Bright Midnight

by Chris Formant

  Vigie Airport, Castries, Saint Lucia

  The FBI plane arrived well before the plane carrying Dennis and Gantry. Bruce was still a considerable way out.

  Upon landing, Melendez immediately conferred with the Saint Lucia authorities in the small terminal building and began to set up a capture site in the hangar where ground control would direct the plane.

  “Here it comes,” the Saint Lucia police captain pointed out. “She’s coming in fast.”

  The plane aligned and dropped down quickly to the outer runway, hitting hard. Smoke flew from the tires, and the plane slowed and finally stopped far from the hangar.

  Melendez turned at the sound of screeching tires from two SUVs that came flying seemingly out of nowhere, racing to intercept the plane. He knew now that they were in for a real battle, not just a confrontation with Briganty.

  “Go, go, go!” he shouted, and his SWAT peeled out in the police Toyotas. At the plane, a handful of heavily armed men jumped out of the SUVs. They were wearing black jumpsuits and carrying assault weapons. They ran up the jetway and popped open the plane door. As Melendez’s men raced toward the plane, the men in jumpsuits reappeared, pushing Gantry and Dennis down the jetway. The SWAT team ground to a halt and the agents spilled out, falling into attack position. Gantry and Dennis were hurriedly pushed back into the cabin.

  Melendez’s team quickly subdued the drivers of the SUVs, then shot out the plane’s tires. Melendez told one of the agents to prepare to fire two rounds of advanced tear gas into the cabin, when suddenly Gantry, and then Dennis, reappeared at the top of the stairs, along with their assailants.

  Melendez yelled for his men to stand down.

  One behind the other, Gantry and Dennis were in line, both held at gunpoint. Comprehending the situation, Melendez communicated with his men through hand signals, holding up three fingers to show that there were three men left to deal with. Two were at the head of the stairs and one was inside the plane. Each of the three agents quickly took positions behind their cars to focus on their targets.

  For what seemed like an eternity, no one spoke or moved.

  Then the third assailant came out. He spoke loudly and clearly in a British accent. “We will not hesitate to shoot both of these men unless you retreat to the terminal. We will give you one minute.”

  Why haven’t they killed them already? Melendez wondered. That won’t happen. Gantry and Dennis must have something the boss needs.

  Dennis also assessed the situation and prepared to make his move. Pretending to stumble, he suddenly spun around and placed a hard knee in the groin of the man covering him. In a swift series of moves, he grabbed him by the head and shoulders, spun him around and threw him off the jetway. Before his man hit the ground, Dennis threw his forearm around the other, startled gunman and quickly snapped his neck.

  The last gunman, who had ducked back inside the plane, re-emerged in a panic, holding his gun high in surrender. Then, suddenly changing his mind, in desperation he shoved the gun into Gantry’s neck and yelled for them to stand down or he would shoot.

  In an instant Dennis pushed Gantry violently aside, and the panicked gunman fired two rounds into Dennis’s upper torso. The SWAT team members quickly responded and the gunman went down in a blizzard of bullets.

  Dennis fell back and into Gantry’s arms, his hands clutching his chest. There was blood everywhere. Gantry and team members carried Dennis down the stairway and laid him on the tarmac. Gantry knelt next to him, comforting his friend and whispering something in his ear. Gantry put his ear next to Dennis’s mouth so he could hear what he was saying. He slipped the ring off, as instructed.

  “Get the medics in here!” Melendez shouted. The drone of the ambulance’s siren could be heard in the distance. One of the agents was applying pressure to Dennis’s wounds, trying to control the bleeding.

  And then, as his position dictated he must, Melendez stood up and said, “Dennis Briganty, you are under arrest for the murder of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Al Wilson, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Ron McKernan, and Peter Ham. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say, can and will be held against you.”

  Gantry was stunned and speechless, unable to comprehend what Melendez had just said.

  Robert Bruce and his team rushed to the scene, having just arrived.

