1
April 22, 1986
April 22, 1986
"What's that you left on Tom's desk, Bill?" Angela said.
"Notice."
"Notice?" Angela came back with, heartbroken, but trying not to show it.
"Notice?" Angela came back with, heartbroken, but trying not to show it.
"I'm graduating from seminary in two weeks."
"Oh my God, congratulations! What will you do?"
"I'll go back home for a little while, I think, and then find a ministry."
"Oh my God, congratulations! What will you do?"
"I'll go back home for a little while, I think, and then find a ministry."
"You'll be a great pastor," she said with a loving smile that Bill did not receive from starting to stare at the window at a passing truck or butterfly.
Angela really was going to miss Bill. She loved talking about theology with him. They could talk freely the way Angela was always afraid to with her own pastor. She didn't want her pastor to think badly of her. But Bill didn't raise any eyebrow no matter what she questioned. He was still questioning quite a bit about the Bible himself. He was still deciding what sort of ministry he wanted to run; he hadn't yet had to accept the ministry he had been handed. For example, he wasn't totally abundantly sure that Easter, a pagan fertility holiday, needed to be celebrated at all, though he supposed people's strong feelings for it, and the opportunity to get people to think deeply about their faith and renew it was worth accepting it as a part of any ministry, its dubious origins accepted.
But, when she thought about it, she noticed a darkness in him, a darkness which she hoped would find a positive outlet over time, the way her son's dark thoughts had turned into a very successful career in illustration when he reached adulthood. His nightmares had become enjoyable reading for others.
Angela kept flashing back to Thanksgiving Day last year, after they had closed, and they had been discussing the topic of the day, which was that the very popular and likely Prom Queen and part-time waitress, Lorlene, was pregnant, and had spent the last two weeks begging forgiveness from her father, who was trying to resign himself to it but unable to because he blamed himself for having been too soft on her in the first place.
"She came to me," Bill said softly. "She asked me if there was a way for God to forgive her for getting rid of it. If there was any way she could make it up, by doing good works or charity. She was crying. She wanted to do the right thing, but she just couldn't handle it."
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her that this was like a soldier asking if he had to shoot, or a judge asking if he had to convict. We cannot sidestep our responsibility because we fear judgment. We must fear instead the judgment of our countrymen that we did not halt the enemy from advancing, or fear the judgment of our fellow citizens that we did not lock up a dangerous criminal when given the chance. The responsibility of a woman to bear a child is one of the gravest responsibilities a woman can have."
Angela looked in his eyes, and he saw the cold, dead stare of a sharpshooter, instead of the kind calm of a pastor. This darkness, this messianic darkness, frightened her when she thought about it. For a minute, she suspected that Bill was somehow the father of the Prom Queen's child, but this was wild fantasy, the stuff of her romance novels. Everyone knew it was Lorlene's boyfriend, Chase. Even if Bill were amenable, which would have been hard not only for his general feelings against having any contact with a woman he was not married to save his mother and sisters but his dismissal of anyone that was not as cerebral as he was, Lorlene wouldn't be caught dead with him.
No, he was not lost in thought considering the nights he had had with Lorlene. He was lost in thought considering how a war may need to be fought. May need to be fought for Lorlene's soul, and if that was not won, a war for her baby. It would be born, no matter what, and there were limits to his abilities as pastor to dissuade her.
That December came and Lorlene's baby bump disappeared, as did all mention of her ever having been pregnant as if the whole thing had been a dream only further intensified the danger Angela felt from that conversation. Not to Angela, of course. Angela's youthful indiscretions were safely locked away from view, because they had happened so long ago. Angela felt as if someone was going to be visited by Bill. Someone was going to be made to pay for not upholding their responsibility. Angela didn't know who, and that worried her all the more.
But nothing ever came of that suspicion, and this darkness, as with her son, did not make her love her adopted son Bill any less. She worried, as she had done with her own son, about the darkness in him, but she prayed it would find a positive outlet. That it had in her son gave her pause to alert anybody about it, or let her suspicion make her overt in her resistance to this darkness.
She hoped her interest in their future was enough to steer them towards the light. But now Bill was going on his way, back to his domineering father, a politician of some kind. Something told her that there was a darkness in his father, too, that he was vainly hoping to avenge by "being good."
But there Angela was again, trying to save everybody from themselves! Boy, Trudy would have a good laugh when Angela told her she was briefly considering telling Bill to stay and be her adopted son so she could make sure that he didn't go a-killing people in some sort of Holy War. As if Angela didn't have problems of her own!
"Well, Bill, I'm going to miss you around here, I really will."
Bill smiled, a rarity. "I'll miss you, too. You've been kinda like my mommy away from home."
Bill smiled, a rarity. "I'll miss you, too. You've been kinda like my mommy away from home."
"That's so sweet of you to say, Bill. I really hoped you would feel that way. I know how hard it is to be away from home sometimes."
Bill nodded. "But there's no use saying goodbye just yet. I still have two weeks."
"You're real responsible, Bill. I like that about you."
"You're real responsible, Bill. I like that about you."
"Thank you, but to be honest, Angela, I really need the money! There's not much work back home and being a counselor at our church's summer camp hasn't paid a single day three summers running!"
Angela let out a hearty guffaw.
Angela let out a hearty guffaw.
She supposed after all, there would be good people where he was going, too. People to steer him into trouble, yes, but also people to steer him out of it.
And, as Trudy would say, "you can't save the whole world from the inside of this diner!"
Well, she could certainly try.
2
April 30, 1986
Agent Danley moved on to his final slide in the darkened conference room.
"And that's why domestic counter-terrorism will be the primary strategic challenge to the United States in the coming decade."
Agent Danley closed up his papers and the house lights came on. He had gotten used to being the in-house Chicken Little by now, but he usually got at least a polite question or two about the methods of his study or some potential uses to root out communist spies or something.
He looked out on the room full of Bureau employees that should be engaged in helping him, and all was silence.
Well, Danley supposed, terrorism did seem like a job for the Central Intelligence Agency or the military, not the FBI. Terrorism was happening in places like Germany and Greece, accessible to the places terrorists were, not in America. It was being done by guys like Gaddafi, which, no matter how much credit you gave him, you probably couldn't imagine him having any sympathizers among Americans.
And then there was Chernobyl, which really didn't have much to do with the Bureau except that everyone was paying attention to it. Chernobyl was real-time failure of the Soviet state, which no one in the Bureau could help but root for, as unwise as it ever is to root for a terrible human tragedy unfolding. In America, Agent Danley thought, the government was scared of the people, not the other way around.
As people filed towards the exits, Agent Danley could see that Agent Harper, the powerful head of the Organized Crime Division, was waiting for him right at the door. Harper didn't like that part of his budget had been earmarked for domestic counter-terrorism, necessitating, among other things, this meeting.
"Great presentation, Howard. I especially liked the part...well I can't remember any part of it, but I thought it was a great presentation."
Luckily, Agent Danley's secretary popped in.
"A call for you in your office."
Agent Danley was appreciative. He couldn't explain to Agent Harper why the Mafia was on the way out and that groups of paranoid conspiracy theorists were on the rise. He'd just have to see it himself.
Agent Danley walked briskly down the hall and hit the elevator door. He and his secretary rode down together and his heart was in his throat. No one ever called his desk. They must have a case.
He flipped the light on his phone and picked up the receiver.
"Agent Danley?"
"Yes, go ahead."
"This is Craig Cantroux with the Texas Rangers. How are you today?"
"I'm fine, Craig. What can I do for you?"
"I've got a homicide. Male. Fifty-four. Shot outside his home." No sign of struggle, no theft to his home, himself or his car. Dedicated family man, no known enemies. Only one motive we can find, it was his occupation."
"What he do?"
"He was an OB/GYN."
"Abortion doctor."
"Yup."
"You think it was religious? Maybe a struggle between two young lovers?"
"Agent Danley, I'm sensing resistance."
"No, no, none at all. I'm just paid to be skeptical."
"Yes, of course."
"Well, fax me over all the particulars. You need me to be on the scene?"
"I normally wouldn't ask, Agent Danley, you know I normally wouldn't except this fits a pattern of harassment behavior and seems to involve multiple actors working in coordination."
"You mean like a terror cell?"
"Not to put too fine a point on it, yeah, a terror cell. We appear to have a terror cell operating in Texas and they've just struck for the first but I'm not sure the last time."
"I'll canvass, see what resources we have to give you. I will definitely be there to consult, possibly tomorrow or the next day."
"I really appreciate that, Agent Danley. I really do."
They hung up, and Agent Danley was left in silence. It was strange, he thought. Now that it was happening, he didn't feel relief or vindication. No, he felt terror, for the families and the lives that were being affected.
Didn't this guy (or gal) think about running for political office? Couldn't he find some way to achieve his political objective through the system that was already in place? But then, he had to remember that ultimately it wasn't the political objective that was really at stake, but the lionization of the person in charge of the terror cell. To be known, to be a soldier for ideals, and then ultimately to become a martyr to the furtherance of the ideology. To be a hero and to be remembered.
To actually accomplish those goals would undercut the messianic fantasies of the leader or leaders of the cult. To actually try to run for office and change the law in question would prove that the system worked and that gradual change was possible. That would make the leader just another charismatic leader, not the soldier of God he or she imagined themselves to be.
Against the state. That was what this joker wanted to be. As if the state was not itself an expression of the people.
3
May 4, 1986
Bill opened the door to the darkened apartment almost absolutely sure that law enforcement would be waiting for him. Ready to take him away for the awful thing he had done. Ready to put him to death for taking that poor doctor's life away. Why had he done it?
He heard a laugh erupt from the other side of the room.
"Caleb, that you?"
"Yeah," he said, through his laughing.
"Why the hell are you laughing?"
"I been staring at that door for at least the last hour ready to blow to bits the first thing that walked through it. And you know what?"
"What's that, Caleb?"
"Lucky you, I wasn't ready in the least to do it."
Bill stared at his friend.
"How's that funny?"
"I don't know," Caleb said. "It just is."
"I'm ditching this town," Bill said. "I think I ought to, like, right now."
Caleb nodded. "I thought that was the plan all along."
"Yeah, I mean I just got to ditch with the apartment just like this."
"That would probably be wise."
"You wouldn't hate me for it?"
"I can't stay here anymore. They're going to find us one way or another eventually. We got our homes to go to. We got our degrees."
"I'm not going to write or call for a good long while, Cal."
"I suppose you shouldn't."
"I'm going to miss you."
"You, too, pal."
"Why did we do this?"
"We didn't know what to do. You know, even though I regret it, I still think we did the right thing."
"Maybe we did. Maybe we didn't. But now we got to live with it, and that's harder than living with the pain in the first place that we couldn't stop those babies from being killed."
"We couldn't live with either."
"No," Bill said, glad for his friend to the point that it made him tear up. "We couldn't live with either."
If it hadn't been for Lorlene, Bill kept thinking. She had wanted that baby, but she'd been convinced it was a normal thing to kill that baby. She'd been convinced it was a normal thing to take the baby's life and just pretend like nothing had happened. I had to show her that it wasn't.
And Bill even still felt the impulse to go visit Lorlene, to tell her that her baby's death had been avenged, but that was the kind of thing that got people put behind bars for the rest of their lives. In a state like Texas, could mean time in the electric chair. There was so much he wanted to say to her. So much he wanted to make right because he wasn't able to change the outcome, he wasn't able to convince her of the preciousness of that life.
But the time for that stuff is over. It's time to ditch, before it's too late to ditch.
And so he found himself in the place he had called home for the last two years dumping his belongings in a suitcase and getting ready to leave it forever. He decided to leave a note to the landlord and a fifty dollar bill, knowing there was cleanup to do. He claimed a family emergency and hoped Joe wouldn't hate them too much for it.
He'd been renting to students for years, Bill thought. He's probably seen just about everything.
Except for the things Bill couldn't shove in his car, the place wasn't in terrible shape.
The more Bill packed, the less real that doctor's death became. The less real everything in Fidello became. Everything was starting to recede into the background. Soon, he would be home, and with family. Of course, he gave his father about until dinner the night he was home to ask him how he planned to get employment. His right, Bill supposed.
He thought it would have been perfect to be arrested right there, at the table. Perfect to say what it was he was being arrested for.
Bill reemerged. "Well, Caleb old buddy, I guess this is it."
"I don't think it's ever it."
"No, I suppose not. We'll see each other when it's time."
Bill nodded. "When it's time."
4
May 5, 1986
8:18 AM
Agent Danley walked out in the bright, beautiful Texas sunshine following Lieutenant Cantroux out to his car. It had been too long since he had been out in the field. His whole life felt like it was now hemmed in by budgetary meetings in darkened conference rooms. He'd spent so long with other bureaucrats he'd forgotten what it was like to spend time with good old fashioned law enforcement. How good it was to trade the hustle and bustle of DC for the simplicity of Austin.
Of course, it wasn't all roses. They were having trouble connecting with the Sheriff from Fidello, who they going to meet up with, because his secretary was on maternity leave and one of his deputies was out sick. A well-oiled machine, that Sheriff's Department did not appear to be. Considering Agent Danley's intentions when he got there, he half-suspected he'd be spending a good part of the next two days filing instead of looking through files.
But Agent Danley knew he had to put his big-city snobbery on pause for just a minute, or else he wouldn't get buy-in from the Sheriff or his deputies, and he was intending to put them to work after he'd gotten the lay of the land.
"You think this Sheriff's department has a computerized system?"
Lieutenant Cantroux looked at him. "That a joke?"
"There are so many grant programs out there! The system would basically be free."
"Something tells me the good Sheriff is not your grant-writing type."
"Then I'm going to guess he doesn't have any body armor or assault rifles, either."
"Perhaps a bit of incentive is necessary."
"Yeah, I guess I got to give him the incentive."
"A lot of these small departments, I don't think will ever get there. It's not the resources, really. Going to take a change in generations."
"Right. But what would your life be life without computerized records?"
"We're managing a state with ten million people, Agent Danley. Not a one-stoplight town."
Lieutenant Cantroux smiled and then put on his sunglasses.
"I'm following you?"
"Yeah. If you get lost, I'll meet you at the 6 West turnoff. It's about a mile before Waco."
"Mile before Waco. Got it."
As soon as Agent Danley got behind the wheel of the unmarked black Lincoln Towncar, he started to search his thoughts. What did he know about the person responsible? Religious, yes, but no preacher. Probably young and idealistic. Military background possibly. Probable history of substance abuse. Marital problems. Possibly a DWI or assault charge on his record. Possible juvenile detention in middle school or high school.
Probable transient or at least transplant. If he was well known he would have been discovered already, or even revealed himself by now. What were the boardinghouses, schools, and small businesses that hired transient workers? Agent Danley would guess, he worked for a preacher or a religious school and had been made to view himself as a Christian soldier by somebody. Whether or not that person was providing material support was the question, as whoever did it may be one of several acolytes, perhaps all of them disposable in some regard. Mental retardation possible.
He could have kicked himself for not remembering to reread some of the narratives of Palestinian terrorists he had in his office. He needed to get inside this person's head. What he was seeing around him felt too familiar for him to create a picture of the perpetrator. Every time he saw him in his mind's eye, Agent Danley saw himself staring back.
Agent Danley was a religious man, and he was sympathetic to the pro-life cause. But he had to remember that this was someone who was attempting to use terrorism to lionize himself using the sheep's clothing of other people's pro-life sympathies. This man did not want there to be any change. This person had no political goals. His goal was to be remembered after he died, and he had found a cause that allowed him to practice his profound narcissism.
This was a PLO terrorist. This was a man that thought nothing of gunning down a doctor, a man with a family, for performing a legal medical procedure. To catch a terrorist, he had to remember all those forgettable details, all those little steps along the way that seemed like accidents but were the method by which a terrorist was made. A handler. There was surely a handler somewhere, but finding the handler would be difficult. He was no doubt shrouded in some mystery and perhaps would only be found through the usual ways: a nasty divorce, children after their estate or death.
And financial records. Because, ultimately, money was always involved, even in the case of fanatics moved by their passion for religious warfare. Even if you planned to pay for everything in cash, you weren't going to have that money lying around unless you had a lucrative cash-only side business. Prostitution and drugs seemed unlikely complimenting businesses. Church donations, sure, the collection box could be good for it, but guns and ammo cost hundreds of dollars. It took a lot of singles and fives to get there.
No, there was a bank draft somewhere out there that paid for this, or even several. Someone spent their personal money or money from a legitimate business with books and tax records and everything.
He started to salivate thinking about the paper trail that was no doubt awaiting him. It felt good to be out in the field!
5
10:58 AM
Bill woke up in a sweat, but the sensation soon faded. He was back at home. Everything he had done, all the people he had left behind, were safely tucked away from view. He got up and went out to the kitchen.
"Hey, hon," his mother said, getting up to pour him a cup of coffee. "How did you sleep?"
He felt a bit of guilt looking into his momma's eyes, but she didn't know what was in his true heart, and she couldn't get at it either no matter how hard she tried.
Bill's father had been a different man the previous night, treating Bill to a nice cognac and a fine cigar. Bill was a college graduate now, his father told him, it was a cause for celebration. Of course, Bill knew better than to expect that this would ever be repeated, but it was a nice change of welcome. Bill's father respected him, if ever so slightly, in a way he never had previously.
