Chapter 12
I saw Dustin again the next morning on my way to my office. He was pushing his cart down the sidewalk on the east side of south Broadway. He was headed south toward the park that runs along the edge of the creek. I pulled into the parking lot of a big hotel and walked down to the trail beside the creek. After a couple of minutes, Dustin came along pushing his cart.
He grinned when he saw me.
“Hello, Good Angel. I got a word for you.” He said seriously. “I know its name.”
Was he referring to the “bad angel”?
“Hello, Dustin. How are you?”
He raised his eyebrows at me.
Oh yeah, I remembered, “he done told me”.
“What name is that?”
He handed me his bible.
“It’s written in the Word,” he said.
Uh oh. There is a lot written in the Word.
He saw the look on my face, and laughed. “You got to open it to read it. You stupid- for a good angel.”
His bible was full of all sorts of page markers. He had leaves, feathers, scraps of paper, bits of string, even a ten dollar bill, stuck here and there, all through it. I didn’t have a clue where to start.
My phone rang. It was Christine, so I answered it.
“I’m waiting in the parking lot. Are you coming to open the office?”
“Yes, sorry, I’m on my way.” I hung up.
Dustin was studying me.
“Dustin, I’m sorry, I have to go. I don’t have time to read everything in your bible.”
“Then you gots to read this,” he said. He pulled a scrap of paper out of his bible and handed it to me. I looked at it. The only thing written on it was GEN 416.
Was this a reference to Genesis, chapter four and verse sixteen?
I looked at Dustin.
He smiled and nodded.
“Word,” he said, and he walked away, pushing his cart.
When I parked at the office, Christine was standing under the green and white striped awning at the entrance. Today, she was wearing a teal colored t-shirt with fancy embroidery on the front. The t-shirt was tucked into her tan jeans and she had a belt festooned with sparkling crystals. Her teal colored tennis shoes had embroidery on them as well. Her flaming red hair blazed in the sunlight, with copper and golden highlights. As usual, she wore it loose and unadorned. She smiled when she saw me approaching.
“I’m sorry if I rushed you,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure you were coming to open the office. I’ll bet there are days when you don’t come to the office at all.”
“No problem, Christine. You’re right, I do keep uneven hours. It will be a huge help having you here, when I can’t come in.”
I unlocked the office and handed Christine the extra key.
“I know we’re looking for a bigger office, but until we find it, you’ll need a key. This one is yours.”
Our office was kind of embarrassing to behold. Christine’s desk was a folding plastic table from Wal Mart. Her chair was a folding plastic chair from the same store. The office was now very crowded. I was actually looking forward to moving.
I pulled out the scrap of paper that Dustin had given me. I looked up Genesis 4:16. It said that Cain had taken up residence in the land of Nod, east of Edom.
What did that mean? Was the kidnapper a man named Cain, or maybe, Nod?
There is a town called Edom, a few miles west of Tyler.
But the passage said east of Edom. There are many towns that are east of Edom; including Tyler, and every other city between here and the eastern seaboard.
I looked up Genesis 41:6. It said that seven heads of grain appeared, and were withered by the east wind.
Huh? Oh please! No help there, either.
I didn’t get it, not at all. I was worried that I had put too much confidence in Dustin.
I called Tony to ask if he could shoot with me that evening. He agreed, but he sounded annoyed and made it a ‘maybe, if’ instead of a definite “yes.”
I called Gary Babcock to get him started on the new insurance fraud case. Gary is one of my part time operatives. He’s a fireman by profession, but because of his shift schedule, he has a lot of days and nights to work a second job. I use him for surveillance and photography. He’s a big guy that fits in nicely in any situation which doesn’t require white collar sophistication. He can pass for any kind of utility serviceman, exterminator or construction worker. He’s quite comfortable in truck stops, barbecue joints and sports bars. He blends in because he is such as an ordinary looking guy. He’s content to sit in a car and wait, watching a subject. He has also proven to be a good enough actor, to put insurance fraud suspects into situations that test their claims of injury.
Once, while posing as a new neighbor, he invited one insurance fraud suspect to go hunting with him. When the opportunity to take a twelve point buck was offered, the guy was miraculously healed. Using a camouflage game camera, we got him on film, scurrying up a ladder and setting up a tree stand. The insurance company put his head up on their wall.
I wasn’t bothered with the ringing telephone, because Christine answered every incoming call, and I was impressed at her ability to do “triage,” setting appointments for people whose need was not urgent, taking messages and only putting me on the phone with the people I really needed to talk to. She employed hand-signal and facial expressions to secure my responses, while she repeated the name of the person on the line.
Later in the day, I introduced her to some of the web-sites I use for locating heirs and finding current locations for people. She started doing some simple name searches. She was a natural.
I was learning other things about Christine. She told me about her struggles with intimacy. She doesn’t like to be touched by people she doesn’t know well. She wants to be loved and to be in love, but she is afraid of intimacy. Her issues go back to somewhere in her development. Ever since her last boyfriend hurt her, she has been unable to allow herself to get close to any man. It’s sad, because she is “all that, and a bag of chips”.
Tony did meet me at the shooting range. I got there ahead of him and arranged for our usual shooting stations. When Tony walked in, I could tell he was not happy to see me.
“Hey, Tony, I talked to Dustin, again.”
“Why’d you tell that homeless nutcase about my family, J.W.?” Were the first angry words out of his mouth.
“Believe me, Tony, I didn’t tell him anything about you, except that you’re my friend.”
He scowled at me, clearly doubting my words, and maybe doubting our friendship.
“Tony, I swear, I didn’t say anything to him.”
“Well, how do you explain what he said to me?” he asked.
“Uh, I can’t. He says things that are off the wall, mixed in with things that make sense. He told me the Impala we’re looking for is black, not blue.”
“…Big help that is. Tomorrow, it will probably be green or yellow.”
He unzipped his gun bag.
“Well, no, I don’t think so. I misunderstood him the first time he described it.” I said, tentatively.
“We have nothing J.W., except the video tape from the supermarket, and the photo found in the parking lot. Everything else is based on the silly jabbering of a mentally incompetent homeless man,” Tony said, as he put on his shooting glasses.
“He was right about the Impala and the location where the girl was taken.”
“Maybe,” Tony shrugged, pulling his hearing protectors down over his ears.
Further conversation would have to wait. I knew I needed to put on my ear protection as well. Tony was preparing to fire the big .50 caliber Desert Eagle, he had just pulled out of his gun bag.
I went to my station and geared up.