by John Clausen
Jonas was still working on his draft beer when Furman popped back into his view.
“Kaiser Bill went up the hill,” Jonas told him.
“I know where they’re hiding the news gal,” Furman told him triumphantly. “Didn’t even take a minute.”
“Fifty pounds of chicken feed,” Jonas replied quietly.
“You’re gonna have to tell the cops,” Furman told him, getting a vacant stare in return. "Go find Eugene Hornsby and tell him they’re at the old Hans Knutsen farm out off Highway 5. Tell him to hurry up.”
Furman followed Jonas to the deputy’s office, but they found nobody there. Furman considered having Jonas leave a note for Hornsby, but could only imagine what kind of gibberish that would produce.
“Anybody else you can tell?” he asked Jonas.
“Yep,” Jonas replied and walked back toward the bar. He’d seen Charlie Taylor’s pickup truck and knew that Charlie was ready to give him a ride home. As Jonas climbed into the truck, Furman transported himself to the center of the truck seat between Jonas and Charlie.
“Tell him,” Furman urged.
“News gal is at Knutsen’s,” Jonas said to Charlie, who assumed this was just part of Jonas’s repertoire of outlandish statements.
“NEWS GAL IS AT KNUTSEN’S,” Jonas repeated louder.
“Okay…what new gal?” Charlie was adept at defusing Jonas’ outbursts.
“Tell him you need to go to that trailer by the Big Hungry,” Furman urged.
“Big Hungry, Big Hungry, Big Hungry,” Jonas intoned.
“Tell him plain, Jonas.” Furman was getting a little desperate and more than a little frustrated with his non-deceased mouthpiece. “Tell him you want to go to the Big Hungry project trailer. Say it just like that.”
The fog that resided pretty much permanently in Jonas’ brainpan lifted momentarily and he looked squarely at Charlie Taylor.
“I want to go to the Big Hungry project trailer,” he said clearly.
“Okay…we can swing by there on the way home. Any particular reason?”
“Labor Day tomorrow.”
Chapter 31
“Tell you what I’m going to do,” Claire Norgard told the larger of the two kidnappers. "You let us go. We walk back to civilization and you guys go back to wherever you came from…and we won’t tell anybody about this.”
“Right, lady. Do I look that stupid?”
Claire bit back the response that was on her tongue.
“I’m telling you, your friend the senator has probably already talked to the cops. They’ll be here any minute.”
The smaller – and probably slightly smarter – of the two kidnappers looked at his partner. “You know, she’s probably right. I don’t trust the guy…do you?”
“Hell, no…but we can’t just turn ‘em loose.”
“Sure we can. Wipe the joint down for fingerprints, cut ‘em loose, and get the hell out of here before this shit rain gets any worse. Just our word against theirs and, besides, by the time they walk out of here, we’ll be halfway out of the state.”
“I say we don’t cut ‘em loose. Just leave ‘em in those chairs. They’ll work themselves free in a while, but it’ll give us a bigger head start.”
The two began cleaning up fingerprints and removing their stuff. Claire was sure they couldn’t remove all of the evidence of their stay in the house, but kept her opinion to herself.
Twenty minutes later, the two kidnappers left the farmyard. Before he left the house, the smaller kidnapper stopped to look at Claire a moment. He reached down and pulled a piece of the tape loose from one arm. “That was a hell of an elbow,” he said, winking at her. As soon as he walked out the door, she began tearing at the tape with her teeth.
At approximately the same time that Claire was gnawing her way to freedom, Charlie Taylor and Jonas were walking into Gene Hornsby’s office carrying the backup camera Pete Morten had left at the scene of the interview. Hornsby and Guthrie had returned a few minutes earlier from their fruitless search of the countryside.
“Got something you might want to look at,” Charlie Taylor said to Hornsby.
“What you got?”
“Just take a look…then you tell me.”
Taylor handed over the camera and showed Hornsby how to review the tape it contained. Pete Morten had been right. It was a wide-angle shot recording the whole kidnapping, including Senator Cameron’s part in it.
“Where’d you find this, Charlie?”
“Out by that construction trailer at the rec project. Old Jonas took me right to it. No clue how he knew where it was…but here it is. Looks bad for the senator, huh?”
“Be better if we knew where they took her.”
“Hans Knutsen’s old place,” Charlie Taylor said, “Least that’s what Jonas says. Also no clue why he’d know that…but he was right about the camera. I’m thinking it might be good to check it out.”
Hornsby grabbed a short-barreled Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun out of his broken gun cabinet and handed it to Charlie Taylor.
“You know how to use one of these?”
“If I have to.”
“Good. I’m deputizing you as of right now. Let’s go see what we can do.”
