The Pale Man Rises

CHAPTER EIGHTY

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Special Agent Mabry held a Q & A session when he was done with his briefing. But the men asked few questions despite the fact that he had insinuated that there might be some magical element in his hypothesis. "We got the go ahead to drop these folks?" Agent Hutton at last put in an inquiry. "That'll be my decision if it comes to that. Colin I'm going to take your place on the chopper, and if we have to fire on these people I'll make that decision. They may be hostages so you can understand that we must take every precaution to try and save them. We'll be looking for Sheriff Harper and his deputy also." he added. He stopped abruptly then and came around the desk and past the group of men and went to the large map of the town and the surrounding terrain.

He turned to Chief Townsend now. "Would you assist me chief?" he asked him. "Surely sir." Townsend said as he hurriedly moved over and stood next to the FBI agent. Mabry picked up a nearby yard ruler. He pointed to the western portion of the framed map close to the uppermost corner of it. He looked at the chief for verification. There were many symbols for trees here with the spaced symbol of a dirt road tracing through them. "This is where the Rankin place is located right chief?" he asked as he pointed to the end of the interval line that was the road. "Yes sir." Townsend said shaking his head.

Mabry looked at the group of gathered lawmen. "This is where we'll start searching." He now pointed to the spot on the map where the police department and the rest of the downtown district of Belfast was. "We are presently located here." he said.

"Gentlemen we shouldn't have any problems spotting this terrain from the air. There's a textile mill here that was damaged by a recent tornado, and there's a rest home here." Mabry said now pointing out these two locations. "This is the general vicinity of where we'll start. And see all this open space here?" he said swirling the ruler round and round about the map close to the places he had pointed out. "This is all open country here except for a few empty buildings and trees and part of some old railroad tracks leading up to the mill. But it's no matter the area is covered with snow and we can probably see anything that moves. We should see everything easily. We're looking for any traffic we're not sure of, we're looking for a red Jeep Wagoner with a black vinyl top, which is what the Sheriff is driving. We check anyone we are not aware of or that is on foot." he went on.

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When he was done with this he asked for any more questions. Again the gathered men were reluctant to ask anything of such a seasoned investigator. But at last those who would not be in the helicopter and were curious as to what their assignments would be put some forth. Mabry told them to patiently wait there for instructions. With so much boundless snow about the entire crowd of lawmen could not hope to participate in the initial search.

Once William Fipps had thrown a few shovels of snow he'd had enough physical labor. Besides his abhorrence for such work he was also nervously concerned about the seeming disappearance of Sheriff Harper and his deputy Skeeter Branch. He certainly had nothing to do with it and his call surely could not be construed as such, but he didn't like the idea of that bastard Langley holding it over his head. He had a lot of gall to intimate that he was responsible for putting the two lawmen in jeopardy.

But what if they had been injured or killed? If so then that fat detective may claim otherwise and who would anyone believe? He was a reporter and if there was a profession that was hated more he couldn't think of it, unless it was car salesmen. He couldn't count lawyers because they were in a category all their own, a category that declared that they were pariahs without any equal. Regardless he was determined to learn what happened to the two Robbins County officials.