A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller by Charles W. Sasser

asked.
    He shook his head.
    “I take it you aren’t married?”
    “Divorced.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “You?”
    “Also divorced.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Why? You think I’m an old maid or something?”
    “Don’t be so touchy.” He clambered to his feet, bracing himself against the back of the chair. He started to remove the bandages from his head but thought better of it. “Let’s go.”
    “To where?”
    “The county jail downtown.”
    “Joshua Logan?”
    She drove them downtown. Nail slumped in the passenger’s seat with his eyes closed, nursing his headache. Sharon turned on the radio and caught a live broadcast being delivered by President Anastos from a D.C. high school gym.
    “The old order has been shaken,” he was saying in his rich baritone, “the old ideas and institutions are crumbling, and, uh, a new generation is called upon to remake the world...”
    Nail opened one eye. “You can’t get away from that man.”
    She glanced at him. “Remind you of anything from history?”
    “Only that I have a headache and he’s making it worse.”
    He switched the radio to Classic Country FM 99.5. Linda Ronstadt crooning Blue Bayou.
    Sharon stopped at a red light. “What will we learn from Joshua Logan?”
    He shrugged. “That’s why we’re talking to him.”
    She waited for him to continue. He didn’t. She prompted, “You said there were connections between Ron Sparks and the shooting at McDonald?s...?”
    “We don’t have diddley yet. It’s a cinch the Homies aren’t about to tell me anything. I’ll have to start from the outside and work my way toward the center.”
    “Don’t you mean we ?” she corrected. “I have a stake in this.”
    He said nothing. The light turned green. She pulled on through the intersection.
    “I need to help in this, James. I was with Jerry almost from the beginning. What he knew and what he said got him—and your daughter—murdered.”
    They were almost to the jail.
    “It’s too soon to speculate,” Nail pondered. “The way you work a homicide is like you throw a bunch of marbles on the ground. You start picking up the marbles one by one until you get to the center.”
    “And Logan is—?”
    “Marble number one.”
    Nail studied her as she looked for an open meter in the courthouse parking lot.
    “I’ll get to the center one way or the other,” he said.
    She stopped the car in the middle of a lane in order to meet his steady gaze. “We will,” she said.
    * * *
    The county jail consumed the entire sixth floor of the district courthouse. By the luck of the draw, Deputy Johnson happened to be on duty, manning the security desk in front of the electronics door to the cellblocks. He was too old and too fat to work the streets anymore.
    “Man, you look like—” Johnson began when Nail got off the elevator. He saw Sharon and amended the last of his statement to “—awful.”
    “Good seeing you too, Johnson. This is Sharon Lowenthal.”
    “Meecha,” Johnson said. “I’m Jewish too. ‘Johnson’ don’t sound like no Jew name, but it is. Johnski.”
    He laughed heartily.
    “You know how to get on the right side of a girl,” Nail said.
    “That’s what my three ex-wives say. You got my message about Logan.”
    “You want to bring him out?” Nail asked. “We can use one of the interrogation rooms?”
    “No can do. The Feds came and picked him up about two hours ago. Custody slip says they taking him to the Homeland lockup in Oklahoma City. I’ve transported prisoners there before. They don’t let no other law enforcement in that joint. They meet you out front and that’s as far as you go.”
    Nail had had run-ins with Oklahoma City before, trying to interrogate homicide suspects in cases the Feds considered sensitive.
    “Logan knew they was coming for him,” Johnson added, “so he left this for you.”
    He opened a desk drawer and extracted a sealed envelope with Nail scrawled on it. Inside was a sheet of lined legal yellow paper filled