My cluttered mind latched on to a conversation, half-ignored, just before I left for Columbia. Something about a fishing trip with his dipshit buddies. That place on the lake. The place with no cell reception.
Why had he picked this weekend to take a vacation?
Because his son’s gone and he’s lonely.
Shut up.
Well, I wasn’t sticking around here until Monday, waiting for that knock at the door. And I wasn’t going to take a Greyhound, so I could disappear in some bus stop restroom.
It was time to talk to the cops. I should have done that first. I’d been beaten and threatened with a weapon. They’d believe me. They’d take me seriously.
And then what? I didn’t know Dan’s real name, where he was from, or why, exactly he’d been pursuing me. They’d take my statement, then throw the report in a drawer with a dozen other assaults, burglaries, and ongoing investigations. And then, while I’m walking home, guess who I’d run into.
I had no choice. I wouldn’t leave this room until Monday. Not shower, Piss out the window if I had to.
Course, that would mean I’d never see Charlie again. The girl who told me to be a man, who tried to seduce me in a public bathroom. I’d be wimping out, just like she warned me not to.
Well, she didn’t know what I was going through. Didn’t know the scope of the trouble I was in.
Then again, neither did I. My visit to the historical society had shown I was on the right track, but revealed nothing of the greater picture.
I brushed my teeth with a swig of cold soda, remembering all the messages I’d left on the Missouri bulletin boards. I should probably take those down. Yeah.
And maybe just look to see if anyone responded.
I checked my e-mail. There was a message from Charlie, saying she’d had a good time last night. A message from Dr. Hopkins, reminding me that my story was due today. No death threats. That was a pleasant change.
Before I could check anything else, my laptop beeped. The little icon at the corner announced that ‘Triple D’ wanted to chat.
I closed down whatever sexy spambot was trying to engage me. But seconds later, it returned.
Annoyed, I opened a chat session in order to block it. But what I saw next made me freeze.
TripleD: Sherman Andrews, you may be in considerable danger. If youre there, please answer.
My hands locked over the keyboard. They’d found me again. Three times in as many days.
TripleD: Are you there? Answer me. You may be in trouble.
I should log off. I should ignore this.
ShermanA: Who the hell is this?
TripleD: A friend.
I pounded the keyboard in anger.
ShermanA: jlkjl what do you want who is this why are you trying to hurt me/
There was a long pause.
TripleD: So they’ve gotten to you already.
ShermanA: WHO IS THEY
TripleD: Certain people who want the story of rev gowen buried forever. Your in great danger. Can we meet in person?
ShermanA: Last night a stranger tried to cut my nuts off. Im not meeting you.
I yelled the words as I typed them.
TripleD: Jesus. I was hoping to talk to you before things got that bad. Im your friend. Maybe the only one who can help you.
ShermanA: Why should I believe that?
TripleD: Because you have no choice. I know why theyre after you. I know what you need to do next. Lets talk. Can you come to fulton?
Fulton was about thirty miles away.
ShermanA: I don’t have a car.
TripleD: Get there somehow. The Campbell Convention Center. Ill be at the snack bar from 5 to 8 today. Im a 39 year old guy, dark hair, 5’10.
ShermanA: I guess you expect me to come alone.
TripleD: That would be a bad idea. Try to be alone as little as possible from now on.
As I was thinking of a pithy response, TripleD logged off.
Drive out to Fulton to meet some guy who knew way more than he should have about me. Dan must have thought I was really stupid.
Of course Dan was a lot more blunt than the guy I’d chatted with. TripleD sounded desperate, like he had something at stake as well.
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to check this out.
I changed my clothes, combed my hair, and sat back down at my laptop. I then wrote a detailed article about Rev. Zeke Morely, the youth pastor from the church. I covered his hardscrabble upbringing, his mission trip to India, his work with troubled youth, and his love for sports trivia. After rereading it, I e-mailed it to Dr. Hopkins. That would hold him off for a bit. I’d be long gone from Columbia when and if they ever ran that piece and realized I’d made the whole thing up.
L.J. came grooving in around three. He was sweaty and was carrying what appeared to be an aluminum baseball bat decorated with streamers. After a second, I realized it was his Quidditch broom.
“Hey, Sherman. Um, you okay?”
“Why?”
“No reason.”
I stood and walked over to him. He took a step back. Something had been floating around the back of my head for the past couple of days, and I suddenly realized what it was.
“L.J., the other night, when those guys tried to open up my larynx.”
“Yeah?”
I took a step closer. “Why did you tell me to go to the alley?”
“Wh…”
“I just remembered. You were the one who told me not to use the bathroom. Told me to go behind the building. And suddenly I’m fighting for my life.”
He winced. “Sherman, you don’t blame that on me, do you?”
“Answer the question.” I was pleased at how cold and steady my voice sounded.
L.J. swallowed. “Look, man, it’s not like that. There’s this local woman…she, uh, turns tricks in that bathroom. It’s not a pretty sight. I just didn’t want you to walk in on it. No one pees back there, I didn’t want…I didn’t want her to think you were there on business.”
