by Brett Baker
“I need to sit up,” I said. “This ground is too cold.”
“Not a good idea,” Johnny said. “You don’t look too good. Just stay put until the paramedics get here.”
As usual I disregarded advice intended to keep me inactive. I sat up to a volley of Johnny’s objections. My ribs pinged, but I had no problem breathing, so I assumed I couldn’t be hurt too bad.
“Take it easy. You need to go to the hospital to get checked out.”
“I’m fine,” I said, looking off into the distance. I had a clear view of Whit’s porch and it didn’t seem fuzzy at all, so I assumed I couldn’t be hurt too bad. I crossed my feet, and quickly pushed myself up to a half-standing, half-bent position.
“Mia, take it easy!” Johnny said, standing next to me, and grabbing my wrists. “What the hell happened to you anyway?”
“Goldschlager,” I said.
Johnny let go of my hands, and a disgusted look came across his face. “Wait a minute, are you drunk? I thought you got beat up, but you’re just drunk?”
“No, I’m not drunk. That’s not what I mean. Goldschlager, a guy who smelled like Goldschlager, beat me up.” Johnny didn’t say anything, but he looked very confused. “Last night I made a peanut butter sandwich and went to eat it out on the porch, and while I was sitting there I saw someone creeping across the yard. So I followed him.”
“Oh my God! Mia, why would you do that? That’s insane. Why not just call the police?”
“I wanted to get the police, but I was worried the guy would get away. I walked up to the squad car and there wasn’t anyone in there. So I took matters into my own hands.” Johnny shook his head. I tried not to discount his objections, because as far as he knew I was a technical writer who went to Princeton and lived a carefree life in Chicago. He didn’t know about The Summit and everything that went along with it. Viewed through his eyes my actions were crazy. But I couldn’t very well tell him the truth. In fact, I even had to lie about what happened in the yard. If the police found out that I’d single-handedly taken down a guy twice my size, and only got battered by another brute because he’d taken a quick cheap shot, they might start asking questions. How’d I learn to fight? Why am I so good at taking a punch? How can I endure so much pain? There were enough questions surrounding my parents’ death. The last thing I wanted was to take the focus off of their case and put it on me, both so we could find the people who killed them, and so I could protect myself.
“What did you do?” Johnny asked.
“I went up to the house and peeked in the living room window and saw him. He freaked out and took off, practically ran through the door like in one of those Roadrunner cartoons. I tried to run catch him, but when I was chasing him a guy came out from behind that tree and attacked me. I didn’t even know what happened. One minute I was running and the next…well here I am.”
“That’s horrible,” Johnny said. “What was the guy doing inside the house?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He was just walking through the room when I saw him. I wanted to watch him for a few minutes and see if he was looking for something or whatever, but he saw me as soon as I saw him, and he freaked out big time.”
“So you don’t know why he was there?”
“Who knows? Could be involved with the murder, or he might just have heard about what happened, figured the house would be empty, and planned to help himself to the television or some jewelry or something.”
“You didn’t see the other guy behind the tree before he attacked you?”
“No, and I was on the lookout. As soon as I saw the guy creeping across the yard I started looking around to see if he was alone. It was so damn dark though that I couldn’t see anything. The guy might have been hiding behind the tree the entire time. I don’t know.”
A sharp pain flashed through the back of my head, and I held on to Johnny’s arm to steady myself.
“Sit down,” he said. “They’re coming to take you to the hospital.”
“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” I said. “I’m fine. Get me out of these wet clothes, take a shower, and I’ll be good to go.”
I staggered past Johnny and walked across the street to Whit’s. Justine met me halfway up the lawn, grabbed me by the arm, and put her arm around my waist to steady me. “You look like hell,” she said. “They’re coming to take you to the hospital.”
“Might as well tell them not to bother,” Johnny said, five steps behind us. “She’s so damn stubborn. If she says she’s not going, she’s not going.”
Justine said nothing, and helped me inside the house. I told the story once again to Justine and Whit, and we all speculated as to the reasons for the intruder’s actions. I played along with the guessing game, but I was certain that Goldschlager and his buddy were connected to the murders in some way. The police car parked in front of the house would have deterred a common burglar. The man inside the house wasn’t just looking to steal from dead people.
12
Chapter 12
Everyone liked Abner Chamberlain. Kind, friendly and attentive, he had a knack for making everyone seem like they were his best friend. He asked questions, listened to stories, and seemed genuinely interested in what other people had to say. Rare was the person who didn’t feel better about themselves and the world while in Abner’s presence. He relished his popularity, and when he encountered someone who didn’t like him, he put forth extra effort to help sway their opinion.
The one exception to the generally deep reservoir of good feeling toward Abner came in the form of the same group of people whom he despised. Abner always used one word to describe these people: elitists.
The word means different things to different people, but to Abner an elitist was anyone who cared more about money or power than the things that truly mattered in life: nature, love, other people.
His distaste for elitists was reciprocated and magnified. As his work and his personality made him a well-known public figure, he drew more intense scorn from elitists around the country. They resented the way he stood in the way of progress, tried to hold businesses accountable for the destruction they wrought on the environment, and his often-stated opinion that people should come before profit. He endlessly declared the green of the earth more important than the green of the dollar.