And he had killed a man in cold blood and left him to his death.
Bill wanted to chat with Caleb, but that was closed off for now. For at least a few months if not a couple years. The biggest mistake a killer could make was to return to the scene of the crime, and that included getting back in contact with your fellow criminals.
"What are you going to do today, honey? You want to come into town with me?"
"No," Bill said. "I'm kinda tired."
"I know. Tomorrow then, or the next day. I know there's a bunch of people want to say, 'hi" in town. Want to congratulate you."
"I know, momma. Tomorrow."
She nodded and then walked off with the her long chain of keys to the family station wagon. The door to the garage closed and Bill could hear the rumble of the engine and the garage door being flung open.
Just then, Bill's brother Tommy walked into the kitchen, perhaps timing it for their mother's escape.
"Hey," Bill said.
"Hey," Tommy said. "You going to be home all day?"
"I think so. Why, am I cramping you're style?"
"No, dude, I'm just wondering, that's all."
"You need a haircut."
"Thanks, dad," Tommy said. "What's it to you, anyway?"
"You'll look like a hippy."
"What's the big deal about that? The hippies were cool."
"Hippies were not cool, Tommy. They burned out and ended up in jail or died or else they cleaned up and got square jobs, like everybody else."
"Wow," Tommy said. "That's the daddiest thing I've ever heard come out of your mouth."
Bill supposed Tommy was right. Bill usually was a bit more reserved with his opinions.
"Anyway, you're going to make dad go crazy."
"So what if I do? I'm not afraid of him."
"I guess you're not," Bill said, clamming up.
"Anyway, Bill," Tommy said. "Are you like a pastor now?"
"I'm qualified to be a pastor. I got to find my flock."
"You've got to find a group of suckers. You'll find one."
"You think all pastors have to be the same?"
"I know all pastors are the same."
"What about me?"
"You will definitely be the same."
Their sister, Deirdre, emerged from the TV room. "Can you guys keep it down. I can't hear the television!"
"Sorry," they both said.
"Anyway," Tommy said. "I'm glad you're home. Takes some of the heat off of me and Deirdre."
"Dad ever say anything bad about Deirdre?"
"You're right. Just me, then."
What would you think of me if you knew I killed a man?
Looking at Tommy right now, Bill honestly believed that Tommy would think it was cool or something.
There was a knock on the door.
"Who's that?"
Tommy ran over and opened up the door for a girl.
"Hey Tommy," the girl said.
He closed the door behind him so he could talk to her, then he came back inside for about a minute and a half before leaving with her.
"Who was that?" Bill asked his sister.
"That's Annie. That's Tommy's girlfriend."
"He's got a girlfriend?"
"Yeah, they're always making out. It's really gross."
"Did you tell mom and dad anything?"
She didn't look up from the television. "I'm always telling them, and they tell me they'll talk to him but they never do. I think they're not bothered by it or something."
"Not bothered by it?"
"Yeah, they let Tommy get away with anything ever since his suicide attempt."
"His suicide attempt? When was this?"
"While you were away."
"So much has changed since I've been gone."
"Yeah," Deirdre said, but she wanted to watch the television.
6
12:48 PM
Agent Danley met the kind smile of Sheriff Donnelly from across the parking lot.
"Howdy, gentlemen. Thank you for being here. I trust you had a nice drive?"
Agent Danley shook his hand. "Howard Danley, Sheriff."
"Please, call me Horace." He smiled again. "Why don't you gentlemen come inside?"
Inside the small structure, that appeared to be nothing more than two conjoined mobile homes dropped on top of an unassuming pile of concrete and weeds, the hum of air conditioning broke the silence of the mid-90s afternoon that was otherwise punctuated only by the dull hum of cicadas some distance off and the rumbling of big rigs kicking into gear. No one was inside. Sheriff Donnelly check his messages.
He pulled up two chairs, and they all sat down in the middle of the room.
"So, gentlemen," the Sheriff said. "What's our plan of attack?"
Agent Danley looked at Lieutenant Cantroux, who made a motion that he was deferring to the Agent.
"Well," Agent Danley starting, unsure of his initial line of attack, "basically we've got to look through all your files, try to get a feel for who had the motive, means and opportunity. Do you have your files at least partially computerized?"
"Well, see," the Sheriff started. "We bought a computer. Maggie--that's our dispatcher but she's on leave at the moment--she uses it sometimes when we have to fill out certain forms."
"But you don't have any files on it."
"No. We got files, though. Pretty well sorted, I think. I don't know. You'd have to ask Maggie."
"It's okay, Sheriff. This is not an interrogation. But you know there are quite a few programs to get you started, lot of resources out there won't cost your department a penny. I can ask my secretary to fax you over some of the easiest programs to access."
"That would be nice, Agent Danley."
But he gave that smile that said he wouldn't be doing any such thing.
"Well, anyway, what we're looking for, I think, is we're looking for aberrant behavior. People that have been arrested for drinking, drugs, domestic abuse, assault, everything, the past couple of months, maybe even back a year if we wanted to be really thorough about it. Then we've got to get everybody connected with that doctor's practice under the microscope, see if there is anybody with an axe to grind. Same thing with the man's family, though it doesn't seem like that could be much at fault."
"Dr. Jones was loved by just about everybody. Heck, most people didn't even know that he was an abortionist. Well, I mean, some could have suspected it, given his line of work."
"And, as if that wasn't enough, we've got to talk to all the churches and other faith-based institutions in the surrounding area, see if they can think of anyone that's come to them with radicalized thoughts or feelings, anyone that has mentioned Holy War or Christian soldiers."
The Sheriff laughed. "That won't narrow things down much, Agent Danley. Hell, the title of the Sunday sermon at my church was 'Christian Soldiers' and I got to tell you, the most offensive thing the pastor there has ever done is have a luau theme for our church picnic."
"Well, we've got to look at the noise and see what we can find."
The Sheriff didn't understand what Agent Danley was talking about, but both men decided to leave it alone.
"How forthcoming do you think his practice will be with patient records?"
"Well, we haven't asked."
"Let's get on the phone and see if anyone's there. Do we have any contact information for any of his staff?"
"No, I don't think so, but Trudy's his nurse or assistant whatever. We can go knock on her door."
The phone rang. Sheriff Donnelly spoke. "That must be the county coroner. I told him to give us a call and fill you guys in."
The Sheriff put the coroner on speakerphone.
"Rudy, is that you?"
"Yes, Horace. Who am I speaking to?"
Sheriff Donnelly looked at his compatriots.
"Agent Danley, FBI."
"Lieutenant Cantroux, Texas Rangers."
"Dr. Rudolph Samuel. Most people call me Dr. Rudy."
"Afternoon," Agent Danley and Lieutenant Cantroux retorted.
"So adult male, 54. You want the bullet wound information first guys or you want toxicology?"
"Whatever order you want it, doctor. We got all day."
"Toxicology then, just to get it out of the way. Doctor had a mild sedative in him, some amphetamine of some kind (common pharmacological traces of psychological medication). Otherwise no drugs or alcohol. Heightened levels of blood sugar. Otherwise fine."
"That consistent with anti-anxiety medication?" Agent Danley said.
"Very."
"Subject 6'4", 250 pounds, musculature and bone structure normal."
"Big target!" Agent Danley said.
"I'll say so," Cantroux joined in with. "Guy's a linebacker."
"Then, the bullet wounds. Subject died of hemorrhaging of the brain from two close headshots from a distance of at least 100 feet. Entry point A above right temple. Exit point back of the head 1 inch right from the base of the brain. Entry point B almost spot on left eye. Bullet ricocheted got lodged in subject's skull. A third bullet struck the collarbone but did not contribute to subject's death. Bullets retrieved are consistent with a high-powered though not military grade rifle. K-mart bullets. No modification was made to the rifle."
"This guy's a professional damn assassin," Sheriff Donnelly called out.
"Right you are, Horace. A damn dog, too. Didn't even fire a second volley to make sure he was dead. He knew the man was going to die the instant he got him in the cross-hairs."
"So we're upgrading our search a little then, huh," Agent Danley said gravely. "Got to have some professional training, though it sounds like not military, or if military, perhaps someone discharged not long after training. This is a symphony played by a man on a two-dollar violin."
"Thank you, Rudy. I'll see you later."
"Goodbye Horace."
"So I think we've got three lines of attack. I'm going to stay here and look through records, get some things organized in my mind. I'd like one of you to follow up on Dr. Jones' practice, see if we can get into some of those records. If we have to, we should subpoena those records, because I think the answer is somewhere in those files. I guess that will be you, Sheriff, if you don't have any other things to do today."
"I'm all yours," Sheriff Donnelly said. "I mean to find this man's killer, and we will."
"Then Lieutenant Cantroux, I guess that means you've got to start knocking on the doors of churches and see if there are any militant churchgoers out there talked about starting holy wars.
Agent Danley turned to the Sheriff. "What you have for churches in this town?"
"Well, there's the Methodist church in the center of town. There's a Lutheran church off of Pike Street There's a Baptist church South of town, and then there's the Seventh-Day Adventists. Real small congregation, shoe box really.
"There's a Seminary in town, too."
"Worth a try."
Agent Danley looked at the Sheriff. "Anybody else working for this department today?"
"I'm sorry to say, no," the Sheriff said. "But first thing tomorrow morning everybody's reporting. Except Maggie of course, whether they can stand or not."
"That's good to hear," Agent Danley said. "We need some proper discipline."
Sheriff Donnelly smiled weakly. Discipline did seem to be this man's weakness.
7
1:38 PM
There was a knock on the door and Panzer and Squeak went crazy.
"Now who in the hell could that be? Jehovah's witnesses, probably."
Trudy pushed back her glasses onto the top of her nose. The knocking continued.
"Hold your horses. I'm'a coming!"
Trudy decided to put the dogs in the backyard just in case, but the knocking was too constant. She opened the door just a crack.
"Hey, Trudy."
"Sheriff. What can I do for you?"
"I got to talk to you."
"Oh yeah?"
"We've got to find Sam's killer."
"Oh yeah. What you need to talk to me for? You think I had something to do with you."
"Well of course I don't. But I still got to talk to you."
"I see. What about?"
"Well, think about it Trudy, wouldn't the person who did this be someone that he knew. Someone that he saw, maybe, or someone else that hassled him."
"There were plenty of those, Sheriff."
"Well, I need to know all those people, and I got to sit down with them and have a chat. I need records, too, Trudy."
"You mean, health records?"
"Yeah."
"Well, Sheriff, I understand the man's died, but you and I know there's a whole lot of information in those records that this town ought not to know."
"Yeah."
"And you've got no right to ask after them either."
"Well, Trudy, I don't disagree with you, but you've got to understand this is an ongoing murder investigation. Other people may be in danger. We've got to do what we can to catch this killer and bring him to justice."
"Well, I'm not giving them up, Sheriff. I won't. When I think about all the struggles these young women went through, and possibly making them go through it all over again, no, not for anything in the world. Dr. Jones wouldn't want me to, no; he'd be dead set it against it no matter what."
"Well, that's fine then, Trudy, don't you worry about that, then. Why don't you tell me about some people that maybe gave the doctor a hard time."
"Ben Damand."
"Reverend Damand, sure."
"Ginger, too."
"Okay, some of his parishioners. Can you think of anyone else?"
"We had a guy, used to hang around the outside of the place. Maybe about six months ago. For two weeks, he's parked outside. I told the doctor to call the police on him a bunch of times but he said he'd talk to him but it never happened."
"You think this was the guy that did it?"
"Could be. I never got a good look at him, though. I didn't go out for lunch. The girl we had to help us some days, Helen, she saw him. She said she recognized him from some place. She said he had a cold, dead look in his eyes like he had some axe to grind."
"That's a good place to start. Where is Helen, Trudy?"
"She goes to Nursing School now. University of Texas."
"You know which branch?"
"I wouldn't be able to tell you."
"What about her parents? You know where they live?"
"You know I don't. Neighboring town, I think. She was kinda embarrassed of her upbringing, if you know what I mean. She was a good girl. We tried not to ask too many questions. Her teachers, though. They may know what school she went to. At the community college, I mean."
"That the last school she attended before transferring?"
"Yes. She was maybe about twenty-five."
Sheriff Donnelly's eyes twinkled. "Well, thank you Trudy, you've been a big help."
"Sure. And Sheriff?"
"Yes, Trudy. You think that I'm in some danger right now."
"I think you are, Trudy."
"I still can't give you those records, Sheriff."
"I'm not asking for them, then, Trudy. You tell me what you want to do. But I think everyone connected with your practice is in some danger, until we can say for certain why the doctor was killed."
Trudy nodded silently, tears forming in her eyes. "Sam would know what to do."
"Yeah, that's the terrible thing about it, Trudy. They took him from us."
"Still can't do it, Sheriff."
"I'll see you later, Trudy. You call us if you see this guy or anyone suspicious, and you let us know if anything else comes to your mind."
"Thank you, Sheriff. I will."
The Sheriff got into his car and wrote down meticulously some of the things she had said. So he was looking for a nursing transfer student at Central Texas Community College. Simple look into records and he'd find her. Problem was, last known address and phone number. Following up on that could be difficult, if the girl had a rocky upbringing.
And Reverend Damand, and Ginger Spitz. The Sheriff didn't make either one for the killer, but Trudy had mentioned them, and he would have to have a chat with one or the both of them.
Figured the FBI agent would be happy though. A lot of things for him to work on.
10:58 AM
Bill woke up in a sweat, but the sensation soon faded. He was back at home. Everything he had done, all the people he had left behind, were safely tucked away from view. He got up and went out to the kitchen.
"Hey, hon," his mother said, getting up to pour him a cup of coffee. "How did you sleep?"
He felt a bit of guilt looking into his momma's eyes, but she didn't know what was in his true heart, and she couldn't get at it either no matter how hard she tried.
Bill's father had been a different man the previous night, treating Bill to a nice cognac and a fine cigar. Bill was a college graduate now, his father told him, it was a cause for celebration. Of course, Bill knew better than to expect that this would ever be repeated, but it was a nice change of welcome. Bill's father respected him, if ever so slightly, in a way he never had previously.
And he had killed a man in cold blood and left him to his death.
Bill wanted to chat with Caleb, but that was closed off for now. For at least a few months if not a couple years. The biggest mistake a killer could make was to return to the scene of the crime, and that included getting back in contact with your fellow criminals.
"What are you going to do today, honey? You want to come into town with me?"
"No," Bill said. "I'm kinda tired."
"I know. Tomorrow then, or the next day. I know there's a bunch of people want to say, 'hi" in town. Want to congratulate you."
"I know, momma. Tomorrow."
She nodded and then walked off with the her long chain of keys to the family station wagon. The door to the garage closed and Bill could hear the rumble of the engine and the garage door being flung open.
Just then, Bill's brother Tommy walked into the kitchen, perhaps timing it for their mother's escape.
"Hey," Bill said.
"Hey," Tommy said. "You going to be home all day?"
"I think so. Why, am I cramping you're style?"
"No, dude, I'm just wondering, that's all."
"You need a haircut."
"Thanks, dad," Tommy said. "What's it to you, anyway?"
"You'll look like a hippy."
"What's the big deal about that? The hippies were cool."
"Hippies were not cool, Tommy. They burned out and ended up in jail or died or else they cleaned up and got square jobs, like everybody else."
"Wow," Tommy said. "That's the daddiest thing I've ever heard come out of your mouth."
Bill supposed Tommy was right. Bill usually was a bit more reserved with his opinions.
"Anyway, you're going to make dad go crazy."
"So what if I do? I'm not afraid of him."
"I guess you're not," Bill said, clamming up.
"Anyway, Bill," Tommy said. "Are you like a pastor now?"
"I'm qualified to be a pastor. I got to find my flock."
"You've got to find a group of suckers. You'll find one."
"You think all pastors have to be the same?"
"I know all pastors are the same."
"What about me?"
"You will definitely be the same."
Their sister, Deirdre, emerged from the TV room. "Can you guys keep it down. I can't hear the television!"
"Sorry," they both said.
"Anyway," Tommy said. "I'm glad you're home. Takes some of the heat off of me and Deirdre."
"Dad ever say anything bad about Deirdre?"
"You're right. Just me, then."
What would you think of me if you knew I killed a man?
Looking at Tommy right now, Bill honestly believed that Tommy would think it was cool or something.
There was a knock on the door.
"Who's that?"
Tommy ran over and opened up the door for a girl.
"Hey Tommy," the girl said.
He closed the door behind him so he could talk to her, then he came back inside for about a minute and a half before leaving with her.
"Who was that?" Bill asked his sister.
"That's Annie. That's Tommy's girlfriend."
"He's got a girlfriend?"
"Yeah, they're always making out. It's really gross."
"Did you tell mom and dad anything?"
She didn't look up from the television. "I'm always telling them, and they tell me they'll talk to him but they never do. I think they're not bothered by it or something."
"Not bothered by it?"
"Yeah, they let Tommy get away with anything ever since his suicide attempt."
"His suicide attempt? When was this?"
"While you were away."
"So much has changed since I've been gone."
"Yeah," Deirdre said, but she wanted to watch the television.
6
12:48 PM
Agent Danley met the kind smile of Sheriff Donnelly from across the parking lot.
"Howdy, gentlemen. Thank you for being here. I trust you had a nice drive?"
Agent Danley shook his hand. "Howard Danley, Sheriff."
