1635:The Dreeson Incident (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  Finally, someone showed up who might listen to her. "Blake!" she called. "Blake Haggerty!"

  He turned. "I can't talk now, Minnie. I'm working. We don't need gawkers. Go on home."

  "Blake, I saw the sniper who killed them. I'm standing here marking where he threw the gun. It's down in the creek. They won't listen to me."

  He was turning away, trying to concentrate on what he was doing, half-blocking her voice. Then what she was saying penetrated. He almost jumped back toward her.

  "Please, Blake. If I leave, I'll lose a lot of what I'm marking. Can't you go into Cora's? Call Benny. Call Mr. Pallavicino from the school. If they come down and believe what I'm telling them, then maybe someone in the police will pay attention."

  "I'm paying attention," Blake said. "Believe me, I'm paying attention right now." He paid more attention when she pointed and he could see, misshapen by the ripples of the water in the creek, the wavering outline of a gun.

  His immediate superior dismissed it as "a fool girl trying to attract attention and get some publicity."

  Blake wasn't supposed to go out of the chain of command. But he went over to Marvin Tipton, interrupted what he was doing, summarized the situation, and requested permission to go into Cora's and call Benny and Joe.

  "For one thing," he said, "Minnie's half frozen already. She was dressed for noon and the temperature really starts dropping once the sun goes down. If nobody pays attention to her, she's prepared to stand on that bridge all night."

  "Why?" Marvin asked.

  "The mayor gave her that eye. Old Jim Dreeson's artificial eye from World War I, in place of the one she lost at that riot in Jena. As far as Minnie is concerned, she owed Henry. Owed him a lot."

  Jacques-Pierre Dumais was truly very relieved when he returned to Madame Haggerty's garage at the end of the day to find that Mademoiselle Hardesty had disappeared. If not mysteriously disappeared, given the hole in the back of the building. He wondered how she managed it. He stood there briefly, deciding upon the most prudent course of action.

  Which would be the least conspicuous. He nailed the two broken boards lying at the back of the garage into place, rubbing some dirt over the new, shiny, nail heads. Then he moved the three garbage cans in which he was keeping his records. Not far. Just onto Madame Haggerty's enclosed back porch. It was not difficult to carry them. There were only one or two packets in each. Partly because he had sorted them by topic; partly because even he had no particular desire to try to wrestle anything as heavy as a garbage can packed solid with paper from one place to another.

  Then he went home to his trailer to listen to the news on the radio. Tomorrow, he thought, each of the newspapers would publish a special edition. He would need to buy a copy of each.

  As he listened to the reports, Jacques-Pierre's dominant emotion was annoyance. The whole thing had been poorly handled, from start to finish. During his time in Grantville, he had read every police procedural novel in the "mystery" section of the public library. He certainly understood how the local authorities felt, up-time, when the feds had moved in on one of their cases.

  If only Locquifier had left it to him! He could have managed it all much better.

  But, of course, if Locquifier had left it to him, there would have been no attack on the synagogue and no killings.

  This was going to be a disaster.

  To be fair, though, the miserable debacle at the hospital was his own fault. His own disaster. Somehow, he should have found out about the anti-autopsy group and prevented them from coming.

  But the other. Didn't the fools ever learn?

  Possibly not, it seemed. He would have to think about that.

  He wrote up a report to send to the duke.

  "The hard thing, sometimes," Pam said, "is trying to remember how much of what you have reported to whom. Just in case any of the recipients come around asking questions again."

  "It was easier back when there were copy machines," Missy said wistfully. "Just put a sheet of paper on the glass, press a button, and there you were."

  She got up and looked out the window, then turned around. "Do you know what, Pam? There are kids coming into middle school now who don't remember copy machines at all. The first year middle school students, the fifth graders, were only six or seven years old when the Ring of Fire happened."

  Ron walked over and put his arm around her. "You two have diddled around with these reports for long enough, now. One version for Cory Joe, one for the police. They're as done as you're ever going to get them."

