Nail and Sharon got out of the Saturn. “We need to return it to Avis,” he said.
Sharon looked around. “What will we do without a car? Ride mules?”
“This is Oklahoma,” he teased. He pointed to a rickety shed off to the right of the cabin. “I have an old pickup truck stored. Big C and I use it to run errands and pull stumps. It’ll get us around and the Homies won’t have it on their radar.”
She took a few steps to the side and made a face as she looked around. “Where’s the outhouse?”
He laughed. “There’s plumbing. And electricity.”
“People in New York and Washington think everybody lives like this between the Mississippi River and the Rockies. It reminds me of The Shack.”
He didn’t understand. They walked to the cabin and Nail dug the key from underneath the door stone.
“The Shack by William Young,” Sharon explained. “It’s a Christian book. A man’s daughter is murdered in an old shack in the woods. He returns to the scene years later, where he meets God—”
She caught herself. Dismay swept her features. She touched Nail’s cheek with her fingertips.
“James...I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
He shook her off. “We both have our wounds,” he said.
The interior of the cabin was almost as rustic as the exterior. It had two bedrooms, each equipped with a bunk bed. There was also a small toilet and a shower. The living room with its worn sofa and a couple of ratty easy chairs merged with a kitchen that consisted only of a table and a stove fueled by a propane tank. Canned goods were stacked against one wall. Sharon looked them over.
“Have you always been a gourmet chef?” she asked.
“Wait until you taste the crappie.”
She took another look at the cans. “What’s a crappie?”
“A fish.”
“Will we catch fish?”
He straightened from inspecting the TV-DVD player. A picture came on the screen. “We may not have time,” he said.
He walked out the back door and down a steep path to the creek. She followed. The creek ran slow and deep and dark with mud flats on either side. Doves cooed. Cicadas burred. The air was rich and thick and earthy with scents.
“You never smell anything this wonderful in New York!” she exclaimed.
“We used to bring Jamie and Charlie fishing here when they were kids,” he said, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets while he gazed downstream as though he half-expected to see them canoeing toward him. “Charlie is Big C’s son, a couple or three years older than Jamie. He just went on the Dallas Police Department.”
Sharon walked up and stood next to him. He took her hand absently, as if it were the natural thing to do, and led her to a big fallen log in the grass overlooking the water. They sat together on the log in a long silence. A beaver slapped its tail upstream. He opened his fingers to release her hand, but she left it where it was. Simple human contact sometimes made things better.
“This is a good place to fish or just sit and not think about the world,” he said.
They felt comfortable with each other. Conversation was not necessary when two people were linked by shared tragedy. The sun was getting low and resting on treetops to the west. A whippoorwill questioned the approach of nightfall.
“Big C said you took a bullet for him,” Sharon said after awhile. “Was that how you got the limp?”
“It was a long time ago.”
“When you were a sniper?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t want to discuss it. She let it go. They sat on the log and waited for sunset.
“Are you originally from New York?” he asked conversationally.
“The Bronx,” she said. “A traditional Jewish home in a traditional Jewish borough. Mom and Dad moved to Miami Beach ten years ago.”
“I’ve heard people from the Bronx talk,” he commented. “You sound more like... Oh, maybe Idaho or Indiana.”
“I worked on my accent when I decided to go into broadcasting. I was a DJ on a morning drive pop music show in Des Moines before I married and moved back to New York.”
“How long were you married?” When she failed to answer right away, he added, “I’m sorry. That’s personal and none of my business.”
“I’m over it. We just went different ways. I was a Jew for Christ, he was Italian Catholic. The old, old story of too many differences.”
“You met Jerry Baer in New York?”
“After my divorce I was producing a late night radio show called On the Edge, a liberal Progressive would-be countermeasure to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Jerry Baer.” She laughed self-consciously. “You wouldn’t have liked me then. Many Jewish women grow up defensive with a victim mentality that points them politically left. I belonged to Women’s Lib and Code Pink. I did it all, except burn my bra. That was going too far.”