"Please, call me Horace." He smiled again. "Why don't you gentlemen come inside?"
Inside the small structure, that appeared to be nothing more than two conjoined mobile homes dropped on top of an unassuming pile of concrete and weeds, the hum of air conditioning broke the silence of the mid-90s afternoon that was otherwise punctuated only by the dull hum of cicadas some distance off and the rumbling of big rigs kicking into gear. No one was inside. Sheriff Donnelly check his messages.
He pulled up two chairs, and they all sat down in the middle of the room.
"So, gentlemen," the Sheriff said. "What's our plan of attack?"
Agent Danley looked at Lieutenant Cantroux, who made a motion that he was deferring to the Agent.
"Well," Agent Danley starting, unsure of his initial line of attack, "basically we've got to look through all your files, try to get a feel for who had the motive, means and opportunity. Do you have your files at least partially computerized?"
"Well, see," the Sheriff started. "We bought a computer. Maggie--that's our dispatcher but she's on leave at the moment--she uses it sometimes when we have to fill out certain forms."
"But you don't have any files on it."
"No. We got files, though. Pretty well sorted, I think. I don't know. You'd have to ask Maggie."
"It's okay, Sheriff. This is not an interrogation. But you know there are quite a few programs to get you started, lot of resources out there won't cost your department a penny. I can ask my secretary to fax you over some of the easiest programs to access."
"That would be nice, Agent Danley."
But he gave that smile that said he wouldn't be doing any such thing.
"Well, anyway, what we're looking for, I think, is we're looking for aberrant behavior. People that have been arrested for drinking, drugs, domestic abuse, assault, everything, the past couple of months, maybe even back a year if we wanted to be really thorough about it. Then we've got to get everybody connected with that doctor's practice under the microscope, see if there is anybody with an axe to grind. Same thing with the man's family, though it doesn't seem like that could be much at fault."
"Dr. Jones was loved by just about everybody. Heck, most people didn't even know that he was an abortionist. Well, I mean, some could have suspected it, given his line of work."
"And, as if that wasn't enough, we've got to talk to all the churches and other faith-based institutions in the surrounding area, see if they can think of anyone that's come to them with radicalized thoughts or feelings, anyone that has mentioned Holy War or Christian soldiers."
The Sheriff laughed. "That won't narrow things down much, Agent Danley. Hell, the title of the Sunday sermon at my church was 'Christian Soldiers' and I got to tell you, the most offensive thing the pastor there has ever done is have a luau theme for our church picnic."
"Well, we've got to look at the noise and see what we can find."
The Sheriff didn't understand what Agent Danley was talking about, but both men decided to leave it alone.
"How forthcoming do you think his practice will be with patient records?"
"Well, we haven't asked."
"Let's get on the phone and see if anyone's there. Do we have any contact information for any of his staff?"
"No, I don't think so, but Trudy's his nurse or assistant whatever. We can go knock on her door."
The phone rang. Sheriff Donnelly spoke. "That must be the county coroner. I told him to give us a call and fill you guys in."
The Sheriff put the coroner on speakerphone.
"Rudy, is that you?"
"Yes, Horace. Who am I speaking to?"
Sheriff Donnelly looked at his compatriots.
"Agent Danley, FBI."
"Lieutenant Cantroux, Texas Rangers."
"Dr. Rudolph Samuel. Most people call me Dr. Rudy."
"Afternoon," Agent Danley and Lieutenant Cantroux retorted.
"So adult male, 54. You want the bullet wound information first guys or you want toxicology?"
"Whatever order you want it, doctor. We got all day."
"Toxicology then, just to get it out of the way. Doctor had a mild sedative in him, some amphetamine of some kind (common pharmacological traces of psychological medication). Otherwise no drugs or alcohol. Heightened levels of blood sugar. Otherwise fine."
"That consistent with anti-anxiety medication?" Agent Danley said.
"Very."
"Subject 6'4", 250 pounds, musculature and bone structure normal."
"Big target!" Agent Danley said.
"I'll say so," Cantroux joined in with. "Guy's a linebacker."
"Then, the bullet wounds. Subject died of hemorrhaging of the brain from two close headshots from a distance of at least 100 feet. Entry point A above right temple. Exit point back of the head 1 inch right from the base of the brain. Entry point B almost spot on left eye. Bullet ricocheted got lodged in subject's skull. A third bullet struck the collarbone but did not contribute to subject's death. Bullets retrieved are consistent with a high-powered though not military grade rifle. K-mart bullets. No modification was made to the rifle."
"This guy's a professional damn assassin," Sheriff Donnelly called out.
"Right you are, Horace. A damn dog, too. Didn't even fire a second volley to make sure he was dead. He knew the man was going to die the instant he got him in the cross-hairs."
"So we're upgrading our search a little then, huh," Agent Danley said gravely. "Got to have some professional training, though it sounds like not military, or if military, perhaps someone discharged not long after training. This is a symphony played by a man on a two-dollar violin."
"Thank you, Rudy. I'll see you later."
"Goodbye Horace."
"So I think we've got three lines of attack. I'm going to stay here and look through records, get some things organized in my mind. I'd like one of you to follow up on Dr. Jones' practice, see if we can get into some of those records. If we have to, we should subpoena those records, because I think the answer is somewhere in those files. I guess that will be you, Sheriff, if you don't have any other things to do today."
"I'm all yours," Sheriff Donnelly said. "I mean to find this man's killer, and we will."
"Then Lieutenant Cantroux, I guess that means you've got to start knocking on the doors of churches and see if there are any militant churchgoers out there talked about starting holy wars.
Agent Danley turned to the Sheriff. "What you have for churches in this town?"
"Well, there's the Methodist church in the center of town. There's a Lutheran church off of Pike Street There's a Baptist church South of town, and then there's the Seventh-Day Adventists. Real small congregation, shoe box really.
"There's a Seminary in town, too."
"Worth a try."
Agent Danley looked at the Sheriff. "Anybody else working for this department today?"
"I'm sorry to say, no," the Sheriff said. "But first thing tomorrow morning everybody's reporting. Except Maggie of course, whether they can stand or not."
"That's good to hear," Agent Danley said. "We need some proper discipline."
Sheriff Donnelly smiled weakly. Discipline did seem to be this man's weakness.
7
1:38 PM
There was a knock on the door and Panzer and Squeak went crazy.
"Now who in the hell could that be? Jehovah's witnesses, probably."
Trudy pushed back her glasses onto the top of her nose. The knocking continued.
"Hold your horses. I'm'a coming!"
Trudy decided to put the dogs in the backyard just in case, but the knocking was too constant. She opened the door just a crack.
"Hey, Trudy."
"Sheriff. What can I do for you?"
"I got to talk to you."
"Oh yeah?"
"We've got to find Sam's killer."
"Oh yeah. What you need to talk to me for? You think I had something to do with you."
"Well of course I don't. But I still got to talk to you."
"I see. What about?"
"Well, think about it Trudy, wouldn't the person who did this be someone that he knew. Someone that he saw, maybe, or someone else that hassled him."
"There were plenty of those, Sheriff."
"Well, I need to know all those people, and I got to sit down with them and have a chat. I need records, too, Trudy."
"You mean, health records?"
"Yeah."
"Well, Sheriff, I understand the man's died, but you and I know there's a whole lot of information in those records that this town ought not to know."
"Yeah."
"And you've got no right to ask after them either."
"Well, Trudy, I don't disagree with you, but you've got to understand this is an ongoing murder investigation. Other people may be in danger. We've got to do what we can to catch this killer and bring him to justice."
"Well, I'm not giving them up, Sheriff. I won't. When I think about all the struggles these young women went through, and possibly making them go through it all over again, no, not for anything in the world. Dr. Jones wouldn't want me to, no; he'd be dead set it against it no matter what."
"Well, that's fine then, Trudy, don't you worry about that, then. Why don't you tell me about some people that maybe gave the doctor a hard time."
"Ben Damand."
"Reverend Damand, sure."
"Ginger, too."
"Okay, some of his parishioners. Can you think of anyone else?"
"We had a guy, used to hang around the outside of the place. Maybe about six months ago. For two weeks, he's parked outside. I told the doctor to call the police on him a bunch of times but he said he'd talk to him but it never happened."
"You think this was the guy that did it?"
"Could be. I never got a good look at him, though. I didn't go out for lunch. The girl we had to help us some days, Helen, she saw him. She said she recognized him from some place. She said he had a cold, dead look in his eyes like he had some axe to grind."
"That's a good place to start. Where is Helen, Trudy?"
"She goes to Nursing School now. University of Texas."
"You know which branch?"
"I wouldn't be able to tell you."
"What about her parents? You know where they live?"
"You know I don't. Neighboring town, I think. She was kinda embarrassed of her upbringing, if you know what I mean. She was a good girl. We tried not to ask too many questions. Her teachers, though. They may know what school she went to. At the community college, I mean."
"That the last school she attended before transferring?"
"Yes. She was maybe about twenty-five."
Sheriff Donnelly's eyes twinkled. "Well, thank you Trudy, you've been a big help."
"Sure. And Sheriff?"
"Yes, Trudy. You think that I'm in some danger right now."
"I think you are, Trudy."
"I still can't give you those records, Sheriff."
"I'm not asking for them, then, Trudy. You tell me what you want to do. But I think everyone connected with your practice is in some danger, until we can say for certain why the doctor was killed."
Trudy nodded silently, tears forming in her eyes. "Sam would know what to do."
"Yeah, that's the terrible thing about it, Trudy. They took him from us."
"Still can't do it, Sheriff."
"I'll see you later, Trudy. You call us if you see this guy or anyone suspicious, and you let us know if anything else comes to your mind."
"Thank you, Sheriff. I will."
The Sheriff got into his car and wrote down meticulously some of the things she had said. So he was looking for a nursing transfer student at Central Texas Community College. Simple look into records and he'd find her. Problem was, last known address and phone number. Following up on that could be difficult, if the girl had a rocky upbringing.
And Reverend Damand, and Ginger Spitz. The Sheriff didn't make either one for the killer, but Trudy had mentioned them, and he would have to have a chat with one or the both of them.
Figured the FBI agent would be happy though. A lot of things for him to work on.
8
3:32 PM
The White Sands Baptist Church had no neighbors. It was set off on a piece of land which was not connected to the rest of the town except the highway which passed to the South into some barren wasteland with salt and gravel mines.
But the church itself looked very nice and inviting, owing to it being flush with born again folk from the surrounding areas.
The pastor, Ben Damand, was well known through most of the state for his rather flamboyant services, in which he could be counted on to sweat, and cry, and shout at invisible demons. Sometimes he could be found on the floor, in convulsions, overcome with the spirit of the Lord.
Ginger Spitz, his most avid follower, and sometime business manager was never very far away from the action, and sometimes had to intervene to narrate what was happening if he got lost in the middle of the act. The whole thing was broadcast on local television on Sunday mornings, and Wednesday afternoons.
The Sheriff found himself, with great misgivings, ringing the buzzer on the gate outside the property, when who should ring back but Ginger herself.
"What can we do you for?" she said.
"Hey, is this Ginger?"
"Yes, who's this?"
"Sheriff Donnelly. I came down to ask if we could sit down and chat, the reverend, too, if he's around."
"What's this about, Sheriff?"
"Don't worry. You're not suspected of anything, I just want to chat with the both of you, follow up on some things."
"Can we arrange a time to come down, Sheriff? We're a bit busy here."
"Oh, sure, but, as you know, Sam Jones was shot in his driveway a few days ago. I'm no longer in charge of the investigation, and I want to go back the agent in charge and tell him that I talked to you, otherwise he's going to get awful sore and probably order the whole church searched and possibly have some of your records carted away."
There was a pause.
"Now, I don't want any of that to happen, that's why I'm asking you, politely, if we can sit down and chat right now, and then I can say we talked."
"That sounds alright, then, Sheriff. Why don't you come on inside."
The gate buzzed and swung open. The Sheriff rolled inside.
Inside the huge church with its perfect climate control, the Sheriff saw the reverend practicing his Sunday sermon.
"Sheriff!" said Reverend Damand. "So good of you to drop by. We all heard the terrible news about Sam and we've been praying on it a lot."
"A lot," Ginger echoed.
"I was talking to Trudy, who you know was Sam's assistant at his practice. She said you and Ginger had been down to their practice once or twice giving him some trouble."
"Did she say that?" Ginger said.
"We did indeed, Sheriff. We believe in the right to life, and we had a slight disagreement with the doctor about his practice of medicine. But you know, I mean I hope you know, that we would never do more than try to convince him, to change his heart...am I being suspected for this murder?"
"No! Not in the least, reverend. But I'm trying to sort out how it happened, and I've been asked by the FBI agent who has taken over this investigation to follow up on some people that might have given the doctor some grief, and see if they have any insight into why this might have happened. I mean, can you think of anyone in your congregation that, you know, said anything to you, maybe even kidding, about killing the doctor or anything like that?"
The Reverend paused.
"Yes, there was one guy who I never really liked. He had an instigator vibe to him, and he was always talking about going in and wrecking the place."
"What was his name?"
"Caleb, I think. Or maybe it was Joseph. He's not a member of our congregation. He was a seminary student. To be honest, he organized the whole protest to begin with. He said it was a class project to work on community building and he asked if we wanted to participate in a protest against Sam's practice, who he said was an abortionist. I admit, I was eager to join, because I happen to think abortion is wrong. But I told him, in no uncertain terms, that I would not do anything more than show up and sing songs. Other than that, I was not interested. He seemed to lose interest in it, and we moved on."
"Anybody you can think of might know where this Caleb or Joseph is?"
"I think I might have his number in my Rolodex."
"You do! Why if you could grab it for me that would be of tremendous help."
"I will, Sheriff."
The Reverend disappeared.
"How's Myra?" Ginger offered.
"Fine. Just fine."
"I've been missing her cherry pies."
"I'll have to tell her. She'll be happy to bring you one, when she baked a couple."
"Wouldn't that be nice!" Ginger said. "Just thinking about it makes my mouth water."
The Reverend re-emerged, with a little card with a number on it.
"Does that do it, Sheriff?"
"Yeah, but Reverend, why if this boy was telling you these things you didn't think to get us on the phone tell us about it?"
"Well--"
"Now, this is serious, Reverend. I know you don't truck in this kind of stuff, you ought to put a stop to it, and you ought to call us so we can have a chat. I don't mean to blame you for it. It's not your fault. But if it is this boy, well, I got to think you could have intervened by picking up the phone and letting us know that the doctor was in danger."
"You're right, Sheriff."
"So if anybody else in your congregation or anybody else you come across starts talking about wrecking anybody's anything or harming anybody what are you going to do?"
"I've got to call you."
"That's right. And you know what? I bet you're going to sleep better at night not having the worry about what they might be up to."
"You're right."
"Okay. And I sure well tell Myra about that pie."
"Thank you. See you!"
The Sheriff walked out the double door into the bright sunshine and put on his hat. He went to his car and started writing down his notes, before he looked at the radio. He ought to radio this one in.
"This is Sheriff, anyone there to pick up, over."
There was a loud scratch and then Agent Danley's voice came over. "I'm here Sheriff, what do you got?"
"I need you to look up a phone record. Might be the perpetrator."
"Sheriff, I could kiss you. Alright, give it to me slowly."
The Sheriff read the numbers over the phone.
"I'm coming back that way in just a moment, Agent Danley."
"I hope to have an address by then."
The Sheriff sat in the car, hearing the birds chirp, before he switched on the ignition and threw on his sunglasses.
9
4:22 PM
Sheriff Donnelly came back to the Department and could see that Agent Danley had gone a bit mad. There were files everywhere in some vain attempt to organize them.
"Now don't be mad," Agent Danley said. "I wanted to arrange a few things in my mind, and I felt it was necessary to organize things a certain way."
"No problem, agent. It's your investigation. I'm sure you have your process."
The Sheriff paused for just a second.
"Oh yeah, that address. I'm still waiting to hear back but any minute now."
"You think we'll get this guy's phone records?"
"Phone records, address, any other associated phone numbers and addresses, everything. Of course this guy could be unrelated, but then, he could be in handcuffs by the end of the night telling us why he did it."
"Guy from the Texas Rangers have anything to say?"
"He thought this guy was a person of interest. The head of the White Sands Baptist Church. He was going to go a bit more raidy than you did, but you got what he was looking for anyway. He said, 'good job.' I think he went to that seminary instead, see who there is to talk to."
"They're out of session, I think."
"Still got papers to grade, I'll bet."
"Say, Sheriff, why don't you let me treat you to late lunch or early dinner. It's on the Department."
"Yeah, alright."
"So where to, then?"
"Joe's Diner, I guess. Only other place unless you want to drive is the pizza place, and, well, I'm sick of that place."
"Joe's Diner, it is."
Agent Danley rode shotgun in Sheriff Donnelly's cruiser over.
Inside, they made an order to go, and sat at the counter, chewing it over. They couldn't help but notice through their entire conversation, that an off-duty waitress kept looking over at them, but she said nothing. She looked to be counting money and looking through her tickets.
"Well, I'm off," she said to the woman at the cash register.
"See you tomorrow, Angela."
"Bye."
And she left.
"You know her?"
"A waitress here. I've seen her before."
"I'm going to follow her."
"What for?"
"I don't know. Call it a hunch."