Abner had chosen the green of earth decades before. Born into an old money family whose wealth continued to grow, he could have lived very comfortably and would have never had to work. His brother, Asa, chose the opposite life, and pursued every last dollar. Only two years in age separated the men, but their life experience couldn’t have been more different. Asa lived in a house on the family’s estate just north of San Francisco, while Abner lived in a three-room cabin on the outskirts of Sequoia National Forest. Abner had become famous for his work to protect pristine lands from being developed, and Asa had made millions investing in Silicon Valley startups, and transferring his profits into hedge funds that he managed. The two men talked infrequently, mostly because their conversations devolved into disagreements over basic cornerstones of human happiness.
For two decades Abner worked tirelessly to prevent eager developers from ruining natural wonders that cannot be replaced. His efforts resulted in his alienation from much of his family, and his complete detachment from his family’s money. His father not only refused to fund his activities, but when he discovered that Abner planned to devote his work and his life to protecting the environment, he froze all of Abner’s assets, leaving him with nothing. So while living in a small, meager cabin helped indicate that he was serious about protecting the environment and reducing his environmental impact, it was also a necessity because he was broke.
Abner built the cabin himself from fallen trees he and three friends collected across the state and trucked back to the forest. He’d never built anything before starting on the cabin, but with the guidance of some friends, and dozens of episodes of This Old House he’d constructed a minimalist, sturdy dwelling tha
t not only provided a place for him to live, but had become a symbol of the entire environmental movement. The cabin appeared on T-shirts and bumper stickers, along with a message about man living with nature instead of killing nature. It had become a meeting place for leaders of the movement to plan resistance campaigns, and on one occasion the backdrop for Abner’s interview on 60 Minutes.
But as the rising sun dappled through the thick stand of trees, the cabin was about to become known for something much more sinister.
Abner began most mornings with a long-distance run along the forest roads. The forest contained more than 2,000 miles of roads, some of them abandoned, others so lightly-traveled that they might as well have been abandoned. Abner used his morning runs as a time of reflection and enjoyment, a useful reminder of why he’d dedicated his life to protecting the environment. The gargantuan sequoias provided a buffer from the rest of the world, which he desperately needed at times.
The forest also provided cover. Trees less impressive than the sequoias densely filled much of the forest: Jeffrey Pine, Red Fir, Ponderosa Pine, and White Fir, among others. And it was in one of these trees that Mr. Mount made himself at home for more than forty-eight hours. He watched as Abner left his cabin on three consecutive days for a morning run. He saw numerous visitors come and go, including a lady who visited Abner late at night after having spent the afternoon at the cabin earlier that day along with her husband and two other couples. He watched as Abner chopped wood, built a fire, and cooked dinner. He saw the glow of the spotlight Abner used to read every night, and smelled the exhaust from his car on the occasions in which he left the cabin.
Mr. Mount had studied Abner. He even sat next to him at a bar the night he climbed the tree and the two men talked for an hour. He seemed like a nice enough fellow, but personality meant nothing to Mr. Mount. He was singularly focused on the job at hand. Abner Chamberlain’s sole reason for existence from Mr. Mount’s perspective was as a target. When he had a target, Mr. Mount cared about nothing else. The guy was a professional, and the best around. With Mr. Mount involved the outcome wasn’t a mystery. The name began as an insult. On an early mission Mr. Mount quickly disposed of a man while a benefactor watched. Mount then asked the benefactor if he’d paid to have the victim mounted on Mount’s wall, like a big game trophy. The idea of a human trophy so horrified everyone who knew of him that the name stuck. Mr. Mount fought it at first, but soon realized it’s the sort of story that creates legends, so he embraced it.
But it wasn’t the weeks of studying Abner that were most beneficial for Mr. Mount. The two days he’d spent in the tree had told him all he needed to know. And now, as Abner jogged along the narrow forest roads, Mr. Mount waited.
Just as he had the previous two days, Abner emerged from around a bend in the opposite direction from which he’d entered it. Mr. Mount watched him sprint for seventy-five yards and then stop upon reaching the comparatively small sequoia at the corner of his property, just as he had the previous two days. As Abner pushed both hands against the trunk of the tree to begin stretching—just as Mr. Mount expected—Mount did a last check of the surroundings. All clear. He lifted the scope up to his eye, and brought Abner into view. With a steady hand he focused on the environmentalist, and waited. Abner’s final stretch always worked his quad, and Mr. Mount waited for him to turn around and kick his right foot back against his butt. As soon as Abner grabbed the foot and held it, balancing on one leg, feeling the stretch in the front of his leg, and tried to catch his breath from an intense run, Mr. Mount squeezed the trigger. The bullet raced absolutely true across two hundred yards of forest and left a small hole in Abner’s forehead. He fell backward to the ground, landing on his leg, forcing it to bend into a grotesque position.
Mr. Mount lowered his rifle, looked at Abner through binoculars, and then began to pack up. Ten minutes later he had lowered himself from the tree and walked a quarter mile to an abandon service road where his ride waited for him.
