by Dudley Lynch
I couldn’t.
My next view of the LED display was at 10:05 a.m.
The managing editor of the local newspaper said he wouldn’t have called me at home, but the Associated Press wouldn’t leave him alone. The AP guy was bugging him for confirmation about the discovery of another professor’s body. Said the AP was planning to suggest that anyone who knew about professors disappearing call their local police department or the Abbot County Sheriff’s Department.
I told him we did have a new active investigation, but I couldn’t say anything more. I stumbled to my bathroom. Got a drink of water. Refused to glance at the mirror. And burrowed back into my bed.
Have no idea where the next hour and twenty-eight minutes went. Or where I went.
Can remember only what my LED display was showing when my phone rang again. 11:33 a.m.
Assistant Fire Marshal Delbert Burrows said he’d been waiting at the old Cromwell Company warehouse since eleven. Was I coming?
I cursed.
I’d texted him on the way back to town six hours earlier and asked if he could join Boots, Reverend, and me in taking another look at the place at 11. I began to apologize. Profusely. All the while thinking, Oh, Lordy, I’m beginning to sound like Delbert Burrows. I told him I’d call him the first chance I got and bring him up-to-date. He said no problem. Said I sounded sleepy. Said he understood. Said it must have been a long night. Said he was sorry he had disturbed me but wanted to be sure he had the time right for our meeting.
This time, I was the one who said no problem. And again, I was so sorry. Did Flagler have Apologizers Anonymous meetings? If so, Delbert and I both needed to go.
Angie called at 12:23 p.m. Our conversation felt more than a little familiar. I told her that I loved her but that she’d done it again — called me when I was having an official daft day. She asked me where I was. I answered in a single word. “Tripping.” She asked for another word. “Hallucinating.”
She did what she always did. Looked for serious meanings first, before considering alternatives. “Sheriff Luther Stephens McWhorter, have you taken something you shouldn’t have?”
“No, no, although I’m about ready to. Just can’t get people to leave me alone. Up nearly all night. No sooner did I get to bed than the phone started ringing. Happening about every hour. Nonstop. I’m beginning to feel, well, stoned.”
Angie, ever the problem-solver, was on the job with specific instructions. “Okay, turn the damned phone off. Turn the damned clock to the wall. Call me when you wake up.”
She said she still expected to be home early Tuesday evening. Planned to catch a late-morning flight to DFW. Had a seat reserved on the late afternoon flight to Flagler. Wanted her favorite sheriff well rested when she arrived. That meant I had to do as I was told.
I did. It helped that my phone went quiet and stayed that way for what seemed like the rest of my life.
I felt like a new man when I reached for it at 5:46 p.m.
The feeling lasted for, oh, a fraction of a second. The time I needed to tilt the phone into view and see who was calling.
My phone screen didn’t say who.
It said what.
The White House. The White House was calling.
Chapter 44
It was not the POTUS on the line.
It was the POTUS’s switchboard operator.
Not the one, I soon concluded, you get when you call the White House. Not that I’d ever spoken with that one, either.
I’d wondered a few times what I’d do if I ever needed to contact President Jim Bob Fletcher. I’d found a phone number on the internet. It was the one any ordinary citizen could use. Would the president take my call if I used it? I thought he might. We didn’t belong to the same political party, but before he’d become Abbot County’s most famous resident, I’d ridden with him a few times in a convertible at the head of parades. Sheriffs do courtesy things like that, no matter what political party the others in the car belong to.
Fletcher had a politician’s leak-tight memory for faces and names. I knew he’d remember who I was, and at least what the back of my head looked like. I’d never called him because I figured I’d only get one free pass. I didn’t want to use it unless and until I had a good reason to.
The voice on the line said she was calling on behalf of the president. “Behalf”? Her use of the word puzzled me. Jim Bob Fletcher had only been in office six months. Wasn’t it a little early to be flacking for reelection contributions?
But it wasn’t money that she was “behalfing” about. She wanted the number for a secure phone connection in the Abbot County Sheriff’s Department.
I told my caller that we’d never had enough to be secretive about to need a secure number. “Best I can offer the president is the number you’ve just used.”
She asked if I could please hold.
I swung my legs off the bed and located my flip flops. Thought about getting up and putting on my bath robe, but how I was dressed wasn’t going to matter the slightest to the president of the United States. Neither would how I’d been doing lately. Or how the weather’s been in Flagler. He wasn’t calling to chat. Truth be told, I couldn’t begin to guess why he was calling.
Fletcher had mastered the vocal tricks that good politicians use. The ones that make them sound like leaders. Different tones for different zones. At least, that’s how one researcher had put it in an article I’d read.
So the first thing I listened for when the president came on the line was how his voice sounded.
My judgment was instantaneous. President Jim Bob Fletcher’s tone fell somewhere between long-lost-best-friend and let’s-do-serious-business-together.
The best-friend zone didn’t survive long. Jim Bob went from ingratiating to jittery in two sentences. It was as if he was afraid for both of us if the wrong words were used.
