by Ben Machell
“Got any Glocks?” he asked again.
Did that sound convincing? He gripped the steering wheel and tried to decide. It was hard to tell. He tried again.
“Gimme a Glock,” he said, but immediately shook his head. It sounded wrong. Also, he knew, that’s not how gun shops work anyway. He cleared his throat and tried again.
“Got any Glocks?”
That actually sounded pretty good. He smiled and kept repeating it as the rain came down.
“Got any Glocks?”
“Got any Glocks?”
“Got any Glocks?”
As he approached Waterbury, he spotted what he was looking for through the driving rain: a large, long single-story lodge with an American flag flying over the front door. Outside, a wooden sign said parro’s. He had come within a split second of driving past it. Instead, he hit the brakes then pulled into the lot, parking beside a pickup truck. He checked he had his wallet with him. And then he ducked into the store.
Inside, Parro’s was large and brightly lit. There were stag heads mounted on the walls. There were black bears, mouths open, teeth bared, glassy eyes staring ahead into nothing. Down the central aisle there were racks of shotguns and hunting rifles, while black assault weapons were mounted on a wall beside a long wooden front desk. There were boxes and boxes of ammunition and hundreds of pistols in a long, low row of glass display cases. The place had the reassuring and familiar smell of a good hardware store, of cardboard and metal and domestic chemicals. On a stand by the entrance was a gumball machine.
It was about two-thirty in the afternoon when Stephen entered Parro’s. There were one or two other customers browsing the aisles and a couple of staff members chatting by the front desk. Seeing the number of weapons on display, Stephen had to stop himself from gawking. He was awestruck by the sheer firepower spread out before him. One of the staff members was a middle-aged man with a gray mustache, horn-rimmed glasses, and a T-shirt tucked into his blue jeans and secured by a large belt. This was Henry Parro, the owner of the shop.
“Hey, how are you doing?” he asked, smiling cheerfully.
“Pretty good,” replied Stephen. He was trying to talk calmly and casually, but it was a struggle. The thrill of seeing so many guns had now been replaced by a sudden anxiety—a panicky, pulsing sensation of fear cut with anticipation, like a teenager in a liquor store. His voice seemed as though it was being dragged out from inside him, and it did not sound American at all. Parro asked if there was anything he could help him with, and Stephen, sounding more and more English by the second, responded quietly.
“I would like to look at a Glock 26 please.”
“Not from around here?” Parro asked brightly as they walked toward the pistol display cases. Stephen mumbled something inaudible. Parro unlocked one of the cases, took out a Glock 26, checked that it was empty, and then handed it to Stephen, who held it by the butt, staring at the functional black sleekness of it, enjoying its weight and the feel of the grip in his palm.
“He looked at it and said, ‘I’ll take it,’ ” remembers Parro, who talks with a warm but measured clarity. “And that was the first indicator that there could be something wrong. Most customers will ponder the purchase. They will try to negotiate the price or get some accessories thrown in. But within thirty seconds of him entering my building, he was saying ‘I’ll take it.’ ”
While Stephen’s Asperger’s often made it hard for him to read the emotions of others, even he could see the flash of suspicion that passed across Parro’s face. A voice in his head told him to just stop, to think up an excuse and leave. But he ignored it. He was so close. He already had the box in the trunk of his car. He could be robbing banks in Worcestershire and beyond with a real gun in a little over a week. Why turn back now? Having come so far? Are you Robin Hood? he asked himself. Or are you just a frightened, anxious nobody? Under the gun store’s bright lights and the unblinking, unseeing gaze of deer and black bears, a battle between fantasy and reality was playing out in Stephen’s head.
Stephen followed Parro to the front desk. Parro placed the Glock beside the till and asked an assistant to provide Stephen with the paperwork needed to complete the purchase. He then asked if Stephen could provide some ID. Stephen nodded quickly, handing over his fake license.
