by Gary Gusick
“I guess they love Elvis like everybody else,” said Rita, looking at the group.
“Or maybe they’ve come to take in an assassination,” said Darla. “The question is, why are they sitting together?”
Chapter 24
Showtime
The backstage lights flickered on and off, signaling that they were five minutes from showtime.
Darla caught the stage manager’s eye. He nodded his head. “Okay, bring down number one,” she said into her headset.
“Yes, ma’am,” answered the trooper accompanying the first contestant.
The dressing rooms were at the rear of the auditorium, a two-minute walk to the backstage area. The rooms for contestants one, three, five, and seven were situated on the right corridor, with contestant nine just around the corner. Similarly, contestants number two, four, six, and eight occupied rooms on the left corridor, with contestant ten just around the corner.
From her position backstage, Rita could see down the right corridor, and Darla the same on the left.
“You make visual contact, Rita?” Darla asked through her headset.
“I got eyes on him, Detective,” Rita said.
Darla breathed a small sigh of relief, and another when the contestant and the trooper reached the backstage area. Maybe we’ve scared Riggins off, Darla hoped, as contestant number one took his place and the house lights went down.
The festival committee had done everything they could to maintain a level playing field for the contestants. The ten finalists drew lots to determine the order of their appearance. They were all required to use the same set: an empty stage with plain white backdrop. Each contestant provided his own costume. Most contestants appeared in a replica of one of Elvis’s jumpsuits. Each finalist was to perform two songs of his choosing, so long as the songs had been recorded by Elvis and commercially released. Usually contestants chose a combination of a hard-driving song and a tender ballad. The contestants were required to provide their own prerecorded music track, which the festival engineer would transfer to a master track. There were three judges. Each contestant began his act by stationing himself in the center of a darkened stage. Once he was introduced and the applause died down, a single spotlight would light up and the crowd would get their first glimpse of him.
The lights were off. The theater was dark. “Our first contestant,” said the announcer over the PA system, “from Larchmont Penitentiary, prisoner Number 34287, also known as “Inmate Elvis” Buchman.”
The lights came up revealing the contestant dressed in a black-and-white prison uniform. The audience laughed and applauded as he went into his first song, what else, “Jailhouse Rock.” He drew another huge around of applause at the end, and proceeded to rip off his tearaway prison costume, under which was a bellhop’s costume, and launched into his second song, “Heartbreak Hotel.”
“You got to admit,” said Rita in her headset, “he knows how to work the audience.”
So far, so good, thought Darla. Let’s hope we’re all still laughing at the end of the evening.
The next six contestants all did their thing, with varying degrees of success, and more important, without incident.
Contestant eight, a seven-foot-tall basketball player version of Elvis, had finished his first number, “All Shook Up,” and was in the middle of his second number, “My Way,” a mainstay of Elvis’s Vegas act.
“What do you think?” Darla heard Rita ask over her headset.
“It could be anytime now,” said Darla. “Stay sharp.”
“I’m eyes wide open, Detective,” said Rita. “What I meant was, what do you think of number eight?”
“He’s good,” said Darla, “but really, it was Sinatra’s song.”
The ninth finalist, Eddie Ide, who went by the stage name of Captain Eddie Elvis, stood next to Darla, waiting to take his place on the dark stage. Captain Eddie was attired in a caped white jumpsuit studded with red, white, and blue sequins. Finishing off the look was white pilot’s hat with a winged guitar stitched in gold across the visor.
“Out of curiosity,” asked Darla. “Why Captain? Were you in the armed services?”
“Helicopter in Desert Storm. Now I’m a commercial pilot. I’ve got my own twin-engine Cessna. You know Elvis owned two planes? He called his favorite the Lisa Marie, after his daughter. I bet you’ve seen it up at Graceland.” He gave her his version of the Elvis smile. “You like flying? I could take you up sometime.”
“I’m married,” said Darla. “But I know a lady who might be interested, if you’re into policewomen.”