  "I don't really want to do this," Missy said. "But I guess that I will." The thought of having to go to the two funeral homes, much less the morgue at the hospital, had been looming over her head all day.

  "You will, though," Ron said. "Not because you want to. But because you have to."

  Missy and Pam didn't recognize any of the bodies in the garages at Central Funeral Home. None of the bodies at Genucci's, either. Those were the men who had been in front of the synagogue. At the hospital, both of them were able to identify one of the anonymous corpses as one of the men who had been taking signs out of Veda Mae's garage and putting them on a handcart. He was the one who had dragged Pam into the garage and had rushed at Missy, but been dragged away by another man wearing a ski mask.

  Neither of them, of course, had any idea who that man was. As Pam said to the disappointed policeman, all they knew was that he had been hauling signs out of Veda Mae Haggerty's garage and putting them on a handcart. She was sorry, but that was it. Although several other men were there when Pam came by, they had all been in the shadow of the garage, so she couldn't tell if any were among either the dead or the living demonstrators in custody. Missy said that by the time she caught up, there had been only two men, both had been outside the garage, and the second one had been wearing a ski mask.

  Overall, the policeman was disappointed. He had been hoping for more. But, of course, it was only coincidence that the girls had been out walking the previous morning in any case, and it did provide a connection to Mrs. Haggerty.

  Veda Mae simply refused to answer questions from the police. She said that she didn't have to. She challenged them to come back with a search warrant. For the time being, they left it at that. She wasn't likely to become a fugitive and eventually someone would be in a position to question her under oath.

  When it crossed her mind that her grandson Blake was now a policeman, she refused to answer any questions he asked her, either.

  She decided to warn Jacques-Pierre Dumais, the next time she saw him, that the police were asking about the signs he had stored in her garage.

  Chapter 49

  Magdeburg, March 4, 1635

  The news about what was going on in Grantville reached Magdeburg, via radio, almost immediately. Even though it wasn't the best window, the radio people threw every bit of power they had, combined and consolidated, into getting out word of the incident.

  From there, the news hit the streets almost at once. It was already being called "the Dreeson Incident." That was perhaps unfair to Enoch Wiley, who'd been the other man murdered, but most people assumed the mayor had been the target of the assassin, not the minister. Which, indeed, was true enough.

  The other name spread widely by the news, of course, was Buster Beasley's. It wouldn't be long at all before Buster had become a national hero for those people inclined toward the CoCs or the Fourth of July Party, especially the youngsters. Not on the level of Hans Richter, perhaps, but awfully close.

  Partly that was because he'd died in what all such people considered a good cause. By the spring of 1635, almost four years after the Ring of Fire, anti-Semitism and witch-hunting had become associated in the minds of just about everyone in Europe with opposition to the newly-arrived Americans and the changes they represented. And that was true whether the person was a partisan or an opponent of Mike Stearns and his people. If you were for Stearns and what he represented, then you were automatically opposed to anti-Semitism and witch-h
unting, even if those two traditions had been deeply rooted in your family or craft or village. And if you were hostile toward Stearns and his people, then you tended-though not with quite the same rigor-to lean favorably toward anti-Semitism and witch-hunting, even if in times gone by you wouldn't have been.

  Not very sensible, perhaps, but much of human social behavior is tribal and ritualistic rather than well-reasoned.

  But, just as much, Buster's rapidly growing popularity as a folk hero was due to the sheer ferocity of his actions. This man was no "martyr," in the usual sense of the term. Yes, certainly, he wound up getting killed-but, oh, he took so many of the swine with him! Roland at Roncesvalles couldn't have done any better.

  An interesting side effect of the incident was that, throughout the continent and in all of its many languages, the term "harley" became the commonly accepted term for motorcycle-despite the fact that most of the motorcycles in Grantville were actually of Japanese manufacture. And, even more quickly and thoroughly, the term "buster" became a term used everywhere to refer to a stalwart and upright fellow, not to be thwarted by miscreants.

