Caged to Kill

by Tom Swyers

  “David, it’s time to spill the beans on this so we all know what’s at stake.”

  “What gives, Dad?”

  “Sorry guys, but I have to pull rank on both of you.”

  “I thought our marriage was a partnership, David. You know, equal partners.”

  It wasn’t the first time David regretted living with Annie, before he married her, while he was attending law school. She learned too much for his own good. Damn law school should just give her an honorary degree, already. “Yeah, well, sometimes one partner is more equal than the other.”

  “How does that work, Dad? If both partners are equal—”

  “Now, Christy, you stay out of this one. Sometimes you’re too smart for your own good. For God’s sake you’re still a kid, so why don’t you act like one for once and not care about your parents’ squabbles? You know, think about the next cell phone you want and how your life will be so much better for having it.”

  “David, that’s not fair. That’s not Christy and you know it. Enough—”

  “Enough? I don’t think so. I’m just getting warmed up. Annie, you know just enough law to be dangerous. Most times we do operate like The Three Musketeers. You know, one for all and all for one. But when circumstances change, we need to change with them. Now is one of those times. You both need to leave this house right now and get far, far away from me. Annie, I’d like you to take Christy and go spend a few days with your father—”

  “Dad, I don’t get it. Why are you kicking us out of the house?”

  “I’m getting to that. You see, most lawyers don’t work out of their homes. Sure it has some advantages. I’ve seen you off to the bus since you were a tyke. I’ve been there for you every step of the way. I’ve gotten to see you grow up into a fine young man. But right now if I had an office outside of the home I’d be kicking myself out of here to go there. I’d be sleeping on the couch in that office until they came for me—”

  “Who’s they, David?”

  “I don’t know—maybe the State Police, maybe the Bureau of Prisons, maybe the CIA, maybe the entire system. You heard the news report. Phillip is a person of interest. If they don’t find him, they’ll come looking for me soon enough. They know I’m close to Phillip and they know I don’t have an office outside of the home. So they will end up at our front door and I’ll need to deal with them.”

  “But David, we want to be here to support you—”

  “You’ll do more to support me if you don’t get involved. If I don’t give them what they want, they’ll look to you two to get what they want. They’ll try to interrogate you: think of some way to use you as leverage against me. How will that help me? How will you be able to support me when you’re all tied up in this mess too? How will that help us? I want you both to be out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind when they show up here. We must divide ourselves now to conquer this situation. This is one time when the sum of ourselves separated is greater than the whole of us together.”

  “But David—”

  “No buts today, Annie.”

  “Mom, I understand what he’s doing now. I think we should leave.”

  I’ve won Christy over. It’s two on one now. Time to seal the deal with Annie. “I’ll keep in close touch with you guys. Text or call to check up on me, if you’d like. I’ll let you know if I need you.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise, but please hurry.”

  Within fifteen minutes, Christy and Annie had packed the essentials for a few days away. The bags were loaded into Annie’s Prius that was headed twenty minutes north to her father’s place. The coast was clear.

  David sat in his living room with oil and a rod, cleaning his Civil War Sharps carbine, the only gun he owned. It wasn’t that he anticipated using it—there’s not much anyone can do with a rifle that can only fire three rounds per minute. It’s no help at all if the entire law enforcement system is breaking down your front door. But he needed to occupy himself. This was a way to take the edge off while waiting for Armageddon.

  And it didn’t take long before there was a knock at the door.

  Chapter 32

  David knew it was them when he heard a rap on the front door. Everyone who was anyone in David’s life knew to come to the side door because he’d disconnected the front doorbell. It was a simple but elegant call-screening system that even tech-savvy Christy appreciated. The undesirables endlessly pressed the doorbell button to no avail. Eventually they would give up and leave without disturbing anyone in the house.

  That is, unless the undesirables were so persistent that they actually put knuckles to wood. The last person who had knocked at the front door was Phillip, on the first day David had met him after his release. But David knew it wasn’t Phillip knocking this time. He knew Phillip was staying away to protect the three of them.

  David unlocked the deadbolt and cracked the door slightly. “Yes, can I help you?” He used his best, pseudo-polite, get-off-my-front-porch voice.

  Two middle-aged, crumpled blue suits perched on the doorstep. They both stood about six feet in their wingtips, with the same medium build. One guy sported unkempt salt and pepper hair; the other had dealt with a receding hairline by reverting to a shaved head. Salt and Pepper had his top shirt button undone. His solid navy blue tie was loose and cockeyed. Baldy’s turkey neck rolled over his choke-hold collar and brown polyester tie. Wrinkles accentuated their white dress shirts, and it wasn’t just from wearing seatbelts.

  Baldy intoned, “We’re detectives from the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigations.” Both men flipped open and shut their badge cases like they were street dealers in a three-card monte game. Now you see them, now you don’t. “We’d like to come in and ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind, Mr. Thompson.” He used his best, pseudo-polite, don’t-make-me-break-down-the-door voice.

