The Great Crime Spike: A Dystopian Thriller Novel (Liberty Down Book 1)

by Eric M Hill

  Dr. Anderson’s flight plan was to Walla Walla Regional Airport, Washington. Agent Alvarez and the DIGO team connected the dots. Walla Walla and its booming metropolis of two suburbs was a whopping forty-five thousand people. It was several hours east of Portland, Oregon and several hours southwest of Seattle. It was known for its sweet onions and wineries. Agent Alvarez noted wryly that a man worth hundreds of billions of dollars wasn’t going to Walla Walla for either sweet onions or wine.

  There were however, thousands of acres of national forests a couple of hours to the east in Idaho. But if Idaho was the destination, why not just fly into Idaho? No, the wayward doctor wasn’t doing a misdirect into some isolated Idaho forest. His destination was Walla Walla.

  Washington State Penitentiary was in the small city of Walla Walla. It was the second largest state prison and had a court approved capacity to house 2,200 inmates; it had 4,000, and had been forced by the courts several times to release prisoners by the hundreds because the chronic overcrowding was considered cruel and unusual punishment.

  Its guards were regularly killed by prisoners. Its prisoners were regularly killed by guards. Bloody riots were common, and the warden was famous for testifying before the state legislature that he was tired of the situation and was open for anything, to include assembly line use of the guillotine on prisoners. Plus, the DIGO team had found several pictures on the Worldnet of Dr. Anderson and Warden Peterson at the same events. Anderson knew the warden. He and the warden were going to use the experimental drug on prisoners!

  Agent Alvarez and his DIGO team preempted the doctor and beat him to Walla Walla Regional Airport. The airport was small and provided little in the way of cover. So they prepositioned themselves in the parking lot and along the route he would take.

  An agent at the airport surreptitiously watched and relayed the movements of Dr. Anderson as he exited the plane and made his way to a waiting black SUV for the presumed ride less than five miles away down U.S. Highway 12 west to the Washington State Penitentiary.

  Agent Alvarez watched the live feed to his phone with a sick feeling rumbling in his gut. He’d be able to stop him today…at this prison, but what about tomorrow and the day after? There were hundreds of days and probably just as many jails and prisons that would be more than happy to let him try out his experimental drug on their prisoners.

  Agent Alvarez hardly knew what he was going to do if the scientist rebuffed him again. He could shadow him every place he went in the prison, but for how long? He could put the warden on notice that he knew what they were up to. But what about the nation’s other 7,499 jails and prisons? Was he going to warn all of them they were being watched?

  What was it that Judge Rhinard had said? There’s a lot of people out there—some in very high places—who are so afraid of what’s happening in our country that they’re ready to try something other than the Constitution.

  Agent Alvarez knew he had but one path to success: convince Dr. Anderson that he was on the wrong side, that he was becoming like President Cuning. “Lights,” he said to his team.

  Two cars behind and one car in front of Dr. Anderson’s vehicle put their lights on the hoods. Dr. Anderson’s vehicle immediately slowed and came to a stop on the right. The driver’s window went down.

  Agent Alvarez alone exited his car, holding up his badge as he neared. Anderson would be angry enough at being followed by a government agent. Who knew what he’d do if three or four of them surrounded the vehicle.

  “How can I help you?”

  “I’m Agent Alvarez. I’m with the DIGO. I’d appreciate it if you’d allow me to speak with Dr. Anderson.”

  “Who?”

  Agent Alvarez looked at the man with narrowed eyes. He wouldn’t risk further provoking Dr. Anderson by mentioning his special authorization from Judge Rhinard unless he absolutely had to. “Sir, this is an extremely important and time critical matter or I would not have flown from Maryland to talk to Dr. Anderson.”

  “I bet,” said the man jovially. “But who’s Dr. Anderson, and why’d you stop me?”

  Agent Alvarez had had enough. “Dr. Anderson,” he said, stretching his neck to look in the back seat. “What the…?” He leapt to the passenger handle. “Open the door! Open the door now!”

  “Alright. Don’t have a stroke. Saint Mary’s may not have a bed for you.”