  By the evening, the word had reached almost every place else in Europe-not just in the USE-that had a receiver. The next day, the newspapers from Amsterdam to Frankfurt, to Paris, Venice, Prague, and Austria, were on the streets with it.

  Almost the only places that had to wait for land communication were Spain and Poland.

  In Stockholm, Charles Mademann studied the news reports carefully. Very carefully.

  There was no chance now to carry out the planned assassination of Sweden's queen in co-ordination with the Grantville actions. Unfortunately, the weather had been uncooperative and Mademann's ship had been delayed in port. He hadn't been able to reach the Swedish capital until two days after the target date.

  And there was no point in even considering the action at the moment, of course. Security had been tightened up considerably, even for someone like Maria Eleanora whom no one seriously thought was at risk.

  So be it. Eventually, security would become lax again. Mademann would simply wait. He had enough funds to remain comfortably ensconced in this inn for months. He wouldn't stand out, either. The Swedish capital was full of men from the Netherlands and the Germanies and northern France, brought there by Sweden's burgeoning industries and commerce. Quite a few of them were Huguenots.

  Stockholm was a dull city, and hardly the place Mademann would have voluntary chosen to while away his time. But at least it wasn't Scotland.

  On a Train Running Parallel to the Elbe

  The train, again. Another full, frustrating, utterly unavoidable day on the train. A day on the train with very little news-only what boys, at the various stops, ran alongside the cars shouting through the windows.

  Gretchen was breathing fire. She was in full avenging fury mode.

  If she only knew whom to direct it at.

  How was her grandmother? How was Annalise? What about the children?

  Someone had killed Henry.

  Nobody knew who had killed Henry. About the only thing the police had concluded, pretty much for certain, was that it hadn't been any of the people directly involved in the demonstration against the synagogue. There had obviously been some sort of connection, of course. The general opinion that was forming-Gretchen's also-was that the vicious act was the responsibility of one or another of the USE's many reactionary extremist groups, all of whom were anti-Semitic to one degree or another.

  She wanted vengeance.

  All the more so because she was feeling quite guilty that they hadn't come back right after the election the way they had promised, to take the children.

  That had been her decision. There had just been so much that she still had to do.

  Jeff sat next to her, watching her stew.

  Grantville, March 1635

  "A state funeral of some kind," Ed Piazza said. "No, I don't know exactly what the protocol will be. We've never had a precedent for anything like this. Not a USE-level state funeral. Neither Henry nor Enoch them held any office under Gustavus Adolphus. Never had. Never would have. Not really a province-level state funeral, either. Neither of them held any SoTF office. Never had. Never would have. But we have to give them some kind of public recognition."

  He was pacing the floor.

  "I've never organized anything like this."

  "No help from me, either." Chad Jenkins shook his head. "If Simpson weren't still up north, he might have some ideas from when he was in the navy. Or Mrs. Simpson, perhaps? Just on general principles, that she knows how to pull off these ceremonial-type things?"

  Preston Richards pulled his head up out of his hands.

  "Ask Dan Frost if he can come down. Talk to Sylvester Francisco. We're going to have to do police funerals for the officers who went down. Both of them have been involved with those before. We could start with the protocol for that, maybe, and work something up."

  That seemed like the best idea anyone had so far.

  Preston nodded toward Ludwig Guenther. "We should lean on his advice, too. He does protocol stuff all the time-grew up with it. Between him and Dan, we can invent our own. A mix of what the up-timers and down-timers will expect. His steward can write it down, so we'll have it the next time we need it. Not that I want there to be a next time, God knows."

  The count of Rudolstadt nodded deeply, indicating his willingness.

  "Good idea," agreed Chad.

  Inez then pointed out that Henry had been a Presbyterian and Enoch had been the Presbyterian minister. That didn't leave anyone to preach the funeral-either one of them. At least, not anyone obvious.

  "So who's going to do the honors?"

