I turned back to face the team and held the now-useless phone out in front of me.

Agent Kavanaugh appeared by my side and took the device from my hand then settled it carefully into the large gadget box. When she had said I was her responsibility, she had apparently been serious.

"Don't trust me?" I quipped, keeping my voice low.

"It's not a trust issue, Mister Gant," she returned.

I answered with a shake of my head, "Could've fooled me."

She took me by the arm and began guiding me away from the group. "You've been very helpful, Mister Gant, and you did very well on the line. Especially using the hostage's first name repeatedly."

"Yeah, I read about that somewhere," I replied. "But it won't work with him. He doesn't care about her identity."

"That remains to be seen," she returned. "As well as you did, however, I would question the wisdom of that last ploy."

"You mean when I told him I was going to kill him?"

"Yes sir," she acknowledged.

I glanced over at her as we walked, and I spoke with absolute sincerity, "Who says it was a ploy?"

"I know this is an unpleasant situation for you to be in, but we need to ask you for some more help," Agent Kavanaugh told me.

We were sitting in the back of a large panel van, the inside of which looked like a compact conference room, communications center, and armory all rolled into one. I was holding a thermos cup that was half-filled with coffee. I had accepted it when it was offered, but after a couple of sips, came to the conclusion that I didn't really want it. Not that it was bad or anything, I was just far too wired to even think about drinking it.

As it was, the only reason I was still holding the container was that I didn't seem to be able to find a place to put it down. Any space that appeared like it would fit the cup was already supporting something else far more important looking and in the case of the electronics, far more expensive."Forgive me for asking then," I replied, fighting to keep the shortness from my voice. "But if you need my help, shouldn't I be out there instead of in here?"

The entire day, right up to a very few moments ago, seemed to have been built around an ever-increasing urgency. Now, suddenly that imperative had slammed face first into an invisible wall. That barrier had presented itself in the form of the standard operating procedures for hostage negotiation.

"There's no rush," she told me. "This is standard procedure. It takes several hours at least before Stockholm Syndrome starts taking hold."

"I already told you this wacko doesn't care about her identity," I remarked. "You aren't going to get any Stockholm Syndrome. He doesn't play by your pat psychological profile."

"We know what we are doing, Mister Gant."

"I'm sure you do under most circumstances, but you're wrong this time."

"How do you know that?"

"Long story. You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

She looked back at me and frowned, then absently drummed the end of a ballpoint pen on the notepad she was holding.

"Be that as it may, you're safer in here," she finally replied.

"From what, Agent Kavanaugh?" I asked as I motioned in what I thought was the general direction of the warehouse. "He's hiding out in the building. What's he going to do to me?"

She pointed toward the opposite corner of the van. "The building is that way."

"Sorry," I snapped. "It's been a really freaking long day."

"I understand that." She nodded sympathetically. "But as I told you earlier, we don't know for sure what Porter has in there with him, and now that the urgency of the moment has passed, we want you to stay out of sight."

"Unless you expect him to throw loose bricks at me, I doubt you have anything to worry about."

"Mister Gant," she said. "Apparently, I am not making myself clear. While we do not know this for a fact, we do have every reason to believe that Porter is armed."

"You mean with a gun?" I shook my head and asked the question with an overabundance of incredulity in my voice. "No way. That's not his style."

"Style or not, Mister Gant," she contended. "The second victim this morning was shot once in the back of the head. That tells us he has a gun."

It took a moment for what she had said to register. When it did, I'm sure the look of confusion on my face had to be textbook.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." I waved my free hand at her. "Back up for a second. What second victim? What are you talking about?""At the scene on Locust where Mister Harper was found, a second body was discovered. The victim was male, approximately mid-sixties and apparently homeless. The current theory is that he entered the warehouse in search of shelter and stumbled upon Porter in the act of... Well, you know."

"How do you know it was Porter who killed him?"

"Fingerprints on the body," she returned matter-of-factly. "Porter apparently had Mister Harper's blood on his hands already."

The image of Randy's corpse imprinted itself on my retinas, dancing in the air before me like a three-dimensional movie. I stopped for a moment and fought back a wave of nausea.

