10:35 PM

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.