The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) Read Online Free Page B

whooosh .
    “Welcome aboard,” said Captain Seven.
    The captain’s hair had hung past his shoulders, wild and unkempt, for as long as Kimberlain had known him. The only difference lately was the graying edges along his temples. He wore cut-off jean shorts which exposed his thin, knobby legs, and a leather vest over a black Grateful Dead T-shirt. A medallion with a sixties peace sign embossed on it dangled from his neck, even though he’d spent much of that era fighting in Vietnam instead of protesting about it. Kimberlain didn’t know the captain’s real name and never had. He knew him only as a spaced-out tech whiz who’d made his mark in Vietnam as a brilliant flake from the seventh planet in another galaxy. “Captain” wasn’t his real rank, but it sounded nice when you ran the “Seven” after it. He seemed content never to return to his own identity, and Kimberlain never pressed him about it.
    “Hope you haven’t come to complain about the video system,” the captain said.
    “Not a chance. Works like a charm.”
    “Course it does,” Seven said proudly.
    Kimberlain followed him through the doorway into his decidedly unhumble abode. The furniture was stunning. Each shiny black leather piece was built precisely to fit in its location. The carefully arranged interior was filled with flashing lights, diodes, CRT screens, monitors, switches, and assorted machines and data banks from floor to ceiling. Kimberlain caught the pungent scent of marijuana and flared his nostrils. “Ventilation system needs to be flushed.” He smiled.
    From a nearby table, Captain Seven lifted a plastic contraption bristling with tubes and dominated by water-filled chambers. “This shit’s too good to flush out,” he said, wrapping his mouth around a small hole in the device and sucking air from it deeply.
    Kimberlain could hear bubbles churning. Almost immediately smoke poured through the various serpentine chambers, tunneling ultimately into Captain Seven’s lungs. He inhaled until the smoke was gone. The bubbles stopped.
    Seven held his breath briefly, then let it out, stray smoke following with it. His eyes fell fondly on the marijuana-filled thing. “Best bong ever,” he reported, voice thinner with each word. “Don’t need to be lit. Breathing in supplies all necessary combustion. Don’t remember how I came up with it. If I’d had it over in Nam, though, I’d be in the millions now.”
    “Retire right,” said the Ferryman.
    “Yeah. Just imagine. All those boys in their foxholes at night lighting up a joint and sending a signal to the Cong for hundreds of yards. They had these, they could smoke themselves silly and the Cong would never know. We might even have won the war. Who knows?”
    “Maybe you should take out a patent.”
    “Too fuckin’ late.” Captain Seven sighed. “World’s turned to that powder shit. Freezes their minds. This stuff, well I been smokin’ it for damn near thirty years now, and look at me.”
    “Right.”
    “Sure you don’t want any?”
    “Yup.”
    Captain Seven plopped down in a black leather chair under a terminal board with a dozen flashing red lights. He turned to Kimberlain. “So what do you want?”
    “Got a challenge for you.”
    “Oh?”
    “Ultimate locked-room murder. Got the best tech boys in the country baffled.”
    “Not the best, old buddy, but please go on.”
    Kimberlain told him about Jordan Lime’s murder, told him everything in the clearest, most deliberate terms so that Seven’s brilliant but often frazzled mind could absorb it. When he was finished, the captain just sat there expressionless, not even blinking, the slight motions of his chest in and out the only reminder he was alive.
    Without warning or word, his eyes flashed alert again and he drew the bong back to his lips. Once more bubbles churned like water boiling in an open pot on a stove. Smoke filled the chambers, and then it was gone.
    “I need to know how it was done,” Kimberlain added