The Fate Merchant

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

     ArkNet.  Written in blood.  Why?

     Detective Butcher of the Stone Mills police force stared at Frank and waited for an answer.  It was a good question, one that Frank had asked himself while waiting for the police to arrive.

     “ArkNet is an online architectural journal,” Frank told the detective.  “I don’t know why he wrote that.”

     Detective Butcher, forty-four, with tired eyes, powerful arms, and a crew cut so even that the top of his head looked like it had been surgically removed with a high powered laser, had arrived on the scene wearing bowling shoes, a sweat stained bowling shirt advertising Ralph’s Seafood Palace, and a scowl.

     Leaning against his truck, Frank had watched Butcher get out of his car, the detective’s shadow -- long and lean and thrown by one of the work lights set up around the driveway -- racing ahead of him across the gravel as he walked to the front door and spoke with the uniformed officer guarding the entrance.  He’d glanced at Frank, held up a finger as if to say, “I’ll be right back”, and entered the house, emerging fifteen minutes later with a notepad and the question for which Frank had no answer.

     “Strange thing to write,” Butcher said.

     “Yes.”

     If Barry had had the strength to scrawl one word, why had he chosen the name of an online architectural journal?  Why not write something that would help the police identify the killer?  Then again, Frank had never had his intestines scrambled, so he couldn’t imagine the pain Barry must have been feeling.  Did ArkNet mean anything, or was it the final, incoherent burst of a dying mind?

     “What do you think it means?” Butcher asked.

     “I don’t know.”

     “If you had to guess?”

     “If I had to guess, I’d say it means Barry had lousy taste in architectural journals.  When can I go home?”

     A uniformed officer appeared and handed Butcher a printout.  The detective scanned the document.  “Are you an angry person, Mr. Sullivan?”

     “What?”

     Butcher tapped the printout.  “Says here your wife has a restraining order against you.”

     Frank glanced at the uniformed officer, who stood five feet away and watched him as though Frank might, at any moment, conjure an Uzi out of thin air.  “It was a misunderstanding.  What are you getting at?”

     “What I’m getting at is that you seem to have trouble controlling your temper.”

     Frank’s jaw muscles tightened.  Soon the tightness would spread to his neck, his shoulders, his chest, and then the steam building deep in his gut would surge up and out, an explosion that usually took the form of something vulgar and highly insulting.