“Does she have handcuffs?” asked Eddie, winking.
Contestant eight finished the set, receiving the loudest and longest applause of the evening.
“He may be the one,” Rita declared in her headset.
“Our ninth contestant,” the announcer said, “from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, Captain Eddie Elvis!”
Ocean Springs was 310 miles from Tupelo, but Captain Eddie Elvis must have brought half the town with him. The applause was huge.
He tipped his hat to the crowd and got right to it, singing “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” The audience rocked along with him.
“This is Patrolman Garrison. Over,” Darla heard in her headset. Garrison was one of the two Tupelo officers patrolling the building perimeter.
Darla felt her stomach knot up. “Go ahead, Garrison. Over.”
“We have a security breach at the left rear of the building, I checked it ten minutes ago and it was locked. Now it’s unlocked. Over.”
“Shit,” she said under her breath.
A new voice broke in. “This is Patrolman Winston.” Winston was the other patrolman on the perimeter. “I got the same thing on the left rear. Over.”
Riggins was in the building but Darla had no idea which side he was on. “Everybody listen carefully,” she said into her headset. “Riggins is somewhere in the auditorium. Officers Garrison and Winston, step inside the doors and stand guard over the exits. Everybody else maintain your posts. Detective Gibbons and I will conduct a search.”
A state trooper was waiting outside the dressing room of Alan Hailburn, the tenth and final contestant. “Stay inside until I come to get you,” the trooper told Hailburn through the door.
Hailburn had flown down for the contest from Des Moines, Iowa, where he performed five nights a week as a headliner in his own venue. He’d been runner-up last year and contestants were prohibited from competing once they had won. Plus, he had been the audience favorite in both the preliminary and semifinals. As luck would have it, he was tonight’s final performer.
Outside his door, the trooper looked from one end of the hallway to the other, his sidearm drawn.
A man with a beard in a dark suit came running toward him. He was wearing identification around his neck and held it out for the trooper to see. “FBI,” the man said. “We need to move number ten.”
The trooper glanced at the ID. He’d seen FBI ID before. The badge, the insignia, the photo. Everything checked.
“There’s an explosive device in the room. Get him out now. Do you understand?” the FBI agent demanded.
The trooper looked panicked. “Okay, okay. Just let me clear this with the Detective,” he said, letting his weapon drop to the side. “This is trooper ten,” he said clicking on his headset. “Over.”
The FBI agent made a movement like he was putting his badge back in his breast pocket. His hand came out with a Glock with a silencer on the end, pointed at the trooper’s chest.
“What is it, Ten?” the trooper heard Darla ask.
“Say ‘everything is fine,’ ” said the agent.
The trooper stared at the gun pointed at him. He had no choice but to do as he was told. “I, ah, just wanted to let you know, everything is fine here.”
“Stay off the air unless it’s an emergency,” said Darla. “I’m clearing rooms. I should be down your way in a couple of minutes. Watch out for Riggins. He could be in disguise. Over and ou
t.”
Riggins knew he wasn’t supposed to kill the innocent, but rules were made to be broken. He moved his gun to the trooper’s head in one swift motion and fired. One shot was all it took. The trooper slumped to the ground.
Riggins knocked on Hailburn’s door. “It’s time, Elvis,” he said.
Hailburn cracked the door. “Where’s the trooper?” he asked nervously. “I was told he’d stay with me throughout the contest.”
“He’s been redeployed,” Riggins said, showing Hailburn the ID through the crack in the door. “I’ll take you where you need to go.”
Hailburn opened the door. Riggins took hold of his arm by the elbow and led him out into the hall. A second later, Hailburn felt a gun at his ribs. He looked over his shoulder and saw the trooper on the floor.
“Make a right at the hallway,” Riggins said.
“Where are you taking me?” Hailburn asked, terrified.
“Where do you think, Elvis? You’re going home.”
