BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 4

SEVEN SALLIE

WHEREAS YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN TOMORROW. FOR WHAT IS YOUR LIFE? IT IS EVEN A VAPOR THAT APPEARS FOR A LITTLE TIME AND THEN VANISHES AWAY (James 4:14)

            A knock at my front door revealed Lieutenant Louis Lewis standing on my stoop. It had been a couple weeks since he and FBI Agent Nora Medora had stopped by to threaten me. Oh, they called it a warning, but I clearly saw restrained hostility in their demeanors.

            “Good afternoon, Lieutenant,” I greeted, I hoped cheerfully. I could feel my blood pressure spike a bit. There is no fear in love, I reminded myself (1 John 4:18). Followed by love your enemies (Matthew 5:44).

            “Afternoon,” he responded, eyeing me cooly.

            No fear in love, love your enemies, my mind repeated. “I’d like to say to what do I owe the pleasure, but I can’t help wondering what I said on podcast that made you show up. I’ve tried to be, shall I say, cautious, since you and Nora were kind enough to warn me.”

            What I didn’t acknowledge to the police officer was that I was choosing my battles wisely. And hopefully it was not as a wise guy, which was my sinful tendency. I needed to seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance with timing in what to say and do. I needed to follow the example of Jesus when He said things like, ‘Tell no one,’ and ‘My time is not yet.’

            “This has nothing to do with your podcast, Sallie,” Triple Lou said. “I need to ask you a few questions about Inga Likas. Also known as Inga Cognito.”

            “Did she get into some trouble?”

            “Yeah, I’d say she did.” He sighed and ran a hand over his face. Then his tired looking dark brown eyes met mine. “I’m afraid she’s been murdered.”

            “What!”

            “I’m sorry. There was no easy way to break it to you.”

            “That can’t be!”

            “I’m afraid it is. Her body was found down by the river in a patch of woods off of first street. Now I know she had been staying with you, so there are a couple things I need to know.”

            “You don’t understand, she…”

            “Once again,” he interrupted. “I’m sorry to break it to you like this, but…”

            “Lieutenant,” I interrupted. “You…”

            “Maybe we should sit,” he interrupted. “How about at the kitchen table?”

            “Yeah, that would be fine,” I said and then sighed. “Can I get you something to drink? Relaxed Mind tea? Sparkling water?”

            “No thanks. Now, Mr. Sallie, when was the last time you saw her?”

            “Please, call me Seven.”

            “Now, Mr. Sallie, when was the last time you saw her?”

            “About fifteen minutes ago.”

            “Fifteen minutes ago? That’s not possible.”

            Inga walked up to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. “Do you have any leads on who killed me?”

            Triple Lou stared at Inga in astonishment. It was as if he had lived two thousand years ago and witnessed Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead.

            “It.. It’s you,” Lieutenant Louis Lewis stammered.

            “It’s me,” Inga said with a shrug. She was amazingly calm for having just found out that she had been murdered. Yet I noticed her fingers were trembling slightly. Then her lower lip developed a bit of a quiver as she asked, “So what makes you think I’ve been murdered?”

            “I swear, I thought for sure it was you,” Triple Lou said mildly, still looking at Inga in disbelief. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

            Now I noticed Inga’s eyes were becoming watery, so I spoke up. “Lieutenant, can you tell us why you thought Inga had been murdered?”

            “I saw her for myself,” he replied, as he turned his gaze onto me.

            “What did you see?” I asked.

            He looked back to Inga. “I don’t know if you want to hear this.”

            “Give it to me straight, Triple Lou,” Inga said flatly.

            Now I am obnoxious by nature. But by the grace of God, I no longer purposely try to get a rise out of people since giving my life to Christ. The old me would have smiled at Inga’s disrespectful tone. But the new creature inside my flesh cringed at the use of the flippant name she used for the gruff police officer. Yet it seemed to roll off his shoulders as if she had called him sir, officer, or lieutenant.

            “Well, for one thing, it looked like your hair,” he told us. “But I see you got it cut.”

            Inga’s dread locks were gone, and her dark brown hair was cut into a pixie style.

            Being rather dense I said, “Didn’t you recognize the face?”

            “It was beaten beyond recognition.”

            “What else?” Inga asked stoically.

            “Carved in her flesh, on her torse to be exact, were the words, ‘Inga Cognito is a fake.’ Also on her person was a Nevada ID that called her Inga Marie Likas… So I hope you can see why I was confident that the… Why I thought it was you.”

            “Did she have any tattoos?” Inga asked hesitantly.

            “Why yes, she did. On the back side of her wrist. A banner that said love conquers all, surrounded by flowers and…”

            “1 Corinthians 13:4-8 under the flowers,” Inga interrupted.

            “Yes,” Triple Lou said solemnly and then paused. “Who is she, Inga?”