I shook my head again when the feeling passed. "No way. This doesn't add up.

Porter doesn't use a gun, and besides he kills Witches not homeless people."

"What about Mister Kasprzykowski?" she asked, stumbling over the name. "He wasn't a Witch."

"Okay, I'll give you that," I replied. "But even then, he killed him with a blow to the back of the head with a hammer."

"Yes, and he killed this homeless man with a gunshot to the back of the head. I'm certain you know that Porter has a criminal history, Mister Gant," she continued.

"Several of his earlier crimes involved handguns."

I closed my eyes and started rubbing my forehead. My perpetual headache was working its way around the inside of my skull. The pain was thick and just the other side of normal. As usual, I couldn't put my finger on the cause other than to say that it was coming from a source beyond the physical realm.

"No. No way," I said. "Porter doesn't have a gun."

"Mister Gant." Agent Kavanaugh took on a concerned tone. "I really don't understand why you are having such a problem with this."

"Twilight Zone" I muttered.

"Excuse me?"

"Twilight Zone," I said a bit more clearly as I re-opened my eyes and looked up at her.

She shook her head as a mask of obfuscation passed over her features. "I don't understand."

"Ask the big Indian outside," I told her. "He'll explain it to you."

Chapter 35:.

"What did he say to you during the first conversation this morning?" Agent Kavanaugh asked.

We had been sequestered in the back of the panel van for something close to half an hour by now. She had all but dismissed my objection to the idea that Eldon Porter was using any type of firearm, as well as my suggestion that she talk to Ben for an explanation as to how I could be so certain. Of course, I don't suppose that his answer would have been any more convincing than mine.

"Which part?" I asked, still trying to temper my impatience at the "hurry up and wait" overtone of the current situation.

The order of the moment was taking the form of an in-depth interview of yours truly. The questions that comprised the Q & A ranged from the expected to the seemingly non sequitur. She had already made several queries that appeared to come from far left and well over the horizon, leading me at times to simply stare back at her with a dumbstruck gaze.

She gave me a quick shake of her head. "Any details you can remember. Any at all."

"Let's see," I sighed heavily. "He quoted a few Bible verses to me, then informed me that he intended to rape my wife. Is that what you want to know?"

The abruptness in my voice was unmistakable. Any attempt at disguising my anxiety was effectively rendered null and void by my rapidly hardening attitude.

Kavanaugh stared back at me for a moment, wagging the ballpoint pen back and forth between her thumb and forefinger as she drummed it on the legal pad in her lap. The rhythm of the nervous tick wasn't helping my headache in the least. If anything, it was simply reminding me that it was there. I was just about to reach out and snatch the pen from between her fingers when she stopped.

"Mister Gant," she began. "I know this is hard, and trust me, I realize this doesn't seem important to you, but each detail gives us something more to work with."

"Forgive me," I told her. "But some of your questions really haven't made much sense to me."

"On the surface, to most people, they don't," she agreed. "But we aren't in a normal situation here. Specific details are important to the overall profile of both the individual and the situation."

"Maybe I'm dense, but I don't see how some of the things you've asked can relate to all of this."

"Believe me, Mister Gant, you would be amazed by what seemingly insignificant details can sometimes mean the difference between peaceful resolution and tragedy."

"Maybe so, but ten minutes ago you asked me what color coat he was wearing earlier today. I mean, come on..."

"Do you play chess, Mister Gant?""Yes," I answered. "And will you please call me Rowan? I've been getting 'Mistered' and 'Sir'ed' to death today."

"All right, Rowan," she continued. "As a chess player, you are certainly familiar with the concept of a stalemate, correct?"

"Of course."

"Well, that's exactly what a hostage scenario is. A stalemate. A big, hairy, no-win situation. The thing is, the hostage-taker doesn't know this. We do, but he doesn't.

His mental state usually places him in one of two frames of mind. Either he believes he has the upper hand and will be able to force his demands on us, or he is in such a state of desperation that he believes he cannot win.

"The second state is the worst because that is usually when he will start killing hostages in an attempt to regain perceived control of the situation. Our job is to make an end run around the stalemate by convincing him that we are as concerned for his well being as we are for the hostage or hostages."

