couch, a lopsided chair and a wooden table. The bed was in an alcove and Dredd had stripped off the threadbare cover and stained sheets and put them in the garbage, buying a sleeping bag to put atop the mattress and a fresh white sheet to cover his body. He’d also purchased a small refrigerator and a cheap set of weights to keep his body strong.
His body needed to stay fit: It carried precious cargo.
Dredd started to stand, but his knees quivered and he sat heavily. When with the Jezebel last night, the power had flowed through him brighter and purer than the sun and while he worked the holy symphony sang in his head. But after he’d finished, his energy had drained away, leaving him weak as a kitten.
Dredd looked at his briefs and saw the purple stain of dried blood. He’d been so wearied he’d fallen asleep before removing his wire. He winced as he eased the underwear down and over his animal. Dredd fought his way to standing and limped across the room to the kitchen drawer he used as a tool box. He pulled it open: hammer, vise-grips, duct tape and – tucked in back – the spool of .32 gauge copper wire and the snips. He grabbed the snips and returned to the bed, sitting on the edge with his legs spread wide, picking gingerly at the base of his animal, grimacing as he pulled up a knotted loop of thread-thin brass wire, snipping the strand. Teeth clenched against the pain – nothin’ compared to your pain and tribulation, Lord, forgive my weakness – he slowly unwrapped the biting wire from his animal, fresh blood seeping from cuts inflicted when the women were close and his animal awakened and hungered for them. But the constricting wire stopped that, the fierce pain reminding him of his holy mission.
Gasping, Dredd dropped the crusted wire to the floor. He fell back to the mattress and began to sing in a high and whispery voice.
“When the Bridegroom cometh will your robes be white?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Will your soul be ready for the mansions bright,
And be washed in the blood of the Lamb?”
Dredd stripped off his shirt to let the Lord see that Frisco Dredd had again fought his animal and won.
“Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin,
And be washed in the blood of the Lamb;
There’s a fountain flowing for the soul unclean,
O be washed in the blood of the Lamb …”
After several verses, Dredd gathered his strength, pushed from the bed and went to the bathroom, dropping to his knees beside the sink. The pipes went into a jagged hole in the wall. Dredd snaked his arm through the hole until his fingers withdrew a leather rectangle with a silver cross of duct tape.
Dredd returned to the bed. From the leather holder he withdrew a black notebook. His missions, his holy crusades, were listed within, along with valuable information: times, dates, locations, employers, routes traveled, maps, photos … Time to prepare for the next mission. Dredd thumbed open a page, a list of names. Who would be chosen? Who was next?
Dredd held the notebook inches above his bleeding animal, showing it to the gaping wound.
The choice was His to make.
Jeremy Ryder’s Key West home sat toward the rear of a long, palm-studded lot abloom with bougainvillea and myrtle, the front yard picket-fenced with ficus on both corners. Pastel yellow with white accenting and a deep porch, the house stood two stories tall plus an attic story beneath a high-pitched roof, a rounded tower twelve feet in diameter comprising the southern corner of the home and ending with a third-story projection with cupola. The majestic dwelling had been built in the early 1920s, when ceilings were a proper height, twelve feet. The original owner, Mr Tobias Throckington, had made his fortune during Prohibition, running liquor from Cuba to speakeasies as distant as Galveston.
It was the top story of the tower where Ryder currently stood, his office, a burled-oak desk curved to fit the wall below one of the wide windows. On the desk were the six small displays of his Bloomberg terminal, his link to the financial world. On the other end of the desk was his personal computer, a large-screen iMac. The Bloomberg monitors danced with charts and graphs and streaming numbers, the personal computer was dark.
Pushed to the desk was a Hermann Miller chair, black and expensive and purchased for comfort, as Jeremy Ryder sat in it several hours daily. A richly detailed oaken wardrobe sat across the room, outfitted to hold files and office supplies. Jeremy Ryder hated file cabinets: they reminded him of institutions.
Three windows faced outward, the northernmost angling toward the re-occupied Schrum edifice. The home had always been well-kept, but lifeless for the most part, a crew arriving every second summer week to keep things tidy, diminishing to every three in the cooler months. The only vehicles in regular attendance belonged to either the crew or tourists gawking at the architectural excesses on the broad avenue. They paused before his home, mouths drooping, cameras ticking.
But now the street resembled a parking lot: news vans, cop cars, the gathering crowd. A catastrophe, Jeremy Ryder thought.
But an interesting one.
A hundred people now, up from fifty just minutes ago, not including the news types. Some stared mutely at the Schrum house, others knelt and prayed. From nowhere a man had appeared wearing a coarse robe and dragging a wooden cross up and down the street.
Jeremy started to draw his blinds, but stared down the street, unable to pull the cord.
Why are they there? What do they see? What can a dying man give them?
No … what do they think a dying man can give them?
The sound of an incoming Skype. Jeremy flicked his personal computer into life. The screen filled with the image of Ava Davanelle in a green surgical gown, her shoulder-length hair snow white though she was in her late thirties, her skin fair, her green eyes sparkling with amusement.
“How goes the day, boyo?” Davanelle said. It amused Jeremy Ryder that her hair was as white as that of the glum Schrum supposedly withering away down the street. Ava was calling during her morning break at the South Florida morgue. She was its newest pathologist, hired last year from her post in Chicago.
Jeremy smiled and leaned the wall across from the camera with arms crossed. “I was checking Baltic shipping rates, but got distracted by the Mongol hordes.”
Davanelle sipped from a coffee cup. “Strom Thurmond served in the Senate until a hundred years old. His last years he resembled a drooling puppet carried into the chamber by his aides.”
“Meaning?”
“Schrum’s a tough and driven old buzzard. Driven types don’t die easy.”
“I can’t work,” Jeremy said, scowling out the window and noting church buses pulling to the Schrum house. “Maybe I’ll saunter over and inspect the carnival.”
An arched eyebrow from Davanelle. “That so?”
“Carson advises me to keep
