The blaring of the bus horn brought him out of his sweaty reverie as he waddled out into York Road without checking to see if traffic was even moving. He felt the bike rack on the front of the block-long accordion monstrosity kiss his thigh and make his entire flabby body jiggle with pain. He looked up into the face of the angry bus driver, tipped his nonexistent hat, and waddled on, only to have his hand hit by the mirror of a speeding yellow Scion, “Damn!”

He hobbled in front of the Fedex van that had slowed in the northbound lane, and finally reached the wide inviting sidewalk before the Towson Central Library. His left hand was already swelling. Fortunately the ink had not been whiped off by the upscale mirror and he was not bleeding.

“No way am I stepping into this shithole anywhere east of Sober.”

With all of the moral cowardice he could muster, when confronted with the prospect of actually seeing his ex-wife in the very habitat he had met and wooed her in, before she discovered what a hopelessly dysfunctional drunk he was, he walked up to the liquor store and bought two flats: eight ounces of Smirnoff vodka and eight ounces of Aztec Goddess Nectar; 100% blue agave tequila distilled by some half-assed holistic 'I love my prickly ancestral plants' Mexican exporter.

The Korean owner gave him a look of ‘understanding American degeneracy’ as he knocked back two shots of the vodka and then pocketed them both. He liked to think that the world—or at least its witless people—respected him for being professional for wearing his suit jacket through the heat of summer. But it was just a booze contingency. He was so goddamned fat he’d have to wear a tent-sized pair of slacks to be able to slide a bottle between his hairy thigh and pocket lining.

He walked back to the library front, without being run over crossing the side street, which had actually been paved within the last few decades, stopped before the UFO looking monolith, tipped his nonexistent hat at the inane structure, and proceeded—outwardly calm, inwardly tortured—through the door into the spacious lobby.

Mary was standing before the desk, directing a homeless man to leave. The worthless Nigerian rent-a-cop was leaning back away from the smelly vagrant, who kept back-talking his—well, my lady-no-longer.

She lost her composure when she looked into the eyes of the man that had disappointed her for 11 years, 2 months and 8.5 days. The bum began to walk on by her. As she tried to recover the situation the bum spun in anger at her reflexive grabbing of his filthy flannel shirt sleeve. She absently brushed the accumulated grime of years from her hand with the ban-notice paper in the other hand. The bum was now grumbling something about his ‘human rights’.

He stepped up and placed his hand gently on the man’s arm and said in his smoothest voice, “Excuse me, Sir, I am Officer Barney Mancuso, of the Baltimore County Human Rights Bureau. I see you have a complaint.”

The big dummy turned and looked at him slack-jawed, “Yo fo real from dat burrow?”

Mary was looking at him with flames in her eyes, so he forged on hopelessly, lying to this stupid fuck just like he had lied to her about not drinking, “Actually, Sir, I am regarded as the founder of said organization, and I am here to serve your needs as advocate and advisor.”

He then looked past the stunned man and said, looking into her stern face as her expression melted away to affection, “Mrs. Mancuso, may I have a word with my client outside, please?”

She nodded with her mouth open to catch any flies that might care to light on that bitchy trap, and he escorted his man away by the elbow. When the security twerp began to follow he turned on him with apparent venom. “Stop right there, officer. My client will not appear to be ejected from this government facility. He is a proud citizen who enjoys the backing of the BCHB!”

They walked outside and around the corner and Barney turned his big ‘client’ against the wall, opening his suit jacket to show his service weapon in the shoulder holster, which did not rest as it should, pushed forward as it was by the flab under his arm, and the two bottles of liquor in the kerchief pockets. The man’s mouth dropped open and his eyes seemed hurt, so Barney cut to the chase. “Look pal, from one drunk to another, I’m giving you three choices so long as you give me the rest of the evening to do my research inside without your disturbing the peace-of-mind of the civil media servant who I hope to retain as my personal assistant. Come back tomorrow and shit on the floor for all I care.”

