Armageddon Crazy

"I mean really mad."

There were voices in the background at his end.

"Listen, Cynthia, let me call you at home later. I'm really up to my ass in it right now."

"Harry?"

"Yeah."

"Be careful, will you?"

"I'll be careful."

He hung up. She put down the handset.

"Damn."

He would call her later, then he would probably come over, and she would not do anything to stop him.

Carlisle

"Goddamn it to hell! I don't believe this. Are you telling me we've got an Oswald here?"

Reeves looked extremely unhappy. "He checks out as the most perfect lone gunman you could imagine."

"It's not right," Carlisle said. "It's too convenient. It's too perfect. I hate the whole thing. It's like the Reichstag fire or the Ortega assassination. This guy's timing is too perfect for a lone nut."

"You can't build a conspiracy on nothing."

"That's exactly what a perfect conspiracy leaves behind. It's watertight." Carlisle stared angrily through the one-way glass. "Wallace Jay Bums. A ten-year history of mental problems but never previously violent. Hospitalized on four occasions. Dropped out of sight fourteen months ago. Told doctors he was going to hermit out in the wilderness to prepare for the coming of the Apocalypse. Shows up today showered and shaved, in a brand-new suit from Barney's and nothing in his pockets but a plastic .50 Sterling. Does that about sum it up?"

"The Reader's Digest version."

"It's like he was newly delivered."

"With a ca

"He had the right piece."

Reeves suddenly gri

"Yeah, that's true. He didn't get his man."

On the other side of the one-way glass, Wallace Jay Burns faced the wall with a Norman Bates stare. When he had first been brought in, he had been howling and screaming, holy-rolling stuff about how Proverb was the Antichrist and how killing him would break the Master Lock and free the Motion of the Universe so the Rapture could begin. He had been yelling over and over.

"I am the designated of the Lord, the slayer of the Antichrist. I come with vengeance and a sword."

"Can somebody shut him up before we all go nuts?" someone had asked.

After the serious questioning had started, however, he not only shut up but suddenly came to a cosmic full stop. His eyeballs rolled up, and the lights went out. From that point on, no one was home in the mind of Wallace Jay Burns.

Reeves peered through the glass at Burns. There were blackening bruises down one side of the assassin's face, and his right eye was closing up. The men who had disarmed him had not been particularly gentle.

"Maybe we should play the tapes of him raving again."

"We've heard it all," Carlisle said. "That Damien stuff gives me the creeps."

"We could get Dr. Feelgood down here to try to wake him up chemically."

Carlisle shook his head. "I don't want to load any drugs into him yet. It could well be drugs that put him where he is now."

"Nothing showed on the bloodscan."

"Microdelics wouldn't show on a bloodscan. They could have used a binary or maybe some three-tier, precision time-release deal. First layer makes him calm and lucid so he can make the hit. The second, maybe triggered by his own natural adrenaline, starts him raving."

"And the third turns him into an eggplant."

"Can you think of a better scenario?"

Reeves shook his head. "I think you'd be better off if you stopped thinking of a mysterious 'them.' "

Carlisle rubbed his eyes. "Maybe. It just bugs me. It's too pat."

He knew that he was approaching exhaustion. He needed food, coffee, cigarettes, and most of all sleep. He stood up and stretched. "I don't know. Maybe I'm not thinking straight. Did we get anything on the gun yet?"

"It's clean as a whistle. It was part of a batch shipped to a Dallas gun store eighteen months ago. There's no record of the purchase."

"There wouldn't be in Texas. Guns come from God down there."

"So where do we go from here? We can't keep the deacons at bay forever."

"I suppose we can run some routine stuff on him. Hook him up to a polygraph and run the Schultz-Dixon Image Test on him, see if we get a response. After that, there's nothing left but to start with the drugs."

Reeves picked up the phone. "Get an S-D kit down here, will you?" He glanced at Carlisle. "I gotta tell you, Lieutenant, I think we've lost this one."

Carlisle leaned against the one-way glass. "I hate to admit it, but you're probably right."

The door opened and a technician wheeled in a steel trolley with the Schultz-Dixon polygraph kit on it.

"You want me to wire him?" the technician asked.

Reeves opened the co

The technician went to work on Burns while Reeves and Carlisle watched from behind the glass. Burns did not react in any way as his shirt was pulled off and contact points stuck to his torso.

Carlisle turned away as if not expecting to get any results. Suddenly he clapped a hand to his forehead. "Goddamn it, I'm getting stupid."

"You thought of something."

"Not exactly. I've just been forgetting one of the first things I was taught. Deal with reality, not supposition."

Reeves blinked. "Say what?"

"So far we've been treating this as an attempted hit on Arlen Proverb."

"What else could it be? You're not saying that Burns had a beef with the bodyguard?"

"No, I'm not. I'm just saying that we ought to look at what we have. First question in any crime. Has anyone benefited by what happened?"

Reeves was starting to look concerned, as if he were worried that Carlisle was finally losing it.

"The bodyguard's dead and the shooter's a veggie. What benefit?"

The tech stuck his head around the co

Carlisle looked down at Burns. The man was festooned with wires attached to his head and body by contact clamps.

"Yeah, run the whole deal, if only for the record." He turned back to Reeves. "Did it occur to you that, as things stand, Arlen Proverb has had a very good day? Most of the TV images from today will get through, and he looks like the man they couldn't silence. Now he's the center of attention again."

Reeves put a hand on Carlisle's shoulder. "Listen to me, Lieutenant. If you're thinking in the deeply weird direction I think you're thinking, they are going to kill you. This is now, boss. They're not going to let you crack the world open with this case. They're just going to take you out and hang you."