What Stephen did not know was that Henry Parro had served as a police officer for more than twenty-five years. In fact, on a part-time basis, he still did, working as a local patrolman. Parro examined the license and immediately saw something that made him want to frown, though he managed to keep his expression mild and neutral. All Vermont driver’s licenses included a signature from the state’s commissioner of motor vehicles. As it happened, the commissioner of motor vehicles was a personal friend of Parro’s. But the signature on Stephen’s ID was not his. Parro smiled at Stephen, thanked him, and told him to complete the form while he went into his office for a moment.
Minutes passed. Stephen had completed the form, filling it with false information about himself, and was almost beside himself with anxiety. He tried to hand the assistant the $500 they had agreed on for the Glock plus ammunition, but he just smiled and said they just needed to wait for his boss to sign off on everything. He knew he should leave. But he would not do so without his fake ID. So he took a breath and then walked toward the door to Parro’s office. He pushed it open and saw the gray-haired man with a receiver tucked under one ear and Stephen’s license in his other hand. Stephen looked at Parro, and Parro looked at Stephen. They both understood what was happening. Parro had already called the state police, asked them to run the details from Stephen’s ID through their system, and established that the license was fake. He had just finished a conversation with the local Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to let them know someone had just tried to buy a gun using false information.
“I was speaking to the ATF when Mr. Jackley comes into the doorway of my office and says, ‘I need my license back,’ ” says Parro. Stephen says that the stolid figure before him responded by calmly explaining that he could not do that. At which point Stephen turned and bolted back out the door. “He ran very quickly and jumped into his car, backed across the parking lot at a rapid pace,” says Parro. Stephen managed to reverse into one of the trucks in the lot with a loud thunk-crack, but fought the urge to pump the accelerator and fishtail onto the quiet country road. Instead he did his best to leave the scene of the crime as casually as possible. He indicated a turn, then slowly pulled onto the road and drove away.
Parro told the ATF agent on the line that the suspect had just made a break for it. “I told them, ‘He’s running!’ And then I grabbed my portable radio and my gun and I ran out after him.” He jumped into his truck and accelerated, radioing the local state police barracks as he did so, describing Stephen and his car. Within sixty seconds, an alert had been passed to all state troopers on the roads within a twenty-mile radius. Parro couldn’t see Stephen’s car, but he knew he had fled east, along Route 2. He scanned every car he approached to see if it was a silver Dodge Charger, his gun at his side, the rain driving down in torrents.
* * *
—
It was a Sunday afternoon at MDC Brooklyn, and Stephen was watching Monsoon preach to a large group of prisoners. The unofficial iglesia services he led were not just popular with inmates of all races, but with many of the prison guards, too. They attended, standing at a remove from the men they were supervising but still nodding their heads in affirmation while Monsoon spoke with white-hot conviction, murmuring their “amens” and squeezing their eyes tight in prayer and contemplation.
Stephen was in awe of Monsoon. Not just because of his oratory and conviction, but the way he was able to bring inmates out of themselves during the services, to make even the toughest, most nihilistic men in this federal prison stand up and tell strangers about their hopes and fears and regrets. Monsoon had been a drug d
ealer and a gang leader, he told the assembled inmates. He had been motivated by greed and by anger. He had grown up in a world that was hard and mean, so he decided that he needed to be hard and mean, too. He had never thought or cared about the consequences of his actions so long as they led to him getting what he wanted. More money. More respect. One day he learned that his sister’s husband had been unfaithful to her. So he killed him.