Another target completed.
13
Chapter 13
It’s an unfortunate fact of life, or perhaps death, that we’re forced to navigate a world with which we’re not at all familiar—funeral planning—at the exact time when we’re most emotionally vulnerable and stressed. Despite my routine encounters with death, I hadn’t given any thought to caskets, funeral services, or burial practices before my parents died. The Summit had trained me to endure stressful situations and to use my wide range of skills to overcome any obstacle, but planning my parents’ funeral challenged me in ways that I could never have imagined. Thankfully I had Johnny and Justine with me, so the three of us navigated the confusing waters of funeral rituals together.
It didn’t help that my head throbbed throughout the day, or that my ribs stabbed me with a knife at every breath. And I’m sorry to say that my thoughts were somewhat preoccupied with thoughts of Goldschlager and his partner, and their intent at my parents’ house. I wanted to forget about such things. I wanted to dive deep into the emotion of my parents’ death, and work through the next few days with my brother and his wife, but at least half my brain power went to replaying the incident from the night before, analyzing every movement, every word. Funeral planning would put us no closer to solving my parents’ death, and I seemed unable to stop worrying about the practical matter of finding their killers long enough to fully engage in the emotional, spiritual events that required attention.
So when we returned to Whit’s house after a day of choosing flowers, caskets, psalms and such, I didn’t at all feel like sitting on the porch and chatting with Whit for the rest of the evening. I appreciated the man’s generosity, and fully understood how acutely he felt my parents’ death, how personal it was for him, but I needed to take action. I hoped the police would be waiting for us at Whit’s house, anxious to interview us, or even better, tell us they had a break in the case, but I saw no police cars as we pulled into Whit’s driveway. Even the lone squad car across the street had disappeared, and the yellow police tape no longer circled the property.
Although the police weren’t waiting for us, Whit met us in the driveway. He stood with his hands in his pockets and a smirk on his face. He opened Justine’s door as soon as Johnny stopped the car.
“Come on in,” Whit said. “There’s someone inside that wants to see you. We’ve been waiting for quite a while.”
Johnny looked back at me and offered a smile that said, “Who’s inside and why the hell is Whit so excited about it?” I shook my head, opened the door, and followed Whit inside with Justine and Johnny behind me.
“They’re here,” Whit called as we walked through the door and past the foyer, into the living room.
“In the flesh and blood,” I heard a tiny, shaky voice say.
I looked across the room to see Migsy Pendleton. I hadn’t seen her in more than a decade, and she looked even smaller than I’d remembered. She sat in a large, throne-like chair, and kept her hands folded in her lap. Her brilliant white hair fell down to her shoulders and she wore it tucked behind her delicate ears. Although her voice sounded fragile, she looked strong. She wore sharp black pants and a fashionable red shirt that looked more appropriate for a woman half her age. Two silver star earrings draped from her lobes. Tan, fit and without glasses, she looked like a woman who knew she was getting old but refused to go without a fight.
“Migsy, it’s so nice to see you,” I said. I walked to her chair, held her hands, and leaned over to hug her. She smelled like coconut, and reminded me of summer. “How have you been?” I stood in front of her and looked down at the woman responsible for my life. She’d introduced me to The Summit, and if not for her I have no idea where I’d be. In high school I had no direction planned for my life, but somehow Migsy saw an untapped potential in me. As much as I hated my first years with The Summit, I wouldn’t have traded my time there for anything. And Migsy was responsible for all of it.
“I’m great,” she said. “Everyone around me is getting o
ld though, and it makes me sick. A bunch of fucking lightweights. I don’t know why these people just keep letting their bodies give up. It’s the only life we’ve got, don’t let your body end it because it’s a quitter.”
“How old are you now, Migsy?” Johnny asked as he gently pushed me aside to get some face time with Migsy.
“Jesus Christ boy, don’t you know you’re not supposed to ask a lady a question like that. Where are your manners? Your mama forget to teach you about manners?”
“No ma’am,” Johnny said, the excitement present in his voice just a moment before now disappearing. “She did a terrific job of raising me.”
“Aww fuck,” Migsy said. “I’m sorry about that, Johnny. Sometimes my mouth just runs on without seeking permission from my brain first. Why the hell bring up your mom on a day like this?”
“It’s okay, Migsy. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Sure I did. I meant you shouldn’t ask an old woman how old she is. Good thing for you, I’m not an old woman. I turned 94 two months ago.”
“That’s old, Migsy,” Johnny said with a wink.
“Not too old to kick your ass, son!”
Justine exploded in laughter across the room. She covered her mouth in mock embarrassment
“Who the hell is the hyena? I thought your mom and dad only had two kids. Where’d they hide this one all these years?”
“That’s my wife, Migsy. Her name’s Justine.” Johnny motioned for Justine to come meet Migsy.
“Justine? What the hell kind of name is that? That’s Justin with an e on the end of it. Your parents think they can take any name and make it a girl’s name just by adding an e on the end?”
“Do you think it’s a good idea for someone named Migsy to give anyone a hard time about their name?” Justine asked.