She blushed and covered it with another laugh.
“So what happened to change you?” he asked.
“Jerry Baer. I started listening to him on the radio before he went to TV. He made a lot of sense. He opened my eyes to the reality of where our country is headed. I couldn’t work for On the Edge anymore. One night I ran into Jerry at an event. He was there with his wife Irene.”
She choked up. “I became real close to her and Jerry. And their children. They have to be taking this hard. I should probably be there with them.”
“I’m sure Irene will understand.”
“I’ve spoken to her on the phone. Poor thing. It must be like her worst nightmare coming true. Jerry tried to prepare her for this eventuality, but that’s something no woman wants to face before it happens.”
They sat on the log and held hands until she had control of her tears.
“Anyhow, that’s how our partnership started,” she went on presently. “Jerry took me with him when he moved to Zenergy TV. What about you? I hardly know anything.”
Nail found himself telling her about his coming up in the Cookson Hills around Tahlequah, raised by his Creek Indian grandmother in Cherokee country after his parents died from a logging truck crashing into their pickup truck. He enlisted in the army when he was seventeen, served as a platoon squad leader with the 2nd Armored Cavalry during Desert Storm, the first Iraqi war. That was where he met Big C, who was also from Oklahoma. Combat experience cemented the two soldiers from Oklahoma into a firm friendship built on trust and common ground.
When the two soldiers redeployed stateside, they got out of the army and applied for the Tulsa Police Department, where they were accepted and attended rookie school together. Big C was Jamie’s godfather, and Nail was Charlie’s. Big C and Charlie moved in with Nail and Connie for awhile after his wife Latisha ran off with an ex-convict from Granite. Nail in turn moved in with Big C and Charlie after Connie decided her life with a cop wasn’t “fulfilling.” The two cops always joked that before either married again he should seek the other’s advice and permission. Big C bought the “Safe House” as much for the in-between-marriages times as for fishing.
“Your grandmother...?” Sharon asked.
“She died while I was in Iraq.”
“I’m...”
“I’m sorry too,” he said with a tinge of bitterness in his voice. “I was in the army six years. I’ve been a cop for nearly twenty. Sometimes I wonder what it was all for. My country is getting harder and harder to recognize.”
“I know,” she said, looking up the creek with him toward where the sun was red through the treetops. “Jerry gave ordinary people a voice. We mustn’t let that voice die.”
Food Safety Modernization Bill Succeeds
(Washington)—In order to ensure Americans’ safety when it comes to their food supply, Congress has proposed a Food Safety Modernization Bill which authorizes the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to oversee how farmers grow fruits, vegetables and livestock. The bill includes safety rules governing soil, water, hygiene, packing, which animals may be kept on which fields an
d when, and the sale of produce through so-called “farmers markets.” It also increases inspections of food facilities. For the first time, government will make sure that food is safe from the field to the consumer...
Chapter Twenty-Three
Keystone Lake
James Nail was up and dressed at sunrise; it was his favorite time of day. Last night Sharon changed the bandage on his head and assured him that he was healing properly. Before going to bed, she paused at her bedroom door, having switched into a pair of light sweats bottoms and a baggy T-shirt. Without a word, she returned to where Nail sat splay-legged on the sofa, thinking. She bent quickly and kissed him on the cheek. It surprised him. By the time he recovered, she had disappeared into her room and closed the door.
The morning sun felt warm on his face as he strolled down to the creek and stood on the bank to watch big catfish roll while sand bass chasing shad churned the creek’s surface. He pulled down the brim of his AAA Quarter Horses bill cap to shade his eyes, but the cap refused to fit right because of his bandaging. He ripped the tape off his head and touched the wound gingerly with his fingertips. It wasn’t much more than a bullet burn. The cap fit after that. It certainly fit better than the pieces of the puzzle surrounding his daughter’s murder.
