Columbia, Missouri, November 16th, 1935—By 1950, the room that held Professor Roebuck’s office would become a storeroom, a place where all the unwanted documents of the Sociology Building went to languish. As it was, there was hardly enough room for the four men. The professor sat in the moth-eaten chair behind his desk, almost obscured by the books, exams, and papers in front of him. Sgt. Knowles leaned on the window ledge to the left of the professor. Behind him, students crossed St. Francis Quadrangle, bundled against the cold autumn afternoon. Across from Roebuck, Rev. Gowen sat awkwardly on a stool, crowned by a hunting trophy hung just above his head. The deer’s horns gave the reverend a cuckold appearance.
Sammy was the only one who was not sitting. Though there was barely three feet of clear floor space, the young hobo managed to pace. Since entering the office he had not stopped smoking, dropping ashes on the professor’s already crusty carpet.
“So then I covered the body back up, locked the door, and high-tailed it to Columbia.”
Knowles took Sammy by the shoulder and gently forced him down onto a small table. “It would seem,” said the sergeant, lighting a pipe, “that we have a murder on our hands.”
“I vote for calling in the police,” said the minister. “We finally have some proof.”
“What proof?” asked Prof. Roebuck. “Saberhagen is obviously well-connected, wealthy, and powerful. Do you think the police will knock down his door, based on Sammy’s testimony? No offence.”
For the first time in two days, Sammy smiled.
“So should we go back to snooping?” asked Knowles, belching a cloud of dense smoke into the unventilated office. “This is the only break we’ve had so far. The Synod, or whatever they are, ain’t going to leave that body in the basement forever.”
Roebuck shifted his considerable weight, then moved some books so he could lean on his desk. “There is another option. But it’s risky. And by risky, I mean we could get shot.”
“I thought we could’ve got shot before,” said Sammy.
“I talked to a friend of mine in the law school,” continued the professor. “According to Missouri law, we can legally enter the Synod’s headquarters and make a citizen’s arrest, provided we feel that a significant crime has been committed. We can sort of deputize ourselves in order to prevent more violence. Of course, if we don’t discover any evidence, we could find ourselves in legal trouble.”
The three other men pondered this. Knowles eventually spoke.
“And Saberhagen and his gang could shoot us as trespassers, right?”
Roebuck shrugged. “We’d be in the legal right, but I guess at that point it wouldn’t matter.”
“I don’t like it,” the reverend said flatly. “I still say let the police handle it.”
Knowles shook his head. “What Louis says makes sense. The police would have to serve a warrant, knock on the door, give everyone plenty of time to cover up. And since Saberhagen’s rich, I doubt the cops would yank open a lot of closets.”
Knowles paused, thinking. “There were a couple of times during the war…if you can really surprise the enemy, numbers don’t mean much. We’d have to tear in there like a bunch of wild Comanches, not give anyone any time to think. If we see anything, then you two,” he pointed to Roebuck and Gowen, “could convince the cops to raid the place.”
Roebuck reached into his desk and pulled out a new Brownie camera. “And a picture is worth a thousand words. I say we do it.” His enthusiastic grin gave him the confident air of someone much younger and thinner.
“Same here,” said Knowles.
Sammy nodded with enthusiasm. Gowen shrugged, and sighed resignedly.
“All for one, I guess. So when should we do this?”
Sammy spoke again. “Is today Monday? There’s not a lot of action at the headquarters at the beginning of the week. We could go tomorrow evening, I bet there won’t be a lot of folks there.”
“Then let’s meet here tomorrow at noon,” said the professor. “In the meantime, could I tempt you fellows with some lunch?”
As the four men headed out of the Sociology Building, Roebuck paused.
“That camera’s borrowed. I want to make sure it works. Hang on.”
In two minutes, Roebuck returned with both the camera and a graduate student. The four men sat on the back steps of the Sociology Building and had their picture taken.
Charlie dropped me off at Mark Twain. I kissed her, and attempted to continue to do so.
“Come back to my dorm for a while.”
She playfully, yet forcefully, pushed me away. “I’m late for work and my parents are probably climbing the walls. Besides, you have work to do.”
