The Heretics of St. Possenti

by Rolf Nelson

  Screaming and more gunshots came from the back, upstairs, and outside. Another flash, more thunder and lightning, more shattering glass, more screaming.

  Joshua crouched low and did a combat reload, dropping the nearly depleted used mag into a rear pocket. He hit the light switch on his pistol and scanned the room. It was a shambles, but the only one moving was Jacobson, who was also doing a fast reload.

  “Dispatch, unit twelve! Shots fired! Men down! Livestream body-cam NOW! Need backup and aid-cars!” shouted Mendez into his com. The two men raced through the house, barely pausing at each doorway, letting speed be their protection, turning weapon-lights on and off as needed. The rest of the house was a mess, too. Some rooms had girls that were obviously strung out on drugs, either in an opiate apathy or meth-like hysteria. Some rooms had men in various stages of undress, some armed, some not, who ended up dead either way if they had anything in their hands. The sweep of the house felt like it took seconds, but it was minutes and multiple reloads before they could take their hands off the pistols long enough to call in any more details.

  The whole scene was in chaos. They found five bodies on the back alleyway, obviously just gunned down moments before they arrived. Two rooms upstairs had men at the windows shooting out with a long guns, and one of them appeared to take a shot from outside at the same moment Jacobson put three rounds into him. Everyone was yelling at once over each other, and the regular peals of thunder and lightning flashes added to the surrealness and confusion. Another room had a terrified and undressed man in bed with a nearly comatose girl. A very young girl. Jacobson wasted no time on revulsion; he cuffed the man roughly while Mendez covered the hallway, and they moved on again.

  By the time the first convoy of aid cars, cruisers, and SWAT vans arrived and poured out backup onto the scene, it was long over. Officers Mendez and Jacobson had made a firm count of six girls in various states of incapacitation from drugs or dehydration, five injured men of obvious foreign origin, eighteen dead men of apparently similar foreign origin, and three middle-aged male prisoners of various ethnicities who were apparently clients or customers.

  The heavily armed newcomers swarmed the house. A minute later the shattering of window glass next door and a suddenly broken window on a cruiser with an officer in it made the whole scene erupt again.

  “Taking fire from the house next door!” shouted the officer in the cruiser.

  “Clear that house!” ordered the scene commander, pointing to the wrong house.

  More and escalating chaos, more armed assaults on buildings, more shooting.

  Nobody noticed the dark blue “Jack’s Plumbing” panel van driving slowly away, pausing to pick up a pair of panting men from the shadows under a tree three blocks away. The police couldn’t see them, but it’s crowded in the back. Allan Bransfield led them in prayer. “Heavenly father, having steadied our hands and guided our actions here tonight…”

  The cops didn’t see “Jack’s” magnetic sign get peeled off and dumped in a commercial trash bin, along with a blue film that revealed a more typical white delivery van underneath, nor the rapid license plate change. They didn’t see the men disperse in an area notorious for bad surveillance camera coverage.

  It was a long night for the men working the scene.

  The next day, Officers Mendez and Jacobson were called in by the captain, who was flushed and all but apoplectic. “Do you two have any idea, any idea at all, what sort of shit-show you stirred up last night? Six houses on that street got raided and searched. Forty one arrests. Thirty eight dead. Six officers injured–”

  “We know about that one, sir. My foot, and Joshua’s vest stopped five bullets; mine, two.”

  The captain glared at him. “Illegal weapons. Illegal immigrants, unaccounted-for refugees, sex-slaves on drugs. Massive amounts of drugs. Gang members with expensive lawyers claiming racism. ICE breathing down my neck. A prosecuting attorney from the DA’s office found with an intoxicated nine-year old. And most curiously of all, sixteen bodies in the back alley, who’d apparently been trying to escape the sound of gunfire until they got cut down leaving by the raid team… or maybe by someone else lying in wait for them. The forensics team is still sorting details, and their first impression is that none of this shit adds up. The transformer popped with a branch across it, but it wasn’t under any trees. Way too many bodies with one well-placed fatal round. Too many windows broken from the outside. Residue of multiple flash-bangs. And we’re still waiting on the IDs for some of those, but all the ones we’ve ID’ed so far are Libyan refugees.” The captain glared in silence at them, daring them to try to find a bright side that was bright for him. “And nobody heard a thing.”

