seymoure

Who’s Who, Maybe

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered:

The point is to discover them.”

-Galileo Galilei

The pictures were enlightening.

The first brought a catch to my throat. It was Eddie, sitting astride the Golden Calf itself. He had that smirking, knowing grin I loved as he pointed up in the air with one hand and at the head of the sparkling bovine with his left hand.

Eddie was left-handed, so it looked almost like he was riding a bucking brahma. It was just an odd picture. The kind of sight he loved to put out there.

“What a joker!” escaped lightly from me throat.

“He left you a joke!” Chester said.

I looked at him for an answer and he gave a sweeping gesture with his hand as two men dragged in the very film prop that was in the photo. The statue was as big as a real cow, but it had been scorched a bit in the fire. The head was untouched, but the flanks had had most of the gold paint seared off. There was a note between the horns that was partially burned, it read, “For the Big Guy, דער ענטפער ליגט ין”

“Sorry that last part got burned so you couldn’t read it,” Max apologized.

At that moment there was an explosion of happy greetings from all in the room. I looked at the door and my heart jumped.

Hugo had arrived.

Max had taken him into a bear hug and lifted him off the ground. For anyone who had ever met my friend, this was no mean feat.

I worked to get past our gilded artifact to greet my old pal, but the line was long as everyone wanted to see the much loved fellow.

Hugo was one of those larger than life people who should be a bruiser, but was just a large puppy at heart.

The next 45 minutes were spent catching up and was the kind of emotional break that we all needed more than I could begin to state. For a couple of minutes I even forgot that my leg hurt.

But then it was time to force ourselves to get back to work. We had pictures to identify and maybe break this case.

The first picture was of a barrel-chested man with an upraised fist. He stood behind a heavy, expensive pulpit, obviously giving a fire and brimstone sermon that would have driven me out of the church in a second. He was identified as “The Right Honorable Reverend Willard Simonson” of the ‘The Holy Order of the Promise of the Soul Purge.’ This man didn’t look for a peaceful afterlife, if the wall of weapons behind him gave any hint.

The next picture featured two men and was devastatingly telling. Simonson was shaking hands with what appeared to be one of his parishioners, a face Chester and I recognized at once: Simon Churchill of the NTSB. Ouch. Just behind them was another man that none of us knew. We put the picture online for the home office to do some facial recognition on, but it would take some time. It was late and there was no one scheduled to be in the office for hours yet.

The next picture was of some sort of gathering, probably a party. In the far right corner stood a man with two small plates of food in his hands, and with more than a little mess on his vest. This, expectedly, was the figure of Doctor Meyer Whitt-McNitt. As efficient a party guest as he was a killer.

A step from the doctor stood a woman none of us could name, and in the foreground was another pair of men, neither of whom seemed to have smiled recently and also could not be named by any of us, so we sent that picture to be sent through the machinery, and give us more names to track down.

Next was a shot taken on the street, just outside of the Muenster Hotel, Sacramento. It was Vern Decker. On the back of the photo was a note: “Good lead. See notes.” Sadly, of course, we had no notes to check.

The last picture was of a building. It appeared to be a factory of some sort, but there was no note on the reverse side. We knew nothing about the place, except that it must be important. Or not.

It could be nothing at all, or it could be Ground Zero. I got on the phone down to the lobby.

When they connected me it was with Marshall Nash Comstock.

“Yes, Mr. Savage,” he addressed me in a voice far too perky to fit the hardened face I had seen only shortly before. “What can I do for you?”

“Marshall, we have need for your department’s multiple sets of eyes.”

“How so?”

“We have a building involved in the investigation that we need to identify. If possible it would be important not to alert those within that we are looking at them, so the most cryptic we can be with this information, well that would be highly wished.”

“Tight-lipped, eh?”

“Absolutely, Officer.”

“Get the picture to me and we will pass it about on the QT.”

I hated sharing something that might tip them off, but we also knew that time was growing short.

We started with nothing and it seemed hopeless.

Now we had so much and it felt even more hopeless than when we began.

Back to the Beginning

Continue on to Chapter 27