Ah, my war with the undead. Not very conductive to a budding romance.
“Sherman, I’m going to do some more digging about our friend. There are old archives at the library, stuff that might have info you’ve missed. I’ll call you later. You go back and ask about your friend, Steph. Use your press pass. Find out why she might have been targeted.”
The mention of Steph’s name killed my amorous thoughts. Charlie squeezed my knee. “We’ll compare notes later. Right now, you take care of yourself, okay? You have one or two good qualities, and I’d hate to have wasted all this time on you.” We hugged, and I left the car.
I could see the smokestacks from the power plant. Just a block away. That’s where Steph had died. Had she been taken there? Was she hanging around there for a reason? The rage that had consumed me earlier was back. I felt guilty for having fun with Charlie…kind of.
Inside the building, someone had already set up a gaudy memorial to Steph, consisting of a badly cropped photo and lots of plastic flowers. I lowered my head and walked upstairs.
L.J. was gone. I took a quick shower and a half-hour nap. I had no interesting e-mails, though I probably should have been curious about the eight unread messages from Dr. Hopkins. I knew that I’d blown any chance to schmooze scholarship money from him, but that wasn’t important right now.
None of the local newspapers had any new information about Steph’s murder. I choked up a little when I read her little biography, and had to shut down my computer before I could read about her parents’ reaction. I stood up and finished dressing. Armed with my necktie and press pass, I prepared to show the world that Saberhagen was a murderer. According to the Columbia website, the police station was within walking distance. I took off, determined not to leave without an interview. And to maybe plant the name ‘Saberhagen’ in a few official ears.
My phone rang. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Charlie. “Hello?”
“Mr. Andrews?” came a familiar, rasping voice. “I…” the speaker dissolved into a fit of coughing.
“Denton? Is that you?”
There was the sound of someone spitting up a large wad of phlegm. “Andrews? I’m in town. Where can we meet?”
L.J. had mentioned that Shakespeare’s Pizza was a popular meeting place, and near campus. Standing in the shadows of the Lutheran Student Center (which obviously used to be a Wendy’s), I hung around until I was reasonably sure no one was lying in wait for me.
Too early for the dinner crowd, the restaurant was a chaotic hot box of old agricultural ads, Mizzou Tigers posters, and classic pinball machines. A vintage Harley Davidson motorcycle stood bolted to the top of the condiment station with a sign that read “Free, with purchase of 10,000 large pizzas.”
The only customers were a group of teenagers clustered around a circular table, rolling a twenty-sided die and arguing about armor class. I found Denton sitting at the bar, drinking a beer through a straw and flirting with the bartender. His hard plastic neck brace had been replaced with a soft collar, and he wore a V-neck sweater and jeans. He still had no belt and his BVDs peeked over his pants line.
“So how long until you graduate?” asked Denton, his voice phlegmy and forced.
“Well, I’m still here for two, maybe three semesters,” said the bartender, a petite brunette in a Chi Alpha cap. “Then, I dunno. Maybe get my MBA.”
“Ah, Amy, it’s not every day you meet a woman with brains and beauty. I’m surprised no man has snatched you up.”
A line like that would have gotten a drink thrown in most guys’ faces, but Amy just giggled and snapped Denton with her bar rag. I had to interrupt this spectacle.
“Denton?”
He turned quickly and immediately winced. “Hello, Mr. Andrews.” Unable to look down, he picked up his beer on the second try. “Grab a drink. I’ll get us a table.”
I ordered a Coke and joined my unhinged associate in a booth.
“For shame, Denton. She’s young enough to be your daughter.”
“Ah, but she’s not, is she? Give an old man a break, I’m not free to keep company with the young ladies like I used to.”
It was somewhat irritating that a middle-aged mental patient was more at ease with girls than I’d ever been. “Speaking of freedom, did you get another pass? I didn’t think you were allowed to leave the county.”
“Nah. They released me.” He tried to sip his beer and nearly stabbed himself in the eye with the straw.
“Released? I thought you were being held forcibly.”