  “Of course not, captain. Thunder.” Joshua’s calm joke didn’t go over very well.

  “The DA is calling for my head, because you made him look bad just a month after he made the Community Customs agreement. He–” his phone flashed. The captain picked it up and listened, while the other two sat patiently. The captain all but snarled before slamming down the receiver. “And now, it seems, your bodycam footage has gone viral. Badass cop heros taking on the drug gangs is the title. More than a million views already. Got a great shot of a stark naked government employee in bed with a child, looking scrawny and pathetic, bawling his eyes out and blubbering about his connections and wife. There is no way we can ever deal with this quietly.”

  “Then embrace it, sir.”

  “Embrace this mass of crap, Josh? How in the hell am I supposed to do that?”

  “With calm and dignity. There were many very bad people there. You’ve obviously been pressured to not move forward on things, sir, and while I don’t know what leverage they might have–”

  “What are you implying, Officer Mendez?”

  “Nothing, sir, except that you had been put in a no-win situation that has now been resolved.”

  “There isn’t shit resolved, God damn it!”

  “Please don’t swear, sir. It’s unbecoming. Much has been resolved. You have massive evidence which cannot be explained away or hidden, and it’s now so public that even trying to do so would look worse than anything the evidence shows. Embrace it and make a huge deal out of it. Tell the people of the city that the refugee center representatives are not dealing in good faith. You have the proof they are corrupting the political offices with their money, and the people with their drugs and prostitution grooming. Go big, sir. This is the raid to ride to sheriff, or lead the State Department of Public Safety. You’ve been getting your hands tied here. This blows those ties off. Run with it. Take down everyone you can. If someone has anything on you that’s less than murder one with video from multiple angles and a signed confession, you can spin it as fabricated accusations and evidence by desperate and cornered corrupt officials.”

  The captain paced back and forth behind his desk, for all the world looking like a caged animal. Twice he stopped and stared at the two of them silently.

  “You don’t know what you are asking.”

  “I know that all great men have done terrible things,” Joshua spoke calmly, with Biblical certainty. “I did things on deployment that I’ve had to work long and hard to do penance for. But I prayed before we went in last night. We both emptied our regular magazines, and nearly emptied our three extras Ron thought to bring. Two against twenty is badly outnumbered and outgunned. We both took hits, but the vests stopped them, and we walked in here under our own power.

  “The tip Ron got. The mountain of evidence, the amazing shooting. It’s obvious God wanted us to go there, dangerous as it was. He was watching over us. I was never afraid. Get right with God, go to confession, and run with this thing, sir. Attack through the ambush, and take scalps as you go. It’ll be a rough ride, I’m sure. But if you do, sir, every uniform on the beat in this precinct will back you up to the hilt. The good people of the city will, too. They want the scum cleaned out from the sewers to city hall. And this is the time to do it.”

  The captain s
at down, and spun his chair around to look out the window. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Joshua spoke low and solemnly. “The spokesman can give the shortest possible gist of it soon, but cite the complicated crime scene and ongoing investigation to beg off on most details. It’ll give you a few days to decide. Pray for guidance. Go to confession. Talk to your dad. Talk to your wife, see if she’d like to have you working at the capitol. See if you have the strength to do the opposite of what evil men want you to do.”