"Agent Danley, did you ever just think, of letting it go?"
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I should just let her go. I mean, I can ask after her if she becomes important later."
"Right, but after all, some people going going to look at you no matter what. Doesn't always mean something. Some women got a thing for a man in uniform. Of course, I don't know that that's it." He grinned. "But, whatever it is, I think it can wait and we can let that woman maybe worked a hard day, let her go on her way, as, so far as we can tell, she hasn't done anything wrong."
"Yeah, Sheriff, yeah, you're right."
But the farther the woman got beyond his grasp, the less able her was to cope with it. Something called to him, to follow her, to chase her down, to find out what she was hiding. But the Sheriff was right. Other than a sideways glance, what did he have to base that on?
He just felt something immediate about chasing after her, something immediate enough to be worth whatever fallout would come afterwards. Instead, they just grabbed their food and went back to the Sheriff's Department, where Lieutenant Cantroux greeted them urgently.
"They got an address."
They all went inside and had a look at the map. It wasn't very far away.
"Do we roll on it now, or do we wait for morning?"
"Guy might be heavily armed. Sheriff, you sure you can't get a deputy or two here?"
"Yeah, I could call Chip, see if he's feeling any better."
"Three of us could take him."
"Assuming he's alone, right? I think you should make a couple calls see if we can get some state troopers on the case."
"Texas Rangers, sir."
"You're right. Not State Troopers. Texas Rangers."
The Sheriff cleared his throat. "This sounds like a job for my favorite two deputies: bright and early."
"Let's hope you can scramble two other ones as well," Lieutenant Cantroux deadpanned.
10
5:01 PM
Angela tried to flip on the television, but nothing. She tried to turn on the lights. Nothing. Oh, hell, she thought. The power's out again. Instead of the news, she saw herself in the mirror.
"A man's dead," she told herself. "And all you can worry about is the 5 o'clock news."
The problem was not knowing. Not knowing if the doctor was the guy that had done Lorlene's abortion. Not knowing if Bill knew. Not knowing if Bill was capable of killing someone in cold blood. It could have been a lot of people, for a lot of reasons. It didn't necessarily have to be the reason that she was thinking.
"But you suspected all along that he'd do it. You knew he would and then it happened and now you don't want to give him up."
That was it, wasn't it. She felt some insane need to protect Bill from the law. Wouldn't it be better for him, she was thinking, if he wasn't caught. He knew what he did was wrong, but prison, well that would spoil his whole life.
Whether it would or wouldn't was of no concern of hers! She had to pick up the phone and call the Sheriff. Tell him to go get Bill and lock him up!
But how do you know they haven't gotten somebody for the crime already? she thought. If you'd flipped on the television, maybe you would have seen the guy had been picked up.
She accepted that as the answer and decided to call the power company instead.
You should make the call just in case, she told herself. But she didn't want to call and have been embarrassed to accuse him. No, that was foolish. She ought to get the power turned back on and then decide what to do.
She thought of her son. Why she should, she wasn't sure. Nick had never done anything worse than light some things on fire he probably shouldn't have. Okay, he had blown up some household objects, but that was normal boy stuff. He hadn't meant to kill anything larger than a rodent.
Angela sat down. Rationalization. Why was she rationalizing everything.
"Because I feel at fault."
She did. She felt like she had pulled the trigger. Where was Phil Donahue when you needed him. This would make a great episode. "I could have stopped him," she could imagine herself saying. And Phil would be in the audience nodding in his serene way. Then he'd pick the microphone back up. "I think we have time for a question."
"Don't disappear into a make-believe world," she told herself. "This is serious. Somebody was killed."
But it was too late. She had already escaped. Wow. And it was well after the time to start cooking dinner! Oh, damn, she remembered. Electric range. Should have gotten something from the diner before she left. Well, she still could go back.
Rather get pizza than see anybody after she'd already left. She decided to call for the pizza right then.
And you know what? She never even considered calling the Sheriff's Department once after that, though she did many times fantasize about being on Phil Donahue, or Oprah.
"Oh, Phil," she would say. "Or, Oprah, I didn't want him to be disappointed with me. And Oprah would say, 'we're going to take a quick commercial break.' She always said that after the guest said something really terrible and damning."
11
5:42 PM
Agent Danley had checked himself into a motel back a ways on Route 6, though he had in no ways stopped working. He had take a few plum files with him and he was sketching a timeline of events. But when he sat down on the motel bed, and really thought about it, it was that woman's face that kept appearing to him. She knew something. She wanted to tell him something. He ought to get back in the car and drive over to that diner and--
He heard the whir of a vending machine click on, and he came back to the situation. That might fly in a drug bust situation, but this was the broad, wide middle of Texas. He couldn't go to people's homes, bust some doors open, and scare them into telling him everything he wanted to know. That kind of action would invite a very negative reaction. The kind of reaction that would get his budget cut, or worse, find himself asked to leave the Bureau.
He found that the most difficult part of his mandate was that he was being asked to operate in environments where the normal tools at the disposal of law enforcement were not appropriate. Witness interrogation was one where the norms in a small town in Texas and the norms in an urban environment in say Chicago were so drastically different that it left Agent Danley with a bit of ennui. Since he couldn't really operate as was necessary to solve these crimes effectively, he couldn't really do what he was asked to do.
Since it was painfully obvious that the threat from places like the middle of Texas was growing to the Federal Government, owing to a generation that experienced the painful losses of Watergate and Vietnam, not to mention cultural changes which, on the one hand encouraged people like Agent Danley who believed in an open world in which goods and people moved effortlessly across borders, discouraged people who relied on manufacturing that probably wasn't coming back. Just like Palestinians and other Arabs, jobless and angry, had pined for some supposed traditional way of life, one that probably never existed in the pure form these radicals were imagining, so too would these young men, disillusioned by American society, start to actively resist it.
When push came to shove, how would agents like Agent Danley get to and prevent the next terrorist act? He hadn't managed to prevent this one. The things that law enforcement agencies were able to do in response to drugs it probably would never be able to do in this place. And if it did, there would be a counter-reaction that would be hazardous to the department, or the Federal Government generally. The cycle of violence would commence, and probably never become disarmed.
What he felt buzzing up in his was a glorious memorandum! Yes, it really was. "Terrorist Threats Within the United States: Operating Framework for Understanding and Dismantling the Enemy Within." This was going to be good one. One for the ages.
He wondered who would read it, though? Someone from the gaze of history, he supposed. Someone who would look back on his work and say, "a-ha!" here is someone that got it way before everyone else. But would it make any change in the department? Would it cause people to prepare for the coming future?
No, probably not.
Well, he thought, I have only this going for me, and that's that criminal acts are done in long strings, where each next criminal act has a chance to upset enough of the right people to cause every criminal act they commit to become forbidden.
Sure, they may start by harassing an abortion clinic, but they would not be able to let it end there. No, eventually they would do something that would let people know their acquiescence to violence to solve political questions led down a terrible road. You could, as Agent Danley did, believe in the same end goal. But there was no use to violence in a working democracy. If you had a need to commit violence either the democracy was not working, or else the person was not willing to commit to democracy.
Agent Danley thought, fundamentally, we live in a working democracy. Yes, there were some things that could use improvement, but fundamentally, we live in a free country. A country where you could convince the broad majority of Americans to make illegal again abortion, or else to make it infrequent. You could run for local office. You could run for state office. You could campaign for candidates that shared your point of view. And, ultimately, if you didn't get you way, you had to abide the law, no matter your feelings towards it.
Well, he still had hope. Tomorrow they were going to crack this case open, and find squirming behind this guy every other person in a long intricate set of links to every other person who intended to do harm to anybody ever. It could happen, right?
12
7:49 PM
"Oh, Horace, you horse's ass. You've been out drinking again, haven't you?" Myra said as soon as Horace closed the door behind him. Somehow she could tell from the way he had had trouble with the keys.
Sheriff Donnelly smiled and careened slightly. "I may have had a couple."
"Well, Horace, you have your blood pressure to think about."
"I know. I do."
He took his hat off and sat down in the easy chair.
"Don't bother thinking I'm going to serve you dinner in the living room. You'll have to come to the table if you want to get fed."
"Yes, dear," he said, and got back up and walked to the kitchen.
He sat down at the head of the table.
"David is coming with his new girlfriend on Sunday. Make sure that you're there. I want to make a good impression."
"Yes, dear. Problem is, this murder case."
"Oh, yes. That murder case."
Myra sat down next to him, waiting patiently for him to begin.
"There's nothing to say, Myra," he said. "Except that it might not be figured out in time for Sunday dinner with David and his new girlfriend."
"Nothing? Not anything?"
"We got a lead, but no suspects."
"The pastor of that Baptist church south of town?"
"No, we don't make him for it."
"We?"
"The FBI agent and I, Myra."
"FBI! Well, just call you J. Edgar Hoover."
"Ginger asked after you."
"Ginger did, did she."
"Yeah."
"She want something?"
"Cherry pie."
"Cherry pie! Ha. Well, that I don't mind giving."
"So it's not that pastor, huh? Somebody else in town that's got it in for the doctor."
Sheriff Donnelly looked over. "I'm not taking media inquiries at this moment, Myra."
"Yeah, you wish. Put your picture on the five o'clock news."
"Once I solve this case, how can they keep me out of it?"
"You about ready to?"
He smiled and winked.
"Oh, Horace, you're a dumb one, but I guess it don't take smarts."
"I guess not."
Sheriff Donnelly slowly chewed at his food in the solace of their house, the night gently falling on their corner of Texas. Some dog barked off in the distance, and a big rig hummed down the highway some miles off. The hum of cicadas started up, ready for the nightfall.
Soon, a blanket of stars and, etched against the sky, an old windmill in the neighbor's yard.
14
May 6, 1986 4:22 AM
Agent Danley had the pot of coffee on and all his files ready to go back to the Sheriff. He was just waiting for another eighteen minutes to go by so he could drive the twenty minutes back to the Sheriff's Department and meet the Sheriff--and his deputies, he hoped--at 5:00 AM on the dot. They would get a plan together and then they would go hit the address, give it all they've got and probably lead the killer off in chains, ready for the cameras.
Well, it probably wouldn't all go like that, but hey, 4:22 in the morning was a time to dream.
Agent Danley looked over at the clock. Still not time yet.
Maybe he ought to call home. It was a little later, though not much. Would anyone be up just yet? Yeah, probably not. But then again, he almost never called when we was on the road. His wife was a high-powered attorney and his daughter was a go-getter National Merit Scholar soon to be Ivy Leaguer. They didn't have time for calls from the road. They'd see him when he got back. If they weren't busy with other things.
But being in this motel made him remember their humble beginnings. Back when his wife was fresh out of law school and was pregnant with Hailey. When they lived in a small apartment in Virginia, and dreamed of their coming life. In their wildest dreams, they could not have imagined where they would end up, but, when he thought about it, the simplicity of their lives then was enviable.
He looked over at the clock. Only four minutes until he could get in the Lincoln Towncar and drive over to the Sheriff's Department. He got up and got himself another little sip of coffee and turned off the maker.
Being in the field! What a wonderful life that was!
14
5:13 AM
Sheriff Donnelly pulled into his parking space and saw that there was already quite a bit of company for him, but that none of them were his own deputies. That pained him a bit, because he knew, without them, he'd be asked to do whatever the lowest level grunt work the Texas Rangers and FBI man could dream up. Oh well. They at least had to respect the fact that he ran the department.
"Gentlemen," he said and approach the crowd.
Lietenant Cantroux spoke first. "This is Captain Beaks and Sargeant Thomas, Texas Rangers. They wanted to give you some logistical support and, if you need it, back up. Your deputies on their way?"
"Yeah, I think so. I think they'll be here any minute now. That or I'll go ahead and look for some new ones."
They laughed at that, but it was an empty threat. Sheriff Donnelly didn't have any interested candidates to replace them if they he did fire them.
"Well, let's get inside, decide on a plan of attack," the Sheriff said.
"Sounds good," Agent Danley said, and they all went inside.
"The way I figure it," Agent Danley started, the pot of coffee gurgling in the background. "This is a lone wolf. Lone wolf's hideout. We could be taking him by surprise or else he could be waiting for us."
"You get in touch with the landlord?" Captain Beaks tried.
"County records didn't get back to us."
"You might have some trouble knocking down the door in Texas if you haven't mentioned it to the landlord."
"This is a murder investigation, Captain. This is a possible terror cell planning attacks all over the state or country."
"It's a guy got a screw loose, and I think we should follow up with the landlord before we go barreling through the doorway."
"Captain, this really isn't our investigation anymore."
"You're right. You're right. But I'd rather roll on the county official thinks they don't have to return calls from the FBI and Texas Rangers."
"Maybe we'll make a stop on the way back."
"We really need to have an operating plan here," Sargent Thomas tried. "We need to cut off all avenues of escape. Sheriff, you ought to take the lead, just in case we can solve this with talk. You can talk to him, get him to surrender. I'll be in the back ready to tackle him. We'll need two people, I guess that's the Captain and the Agent to act as reconnaissance flanking the sides. You may also find a way through a window or side door. I think we should go ahead and use every access point rather than wait and be sorry later."
"Alright," the Captain said. "Sounds good."
Sheriff Donnelly put on his hat. "Let's get to work."
Agent Danley met the Sheriff at the door. "Look, Sheriff, I'll be there the whole time. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."
"What would happen to me? I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself."
"Yeah," Agent Danley said only. "Yeah."
Just then, the door opened, and in walked a woman on a mission.
"Margaret," the Sheriff said.
"Well, I'm here. I got two hours of sleep, my makeup is probably on crooked, but I'm here."
"Margaret, we'll be fine."
"No, we got a killer on the loose, and you asked the whole department to come in, come hell or high water, so here I am."
She stopped in her tracks about a step away from sitting at her desk. "Who moved around all the files?"
Sheriff Donnelly looked over at Agent Danley, who turned bright red, which was really pretty amazing, because it was incredibly hard to make him blush.
"I just thought--"
"You thought I didn't know how to keep a filing system is what you thought. But, actually, that's about the only thing they let me do all by myself, but I guess you didn't know that. My God! What did you do this for?"
"I was trying to get a feel for this town."
"Yeah, yeah, my fault for having a newborn child to feed."
"You got some things for me to do, Sheriff Donnelly, other than to figure out a new filing system?"
"Well--"
"Don't be shy. I'm already here, against my better judgment. Might as well make me feel useful."
"Well, I should have followed up with the landlord of the address we're about to go to right now."
"Suspect's address."
"Yes."
"And Tracy and Powell ought to know if they don't want to come in today, they better expect not to have a job here anymore."
"You want me to say that? Or you want me to say you said that?"
"I want you to say I said that."
"But you want me to say it."
"You have a flair for this kind of thing."
"I suppose I do, Sheriff. Someone's got to whip this Department into shape."
"Might be expecting some calls, too."
"Yeah, calls I got, no problem, Sheriff."
They all went to their various cars in the parking lot.
"Wow. Real firecracker you got there, Sheriff."
"You should see her when she really gets going. This Department really needs her."
The Sheriff stopped.
"One thing I was thinking about, Agent Danley. We never followed up about that nursing student."
"No. But I'm thinking we may not need to, or else we can double back. I feel more and more like this is the center of our investigation, the address we're headed to now."
"True."
6:00 AM
Sheriff Donnelly gingerly walked towards the front door of the duplex and double checked the address, since both addresses looked exactly the same side by side.
He nodded to Agent Danley standing beside him, and knocked firmly on the door. He went around to the side of the building, which was difficult because the walk sagged a bit on the side and was cut off by a fence.
They couldn't see anybody stirring inside.
The Sheriff knocked again.
He walked back to the car, and radioed Margaret.
"Hey, Margaret, come in."
"What's happening, Sheriff?"
"I need you to call Judge Thompson, see if he'll issue us a warrant over the phone to search the premises of a suspect."
"Yeah, okay, Sheriff. I'll call him right now."
The Sheriff went back over. He saw Agent Danley inspecting the door for a way to break in.
"We're calling for a warrant."
"Wise. But any reason you think he'll reject it?"
"It's your investigation, agent."
"I want in. Right now."
"Now, listen here, Agent--" Captain Beaks started.
"We're all on the same team," Lieutenant Cantroux started.
"Yeah, the team of the Constitution. Now, Agent, I am absolutely sure that you have been in many situations where these tactics are warranted, but this this is a small town. I'm absolutely sure it can wait until you get a warrant to search this property."
"It probably can, but I can't."
They heard a honking horn in the distance, and a tan truck moving quickly towards them.
They all found cover and drew their weapons, but the truck stopped short and a big, burly man got out.
"Don't shoot me, for the love of God, and don't destroy my property!"
He ran up out of breath, and it was readily apparent that he had rather recently been in bed, because he was wearing pajamas, a bathrobe, and some slippers.
"Are you the owner of this property?" Sheriff Donnelly tried.
"I sure am, but it's currently vacant."
"Well, we want to ask you about that, because we're looking for the previous tenants."
"You mean, where I can find them? Well, you let me know if you find them, because they owe me for this month's rent, and they got a whole apartment full of stuff they left behind I got to clear out myself before I can rent the place again."
"How many tenants were there?"
"Two boys. Seminary students, I think."
"Both left."
"Yeah."
"Well, we're going to need to go through any records you have on either one, and we'd also like a look around inside if you don't mind."
