by Reed Sprague
God kept better records than that, Briggs believed, because God didn’t make mistakes. Maybe one or more angels had overslept or something, and issued an incomplete report to God years ago that was uncovered recently by an auditor angel who was auditing Briggs’ balance sheet. Briggs wasn’t quite sure what his own angels had been doing when they were supposed to be advocating for him, though. Maybe Briggs’ angels were napping when the auditor angel came to them to ask them about his findings, and those naps, too, will be discovered years down the road, causing God to send down an unexpected blessing or two to re–balance the scales.
Briggs did not see that his scales were ever balanced. His scales always seemed to be out of balance against him. Briggs trusted God fully, though, so his scales must be in balance, in spite of the fact that God’s instances of punishment seemed to far exceed the seriousness of Briggs’ infractions. He didn’t question God; his presumption, always, was that he deserved the punishment. Otherwise, why would a just God continue to place so many flawed people of low intelligence into his life?
Briggs went to his boss’ office, Lieutenant Jim Washburn. Before he was able to speak a word, Washburn spoke, firmly and definitively: “Here’s the final report on the SUV crash, Sargent. Now let’s leave this one alone and move on, okay? It’s clear that the FBI has done what you asked, and they’ve sent a summary report of their findings to us so we can close this investigation. That’s what you wanted, and that’s what we got.”
“No; that’s not what I want. I’m telling you that I met with an FBI agent, a man by the name of Cottrell. He and I inspected the left front fender. There is no question that the fender was blown up and out, probably by an explosive device. That fender did not explode because of a blown tire. The tire was probably blown as a result of the explosive device that exploded under the fender. Did the FBI send any pictures of the fender?” Briggs asked.
“You know what, Briggs? They did. They did send pictures of the left front fender. Look, look at it. It’s not ‘blown up and out,’ as you say. It’s fine. The tire blew out. That’s what the final FBI determination is and we’re going to live with that. Do you understand that, Sargent Briggs? Leave it alone, okay?” Lieutenant Washburn was shifting in his chair, ruffled, confused but determined to convey the conclusion to Briggs and determined to have Briggs accept the explanation and the report as final.
“I’m signing off on the report as final, Briggs, and I am closing the case. It’s over now. I need you to meet with the families and tell them that this was a horrible accident and that we’re so sorry that it happened.”
“I would like a few days to go over things, Lieutenant, to verify the facts before I meet with the families.”
“Denied. The facts have been verified. Your job is to meet with the families. Set up your meetings for tomorrow morning. You will tell the boy’s father, and then you will go to the home of coach Orlanzo, meet with his wife, and tell her.”
Briggs went to his desk with Lieutenant Washburn’s report. He compared the pictures of the fender in the report to the pictures he had on his digital camera. There was no question that these were two different fenders. Briggs was frozen. He would not face the families and tell them something he knew was untrue, especially about something so serious as this, but he had been given a direct order that he had no choice except to follow.
There could be an appeal procedure, but Briggs wasn’t sure there was enough time, and he wasn’t sure whether or not anyone would listen. He was technically required to hand over his digital images to Washburn, but he no longer had faith in his boss. He would justify his decision to withhold the pictures by reasoning that the pictures had been taken with his personal camera rather than a state of Montana–issue camera. He wasn’t so sure that God would accept that reasoning, so he filed his decision in a category he called, “God Will Deal With This Later.” It was a gamble, though, because God took such sins seriously. Briggs believed that God didn’t wink at this or any other sin.
Briggs did not believe in making phone calls to families of crime victims to inform them of important findings regarding their injured or dead loved ones. Meeting with them face to face was Briggs’ own commitment to improving manners in the world. He didn’t learn that from a consultant. Briggs went to the asylum to meet with Winston.
The asylum was white. Everything was white. The lights illuminated bright white light only—light that was not even tinged yellow, orange or brown. The walls and ceilings were painted white. The floors were covered in white ceramic tile. The ceiling fans, air conditioner vents and blinds, were all white. The whole place screamed a false sense of pureness and happiness at the patients and their visitors and caretakers. It was almost as if a madman had escaped from the asylum and returned with a white covering of some sort for everything in the place to hide the deep sadness there under a thin veil of waxed–paper purity. The white was for the caretakers and visitors. The patients were not fooled by it.
Briggs proceeded inside, to Winston’s room. “Mr. Winston, my name is Sargent Mark Briggs, and I’m with the Montana State Highway Patrol. I’m an investigator, and I’m in charge of investigating your son’s horrible accident. Let me say first, sir, that I am deeply sorry about your loss. Your son had a spotless reputation, and he truly was a good and decent person. You and his mother must be crushed. How is she doing?”
“My wife is dead. She died years ago from cancer,” Winston replied coldly.
“I am so sorry. I can’t seem to say the right thing to you, Mr. Winston, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Please tell me who murdered my son, Sargent Briggs,” Winston pleaded, then continued, monotone, and as if he were reciting one very long sentence, “We know what happened. Agent Warwick told me. He apologized. He said he was sorry. It sounds as if you’re sorry, too, Sargent Briggs. Everyone’s sorry, but that doesn’t change the fact that my family is dying around me. Did I cause this, Sargent Briggs? Did I?