  Two days of forensics work had left nearly as many questions as answers. The number of bullet holes (in walls and people) didn’t add up to the brass found. The angles sometimes lined up, sometimes didn’t. The video from the body cams showed exactly what the officers described, but some things revealed more actors on the scene than were apparent at first blush. The SWAT team was happy to claim all the bodies in the alleyway, but their shots confirmed by body and gun cameras only appeared to account for just under half of them. A lone vehicle—a white panel van with a partially seen image of a business that didn’t seem to exist and a license plate that expired on a sedan years earlier—appeared and disappeared mysteriously on just three security camera tapes. A number of the bodies had a single 220 or 240 grain 30 caliber softpoint embedded in them, something none of the police were shooting. A few pedestrians with packs were seen briefly in other camera footage, but only as shadowy figures who appeared, then disappeared into the night. Nobody living nearby had seen anything, nor heard anything but the wild shooting that broke out when the officers had first entered the house.

  They didn’t find the cameras in the trees because they’d been removed at the last minute.

  They didn’t find the “extra” brass, because it landed in brass catchers and left with the shooters.

  They didn’t find any stray cell phone signals to run down because there were not any.

  They didn’t find witnesses to report extra gunfire because the rifles were shooting heavy subsonic bullets and suppressed on a night filled with thunder.

  They didn’t find the blue van because it only existed for a few hours.

  They didn’t pick up any rumors on the street because the brothers’ lips were silent.

  Four days later, the police captain gave a news conference that could only be described as fire and brimstone, and a month later he was the run-away frontrunner for the state chief of police, with a strong anti-corruption platform. The rumors of a night of infidelity some twenty years earlier were quickly forgotten amidst the much larger news.

  Encounters

  Let easy admission not be given to one who newly cometh to change his life; but, as the Apostle saith, “Try the spirits, whether they be of God” (1 John 4:1). If, therefore, the newcomer keepeth on knocking, and after four or five days it is seen that he patiently beareth the harsh treatment offered him and the difficulty of admission, and that he persevereth in his request, let admission be granted him, and let him live for a few days in the apartment of the guests.

  The Holy Rule of Saint Benedict, Ch. LVIII (Of the Manner of Admitting Brethren)

  William “Bill” Strohheim had finished his shift stocking supermarket shelves. It wasn’t a great job, but it did allow him a modest discount on the food he bought there, and the minimal hours worked around the time he spent at his day job at the plastics plant. Between the two of them, the income wasn’t great, but it was sufficient.

  Since his return from the abbey, the quiet certainty with which he went about his life had made his wife see him differently. After the initial “honeymoon” of his return, she’d started to return to her old habits, but when he put his foot down and politely but firmly kicked her out for the misbehavior that had started the argument, it had actually turned her on that he was acting like a man and not a doormat. It came as quite a welcome shock to him. She agreed that kids would be fine if he could find the income to replace that lost by giving up her job to rear their children the way he demanded.

  For her part, she was surprised at how thrifty it was possible to be on the food with all the scratch cooking he’d learned at the monastery—thirty cents for a homemade loaf of bread that was better than the $4 store loaves, a $3 soup that filled a pot instead of a bowl, and homemade yogurt for the $5 a gallon of whole milk cost, rather than a buck and a quarter for six ounces of sugar-laden “food product.” So he now worked three regular part-time jobs, with occasional extra things on the side.

  Bill picked up the day’s groceries and headed out the store’s front door. The man he saw holding a sign reading Homeless vet, please help was a new guy whom he’d not seen around before: mid-twenties, hair still somewhat short and even, a week’s beard, good teeth, couldn’t be smelled from upwind, thin but not yet gaunt, tired but not drugged up. “Where’d you serve?”

  The homeless man looked him in the eyes. “Anything you can give will help.”

  “Where?”

  “Why you want to know?”

  Bill shrugged. “Don’t mind helping out an honest man in honest need. Don’t want to support any more frauds.”

  “Sudan. Too much time in the hills east of Kasalla. Far East Sudan, if you know what I mean. 3rd of the 2nd. 9th Army.”