  Dennis looked at Gantry and tried to whisper something, then his head fell the opposite way as he passed out. The ambulance attendants ran up with a stretcher.

  “Two of you stay with him at all times,” Melendez ordered, pointing to two team members. “Call Miami right now and get a real doctor down here. Gantry, you go to the hospital with them.”

  Too stunned to think straight, Gantry could barely get the words out, “Is he going to live?”

  “It doesn’t look too good,” Melendez answered.

  “Gantry, what did he say to you…Gantry…what?”

  “A name… all he said was a name before he lost consciousness…Ciarin McMullan.”

  Melendez turned to Bruce. “That’s him! The Saint Lucia police captain can take us there.”

  “Let’s go now, Raphael, before McMullan realizes what has just happened here,” Bruce said.

  They commandeered the SUVs and headed north.

  The Saint Lucia police captain in the lead car directed them over rutted, unpaved roads up the mountain. When they came to the gates of the estate, they crashed through and raced up to the house. The combined SWAT teams quickly spread out and surrounded the compound, firing two rounds of tear gas into the building. Three agents burst through the front door.

  Melendez and Bruce waited behind the cars as gunfire ensued. Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over.

  “Clear!” a SWAT team member yelled from the doorway.

  Bruce and Melendez ran into the mansion, waving away the dissipating fumes.

  On the far side of the room, an old man stood propped on a cane. Two men, apparently bodyguards, stood at his side; they’d been disarmed quickly.

  The old man looked to be in his eighties, and very fragile.

  Melendez took the lead. “Ciarin McMullan?”

  The old man nodded as Melendez and Bruce approached.

  “Ciarin McMullen, you are under arrest as an accomplice to the murder of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Al Wilson, Jim Morrison, Ron McKernan, and Peter Ham. You are also under arrest for evasion of taxes and committing tax fraud against the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom.”

  Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,

  Cleveland, OH, November

  Gantry had arranged a private tour of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for himself and Melendez through his old friend and former colleague, Jim Henke.

  As they walked the halls, they lingered at the Rolling Stones exhibit and stared at Brian Jones’s first guitar. Gantry pointed out the recording of the Rice Krispies jingle Jones had written. They stopped at the exhibits of all the dead rock stars. These had now become almost shrines, as flowers and messages were placed in front of each one by fans from around the world who never forgot them.

  Emotions ran high for both men.

  “These are the first editions of Rolling Stone magazine.” Gantry pointed out, as they stopped at one of the landings. “Looks like a tabloid, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, you guys have come a long way,” Melendez smiled.

  They stopped in front of the Kurt Cobain and Nirvana exhibit, then sat down on a bench near the display.

  “You know what, Raphael? There have been a lot of emotions flowing through all of this—the stars, the era, the stories, us meeting and working together, and Dennis…I’ve been reliving those days of Aquarius vicariously, as I’m sure you have. Now it’s time to write the story. Not just for me or Alex or Rolling Stone, but so the world will finally have the truth.”

  “You’re a good man, Gantry. It has been a true and unique privilege working with you,” Melendez said, shaking Gantry’s hand with both of his. “I also h
ave to give your boss credit. When Greely put his cojones in a vice, he did the right thing. That is a rare virtue in this day and age.”

  “Yeah, that’s why I stayed with him all these years. In the end, each of us fought the fight that our dead heroes needed each of us to do,” Gantry answered. “How about you, now that Mayflower’s no longer on your weekly radar and you’re almost officially retired? What are you and Lucia going to do?”

  “Well, oddly enough, after our little visit to the islands, I took her back down there. The police captain showed us around. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and it’s very cheap in comparison to here. We decided not to go to Palm Desert, and we bought a little casita in Saint Lucia—me and Lucia in Lucia.

  “And you, Gantry? The world’s gonna be your oyster when this story breaks in Rolling Stone. You wouldn’t consider taking some time off would you, like, permanently?”