  Inez shook her head. "Charles Vandine and Gordon Partow are still in Geneva, being trained to succeed Enoch. We knew he wouldn't live forever. But they can't get back in time for the funeral. There's no Scots Presbyterian minister in Grantville. No other Calvinist minister of any persuasion, as far as I know, whether French, Dutch, Palatine, Swiss, Hungarian, or 'other.' "

  "Who, then?"

  Veronica stood up. "Elder Orval McIntire. Henry liked him. They were friends."

  Inez concurred.

  "At the church?"

  "No. Even after the remodeling, there wouldn't be room for everyone who'll want to come. A lot of people will. There've been lines all day and nearly all night at the funeral home, for the viewing. And I don't want to be in the position of saying, 'you qualify to come inside, but you don't." Inez shook her head. "That's. .. invidious."

  "Where, then?"

  "At the fairgrounds, I guess. Outside, and hope it doesn't rain. If it does rain, the families will need to be inside. Mike and Becky are flying in. Ed and the rest of the SoTF officials-the department heads, Chad Jenkins, Ableidinger. The county board. The elders and deacons. Then let as many more people as possible inside. First come, first served. And borrow every umbrella in town for the rest of them."

  Preston Richards put his head down on his hands again.

  "I'm so glad Gustav Adolf decided he needed to stay in Copenhagen. Having the emperor here, too-sorry, the Captain General-would have been a little much. At least we don't have to handle everything that would have been involved with having him here."

  "Which reminds me. What about other prominent guests?" Arnold Bellamy gestured at Count Ludwig Guenther. "You'll be there, won't you? And your wife? The mayor of Badenburg, certainly; several other mayors are still 'maybes. Jena, almost certainly; Erfurt, perhaps. People like that?"

  The count nodded. "Duke Albrecht and his wife, as well. Plus, since Duke Ernst is in transit from the Upper Palatinate to Magdeburg in any case, his brother. Wilhelm Wettin will apparently be staying in Magdeburg. Unwise, that, in my opinion. But…"

  Ludwig Guenther shrugged. "I suppose he had to keep from irritating his own followers. Duke Johann Philipp from Altenburg and his wife and daughter will be here. I'll have my steward furnish you with a head count."

  Inez resigned herself
to the inevitable. "We can borrow folding chairs from all the churches, I guess. And the American Legion and the lodges."

  At the funeral, Veronica went through everything with a perfectly calm face. Then she went home and locked herself in their bedroom for a while.

  Inez had to go through it all in a wheel chair, because of her injured leg, which was worse. She couldn't go home and lock herself in afterwards, because they took her right back to the hospital. Doctor Nichols thought he would have to operate on the broken leg, not that Wilton hadn't splinted it right, but because there had to be some injury in addition to the break. Inez still didn't have any feeling in it.

  Will rode back to the hospital with her in the ambulance. He didn't leave right away, which meant that he was still there when Gina brought Brette.

  When he looked up and saw them standing in the door of the room, he said, "The restraining order expired a long time ago."

  Chapter 50

  Grantville, March 1635

  "Buster didn't belong to any church," Christin said, "and he definitely would not want to be buried by some preacher." Buster's grandfather Johnnie Ray agreed with her, considering that he had managed to live eighty-five satisfactory years without being a member of any church himself.

  They ended up, the day after the state funeral, with this overfilled memorial service at the old movie theater downtown, conducted by Jenny Maddox. There was no way they could have fitted everyone into even the big parlor at the funeral home. Not even with the folding doors open and both parlors thrown together.

  Jenny had written a nice statement about the boy, Johnnie Ray thought. The printed program called it an eulogy, which he sort of wondered how to pronounce. Now she got up and was reading it out loud.

  Denise wished she didn't have to listen to it. Daddy had been alive and now he was dead. He was dead because she had phoned him. If she hadn't phoned him, he wouldn't be dead. He would be up at the storage lot, working at something. Probably working in his weld shop. He was-had been-one of the town's best welders. He would have been there at breakfast this morning, saying something rude about the fancy funeral they had yesterday where all the politicians got up and orated about Mayor Dreeson and Reverend Wiley.