The theft of the bones of the dead soldier from the town storage hut had shaken everybody. It seemed a pretty simple case, at first. Belton Police Chief Ernie Sands had gotten right on it that following morning—followed a trail in the mud and soft earth from an overnight rain storm. The stolen coffin had been dragged from the town storage hut down Old Enfield Road and then along the shoreline. But then things had gone wrong.
Ernie Sands had suffered a heart attack out there alone in the Quabbin woods; dropped dead in his tracks, basically. And of course, Belton, being Belton there had been no police backup and nobody even realized the Chief was missing for hours, until Selectman Willock had wandered into the empty police station and been unable to find Chief Sands.
The resulting search and discovery of the chief’s body on the shore of the reservoir had been a big news story. Hudson had covered it from all angles: the tragedy of Chief Sand’s death—30 years on the force starting as a part-time patrolman, his unexpected demise while searching for a missing coffin, the pomp and ceremony of the chief’s funeral. Willock had loved that one—putting him front and center not only as the senior selectman in Belton, but as the funeral director.
It had taken days before anyone stopped to ask—where was the missing coffin? Who had taken it? And why? Whoever had stolen the coffin had indirectly, at the very least, caused Chief Ernie Sand’s death.
And the Memorial Day ceremony for today—well planned but now without the body of the missing soldier--would go on. It always did. But the theft of the coffin hung over the event like a thunderclap booming in the distance.
Willock had been furious. “Punks from the university,” he had mumbled angrily to Hudson under his breath just moments ago. “We’ve gotta kick some ass in this town. Probably some sort of protest against Lester Carlson. Some of these bastards never forget. Tenured professors and that sort from the university. Fuckers don’t know what it’s like to have to work for a living.” Of course, Willock was pissed. Without the coffin there would be no funeral—and a much smaller bill to the Veteran Administration, which footed the expenses for veteran’s services.
And then there was the small matter of the rather private phone call from Lester Carlson. He still wasn’t sure what to make of that one. On the night the coffin vanished, Lester Carlson had called him.
Hudson had been rocked out of a sound sleep as the phone on his bedside table rang for the fourth or fifth time. He picked it up in a fog half expecting the voice of his ex-wife Linda. They had split for good several months ago and she had gone to Philadelphia to work as an editor there for the Inquirer, the city’s big daily paper.
The voice on the other end though surprised Hudson. Even had he been fully awake, he would still have been almost speechless. It was Lester Carlson calling from Belton. Something had happened on his property, the voice said. He was sorry for the lateness of the hour, but he didn’t really want to call the police and make an official fuss. He needed somebody to come out and walk the property with him. Check to see if a prowler or prankster was about. He’d found Hudson’s business card on the table by the phone left there after their interview of that afternoon.
Hudson had driven the 10 miles from Amherst to Belton in a dark wash of low gray clouds. The fine clear sky of midnight had vanished replaced by a soggy slow falling rain. Lester Carlson had greeted him at the door and together, each with a large flashlight from the kitchen cabinet—those heavy long plastic jobs that took 4, D-cell batteries, but were worth it for the powerful beam they projected--they canvassed the yard stopping at the property line that separated Lester Carlson’s backyard from the Belton town cemetery. There were no footprints near the old gray house. The ground was soft and Hudson noted how his own footsteps left a big squishy print on the ground.
Later, in Lester Carlson’s kitchen, where he had offered coffee and the two of them had sat watching the dawn lighten the sky; Lester Carlson had explained his call. A strange deformed face had appeared at his window. Frightening, really frightening. But now, with no footprints out there, he was inclined to think it a prank of some sort. Though, who would want to play an elaborate prank on him, he didn’t know. They must have even taken the trouble to broom away their footprints as they withdrew to the nearby road.
Lester Carlson had sighed and picked up the heavy-duty flashlights and placed them back in the lower kitchen cabinet in a neat row beside several boxes of new batteries. He was so neat, meticulous, and well prepared, Hudson thought with a pang, recalling one of his last fights with ex-wife Linda.
She had broken down while driving one night from Amherst to Shelbourne Falls, a rural town on the Mohawk Trail--a scenic road high in the hills of north-western Massachusetts. Linda had managed to maneuver the car to the side of the country road. It was dark and she needed a light to signal approaching cars and so she fished in the glove compartment for her flashlight. The flashlight was there all right, but Hudson had borrowed the batteries and forgotten to replace them.
“I forgot. The story of your life,” Linda said bitterly later that night. “The whole story of your fucking life. I forgot.”
Hudson had stayed with Lester Carlson for several hours the night of his call, alternately concerned and baffled. Something had happened to Lester Carlson in the early hours of that morning that defied explanation; something that had left him frightened and shaken as if he had fallen asleep while driving and awoken at the last minute just in time to avoid careening off the road into a deep river. His eyes still showed a startled brightness behind the calm facade he adopted. Hudson had accepted a second cup of coffee and looked out the living room window where the face had appeared.
“If it happens again, call me,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.” But he could tell that Lester Carlson wouldn’t call again
“Must have been a prank,” Lester Carlson repeated. Hudson nodded.