            But instead of replying, Inga’s chin began to quiver, and tears seemed to pop out of her eye socks. She coughed out a sob, covered her mouth with her hand and ran to the bedroom.

            “Must be a relative of hers,” the Lieutenant said quietly.

            I shook off the shock I felt and said, “I better go comfort her… Or something.”

            I got up slowly from the table. Although my heart broke for Inga, I selfishly longed for my wife. I mumbled, “Zella, you should have been home a half hour ago, where are you?”

            Low and behold the front door popped open and my beautiful wife stepped into our home. I stepped quickly to her, and we embraced. Having noticed the Lieutenant’s car in the driveway, she whispered into my ear, “Are you in trouble again?”

            I explained the reason for Triple Lou’s presence. My wife is mentally tough because she is spiritually grounded in the love of Christ. She pushed away from me and briskly walked toward Inga. I slowly walked back to the table, sat, and then sighed as I eased into a chair.

            Triple Lou and I sat in silence for a couple minutes. Then I said, “Maybe you could come back later, or we could come down to the station later.”

            “I really need to talk to her as soon as possible. If we don’t catch the perpetrator within the first forty eight hours, the odds of ever finding him drop dramatically.”

            “So you think it’s a him?”

            “In most cases of a brutal murder it’s a him,” he told me sternly. “But to be fair how about I change it to ‘them.’”

            “Them? So you think it’s more than one person?”

            “Sallie, why do you always have to be so difficult?”

            “I don’t mean to be, Sir. I just like to explore every detail of a subject.”

            “Ya know, even when you’re being respectful, I somehow feel that you’re mocking.”

            “I’m sorry you feel that way. On the other hand, we live in a dog eat dog world. Your paranoia could be looked at as just being cautious.”

            “I’m not paranoid,” he said testily. Then he forced a smile and said with eerie calmness, “I’m not paranoid.”

            He glanced at the door that concealed Inga and my wife. Then his eyes shifted to me. Then he looked back at the door. Then he looked back at me. Then he muttered to himself, “Oh nuts.”

            “So Lieutenant, do you have time to investigate a murder while at the same time enforcing Sunday laws?”

            His eyes narrowed with distaste, and I put up my hands in a surrender gesture. “I’m sorry how that came across. When I’m under stress, it gets hard to control my natural bent for flippancy.”

            “Be careful Sallie, you do realize you’re a suspect?”

            “What! Surly you don’t think I killed… Whoever it is that was killed?”

            He sighed. “At this point everybody is a suspect. But no, I don’t think you did it.”

            “Well, good.”

            “Yet,” he added cooly.

            After a minute of awkward silence, Triple Lou said without looking at me, “I am off of overseeing Sunday ordinances though.”

            “Yeah? How come?”

            “Conflict of interest.”

            “May I ask what the conflict of interest is?”

            “You may,” he replied but then remained silent.

            “Well?”

            “I just said you could ask, I didn’t say I would answer.”

            Despite the violent death of somebody seemingly related to Inga somehow, I laughed. “It sure can be hard to like somebody that’s flippant.”

            “Tell me about it,” he said.

            “Well, I wanted to understand your conflict of interest, and I found it annoying when you responded with flippancy instead.”

            He still eyed me with narrow eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitched. “’Tell me about it’ was a figure of speech, not a request. You’re something else, Sallie.”

            “That’s what my wife always tells me.”

            “I bet she does,” he said, sighed and rose from the table. He began to slowly do laps around the kitchen table. “I’ve been studying out this Sabbath issue with my Bible and concordance. Now I was believer that we kept Sunday in honor of the resurrection. But then I discovered in the book of Acts, in particular chapters thirteen and seventeen, that they kept the Sabbath. Jesus had been long risen from the dead by then.

            “Then I looked up Constantine and how he mandated on March 7, AD 321, dies solis meaning ‘The Day of the Sun’ in latin, making Sunday the official day of rest.”

            “Lieutenant, that’s awesome!”

            “Yeah, well, truth is truth. I also got to thinking about the first scripture I read on the Sabbath. Genesis 2:3 says God sanctified it. I couldn’t find anywhere in scripture where God sanctified or made holy, the first day of the week.”

            “That’s because He didn’t.”

            “Right,” he replied as if he didn’t want to admit it. But then he acknowledged, “So, I told the Captain I didn’t want to oversee the Sunday laws anymore.”

            “How’d that go over?”

            “Okay, but now he regards me with suspicion.”

            “Ya mean he didn’t before?”

            “Sallie, do you always have to…” He grinned, shook his head and said, “No, he didn’t.”

            The bedroom door opened, and Inga and Zella came out walking hand in hand. Inga’s arctic blue eyes were red rimmed as she said in a childlike voice, “I’m ready to talk, Lieutenant. I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but I want you to find who did this.”

            “Okay,” Triple Lou said with surprising gentleness. “Let’s start with this. Do you know who she is?”

            “Her name is Paloma, she’s my sister.”