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composure, pried my mind open again, and said, “Yeah. Tell me about it.”
    He glanced around the room, clearly on edge, and then spoke in a lowered voice. “For a while I thought I was going crazy. I was coming back from Spokane on Highway 2, and there was this guy hitchhiking.”
    Uh-oh.
    “I was feeling pretty good, I wasn’t in a hurry, so I figured, hey, I’ll pick the guy up—if he doesn’t mind riding in a squad car. He looked a little weird anyway, so better a cop gives him a ride than some innocent citizen—”
    I interrupted. “Hey Brett.”
    “Hm?”
    I held my hand up, just trying to keep the peace as I offered my question. “Did this guy get in the car, ride with you a while, say ‘Jesus is coming soon,’ and then disappear?”
    I regretted the question the moment I asked it. He’s never going to talk to me again , I thought. I’ve insulted him, I’ve— He froze, his face turned pale, and he stared at me as if I’d told him Martians had landed. “How did you know?”
    This just couldn’t be happening. “I . . . uh . . .”
    “Did someone else run into this guy?”
    Now we were in a face-off, staring at each other as if each was waiting for the other to crack into a smile, confess the whole thing was a gag, and break the tension. Was Brett trying to outlast me? If so, he was an incredible actor playing a role vastly different from his nature. I finally broke the freeze-up by asking, “You’ve never heard that story before?”
    “What story?”
    No. Brett wasn’t a Christian; he wasn’t part of the culture. I could be reasonably sure he’d never heard that popular rumor that circulated around Christendom every few years.
    “Well, we’ll, uh, get to that. You say he looked a little weird. What did he look like?”
    “Long blond hair, like a hippie, about five-seven, early twenties, wearing a white sweatshirt and jeans. He looked a little ghostly— you know, pale and skinny like he was sick. Couldn’t have weighed more than 120 pounds. He got into the car, the passenger seat right next to me, fastened his seat belt, and rode with me for a couple of miles.”
    “Did he say anything besides . . .”
    “He said he was coming to Antioch to visit some friends. He didn’t say who. I talked a little bit about the town, the weather, you know, just making conversation, and then he said, right out of the blue, ‘Jesus is coming soon,’ and then—” He took a moment to watch the memory play through his mind. “Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw him make a quick movement. I turned and he disappeared. There wasn’t any sound or anything. His seat belt was still buckled. He just wasn’t there anymore. I slammed on the brakes and pulled over and checked every inch of that car. I looked up the highway, off the shoulder, drove back the way I came. The guy was gone.
    “Then I talked to Nancy this afternoon—and listen, I haven’t said a thing about this to anyone except you—and she starts telling me about people seeing angels and a crying crucifix and Jesus in the sky.” He looked at me intensely. “Now that tells me I’m not crazy, but it also tells me there could be a blond, five-seven suspect in town that I need to question before he pulls this little stunt again.”
    I couldn’t believe I was even having this conversation. “Have you talked to Sally Fordyce?”
    “Is she the other person who offered this guy a ride?”
    Oh brother. What could I say to that? “No. Brett, the story about the hitchhiker, it’s a rumor, a legend.”
    “Was.”
    I stared. It happened to him —not to a friend of a friend who told a lady who was aunt to the woman who was married to the man who used to work for the guy who last repeated the tale. It happened to Brett Henchle, the man sitting right across from me. “From what I understand, the man Sally saw had a totally different description.”
    That news did not cheer him. “Oh great. So there might be two.” He thought aloud as if