Over the years he had lost count of how many homicide cases he had worked. Multitudes of mangled bodies with their dead eyes startled and frozen in terror at the moment of death from gunshot, knife wound, drowning, bludgeoning... People killed each other out of passion, revenge, greed, occasionally for the pure hell of it. He had killed twice himself. Not murder, but killing.
The first time was a ski-masked armed robber heisting a Wendy’s, for God’s sake. Nail was waiting for him with a twelve-gauge shotgun when he ran out. The dude got off one shot with a Saturday Night Special before Nail let him have a round of Double Aught.
The second scumbag was a serial strangler of young women. He was holed up with a .380 in a Seven-Eleven on North Apache and had Big C dead to rights. Nail, sniper on the scene, jumped out in the open and yelled to distract the shit bird inside the store. The guy shot him instead, in the lower leg, shattering the bone and his knee. Big C dragged Nail out of the line of fire and pressure-bandaged his leg. Nail refused to be evacuated until he finished his job. Five minutes later, he got a clean sight picture through the scope of his 30.06 bolt-action Winchester and took off the top of the perp’s skull.
He never dreamed in his worst nightmares that he would be investigating his own daughter’s murder. Things were much different when you had a personal stake in the outcome. He felt overwhelmed, inadequate, a state of mind he had never entertained in any other case. In previous homicides, he ferreted out the suspect and arrested him. Case closed. Justice.
In this case, however, he was beginning to comprehend that it was more complicated than all his previous homicides combined. As Sharon said, it ran deeper than he could ever imagine. With implications of political corruption, of an evil network of Dr. No types who seemed to encompass the globe. Who committed crimes with cold, deliberate calculation and were powerful enough to casually eliminate with impunity anyone who got in the way.
There were so many pieces to it that he hardly knew where to start. First, there were the dead: Greg Morris at McDonald’s; Joshua Logan attempting to escape; Ron Sparks hung in the cemetery; Jerry Baer, Jamie and all the others at ORU. Second, there were those populating the case and complicating it: Rupert; Judy Sparks-Taylor; Director Anthony Kimbrell; the shooter with the tattoo in the helicopter; the Defenders; ACOA; PEIU... Although Kimbrell appeared to be a common denominator, Nail couldn’t help looking upon him as little more than a bit player on a big stage whose strings were pulled by a puppet master.
Damn! He was getting another headache just thinking about it.
* * *
Big C arrived driving a red Ford pickup truck and wearing jeans, boots and a green T-shirt that made him look like a model for the Incredible Hulk. Nail and Sharon met him outside as he drove up.
“That was something, what you two reprobates pulled off at the cemetery,” Sharon congratulated them.
Nail grinned at C. “I hope I didn’t give you a black eye, pard?”
“I already got two black eyes.”
Nail glanced at the road that led out through the trees to the main blacktop. “You weren’t followed?”
“Bro’, how long we be fighting crime and evil and you ask that?”
Nail slapped him on the back. “Sorry.”
Big C ran a massive hand across his shaved head and flashed bright ivories at Sharon. “You much too fine to be hanging with home boys like us,” he teased. “He probably got you in the house cooking and cleaning. You ain’t had lunch, right? I brought take-out.”
Take-out hamburgers. Sharon laughed as they retreated inside from the mosquitoes. “How would James and you eat if you couldn’t open a can or stop at a drive-through?” she asked.
Sharon reheated fries. James cleared the table of unopened cans, the contents of which they had initially planned for lunch. Sharon recited grace. While they ate, Big C filled them in on what little he had gleaned from Judy Sparks-Taylor during their afternoon together.
“She Ron Sparks’ cousin all right,” he said. “She having a fling with this married dude works as chief of staff for Senate Majority Leader Joe Wiedersham. Dennis Trout his name. At least we know who fed Ron Sparks information from Washington—except I don’t think she know she the contact. She... Well, she naïve and trusting. I like the girl and don’t want see nothing happen to her.”