"Well, I'm not entirely sure about that, Sheriff, you see I still have to take some pictures of the inside of the property for my own records."
"Maybe I should rephrase that..." Agent Danley started.
"Dennis Dietrich."
"Dennis Dietrich. I'm Agent Danley. I'm with the FBI. We're investigating a murder, a possible terror cell. We need to get inside now."
"Well, I've got rights, Agent Danley, and I--"
"This is a murder investigation. Some might say you are impeding it right now. Some might even say you are aiding and abetting them by delaying the inevitable, which is we are going to get inside one way or another. There's going to be a warrant issued for this property this morning or this afternoon or this evening but either way, we're going to get inside. Now, for the love of God, can you open up this door so we can have a look around?"
The landlord look right at Agent Danley. "No."
Agent Danley slapped cuffs on him and cuffed him to his car.
"Hey!"
"Sheriff Donnelly, if you would."
Agent Danley went over and they took turns kicking down the door.
Lieutenant Cantroux looked at Captain Beaks. The Captain shrugged and then went inside.
Inside, a musty odor met them; the apartment of two bachelors.
As advertised the apartment had seen a recent hasty escape, with things thrown about and left behind in a frantic rush. It was the scene of criminals running away from the law.
Agent Danley breathed it in. "Fantastic," he said. "This is a treasure chest of information. I can't wait to go through it all."
He picked up the phone, which was still live, and pressed *69. The phone rang, and it rang, and then, miraculously, someone picked up.
"Hello?"
"Yes, who is this?"
"Well, who is this?"
"Honey, I'm a police officer, and I wanted to know, do you know someone that just graduated from seminary?"
"My brother."
"Your brother. I see. Is he there?"
"Uh, I don't know."
"Can you go get him for me if he is?"
"Okay."
There was a pause, and then she came back to the phone.
"No, he's not here."
"Hey, what's your name, by the way?"
"I don't think I'm allowed to tell strangers over the phone."
"I'm a police officer, honey. It's okay."
"Deirdre."
"Deirdre. Is there an adult at home right now?"
"No. Not right now."
"You're home alone?"
"Yes."
"Okay. I want you to tell an adult to call me, and that it's urgent. Do you know what urgent means?"
"Not really."
"Very important. Very, very important. Can I leave a phone number with you and you'll make sure they call it for me? It's a matter of life and death. Can you do it for me?"
"Yes."
Agent Danley gave them the Sheriff's Department number and then hung up with little girl.
"Wow!" Agent Danley said. "I got him. Get the call records for this number. Boy went home. He killed a man, he graduated, he went home."
"I'll radio Margaret right now."
Agent Danley looked over at Captain Beaks. "I know what you're going to say, and I'll readily admit I didn't follow all the rules. But this isn't an isolated incident, Captain. This is a campaign of terror and this is a terrorist."
"I'm not arguing with you anymore, Mr. Danley. You got your way, and you don't care what happens afterward. I kind of respect it. Don't think it's going to end well for you, but I respect it. We got a whole big apartment full of clues as to these guy's whereabouts right here, though. Suggest we ought to start working through it all."
16
9:17 AM
Deputy Powell was sitting in the chair waiting for the Sheriff for more than forty-five minutes. Every time he heard a noise, he got up, and then sat back down.
"If he's going to yell at you, he's going to yell at you."
"I was sick."
"I'm sure you were, but you well enough to be here right now, I suppose."
"Barely."
He slumped back in the chair.
There was a rattling of the door, and then it opened. In walked not the Sheriff but Trudy, the late doctor's secretary.
"Yes, ma'am. What can I do for you?"
"Hi. I'm here to see the Sheriff. Is he in?"
"I'm afraid he isn't, but I'm a Sheriff's Deputy. Can you speak to me?"
She sighed. "I suppose so. I found that address he was looking for. The girl saw that man who was outside the practice for a couple weeks."
"I'll be very interested in that. Thank you."
He looked at it.
"Now, where in the heck is this?"
He showed it to Margaret.
"Wow. That's way outside of town."
Margaret showed him on the map where that was. To say it was on the wrong side of the tracks didn't do it justice. It was on the bombed out side of the county.
Deputy Powell swallowed.
"Well, what are you waiting for, Deputy. Got to follow those leads, don't you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
He slunk off towards the parking lot, looking back to see if Margaret was going to make him. Well, goddamn if she had to, well then she would!
17
10:07 AM
Deputy Powell sat in the car with the map on his lap, trying to figure it out, when he realized the path of least resistance was just to start knocking on whatever door until he was told the right way.
He folding back up the map and drove to the first house he saw.
There was a rumbling the back, but no one answered the door.
He rang the doorbell again.
"Sheriff's Department," he said. "I'd like to ask you a few questions if I could."
The door opened, but it was just a little boy.
"Hey there. Anybody else home?"
The boy looked up, his finger firmly up his nose working on a booger. He shook his head.
"Do you happen to know where the Haverfords live?"
He walked up, his eyes full of either purpose or fear and pointed down the road.
"Thank you," Deputy Powell said honestly, and then he took a took a quarter out of his pocket and gave it to him. The boy looked almost like he wasn't sure what it was, but he figured if someone gave it to him it must have something good about it, and put ran to put it in a hiding place he had. "Alright then," the Deputy said. "Thank you. Goodbye."
Scenes like that made his heart break. Here was a child no more than two or three getting by by themselves. He supposed it was on him to call child services, but then, expectations were a bit different out here. There could be folks checking on him throughout the day. There was no way of knowing. Plus, could have been a brief trip to the store.
He drove down the block to what he now believed was the Haverford house, and knocked on that door.
Immediately a door opened wide.
"What do you want?"
"Hi. I'm Deputy Powell, from the Sheriff's Department."
"Yeah, hi. What do you want?"
"I'm looking for Nicole Haverford. Are you her father?"
"Yeah, I am. She in trouble for something?"
"No. Not at all. I hear she's working on a nursing degree in Austin. Highly commendable."
"She is."
"The trouble is, doctor she worked for has been shot."
"Oh, I heard about that."
"The office manager told us your daughter might have got a good look at a good might be the killer, or might even know who he is. Trouble is, she doesn't have any way to contact her."
"Oh, you want her number at school. I have that."
The man went into the back of the house, and then came out with his little book. "This is it."
He showed Deputy Powell the book with the phone number underlined.
"Thank you so much. You wouldn't happen to remember her mentioning, in the time she worked for the doctor, anybody that threatened her personally, or threatened anybody else at the practice."
"To be honest, she's the quiet sort of girl. The kind you go into her room and the curtains are on fire, and she tells you calmly 'that there might be a little problem with the curtains.'"
"I understand."
"It's terrible about that doctor, though. I really did appreciate him giving my daughter some work experience."
"We'll get the guy that did it, don't you worry, but every little bit helps, you know? Thank you for your cooperation."
"Sure, sure."
"Well, I guess I'll be on my way. You should take this card, though, just in case you think of anything, or the wife thinks of anything--"
"It's just me."
"Well, anyway, sometimes people think of things. I want you to call if you do."
"I will."
"Alright, then."
Deputy Powell rather softly closed the screen door that was bent and only on one hinge. The siding around it looked no better, with insulation coming out of a part of it next to the door. There was some furniture on the patio, but it seemed to be made of discarded pieces of other furniture fitted together, and there was quite the collection of spider webs in the dark corner by the two chairs and a tree stump table.
The front window had a hole in it which was patched up with tape, though was sagging slowly, and the whole thing was probably a stiff breeze away from falling apart entirely.
Hard to think, Deputy Powell shuddered, that these people don't do something about their living condition. But, he supposed there wasn't much to do. Not around here. Not without a truck that worked at least as often as it didn't.
He wanted to help, he really did, but instead he just went back to the cruiser and drove back to the Department.
"You get that number?" Margaret said.
"I did. I'll call her right now."
He stood there a moment too long.
"Anything else, deputy?"
"Terrible the way people are living out there."
'You're telling me! Got two cousins live out that way. Like a third world country! I don't even bother to visit them these days, got so tired of the whole thing."
"You don't think something ought to be done?"
"Oh sure something ought to be done. A lot of those people ought to get a decent job, or just move away entirely. There's nothing there. I suppose, in time, they will, or die."
Deputy Powell nodded, and went over to his desk.
He paused for a second before picking up the phone and dialing.
The machine.
"Hi, Nicole this is Desmond Powell calling you from the Sheriff's Department in Flat Bluff County, back home. If you could call me at your earliest convenience. It involves a matter of some importance."
Deputy Powell gave the number and hung up.
He still wasn't satisfied, but there was nothing much he could do about it at that moment, so he went over to the snack table and got a cup of coffee, as well.
18
10:58 AM
"Listen, Agent Danley," Sheriff Donnelly began. "I've been turning over what Ben Damand said to me more and more in my mind, and it doesn't sit right."
"What did he say?"
Agent Danley, like a kid in a candy store, had meticulously sorted through everything in the house, after taking meticulous pictures, of course. Everything was in front of him, and he couldn't have looked happier to be sorting through all of it.
"He said that there were two boys they picketed the practice with, two boys they said it was their idea in the first place to picket the place. Said they had told him about things they wanted to do that he didn't approve of."
"You mean like murder."
"He didn't say. But the more I think about it, and the more I think about Ben and Ginger, the woman does most of his planning for him, the more I start to think they were in all in league together."
"How do you mean, Sheriff?"
"Well, I don't. I don't know, but the more I think about the them, the more I think that they had a lot more to do with the whole thing than they say."
"You think they killed him?"
"No. No, I don't think they killed him. But I think they were in on the planning stages of the murder. I think they knew that he was in danger. And I think they might know where one or the both of them is."
"You think they directed the murder to begin with?"
"No. No, I don't think so. But you can give a lot of help to someone planning a murder without actually pulling the trigger."
"Well, that's very true. Just like the guy owns this building. I really suspect he has a lot more to do with things than he lets on."
"The landlord? You think so?"
"I never seen anybody refuse to grant law enforcement access to a vacant property before, and I mean never."
"Well, maybe you haven't spent much time in Texas."
"He's hiding something. I know he's hiding something. Maybe it's a different illegal act of some kind--I hope, for his sake, that it's something petty like his girlfriend is fourteen or something like that. But I suspect he wasn't just housing these boys for the little bit of money they gave him."
"You think he had something to do with the murder?"
"I do. I really do."
Sargent Thomas came into the room suddenly.
"The landlord wants to know if you plan on charging him for anything or if you plan on letting him go, because if you aren't charging him for anything, then it's an unlawful detention."
"Then take him to the Sheriff's Department and book him."
"What for, Agent?"
"Impeding a federal investigation."
"We'll have to transfer him to a federal jail."
"Well don't you have a similar statute in this state?"
"Not really."
"So you're saying there's nothing you can do if someone won't help you investigate a serious crime?"
"Not really."
"So what do you do?"
"Wait for people to cooperate. Get court orders that compel them to."
"Who has time for all that?"
Sargent Thomas looked at him.
"So we letting him go, or..."
"Yeah, alright, let him go. Tell him we'll be by to pick up any records on these boys that he has sometime in the afternoon."
"It doesn't seem like he'll be letting you."
"Well then let's get a court order for it."
Sargent Thomas nodded, and then left.
"Don't think they like me much," Agent Danley admitted.
"They have respect for you, Agent. I see it. They also think anybody that comes from outside has got to have something wrong with them."
"I could have gotten some people from the Austin field office."
"Why didn't you?"
"This is a counter-terrorism operation, Sheriff. They weren't going to investigate like a counter-terrorism operation."
The Sheriff nodded. Wasn't any of his business, he supposed.
19
12:11 PM
Margaret was frantic over the dispatch.
"We found the address. It's in Louisiana."
"Can you call my office and have them book a flight?"
"I don't have your office number, Agent."
"It's okay. I'll call when we get back to the Department."
"On to Louisiana, then," Sheriff Donnelly noted.
"Wherever the case leads me. Looks like you've got quite a bit to go through here, though, and you've got to follow up get the landlord's records. I really suspect the rabbit hole goes down pretty far with him, and you suspect that pastor and that woman."
"Think I'll take direction from the Texas Rangers."
"Yeah, I suppose that's best."
"Well, I really appreciate it, Sheriff. You've been a tremendous help. You're a good lawman. And I'll be back real soon, I think, because there's a whole lot more to investigate here."
"And who knows, could be a dead end."
"Could be."
They went back to the Department and Agent Danley called his secretary to make the arrangements and his secretary called the New Orleans field office to send an advance team to survey the situation.
Agent Danley went back to the motel to pack up his things. He drove back to the field office and then got a cab to the airport. At the gate, he thought about everything, and realized that as much evil as he saw, he saw a lot more good. There was trouble brewing, and he didn't know yet how that would all go, but there were good people to try to thwart it. Agent Danley just hoped it would be enough to stem the tide.
He wondered how things were back at the office. He highly suspected that Agent Harper was trying to undercut him, and he knew there was a lot riding on making one or several arrests to account for Agent Danley and his mission. In fact, Agent Danley high suspected that he was going to be reassigned regardless of the outcome of this investigation. It was a mission whose time had not yet come, and that generally meant, in a large and sprawling bureaucracy at the behest of political leaders, it just wasn't necessary.
Then he thought about the trip to Palestine he had taken at the expense of the Department to learn from the Mossad about counter-terrorism. The Agent he had talked to explained some of the psychology of terrorism, and Agent Danley was thinking hard about what it may mean for the future of the American republic.
Colonialism had stripped away the past of Arab people, through a series of convenient alliances to extract oil and revolutionary communism which expressly forbid the past to be expressed. When people's history is erased, they do not fail to yearn for it; instead, they make it up as they go along, and they become intolerant both of their parents, who they blame for not adhering to a version of the past which they invented in their mind, and outsiders, who they think are naturally intransigent to them practicing their "traditions." Ultimately, because they live in a fantasy world, in which the reality of the past must be erased to invent a new one that is ideologically pure, there is no way to reconcile them with a future of accommodation. They invent that their ancestors would not have accommodated foreigners or new ways of being, and they will never see any benefit to cooperation.
That colonialism is, in many ways, still at work, precludes much popular support for a way forward for Arabs that involves accommodation with the West or with Israel. They still are being taken advantage of, in innumerable ways, and the socialist leaders are truly no better than the colonial overlords.
To keep control over the population, in truth, both Soviet and colonial agents have encouraged proxy warfare between tribal groups, which has created a fractured landscape in which identity never has a chance to develop peacefully. It is constantly being manipulated and ethnic tensions are, when necessary to achieve geopolitical ends, exacerbated.
America was a colony of Britain. The American South was set up for a rich and politically well-connected planter class to control all the levers of power. African American slaves were marketed by the Crown and then brought in in great numbers. To control the population, Britain encouraged reducing the status of African slaves until they were little better than animals. Other Southern Whites, especially those of the upcountry, found themselves left out of the privilege of their rich and politically well-connected "brethren" and, led by revolutionaries like Andrew Johnson, helped halt the advance of the Confederacy in the South, which fell on ethnic and class divisions created by the British to monetize their colonial possessions.
Southerners in the years after the Civil War, searched for a Southern identity, embracing terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan rather than admit that their ancestors, like Jefferson, were reliant on but abhorred slavery, and well recognized the colonial imposition of slavery on the colonies, and the need to end it and find a way forward that was not so reliant on the domination of one group over another based on something as flimsy as race. That Jim Crow developed was predictable, and that the Civil Rights movement developed to defeat it was an equally predictable Federal countermeasure. Defeat of the colonial legacy of slavery and racism has always come from above and never included Southerners in either its drafting or implementation. This has caused Southerners to tug closely to their "Southern heritage" which shifts in meaning so often that it, like Arab identity, seems to have little meaning outside of terrorism against a maligned race that, lo and behold, was the assigned enemy by their previous colonial overlords.
That being pro-life should have become inextricably linked to the formation of Southern identity perhaps is a recognition that it needed something which was not explicitly racist, though the interweaving of dreamed theocratic Christian institutions and a Master Race utopia are so similar as to really be one concept. The confusion of having had your identity stripped from you manifests as nihilism. Because the past and present cannot be reconciled into a workable future, all must be sacrificed to reflecting a vision of the past which vindicates Southern-ness. If need be, everything will be literally blown up rather than admit to a new Southern identity which is anything more than the concept of White Power.
Ultimately, being understanding of prejudice is the first and most important mistake in finding an identity which does not rely on it. Too much systemic racism is allowed to persist in the South, and very little is done to train Southern institutions to function without it. Anything that is done is usually done without the input of those in charge, which gives citizens of those states the impression that the Federal government is really in charge of the situation, when it cares enough to do something about it, and when it does not, it will leave Southern states to their own devices, with inevitable consequences.
The legacy of colonialism and racism will need to be dealt with at some point. Being Southern does not somehow necessitate being racist or intolerant in any way. That being Southern has been defined as such both by the messianic nihilists that claim themselves the defenders of the South and also by those in other American regions shows just how much work there is to be done to exorcise the demons of the past. Southern states are only places. A new identity is easy enough to craft. It was easy enough for those that claim they are recreating the proud history of the South.
20
3:45 PM
Sheriff Donnelly sat in his office looking over Ginger's file. The way it had happened was, her husband had left her and moved in with his girlfriend. She showed up drunk to the new address brandishing a firearm and told him she was going to kill herself. By the time a Sheriff's Deputy arrived, she'd given up and was on the ground in tears. She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and public intoxication.