  David scanned the street behind them for a moment. He saw an unmarked blue Chevy Tahoe parked in front of his house, with a black one parked in back of it. David spotted two people in the black unit, on high alert in the front seat eying the scene at his door. The blue one was empty, which told David its occupants were on his doorstep. “Hey, I’d like to see those badges again.” The detectives looked at one another and then slowly removed the cases from their suit pockets. David held out his hand through the door opening crack.

  The detectives glanced at one another again. “Don’t worry, I’ll give them back.” David took the badges and studied them. He read their names and gave the badges back before stepping outside and closing the door behind him. David took out a pen and a spiral pocket notebook from his back pocket and began writing the detectives’ names down. “I’m writing your names down. Please understand that it’s nothing personal. Recently I got pulled over by a pair of corrections officers impersonating police officers. Ever since then, I’ve made it a point to look at the badges more closely. Now what can I do for you two gentlemen?”

  Baldy said, “We’d like to step inside and ask you some questions.”

  “Do your friends want to come in too?” David said, gesturing with his head at the black SUV.

  “No,” Salt and Pepper said, “they’re fine.”

  “Are they from the State Police, too?”

  “No,” Baldy replied.

  “Where are they from?”

  The two detectives glanced again at one another. “We can’t tell you at this point,” Baldy asserted.

  “Is that right?”

  “So can we come in?” Salt and Pepper asked again.

  “Do you guys have papers to serve me at this point?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know, like a search warrant?”

  “No,” Salt and Pepper said. “We just want to ask you some questions. We thought we could do it inside because it’s cold out here.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine out here.” David wasn’t about to let them step over the threshold. He didn’t want them to see all
the family pictures around his home. He didn’t want them scoping out his house to find information to support a search warrant. As far as he knew, the State Police also were involved in this in some way. The tactical throwable camera with its kill-David-Thompson message was proof positive. “What’s on your mind?”

  “We’re looking for Phillip Dawkins,” Baldy said. “We want to talk to him.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, do you know where he might be now?” Baldy asked.

  “I don’t, but even if I did I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Why is that, Mr. Thompson?” Salt and Pepper asked.

  “Attorney-client privilege.”

  “Phillip Dawkins is your client?” Baldy scoffed.

  “Yes.”

  “Since when?” Baldy needled.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Why not?” Salt and Pepper asked.

  “Attorney-client privilege.” David couldn’t tell them about the timing of his representation, as it might implicate Phillip in a crime. No matter what, though, David wasn’t about to tell them that Phillip unknowingly became his client the minute they showed up at his door. He decided to invent and play the attorney-client privilege card to put an end to the questioning before it got started.

  “Is Mr. Dawkins in your house?” Baldy inquired.

  “I already answered that I didn’t know where he was. I think that covers your question. By the way, there’s nobody in the house but me.”

  “Where were you earlier today?” Salt and Pepper asked.

  “What does that question have to do with locating Phillip Dawkins?”

  “Are you hiding something, Mr. Thompson?” Salt and Pepper asked. “If you aren’t going to answer our questions, it might implicate you—”

  “Implicate me in what? What crime are you investigating?”

  Baldy was up to bat now. “We’re investigating the death of Martin Kleinschmit in Hampton Manor.”

  “I saw that incident reported on the television. The reporter said that the police didn’t suspect foul play.”

  “We don’t at this time, but we still need to investigate it,” Baldy said.

  “How do you think he may have died?” David wanted to confirm that they were still working from the same script that the TV newsman had read.

  Baldy glanced back at the black SUV, took a deep breath, then exhaled. “We think he might have slipped at the edge of the pool and hit his head on the concrete lip before drowning.”

  “Well, you showed up here looking for Phillip Dawkins. I already told you he’s not here and I don’t know where he is, and that’s all I’m going to say. Unless you have a warrant, I think our conversation is over. And by the way, you can tell your friends in the black SUV that I’ve made arrangements for everything I know to be made public in the event that any harm comes to me, my family, or to Phillip Dawkins.”

  Baldy’s eyes bulged and his mouth dropped open for a few seconds. “Those two in the SUV will want to know if your arrangements include a list of names.”

  David had no clue what he was talking about, but he ran with the ball. “Absolutely everything, including my lists. They’ll understand.” It was a total bluff on David’s part. He hadn’t set up any such thing yet. But he needed to put that idea out there to buy some protection until he did make those arrangements. “Have a good evening, gentlemen.” With that, David stepped into his house and shut the door.

  David peered out a sidelight to the front door as the detectives schlepped to the black SUV. His heart thumped; sweat trickled down his forehead. He didn’t have a Plan B if they all decided to converge on the house.

  When the vehicles finally drove off, David breathed a sigh of relief. His ploy had worked. After he gathered himself, he texted Annie that he had met with the police and that everything was fine for now. She and Christy could return home the next morning.

  Leaning against the front door, David wondered what list of names Baldy was talking about. He had sifted through the stash of papers Johnny had retrieved from Edith’s file cabinet and there wasn’t a list anywhere in the pile. Besides, he didn’t think anyone knew about Johnny’s haul and delivery to David.

  David didn’t buy Baldy’s theory of how Martin Kleinschmit accidentally died any more than Baldy apparently believed it. The explanation sounded like it was right out of the 1953 CIA assassination manual: “the most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface.”