The man’s eyes went to the gun fearfully, went to the Smirnoff with a note of disgust, and then fell on the top shelf tequila with a dancing light of triumph.

Barney reached for the tequila as the man’s face split into a triumphant grin. “You drive a hard bargain My Man.”

The man clutched the small bottle eagerly with both large dirty hands and smiled. “Is you be back tomorra, Sir?”

“Don’t push it, pal. That was dinner. Now get.”

“Gettin’ Sir, gettin’.”

“How are you today?”

She glared from behind her desk and spoke with an accusatory tone, “You did not threaten Mister Jorgenson I hope?”

“I did not.”

She then seemed to deflate, having had her emotional weapon emptied of its most stinging bullets. She recovered though. “You should be arrested for impersonating someone who cares.”

“No, I should be arrested for impersonating a husband.”

She nearly cried at that, and he felt suddenly like the heel he was.

“Sorry Mary—really, for everything.”

She batted her eyelashes in consideration, trying and failing to forgive him.

“Look, Mary, I’m investigating a mass murder and thought your organization would be better equipped to assist me than the Pratt people.”

She lit on fire again. “No Barney, your manipulative turn of mind simply arrived at the considered conclusion that I would be more likely to comply with your requests. That is a sad statement on the belief in your ability to connect with anyone who cares about anything that you would count on our sordid history over forming a new connection.”

He stood silently as she gathered herself with a few breaths. After a few moments she smiled reluctantly. “What can I get for you?”

“You know I’m not much of a reader. I don’t have weeks to learn how to crawl through these books. Do you have someone here that could answer a few simple questions? When I don’t know what something is called—I’m talking about symbols—I have no idea how to search that on the database. And you know, after the Burwell case, my fellow detectives are not inclined to offer much in the way of selfless assistance.”

“Are you kidding me! Who writes anymore? What a kook this nimrod sounds like!”

Talking to himself was a bad enough habit. Talking to himself in a library was unseemly. But he was coming apart at the seams. He ducked behind the stacks in the history section, downed half of his remaining Smirnoff, eyed the bottle suspiciously to try and determine how many hours he had before he was straight up east of Sober, and then put it reluctantly away. Rationing worked better than top-loading when it came to maintaining distance between him and the dirty world he floated in like a…

He then saw the geek hunched over a lower shelf, massaging books like a pedophile rubbing a pair of boys. He had long black hair, an affected go-tee, and, at five-six, maybe weighed 120 pounds.

He walked up to the man and cleared his throat. The fellow did not even notice. He wanted to kick him for being pretty and then spoke instead. “Jack Kersarge?”

The man looked up at him over wire frame glasses. “Yes.”

He stood like a question mark, hands crossed over the two books he was considering.

Reflexively he flashed his badge. “Mister Kersarge, Detective Barney Mancuso. I am investigating a crime down in the city. There were two symbols at the scene.”

The man mumbled, “Come with me,” and led him over to a table that had the appearance of his own desk. A laptop and a number of notebooks were spread about. He silently pushed a notepad to his side, so that the page stared up blankly at Barney. Barney took out his pen and drew the hooped cross that he had found carved into the nameless boy’s chest. He looked at the man for an answer and the little squirrel just curled his lip and tapped on the paper. “That would be the primary symbol of the message. Please draw the second one, and if there is a third, that one as well, in the lower quadrants of the page.”

He drew the eye at the bottom left and then looked over at the tiny man, who now expounded as he tapped with his finger first at the hooped cross, “This is the ankh, symbol of Toth-Amon, Egyptian God of Knowledge. The all-seeing eye is on our dollar, has been an occult symbol for ages, and is thought to have originated in ancient Egypt among the indigenous cults, but may be a universal symbol. As such it is generally regarded as the eye of God, who sees all. Put together with the ankh it is a symbol of all-seeing, all-knowing divinity; a warning that one is being watched and judged by a higher power that cannot be escaped through deceit. I can make no more specific interpretation without context.”