I remembered how angry the bartender had been when I identified myself as a reporter. It made sense. But I wasn’t ready to let my roommate know that I believed him.
“I’d thank you to keep your concerns to yourself. As I recall, you were the one who dragged me to that dump in the first place.”
I thought L.J. was going to cry. “Sherman, man, I’m sorry. I just wanted you to have a good time.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“C’mon!” he said, desperate. “It’s Friday. No classes tomorrow. Let’s do something, you pick. We got my car. Let me make it up to you, anything you want.”
“Well…I wouldn’t mind a drive.”
“Awesome! Where?”
“Fulton.” Jesus, will I never learn my lesson?
“Fulton? But that’s—”
“Fulton. I only need to be there one hour. You owe me big.”
He started to open his mouth, then stopped and swallowed. “Okay. But why?”
I gently but forcefully took the bat from his hand, and with a quick gesture, ripped off the crepe paper. I slowly tapped it against my open palm.
“We’re leaving in twenty minutes. Dress nice.”
Even though it was his room too, L.J. slowly backed out the door. I smiled. Maybe this paranoid psycho attitude could work for me. Or at least end the Nick at Nite marathons.
“Oh, hell no. I’m not going in there.”
We sat parked in front of the Howard W. Campbell Convention Center, a squat, ugly building outside of Fulton. Other than the nuclear power plant and the mental hospital, it was the only landmark of any size for miles.
“C’mon, L.J.”
“No. I said I’d drive you, but you didn’t say this was where we were going. I’ll wait in the car.”
I couldn’t say I blamed him. Grabbing the bat, I climbed out of his car.
“If I’m not back in an hour…”
“I’m leaving without you,” he said with a smile.
Squaring my shoulders, I headed for the building. Not wanting to stand out at a business convention, I’d dressed in a conservative sweater and slacks. When I saw the sign on the center’s marquee, I realized I’d made a tactical mistake.
MID MISSOURI SCIENCE FICTION AND COMIC BOOK CON!
FRIDAY-SUNDAY
Not only was I putting my life on the line to meet my contact, I’d have to attend a science fiction convention. This ordeal got more painful by the minute.
The conventioneers sludged past. Two men decked out in full Klingon garb. A person in a cheerleader’s uniform, who seemed just a little too tall and broad-shouldered to be a girl. A totally bald man with a live ferret on a leash. A totally bald woman with a live man on a leash. A woman in a chainmail bikini who made Charlie look like a famine victim. A far cry from the accountants or lawyers I had expected.
Bracing myself, I walked through the door. The inside of the center buzzed with a thousand voices, including some in Elvish. Dozens of tables lined every wall, each laid out with an imaginary battlefield. Plastic tanks rumbled across a paper Europe. Pewter knights crusaded over a fantasyland laid out in careful hexagons. Gigantic battle machines fought to the death on the surface of a foam and glue planet.
I leaned against the pathetic rack of pamphlets from the Calloway County Chamber of Commerce and searched the crowd. Was Dan Cooper or his partner here? Did any of these rejects look like someone who’d come at me with more than a sword made out of PVC pipe and duct tape?
My eyes fell upon suspicious character after suspicious character. The bearded man whose gut tumbled from the bottom of his XXXL T-shirt seemed to be staring in my direction. The girl in the Japanese schoolgirl outfit had dialed her cell phone right after walking past. Someone in a storm trooper suit stood uncomfortably close to me.
“These are not the droids we’re looking for,” I told him. He ignored me.
My nondescript clothes made me stand out like a tattoo on a bridesmaid. At a T-shirt stand I bought a Campus Crusade for Cthulhu shirt. I had to wait five minutes until the huckster could find something as small as a large.
The snack bar was a little kiosk set up in a spare corner of the building. Two men, a chubby black guy in a biker jacket and fur hat, and a skinny white guy in some sort of military uniform, were the only customers. No one sat at any of the tables.
The oddly dressed conventioneers took their trays and walked past me. The white guy, who had a letter ‘H’ drawn on his forehead, flipped me an elaborate salute. I flipped him the bird.
I found a table next to the wall. I laid the bat over my knee and made sure the razor was still in my pocket. It was amazing how heavily armed the Scholars’ Academy had made me.
I eyeballed everyone who passed by. This seemed like an odd location for an ambush, but they weren’t going to catch me flatfooted again. On the other hand, maybe I’d found an ally in this strange situation. Some no-nonsense hombre who knew exactly what I was up against and how I could regain my safety. I pictured one of the better James Bond actors.
“Dude, cool shirt!”
The man who’d waddled up to my table had to have been in his thirties, though somehow gave the impression of adolescence. Perhaps it was his acne or his Homer Simpson shirt. He carried a melting ice cream cone in one hand and a valise crammed to overflowing with Dungeons and Dragons sheets in the other. Some sort of food residue lingered in his beard, down his shirt, and over his sweatpants. He was gawking at my shirt.
I gritted my teeth. So much for the secret agent theory.
“Thanks.” I waited for him to introduce himself. Instead he stood there and gaped at me.
“Cthulhu,” he read from my shirt. “That’s H.P. Lovecraft, right?”
“Right.”
