Lester Carlson’s daughter stood beside him under an ancient maple that shaded the area, answering questions also, tossing her dark hair from side to side as she fired comments back at the dozen or so writers and TV reporters who circled her and her father. She was a singer, a stage performer, used to projecting herself in front of a crowd. Blake stood at the back of the crowd, but looked up in time to see Maria Carlson staring at him. She had recognized him. It had been a week since their meeting at the Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.
For a moment Blake stared back, but then he dropped his gaze and walked slowly over to a seat near the podium. People were leaving now that the ceremony was over. A steady stream of vehicles circled the main road through the cemetery to line up at the only exit gate to the left of the speaker’s stand. Blake sat for many moments lost in thought. He didn’t feel like leaving this cemetery, but he no longer felt any anger at Lester Carlson.
James Bradley had died just days ago. Died mysteriously. Probably killed by a midnight arsonist. Killed after surviving fucking Vietnam--killed by some creep who torched his trailer while James Bradley slept inside. Blake had left James Bradley’s burnt-out trailer that morning and ridden on his motorcycle aimlessly for hours. And then he had called Katherine. He always did that. Katherine was always the one he called on when fear, loneliness, and sadness overtook him. That night, he had found a motel in Amherst and called Katherine again.
The next morning, he awoke early and packed his few belonging in the panniers on the side of his Harley. He was getting ready to ride back to Ohio and put the death of James Bradley out of his mind when he saw a newspaper lying open on the highly polished mahogany table in the front lobby where the complimentary coffee and stale donuts were left to be picked over by departing guests.
He paused to pick up a donut and glanced at the newspaper. There on the front page, boxed in the lower right corner, with a headline in bold type that couldn’t be missed, another Kevin Flanagan story--“Coffin Missing after Belton Service.”
And besides that, another story inside a dark black box: “Belton Chief Dies While Investigating Coffin Theft.”
Blake sat down and read both news stories.
Mysterious theft in Belton. The coffin containing the remains of Kevin Flanagan, a soldier missing in Vietnam for 25 years, was missing from the Belton town storage hut on Old Enfield Road in the Quabbin Reservation area. Plans to memorialize the dead soldier at the Quabbin Park Memorial Day ceremony to be held that weekend were now on hold.
And
Belton Police Chief Ernie Sands had suffered a fatal heart attack while investigating the coffin theft late yesterday. Police had no leads in the theft of the coffin.
Blake had folded the newspaper under his arm, and turned and gone back to his room where he stayed for the rest of the day before deciding to linger on in Amherst and go on with his original plan. He would confront Lester Carlson at the upcoming Memorial Day service and tell him about the day Kevin Flanagan died. And so he had come here to Quabbin Park Cemetery.
A few local news reporters still straggled after Lester and Maria Carlson when they approached Blake sitting on the bench.
“I remember you,” Maria Carlson said, not unkindly, but with a question in her voice. “I remember you from the Vietnam Memorial.”
Blake nodded. “Yup. I couldn’t stay, though. I wanted to talk but couldn’t.”
“What did you want with me then?” Lester Carlson spoke up. “Are you stalking me?” Blake stood his lanky frame several inches taller than Lester Carlson or his daughter.
“No way. I’m not stalking you. I wanted to tell you then about a massacre in Vietnam. A massacre by our guys. Something you should have known about back then. But maybe it doesn’t matter now ‘cause you feel the same way I do about the whole sorry thing.”
“Let’s talk,” Lester Carlson said. “This is my daughter Maria. You can tell her also. I want to know what happened. What I missed. What I should have known. I said I was sorry today, and I have a lot to be sorry for.”
Blake sat down on a wooden bench and stretched his long legs out in front of him. Lester Carlson and Maria sat together on another bench across from Blake. The sunlight sifted through a huge old hemlock that shaded both benches while Blake told his Vietnam story—the story of how he and Kevin Flanagan had come upon a massacre-in-progress; of how American troops blinded by fear and frustration were destroying a Vietnamese village in the mountains near the Cambodian border.
It took only a few minutes, and when he was done Lester Carlson sat silent. Maria had folded her hands between her knees and said simply, “Dear God.”
“There are a lot of stories like mine out there,” Blake said. “Lots of unreported ‘incidents’ as the generals called them, against civilians.”
“But you know, it was war, and it was crazy,” Lester Carlson said.
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” Maria said. “You probably couldn’t have stopped the shooting, the killing.”
“Here’s the thing,” Blake said. “If only I’d jumped out of the chopper with Kevin, we might have both made it. Whoever shot him might have thought twice about it if there were two of us. Two of us together. Two of us yelling at the captain, yelling at the troops, yelling for everybody to just stop it, stop shooting those villagers--that might have worked. Kevin Flanagan might be alive today and I’d be home in Ohio instead of trying to figure out why I came here to confront you in the first place.”