The Sheriff and Myra had prayed a lot for her, but she descended further into alcoholic madness before she came along the ministry of Ben Damand, and she became reborn. Since then, she'd been a good citizen, kept out of trouble, but something told the Sheriff that the wheels had really never stopped turning for her. She had just, adjusted the target of her almost limitless rage on other things.
And then there was the reverend himself to consider, no stranger to trouble. He'd been arrested no fewer than five times in the last few years, usually on trespass charges related to practices which performed abortions in the county. He had, or at least publicly showed to have, very little respect for authority other than his own.
Now, he didn't believe either on of them or even both of them together was capable of a criminal conspiracy of this magnitude, but they were both guilty of crimes of moral turpitude, and the sad thing was, people capable of crime are really one and the same. Big crimes, small crimes, criminals were criminals. All people are going to go through challenges in life. Most people go through those challenges without committing crimes. Some do. The people that do are liable to blame the challenges, but the truth is, their personality either forbade or accepted their criminal conduct as a tool to get them what they wanted.
From the outside, the Sheriff couldn't say what it was that the two of them had done, but it was clear that they were capable of crime; were in fact criminals. The question was how far did their criminality allow them to veer into deviant behavior?
He'd have to pay them another visit on the idea that he needed more background information on the killers. This time, though, he was going to lay it all out there rather than wait to find out what had been going on behind closed doors.
21
4:48 PM
The phone rang and Deputy Powell picked up. Margaret's breasts were starting to hurt and her husband called in to complain that the baby was crying incessantly. Margaret tried to troop forward, but then she realized there wasn't going to be any solution to it unless she went home and solved both her and her baby's problem all at once.
She called Deputy Powell over and ordered him to take over the phones, which he did after a pause.
"Sheriff's Department," Deputy Powell tried.
"Yes," a quiet voice came over the phone. "I got a call from you, I think."
"Is this Nicole?"
"Yes."
"Hi, so," and the Deputy pulled out a piece of paper to write down on, "I can't say I'm calling under the best of circumstances. Dr. Sam Jones was, unfortunately murdered last week."
"I heard."
"Well, the Sheriff was talking to Trudy, your former boss I believe."
"Yes."
"And she said that round about the time you were working in the office. You were working in that office for a time, weren't you?"
"Yes."
"Well, she said that there a man who was parked outside for a couple weeks during that time, and I was wondering if you might be able to give a description of the man you saw, if you remember him."
"His name is Caleb Sampson."
"Caleb Sampson. That's very specific. How do you know him by name?"
"He introduced himself. I think he kind of liked me."
"Wow. Fantastic. I mean, I don't know how fantastic it is, but that's great information. Thank you. We'll follow up. Can you search your memory, too, think of anybody else that you think might have had it in for the doctor?"
"His friend."
"His friend."
"Bill Peterman."
"Wow. You have in incredible memory, Nicole."
"I wrote down their names, officer--"
"Deputy."
"Deputy. I thought this would happen a lot quicker than it did, and I meant to go straight to the Department with it, but I guess I got shy."
"Well that's a shame. Might have stopped this whole thing before it happened."
"I know that, deputy, and I'm very, very sorry."
"You didn't do anything. It can be hard sometimes to accuse people of things they haven't yet done, anyway."
The deputy looked at what he'd wrote.
"Now, Nicole, this is the real hard part. At what point you can you come in for an interview with the department, because it appears you are a material witness in a murder investigation, and we really, really, could use you to sit down and get something written and signed."
"I'm still in school, deputy."
"No rush. Sometime in the next week or so?"
"Yes, entirely. I'll come home this weekend."
"That's wonderful. You're a superstar. I really, really appreciate all this. Gonna make me look great."
"Okay. I'm really glad I could help."
The deputy hung up the phone and then got on the radio.
He ran to the Sheriff's office, and threw the piece of paper in his face.
"We got them."
The Sheriff looked at him. "Who we got?"
"The two boys. Their names are Caleb Sampson and Bill Peterman."
"What? Who says?"
"The girl that worked in Sam's office. Says one tried to hit on her introduced himself and must have introduced his friend."
"Boys will be boys. Well this is great, deputy."
"The girl says she's going to go come in this weekend and give a statement."
"That's great."
"Well, I'll be at the phones."
The Sheriff looked at the piece of paper. They had their boys. But the question now was, who else was involved?
22
7:00 PM
The buzzer rung, and Ginger looked quizzically at Ben, as the service had been over for half an hour and nothing was scheduled the rest of the night.
"Who is it?" Ginger said as sweetly as possible.
"Oh, Ginger, it's you. I did some baking today. Horace said I should drop by and deliver one of my cherry pies."
"Are you serious?" Ginger said. "That is the about the sweetest thing...well, what am I saying this over the intercom to you for?"
And she rang the buzzer, and Myra drove into the parking lot.
Myra went over to the doorway, which was open just a crack to allow her admittance, and they all went inside.
"Doesn't that look beautiful," Ben said when Ginger showed him the pie.
"To be quite honest," Ginger said. "We have been expecting an unannounced visitor, but it's your husband we were expecting. He mention anything to you?"
"He said he came by and that you asked after my cherry pie, so here I am."
"So here you are," Ginger said.
"We wanted to tell the Sheriff that we have quite a bit more to tell him than we did that day, only we're kind of afraid."
"We don't want, or well we don't want to ministry to be pulled into the whole thing and dragged in the mud, do you know what I mean?"
"I'm sure that I don't," Myra said. "It's what I said, I came by to drop off a pie."
"Well, sure, but I know you're going home to him now, aren't you? Unless you have another delivery."
"No I don't."
"Well, we want to surrender. I mean, we want to surrender what we got. We want to be helpful, is what I mean."
"You want me to tell him to come by the Department, or have him come and meet you here."
"Either," they both said.
"Maybe there is best," Ben said. "But I want you to tell him, too, that we're really sorry. We didn't mean not to say everything, but we started thinking about ourselves--"
"And the ministry," Ginger said.
"And everything we've worked so hard for and, well, sin of pride, we forgot what is important which is finding that man's killer and that boy paying for what he did."
"You knew the killer?" Myra said offhand.
Ben looked at Ginger.
"We believe we did. We spent a great deal of time with him right here. We thought he just wanted to picket that practice of Sam's but, as it turned out, he had other things on his mind. Well, we could have guessed--"
"But we didn't know--"
"No, we didn't know he was going to do what he did, but sometimes he talked about doing things like that. Shooting or blowing up the place."
"But you two never--"
"No!" Ben said.
"Of course not, Myra," Ginger said. "You think either one of us is capable of anything approaching what that boy did?"
"Well, I certainly hope not! Well, anyway, this really isn't my business. But I'll tell Horace what you told me and I'll tell him you sounded really sorry and not to be hard on you two, just in case he's mad about it."
"Would you?" Ben said. "That would be amazing."
"Of course I don't want you blaming me on how he reacts. He's not a robot of mine."
"Yes, of course," he said.
Myra looked at Ginger. "Remember when the worst bit of trouble you got into was, you drank a little bit more than you should have?"
Ginger smiled uncomfortably.
Myra cackled despite them. She did like a good laugh, and that one tickled her nicely.
"Well, anyway, be seeing you two."
"You should come Sunday," Ben said.
"We got our own church, Reverend," Myra said.
"Yes, of course."
"I'll be sure to bake some of those butterscotch squares you used to like if I get the chance," Ginger said.
"Sounds delicious," Myra said, but gave it about a three percent chance of happening.
23
10:35 PM
The Sheriff and his wife debated for a long time whether it was worth disheveling everybody, but the whole thing kept gnawing at him and gnawing at him until he could hold off no longer. This was a terrorist plot that had been imagined for the town. This was a threat not just to the town but to everybody's way of life entire. If the Sheriff could allow that sometimes places in town were blown up based on people's hatred, then they would be living in a very, very different town than they had been living in. A town, well, the Sheriff was not quite sure he wanted to live in.
So he dragged Ben Damand in his bedclothes down to the Department and woke up Deputy Powell, though he decided to leave well enough alone with Margaret.
"We're going to be recording, just so you know."
"That's fine, Sheriff," he said in his best upbeat voice, but there were some rough edges to it, as rough as the tufts of his hair poking up or the redness in his eyes, softened endearingly by his charm and good looks.
The Sheriff clicked on the tape recorder. "Okay, state you name and occupation."
"Ben Damand. Chairman of the Board of Directors, White Sands Baptist Church."
"State, if you would how you came to know the suspect, Caleb Sampson, the circumstances in which you worked together, and any other background information you want to share."
"Caleb was in a work study program, and was working on youth initiatives when I met him. He was a young, bright man."
"Just the facts, Ben."
Ben smiled.
"Last summer he approached me about direct action to impede or possibly prevent an operating abortion clinic in Fidello. I told him that I didn't believe that there was one. He informed me that Dr. Sam Jones did, on occasion, perform them at his practice. I told him if that were true, we owed it to the pro-life movement to impede or prevent abortions from taking place, within our legal rights.
"He agreed that we would do only what was legally possible. However, he many times approached me about trespassing, burglary, assault, multiple batteries, and, eventually, kidnapping, murder, and terrorism. He mentioned stashes of weapons and explosives, as well as safe houses for people that committed the crimes. He mentioned that he was more than willing to become the first martyr to our cause. He mentioned many times that the early Christians had suffered mightily at the hands of the Romans for their faith, and that he intended to do the same, no matter if the American lawman played the part of the Roman Emperor.
"Did he mention, at any point, where these stashes of weapons and explosives where, or the locations of these safe houses?"
"No, and at the time, I thought he was just talking."
"Do you now believe that these things are real?"
"I haven't seen them still with my own eyes, but they at least had enough weapons to shoot that poor doctor down in cold blood in front of his home, and they've fled somewhere, we don't know where, so there's enough there to believe part of their story."
"Did he mention other crimes that you believe are imminent?"
"No. Everything centered around that clinic. Nothing else mattered."
"What, if anything, did you do to stop him."
"I told him that I would not participate in any violence, that I would not do anything illegal, that I would only do what I could do within the law."
"Did you attempt to stop him?"
Ben paused, very judicious with his words.
"There was nothing specific that I knew I needed to stop. He's not the only boy I've ever had in my ministry that got it in his head that he was a Christian soldier, fighting the Lord's fight. Most times, it's just a fantasy in their head, a daydream, and it never turns into anything. Once in a while, it turns into a petty property crime or something like that. I never would have imagined that a murder would follow, even after he repeatedly told me that he would. I guess I just, didn't give him enough credit for being serious."
The Sheriff nodded, and clicked off the recorder.
"Deputy Powell will be by tomorrow to pick up any documents that you think will help our investigation."
"Of course."
Ben sat in silence. "Is that all?"
"Yes, Ben."
He paused, and then he got up and left, whistling a gospel song to himself. They heard his truck engine start up, and then rumble away.
"Well, Horace," Deputy Powell said, leaned back against a corner wall. "We got a war on our hands?"
He cocked his head, remembering that Deputy Powell had been in boot camp just as Saigon fell. He'd never had his chance to deploy to the South Pacific, and he'd always imagined him and his company could have turned the tide of the war.
He'd been itching for battle ever since, staying in the Reserves and, with every news item thinking he was going to get called up and deployed. But, the Sheriff believed, he did not want to go to war against his friends and neighbors. Nobody did.
"I don't think it's going to come to that," the Sheriff said finally. "But we've got to be more vigilant. We've got to keep tabs on the comings and goings of people from that church."
"Yes, sir."
"And we've got to knock down the door of that landlord of theirs and, if necessary, put the screws on him until he gives up everything he knows."
"No better time than the present."
"No better time than the present," the Sheriff said.
24
25
8:47 AM
The Sheriff and his Deputy were outside of Dennis Dietrich's office, deciding what it was that he was doing, because they could hear a lot of rearranging going on--some might say, fleeing--but they were patient to see where it all led before spoiling it all by knocking on the front door.
"You think we should just let this go on?" Deputy Powell said, finally.
"Yeah, I guess so," the Sheriff said, although he was kind of enjoying watching somebody panic from the outside. They so often only got to see the aftermath of a suspect's handiwork.
"Sheriff's Department!" Deputy Powell yelled into the trailer.
Everything inside stopped, and then the back door swung open and they could hear them attempt to get something heavy to come with him.
They ran to the other side, where they saw him attempt but fail to hoist a large bag into his truck.
"Stop! Put you hands up!"
He put his hands up. "What have I done?"
"You're resisting arrest," Deputy Powell tried.
"I didn't know I was being arrested."
"I'm finding that kind of hard to believe."
"We're placing you under arrest as an accessory to the murder of Dr. Sam Jones."
"What I do?"
"You housed a couple of terrorists. You gave them weapons. You gave them training. It wouldn't surprise me if you gave them the idea in the first place."
"How you going to prove all that, Sheriff?"
"I would guess, the contents of that bag right there are a good place to start."
"May I?" Deputy Powell said, pointing to the bag.
"Go ahead."
The Deputy unzipped it and, unsurprising, a large cache of weapons and documents stared them in the face.
"Wonder why you made it so easy for us?" the Sheriff said.
"I didn't do anything wrong," he said only.
"Well, we'll see about that."
Deputy Powell slapped the cuffs on him and the Sheriff put his hat back on. They stuffed him in Deputy Powell's cruiser.
"We got to go through the contents of that trailer."
"Yep."
"Guess I'll start on that just now."
The Sheriff looked at the dark trailer. There went the rest of his day.
26
10:27 AM
Deputy Powell was watching a stream of cars on the horizon. Somehow he knew from the outset what it was. The Sheriff came over to the window.
"What is it?"
"Don't know just yet," he said glumly.
"But you're watching it just the same."
"Got a feeling. Got a feeling that FBI agent and some of those Texas Rangers are coming back."
"You think?"
"I don't know."
There was a silence in the room, as they all knew who it was that was being transported. Had to be. Had to be.
But it could be anything. They couldn't assume.
The Sheriff felt a sinking feeling in his gut. As things were developing, he felt that this thing went deep in the town, maybe across a lot of towns in this area of Texas. Maybe cross-nationally. They were only skimming the surface right now, and there could be danger to the department, the whole town even. But, then the Sheriff supposed, if it got any deeper it wouldn't be in his hands any longer. He'd be relieved of it the second it got any deeper.
The cars pulled up finally, and out walked Agent Danley, Lieutenant Cantroux and Captain Beaks, with three Federal Marshals and a whole contingent of FBI from the Dallas field office and Texas Rangers. They reached into the back of one of the cars and pulled out a man. Well, not really a man, a boy really. A slight boy with hair over his eyes. He flipped it out of his eyes as he stood up fully.
"It's got to be him," Margaret said behind them.
"Could be anybody. Could be somebody else."
"Don't think it is, though."
"The Sheriff walked up to the Department."
Agent Danley walked over and smiled. "Got your suspect. Ready to be booked."
"You don't want to remove this to another jurisdiction?"
"Can't think of any one better, Sheriff. He's got to be tried. Got to be tried where he committed the offense. Got to face the town he changed through his actions."
The Sheriff looked over at the boy. "Got something to say for yourself?"
He looked at the Sheriff with wide eyes, but said nothing.
County lockup was an ancient jail behind the Sheriff's Department. It could house up to fifteen inmates. Most inmates that had done serious crimes were transferred to state lockup, but those sorts of crimes usually came so few and far between that the Sheriff couldn't think of the last time they'd called the state to transfer someone.
They brought him inside the Department and all sat around him with him in handcuff on a chair in the middle of the Department.
Margaret shouted over the gathering. "Harry says he's going to stay late and do his arraignment at 7:30."
"Tonight?" the Sheriff said. Usually the good judge was the kind to be in bed by 7:30.
"Tonight."
"Thank you, Margaret. Always looking ahead."
"Someone's got to," she said and got back on the phone with the county clerk to give all the particulars."
All eyes were on the boy.
"We're listening," the Sheriff said simply.
"Well, I, uh, I got to confess. I had a part in this crime."
"You did. Well, of course you did. What did you do?"
"I helped plan it."
"You did. Anything else?"
"Maybe I came up with the idea."
"Uh-huh. That's what I heard."
'From who?"
"Ben Damand."
The boy nodded slowly. "I shouldn't have included him."
"He's a big boy. An adult, even. An adult with a lot of responsibility in this community."
"Well, he didn't have anything to do with it."
"I hope so." The Sheriff paused. "You kill this man, son. Were you the one that did it?"
"No."
"You sure. You just planned it, or you came up with it."
"I did. I did I did."
"You don't feel anything for that?"
"I do," he said calmly.
'You don't sound all that remorseful."
"Well, I didn't do it. The deed I mean. The shooting. So, you know, it doesn't totally feel real, that it happened."
"You were involved in the murder or the getaway?"
"Nope."
"Just planning it."
"Yeah."
"So who was it? Who killed Dr. Jones?"
The boy paused, and then he looked around the room. "It was that landlord of ours. Dietrich."
"That's who we make it for. But there's just one problem. His car wasn't at the scene. Got two witnesses describe a lime-green Ford Taurus. He doesn't have one. Who's car is that?"