The deputy pointed at Guthrie. “You stay put here. We’ll let you know how it turns out.”
“Not likely,” Guthrie snapped picking up the video camera and following Hornsby and Taylor out the door and climbing into the back seat of Hornsby’s car. “This looks like the perfect place for a guy like me.”
Hornsby didn’t feel like arguing, so he shrugged and the three took off to save Claire from the kidnappers. They’d gone about eight miles toward the deserted Hans Knutsen farm when Hornsby saw two people walking toward them on the gravel road.
Guthrie rolled down a window as the car stopped beside Claire and Pete. “You guys want a ride…or you just out for the exercise?”
“Ride,” Claire said as she opened the door and piled in beside him. “Anybody seen the senator?”
Guthrie handed over the camera. “Pretty soon everybody’s going to see him.”
“Those two boys that grabbed you still out at Knutsen’s?” Hornsby asked.
“Probably all the way to St. Paul by now,” Claire said.
“Okay, I’m gonna need a statement from you.”
“Any chance we can get a couple beers first?” Pete asked.
Once they arrived at Hornsby’s office, Guthrie trotted over to Nolen’s to get a six-pack for the two kidnap victims.
Chapter 32
The attempt to capture State Senator Boyd Cameron did not go well.
The first thing that Deputy Eugene Hornsby did was call the Wallace County courthouse in Porterville and ask for a warrant based on the video evidence, tape transcripts, and the reports filed by Claire Norgard and Peter Morten. Getting the warrant was the easy part.
Almost before the ink on the warrant had dried, one of Cameron’s loyal supporters called the senator’s office and informed his assistant that the police were on the way with paperwork in hand. Hornsby had intended to seize the senator’s files as well as the senator himself.
By the time Hornsby arrived to serve the warrant, the object of his visit had shredded forty pounds of documents and decamped for points unknown, leaving a very confused and frightened assistant behind. Hornsby carried off several boxes of files that had escaped shredding, knowing full well that there was almost no chance that they contained any useful evidence. He also assumed that the senator was only a few hours by airplane from the Cayman Islands or some other exotic offshore locale that specialized in protecting ill-gotten gains.
His next visit was to the law offices of Odell Scrum.
Scrum, unlike the senator, was sitting calmly in his office when the deputy arrived. Scrum’s secretary showed him in immediately.
“Hello, deputy. How may I be of assistance?”
“I’m looking for Senator Cameron, Odell,” Hornsby said, feeling certain that he was
about to get a masterful runaround.
“The senator is both a friend and a client, Eugene. May I ask what you want from him?”
“Sure…I’d like to put some handcuffs on your client and arrest him for a handful of crimes.”
“What exactly are the charges?”
“Kidnapping’s probably the biggest one, although it looks like there could be several more."
“As the senator’s attorney, I’d like to know what you are basing those charges on.”
“Video tape of the crime and eyewitness reports.”
“Well…that doesn’t sound good, does it?”
Eugene thought that Scrum sounded just a little too condescending and confident.
“I’d also like to have you come down to my office to discuss some other things,” he told the attorney. “It involves another client of yours, Harlen Ackerman, and some bribes that apparently were given to Senator Cameron. You know anything about that?”
“I’m afraid anything to do with Mr. Ackerman’s activities is privileged. I can’t tell you anything…but I’ll be glad to come to your office whenever you wish.”
Hornsby knew that the transcribed tapes of Ackerman and Scrum talking about the bribes were nearly useless as evidence. Anyone could have made up the conversation and typed it up. Even the actual tapes would not be acceptable as legal evidence because of the way they were obtained. Still, he made an appointment with Scrum for the following day.
Chapter 33
Harlen Ackerman finally opened his eyes on a Sunday morning. The first thing he noticed was his wife Rita sitting on a chair by the window.
Rita had skipped church, as she had every Sunday since Harlen had been shot and brought to the hospital. Neither Harlen nor his wife had serious religious leanings. Years ago he’d read the writings of Thomas Paine and decided that he was a deist, that is he believed in some sort of higher power…but he had no faith that mankind had gotten it straight. Rita still went to church, but mostly for the social aspects of it. She enjoyed sitting with the other ladies in the community, could tolerate the less than inspiring oratory that emanated from the pulpit. Because she felt no particular pull toward any one denomination, she would switch between churches each week. On a given Sunday, you might find her perched on a Baptist pew only to be in the clutches of the Catholics the next week. Harlen once asked her which one she preferred and she told him, “Can’t really say, Honey. The more I hear, the more I think you might have the right idea.”
