Genesis of Evil (18 page)

He knew that pseudo Mexican food was relatively cheap. He marched purposefully into the mall and got in line at the Taco Loco where he shifted from one foot to the other and wondered if he could get to the paper mill, unload and get one more pile of logs on his truck before dark.

And then the boy stepped in front of him.

The boy, a high school student and rugged individualist, wore the current uniform of shorts four sizes too large that hung on his skinny frame with the crotch at knee level, an equally outsized shirt that dwarfed the shorts and a baseball cap, worn backwards of course. All he wanted was a napkin for the girl that was helping him eat his burritos.

Squeezing in front of Beano was a terrible mistake. Under the circumstances Beano wouldn’t have given way for his mother. The huge logger reached down, grabbed the kid by the scruff of the neck and tossed him effortlessly onto an adjacent table where two girls and their aunt were destroying a sausage and mushroom pizza.

The table held bravely together but the pizza didn’t fare as well. The aunt, who witnessed the entire incident, shoved her chair back, stood and stalked over to Beano.

“What the fuck is the matter with you, dickhead?” she shouted as she stood on tiptoe and glared fire and death into the man’s eyes.

Beano, taken totally by surprise, stepped back a pace and trod on the foot of a lady in her late sixties who stood behind him. She uttered a squawk of pain, grabbed her umbrella by the tip, started her swing about three miles offshore and belted Beano above the right ear with the handle. He yelped, pulled in his head and turned to see who was attacking him from behind. He wasn’t fast enough to avoid a shoe in the nuts by the aunt who had called him a dickhead.

In the meantime, her nieces were methodically stomping the snot out of the hapless youth who had merely wanted a napkin for his girlfriend. Said girlfriend was now attempting to break a chair over the head of one of the sisters.

People ran in droves toward the Taco Loco, some to break up the fighting, some to join in and some just to see what was going on. Beano had fallen to his knees. He clutched his injured scrotum as the two women kicked him from both sides. Somebody swung a new tennis racket at Beano in an attempt to stop the violence. Beano ducked at the last possible second and the racket struck a short black lady between the eyes, laying her out colder than a North Sea salmon. From this point it became impossible to follow the action.

When the first police car screeched to a halt in front of the mall there were three dead and thirty-seven wounded. Not only was the fight still going on, it was expanding. Gerhart arrived a minute and a half behind the first car. He ran inside, took one look and ran back out to call for help from the county. Then he grabbed the shotgun from his car, dashed into the mall and fired two shots into the ceiling. With the exception of a half dozen assorted citizens who were trading punches right next to him, nobody paid any attention. He ran back to the car and called the fire department.

It took almost fifteen minutes to stop the riot. The mall was awash with water from the hoses the firemen dragged into the food court from their pumper. Five ambulances drew up in front of the building as three left. Two women and five men were dead, fifty-nine other people were injured and more damage was done to the mall than anybody cared to think about. Gerhart stood in the center of the food court with Sid Flax, the Fire Chief, and Michael Penton, the Mall Manager. They looked about in dismay.

Penton shook his head. “I don’t understand this. I truly don’t. What the hell got into all these people?”

Gerhart had a pretty good idea, but he wasn’t about to say anything to Penton. He thought for a moment.

“Listen, Mike, I’d like you to shut down for a few days.”

Penton looked at Gerhart with disbelief. “What on earth for? It’s going to take some time to get the place cleaned up, but I’m not going to have to shut it all down.”

“I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but I think it’s in the best interests of the community.” He took a deep breath, decided on a gamble and looked directly into Penton’s eyes. “What do you know about radon?”

“Isn’t it some kind of gas?”

“Right. I’ve been talking with some experts about the problems we’ve had here, and they think it might be linked to radon. You know, sort of mass hysteria brought on by the stuff.”

Sid Flax, who knew something about radon, opened his mouth to speak and Gerhart kicked him on the ankle. Hard. Sid winced but kept silent.