“They play dirty, I play dirty. I told them if I wasn’t out by today, you’d tell the press about all the horrible things that happen in the hospital. The drug abuse, the beatings, the sodomy, the electroshock torture…”
“Jesus Christ!” I thought of kindly Dr. Garcia and overprotective Martin. “That really goes on?”
“No. But there’s been cops sniffing around since I was attacked. I think Garcia is afraid of more bad publicity. I’m staying at a halfway house on Cherry Street now.”
“Denton, you never fail to amaze me. But get this.” I glanced over my shoulder, but Amy the bartender was busy washing glasses. “Saberhagen tried to trade my soul for immortality. And Rev. Gowen is still alive!”
It took about twenty minutes to update Denton, from the attack in the cemetery, the murder on campus, the visit to St. Louis, and Saberhagen’s proffered bargain. Denton listened so raptly I feared he was actually staring at Amy over my shoulder. When I finished, he toyed with a cheese shaker.
“May I ask a rhetorical question, Mr. Andrews?”
“Sure.”
“Thank you.”
We stared at each other for a moment.
“So what now, Denton?”
“You could get something to eat. I’m still on a liquid diet, but if you’re hungry…”
“You know what I mean.”
Denton fixed me with his innocent eyes and smiled. Reaching up, he removed the collar, exposing a neck mottled with blue and purple bruises. Without moving his head, he began to scratch.
“Mr. Andrews, I don’t know. Quite frankly, I wish you hadn’t told me.”
“What the hell? You were the one who got me into this mess. You wanted me to prove that you weren’t nuts.” Which, I wasn’t entirely sure had been proven.
“Perhaps,” he replied. He sounded almost bored, as if I were rehashing a problem that he’d stopped caring about years ago. “But it was a lot easier when I was crazy. Think back to when you were five years old. It’s one thing to believe in Santa Claus. It’s another thing to have a strange bearded man come down your chimney at night. But let’s get back to the problem at hand.” With a look of regret, he replaced the neck brace. “Do you have any ideas?”
I didn’t like that he was dumping this on me all of a sudden. “I’m going to ask around at the police station, see if I can link Saberhagen to…the murder.” I found I couldn’t say Steph’s name.
Denton twisted his torso. It took me a moment to realize he was shaking his head. “You can try, but Saberhagen’s been at this for hundreds of years. His hands will be clean, even if he killed that girl himself. Which he undoubtedly did.” He lapsed into thought. “We need to do something nasty. Something so brutal, so decimating that he’d never see it coming. Never…”
Denton’s face broke into a somewhat disturbing grin. His bloodshot eye seemed to glow. “Mr. Andrews, have you ever been forced to fill out a Missouri 27B-6 form, authorizing the inspection and removal of lead paint, pipes, asbestos, and Freon-based appliances?”
“Now who’s asking rhetorical questions?”
His grin widened. A lone tear oozed out of his bad eye. “I used to have to fill them out all the time when I worked in real estate. Perhaps that’s why I went mad.”
As he dabbed at his eye with a napkin, I tried to think of a polite way to phrase my next question. Then I decided to just be blunt.
“Denton, what—and I mean this both in specific reference to our current conversation, and generally applied to everything you’ve ever said to me—the hell are you talking about?”
“You say Saberhagen is running some kind of business out of an office building, right?”
“Yeah…”
“And that the Synod owns some scrap yard here in town?”
“Go on.”
“Saberhagen has been out of the loop since the mid-sixties, when everything was still done with a handshake and a man’s word. He has no idea the scope of today’s bureaucracy. Andrews, what do you suppose would happen if we sicked the IRS on him?”
This was going nowhere. “We’re talking about the physical embodiment of evil!”
“Versus Saberhagen.” Denton grinned. “This is someone who can only operate from the shadows. Once people start to get wind of what he really is, he vanishes. Well, what would happen if the taxman showed up at his door, asking him all kinds of questions about where he was born and the source of his income? What if the EPA barged in, demanding he clean up all the battery acid that’s draining into the water table under his junkyard? What if someone hit him with a class action lawsuit about his violations of the OSHA rules?”
I wanted a beer. “That’s your plan, Denton? Annoy Saberhagen back through the gates of hell?”