And now, days later, Lester Carlson looked as composed and assured as ever. How did people find such confidence Hudson wondered?
Hudson heard the motorcycle before he saw it arrive—a loud purr rising above the jumble of voices and bird song that filled the Quabbin Park cemetery. He turned to watch as the motorcycle rider, a tall gangly guy in his mid-40s carefully parked his bike—a large Harley Davidson, and just as carefully walked slowly over to an old, gnarled maple tree and leaned against it.
* * *
Chapter 28
He stood off to the side near the small administration building where most of the veterans and politicians who would march around the Quabbin Park cemetery and plant the flags had gathered. A few old timers from Belton chirped hellos, and he planted a big false smile on his face like a television news anchor and said hello back.
“Lovely day Mrs. O’Dell.”
Nice to see you again, Mr. Faragin.”
“You’re looking 80 years young, Mrs. Kasuba.”
He wondered how many others like him were out there in the world—passing themselves off as ordinary people. He had read an interview with Ted Bundy just before Bundy went to his death in Florida’s electric chair for the last of his killings. Bundy had talked of how once a month, for many years, a feeling would come over him, a possession, “like some sort of entity took hold of me,” and then Bundy would be driven to seek out and kill. But it was never about the actual killing, Bundy explained. It was more about the possession of the victim; the raging need to have absolute control over the last moments on earth of the person who had come into your clutches.
That was true and as close to an explanation as any he could now think of. For a time, several years back, the call had come again and again for him—never here in his own backyard near Quabbin Reservoir, but nearby--up and down the Connecticut River towns that bordered the river in Vermont and New Hampshire near Massachusetts. The entity was showing him another world.
After the hitchhiker, there had been the waitress at the phone booth followed by the death of Barbara, the nurse. The media had covered that one intensely—and j
ust a year ago, had done a recap on the crime, such was its power to haunt and trouble the region’s memory.
It had been snowing hard that night and it was late—near midnight when he had seen the older-model Mercedes pulled off the road in a rest area, its occupant, a woman in her 40s, moving back and forth in front of the car struggling to clean the ice-encrusted windshield with a short plastic brush. The rest were all snapshot memories-as were all his crimes. His approach. Her smile at first—New Englanders helped each other out—her terror when the knife came out.
She had almost gotten away. She’d pushed him hard and run around to the driver’s side door of her car—which was running. She jumped in and slammed her car into reverse as he clung to the open door. And she would have made it if only the snow hadn’t fallen so heavy and deep. The rest area had a thick wedge of wet snow where the first plows had come by. The nurse’s car had skidded backward into the snow wedge and stuck. He had her. If another car had stopped, he would have been in big trouble, but it didn’t happen. The entity was protecting him.
“Why,” she had kept pleading as they drove through the snowstorm. “Why are you doing this to me? Why? Why?”
As he pushed her through the falling snow still swirling hard out of the dark sky and down a long slope of apple trees in an orchard, he had answered her pleas. “Why not? Why not when it feels so good?” And then he had stabbed her.
The media had been full of the story for weeks afterwards. Barbara, the nurse, dedicated to helping people; her life snuffed out by a roadside killer for no reason.
No reason?
Not likely.
The entity had been testing him. Seeing if he had the right stuff.
He had passed, and for the past several years had stalked the region guided by the entity. But then, for a brief time, the entity left him. Perhaps, testing another as his replacement. But that too passed. The entity had returned and it was now obvious that the entity had something bigger and more important for him to do.
He had discovered what that was in his browsing in the local history section of the library--all described in a chapter of an old history book.
He was not just some out of control sex killer like a Ted Bundy. The entity had chosen him. It was definite. The entity needed him. All those random attacks over the past decade had been for practice. A way of honing his skills.
The entity would guide him, and things would work in his favor when the entity was with him.
* * *
Chapter 29
Lester Carlson moved to the podium as State Senator Steve Baker finished his remarks and motioned him forward with a small half wave of the hand at chest level. State Senator Baker’s speech had been brief and well delivered—touching on the many wars that the monuments here at Quabbin Park Cemetery commemorated—from the Civil War and World War I monuments that had been moved from their original homes on the town commons of Dana, Enfield, Prescott, and Greenwich when the reservoir was built, to the newer memorials erected right here in the cemetery for the World War II and Korean War veterans.
An ancient member of the American Legion, almost resplendent in a dark blue gold-emblazoned shirt and the familiar peaked hat of the Legion tottered forward to ceremoniously escort Lester Carlson across the thick grass to the podium. Lester Carlson stood for a moment looking out at the gathering. There were perhaps 500 people here under the large and ancient oaks and maples of the Quabbin Park cemetery, all waiting expectantly for him like a well-behaved crowd at an outdoor folk festival.
From this site, created in 1938 after the reservoir was constructed, the waters of Quabbin were not visible. In that way, a speech about Vietnam was easier. There was not the distraction of the great blue reservoir to remind him of happier days when he had roamed these same hills and valleys with his father and later his friends.
Lester Carlson was feeling haggard. He wondered if it showed. He looked out to Maria, standing in the shade of a great old maple with a gnarled trunk the circumference of a manhole cover. Maria smiled and gave a small wave of her hand. “Go on,” she mouthed, “get it done.”