  The door clicked and Agent Alvarez pulled hard on the door. There was no one in the back seat. Anderson had disappeared. “Where’s Anderson?” he yelled. He ran to the other side of the SUV. He dropped to his belly and looked underneath. He snatched open the door opposite the driver. “Where is he? I saw him get in this vehicle. Now where is he?”

  The driver looked at the frantic agent. “Mr., I may have spoken too soon. I am sure Saint Mary’s got a bed for you. And if they don’t, Comprehensive does. They do mental health. I think they got one on Kelly Place, right here in Walla Walla. I wouldn’t put it off if I were you.”

  Agent Alvarez’ eyes were fiery. He marched around the front of the SUV without taking his glare off the man. “Why you son of a—” He froze at the open passenger door.

  The man’s right hand was on his lap. His fingers were wrapped around a gun. It wasn’t pointed at him, but it didn’t have to be to communicate loud and clear. But just in case he was hard of hearing, the man said, “Mister, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  Agent Alvarez took a half step backward. The other agents were now approaching the vehicle. He motioned them back. “I’m sorry,” he said to the man. “I didn’t mean—” He looked again at the empty seat. “I saw Dr. Anderson get in this vehicle. We saw Dr. Anderson get in this vehicle.”

  “Uh huh,” said the man.

  “Where’s Dr. Anderson? Where’d he go?” said one of the two female agents.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you’re satisfied that there’s no one in the back seat, I’d appreciate it if you’d close my door.”

  “You mind popping the back so we can check the tire compartment?” asked the other male agent.

  “Did all of you see this Dr. Anderson get in my vehicle?” They all said yes. “I’ll open it if all of you promise to stop doing drugs. And check the backseat again for any hidden compartments. You never know where Dr. Anderson may be hiding,” the man snickered.

  They finished checking the vehicle and watched in stunned silence as it rolled away. Dr. Anderson had disappeared. Where was he?

  Chapter 31

  Dr. Anderson was in Austin, Texas.

  His holography technology was one of the many secrets he had not released to the public. Presently, the closest the government would get to this secret would be when he had them surveilling a holographic image of himself. The technology had allowed him to send their army of government snoopers to Walla Walla, Washington while he set up his temporary laboratory at the Austin City Jail.

  “You said you wanted to start with the worst of the worst, and somebody who’s guilty as sin and swears he’s not,” said Chief King. “There he is. Charlie “The Basher” Johnson.”

  The man’s small size was in contrast to his classification as worst of the worst. His missing height and weight were accentuated as he stood between the two muscled guards who both were two or three inches above six feet.

  Dr. Anderson and Charlie locked eyes as the man shuffled his shackled feet forward. The only reason Anderson didn’t feel revulsion at the predator’s wide smile was because he’d stopped feeling anything about predators. Sure, there was hatred. Intense hatred. But like boiling water that changes its form to steam without actually going out of existence, his hatred now looked like emotionless functionality. One did not have to consciously hate a roach to step on it or a rat to snap its neck in a trap. He simply did it because roaches and rats demanded extermination.

  The guards put the prisoner between a long, wide table and a chair and pushed down on his shoulders. The man sat across from Anderson. “So you the man who got me out of the hole
.”

  “It appears so.”

  “They say they gone pick me up somethin’ from a fast food joint, too, for talkin’ to you. I would shake yo’ hand and thank you, but that’s kinda hard to do with my hands behind my back.”

  “Tell me about the women you killed.”

  “Ain’t killed no women.”

  Tell me about the women you raped and didn’t kill.”

  “Ain’t raped no women, either.”

  “Then why are you in jail?”

  “Lots of innocent people in jail.

  “So you’re innocent?”

  “I’m not sayin’ I’m an innocent person.” He smiled and rocked his head to the left and right. “All God’s children sin. Right? Yeah, I’m a sinner, too, but I ain’t raped and killed nobody.”

  “They’ve got a lot of evidence that says otherwise.”

  “Who’s they?” Charlie asked, unimpressed. “I ain’t never met they. Unless they’s the people who locked me up.”