Stephen watched entranced as the shaven-headed, tattooed man in front of him described undergoing a religious conversion in jail, about how one night he was so consumed with hatred and anger that he just collapsed in his cell. Writhing on the floor, Monsoon finally cried out for forgiveness from God. And in a moment, he knew that forgiveness had been granted. Grace had been bestowed. A second chance provided. At Monsoon’s encouragement, other inmates stood up and talked about the crimes they had committed and how deeply they regretted them—not because they got caught and ended up in jail, but because they could see that what they had done was wrong. These confessions sometimes took place in smaller groups, after the main service. Which was how later, Stephen came to be sitting quietly with a group of inmates who, at Monsoon’s gentle encouragement, were describing the worst thing they ever did. Some talked of stabbings and shootings. Others of gangland cruelty and betrayal. Eventually, it was Stephen’s turn to speak. All eyes turned to him. He cleared his throat and spoke quietly.
“I burgled the Worcester offices of the National Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children,” he said. This only drew blank looks from the men listening, so he added that he also robbed quite a few banks. Now the inmates around the table nodded slowly. “I thought I was Robin Hood,” he continued. One of the men sighed in sympathy and said he knew that feeling, telling yourself that you’re some kind of outlaw. But Stephen just shook his head. No, he said. He genuinely thought he was Robin Hood.
Monsoon asked if he’d hurt anyone. Stephen thought of Raymond Beer, and how close he had come to seriously wounding somebody who had just been going about their job. He thought of the screaming, trembling bank and betting shop employees he had threatened with guns and knives, and how he had allowed himself to believe that their momentary fear would pass once he had gone. But after months in jail, he was beginning to understand that this was not how trauma worked at all. He thought of his mother, on her own at Manstone Avenue, and how during the few brief telephone conversations they’d had since he’d been jailed, she had simply not understood where he was or why. He thought of the ice cream they had shared at the Riviera Hotel in Sidmouth and wanted to cry. Stephen looked at Monsoon and nodded. Yes, he said. I hurt people.
Later, after the inmates had drifted away from iglesia, Monsoon approached Stephen and sat beside him. He asked if it was true what he had said about robbing banks. Stephen nodded. Monsoon couldn’t help smiling, but saw that Stephen was troubled, so he asked how he’d ended up getting captured. Was there a shootout? Hostages? Betrayal? Stephen sighed.
“No,” he said. “I just got caught.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Stephen drove away from Parro’s gun store, keeping to the speed limit and heading east into the small town of Waterbury. His forearms trembled as he gripped the wheel. Nevertheless, he reviewed what had just happened and looked for positives. Had he really done anything so wrong? It’s not like he’d snatched the gun before he ran out or made threats to anyone. Yes, the owner seemed to be on the phone to the police. But even if he was, were they likely to send officers to investigate a fake ID? And if they did, how urgently were they really going to respond? If he could just put some distance between himself and the gun store, then he would be in the clear. The key was to behave normally. He drove past rows of pretty colonial houses, their timber walls painted white or deep russet red, with neat green lawns and American flags out front. At a roundabout, he took a left onto Route 100, which headed north out of Waterbury, over the interstate and past the factory where, he had read in a tourist leaflet, they made Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
He drove for ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds. Then up ahead, at a junction for cars coming off the interstate, he spotted a police cruiser with lights flashing. This did not worry him immediately. Over the past few days, he had often seen police cars waiting at roadsides, lights on, letting drivers know they were there watching for speeders. Stephen kept driving. He passed the interchange, aiming his car down the wide, quiet road and toward the thickly forested hills crowding the horizon. More seconds passed and nothing happened. He pressed the accelerator down just a fraction. Trees sped past him on either side. Something in the heavy gray sky caught his eye. He wondered if it was a bald eagle.
Sirens sliced through his thoughts. He immediately checked his mirrors. The police cruiser was about twenty yards behind him and closing, flashing him to pull over. Stephen complied, bringing the Dodge to a halt beside the metal guardrail, beyond which was open country. From his side-view mirror, he watched the state trooper approach his car, his right hand on his holster, rain flowing over the edges of his broad-brimmed hat. Opening the window, Stephen saw that the trooper was a young, clean-shaven man with a crew cut and dark, impassive eyes. He asked to see some ID, and Stephen handed him his genuine British driving license. “Then he said, ‘I would like a few words with you, please,’ ” remembers Stephen, who stepped out of the car and into the rain. “He said, ‘Have you been at Henry Parro’s gun store?’ I denied it at first. For a fleeting second I looked at the car and thought…can I jump back in and drive away?”