Lester Carlson leaned forward and gripped the podium on either side—a speaker’s trick that allowed you to appear more engaged with your audience. He glanced once more over to Maria and began.
“I’ve wanted to be part of this ceremony, honoring the fallen soldiers from the towns of the Swift River Valley, for some time. It seems that I was always far away on Memorial Day—off on some of the country’s business and too busy to stop. But now that I’m retired and living right here in the region, I’ve run out of excuses. And today, I feel both honored and called upon to attend and talk to you a bit about my war—the Vietnam War.”
Lester Carlson paused and glanced down at his notes. Maria had helped him prepare the speech over several days, and he didn’t really need these notes, but they served as a handy speaker’s prop that allowed for pauses and considerations while he spoke.
“We have no monuments here at Quabbin Park Cemetery for the Vietnam War, but perhaps we should. True, there are no residents of the original Quabbin towns left who could have been in the armed services during the Vietnam War, but still it touched many, such as myself. I was not a member of the armed forces during the Vietnam War, but I served the country during that conflict. Some of you knew of me, or read about me, during those times as the Under Secretary of Defense for Southeast Asia—a fancy title for the civilian charged with coordinating the war in Vietnam. I was the person who met with the generals and toured the battle grounds and then reported back to Washington, D.C.”
Lester Carlson took a deep breath, glanced again at his notes, and plunged on, looking through his rimless glasses straight ahead and out at the crowd. “In many ways, I served you and this great country of ours to the best of my ability. But I’ve also come to realize, with the wisdom that comes from the passage of time, that I failed you. I failed you and I failed myself. I’ve come here today, to apologize to you, and to all the dead and wounded from the Vietnam War. I’ve come to apologize for what I didn’t do—for my own failure; my own dereliction of duty; for my failure to speak out against the war and tell the truth.”
Lester Carlson drew a deep breath as he sensed the mood of the crowd changing—people suddenly listening who a moment before had been tuning him out.
“You see, for much of my time in Vietnam I realized that the war was hopeless, a bottomless pit of failure that we were dumping men and resources into—men whose lives were lost because we didn’t know how to get out of Vietnam. I failed to tell that truth; to tell the President and all our other leaders what I really thought—that the Vietnam War was a terrible mistake; a terrible waste, and that we had no business fighting it.”
A loud murmur, partly of surprise swept through the crowd. State Senator Baker, who had been standing to the side with a solemn but appreciative look on his face indicating he was listening intently, looked up with his mouth slightly agape like an uncle surprised by an indelicate word from a favorite nephew.
“I failed you all by simply plunging ahead and not telling the people in Washington the real truth about what I saw and what I knew. And for that, I apologize today. I apologize for all the sacrifice and waste that could have been prevented had I, and others like me, spoken out.
“I stand here today, and I realize that the bones of a soldier killed a quarter of a century ago in the Vietnam War were to be interred here today. And they will be when they are found. But all of us who conducted that war so long ago share some responsibility for his death. For all of us who asked others to die for our mistakes, I’ve come here today to say this. I am sorry. I am truly sorry that I failed not only you, but that I failed myself.”
Lester Carlson finished quickly and stepped out from behind the podium. There was a stunned silence. Nobody from the American Legion moved forward to escort him from the podium. State Senator Baker stepped forward and shook hands mechanically. He seemed about to say something, but instead cleared his
throat and nodded. Lester Carlson walked alone over to a large maple and stood waiting. Maria came hurrying over to him. It was done. He would be news, but it was done—the apology he had wanted to make for many years.
“You did it Dad,” Maria, said and hugged him. “Mom would be wicked proud of you today. Let them think what they want. You did the right thing.”
Lester Carlson reached out and took Maria’s hand and together they turned to face several news reporter form local television and newspapers who were already shouting questions.
* * *
Chapter 30
A donut. A plain donut that was already a bit stale and crusty on the edges had brought him here. If he hadn’t stopped to grab the free donut, and he hardly ever ate the greasy things, he’d be far away.
Blake stood and watched the crowd ebbing around Lester Carlson. He had come here to confront the man; to demand an apology—an apology for all the Vietnam veterans who had fought in a bad war and were then left to flounder about on their own, gasping and lashing out aimlessly like a large and once powerful fish—a pickerel; a trout-- hooked and dumped on a lakeside dock.
At least that had been the plan after the encounter at the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. He had ridden away that day with no clear plan except to see James Bradley and perhaps have the both of them attend whatever kind of memorial service was planned for his old friend and co-pilot dead now 25 years—Kevin Flanagan.
But now James Bradley was dead and Kevin Flanagan’s body was missing. He wasn’t sure what to do next. He had come here hoping they would talk of Kevin Flanagan. Instead here was Lester Carlson apologizing for his part in the bad war. Somehow, he and Lester Carlson had ended up sharing the same demons from the same war.
Blake walked slowly over to the crowd hovering around Lester Carlson. He folded his arms across his chest and swiveled his head from side to side, his dark beard flecked now with gray catching tiny shafts of sunlight.
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