“I was only trying to help, Sargent. When Style & Shores began their games I looked the other way, but I did help to expose them. I worked hard on it, put my career and my life on the line—did everything I could to beat the bad guys. Have you ever worked hard to beat the bad guys, Sargent Briggs?” Winston asked, crying out through his tears, his speech breaking up more and more with each word he spoke near the end of his long run–on sentence.
Winston had been sedated for several days to treat him for his depression. Briggs didn’t know any of that. All he knew was that he had a sad father in front of him who was distant, confused and anguished over the loss of his son. Briggs also couldn’t help but notice that this father believed that his son was murdered. Briggs wondered now, more than ever, why the stupid people involved so far didn’t seem to understand that a serious crime had taken place.
“Mr. Winston, would it be possible for me to meet with you and this agent Warwick person you mentioned? By the way, who is agent Warwick?” Briggs asked.
“River is his first name. He’s an agent for the U.S. Federal Intelligence Agency, and he’s going to help me,” Winston cried out loudly. Then he began to scream out his distress in a loud shrill. “Please help me, please help me, because they’re all looking for my daughters and me, and they’ll hurt or even kill us all to keep me from talking! Please help me, Sargent Briggs. Please help me!”
Winston’s attendants heard his screams. They came into the room and forced him to lie on the couch. They injected him with even more drugs to further sedate him.
Briggs decided to track down River. Rather than use a computer, or other sneaky and complex ways to track down government secret agents — taught to him by yet another stupid genius God put in his life at a seminar he had attended years ago on “investigative techniques” — Briggs picked up the phone, dialed the number for the USFIA and asked if they had an agent there named River Warwick. “This is official Montana State Highway Patrol business. I need to speak with an agent you have there by the name of River Warwick
,” Briggs said to the supervisor on the phone at USFIA headquarters in Houston.
“Sir, this is a national intelligence agency. We need specifics before we can allow you to speak with anyone here about official business. What kind of response do you think you would get if you phoned, say, the U.S. Army Intelligence Office, and asked to speak to a man by the name of River?” the supervisor said.
“I must have been mistaken. I meant to dial the number for the USFIA. I must have inadvertently dialed the number for the U.S. Army,” Briggs replied, with the least amount of etiquette, manners and sensitivity possible. “Now, let’s start over. Do you have an agent there by the name of River? Do you have an agent there working with a Mr. Winston? It’s about a suspected murder in Montana.”
“And you’re from the Montana State Highway Patrol?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Oh, you must be investigating the SUV crash.”
“Yes, that’s it. Yes. Is River there? Please let me speak with him.”
“Hold the line. I’ll find him.”
Briggs didn’t know River at all, so he didn’t like him. As he did with most people he heard about but hadn’t yet met, he placed River in the “Probably Stupid, And Doubtful To Prove Otherwise” category. He believed it was more respectful to categorize people this way than it was to blindly stereotype them. He wasn’t sure, but he believed he had been taught to be reserved like that in the consultant’s session on sensitivity, although he doubted so, because he didn’t recall a thing the consultant said in that or any other session. People in this category may or may not have been sent from God to torment Briggs with their stupidity. A small handful of them proved to be okay throughout the years, although Briggs didn’t recall any particular one that was.
“Agent Warwick, can I speak with you face to face? I would prefer not to speak on the phone,” Briggs said, after Warwick answered his call.
“Are you calling me from a phone in your home or office, or from your cell phone?”
“Neither. I’m calling you from a pay phone. I don’t have a cell phone. I can’t stand the damn things.”
“It’s okay, then, we can talk,” River said reassuringly.
“My name is Sargent Mark Briggs and I’m an investigator with the Montana State Highway Patrol. I’m investigating the car crash that killed James Winston. There’s a coverup going on, and the FBI is participating in it. Mr. Winston’s son was murdered. It was not an accident.”
“I’ll have to preliminarily establish that you are, in fact, Sargent Briggs. Please tell me your badge number, your driver license number, Social Security number and your birth date,” River said.
Briggs provided River with all the information he requested. River took a few seconds to run a preliminary check on Briggs. River was then satisfied that Briggs was the real deal.
“Thank you for calling, Sargent Briggs, but I already knew that the crash was no accident. How did you come to believe that as well?”
“The left front fender. It’s a hot spot, clearly the point of an explosion. There’s no question that it was blown up and out by an explosion. An FBI agent met me at the wreck yard and inspected the fender with me. He saw it first hand. He was supposed to return the next morning with legions of geniuses to figure out the obvious, but he didn’t show up. Instead, other agents came very early in the morning and towed the SUV. They probably took it to a black hole somewhere and made up a report with pictures of a different fender, showing none of the signs of an explosion.”