"I understand that," I said. "But the color of his coat?"

"Sometimes, even when you think it is going well, something that appears wholly unrelated can make everything go sour." Kavanaugh sighed. "Let me give you an example. I worked a hostage negotiation three years ago in Nashville, Tennessee. It was a bank robbery gone bad. The gunman had five hostages, but things had stayed fairly calm. We were in the ninth hour, and everything was going by the book. It really looked like we were going to be able to bring on a positive resolution with no casualties, not even the gunman.

"As a good faith move for the release of one of the hostages, we gave in to a request for soda. A specific brand of root beer actually." She paused for a moment.

There was a distant look in her eyes that bespoke of repressed sadness and maybe even a modicum of self-blame. She looked down at the notepad in her lap then back to me. "Two minutes after we sent it in, the gunman went berserk, and without warning he killed the hostage he had told us he would release. He shot her point blank in the back of the head as he shoved her out the door.

"Her name was Becky, and she was a twenty-three-year-old teller-trainee with a husband and a one-year-old daughter." She paused again as if taking a moment to force the memory from her mind, and then asked, "Do you know why he killed her?"

I simply shook my head.

Her expression moved in the direction of controlled anger for a pair of seconds and then blanked to a professional, matter-of-fact countenance as she looked me in the eyes. "Because the soda was in a can instead of a bottle. We had missed a detail."

I couldn't think of anything to say that I was sure hadn't already been said. I let out a heavy breath and closed my eyes. I had been able to feel the burst of anguish that came from Agent Kavanaugh as she relayed the incident. To be honest, when she had first started, I wasn't entirely sure the story was going to be anything morethan a textbook example. That thought proved itself to be wrong within the first few sentences.

Still, had it not been for the empathic connection now presenting itself, I'm sure I would have believed she had fabricated the whole thing simply to benefit her explanation. I think maybe Ben's jaded attitude had done more than just begun to wear off on me. It had become an integral part of my personal makeup.

"So..." She stopped short. I watched as she consciously took a deep breath herself, and then she began again. "So, I know that some of my questions might seem off the wall to you, Rowan, but there is a reason for them. Everything matters even if you don't think it does."

"I'm sorry," I muttered.

She shook her head. "Don't be. I didn't tell you that story to make you sorry. I want you to understand. As long as you do, that's all that counts."

"I think I do."

"Good. Now can you give me any details from that call?"

I nodded. "I can try."

I searched my memory for a moment, trying to remember specifics of a conversation that seemed to have taken place ages ago, but in reality was no more than twelve hours old. My thoughts were muddy from lack of sleep and an overabundance of sensory input. I swam through the murk and seized on the snippets I found floating about the dark mental waters.

"His biblical references were all Satan specific," I finally recalled aloud.

"Ecclesiastes three, three. Second Corinthians, Book of Revelation. I'm pretty sure they were all from the King James Version."

Kavanaugh scribbled a note on the legal pad. "Why does that stick out in your mind?"

"Because he follows the covenants and procedures of the Malleus Maleficarum,"

I told her and then added a short explanation. "It's a Witch-hunting text that was written by a pair of inquisitors posing as theologians in the year fourteen eighty-four.

The King James version of the Holy Bible wasn't published until over one hundred years later in sixteen eleven."

"What do you think is the significance of that?" she pressed.

"It's probably just a part of his mental state," I offered. "It may be nothing. Truth is, the King James version of the Bible is the most commonly available, but what is so peculiar to me is that he has gone to a great deal of trouble to research things.

From the Malleus Maleficarum, to various practices of the Inquisition, and even the pomp and ceremony of the executions. When I had my run-in with him last year, he was wearing the clerical collar of a Catholic priest. So in a way, I would have halfway expected him to use the version of the Bible connected with that period of history. All of it is the Christian faith, yes, but the translations aren't exactly the same."However," I said, "The prison ministry that is most likely responsible for sending him down this path is Evangelical, Old Testament, fire and brimstone. His indoctrination would have come from the KJV so the discrepancy might be moot."

"You never know. So your perception is that he is confused?" Kavanaugh asked as she scribbled.