He paused to think it over. He took a long draught from his Coke cup before proceeding.
“What I figger is somebody in the Defenders snitching to the Homies. Ron told Judy two days before he killed that Kimbrell suspected him of double cross and going over to the militia. I figure Kimbrell had him hung and try to lay it on us Defenders. Morris and Logan seen it happen and went on the run with the Homies chasing to shoot them up. I still don’t know how this all fit in with ORU, but I got an idea it do.”
“If we’re right, C,” Nail speculated, “Kimbrell may be up to his neck in this but we’ll still need his snitch inside the Defenders to turn on him to prove it.”
“Same ones kill Ron could be the ones in the helicopter,” Big C added.
Nail dared not be too hopeful, not at this early stage of the probe. His mind shifted to another revelation that had surprised him as much as anything else his friend had divulged—that Big C was apparently a member of the militia known as the Defenders.
“Being in militia ain’t something you go spreading around, not even to best friends,” Big C explained. “Militias is organizing all over from Texas to Florida to Arizona and the Southwest and Middle West. I see President Anastos on CNN saying government is going to end the militia’s reign of terror, that people deserves to be secure in they homes from domestic terrorists as well as from foreign terror. Like we the ones shooting down folks.”
The Defenders, Big C went on, knew Ron Sparks was a Homeland Security agent from the beginning. Greg Morris brought him into the organization. The commander of the Defenders, Colonel Josiah Mosby, objected at first.
“He’s a patriot like the rest of ya’all,” Morris argued. “He’s seen the inside workings and knows how it’s rotting. He wants to resign from Homeland, but I think he can better serve us by being our eyes and ears inside the enemy camp.”
Sparks was about thirty, lean and serious with a large nose and nearly-black eyes.
“My great, great grandparents survived the Jewish holocaust,” he said at his initiation. “I’m Jewish, I’m an Okie, but most of all I’m a loyal red-blooded American. I’ve seen some of what they’re planning for us and I just can’t go along with it and keep quiet. Paul Revere said it best: They’re coming! They’re coming! We had better be prepared.”
Sparks had proved his worth and his loyalty. Two days before his hanging, he spoke to the Defenders at their meeting in Akins a
bout disturbing developments his “contact” in Washington had passed on to him.
“President Anastos and his cronies have directed more than ten billion dollars in economic stimulus funds for recruiting and training a secret civilian army loyal only to them,” he revealed. “AmeriCorps was supposed to be a civilian unarmed federal service organization. You know, plant trees, fight forest fires, organize communities to be good little Progressives... Instead, more than three hundred thousand young AmeriCorps Green Shirts are currently being trained as a military arm in remote secret camps all over the United States.”
The Defenders fell unearthly silent as Sparks continued his message. Most were farmers and hill people from eastern Oklahoma’s Green Country, with a few like Detective Corey Brown from the nearby cities of Tulsa, Muskogee and Fort Smith.
“Why does government require a civilian army of Green Shirts on top of Homeland Security?” Sparks asked rhetorically. “Who are the enemies they expect to fight with such a large force? Tea Parties? Conspiracy nuts? People who carry ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ flags? Jerry Baer? Zenergy News Cable? Militia groups? The American people...?”
Now in the Safe House, Nail sat at the table with Big C and Sharon silently pondering Ron Sparks’ warning. Sharon slipped outside to the rented Saturn to retrieve the FedEx package left at the door of Nail’s apartment. While she was gone, Big C said, “I taking some earned leave from the police department. I got an idea how to set up a little sting to flush out the snitch in the Defenders so we can ask him some questions.”
“C, what about the blonde? Judy? She’s going to be in trouble when they figure out she was the one passing information to Sparks that she apparently learned from what’s-his-name. Her lover.”
“I thought about that. I don’t know. If they not picked up on her yet, she may be safe. Maybe Trout think she too stupid to understand what’s going on.”
“Is she?”
“She ain’t stupid,” Big C said, sounding defensive.
A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller Page 10