  “Hell, no. The party’s just starting,” Gantry laughed. “If Mick Jagger and Keith Richards can still crank it out, no reason I can’t! I’m a pup compared to them. The kids at Stone all want my advice now!”

  Gantry turned serious and said, “What’s going to happen now?”

  “Well, the case against McMullan is more than enough to keep him in prison for the rest of his life, which may not be very long. The families and estates of all the murdered rock stars have filed a myriad of civil suits to compensate them for the loss of those brilliant careers cut so short by that madman. The forensic accounting teams have been working with the banks and have uncovered dozens more accounts. In fact, with the information that Hislop provided us, we eventually tied some of the large insurance drafts to dummy companies that, in turn, flowed the cash through the same offshore process we previously pieced together.

  “I expect that criminal charges in Europe and the states will be filed soon. There is talk of conducting them remotely, from his prison hospital room, because of the political pressure to get this going.”

  “How about Daniel Culain. Have they found him yet?”

  “No trace,” Melendez curtly answered.

  Gantry looked at him and was about to say something.

  “Oh, and you’ll love this,” Melendez added. “Mayflower tried to muscle in on the positive PR that the agency was getting, trying to make it look like he was behind the scenes, driving the investigation. What a joke. But the Director got a direct order from the attorney general to back him off. What the hell,” he said, laughing, “I never knew that Tanner was the attorney general’s nephew!”

  Gantry high-fived him.

  “So Gantry, you didn’t answer my question, what are you going to do?”

  “Well, that’s why I asked you to meet me here in Cleveland. The Rock Hall came a-callin’ and they want me on the board. I think I’m going to accept. They also want to give me a lifetime-achievement award at the next induction ceremony. But of course, I’ll keep writing. It’s all I know, really, as long as Alex will keep me.

  And...Jodi and I are spending next week together in San Francisco.” Jodi walked up to them and gave Gantry a kiss.

  “Hello detective, fancy meeting you here?” Jodi laughingly said.

  “Congratulations, you two! You deserve it. Wow, on the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And you get the girl, too? Not bad.

  “May the sun always shine on your window pane,” he said as he hugged both of them, “I’m proud of both of you.”

  “Anything’s possible. We’re both a lot wiser now,” Gantry answered, smiling. “Well, I won’t claim wisdom. But all of this—everything that’s happened—it all made us think about what we’d been doing, and who we are, and what we are to each other.”

  “Yes, anything is possible,” Melendez said. The two men laughed, then they got up and walked toward the exit. As they opened the door and a flood of late November sun spilled across the floor at their feet, Melendez reached out his hand, smiled at Gantry and said, “Pardner, you keep in touch. Don’t wait another thirty years to call me.”

  Gantry nodded, and felt a lump come up in his throat. Reaching out, he hugged his friend, then took a deep breath and said, “Raphael I need to show you something”, as he pulled out a new iPhone.

  “A smartphone?” Melendez said sarcastically. Gantry’s expression stopped his joking.

  “I received this video file late last night. It’s from Hislop.”

  “Hislop. That’s not possible…”

  “Just watch this,” He coldly interjected.

  A video of Hislop sitting behind a desk appeared on the screen.

  What I am going to tell you will be hard to believe, but you will discover that it is true.

  Ciaran McMullan is a Red Branch Knight. As were his father, grandfather, great-grandfather…all his known lineage.

  The Knights of the Red Branch are an Irish off-shoot of the Knights Templar, the Protectors of Jesus. They look to Cuculain, the warrior saint of Ireland, as their founder and patron. As legend has it, Cuculain died in a fierce battle, tied to a tree in order to die on his feet. He was twenty-seven years old.

  In Red Knight culture, the age of twenty-seven was a sacred time of transition from manhood to knighthood. It was the age that Cuculain went from warrior to legend. To McMullan, the age symbolized a time of perfection. In Knight lore, it was more than that; an inflection point of total dedication to the Knights. So total, that legend has it that if a prospective Knight failed, he was not just alienated from the Knights, but eliminated to preserve the sacred secrets that had been entrusted to him.