Chapter 25
The Unveiling
90 SECONDS LATER
As soon as she turned the corner, Darla saw the downed trooper, blood pooling onto the cement floor under his head. She raced up to him and checked for a pulse, hoping he was still alive. Nothing.
Hailburn’s dressing room door was open and Hailburn was gone.
“We have a code red, officer down,” Darla said into her headset. “Alan Hailburn, contestant ten, has been abducted, most likely by the suspect, Daniel Riggins. Secure all the auditorium exits. Tell the other contestants to lock themselves in. Use the building schematic you were given and get back to me each time a location is cleared. Riggins is armed. Follow hostage protocol. Keep this line open except when you’re reporting in to me. Rita, notify the show’s announcer in the booth. I’ll set up a command station backstage. You can find me there.”
Rita placed a call to the announcer’s booth. Unfortunately, he was introducing Hailburn and didn’t pick up. “And now for our final performer,” he bellowed over the PA system, “contestant number ten, from Branson, Missouri, Alan Hailburn.”
The curtain opened, as it had nine times before, to a dark stage. The applause began and grew louder and louder as the seconds passed. Hailburn’s fame preceded him. He was the performer everybody had been waiting for. Gradually, the applause died down and the lights came up on an empty stage.
Twenty seconds passed and the nervous coughs started. Then came whispers. Foot stomping. Catcalls. After thirty seconds, a video unexpectedly began playing, filling up the stage’s white backdrop.
On the video, a man smiled and waved at the audience. He wore a pink 1950s-style rayon shirt, light gray slacks, with black pinstriping down the side of the legs, and of course, a pair of blue suede shoes. “My name is Carl Perkins,” he said, and indeed Riggins’s resemblance to the singing star was remarkable.
There were boos and a few more catcalls, but for the most part the audience reacted with quiet shock, looking at each other, then back to the video, unsure of what was coming next.
“As you can see,” Riggins said, “I’m not a contestant tonight. I’m here ’cause I want this audience, this state, this country to know who wrote ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and made it into one of the most famous songs in rock history. The songwriter was the originator of rockabilly and that would be Carl Perkins.” Riggins cleared his throat. “Me,” he said, “Carl Perkins.” He took a bow.
A few people in the audience politely clapped their hands, as if out of respect for the real Carl Perkins.
Riggins continued. “What you might not know is, Elvis Presley stole that song from me. He was a fraud from the start.”
The booing started in earnest now and did not stop as the video continued.
“It’s a fact,” Riggins started. “Look it up in the history books. I made ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ famous. Elvis stole my song. He’s a phony, a thief. I am the King of Rock and Roll.” Riggins began singing Perkins’s version of “Blue Suede Shoes.”
Somebody threw a ball-like object at the stage. It ricocheted off the back wall.
By this time the security team had been alerted to the situation and moved to block the exits. Following protocol, they drew their nightsticks.
The video recording continued with Riggins dressed as Carl Perkins rocking his way through the song. Riggins had a decent voice, but nothing more. He did not sound like Carl Perkins.
“Take your seats. Please take your seats,” the announcer in the booth implored the audience, over the music and video he was powerless to stop. Some people followed the order and sat down. Most remained standing—unwilling to sit but not ready to rush the doors. For the moment, the sight of the guards blocking the exits was enough to keep them where they were.
One of the backstage crew finally located the source of the video: a rear screen projector behind the stage. He reached up and turned off the projector—but not before Riggins had finished the song, saluting the audience, taking a bow, and blowing kisses. The screen faded to black as though the whole fiasco were just part of the evening’s entertainment.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” another voice on the PA said, “this is Collins Duckworth, festival director. I’m sorry about the disruption. If you folks could kindly just sit tight. We’re working to clear this matter up. Mr. Hailburn, our final contestant…We’re hoping he’ll be here in another few minutes.”
A chorus of boos followed. The audience yelled and shook fists at the guards.
“Let us out of here!”