“Well, I guess that could happen,” Penton said, scratching under his chin. “Is there anything we can do to correct the problem?”

“That’s what I’m talking to the experts about. In the meantime I think it would be safer to close the mall. You saw what happened today. It could have been worse.”

“How long do you think this will take?”

“Oh, two or three days, I suppose.”

Penton walked in tight circles, fished a pencil from a shirt pocket and chewed on it. Finally, he stopped in front of Gerhart. “Okay, if you think that’s best.”

“Thanks, Mike. Believe me, it’s the right thing to do.”

Penton shook his head once more and stared at the ceiling. “I guess I’d better go call the Chairman of the Board and let him know what’s going on.”

He walked slowly away and Sid Flax turned to Gerhart. “What’s this bullshit about radon? It makes you sick, but it doesn’t cause mass hysteria.”

“I know, Sid. Fortunately, Penton doesn’t. At least not yet.” He turned toward the parking lot. “Walk me to my car. I’m going to tell you something I don’t want you to repeat. If you do I’ll hunt you down and shoot you like a dog.”

Sid Flax trotted along with Gerhart, his ears three sizes larger than normal.

At the edge of the parking lot, Byron Skjelgaard leaned against the fender of his Camaro and watched Gerhart and Sid Flax come out of the mall. He waited until they climbed into their respective vehicles and drove off, then he walked quickly across the lot and through the front door. He stepped into the food court, stopped dead, looked around for a moment and whistled.

“Oh, boy,” he said to himself. “I smell money.”

Maurice couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Basically, you’re telling me the thing is back bigger and better than ever,” he said.

“It sure looks that way,” Gerhart said into the phone. “You wouldn’t believe the riot we had today. Seven dead. Seven! My God, Maurice, what the hell am I going to do?”

There was silence on the other end for a moment. Then Maurice said, “We’re not that far away. Been in Indiana looking into a barn that proved to be haunted with a lot of electronic gimmicks. We were headed home for a few days, but we can be in Trinidad day after tomorrow. I’ll call Arch. He’s in Vermont. He won’t be there for another day, but I want to talk to him about the meters we used at your mall.”
 

“What should I do in the meantime?”

“Nothing. Closing the mall is the best thing you could have done. Keep everybody away from there. We’ll see you late Sunday or early Monday.”

Gerhart hung up and sat thinking. How did the thing get back? Why did it return? What the hell was it in the first place? At least Maurice could come back. That was something. All he had to do was keep folks out of the mall until then. He picked up the phone to call Penton and tell him the experts were on the way. He hoped the mall manager could hold off the stockholders until the mess was cleared up. Gerhart didn’t want to think about what might happen next.

The Right Reverend Rimer Tillotson of the Trinidad Church of Divine Prayer parked his fifteen-year-old Chevrolet in the center of the almost empty parking lot in front of the mall. Although there was an announcement on the front page of the
Trinidad Probe
, as well as several spots on the radio, cars kept coming and going. They started rolling slowly through the lot at 10:00 in the morning when the mall usually opened. Tillotson reached into the trunk of the Chevy and pulled out what his daughter referred to as “Daddy’s Soapbox.” In reality, Tillotson had built it himself from scrap lumber. It was designed to elevate the Reverend some eighteen inches and assure him a view over the heads of a crowd, assuming one happened to gather. Tillotson climbed onto the box and rotated slowly, both arms raised to Heaven. After turning a full circle he closed his eyes and bowed his head.

“Dear Lord, help us to spare these, your humble sheep, from the evils of this den of commerce. Help us to understand that these evils are only a test of our faith, Dear Lord, and are designed to enable us to ascend to your mansions in the sky.”

Several curious folks wandered toward Tillotson to see what he was babbling about. The combined sound of the ubiquitous seagulls and surf almost drowned him out. When they got close enough to understand the thrust of his message, some stayed, but most returned to their cars or trucks and drove away. Tillotson was not to be deterred from his goal. He knew firsthand that the work of the devil was going on in that mall, and he intended to fight it with every ounce of his strength.