“This office I occupy opens a lot of doors and a lot of filing cabinet drawers. And, on occasion, it loosens tongues.”
I knew he was setting the stage for something if he didn’t get lost en route. The less I said, the better. “Yes.”
“I’ve seen some things, read some things. Been told some things.”
“All right.”
“I can’t talk about this on the phone — just not safe. Not wise, let us say.”
I was beginning to feel like an equal to the other party in this conversation, so much so that I thought I could at least state the obvious. “Then it needs to be done face to face.”
“It does — but in Flagler, not here.”
“Can I ask if this is about the crime spree we’re up to our necks in?”
“It is, but there’s so much more to it. That’s why I called. I know you’ll find the perpetrators and all that without my help. But what’s happening in Flagler has a national security aspect to it. Possibly, an international security aspect.” President Jim Bob Fletcher had abandoned any pretext of trying to project charisma. I could hear fear in his voice. “I need you to get on top of this. And I can’t help you from here.”
“What’s preventing the president of the United States from helping a lowly Texas sheriff?”
“I don’t know who I can trust.”
“So what do you need from me?”
“I’m going to send you someone with that information.”
“All right.”
“A secret source of information — a Deep Throat, like in Watergate, remember? He’ll be there in a day or two.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to give him this phone number. He’ll say he’s collecting donations for the Overwatch Group when he calls. And when you actually meet, the code word is Gideon’s Trumpet.”
I wasn’t quite sure what I was feeling as I listened to all this. Curiosity? Concern? All with a bit of amusement thrown in? “Overwatch Group and Gideon’s Trumpet
— got it.”
“You’re going to need a place to meet and talk totally removed from the public. You can’t be seen together, and you can’t be overheard. Just can’t be. Too dangerous. You need to maintain total privacy, or this might not turn out well. And he’ll give you the passwords when he calls.”
My mind went to the basement of the parking garage where Woodward and Bernstein and their mole met in the movie All the President’s Men. I told the president I’d be ready for the contact.
There was no reply.
I’d already been reassigned — to the over-and-done-with-that zone.
Silence was the new tone.
Chapter 45
I was born in October 1976, so I wasn’t even a gleam in my father’s eye when President Nixon’s “Plumbers” burglarized the National Democratic Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. The five guys who brought the house tumbling down on the Nixon administration were arrested on June 17, 1972.
This meant my knowledge of Watergate had come from history classes. And occasional news stories.
Like the one in 2005 naming former FBI associate director Mark Felt as Deep Throat. For some reason, I remembered that the journalist, Woodward, had signaled Felt when he wanted a meeting by moving a flower pot with a red flag on the balcony of his apartment. The POTUS wanted me to participate in a similar kind of arrangement. One that was already approaching Kafkaesque dimensions — or maybe I should be saying Nixonian dimensions — and I’d only just gotten my first assignment.
So what the best place in Abbot County for a mysterious visitor to whisper secrets in my ear? Dangerous secrets, from what the president had said.
And besides that, did I have to go along with all this?
Well, at this point, I didn’t know enough not to go along. A matter of curiosity — yes, there was that. But it was more.
I suspected I was nowhere close to understanding Flagler’s turmoil. Not enough to get ahead of it. Each time I seemed to be closing in on possible culprits and believable theories, reality had opened a new door. Produced new crimes. Claimed new victims. Loosened new atrocities.
And then there was this: I’d told the world’s most powerful leader that I’d play ball. So, yes, it did feel like I was already committed to going along.
We had several large parking garages in Flagler. But none had basements. If anything, their bottom floors were the busiest parts of the structures. You could go in the other direction and have clandestine meetings on the roofs. But if you did, you’d run the risk of being photographed from neighboring buildings.
Another was one of the old missile bases.
During the ’60s, we had twelve deep silos for ICBM missiles and their nuclear warheads scattered around West Central Texas. Their deadly missiles had been controlled from Burford DeBlanc Air Force Base north of town. Four of the silos had been in Abbot County. The sites were remote, and all were fenced. The chance of being overheard inside their fences was close to zero — nil, in fact, if you were down in the silo.
Which was the problem.
Any time the fundraiser for the Overwatch Group and I wanted to have a conversation, we’d have to hie away to the county’s hinterlands. Hope we didn’t run into a cow or a hay trailer. Force open a weather-encrusted lock on a chain-link fence. Raise a heavy lid on a big hunk of concrete sitting in the middle of the prairie. And park ourselves on some rusty metal steps underground while we trafficked in presidential secrets.
I thought not. But as fast as my imagination could conjure up other locations, my no-not-that analytical mind slammed the door shut.
Abandoned buildings? Too iffy. You never knew who you’d meet in them — kids, pot smokers, teenaged lovers, squatters, owners, more cops. Church bell towers? Flagler only had a few and none that would be suitable. Football stadium press boxes? Too many authorizations to get, and too high a likelihood that the schools’ security people would show up.