“You don’t have any right to keep us.”
“You’re a moron, Duckworth!” yelled Kendall.
“Sorry, we’re going to have to ask you to remain seated for the time being while we go through security procedures,” Duckworth said. “We’re just being cautious. I promise you, you’re safe. Just bear with us.”
“I’ll sue their ass!” yelled an old lady in a tight dress. In her hand was a pair of panties she’d intended to throw at Hailburn.
Darla made her way backstage from Hailburn’s dressing room. She had a schematic of the auditorium pulled up on her iPad and was marking off each area of the sweep as it was cleared.
The well-coordinated security operation took less than five minutes. Every inch of the auditorium, as well as a three-block perimeter, had been searched but to no avail: Hailburn and Riggins were gone.
Darla had Rita send out an APB, in the hopes that they’d catch Riggins before he got out of Tupelo. Darla doubted they’d be successful: Riggins had been two steps ahead of them from the beginning. She called Duckworth from a backstage phone. “Open the doors and let people out,” she said. “The threat to the audience is passed, if there ever was one.”
Duckworth immediately got on the PA. “I’m sorry,” he said, but “Mr. Hailburn will not be appearing tonight. He, ah…Something came up.”
“Is he dead?” someone from the audience yelled.
“Everything is just fine,” Duckworth said. “But, ah, we’re going to take an hour intermission here and then we’ll return with results…uh, later.”
There were more complaints and one or two threats as the audience headed to the exits and filed into the street, a few stopping to ask the guards how they could get a refund.
On his way out, Hardy Lang recognized one of the Tupelo officers guarding the doors. “How you doing, Jimmie boy? We ain’t socialized since you testified against me in court.”
“Doing fine, Mr. Lang,” the officer said.
Hardy poked J. B. Caulder in the ribs. “If I had a dollar for every cop that testified against me in court, I’d be a rich man.”
“You already are a rich man,” said Caulder.
At another exit, a police officer held the door open for Kendall and her escort. She turned to the officer and said, “Tell that ding-dong, Collins Duckworth, he has shit for brains. Bless his heart.”
—
As the last of the audience was exiting, an ashen-faced Duckworth arrived at Darla’s post bac
kstage. “Have you checked everywhere?” he asked.
“Everywhere,” said Darla, nodding at Rita, standing at her side.
“You’re sure, they’re not hiding somewhere?” asked Duckworth. “There are all kinds of places, closets, storage areas.”
“The search was very thorough,” said Darla.
“This can’t be,” said Duckworth. “It just can’t be.”
Darla looked at her partner. “Tell him, Rita,” she said. “I know you want to be the one to say it.”
“Sorry, Mr. Duckworth,” Rita said. “Elvis has left the building.”
Chapter 26
An Explosive Situation
Darla knew. There was only one place Riggins would take his captive. Fortunately Graceland was under heavy guard and the drive from Tupelo would take him more than an hour and a half. Darla called the Mississippi Highway Patrol to set up a roadblock southeast of Holly Springs, on Highway 78, midway between Tupelo and Memphis. However, Riggins had at least a fifteen-minute head start and there were dozens of back roads and side streets that would get him to Graceland. If he made it there, he’d face a security detail now amassing around Elvis’s estate.
Even though Uther had not identified Riggins on any Graceland security tapes, Darla was sure he had visited the site, studied the layout, and had his every move carefully planned out.
Darla put the cherry top on the Prius and she and Rita set out in pursuit. The highway patrol that set up the roadblock outside Holly Springs was under orders to contact Darla if they encountered Riggins. When a half hour went by and she hadn’t heard from them, she knew that Riggins was carving out his own route to Graceland.
Entering the outskirts of Memphis, Darla got a call from Memphis police chief Willie Paulson, who was serving as the OIC for the combined task force that was guarding Graceland. She put the call on speakerphone so Rita could hear, too.
“The son of a bitch got in,” Chief Paulson said.