His encounter with Geraldine Mockey had almost culminated in his arrest. A screaming Geraldine had galloped into the food court and dragged a startled security guard back to the closet where Tillotson had hidden and waved his weenie at her. But by the time she returned the preacher had yanked his clothing into a semblance of order and escaped via the delivery door at the rear of the building. His wife and daughter waited for him near the front door for almost an hour before going out to the old Chevy to find him sitting stiffly behind the wheel, ninety-three-degree heat notwithstanding. He had claimed boredom as the reason for vacating the comfort of air conditioning. Although both wife and daughter eyed him suspiciously, neither questioned the statement.

Now that the Right Reverend Rimer Tillotson knew what he was up against he intended to subdue it one way or another. Upon ending his prayer he looked out over the small crowd. There were some twenty souls who had planned a morning of shopping but now found themselves with time on their hands. When Tillotson looked up, some offered “Amen” or “Praise the Lord.”

Tillotson, thus encouraged, launched into a sermon.

“The time has come for all good Christians to offer themselves to the Lord God for evermore. Confess your sins and come forward to be saved in the name of Jesus!” He held his hands above the heads of the crowd. “Let no man keep you from ensuring your entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven.” He rolled his eyes skyward once more and drooled slightly from the left side of his mouth. “Baptism is the one sure way of gaining entrance into the Kingdom,” he cried. “Come forward and be baptized.”

One man stepped slowly forward and looked hopefully up at Tillotson. The Reverend quickly lowered a hand, opened his fly and urinated forcefully in the direction of the startled man. “I baptize you in the name of the Lord,” he roared. The crowd gasped collectively and the first row beat a hasty retreat. Tillotson seemed unaffected.

“Shrink not from the anointment of your Spiritual Leader,” he commanded, unbuckling his belt.

He released his penis and slid his trousers and shorts down to his ankles. “Come to me and learn the way to salvation,” he roared, then spun around and mooned the remaining onlookers. “Kiss this sacred ass, you motherfuckers, and I shall lead you into the ways of lust such as you’ve never known.”

The crowd fell all over each other in an effort to retreat before the Reverend lost all control and shat upon them. Two large trucker types, however, ran to the soapbox and yanked Tillotson to the ground.

“What’s the matter with you, man?” one of them yelled in his ear. “Have you gone nuts?”

“Do you know this guy?” the other asked as Tillotson struggled to escape.

“I’ve been to his church a few times. Seemed like a regular type preacher. I think he’s flipped his cork.”

Tillotson did his best to bite the ear from the shorter of the two men as they wrestled him into the back seat of his car. They managed to keep him there until a police car arrived, summoned by one of the previous onlookers. Officer Mazack hauled Tillotson to the station and locked him in a holding cell until Gerhart could be reached for instructions.

Chapter Seventeen

November 17, 2004

Mark Birrell had not smoked for seventeen days. In times of stress he would almost beat himself to death looking for the pack of cigarettes he had carried in a shirt pocket for the better part of forty-one years. This time he went two rounds with himself before he realized what was wrong. He stopped pounding on his body and dug in a jacket pocket for the pack of chewing gum he used as an ineffective substitute for the nicotine. All he found was an empty package.

“Hey, Gino,” he called to his driver, “pull in at that store up there and get me some gum.”

“Sure, boss.”

Gino swung the Mercedes into a parking slot, climbed out and trotted into the big grocery store. It took him six minutes to find the gum, gather up five packs and get to a checkout line. Then he came to a halt behind a blue-haired little old lady trying to find six more pennies in her purse. To kill time he read the headlines on the various tabloids and gossip magazines racked next to the aisle. Most of them contained the usual mindless bullshit. His gaze stopped momentarily on a magazine cover that sported a shot of a pneumatic model wearing about two square inches of bikini. Next to this magazine was the latest copy of the
National Query
. The headlines took up half of the page.