"Must have been a friend of his, huh? I don't know. I never saw a car like that before, or if I have I don't remember it."
"So what you're saying is, according to you, you planned it, this guy shot him, he did all the logistics. You heard about it later. Did you talk to your landlord after the shooting?"
"No. In fact, I owe him for the month still."
"So when you heard about it, you fled."
"Yeah. Yeah, that's right. When I heard he'd done it, I fled."
The Sheriff looked at him, calmly turned off the recording device, and then smacked him hard across the face. "You're a smug little son-of-a-bitch."
And then Deputy Powell hoisted him up and pushed him out the back door in the direction of the jail.
"I'm frankly surprised," Agent Danley said, "at your lack of composure."
"To be quite honestly, agent, so am I."
27
4:00 PM
Being led in handcuffs up to bench to be arraigned, Dennis Dietrich didn't look so imposing. If anything, despite his size and his significant beard, he looked rather slight. He looked like he'd wandered into the wrong place and he wasn't sure how he'd gotten there.
"In the case State of Texas v. Dennis Walter Dietrich, defendant is accused of capital murder."
"Sheriff, do you want to explain the circumstances under which you arrested this man."
"Yes, Judge, we were investigating the murder of Dr. Samuel Jones. Following several roads, we discovered a conspiracy to commit premeditated murder between Mr. Dietrich, of Fidello, and a Caleb Sampson, of Houston, Texas, a seminary student at Fellowship Christian Academy. In Mr. Dietrich's possession was discovered several firearms, both registered and unregistered, as well as explosive materials and instructional manuals for producing and using them to kill as many people as possible. He had in his possession several unpublished manuscripts where, among other things, he described killing and maiming abortionists and medical clinics that provide abortion, as well as other enemies, among them federal and state buildings and the homes and offices of state legislators."
The judge looked at the accused. "You've been busy, haven't you?"
"Proposal for bail?"
The bail proposal was set in front of the judge.
"Proposal for no bail."
"Motion from the defense?"
Mr. Dietrich's lawyer passed his motion to the judge. "Defendant has longstanding ties to the community including rental properties and businesses throughout the county. He poses a minimal flight risk, and has an untarnished reputation."
"Defendant credibly accused of shooting down a man in cold blood. In broad daylight. Found with unregistered firearms and explosives. Motion denied. No bail set. Hearing set for 9 o'clock Tuesday, May 19th."
He hit the gavel and the landlord was led away by Deputy Powell.
The county attorney turned to the Sheriff. "I got to be honest, Horace. I'm going to need a ton of help going through the volumes of evidence."
"We're getting some support from the Rangers and the FBI."
"You might need to take on some support staff, just for the next few months."
The Sheriff nodded. "You know anyone?"
The county attorney smiled. "No."
"Alright, then."
The landlord's defense attorney came over.
"This is a big step up for you, Davis," the county attorney intoned.
"What? You think I'm not up to it? Anyway, Curtis, what's your primary qualification to prosecute a capital murder? That group of high schoolers you prosecuted for producing fake IDs?"
"Ha, ha. I guess you're right. State's probably going to take over prosecution, anyway. Capital murder cases, they tend to horn in."
"Bet they'll get a real nasty one, too."
"Bet you they will."
The Sheriff had to feel a little bit heartened, because in the county court things were just about the same as they always had been, no matter what was going on in the rest of the world. Heck, things probably would never much change, even in the time of robots and living in underground bunkers.
The Sheriff stopped by the county clerk's office to drop off some documents and pick up some requests for documents. Curtis was right. He was a bit out of his depth with the level of documentation. Margaret probably couldn't be counted on coming in two to three days a week at most to carry the load. Agent Danley had the energy for it, but he was based out of Washington, ultimately, and he couldn't find anybody from the field office in Dallas. He said he suspected someone from Washington was telling the Dallas field office not to provide any help.
Well, he thought, one day at a time. That's the only way he could do anything.
28
7:23 PM
Margaret came over to the desk Agent Danley was working at, and dropped a note.
"This from my secretary?"
"They just said to call back immediately."
"I was sitting right here."
"I can't clog up the main number walking over here."
Agent Danley shot up an eyebrow, but then he left it alone.
"Thank you, Margaret."
"No problem, Agent."
She smiled and walked back to her desk.
Agent Danley picked up the phone, paused for a second, and then dialed. It was almost 10:00 in Washington. What was she still doing at the office?
"Howard? Is that you?"
"Yes."
"I've been reassigned. I think so have you. You've got a meeting with the Assistant Director tomorrow at 9 o'Clock."
"Tomorrow? At 9 o'clock."
"I know. I'm sorry. But I got you a flight out of Dallas Fort Worth that leaves at midnight hours. Can you make it?"
Agent Danley looked at the clock.
"Yes, I can make it, but it will make a mess of things here. And I won't be able to, you know, sleep."
"Sudden thing, I think."
"Well, Marjorie, I really appreciate you staying. I know it's way after the hour you normally go home."
"I couldn't just leave."
"You could have. Thank you."
He took down the particulars for the flight and then looked at the desk. He had to leave everything just as it was. That was a shame. He went over to Margaret.
"I've been recalled, Margaret. Please tell the Sheriff that I'm sorry and that it was a pleasure working with him."
She looked at him quizzically.
He didn't have time to explain. He put on his coat, picked up his bag and walked out the door to the car.
"So why the hell am I here?" she said to an empty room full of boxes and papers.
29
William Reginald Peterman, Jr. was left with the sad fact of his fatherhood: he had failed his eldest son. He had done his best, but he had failed him. It had probably been all those moments when he had terrorized the boy. All those night when he had gotten liquored up and been angry about some small sleight.
Of course his son had always had a darkness in him. Something that made him have a tendency to view conspiracy in everything around him. That had been with him since the beginning. When Bill was just a little boy who they called Skip.
He scolded himself. All he could think about was, what if it was an item in the news; what if the news item was picked up nationally. It was just the sort of thing that newspapermen liked. "State Senator's Son in Murder Probe."
But he had to think about these things, because they were important to that split second decision people made in the voting booth.
As he sat on the porch and smoked his cigar, he realized he had always put his career above his family, and especially his eldest son. But now the question was, would he use his significant resources to aid his boy in escape, or would he use them to catch him?
Catch him, Bill's father decided. Catch him and get him the best defense lawyer in the world. Hope that he got a lenient sentence, mostly served at home and that something could be salvaged from the rest of his life.
He had ignored his son for too long, and when not ignoring him, had injured him, had mentally scarred him. It was now his responsibility to find the boy.
Agent Danley walked into the office with Agent Harper and the Assistant Director calmly. He knew what this meeting was, but he wasn't about to let on that he knew what this meeting was about.
3:45 PM
Sheriff Donnelly sat in his office looking over Ginger's file. The way it had happened was, her husband had left her and moved in with his girlfriend. She showed up drunk to the new address brandishing a firearm and told him she was going to kill herself. By the time a Sheriff's Deputy arrived, she'd given up and was on the ground in tears. She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and public intoxication.
The Sheriff and Myra had prayed a lot for her, but she descended further into alcoholic madness before she came along the ministry of Ben Damand, and she became reborn. Since then, she'd been a good citizen, kept out of trouble, but something told the Sheriff that the wheels had really never stopped turning for her. She had just, adjusted the target of her almost limitless rage on other things.
And then there was the reverend himself to consider, no stranger to trouble. He'd been arrested no fewer than five times in the last few years, usually on trespass charges related to practices which performed abortions in the county. He had, or at least publicly showed to have, very little respect for authority other than his own.
Now, he didn't believe either on of them or even both of them together was capable of a criminal conspiracy of this magnitude, but they were both guilty of crimes of moral turpitude, and the sad thing was, people capable of crime are really one and the same. Big crimes, small crimes, criminals were criminals. All people are going to go through challenges in life. Most people go through those challenges without committing crimes. Some do. The people that do are liable to blame the challenges, but the truth is, their personality either forbade or accepted their criminal conduct as a tool to get them what they wanted.
From the outside, the Sheriff couldn't say what it was that the two of them had done, but it was clear that they were capable of crime; were in fact criminals. The question was how far did their criminality allow them to veer into deviant behavior?
He'd have to pay them another visit on the idea that he needed more background information on the killers. This time, though, he was going to lay it all out there rather than wait to find out what had been going on behind closed doors.
21
4:48 PM
The phone rang and Deputy Powell picked up. Margaret's breasts were starting to hurt and her husband called in to complain that the baby was crying incessantly. Margaret tried to troop forward, but then she realized there wasn't going to be any solution to it unless she went home and solved both her and her baby's problem all at once.
She called Deputy Powell over and ordered him to take over the phones, which he did after a pause.
"Sheriff's Department," Deputy Powell tried.
"Yes," a quiet voice came over the phone. "I got a call from you, I think."
"Is this Nicole?"
"Yes."
"Hi, so," and the Deputy pulled out a piece of paper to write down on, "I can't say I'm calling under the best of circumstances. Dr. Sam Jones was, unfortunately murdered last week."
"I heard."
"Well, the Sheriff was talking to Trudy, your former boss I believe."
"Yes."
"And she said that round about the time you were working in the office. You were working in that office for a time, weren't you?"
"Yes."
"Well, she said that there a man who was parked outside for a couple weeks during that time, and I was wondering if you might be able to give a description of the man you saw, if you remember him."
"His name is Caleb Sampson."
"Caleb Sampson. That's very specific. How do you know him by name?"
"He introduced himself. I think he kind of liked me."
"Wow. Fantastic. I mean, I don't know how fantastic it is, but that's great information. Thank you. We'll follow up. Can you search your memory, too, think of anybody else that you think might have had it in for the doctor?"
"His friend."
"His friend."
"Bill Peterman."
"Wow. You have in incredible memory, Nicole."
"I wrote down their names, officer--"
"Deputy."
"Deputy. I thought this would happen a lot quicker than it did, and I meant to go straight to the Department with it, but I guess I got shy."
"Well that's a shame. Might have stopped this whole thing before it happened."
"I know that, deputy, and I'm very, very sorry."
"You didn't do anything. It can be hard sometimes to accuse people of things they haven't yet done, anyway."
The deputy looked at what he'd wrote.
"Now, Nicole, this is the real hard part. At what point you can you come in for an interview with the department, because it appears you are a material witness in a murder investigation, and we really, really, could use you to sit down and get something written and signed."
"I'm still in school, deputy."
"No rush. Sometime in the next week or so?"
"Yes, entirely. I'll come home this weekend."
"That's wonderful. You're a superstar. I really, really appreciate all this. Gonna make me look great."
"Okay. I'm really glad I could help."
The deputy hung up the phone and then got on the radio.
He ran to the Sheriff's office, and threw the piece of paper in his face.
"We got them."
The Sheriff looked at him. "Who we got?"
"The two boys. Their names are Caleb Sampson and Bill Peterman."
"What? Who says?"
"The girl that worked in Sam's office. Says one tried to hit on her introduced himself and must have introduced his friend."
"Boys will be boys. Well this is great, deputy."
"The girl says she's going to go come in this weekend and give a statement."
"That's great."
"Well, I'll be at the phones."
The Sheriff looked at the piece of paper. They had their boys. But the question now was, who else was involved?
22
7:00 PM
The buzzer rung, and Ginger looked quizzically at Ben, as the service had been over for half an hour and nothing was scheduled the rest of the night.
"Who is it?" Ginger said as sweetly as possible.
"Oh, Ginger, it's you. I did some baking today. Horace said I should drop by and deliver one of my cherry pies."
"Are you serious?" Ginger said. "That is the about the sweetest thing...well, what am I saying this over the intercom to you for?"
And she rang the buzzer, and Myra drove into the parking lot.
Myra went over to the doorway, which was open just a crack to allow her admittance, and they all went inside.
"Doesn't that look beautiful," Ben said when Ginger showed him the pie.
"To be quite honest," Ginger said. "We have been expecting an unannounced visitor, but it's your husband we were expecting. He mention anything to you?"
"He said he came by and that you asked after my cherry pie, so here I am."
"So here you are," Ginger said.
"We wanted to tell the Sheriff that we have quite a bit more to tell him than we did that day, only we're kind of afraid."
"We don't want, or well we don't want to ministry to be pulled into the whole thing and dragged in the mud, do you know what I mean?"
"I'm sure that I don't," Myra said. "It's what I said, I came by to drop off a pie."
"Well, sure, but I know you're going home to him now, aren't you? Unless you have another delivery."
"No I don't."
"Well, we want to surrender. I mean, we want to surrender what we got. We want to be helpful, is what I mean."
"You want me to tell him to come by the Department, or have him come and meet you here."
"Either," they both said.
"Maybe there is best," Ben said. "But I want you to tell him, too, that we're really sorry. We didn't mean not to say everything, but we started thinking about ourselves--"
"And the ministry," Ginger said.
"And everything we've worked so hard for and, well, sin of pride, we forgot what is important which is finding that man's killer and that boy paying for what he did."
"You knew the killer?" Myra said offhand.
Ben looked at Ginger.
"We believe we did. We spent a great deal of time with him right here. We thought he just wanted to picket that practice of Sam's but, as it turned out, he had other things on his mind. Well, we could have guessed--"
"But we didn't know--"
"No, we didn't know he was going to do what he did, but sometimes he talked about doing things like that. Shooting or blowing up the place."
"But you two never--"
"No!" Ben said.
"Of course not, Myra," Ginger said. "You think either one of us is capable of anything approaching what that boy did?"
"Well, I certainly hope not! Well, anyway, this really isn't my business. But I'll tell Horace what you told me and I'll tell him you sounded really sorry and not to be hard on you two, just in case he's mad about it."
"Would you?" Ben said. "That would be amazing."
"Of course I don't want you blaming me on how he reacts. He's not a robot of mine."
"Yes, of course," he said.
Myra looked at Ginger. "Remember when the worst bit of trouble you got into was, you drank a little bit more than you should have?"
Ginger smiled uncomfortably.
Myra cackled despite them. She did like a good laugh, and that one tickled her nicely.
"Well, anyway, be seeing you two."
"You should come Sunday," Ben said.
"We got our own church, Reverend," Myra said.
"Yes, of course."
"I'll be sure to bake some of those butterscotch squares you used to like if I get the chance," Ginger said.
"Sounds delicious," Myra said, but gave it about a three percent chance of happening.
23
10:35 PM
The Sheriff and his wife debated for a long time whether it was worth disheveling everybody, but the whole thing kept gnawing at him and gnawing at him until he could hold off no longer. This was a terrorist plot that had been imagined for the town. This was a threat not just to the town but to everybody's way of life entire. If the Sheriff could allow that sometimes places in town were blown up based on people's hatred, then they would be living in a very, very different town than they had been living in. A town, well, the Sheriff was not quite sure he wanted to live in.
So he dragged Ben Damand in his bedclothes down to the Department and woke up Deputy Powell, though he decided to leave well enough alone with Margaret.
"We're going to be recording, just so you know."
"That's fine, Sheriff," he said in his best upbeat voice, but there were some rough edges to it, as rough as the tufts of his hair poking up or the redness in his eyes, softened endearingly by his charm and good looks.
The Sheriff clicked on the tape recorder. "Okay, state you name and occupation."
"Ben Damand. Chairman of the Board of Directors, White Sands Baptist Church."
"State, if you would how you came to know the suspect, Caleb Sampson, the circumstances in which you worked together, and any other background information you want to share."
"Caleb was in a work study program, and was working on youth initiatives when I met him. He was a young, bright man."
"Just the facts, Ben."
Ben smiled.
"Last summer he approached me about direct action to impede or possibly prevent an operating abortion clinic in Fidello. I told him that I didn't believe that there was one. He informed me that Dr. Sam Jones did, on occasion, perform them at his practice. I told him if that were true, we owed it to the pro-life movement to impede or prevent abortions from taking place, within our legal rights.
"He agreed that we would do only what was legally possible. However, he many times approached me about trespassing, burglary, assault, multiple batteries, and, eventually, kidnapping, murder, and terrorism. He mentioned stashes of weapons and explosives, as well as safe houses for people that committed the crimes. He mentioned that he was more than willing to become the first martyr to our cause. He mentioned many times that the early Christians had suffered mightily at the hands of the Romans for their faith, and that he intended to do the same, no matter if the American lawman played the part of the Roman Emperor.
"Did he mention, at any point, where these stashes of weapons and explosives where, or the locations of these safe houses?"
"No, and at the time, I thought he was just talking."
"Do you now believe that these things are real?"
"I haven't seen them still with my own eyes, but they at least had enough weapons to shoot that poor doctor down in cold blood in front of his home, and they've fled somewhere, we don't know where, so there's enough there to believe part of their story."
"Did he mention other crimes that you believe are imminent?"
"No. Everything centered around that clinic. Nothing else mattered."
"What, if anything, did you do to stop him."
"I told him that I would not participate in any violence, that I would not do anything illegal, that I would only do what I could do within the law."
"Did you attempt to stop him?"
Ben paused, very judicious with his words.
"There was nothing specific that I knew I needed to stop. He's not the only boy I've ever had in my ministry that got it in his head that he was a Christian soldier, fighting the Lord's fight. Most times, it's just a fantasy in their head, a daydream, and it never turns into anything. Once in a while, it turns into a petty property crime or something like that. I never would have imagined that a murder would follow, even after he repeatedly told me that he would. I guess I just, didn't give him enough credit for being serious."
