Chapter 11: The Skull of Doom, Part 11

EPISODE with JASON "SWINGO" JONAS, Continued

September, 2007

HEATH, OHIO

"Ow-oooooo!" yells the big man a second after the whir-buzz of the nail gun, looking to the ceiling and howling like a dog. Then he collapses sobbing over the table.

"They'll do something like that," says the smaller man. "Only worse." The big man kicks and stomps and rattles his cuffs against the cable of the bike lock and tries to raise the table with his free hand.

"Not so loud," says the professorial fellow, pressing again on the table. "They'll think we aren't getting along."

The big man makes a grab with his other hand, comes up short, and cuts loose with a torrent of curses and threats, all but the intent of it unintelligible.

The smaller man takes the expression of someone trying to solve a problem, the two fingers again coming to the forehead. Another time the nail gun comes up from the seat beside him, and another shot drives the big man's other hand down upon the table. To add to the jarring environment, there's a sudden sound like someone whacking the wall with a two-by-four. The big man has kicked his chair out from under him and driven it into the wall behind him. He has shaken the table enough to have shot the pen, picture and pad onto the floor. He slumps, gasping and panting, stretched across the table, resting on his elbows.

"That can't be very comfortable," says the smaller man soothingly. He comes around, recovers the chair, and slides it in behind the big man's slack knees. Then he recovers the displaced items and resumes.

"Now you just sit back and take the weight off," he says. "I'm betting that we can communicate without the need of any more unpleasantness and get each of us on to the rest of our evenings."

The smaller man finds a bit of blood streaked across the top sheet of the yellow pad, already beginning to turn brown. He tears off the first couple of sheets, wads them into a ball, jump-shoots it ten feet across the room toward the waste basket at the corner, banks it off the wall, and hisses cheerfully as it falls in. "Ssssssshowtime! Nothing but net." Then he moves his chair a bit to the right of his former position so as not to touch the bloody drops.

"Owooo," sobs the big man, seeming to cry over his two stuck hands.

The smaller man speaks affably, making eye contact across the table and shaking his head in the tone of a stockbroker explaining a loss to a client. "Ahh, come on. You're OK. Couple shots, a little PT, good as new in a week. You may not even need stitches. But make sure you tell me everything just the way it is. If we have to come back and talk to you again it's not going to go any better."

The room is suddenly still except for a patient weeping. The smaller man resumes. "Now I'm aware that you came across a certain object, an artifact, that had been in the ground a long time. It's the one I tried to talk to you about this afternoon. It looks like the two objects might be connected, the one you came up with and the one I showed you in the picture. I'm still curious about the one you got hold of. Let's start with you telling me what you know about where it was found. From there, we can move on to how we might be able to figure out where it is now."

2

The nail gun rests on the surface of the table. A box of nails is open beside it and a handful are scattered about.

"So just so I have this completely straight," says the smaller man, "you didn't really sell them the whole production, did you? You held something out on them, right?"

The interrogator leans in and listens to his slumping companion, who has placed his head on the table between his elbows.

"It was this, right?" said the smaller man, passing the photograph between the manacled wrists and resting it on the forearms. He leans in and listens. Whatever he hears is inaudible. He takes the image away with the exaggerated grace of someone withdrawing a cookie tray from the reach of a child being taught to take just one.

"That's the only one I have of those," he says affably. "I can't get blood on it." Then he resumes.

"And you held to the letter of the law, in a sense, and you sold them the big object. Because that was all anybody talked about, right? But the part they expected to be included, the part in the photograph I have here... The part you didn't think they'd know about... That you held out on, correct?" He leans in and listens again.

"That's really good to know," says the smaller man. "So what's your connection with this... Mr. Skittles?" he says, and leans over. He hears something.

"Skeeter, Skitter, Scooter," he says. "He got a real name?" He listens as the big man mumbles something.

"You know how to spell that?" says the smaller man, leaning down, transcribing another mumble.

"OK, well skip the spelling," he says, starting to unlatch the cable. "I didn't figure you for 1200 on the SATs. Where can I find him?" He leans and listens again, this time for a bit longer.

"That's really good, thank you," the smaller man says, pausing and making careful notes on his legal pad. "That may help us clear things up." He leaves a card beside the man slumped over the table, then rises and walks toward the door. "If there's anything you want to talk about in the future, don't hesitate to call. Anybody that answers will put us in touch. We can talk like friends next time. Like professionals."

He stops at the door and turns back. He notices the card on the table beside the big man's hands, walks back, and, as if as an afterthought, snatches the nail gun and drills the card down with one more punch. The big man jumps at the sound as much as he can. "Wouldn't want you to lose that," the smaller man says.