“I was tipped off, so I knew, but I have no evidence,” River said. “Sargent Briggs, do you know that the USFIA has broad powers to investigate the other federal agencies, including the CIA and the FBI?”
“Yes, that’s one of the reasons I called you. I need an official channel to appeal the Montana State Highway Patrol accident report. It really isn’t our report. It came to us directly from the FBI. My boss signed off on it and filed it as our official report. The only way I can appeal is if I have an appeal process that is acceptable. The USFIA is my only hope for that. We need to meet and go over our notes. Can you come to Montana, but not to my town, and meet with me in a public place, a park, a mall or restaurant?”
“What about the Run ‘N Gun Café in Kalispell?” River asked.
“How did you know about the Run ‘N Gun?” Briggs asked.
“Within one minute of you calling here and identifying yourself, we found out more about you, the Montana State Highway Patrol, and the state of Montana than you would want me to tell you, Sargent,” River said with a slight chuckle. “I’ll meet you at the restaurant tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock. Please bring plenty of forms of identification with you. Being dressed in a Montana State Highway Patrol uniform will not be identification enough, even if you’re dressed real nice, in a tie and everything. You will be thoroughly checked out before we can talk,” River said.
“Great. And how will I know who you really are?”
“You won’t know for sure, but you’ll have a general idea.”
“How’s that?”
“I’ll be dressed like the people you despise the most.”
Food at the Run ‘N Gun was almost edible, but not quite. The owner, Charles F. Gates, Sr., and his family ran the Run ‘N Gun. They were proud of their restaurant business and proud of the awful food they served there. The Gates family displayed a sign over Mr. Gates’ cooking area, behind the swinging half doors that the servers went in and out of to drop off the meal orders and get the cooked food to bring back to the customers:
KALISPELL MEMORIAL HOSPITAL FOOD POISONING HOTLINE:
406–905–8784
“I forgot to tell you that while we are able to find out most things about you and the area you’re from, we obviously don’t know much about the menu offerings here,” River said to Briggs, as they began with an appetizer of rotten potato skins stuffed with an unidentified mushy substance.
“I need every form of identification you can imagine—license, Social Security card, police I.D., credit card.”
“I’ve got it all, Warwick. Here it is.”
River removed his netbook from his inside coat pocket and began the five–minute process to verify Briggs’ identification.
“Place your right index finger tip here into this slot while looking directly into the tiny camera lense here, on the top of the back of the netbook cover.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. I’m not kidding.”
River then pecked away for a few minutes, completing Briggs’ background check in record time.
“Done. Two minutes to spare and I’m done. That’s a record,” River said.
“You did all of that, and that fast, from that tiny computer? You don’t even have wires coming out of that thing. Where’s the phone cord?” River laughed. Briggs didn’t.
“That’s it. That’s all it took. You are Sargent Briggs. Would you like to know anything else about yourself? Would you like to know your complete fourth grade report card, including subject grades for each grading period? Remember your great aunt, Ida Jeanne Briggs Mason? Would you like the complete family genealogy of each of her in–laws? Ever wonder about them? Anything at all that you would like to know about you, I can tell you.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. I never liked my great aunt Ida or any of her in–laws. She was the meanest woman I’ve ever known. She wasn’t very smart either.”
“You know that this is a huge issue,” Briggs said. “I’m sure you do. You would not have already been involved if it weren’t. How’s Winston? The poor guy was psychotic when we met to discuss the SUV crash.”
“He’s bad. The situation is as bad as I’ve seen. He was used by Style & Shores, McCann and the FBI. Then he was thrown to the wolves. He’s got serious concerns. He’s right to be worried for his life and for the lives of those he loves. Even his own lawyer tossed him aside. Briggs, you and I are all he’s got, and I’ve already let him down once,” River explained.
“Who’s McCann?”
“He’s the senior managing partner of the audit firm that provides the auditing services to Style & Shores.”
“Auditors; I have an exclusive category for them. I despise them,” Briggs said quietly, under his breath.
“What’s that?” River asked, not wanting to miss any important information.
“Nothing—just a passing thought.”
“But this is even bigger than all that. It’s bigger than Style & Shores and auditors who participate in fraud. It’s bigger than corporate fraud. It’s even bigger than the lives of Winston and his children, believe it or not. This is about the entire system gone wrong. We’ll realize the full extent of it when it all comes crashing down,” River continued.
“What you don’t know is that Style & Shores has contributed millions to political campaigns of cooperative U.S. politicians, and millions more to Peterson’s planned Council,” River said.
“The ACC?” Briggs asked.
“No, not the ACC. The ACC’s old news. I wish people would get it about this guy. ACC was only a stepping stone. Peterson has moved on while we’re all still focusing on the ACC. I tried to get my boss to listen to me about Peterson. He moves fast. The ACC was a flash in the pan. He’s on to bigger things. He’s thinking bigger than anyone imagined.
“The U.S. can’t allow Style & Shores to go down. It will cause a chain reaction that will not only bring down the entire worldwide financial system, but also the plans for the Worldwide Economic, Religious and Cultural Authority,” River explained.