The Sheriff nodded, and clicked off the recorder.
"Deputy Powell will be by tomorrow to pick up any documents that you think will help our investigation."
"Of course."
Ben sat in silence. "Is that all?"
"Yes, Ben."
He paused, and then he got up and left, whistling a gospel song to himself. They heard his truck engine start up, and then rumble away.
"Well, Horace," Deputy Powell said, leaned back against a corner wall. "We got a war on our hands?"
He cocked his head, remembering that Deputy Powell had been in boot camp just as Saigon fell. He'd never had his chance to deploy to the South Pacific, and he'd always imagined him and his company could have turned the tide of the war.
He'd been itching for battle ever since, staying in the Reserves and, with every news item thinking he was going to get called up and deployed. But, the Sheriff believed, he did not want to go to war against his friends and neighbors. Nobody did.
"I don't think it's going to come to that," the Sheriff said finally. "But we've got to be more vigilant. We've got to keep tabs on the comings and goings of people from that church."
"Yes, sir."
"And we've got to knock down the door of that landlord of theirs and, if necessary, put the screws on him until he gives up everything he knows."
"No better time than the present."
"No better time than the present," the Sheriff said.
24
May 7, 1986 3:42 AM
Some towns get known and some towns get forgotten. It isn't all gravy for the towns that get known, though. Sometimes they get known for the wrong reasons, and they wish just as soon as they got known to become forgotten again.
Fidello is a forgotten town, but it wishes it was known. Little girls wish they were known for their voices and style; little boys for their speed and passing ability. Hobbyists for their fine art and crafts. Some gentlemen for their style and panache; some women for their extensive knowledge of the workings of cars. People dream in their head that the things they do will some day make them famous, and the town they came from if they do will always live in fame.
Of course, in the act of doing things they think they should do, well, sometimes they end up doing things they shouldn't. Sometimes to get where they think they want to go, they rob, they cheat, they outright steal, hit, abuse, cajole, and, even, outright murder to get their way--to finish what they think they've started and make their way in the world. Becoming famous is all-consuming and that means becoming infamous.
And everybody that ever learns about either the famous or the infamous is going to learn about them, where they came from. That city or that town is going to be put on the map.
But just because you did something that should become well known doesn't mean your going to become famous or infamous. No, the timing has to be right for the discovery. And even if the world has followed from the feat, well, unless you get the credit for it, no one is going to remember you. No, they're going to forget you ever existed, and they're going to remember someone else in your place. Not because they were there first, but because they were there at the right time.
And your town is not going to become well known, as the birthplace of you and whatever you did. Nope, it'll just be another town, unless it's known for someone else.
There are just too many places for all of them to be well-known for something. Some towns must be forgotten. And Fidello, yes, Fidello was one of them. In the town was fired for the first salvo in a war that is still going on for the country, and yet the name is not famous and the soldiers that fired the shots not well-known.
Isn't that something?
25
8:47 AM
The Sheriff and his Deputy were outside of Dennis Dietrich's office, deciding what it was that he was doing, because they could hear a lot of rearranging going on--some might say, fleeing--but they were patient to see where it all led before spoiling it all by knocking on the front door.
"You think we should just let this go on?" Deputy Powell said, finally.
"Yeah, I guess so," the Sheriff said, although he was kind of enjoying watching somebody panic from the outside. They so often only got to see the aftermath of a suspect's handiwork.
"Sheriff's Department!" Deputy Powell yelled into the trailer.
Everything inside stopped, and then the back door swung open and they could hear them attempt to get something heavy to come with him.
They ran to the other side, where they saw him attempt but fail to hoist a large bag into his truck.
"Stop! Put you hands up!"
He put his hands up. "What have I done?"
"You're resisting arrest," Deputy Powell tried.
"I didn't know I was being arrested."
"I'm finding that kind of hard to believe."
"We're placing you under arrest as an accessory to the murder of Dr. Sam Jones."
"What I do?"
"You housed a couple of terrorists. You gave them weapons. You gave them training. It wouldn't surprise me if you gave them the idea in the first place."
"How you going to prove all that, Sheriff?"
"I would guess, the contents of that bag right there are a good place to start."
"May I?" Deputy Powell said, pointing to the bag.
"Go ahead."
The Deputy unzipped it and, unsurprising, a large cache of weapons and documents stared them in the face.
"Wonder why you made it so easy for us?" the Sheriff said.
"I didn't do anything wrong," he said only.
"Well, we'll see about that."
Deputy Powell slapped the cuffs on him and the Sheriff put his hat back on. They stuffed him in Deputy Powell's cruiser.
"We got to go through the contents of that trailer."
"Yep."
"Guess I'll start on that just now."
The Sheriff looked at the dark trailer. There went the rest of his day.
26
10:27 AM
Deputy Powell was watching a stream of cars on the horizon. Somehow he knew from the outset what it was. The Sheriff came over to the window.
"What is it?"
"Don't know just yet," he said glumly.
"But you're watching it just the same."
"Got a feeling. Got a feeling that FBI agent and some of those Texas Rangers are coming back."
"You think?"
"I don't know."
There was a silence in the room, as they all knew who it was that was being transported. Had to be. Had to be.
But it could be anything. They couldn't assume.
The Sheriff felt a sinking feeling in his gut. As things were developing, he felt that this thing went deep in the town, maybe across a lot of towns in this area of Texas. Maybe cross-nationally. They were only skimming the surface right now, and there could be danger to the department, the whole town even. But, then the Sheriff supposed, if it got any deeper it wouldn't be in his hands any longer. He'd be relieved of it the second it got any deeper.
The cars pulled up finally, and out walked Agent Danley, Lieutenant Cantroux and Captain Beaks, with three Federal Marshals and a whole contingent of FBI from the Dallas field office and Texas Rangers. They reached into the back of one of the cars and pulled out a man. Well, not really a man, a boy really. A slight boy with hair over his eyes. He flipped it out of his eyes as he stood up fully.
"It's got to be him," Margaret said behind them.
"Could be anybody. Could be somebody else."
"Don't think it is, though."
"The Sheriff walked up to the Department."
Agent Danley walked over and smiled. "Got your suspect. Ready to be booked."
"You don't want to remove this to another jurisdiction?"
"Can't think of any one better, Sheriff. He's got to be tried. Got to be tried where he committed the offense. Got to face the town he changed through his actions."
The Sheriff looked over at the boy. "Got something to say for yourself?"
He looked at the Sheriff with wide eyes, but said nothing.
County lockup was an ancient jail behind the Sheriff's Department. It could house up to fifteen inmates. Most inmates that had done serious crimes were transferred to state lockup, but those sorts of crimes usually came so few and far between that the Sheriff couldn't think of the last time they'd called the state to transfer someone.
They brought him inside the Department and all sat around him with him in handcuff on a chair in the middle of the Department.
Margaret shouted over the gathering. "Harry says he's going to stay late and do his arraignment at 7:30."
"Tonight?" the Sheriff said. Usually the good judge was the kind to be in bed by 7:30.
"Tonight."
"Thank you, Margaret. Always looking ahead."
"Someone's got to," she said and got back on the phone with the county clerk to give all the particulars."
All eyes were on the boy.
"We're listening," the Sheriff said simply.
"Well, I, uh, I got to confess. I had a part in this crime."
"You did. Well, of course you did. What did you do?"
"I helped plan it."
"You did. Anything else?"
"Maybe I came up with the idea."
"Uh-huh. That's what I heard."
'From who?"
"Ben Damand."
The boy nodded slowly. "I shouldn't have included him."
"He's a big boy. An adult, even. An adult with a lot of responsibility in this community."
"Well, he didn't have anything to do with it."
"I hope so." The Sheriff paused. "You kill this man, son. Were you the one that did it?"
"No."
"You sure. You just planned it, or you came up with it."
"I did. I did I did."
"You don't feel anything for that?"
"I do," he said calmly.
'You don't sound all that remorseful."
"Well, I didn't do it. The deed I mean. The shooting. So, you know, it doesn't totally feel real, that it happened."
"You were involved in the murder or the getaway?"
"Nope."
"Just planning it."
"Yeah."
"So who was it? Who killed Dr. Jones?"
The boy paused, and then he looked around the room. "It was that landlord of ours. Dietrich."
"That's who we make it for. But there's just one problem. His car wasn't at the scene. Got two witnesses describe a lime-green Ford Taurus. He doesn't have one. Who's car is that?"
"Must have been a friend of his, huh? I don't know. I never saw a car like that before, or if I have I don't remember it."
"So what you're saying is, according to you, you planned it, this guy shot him, he did all the logistics. You heard about it later. Did you talk to your landlord after the shooting?"
"No. In fact, I owe him for the month still."
"So when you heard about it, you fled."
"Yeah. Yeah, that's right. When I heard he'd done it, I fled."
The Sheriff looked at him, calmly turned off the recording device, and then smacked him hard across the face. "You're a smug little son-of-a-bitch."
And then Deputy Powell hoisted him up and pushed him out the back door in the direction of the jail.
"I'm frankly surprised," Agent Danley said, "at your lack of composure."
"To be quite honestly, agent, so am I."
27
4:00 PM
Being led in handcuffs up to bench to be arraigned, Dennis Dietrich didn't look so imposing. If anything, despite his size and his significant beard, he looked rather slight. He looked like he'd wandered into the wrong place and he wasn't sure how he'd gotten there.
"In the case State of Texas v. Dennis Walter Dietrich, defendant is accused of capital murder."
"Sheriff, do you want to explain the circumstances under which you arrested this man."
"Yes, Judge, we were investigating the murder of Dr. Samuel Jones. Following several roads, we discovered a conspiracy to commit premeditated murder between Mr. Dietrich, of Fidello, and a Caleb Sampson, of Houston, Texas, a seminary student at Fellowship Christian Academy. In Mr. Dietrich's possession was discovered several firearms, both registered and unregistered, as well as explosive materials and instructional manuals for producing and using them to kill as many people as possible. He had in his possession several unpublished manuscripts where, among other things, he described killing and maiming abortionists and medical clinics that provide abortion, as well as other enemies, among them federal and state buildings and the homes and offices of state legislators."
The judge looked at the accused. "You've been busy, haven't you?"
"Proposal for bail?"
The bail proposal was set in front of the judge.
"Proposal for no bail."
"Motion from the defense?"
Mr. Dietrich's lawyer passed his motion to the judge. "Defendant has longstanding ties to the community including rental properties and businesses throughout the county. He poses a minimal flight risk, and has an untarnished reputation."
"Defendant credibly accused of shooting down a man in cold blood. In broad daylight. Found with unregistered firearms and explosives. Motion denied. No bail set. Hearing set for 9 o'clock Tuesday, May 19th."
He hit the gavel and the landlord was led away by Deputy Powell.
The county attorney turned to the Sheriff. "I got to be honest, Horace. I'm going to need a ton of help going through the volumes of evidence."
"We're getting some support from the Rangers and the FBI."
"You might need to take on some support staff, just for the next few months."
The Sheriff nodded. "You know anyone?"
The county attorney smiled. "No."
"Alright, then."
The landlord's defense attorney came over.
"This is a big step up for you, Davis," the county attorney intoned.
"What? You think I'm not up to it? Anyway, Curtis, what's your primary qualification to prosecute a capital murder? That group of high schoolers you prosecuted for producing fake IDs?"
"Ha, ha. I guess you're right. State's probably going to take over prosecution, anyway. Capital murder cases, they tend to horn in."
"Bet they'll get a real nasty one, too."
"Bet you they will."
The Sheriff had to feel a little bit heartened, because in the county court things were just about the same as they always had been, no matter what was going on in the rest of the world. Heck, things probably would never much change, even in the time of robots and living in underground bunkers.
The Sheriff stopped by the county clerk's office to drop off some documents and pick up some requests for documents. Curtis was right. He was a bit out of his depth with the level of documentation. Margaret probably couldn't be counted on coming in two to three days a week at most to carry the load. Agent Danley had the energy for it, but he was based out of Washington, ultimately, and he couldn't find anybody from the field office in Dallas. He said he suspected someone from Washington was telling the Dallas field office not to provide any help.
Well, he thought, one day at a time. That's the only way he could do anything.
28
7:23 PM
Margaret came over to the desk Agent Danley was working at, and dropped a note.
"This from my secretary?"
"They just said to call back immediately."
"I was sitting right here."
"I can't clog up the main number walking over here."
Agent Danley shot up an eyebrow, but then he left it alone.
"Thank you, Margaret."
"No problem, Agent."
She smiled and walked back to her desk.
Agent Danley picked up the phone, paused for a second, and then dialed. It was almost 10:00 in Washington. What was she still doing at the office?
"Howard? Is that you?"
"Yes."
"I've been reassigned. I think so have you. You've got a meeting with the Assistant Director tomorrow at 9 o'Clock."
"Tomorrow? At 9 o'clock."
"I know. I'm sorry. But I got you a flight out of Dallas Fort Worth that leaves at midnight hours. Can you make it?"
Agent Danley looked at the clock.
"Yes, I can make it, but it will make a mess of things here. And I won't be able to, you know, sleep."
"Sudden thing, I think."
"Well, Marjorie, I really appreciate you staying. I know it's way after the hour you normally go home."
"I couldn't just leave."
"You could have. Thank you."
He took down the particulars for the flight and then looked at the desk. He had to leave everything just as it was. That was a shame. He went over to Margaret.
"I've been recalled, Margaret. Please tell the Sheriff that I'm sorry and that it was a pleasure working with him."
She looked at him quizzically.
He didn't have time to explain. He put on his coat, picked up his bag and walked out the door to the car.
"So why the hell am I here?" she said to an empty room full of boxes and papers.
29
10:13 PM
William Reginald Peterman, Jr. was left with the sad fact of his fatherhood: he had failed his eldest son. He had done his best, but he had failed him. It had probably been all those moments when he had terrorized the boy. All those night when he had gotten liquored up and been angry about some small sleight.
Of course his son had always had a darkness in him. Something that made him have a tendency to view conspiracy in everything around him. That had been with him since the beginning. When Bill was just a little boy who they called Skip.
He scolded himself. All he could think about was, what if it was an item in the news; what if the news item was picked up nationally. It was just the sort of thing that newspapermen liked. "State Senator's Son in Murder Probe."
But he had to think about these things, because they were important to that split second decision people made in the voting booth.
As he sat on the porch and smoked his cigar, he realized he had always put his career above his family, and especially his eldest son. But now the question was, would he use his significant resources to aid his boy in escape, or would he use them to catch him?
Catch him, Bill's father decided. Catch him and get him the best defense lawyer in the world. Hope that he got a lenient sentence, mostly served at home and that something could be salvaged from the rest of his life.
He had ignored his son for too long, and when not ignoring him, had injured him, had mentally scarred him. It was now his responsibility to find the boy.
30
May 8, 1984
9:14 AMAgent Danley walked into the office with Agent Harper and the Assistant Director calmly. He knew what this meeting was, but he wasn't about to let on that he knew what this meeting was about.
"Howard," the Assistant Director said, and pointed to a seat. "Do you have any idea what this meeting is about already?"
"Probably something having to do with our little sub-department."
"That's right."
Agent Harper went into it. "We did a little re-reading of the enabling statute, and we found that the counter-terrorism work you are doing is indeed part of it, but that funding for it is at the discretion of the head of the Organized Crime Division and the Assistant Director."
"You mean, you're getting rid of it."
"Howard, no. We just misread the statute. It mandates that I spend part of my budget with approval from the Assistant Director on counter terrorism investigations. The Organized Crime Division is already working on several counter-terrorism investigations."
"Probably something having to do with our little sub-department."
"That's right."
Agent Harper went into it. "We did a little re-reading of the enabling statute, and we found that the counter-terrorism work you are doing is indeed part of it, but that funding for it is at the discretion of the head of the Organized Crime Division and the Assistant Director."
"You mean, you're getting rid of it."
"Howard, no. We just misread the statute. It mandates that I spend part of my budget with approval from the Assistant Director on counter terrorism investigations. The Organized Crime Division is already working on several counter-terrorism investigations."
"Related to organized crime."
"Right, as intended in the original statute."
They looked at Howard. "So then," he said. "I'm being reassigned."
"Yes, yes, Howard. You are being reassigned back to your previous division."
"Okay."
"Right, as intended in the original statute."
They looked at Howard. "So then," he said. "I'm being reassigned."
"Yes, yes, Howard. You are being reassigned back to your previous division."
"Okay."
There was a pause, where the only thing that could be heard was the soft tick of the clock.
"I do want to say one thing, though. There is a threat out there, and it is only growing. What's more, the longer we fail to take it seriously, the more we give an impression to the communities seeing it, that violence is a legitimate form of political protest. Over time, seeing and internalized violence as a form of political protest raises the specter of Civil War. While I don't see an immediate horizon for such conflict, left unchecked I think in twenty years we could be looking at a very different picture. One in which, for example, Right to Life is a serious strategic threat to the United States, and threatens to bring down not only lives and structures but our democratic institutions themselves. This is an existential threat, not just a threat to life and property, as great or greater than the one presented by organized crime."
They looked at him, for they knew they were going to hear him say what he wanted to say, but they weren't listening.
"So then, that's it," Agent Danley said, and shook their hands.
There wasn't a word he had just said to them that wasn't horribly, unbearably true.
No comments:
Post a Comment