  That sacred trust went all the way back to the time of Jesus and his ultimate betrayal by Judas. Well documented in the Bible is Judas’ betrayal of Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. His guilt built to the point that he committed suicide by hanging himself. A scene so iconic in the Christian Religion that the very variety of tree he hung himself from has been forever called the Judas Tree, known for its blood red coloring.

  The Knights of the Red Branch believed something different and protected that knowledge for centuries. They protected the ancient archive that documented not only the crucifixion of Jesus and the betrayal by Judas, but the revenge murder of Judas by the followers of Jesus. An outcome so diametrically opposed to Jesus’ message of forgiveness, that they committed from the time of Cuculain, to protect that knowledge with their lives.

  In fact, the very tree that Judas hung from…the Judas Tree…the Red tree, begot their name…Red Branch. Judas was hung from a red branch to revenge Jesus’ death.

  Judas was 27 years old.

  Melendez and Gantry looked at each other.

  …To McMullan, his rock stars were perfect in a different way. They commanded huge audiences who followed their every action and song message. They were legends. They were his own special Knights and he expected their full loyalty.

  To a megalomaniac like McMullan, their lewd behavior and their disloyalty infuriated him. He saw them as almost god-like and perfect. Legends to be worshipped.

  Their behavior at twenty-seven years old, made him go berserk with a consuming rage. Not only was it a blasphemy on the sacred age of Knight transition. But it was the age Judas made the ultimate betrayal.

  He saw them as publically betraying the loyalty he entrusted in them and failing in their transition to legendary perfection.

  In his mind, he had no choice but to eliminate them.

  With that, the video ended and the two men stood speechless staring at each other.

  Was it possible that the Myth of 27 was explained as the work of an insane businessman? A crackpot whose maniacal distortion of Irish myths led to murder?

  “Dennis asked me to keep this, right before he died,” Gantry slowly spoke, as he reached into his pocket and took out a Celtic cross signet ring in a red stone setting.

  “This looks just like the ring we took off McMullan when we arrested him,” a surprised Melendez answered, “It was the only jewelry he wore. Unmistakable.”

  “Raphael, I recognized it in the Bill Wym
an picture in Greeley’s office we both stared at,” added Gantry.

  “After I got the video last night, I googled Knights of the Red Branch. This is their symbol. A Celtic cross set in red. Its origin goes back to their founder,” Gantry explained as he showed Melendez the image on his phone. “They must have all been Knights of the Red Branch...including Dennis.”

  Gantry looked at Raphael with an empty look that belied the internal emotion within him.

  “Raphael, we need to…”

  Without speaking, Melendez waved his hand to stop Gantry as he shook his head and began walking to the parking lot.

  He was done.

  Gantry instinctively started to go after him, but Jodi grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

  “It’s over, sweetheart,” she said, “It’s all over. Let him go. You all brought justice. You did it, baby.”

  Gantry turned and exhaled a deep breath. Then he smiled.

  It was time to move on…tell the story…rewrite history.

  Lake Erie magnified the dusky sun reflecting off of I.M.Pei’s iconic glass pyramid, illuminating a wide pathway on the entrance promenade, as the wafting lyrics of “Crystal Ship” poured out of the outdoor speakers like a warm musical sauce.

  “Cosmic,” as Jodi put her head onto Gantry’s shoulder and whispered into his ear, “Cosmic.”

  List of Sources

  [1]Brian Jones, Quote, June 1967

  [2]All along the Watchtower: Dylan, Bob, ©1996, Dwarf Music, (Lyric Reprint License #2492, 2016)

  [3]3. "I want to do with the guitar": Hendrix, Jimi p228, The Life and Times of Little Richard – White, Charles 2003 Omnibus Press)

  [4]Morrison Quote: Henke, James, Jim Morrison Scrapbook: 2007

  [5]Henke, James (ibid)

  [6]"I Believe": McKernan, Ron, 1972

  [7]"End of the Night": The Doors, 1967