“This is not about Templeton. It’s about my mother. She’s not well and…I don’t think she has a lot of time left. Every time the phone rings, I think this must be it.”
“She’s not well?”
“Cancer. Anyway, you know I’m Jewish, as is my dad. My mother ‘converted,’ but she was raised Episcopalian and now—”
“How’s your father holding up?”
“As well as might be expected. They were a match made in heaven, I think. Whether in yours or Abe’s, I’m not sure. Well, I was going to ask you to see her and…do whatever it is you do.”
“Certainly.”
“It’s been a long time since…well, you know, and I think she feels she might not be allowed to—”
“We’ll be fine.”
“Thank you, Reverend.”
“Blake. Reverend is not—”
“I know, I know, but as I said…okay, and if there is anything I can do to—”
“Well, now that you mention it, there is a little matter of a speeding ticket your young man, Deputy Billingsly, gave me—”
“Sorry, but you’ll have to suborn a magistrate to fix that one.”
“Well then, how about rescuing me from any more theological calisthenics with the good Monsignor.”
“That, I can do. I’m expecting a phone call to pull me out of here. Shall the emergency it will call me to also require the services of a priest?”
“I have no doubt it shall, Sheriff. I can feel it in my bones. Someone, somewhere in the very near future is about to experience a crisis of conscience. Of course, the Church must make herself available.” Fisher grinned. “You won’t forget, will you, Sheriff?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, one more thing. I was looking through my things and discovered something’s missing.”
“What?”
“A gun. I left a message at your office with a woman named Falco.”
Essie, good at logging in messages, not so good at passing them on.
“What kind of gun are we talking about?”
“A .32 caliber Colt automatic.”
“You own a pistol? That seems an odd thing for a minister to own.”
“It was my father’s.”
“You father gave you a .32 Colt?”
“Yeah. I’ve never used it or anything. My mother didn’t want it in the house so I said I’d take it. Is there a problem?”
“Nothing…it’s just that a .32 Colt auto is considered a ladies’ piece, you know?”
“A what? Did you say ladies’?”
“Sorry. The figure of speech predates political correctness. In its day, it meant a pistol more appropriate for a woman to carry than a man—small caliber, short barrel, fits in a purse, and so on—not the sort of thing you’d expect a man to use. Though I did read somewhere that Pretty Boy Floyd used a .32 Colt.”
“Pretty boy…who?”
“Depression era gangster…before your time. Mine too, come to think of it.”
Dunnigan zeroed in on Fisher as they took their seats, intent on continuing their debate. But Blake waved him off with a smile.
“Father Dunnigan,” he said, “enough theology for one night. Let’s talk about more important things—food, fine wine, and who have you got in the World Series?”
Ike found a place card with his name on it and discovered he had been put at the end of the table next to the Gibson drinker. He introduced himself to Ike without betraying any sign that he had recently mistaken him for a waiter.
“Everitt Barstow,” he said and extended his hand. “You must be new to the faculty. I’m Chemistry. This is Antoine Baxter,” he gestured to the dashiki clad man, “and that is Foster Prendergast.” Baxter looked a little embarrassed, and Prendergast jerked his head up and down like a chicken pecking corn.
“Antoine is head of Ethnic Studies and Prendergast is our mathematician. So you are with…?”
“The Picketsville Sheriff’s Department. I’m the sheriff,” Ike said and waited. The reaction was predictable and immediate. Their eyebrows, like six mismatched caterpillars, went up and then down and then reconfigured themselves into carefully crafted neutrality. Synchronized swimming had nothing on those beauties. Everitt Barstow cleared his throat and studied his water glass. Baxter made a sound somewhere between a snort and a grunt. Prendergast simply smiled and waited for more information. Ruth took her place at the head of the table opposite Ike and sat. Her guests followed suit. Ike glanced surreptitiously at his watch. He had forty-five minutes to go before he could expect a call from Sam.
Chapter Seventeen
Sam’s pizza arrived and Bobby, moon eyed and needy, lingered for a few minutes. He would have spent the night if she’d let him, but she gave him a hundred-watt smile and sent him on his way. She chewed absently on her fourth slice of pizza and stared at the screen in front of her. The aroma of mozzarella and pepperoni mixed incongruously with the scent of new linoleum and jailhouse Lysol from down the hall. She studied her notes and realized Krueger’s past activities would probably not produce any more useful information. Except for a few incursions into some import-export firms in San Francisco, he’d limited himself almost exclusively to Ibex and Crane. In fact, he’d visited the site several times, either to confirm his previous data gathering or to explore some more. In any event he did not succeed in going any farther into their system than the development proposal. She tried breaking all the way into it herself just to see what he’d run into. Their website was as secure as any she’d run across, and even though she did breach their wall, she realized most hackers, especially ones like Krueger, couldn’t.