My house, my office, my car parked in a dark alley? In some ways, I was the most surveilled individual in town. Before long, someone was going to ask, “Who’s the guy in the black Homburg the sheriff keeps meeting with?”
It had to be a place that was easy to get to. Where nobody came, where nobody cared, where I could find my way around like it was my backyard. That’s when I knew where the Overwatch representative and I were going to have our chats about getting Abbot County away from the brink of the abyss without endangering national or international security. We’d meet in the tumbled-down old tin shack in the far back corner of the BewaretheJunkyardDogs Company’s abandoned wrecking yard.
For years, various members of the sheriff’s department had used the unremarkable old shack to meet with confidential informers and street snitches. The wrecking yard’s owner had honored my request for a key to the padlock on the gate with no questions asked. And the name on the signs kept out trespassers and thieves. That was the owner’s brilliant little joke. If you named your salvage business BewaretheJunkyardDogs Company, you didn’t need the dogs.
I was ready for Deep Throat Number Two when he called. I could only hope his reason for coming was to tell me about more than just nefarious acts. I was up to my kiester in nefarious acts.
What I needed most was a workable theory about why a bunch of physicists been so intent on shouting “unus mundus” to the skies. And why they may have paid for their audacity with their lives.
Chapter 46
It was after-hours, so the answering machine at the office of the Abbot County medical examiner gave me three choices. If my call was an emergency, it gave me another number to call. Or I could leave a message. Or I could call back any time between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
I left a message. And knew as soon as I hung up that I didn’t want to delay knowing what was happening with the ME’s investigations.
I placed a call to my chief deputy. Sawyers skipped the small talk. “Rat poison.”
I started machine-gunning pared-down questions at him. “Doc Konnie knows this how?”
I got pared-down answers back. “Victims crapped their pants.”
“Rat poisons make people’s bowels move?”
“This one did.”
“Does she know how rat poison got in their bowels?” But I didn’t wait for him to answer. I had another question. “She think they drank it or eat it?”
“Her guess is drank it. She thinks this may be the largest mass murder in history where aldicarb was the poison.”
“What’s aldicarb —?” And answered my own question. “Rat poison.”
He told me more. “Comes in little brown grains that look like food. This appears to have been a really insidious form of aldicarb. She’s guessing it was slipped into their coffee.”
“What makes her think that?”
“The drinking cups in that garbage bag we found not far from the Huntgardner house.”
“It’s easy to acquire — this aldicarb stuff?”
“Not in the United States. It’s so dangerous it’s been banned for years. One teaspoonful will kill a rhino. If you want to stock up on Tres Pasitos, you’ll have to order it from one of the Latin American countries. You’ll get the best price from suppliers in the Dominican Republic.”
I repeated the name he’d used. “Tres Pasitos?”
“That’s the commercial name of the poison. Means ‘three little steps’ in Spanish. That’s about how far a rat can walk after eating it. A human will begin to asphyxiate within minutes. It attacks your muscles. You can’t move, so you can’t breathe.”
“So our victims died horrible deaths?”
“Like the ME says, it’s nasty stuff. I’d guess they went crazy. Started fighting to get out of the house. Blood pressures dropping. Hearts pounding and fluttering. Not a pleasant way to go, for sure.”
That explained the tortured position of the bo
dy we’d found on the front porch, the one I’d first seen after following the buzzard. “And what do you suggest we do with this information?”
“Tell as many people in Flagler about it as we can. Ask them to be alert for plastic sandwich bags with little brown grains in them.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe ask them if they’ve drunk any coffee lately that tasted funny.”
“That wasn’t funny, Sawyers.”
“Wasn’t, was it?”
I asked him to put the ME’s report on my desk. Then had two more quick thoughts. One was reflective; the other, motivational.
The reflective one left me feeling guilty. I thought how much simpler it would have been if the killer or killers of the Huntgardner victims had shot them. Bullets, we understood; poisons, not well at all.
The other one was more constructive.
I thought we were going to have an answer for singer Johnny Cash’s question, “Will the circle be unbroken?” And breaking it open wasn’t going to lead to a better home for a bunch of folks in the sky.
Knowing the cause of death for the nine physicists in Professor Huntgardner’s house had triggered an emotion I’d not felt a lot in recent days. Optimism. It lasted until I walked into Doc Konnie’s industrial kitchen at exactly nine o’clock the next morning.
Then it evaporated.
Chapter 47
“You have come, my dear sheriff.”
“I always come when my favorite pathologist summons me.”
“Well, I save you trips sometimes, όχι?”
“Yes, you do. And I thank you. But I gathered you wanted me here for this.”
I got no answer. Her abrupt departure was reply enough. She was headed for one of her caster-equipped metal tables. I expected to see her pick something up off the table, but instead, she began rearranging an object lying on it.
A man’s belt. Coiled tight around the buckle. Seeing it sent my mind back to my first glimpse of the skeleton when we removed the cedar chest lid at the circle of trees. I’d noticed a belt wound numerous times around the victim’s neck.