  Bill thought a moment and then nodded toward a bench nearby. “Give me a minute.” He set his bags down and dug out a can of peanuts. Good protein and calories; dented can, priced half off. He held it up to show the homeless man the label and raised his eyebrows inquiringly. The other smiled. Bill tossed them over and then waved the man to join him as he took a seat on the bench while the other man put the peanuts into a cargo pocket on his pants. “I’d guess discharged about… two months ago?”

  The stranger looked startled. “Ten weeks.”

  “Pretty average.” He nodded knowingly. “Almost ended there myself. Lots of couch-surfing between jobs. Apartments charge what the market will bear, and no landlord worth his pay will let you stay on a promise of a job just around the corner…. Any good civilian job skills or just the eleven bravo security guard circuit? Oh, sorry. Bill. Bill Strohheim.”He held out a hand to shake. The other man took it firmly enough. Good grip strength, still.

  “Terry Whidmer.”

  “Whidmer? Huh. You got a brother?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm… I know a former chaplain by that name.”

  “Yeah. Heard about that. Bummer. No relation though.”

  “Skills?”

  Terry shrugged.

  “So you looking for a hand up or a handout?” Terry looked at Bill warily. Bill flashed a grin. “Been in tight spots myself. A couple tours, nothing ugly like the Sebderat hills, but I saw my share. Adjusting when I got back was a challenge.” He appeared to just sit back quietly and reflect a moment, giving Terry time to formulate a response or not.

  Bill rummaged in the bags a moment, pulled out a bag of carrots, took one, and offered another to Terry, who accepted. “Life wasn’t stable. It was hard to find people who understood. Drinking drowns the pain a little. For a while.” Bill watched Terry’s face out of the corner of his eye as he munched on the vegetable. “Life wasn’t really back together, but it sort of lurched along. Marriage bounced from okay to couch to the spare room over the tavern for a night to act as watchman in case something happened after hours, and back. Too proud to ask for help. Too smart to not know I didn’t need it. Worked hard sometimes, but when the deck is stacked against you, it’s easy to say screw it and give up for a while.”

  “Yeah… I hear you. Nobody that hasn’t been there gets it.”

  Bill nodded absently and took a bite. “Any job prospects?”

  Terry shrugged. “Security pays less than rent. Not many hours. Too much competition. Gotta show up clean and shaved. Costs more. All the programs have too much paperwork to fill out. Too many restrictions.”

  “Amen, brother. You are singing a song I’ve heard many times. Too many. Gotta work three jobs now to make ends meet. Wife has a kid on the way.”

  “Wow, man. C
ongratulations.”

  Bill acknowledged the well wishes and then continued his interview.

  “So just the nuts, or are you willing to do more?”

  Terry gave no sign of what he thought. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Dunno. Depends on skills and what you’ve tried. Talked to the VA?”

  “Some. Not a lot of help.”

  “College?”

  Terry shook his head. “Not my style. Too much stupid shit.”

  “True enough. But the stupid stuff is everywhere. The whole place is drowning in it. You got to find a place where it’s shallow enough you can stand and breathe.”

  Terry snorted at the image.

  “I’m working here, so no, I don’t have a job to offer. But I hate seeing a guy who put his life on the line out on the street. St. Paul’s has a soup kitchen if you think a prayer is a reasonable price for a meal.” He handed over a business card.

  Terry patted his pockets. “I can swing that. I think,” he said with dark humor.

  “So hand up or out?”

  “Work if I can. Don’t want to be a parasite.”

  “So… what can you do?”

  “I don’t know, man.” The vet was starting to sound slightly on edge, defensive. “I can learn whatever someone can teach. Nobody wants to pay shit for anything they gotta teach you though, you know?”

  Bill elbowed the bags next to him. “Oh, I know. Been there. Get a little training. Gets you in the door. Get a little more. Moves you up the ladder. Move on to something else a little better. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “Simple. Not easy. A world of difference between those two. The Ten Commandments are simple. Not easy at all.”