A few moments later, a pickup truck pulled up behind the police car. Henry Parro stepped out with his gun, but deliberately kept his distance from the two men before him. “One of the things that we do is that when a police officer is dealing with someone, I always stay back, because it could be intimidating or overwhelming if two people are trying to talk to them,” he says. It was, he continued, an incredible coincidence that Stephen happened to drive right past the police car when he did. Parro chuckles. “There was a trooper that just by luck was coming off the interstate, and Mr. Jackley drove straight past him. The trooper pulled out, turned his siren on, and stopped him within a hundred yards of where he was passed. It was just perfect timing.”
On the roadside, the trooper briefly glanced back at Parro, who gave him a nod. Then he told Stephen he was under arrest. He said that he had reason to believe that he had been involved in a hit-and-run. Which was true. He had failed to stop after backing into a truck when leaving the gun store, a fact Parro had made sure to tell the police dispatcher. Stephen was handcuffed, placed in the trooper’s car, and driven toward the state police barracks in the nearby village of Middlesex. There was a large German shepherd in the rear of the cruiser, impassive and still behind a wire mesh. Stephen looked out the window and saw what seemed like smoke rising from a valley below. It puzzled him. He asked the trooper what it was. Just condensation, he replied. Rising up from a creek.
As Stephen was driven through the countryside, his mind turned. He could get out of this, he reassured himself. It may involve paying a fine. It may involve posting bail. But he could afford that. He was just an English geography student on holiday who tried to get a gun as part of a stupid bet with a friend. They had believed him in Istanbul. They would believe him here.
* * *
—
A very short time later, Special Agent Scott Murray of the ATF was driving to the Middlesex police barracks in order to interview Stephen. Short and in his midthirties, with close-cropped dark hair and bright, appraising eyes, Murray was a former officer with the Phoenix Police Department. He joined the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2001. The laxness of Vermont’s gun laws meant that the state was a magnet for arms traffickers, and there existed a circular underground trade as organized criminals from the big East Coast cities came to Vermont to obtain cheap and readily available high-powered weapons that could then be smuggled out of stat
e and back to New York or Boston. As part of the process, cheap and readily available drugs from New York and Boston were brought into Vermont and sold at a healthy markup. New England junkies were happy. Big-city gang members were happy. Special Agent Murray was busy.
“The majority of the cases that I work are related to heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, things like that,” he says. “A lot of gun cases that we do are using firearms in the furtherance of drug trafficking, or related to robberies and murders.”
When Murray arrived, Stephen was being held in a small interview room. He had been advised of his Miranda rights and had signed a document waiving them. He was ready to talk. Murray sat opposite him with an ATF colleague and began to ask questions. It was not the kind of interrogation you see in movies, says Murray, where men with rolled-up sleeves lean over a suspect and try to break his will or catch him out somehow. “For me that has never worked,” he says. Instead, Murray spoke to him directly but with a matter-of-fact congeniality. Above all, he wanted to listen to what Stephen had to say and judge to what degree it seemed coherent. “The general thing you are looking for is, does the story they are telling make sense to you? Do the set of facts they are telling me come easily to them? Do their answers come easily? Or are they grasping and trying to think up a story, rather than just telling you the truth, which should come out pretty naturally?”
Initially, the story Stephen presented seemed to have elements of truth to it. He explained that he was a geography student from the United Kingdom and that he was on holiday. He told them where he was staying. He admitted that the ID he had was fake, that he’d bought it online, and that he had tried to buy the gun at Parro’s store in order to win a £100 bet with a friend. He told Murray that had he succeeded, he would most likely have just taken a photograph of it and then tried to sell the weapon before returning to the UK.