozen little old ladies in their ankle-length dresses and 9-eyelet button-up high-top shoes. Their hair was long and rolled into tight buns on top of their heads—not chopped off at the neckline. They weren’t painted with makeup and nail polish, and their ears and fingers weren’t heavy-laden with jewelry like this bunch of hussies walking around here today.
The men were farmers who’d come to church in their overalls, long-sleeve shirts, and work boots. They were hard working, clean-shaven men who tilled the soil and created something from nothing.
They were men who knew how to live by a holiness standard of separation, not like this bunch of internet cell phone junkies walking around the house of God today in shorts and tee-shirts with their faces covered with beards and mustaches and those nasty little goatees. The one he hated the most was that little patch of hair on their chins, some with their heads shaven clean like the skin-headed neo-Nazis he’d seen in New York, and others with hair that fell down over their shoulders like the perverted homosexuals in San Francisco.
And this music! Dear God, the music! Where was “I’ll Fly Away” and “Amazing Grace?” Didn’t anyone know the words to “Heaven’s Jubilee” or “Everybody Will Be Happy Over There?” Real gospel music! Not this sanitized, homogenized, canned contemporary genetic feel-good racket.
And songbooks? Where are the songbooks? Now the words to the songs are flashed on an overhead projector. People don’t even have to hold their own songbook, or come to think of it, even their Bibles anymore. All they need now is that little bounci
ng ball so these people don’t have to put out any effort at all.
Preached looked up just in time to see Stacy, the waitress who had served them at the Family Diner yesterday, walk to his son and hug him. She whispered something and they both laughed.
Physical contact like that would have been forbidden when he was pastoring, especially with a child. The man of God must stay separate from his flock. He can’t afford to be friends with them. After all, he would answer for their souls on judgment day. How can you judge your people if you’re friends with them?
Preached looked his son up and down, a sour taste filling his mouth. Look at the way the boy is dressed. Blue jeans and untucked open collar shirt without a tie. Cowboy boots, for cryin’ out loud! The boy looks like a goat roper.
Whatever happened to men of God that dressed in a suit and tie? Men that looked like preachers? Why does the boy think he has to blend in with the sinners? Does he really think he’ll win them to the Lord by becoming like them? Preach sighed. It’s the end of an era.
A large bank of multi-colored lights came on over the stage and the music changed to a tune he didn’t recognize. The praise team walked out onto the stage, each one holding a cordless microphone. Preach watched while people began to sway back and forth to the easy music. Mumbled prayers and almost inaudible expressions of “thank you Jesus” filled the air.
Preach took in this scene of modern day Christianity and knew the mission the Lord had embarked him on would somehow help restore true worship and discipline in the church. He didn’t fully understand it, but he knew that if he failed, the old ways would die with him.
Chapter Fifteen
“We’ve got to get to Nashville,” Morris said.
“Nashville?” Keller asked.
“To see this John Dupont. We’ve got to talk to this guy.”
Keller pushed a pile of papers off of her desk chair and sat down. She was already pissed that Morris had pulled her out of her nice warm bed, and now the old fool wanted to take off across country to see a man that may or may not be a victim of the interstate serial killer. She just stared at Morris but didn’t say anything.