  “Not important,” said Anderson. “Do you know who Michelle Henderson was?”

  “She the lady they say I killed.”

  “She’s one of them. They found you in her house sleeping after she was raped and murdered.”

  “I told these people what happened. Ain’t nobody want to hear a brotha. It’s like what I say don’t matter. Everybody just want to say what they want to say and let that be it.”

  “What you say does matter. That’s why I’m here. Let’s hear it.”

  A look of frustration came to Charlie’s face. “You serious, man?” he asked rhetorically. “I done said this crap a thousand times.” He looked at Anderson and shook his head. “Y’all killin’ me, man. Alright for the last freakin’ time. I was sleepwalkin’, man. Lot of people kill people when they sleepin’. My lawyer told these people that.”

  “That you raped Michelle and turned her head into mush with the hammer you brought with you?” Anderson’s voice was flat.

  “Naw, man. Not that I did it. He said if I did it, it was because I was sleepwalking. He told these people what it was.”

  “And that was?”

  “Homicidal sobulism…or somethin’ like that.”

  “Homicidal somnambulism.”

  “Whatever man. If you know what it is, why you asking me?”

  “And you raped and murdered the other six women—with that same hammer—while you were sleepwalking.” Anderson’s hatred had crept into his tone.

  “Man, forget you! I just came here ‘cause it got me out the hole and they said they gone get me somethin’ to eat from the outside.”

  “Charlie, I brought you something from the outside. Something from Michelle.”

  Chapter 32

  “What you mean you got somethin’ from Michelle?” The prisoner pushed back in his chair in alarm.

  Dr. Anderson looked at Chief King. “You’ll find out soon enough. One last question.”

  The Basher was through with this interview. He went to rise. One of the guards slapped a heavy hand on his shoulder and put his mouth to his ear and shouted, “Prisoner, sit down!”

  The prisoner wisely planted his butt back in the chair.

  Dr. Anderson continued. “I assume that you are aware of the Saxon Rule.” This meant nothing to Charlie. “Of course,” said Anderson, noting the prisoner’s dumbfounded expression. “I’m speaking of the fifth district U.S. Appeals Court decision that says prisoners who have not admitted to culpability may be considered for early release from prison when their continued restraint conflicts with the letter or spirit of Amendment Six and Amendment Eight of the Constitution.”

  “What that mean?”

  “Well, I paraphrased the Honorable Hubert Saxon. But basically what it means, as apparently every violent criminal except you have discovered, is that if they plead not guilty and keep their mouths shut, they may be released early when our idiot courts decide that their constitutional rights are being violated.

  “Things like having to wait too long for a trial, or overcrowding, or harsh treatment, or cruel punishment, or running out of French vanilla ice cream, or failing to give you regular manicures and pedicures. A thousand and one things our federal imperial lords come up with.”

  “Oh, you talkin’ ‘bout that,” Charlie smiled. “Harold Saxon’s the dude who came up with that rule? I like that dude.”

  “I don’t like him,” said Anderson. “And I don’t like you.” He looked at Chief King. “Take this predator to the lab. He’s exactly what I’m looking for to start the cleansing.

  ***

  The room they took Charlie “The Basher” Johnson to wasn’t a traditional laboratory. In fact, it wasn’t a laboratory at all. It was a killing room.

  Charlie had never been accused of being bright. As a young child, he was teased as being stupid. Even his mother was convinced he was stupid, and she regularly told him so. In middle school and the two years he visited high school (when he wasn’t in juvenile hall), the chorus of voices telling him he was stupid grew. And his small frame encouraged his tormentors to deliver their taunts with physical beatings and other degrading assaults—some of them sexual.

  Charlie knew he was stupid. Why else would everyone call him stupid and treat him as though he was stupid if he were not stupid? But he wasn’t so stupid as not to know he was in a kind of trouble he had never been in before—and he had been in a lot of trouble.