She finished the pizza and began to search his personal files. Her eyebrows pulled together in concentration. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. She began to retrieve deleted files. Some had been written over, but most were intact. Krueger had a large hard drive—plenty of room. He obviously had not considered the possibility his computer might some day be dissected by anyone, certainly not by the police. She restored data and tracked it back to its original location. Some of the files were huge. Pictures probably. When she was sure she had them all, she copied them to a series of discs and set them aside. The clock read eight. Too soon to call Ike. She began to open the files one at a time. The first half dozen were pictures of what she took to be local farms and roads, something to do with the development proposal she guessed. Then came a group of e-mails. Without a sense of who the recipients might be or the context of the exchange they would have to be read later.
Her second computer dinged. She’d set it up to search the Internet for information relating to Walter Krueger. Her genie program let her selectively search any and all available resources on the Internet. It would even probe some secured sites. It couldn’t break in but it could read the site’s indices. She’d do the breaking in. She scanned the files—there were several dozen—and hit the print icon. The laser printer whirred to life and sheets of paper began to pile up.
She turned back to her previous task, a huge file that appeared to be more photos. She rubbed her eyes, stopped, drained her Coke and stood up. Her back ached and she seriously considered quitting for the night. Enough was enough. She stretched her arms and touched the ceiling, then the floor, both with her feet flat and knees straight. She rolled her head in a circle and sat down again. She began to open the last series of pictures. The first one made her wrinkle her nose. The laser printer ceased swishing out paper. The top sheet caught her eye.
***
Ike’s announcement resulted in a quiet fifteen minutes during which he was able to enjoy his dinner. He had no doubt he would be drawn into the conversation eventually. The food was quite good, by Picketsville standards. Molly Gilliam owned the Candlelight Inn south of Lexington and had a small catering business on the side. Her cuisine was mostly Southern, altho
ugh she once made a brief foray into French and had quickly learned that unless you know how to prepare them, and are willing to eat them yourself, you should never serve snails. Garlic and butter can make almost anything palatable, but not everything. The evening was a disaster. Oddly enough, the snails had been harvested locally, thanks to an enterprising soul who’d brought the edible species to Lexington years ago, before the Department of Agriculture began to regulate what it would and would not allow into the country.
Ike had managed to get most of his prime rib disposed of when Barstow turned to him.
“So, Sheriff, would you recommend a career in law enforcement to our students?” Ike couldn’t be sure if Barstow was setting him up, or if the question was sincere.
“Yes and no,” he said. “It’s an iffy proposition at best. Most law enforcement units are still chary about hiring women, though they do so, but there remains a deeply rooted notion that it is not a profession suitable for women. It’s the same sort of prejudice you hear in the armed services and with combat soldiers.”
“And you subscribe to that, I assume?” Baxter said. “How many women do you have on your force, anyway?”
“No I don’t, and I have several in various capacities. One armed.”
“And you give her a bullet like Andy did Barney Fife, I suppose.”
“The woman can shoot the eyes out of a gnat, and drop you with one karate punch,” Ike said. “No, if anybody gets the Fife bullet, it’s me.”
Barstow looked disappointed and tapped his glass with his knife. “It’s time,” he said. “The topic of the evening shall be…?”
“Racism,” Omanaka said.
“No, ethnicity, Omanaka, racism is too narrow,” Baxter said.
“Globalization,” Prendergast offered and bobbed down for some of the few peas still on his plate.
“Scientific adventurism,” Weimar offered.
“By that you mean exactly what, Franz?”
“The arrogant exploration of life in its many forms to exploit discoveries for profit. Look at the genome project, radiated grains, hormone-fed beef.”
“American imperialism is my choice,” Barstow said. “Sheriff, have you any thoughts on the compelling issue of the day? What concerns you most about the decay of our society?”
Ike inspected the company, read the expressions on their faces, expressions that varied from curious to supercilious. Ruth’s sat tight lipped, eyes narrowed, daring him to misbehave.
“Fat men in Speedos,” he said. The company fell silent. Ruth shook her head and shot him a look that, if the proverb held, would kill him. Then Jack Farragut laughed.
“My choice, too,” he said. “It’s symbolic of a self-absorbed but tragically uncritical society. Bravo, Sheriff.” No one followed his lead, and the table fell silent again.
“Dr. Harris,” Barstow said. “As our hostess, we leave the choice to you.”
“I will give our good Sheriff one more chance,” she said. Ike heard the steel in her voice. “I happen to know he can do better.” Ruth glared at Ike. He thought a minute, realized Sam’s call would be coming soon, and therefore relief was on its way.
“The loss of common courtesy, civility and tolerance for contrary views,” he said.
“Explain,” Barstow said.
“Look, when you asked us to come up with topics, each of you selected one that was divisive by its very nature. Each called for choosing up sides—to make assumptions about people, to categorize them into right thinkers and wrong thinkers—stereotyping them and forcing them to one or the other side of your issue. You are either for, or you are against. You affirm a woman’s right to choose or you don’t. Those, thus affirmed, classify those who aren’t as the enemy, as Conservative or Liberal. If, for example, I were to come down on more than one issue in that camp, I will be labeled as part of the Great Right Wing Conspiracy—or the great Left Wing—”
“You are not a believer in conspiracies, I take it?” Barstow interrupted. He had the look of a deer hunter who had an eight-point buck in his crosshairs.