“They got Capone on income taxes. Trust me, I worked the system for years. If we bring Saberhagen to the attention of the right people, he’ll have too many eyes on him to accomplish anything. What time is it, about three? Maybe I’ll take a stroll over to the courthouse. See what I can find out about his office building. Maybe lodge a noise complaint, get the ball rolling.”
The sad thing was, I couldn’t think of a better use of his time. “Well, I’m going to swing by the police station.”
Denton awkwardly stood. “I think we’re headed in the same direction. Give me a moment, I’ll meet you in the parking lot.” Before I could object, he stood up and passed through the men’s room door, under the huge bell ominously labeled DID NOT WASH HANDS.
I slipped outside, wondering if I should leave without him. He was knowledgeable, yet very unstable, which wasn’t comforting.
“Hey, Chuckles. Got a light?”
Dan Cooper had been leaning against the wall of the adjoining Missouri Theater and I’d nearly walked by him without noticing. He wore workman’s coveralls and had an unlit cigarette dangling out of his mouth. Someone had been giving him a rough time; his lip was split and there was caked blood in his misshapen nostrils.
The last time we’d met, Dan had threatened to castrate me, so I felt it prudent not to allow him to press the advantage. Grabbing him by the shoulders, I slammed him bodily against the brick building.
Dan grinned and the fight drained out of me. That was not the smile of someone about to have his brains dashed out. It was the smug look of someone who held all the cards.
Slowly, so as not to invite a sock to the jaw, Dan reached into his breast pocket and handed me a folded piece of paper.
“Mr. S sends his regards, Sherman.”
There was no note on the paper, no strange powder, no small pile of diamonds. Just a lock of hair. Kinky red hair.
Dan lit his cigarette with infuriating deliberation. “Feel like a drive? C’mon.”
He didn’t even need to force me. The crippling fear and guilt frog-marched me towards a septic-green four-door pickup. I didn’t see Denton anywhere.
Dan held the rear door open for me before climbing in after. Insultingly, the automatic locks did not snap shut when he closed the door.
I could not see the face of the woman who was driving, only her bushy brown hair. Without a word she pulled the truck out onto Elm Street, then over to Ninth.
“Where’s Charlie? What did you do to her?” I meant for the question to come out as brutal interrogation, not meek supplication.
Dan produced a handkerchief and ejected a huge wad of bloody snot out of his nose.
“She’s fine, Andrews. And provided you don’t play the hero, she’ll stay that way.”
“You didn’t hurt her?”
We had stopped at the intersection of Ninth and Broadway. The driver spoke for the first time. “He didn’t say that, did he?”
Dan shrugged at my look of raw hate. “I maybe had to take the wind out of her. She wouldn’t go quietly.”
The driver glanced sideways, revealing a gauze pad taped over her eye and several deep fingernail slashes across her hatchet face. “The fat bitch nearly tore my eye out. She’s lucky I didn’t cut out her smart tongue.”
“You hush up, Wanda June,” said Dan in a mock Southern accent. He turned to me. “She’ll be fine,” he said, almost sympathetically. “She’s just an insurance policy.”
I would’ve have gotten down on my knees if we weren’t in the truck. I would have submitted to torture. Charlie was at the mercy of Saberhagen, thanks to me. My mind refused to turn off the slide show of Charlie’s brutal kidnapping, rape and murder.
“Dan, I’ll do anything to save her.”
He tossed his sodden handkerchief to the floor. “Yes, you will. You can start by giving me your phone.”
Meekly, I passed it over. He opened the sliding rear window and tossed it into the truck bed. He then extracted a toolbox from behind the seat. From within Dan removed a stoppered bottle and syringe. He rolled up my sleeve, not even considering I might resist. “This will put you out for a couple of hours.”
I barely felt the prick. I braced myself, but nothing happened. It seemed self-defeating to call attention to the fact.
Dan seemed to read my mind. “You watch too many movies. Give it a second…there you go.”
His head seemed to swell like some misshapen carbuncle. He leaned in, his bruised face swimming before my blurring vision.
“Sleep, Andrews. Things are about to get interesting.”