“This was at a murder scene.”

“It is then a warning that more justifiable killings are in the offering. I would be surprised if there were no mutilations.”

Barney’s surprise that this twerp knew anything about police work betrayed the truth, and the man caught his failed attempt to cover up his own expression.

“What kind of mutilations?” he smirked impishly.

“What the hell kind of writer are you? I could lose my job and my pension over this.”

The man grinned, “I write horror stories, novels mostly. Whatever information I get from our talk will be broken up into constituent elements and used by me to build more interesting cases.”

“Five dead. Four had their eyes cut out and displayed at a separate location over their scorched genitals.”

The long-haired freak pumped his fist, “Fuck yes! I should have written that long ago. That is genius—sorry. The eyes are witnessing the postmortem emasculation of the victim, who is likewise blind to navigate eternity like a rootless ghost, lost as well as damned. Where were the symbols etched?”

“The eye on the forehead of the un-mutilated victim and the cross on his chest. The body was shown some reverence, unlike the others, who were lined up like hunt carcasses.”

Again the freaky little bone-rack smiled with bitter joy and pumped his boney little fist, “Suweet! That is badass!”

“The reverential victim was left sighted and marked as a messenger of God. He will lead the damned into hell, and serve notice to the powers that dwell therein that God’s avenger is stalking the shared world between heaven and hell. This man will kill again. He is singular and alone, a raging psychopath who has killed before, but without proper justification and lacking a ritual of purification. He is a redemptive killer. The mutilations are fairly universal and primordial and may stem from any form of animistic belief complex such as those practiced in Africa, or once here by Native Americans. If this were the 1970s I’d say you were dealing with a Black Muslim fanatic considering the borrowed Egyptian symbology. This might be a do-it-yourself mythologizer. He will be adding to your caseload, detective.”

“You’re not going to let this get out, are you?”

“My next novel will be set in Detroit. You just provided me a villain. You will be "Fat" Ben Matheson, private investigator. I will be Bryan Lange, cryptic symbology researcher who does not have the discipline to publish his findings.”

“Who will the killer be?”

“Methuselah, a nut that believes he is the longest-lived person in history, reborn into a post-apocalyptic world to hunt evildoers.”

“You have a quick mind. I’ll give you that.”

“I’ll take it, Detective Rubble.”

“One more question Mister Manson?”

“Touche. Go ahead.”

“I have a name, Arbese Comma."

“Arbese is some made up ghetto name, obviously. Now ‘Comma’, if we are going with the Black Muslim supposition, would probably be ‘Qama’, with a Q. This means ‘Big-knife’ and is a rare term that I have only seen applied to a gladius-like sword native to the Georgian region of the Caucasus Mountains. Such a moniker, held by an American of the Black Muslim community, would indicate edgy defiance in the heart of an enemy white Christian nation. Barney, I haven’t written nonfiction. But with what you have on your hands, I would be willing to ghost-write your story. This is the Hillside Strangler as Tom Horn avenging God-only-knows-what.”

“I’ll consider it. Thanks for your help, Mister Kersarge.”

The writer twerp just shook his hand limply and nodded with a curious wink. Barney could not help himself, and turned before cornering the bookshelf. “The private eye in the novel, does he solve the case?”

“Of course—with the help of the researcher.”

“Do we live?”

“I find your mutilated body, and then go insane and am institutionalized. Sorry, but a villain as cool as Methuselah needs to last at least three novels. No offense.”

“Fuck you, you hippie twerp!”

The writer then laughed joylessly, a laugh that turned into a cackle, as he furiously began typing away on his laptop without even taking his seat.

He hobbled away with as much weight on his mind as his poor flat feet had on their fallen arches. He knocked back the rest of the vodka, placed the empty bottle ‘reverentially’ back in its pocket, and mourned its loss.

“So, Methuselah Qama, who do you mourn? What have you lost?"