  Charlie was totally naked and strapped snugly to something like a gurney that had a long, thick arm that came from a large machine. The gurney stood him straight up. His arms were fastened to his sides and his ankles touched one another. A hard, plastic sleeve was on both sides of his face preventing him from turning his face left or right. A plastic band that went across his forehead prevented him from sliding his head out of the sleeves. A device stretched both his eyelids open. A stream of tears poured out. These crackers up to no good, he thought.

  Austin City Jail was bad. Solitary confinement in the hole was worse. But King and his gangstas had never done him like this, he thought. Yet this wasn’t the main reason for Charlie’s alarm. What was terrifying the serial murderer were all those white folk’s eyeballs staring at him like something dramatic was about to happen.

  “What y’all doin’ to me? Why you lookin’ at me like that?” he yelled.

  None of the seven men said a word. Neither did the one woman. The eyeballs that focused on the predator with barely a blink among them belonged to powerful and influential people. Two of them belonged to Wendy Shuman, the Travis county district attorney. Her left eye was still bloodshot red from the beating she had suffered when she had been robbed.

  The others belonged to Gregory Mitzer, the San Antonio Chief of Police; Steven Yancey, the Houston Chief of Police; Bill Bentley, the Dallas Chief of Police; Kenny Marshall, Chairman of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice (his sister-in-law had been raped and murdered only days ago and he had attended her funeral earlier today); and John Roussard, Mayor of Austin, whose teenage daughter had barely escaped being gang raped months ago, but hadn’t been fortunate enough to escape the rough fondling and probing, invasive hands of the boys who’d attacked her.

  And besides those of Dr. Anderson, the last two eyeballs belonged to the only non-Texan in the room, Jake Peterson, the warden at the Washington State Penitentiary. Charlie would have died of fright had he known that one of the cameras in the room was live streaming this event to Governor Richardson.

  “Y’all can’t kill me,” Charlie screamed in a pathetic lament. “I ain’t done nothin’ wrong. It ain’t right. I ain’t even been to trial. Just ‘cause I’m in jail don’t mean I don’t have no rights. Will y’all please listen to me?”

  Dr. Anderson’s face was stone. He left the small crowd and stood a few feet from the predator. “Adjust,” he directed the machine. The gurney slowly turned backwards ninety degrees and locked into place. Anderson looked down at the predator. “My daughter didn’t do anything wrong. She only wanted to go shopping,
and you raped and killed her in a parking lot in broad daylight.”

  Charlie’s whimpering stopped. His eyeballs pushed sideways to see the man looking down at him. “I killed yo’ daughter? Man, I ain’t raped and killed nobody in no parkin’ lot? You got the wrong dude, man. You got the wrong dude.”

  “No, you’re the right one,” Anderson said softly. He took a pair of eyeglasses out of an inside pocket and placed them on the predator’s face.

  Chief King had provided him with two vials of the predator’s blood. Anderson used it to program the machine and to create a glass lens that was birthed during third gear contemplations. Properties within the lens would both manipulate data entering the glass, and subsequently cause the retina to process and present the received data in such a way that the new brain cells Anderson had discovered would stimulate nonchemical communication among themselves, then to other cells that would do the work of self-elimination.

  The gurney’s arm retracted, pulling the predator sideways under a white top six feet above that was shaped like half a boiled egg. Going across the smooth bottom of the half-egg was a large smart screen with capabilities that would have thoroughly baffled the world’s greatest physicists and molecular biologists.

  Charlie was sobbing like a baby as he looked through the clear glasses up at the screen above. “Man, what y’all doin’ to me?”

  “I told you that I had something for you from Michelle.” Nothing but crying from Charlie. “The screen above you is from Michelle and Abby. It’s from Charlotte and Lynn and Tonya. It’s from Rachel and Heather and those we don’t know about whom you’ve raped and murdered. It’s from my daughter, Emerald.”

  “I ain’t killed nobody in no parking lot,” the predator said between sobs.

  “It’s from every girl and woman in Austin who has been assaulted, and from every girl and woman who predators like you have filled with fear. They can’t walk safely down the street. They can’t sleep soundly at night.” He paused. “They can’t go shopping.”

  “Y’all gone let this man kill me?” Charlie screamed desperately.