“I believe people conspire. I believe conspiracies exist, but except for those with no moral implications, they generally don’t stand the test of time.”
“You don’t believe there were any shots fired from the grassy knoll?”
“I have no information there were or were not.”
“You really believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone? The sheriff of Picketsville speaks. In your position as Picketsville’s chief law enforcement officer, you have access to information to support that, no doubt?” Barstow had crossed the line and everyone at the table knew it. And in fact, at one time Ike did have access to that very information.
“I believe the probability that Oswald acted alone is no more or less likely than the probability that there were shooters on the knoll,” Ike said. He could feel the heat on his neck. There was an embarrassed silence. Then everyone tried to talk at once. Ike raised his hand.
“You see how it is,” Ike continued. “As you just demonstrated, we polarize our issues and force everyone into camps. Once in them, members then tend to separate themselves even farther as the debate continues. At least one president, among others, said, ‘Those who are not for us, are against us.’ He was quoting Lenin, I think, although I doubt he realized it at the time.
“If we all hold to that premise, eventually we create a polarized society and eventually a society of ‘haters,’ people who despise this president or the one before him, or the one aiming to get elected next. Opponents become objects of disdain and we pull farther and farther apart, pointing self-righteous, accusatory, and sanctimonious fingers at one another.”
“And then,” Fisher interrupted, “any deviation we make from the strict guidelines of the right or left leaves those of us in the middle with no place to go, but certain that however we vote, we will end up supporting one extreme or the other, but not for the reasons they will attach to the victory. Why, people ask, do the voting percentages often hover in the low thirty percent range? Because the middle can’t, in good conscience, bring themselves to endorse either extreme.”
Ike decided he would have to reassess his take on Fisher. “When you say something like ‘scientific adventurism,’ Doctor Weimar,” Ike continued, “you introduce a whole new trigger phrase that requires us to scorn anyone promoting a policy your label implies wrong. Do you see?”
“Well, I think it’s a bit Über menschen of you to use that kind of judgmental language, Sheriff. After all who are you to—”
“Ah, now you get it. Who indeed? My point exactly.”
Ike faced two rows of angry stares. He wasn’t sure if Ruth was with him or against him. He picked up his dinner knife and pointed it at Barstow.
“When I arrived this evening, Doctor Barstow, you barely glanced at me, but since I was wearing dark slacks and a white shirt, you mistook me for a waiter. You handed me your glass assuming I would fetch you a drink. I hope you don’t mind my saying this, but your tone of voice was patronizing. Baxter made the same mistake, but thought it was only fitting that I, as a white man, should have to put up with some of the white privilege arrogance African-Americans have endured for centuries. He’s probably right in that, but it’s beside the point.”
“I have no—”
“Doctor Harris, on the other hand, requested I not wear my uniform tonight. She feared that it typecast me in some people’s minds. Everyone has seen so many Hollywood versions of smarmy southern sheriffs with their mirrored sunglasses and rampant bigotry, that there could never be any real dialogue with me. When I introduced myself to you, that was the reaction I got.”
Dunnigan broke in. “Nicely put, Ike. When I first arrived in this part of the country, not that long ago, I should add, I was told there were three religions—Jews, Christians, and Catholics—”
“Ke
ep pressing the doctrine of Mary as co-redeemer, and they’ll be right,” Fisher muttered.
Dunnigan scowled. “As I was saying, I heard that when I first arrived in this part of the world and still do. Now as to that—”
“We are straying from the task at hand,” Barstow said, trying to reassert his control over the discussion. He fidgeted and looked distressed. Farragut half stood and leaned over the table so that he could see him.
“Doctor Barstow,” he said, “I am new here. I come from the Midwest, from the University of Illinois. Out there we tend to be a little more forgiving of other people’s views, but the sheriff is right. We have a society characterized by language that is either abusive or downright toxic. We sit here in this ivory tower covered by—what is that vine?”
“Virginia creeper,” Prendergast said.
“Wisteria,” Barstow corrected.
“Wisteria, creeper, whatever, and we opine about the state of a world with which many of us have little or no contact. We read books, specialty journals and all the correct newspapers. We discuss issues ad nauseum, but we almost never engage. Monsignor Dunnigan, you spent an interminable twenty minutes discussing an incompressible theological issue with Fisher here. I have no doubt that among theological types, it is a burning issue, perhaps an issue defining the faith position of many in the future as Fisher seems to imply, but do you really think the public cares a rat’s rear end about it? People are engaged in the realities of life while we sit here in academic cotton wool and suppose we’ve been assigned the task of defining our culture.”
Ike’s phone chirruped.
“It’s okay, Sam. I can manage this,” he murmured. Having found an ally, he was ready to launch into a full-scale attack. Fisher stood and looked eagerly at Ike.
“Ike,” Sam said. “This isn’t a rescue call. I have some things you need to see. Maybe they could wait, but since you asked.…Anyway I think you should skip dessert and get down here.” She must have heard the raised voices in the background. “What’s going on up there?”
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