Chapter 8: The Skull of Doom, Part 8

EPISODE in LITHOPOLIS, OH

September, 2007

A black pickup pulls into the lot of a 1950s-style industrial building that could once have been a pre-school. A tall, sturdy man in his early thirties steps out, a black plastic portfolio under one arm. The door he closes is cleaner than the denim jacket and jeans he wears.

He enters the Legion Hall. Thinly-bearded, ruddy-faced, and light-skinned, he keeps his golden-brown hair short on the back and sides. His lank bangs are combed over his receding hairline almost down to his eyebrows. His green, uncertain eyes scan a cafeteria-sized open space with two doorless arches at the far end. Through the one on the right, he spots the bar and a bandy fellow at a small table, the veiled light of the early afternoon falling in upon him. "Mr. Cain," he calls, extending a hand that the seated man takes without rising. "Rob Schenne. Nice of you to meet like this. Take time out of your day." He looks over his shoulder and spots the bartender studying them. The three are the room's only occupants.

The seated man has a short brown beard, pea-sized blue eyes, and a florid complexion. He wears a trucker cap and a hooded sweatshirt under a nylon jacket with the faded logo of a construction company embroidered over the heart. "Still not too clear on how you tracked me down," he says, sipping from his bottle of Rolling Rock.

"You can get a look at a lot of the old documents on line, Mr. Cain. Property records. Wills. Genealogies. Just happens that's one of my specialties."

"What I'm uncomfortable about is how you knew it to be me and my young relation that was looking to make a deal."

"Quite the coincidence that I ended up living in your grandpappy's house," says the newcomer. "I began to find some of the items we discussed on the phone last week, and there was certain clues as to the finding of others. When your item turned up as being offered for sale, it only made sense that mine ought to go with it."

"How bout you tell me why you believe you have any interests in this matter?"

The newcomer edges forward but makes poor eye contact. "Now, it might could be argued that certain rights a possession go long with the house and property. Mose people think a 'minerals' as meanin gas and oil, but minerals is anything comes out a the ground. Gold, silver, diamonds.... Even outa something we now know to be an Indian monument that's currently on state land. And it could be debated in a court a law that those rights was abandoned. Means they go back to the surface owner."

"This gets into a court a law," says the other, "ain't going be much in it for anybody."

"Then it only makes sense that we need to keep this a kind of a team operation. A team. As you have got to be sensing by now, the items that have brought us together at this table are companion items. Have to be. What's out there like em? They're a set. And if we was to put our hands together... Make this a partnering relationship... The value of them two ought to be ten times what it is for either one just by itself. Ten times. You get that?"

"We sorta made our rangement," says the man in the hat."Made us a deal."

"Tell em you need a little more time. Tell em you got a little surprise. A complete package. Might even get us a little price war going on with other interested parties."

The taller man sets his elbows on the table. "This is about where you got to get your thinking cap on. How about if somebody was to come up to you and tell you you get to have a half of ten. And then I was to come up and give you the chance to get a third of a hundred. Now which way would you think was like to leave you better off?"

The man in the hat looks uneasy. His pocky cheeks are even redder. "My uncle's boy is counting on coming into his half a something. I don't right know how he'd think of that dropping back to a third."

The taller man reaches into his portfolio and passes over photocopies of a few old documents. Several passages are highlighted in a ghastly lavender-pink.

"Remember that thinkin hat I told you about," he says. "You got to keep that on now. Keep yourself open to imaginative possibilities. You see, his claim on the item you hold isn't quite the same as what yours is. Surely you know about this, or else you ought to. Your grandpa didn't mention your dad's brother when he got round to making up his will and testament. Not with the minerals. Now exactly why that was, I don't know. But the rights of possession went through your dad.

"Now, if we was to take a little action... If we was to put our hands together on this, why, you could surely do what you think is the right thing by your nephew down the road. I'm sure he'd understand all that, though I'd tell you, ain't no way that's gonna happen without fifty percent for the each of us. Or close to it. Ain't no way, Mr. Cain."

"Mose people calls me 'Skeeter,'" Cain says through his back teeth.

"Well, all right, Skeeter!" says the other, waving two fingers to the bartender and tapping at the other's empty bottle. "But there's one aspect of this matter's keeping me curious. Why would your grandaddy hang onto that remarkable item that long and not say nothing about it?"

"That old pack rat. Seemed to specially like the idea a him being the only one that knows something. The thing was real special to him for something or other. I knew he had it because a him showing it to my sister and me when we was kids. He got closer to the chest with ever-thing, particularly after my gramma passed on. I think he was planning to enjoy it long's he could and then put it back where he found it someday. I used to almost think he talked with it. Like he felt some obligation to it."

"Being as he probably didn't know history like we do now, I don't blame him for not knowing what it might a meant," says the other. "Now, why somebody didn't find the second component when they turned up the first... That I'll leave up to speculation."

"Just so's we all know what we're talking about," says the man in the hat. "You happen to bring that item a yours along with you?"

His companion smiles, opens his folder, and sets another sheet of paper on the table. It is the print of a photograph of an object resting by the header of the front page of the Circleville Herald, dated Thursday, September 6, 2007 - the day before. It is a perfect human jaw, teeth intact, seemingly made of solid crystal.