  In David’s mind, there was no difference between a fall of 75 feet and a slip and fall by the edge of a pool, so long as the target ended up dead. But he didn’t believe for a second that Kleinschmit was assassinated by the CIA like Frank Olson. He feared that Phillip had something to do with Kleinschmit’s death, and that the CIA—the people in the black SUV—were using that accident theory to bury their new brainwashing operation. The last thing the spooks wanted was for a state murder investigation to uncover their operation at Kranston. They couldn’t risk being publicly exposed in a courtroom by David or any lawyer in Phillip’s defense of a state murder charge. There was only one way for them to deal with Phillip. They needed to arrange for him to have a fatal accident, too.

  Just then an epiphany hit David and he flew down the stairway to his office. When he had given up on his crusade against solitary, he didn’t bother to tell the Bureau of Prisons. The bureau kept sending David documents to comply with his previous Freedom of Information Act requests. The system was slow as a glacier but equally unstoppable. So his requests were still being complied years after they were first made, long after he had given up the quest. David had simply piled up their mailed responses in a corner of his paneled office. He never even bothered to open up the large brown envelopes that bore the NY State Seal.

  Within seconds, he was tearing open envelopes and scouring the contents for anything that resembled a list. A half hour later, David’s sweaty fist curled around a list of first names, followed by the first letter of their family names, ending with a numerical eight digit code. He found the list stapled to the back of a bunch of spreadsheets that contained statistics about prisoners at Kranston.

  Aghast at the implications, he flipped through the pages of the list backward to find the beginning. There were hundreds of names, maybe over a thousand names, mostly women. It just ran on and on: Marie G 1246920; Gladys W 15736269; Shirley D 18954723; Mary K 18957846; Louis F 19429821; Marian M 19864327. When he got to the top of the list, he saw the typed heading to the document. It read, “Allan Memorial Institute Participants.”

  Oh my god. I don’t believe it.

  David searched for and located the boilerplate cover letter that always accompanied a Freedom of Information Act response. Dated two years earlier, the letterhead read “Kranston Maximum Security Prison.” The letter itself was signed by Edith Nowak on behalf of Martin Kleinschmit, Superintendent.

  Bada bing, bada boom.

  Now it all made sense. David had read newspaper articles stating that there were fewer than 100 participants in the Allan Institute experiments. Nobody knew for sure because CIA Director Richard Helms had ordered most of the MK-Ultra records destroyed in 1973. But David held evidence in his hands that proved there were close to a thousand victims.

  Most if not all of the people on the list were probably dead. But if the existence of the list splashed into the headlines, it would be a public relations nightmare for the CIA. Family members of the victims, if they could be identified, would scream bloody murder and deluge the CIA with lawsuits for years to come.

  Now David knew the primary reason he was a CIA target. It wasn’t simply because he had campaigned against solitary. It was because he accidentally received this list from Edith Nowak. Kleinschmit and the CIA knew that he had it and they were terrified. They all wanted to kill David to bury the list with him.

  Chapter 33

  The next Saturday, the Thompson family gathered for supper in the dining room. Their dinner prayer included Phillip, jus
t as it had every night that week.

  As portions of turkey, mashed potatoes, and salad were being passed around the table, Annie took her turn to ask the inevitable first question of the meal. “David, have you heard anything from Phillip?”

  “Yeah, anything, Dad?” echoed Christy.

  David sighed. “No, I’m afraid not.” His shoulders slumped at the thought of endless unanswered questions.

  “Where do you think he went?” Christy asked.

  “Oh, I think he’s hiding somewhere. He can make himself small. He can live in small places.” David didn’t mention that he had checked their shed for Phillip. But he saw no sign that the man had set foot there since the day David hid him under a tarp when he first arrived on their doorstep. “They had a brief TV news report from Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery today about Martin Kleinschmit. At the end of it they mentioned Phillip again.”

  “Oh, was it Kleinschmit’s funeral today?” Annie asked.

  “Yes, it was quite a show. There were COs in dress blues with white gloves serving as pallbearers. Bureau of Prison officials sang his praises before they lowered his casket into the ground, while a guy in a kilt played ‘Amazing Grace’ on the bagpipes.”

  “Sheesh, what a crock,” Christy muttered.

  Annie scowled. “I don’t like to say it, but that man had an accident coming to him.” David had told them both in detail about Martin Kleinschmit and his experiments on Phillip—the electroshock therapy, the messaging indoctrination, the LSD.

  “Maybe it wasn’t an accident,” David said. He wanted to suggest that Phillip might have been involved in Kleinschmit’s death. Annie’s and Christy’s enthusiastic support for Phillip needed to be contained without revealing too much.

  David hadn’t told them he’d followed Phillip out to Kleinschmit’s house and found the superintendent dead in the pool. In his mind, he was asserting the attorney-client privilege not only against the state police, but also with Annie and Christy. The less they knew the better, just in case the state cops ever made a return visit. Since their house call the week before, David hadn’t heard a peep from them. Things were quiet, almost too quiet.