During her vigil at the hospital, Rita sometimes took a few minutes from keeping Harlen company and drifted down to the little hospital chapel. When she prayed there, she was careful not to direct her missives to any specific religion. Her pleas, once she was on her knees in front of the altar, were not really the hey-God-you-gotta-help-me variety. They were more just a heartfelt process of hoping. She went to the chapel because she felt it might be more effective to do her hoping in a place specifically designed for such activities.
Harlen wanted to ask for some water, but when he tried to speak, it came out as a quiet squawk. Rita heard him and immediately called the nurse. She’d been warned that coming out of a coma such as the one Harlen had experienced could be tricky and should be attended by a doctor or nurse when and if it happened.
Both the doctor and the nurse arrived quickly, did what they needed to do for a patient in Harlen’s condition, and then left Rita alone with her husband. If he had difficulty, they told her, she was to call for help immediately. They also told her that he might have problems talking, which turned out to be completely untrue. As soon as they left the room, Harlen began talking easily with his wife.
“Remember those Jake and Ronnie stories?” he asked her.
“You want to hear some stories, Honey?”
“No, but I saw old Grandma Bamma while I was out.”
When Harlen Ackerman was a small boy, his father used to sit in bed with him and tell him stories before the youngster faded off to sleep. Mostly these stories were about a pair of anthropormorphized mice named Jake and Ronnie. Little Harley, as he was known in those days, would go to sleep with images of sword-carrying mice doing battle against ravaging cats and other forces of evil. One of the reoccurring characters in the stories, however, was a human…an old woman named Grandma Bamma who had magical powers. She could make buildings float loose from their foundations and helped the gallant rodents in their quests for justice and better cheese. Little Harley formed a mental picture of Grandma Bamma that lasted him throughout his long and very busy life. It wasn’t something he thought about every day, but if someone said the words Grandma Bamma to him, or even just Bamma, he would immediately picture the old woman from his father’s stories. In his mind, she was very short, with a tiny body, bright white hair, and an amused twinkle in her eye. She was like no one he had ever actually seen in his whole life.
He was quite surprised, therefore, to see Grandma Bamma sitting in the corner of his hospital room. She was exactly what he always imagined she’d be like in person…except for her shoes, which were sensible enough in their construction – flat heels, sturdy leather, and a nice non-slip sole – but they were bright red. In fact, they almost glowed.
“You dreamed about Grandma Bamma?” Rita asked. She was familiar with the stories and had suggested to Harlen that he record the stories and make them into children’s books. Harlen had refused, saying that they were something between him and his father and not to be shared with everybody on the planet.
“Guess you could call it a dream…sure seemed real.”
“What happened in the dream?”
“She said she’d come by to see how I was doing,” he answered. “Said I’d been shot by an angry, confused man. From what the doctor just told me, I guess she had it about right.”
“Nobody’s sure who did it, Harlen, but you did get shot. We almost lost you.” Rita dabbed at her eye with a white hanky.
“I asked her who it was and she said she didn’t know…it wasn’t in her files.”
“Files, Harlen? What do you mean…files?”
“Don’t know…she just talked about files and how she was here to talk to me about some important things…like my life…and death and souls…stuff like that. I know this sounds a little corny, but I felt like she was a messenger…you know, like a messenger from God.”
“Grandma Bamma is a messenger from God?”
“Maybe just something I dreamed up…but I gotta tell you, Rita, what she said made a lot of sense.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she was concerned about my Big Hungry project.”
“The Big Hungry Recreational Project? Why on earth would she care about that?”
“She wanted to know why I was doing it, why I considered it important enough to go to all the trouble of building the lake and doing all the things I’ve done to move it along. I told her all about it.”
“Was she upset or angry?” Rita had absorbed a good deal of rhetoric about an angry God and had come to think of Him as a rather stern, if loving boss man.
“No…actually, she was very sweet about it. Showed me what it would look like when it was finished. Two versions, now that I think of it…one as a financial success all full of junk food restaurants. The other was a complete failure falling in on itself. Can’t say I liked what I saw…either version.
“Then she had me look at it the way it is now, with the river going along peacefully and everything just the way it’s been for centuries.”
“Sounds like she was asking you to stop the project,” Rita said softly. She’d never been very much in favor of the project and welcomed this intervention – divine or otherwise.
“I know what you mean, Rita. It was like God was telling me ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ What she actually said was, ‘It’s best to leave things alone if it isn’t absolutely necessary to change them.’ Told me that if people needed electricity or if I really needed the money, that would be one thing…but she knew
we didn’t need any more money. Made me think. We really have enough to last us for a couple lifetimes. Maybe it’s time to start helping people.”
“I think that’s wonderful, Honey, but isn’t that what you were trying to do with the project?”
“Sure…and I explained that to her, but she said that it’s better to help a person than it is to help people. That make any sense to you?”
“Maybe you should apply your dad’s Smell Test,” Rita said.