The Pale Man Rises

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

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Detective Sergeant Frank Spellman got a call at nine o'clock. The phone rang and rang and would not stop. Finally he reached out and over the covers and took the thing from its cradle. It was very cold. When he had lain down it was so nice that he had cut the thermostat to 68. This dramatic drop in temperature suggested to him that the weather had likely turned off bad. "Hold on!" He attempted to say into the mouthpiece. His teeth were chattering and he wasn't sure the caller heard him. He hoped they wouldn't hang up thinking they had called the wrong number.

He jumped out of bed and raced into the hallway and pushed the thermostat close to 80. Then he dashed back to his bed and dove into the covers once again. As he reached for the phone again he heard the furnace kick in and the fan whir to life pushing seemingly instantly warm air throughout the small bungalow.

"I think we've got one!" his excited partner Doug Farr said after he was back on the line. It took a few seconds for the words to register with Spellman. He rubbed his eyes as if that would ignite his memory banks. And then he did remember. There had been quite a number of murders in various nearby counties since late November and the chief investigator an FBI agent was certain the perpetrators would eventually move on Sayerville.

The murders had not been widely publicized as per the FBI's request for fear of creating a panic. Such a proliferation of murders in such a short period of time defied logic and indicated that this was no run of the mill killer they had on their hands. This was rather some kind of homicidal maniac and they decided keeping it low profile was preferable regardless the dangers of keeping the general public somewhat in the dark concerning it. If it got into the public domain they could possibly expect the media running wild with the story and definitely causing panic and damage to the case with false leads and innocent suspects.

Oh they had been reported of course, but having occurred in rural areas they were generally just one line pieces over the wire services by cooperative rural pressmen or stringers with most of the details of the crimes omitted or those given out right lies.

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The weeklies reflected the same cooperation. The crimes and their details were then almost exclusively the province of the FBI agent in charge of the investigation, Special Agent Mabry, and those on the task force he had created.

Sayerville Detective Sergeant Douglas Farr pulled into the driveway of Frank Spellman's bungalow just behind his ugly maroon Gremlin hatchback some seventeen minutes after ringing him up. Spellman had by then taken a quick hot shower and had dressed just as quickly. When he saw the lights of the car he was standing in his small crowded kitchenette and drinking a cup of hot chocolate.

Upon realizing it was Farr he trundled through the living room and snatched his heavy coat, which maintained a constant vigil on the, couch the whole of the winter months, pulled it on and went outside. As he locked the front door of the small rental he thought he noticed several snow flakes floating by. But that was all and he soon thought he'd imagined it because of his utter dislike of cold weather.

Being from Illinois some thought it odd, but it was true and the main reason he'd decided to remain in the south after his discharge from the army some ten years earlier. Why anyone would assume that a person would love the weather in the place they hailed from was a puzzle to him. The place of one's birth was not something they had chosen and so he was bemused by such assumptions. It was like saying a person in the Third World enjoyed war and famine because that was all his homeland had known. It was a ludicrous thing to even entertain.

He had also had a relationship with a local woman. But it had fallen apart after only several months of cohabitation. They soon discovered that, though they were physically compatible they were not in any other respect. Frank had secured himself a job as a rookie on the Sayerville Police Department by virtue of his 8 year experience as a military policeman. And so after the collapse of his romance he channeled all his energies into his efforts to succeed as a Yankee cop in a small southern city.