The Revelation by Bentley Little Read Free Book Online

the Rim. "Damn," he said.

    Marina finished opening the windows in the back of the house and returned to the living room. "What?" she said.

    Gordon tried to smile for her sake. "I said "At least it's cool."" She stood next to him and put her arm around his waist, snuggling into the crook under his arm. She looked with him out the screen door toward the forest. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but she did not allow him to see them. The tears flowed freely down her cheeks. "Yes," she said softly.
    "At least it's cool."

    Jim Weldon slept for ten hours straight--a record for him--and for the first time in almost a month his sleep remained undisturbed by nightmares. He was exhausted; his body and brain were just too damned tired to allow him to dream, and he lay on the bed unmoving from four in the morning until two in the afternoon.

    He had never had a day like this before.

    The morning had dawned clear and hot like any other, and he'd gotten to the office by eight. He'd expected a few minor complaints, maybe some drunks or speeders, then an afternoon of paper shuffling and serious rest. But Tim Larson had called less than an hour later with news of the vandalized Episcopal church, and by noon the investigation had spread to include the mysterious disappearance of the Selway family and the series of goat mutilations, which apparently stretched all the way from the Green River Ranch south of town to Bill Heard's place up on the Rim. The bodies of Loren Wilbanks and Clay Henry, or what was left of their bodies (connected somehow with the goat mutilations?), had been discovered by a neighboring rancher late in the afternoon, and by the time they had dusted for prints, taken the pictures, examined the house and carted off the bodies six hours later, the other five churches in Randall had been vandalized. Although the desecration of these churches had to have taken place between six and ten p.m."

    none of the nearby residents had seen or heard a thing, and they'd had to spend another four hours sifting through the piles of broken glass and combing every inch of each church, trying to gather what clues they could. Judson Weiss and Pete King were working night shift, and when Jim's brain finally became too tired to function properly, he left everything in their hands and went home to get some much needed sleep.

    He'd been up for almost twenty-four hours.

    Jim had prayed before falling asleep that somehow, miraculously, Judson and Pete would solve everything in his absence and that the two murders, the disappearances, the vandalism, and the livestock mutilations would all be neatly tied up into one package and written into a typed, doublespaced report that would be placed on his desk for him to read and sign.

    No such luck.

    A call to the station upon waking revealed that no progress had been made in any of the cases. There were still no leads and nothing to go on.

    He hung up the phone, feeling a headache coming on. A bad one. He massaged his temples with his fingers, feeling the rhythmic pounding of blood beneath the thin layer of skin. He just wasn't cut out for this shit. This was for the big-city cops and the motion-picture sheriffs, not him. Already he felt way out of his league, and he wondered vaguely if he shouldn't call for some help on this.

    But who would he call?

    He pulled on a robe and lumbered into the bathroom, his bare feet sticking to the green tile floor as he walked. He pulled back the shower curtain and turned on the water in the shower, adjusting the two faucets by feel. Why the hell had he been born in Randall instead of one of the hundreds of other small towns scattered throughout Northern Arizona? Why wasn't he sheriff in Sedona or Heber? He climbed into the shower, wincing as the water hit his skin. This was going to make national news for sure-if not television then at least the wire services. People were going to be watching him closely. He'd better not fuck it up.

    A note on the refrigerator said