“You ever see Bride of Reanimator? That’s based on one of his books.” The ice cream melted down his arm.
“No.” I was beginning to doubt this was my man, and didn’t wish to have a protracted conversation.
“It rocked. I saw it at Copacabana-Con last year.”
“Really.” Is that what you were doing while you weren’t getting laid?
“Yeah.” He gulped the top off his cone. “Didja see Dead Alive? That’s like a Lovecraft story.”
“Does the name Louis Roebuck mean anything to you? Or David Gowen?”
With the hand that held his cone, he leisurely dug something out of his navel. “No. What were they in?”
In my nightmares, that’s what. I had to get rid this cheeseball.
“If you don’t mind, I’m expecting someone.”
He sniffled, snorted, and then sneezed. I felt moisture hit my cheek. “It’s cool. Klatuu Verata Niktu!” He jiggled away.
When the nuclear bombs fall, we eat him first.
“Mr. Andrews?”
I hadn’t noticed the man on my other side until he spoke. Though he didn’t fit my young Sean Connery image any more than the first guy, I somehow felt more comfortable.
He was early middle age. He had rather babyish features, chubby cheeks and an almost button nose. His dark hair ended in the ‘M’ shape that indicated a losing battle with male pattern baldness. He was dressed, I was happy to see, in a work shirt and jeans that seemed a little baggy. He wore cheap sunglasses with scratched lenses.
“That’s me,” I answered, warily.
The stranger sat down. I blatantly scooted out of arm’s length. He seemed to be sizing me up. Of course, with the sunglasses he may have actually been sizing up the guy in the SpongeBob Squarepants costume two tables back. Finally, he spoke again.
“You’re younger than I expected.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be asking to meet teenage boys over the internet, Mister…”
“Call me John Doe.”
This was too much. “I can’t do that.”
“Then call me Denton Dubbs.”
“Why Denton Dubbs?”
“Because that’s my name.” He removed his glasses. “I’m sorry, I’m no good at this cloak and dagger routine.”
Though I would never admit to noticing another man’s eyes, his held me for a few seconds. They were pale blue, almost childlike. There were no worries in those eyes, no stress, no deception. He would have gone far in a sales career.
We sat in silence for a moment. “Mr. Andrews,” he began in a conversational tone, “you look terrible. And in this crowd that’s saying a lot.”
“I’ve had a rough couple of days.”
“So you mentioned. Did someone really try to castrate you?”
I shrugged. “He held a knife to my crotch. I don’t know if he would have used it.”
Denton looked over at SpongeBob, who was attempting to fold himself into a chair. “He would have.”
“Come again?”
Denton’s soft eyes took on a pitying look, like someone telling a coworker the boss was pissed at them. “He might not have stopped there, either.”
I suddenly felt hideously exhausted. I wanted to sleep. There was a hotel across from the center. I had a strong desire to check in there for a week, turn off the lights, and pretend the outside world didn’t exist.
“Denton, what’s going on? I’m just a high school student, why are people trying to hurt me?”
“Why don’t you tell me what you know already?”
“Honestly? Because I don’t trust you. I don’t like how you know my name, how you know what’s been happening to me.” I absentmindedly stroked the razor in my pocket.
Denton smiled. He had good teeth and a slight overbite. “All right, Mr. Andrews. Stop me if you’ve heard this one. In 1935, four men met in central Missouri. Samuel Hollerback, Louis Roebuck, Herbert Knowles, and David Gowen. Sound familiar?”
I pulled out the photo, now dog-eared and battered from my constant possession. Denton looked at it, and turned it over. “Do you know what these dates mean?”
“Tell me,” I replied, almost mockingly.
“They’re the dates Mr. Knowles died in a house fire, Mr. Hol
lerback was killed in a bar fight…”
“And Mr. Roebuck disappeared,” I finished. “Wait a minute, Hollerback was killed too?”
“San Francisco. The authorities said it was a bar brawl.” He chuckled, as if he’d said something utterly absurd.
“Any idea what really happened to Roebuck?”
He shook his head. “No, but a shallow grave would be a pretty good guess. No loose ends, and back then it was a lot harder to identify a body.”
I took back the picture. “So would you mind telling me exactly what the hell is going on? The history lesson is fascinating, but let’s get back to the guys who are trying to kill me.”
Denton stood up. “Walk with me, Andrews. This might take a while.”
– Chapter Nine –
On a concrete lot behind the convention center, a small crowd had gathered. A piece of plywood, about two yards square, balanced on top of some milk crates. Two remote control machines tried to knock each other off the edge, to the delight of the spectators. One of the contestants, a dude with scraggly long hair, trash talked his opponent, a boy of about ten.
Denton and I sat at a concrete table a few yards away. He had replaced his sunglasses, and the late afternoon glowed off the reflective lenses.
“Two years ago I worked for a real estate company. My job was to check out available property, see if it was worth buying or renting. One day they sent me out to La Plata to look over this rental house.”
“That’s up north, right? By Kirksville?”
“Right. Anyway, the family had bugged off one night, and the place was a wreck. I was supposed to supervise getting rid of their junk and cleaning the place up.
Everyone Dies in the End Page 8
