Cloudland Read Free Page B

fleeing and, unfortunately, leaving the knife behind.
    Anthony leaned forward. “What you don’t know is that Marjorie Poole was high when she ran into this guy.”
    “How high is high?” I asked.
    “They found traces of cocaine and Vicodin and alcohol in her blood.”
    “That’s really high,” I agreed.
    “She was so high that she couldn’t really give the police any details about his face or how old he looked.”
    “So that’s what it was,” I said. “Not traumatic memory loss.”
    “Correct.” Anthony leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “But here’s the thing,” he said. “Being high probably saved her life. In medical school they say, ‘God protects the inebriates and the babies…’ Basically she was too stoned to panic. And really fought back hard with everything she had. Even though she couldn’t give us any particulars about his face or his age, she does remember one very significant thing.” Anthony paused, scrutinizing Paul and then me. “When he was trying to kill her he told her about ‘The Day of Judgment’ and that she’d sleep until then. And when she was on the way to the hospital, they found a few Seventh-Day Adventist pamphlets shoved into the pocket of her peacoat.”
    “And the connection?” I wondered aloud.
    Raising his ginger-colored eyebrows, Anthony said, “It hasn’t been reported and it won’t be reported, I don’t think, but a similar pamphlet was actually found in Angela Parker’s ski jacket.”
    Shuddering, I said, “What about the rest of the women?”
    “We’re checking through the files, but as far as I can see, nothing like this has been linked to any of the other bodies. But we have to take into consideration that every other victim was killed when it was warmer, so the bodies had decomposed and were picked over by animals by the time they were found. Had it been left, printed matter might have been scattered.”
    “Or depending on the weather, decomposed or dissolved in the elements,” said Paul, who, being an artist, knew about the durability of paper.
    “How about the one killed in her home?” I said.
    “Janet Tourvalon?” Anthony said. I nodded. “Nothing printed found anywhere near her. However.” He held up a finger. “Everything else matches, the strangle marks, the knife wounds.”
    “Maybe he found God and His literature more recently,” said Paul, a lapsed Catholic.
    “I think he’s just trying to mix it all up, red-herring style,” Anthony said.
    “Or maybe just getting bolder,” I said, “and taunting us with clues.”
    Sheila, our waitress, arrived with more coffee and refilled Anthony’s cup and mine. “Whatya up to these days?” she said to everyone. “You doing all right, honey,” she addressed me, and then was uncharacteristically direct for a Vermonter. “Talk about one crazy day, going for a walk and finding a stiff in the snow!”
    “Not one of my better ones.”
    She grimaced. “I can only imagine.”
    Sheila was a tough-talking, rail-thin blonde who was rumored to have been a partner in a crystal meth lab that was run out of an auto body shop attached to an old, degraded farmhouse. The local scuttlebutt claimed that she was out of town when the operation was raided and shut down.
    Glancing at Paul, who knew her a lot better than Anthony, I said to Sheila, “I’m coping. And you ?”
    “Oh, keeping my thoughts and deeds pure,” she said with a saucy smile. “Be a lot happier when the weather perks.” We all reflexively glanced out the window across the parking lot and past the drive-up bank teller to a short field where the snow had melted down to stubbled grasses that were a monochrome, mud-seasonal brown. “Dreary, isn’t it?” Sheila remarked. I looked back and saw her winking flirtatiously at Anthony, who waited until she drifted over to the next table of customers.
    “I think she likes you,” I said.
    Ignoring my remark, Anthony said sotto voce, “Angela Parker was an