Blake stared at his hands. “If only I’d tried like Kevin to stop the killing; if only I’d forced myself forward that day when I saw you and made you listen to me, if only this, if only that. You can only live with just so many ‘if only’s’.” Blake stopped talking and sat staring off into the green, well cared for shrubbery of the cemetery.
Maria stood and walked over to him. She took his hand lightly. “Come over to our house,” she said. “Dad’s been haunted by Vietnam too. You can both talk some more, and have lunch.”
Blake stood. “OK,” he said. “I’d like that. I need to talk.”
“Follow us,” Lester Carlson said. ‘We’re in the Volvo wagon.”
“I parked my motorcycle over there away from this,” Blake said. “I’ll go get it.”
“Fine. We’ll wait here for you,” Lester Carlson said.
Blake walked off, a tall, stooped figure in jeans and leather riding jacket.
* * *
Chapter 31
Timing is everything.
He nodded and smiled to himself as he carried on this internal conversation.
Timing is everything—stay focused.
He stood behind a granite obelisk on a small hill in the Quabbin Park Cemetery. Below him, in a shaded hollow under a large old hemlock, a big green motorcycle leaned on its kickstand.
The call from the entity had come to him quickly, but clearly--eliminate this interference. He had already missed this man once—gone into his house to get his wife figuring that would bring this guy into sight. And all the time the target was right here in the area. He watched now as the tall thin man approached his motorcycle. Watched as the man stopped in surprise and then knelt to look closer at the slashed and flattened front tire.
Now was the time.
Timing is everything, he repeated to himself as he slipped out from behind the monument and scampered quietly down the short incline. His trusty Buck knife was in one hand; a small Little League aluminum baseball bat in the other. He’d never tried to do it like this—in broad daylight and with a man, and not just a man but a bigger person than himself. But the entity was inflexible; the entity allowed no hesitation. When the call came from the entity, you acted. You did his bidding.
He had started out doing it for fun and the sense of power it brought, but now he realized that even back then, even back in the carefree early days of the waitress at the phone booth, the nurse in the snowstorm, and one of his last successes—a young housewife in a red bikini out painting her porch on a T
hursday afternoon—even back then the entity had been watching. Assessing him. Showing him how to commit his so called crimes.
He smiled briefly at the thought of the housewife in her bright red bikini. So pretty and so confident in the power of her fine body. He had been out driving, cruising in his pickup truck. Sometimes he did that. The feeling for action would come over him and he would drive for hours, looking and waiting. Sometimes the day and the mood would pass with no possibilities, but other times—bingo.
He had spotted the housewife in her bikini, lips pursed in concentration; reddish-blonde hair tied up in back and covered with a kerchief, standing on the lower rung of a small ladder with a bucket of white paint on the ladder and a brush in her hand. Long legs. He had pulled over, parked, and approached her.
She had seen him coming, turned and climbed off the ladder to take his question. He had looked at a small notebook that he pulled from his shirt pocket—as if he were studying it for the correct street listing that he was about to ask directions for. And then he was up close to her and the wonderful clarity of vision and purpose that came upon him when he was about this type of work enveloped him.
He had assessed the road and the house and the whole landscape in an instant. There was nobody here. “Hello,” he said, and smiled. She started to reply when he swung his right hand as if delivering a punch and slashed her in the chest with the knife. A look of astonishment froze across her face and then she had screamed and tried to run. But he had followed her and done the job quickly. The police had never been able to figure it out. A young woman attacked and killed in broad daylight in front of her home—no sign of sexual assault; no sign of robbery.
He shook the thought of his past triumphs from his mind. Here at Quabbin Park Cemetery he had work to do.
The man’s back was turned from him, and the man himself still knelt in the grass examining from every angle the slashed tire, muttering and shaking his head in vexation. The man started to stand and turn, perhaps sensing somebody closing behind him. And that’s when he hit him, swinging the aluminum bat with all his might, but with only one arm.
The man crumpled face down on the ground beside his motorcycle, but then with a reflex action curled up into a ball and rolled several feet away. That saved the target’s life. He jumped him anyway, plunging his Buck knife into the chest area—two quick stabs. But he was out of position and worried now that the man would roll away again. He was not in control, and control was what he liked best about this type of work. The man’s leather riding jacket seemed to deflect the knife trusts. This was much harder than shoving a knife into an unsuspecting housewife dressed in a red bikini.
As he raised his hand for a third plunge, he heard the car. Cresting the small rise in front of him was the Volvo station wagon of Lester Carlson and his daughter. He jumped off the man and ran up the incline that he had just descended and down a small hill out of sight.
“We came looking for you,” Maria said to the Blake as several emergency personnel trundled him into an ambulance. “We thought maybe you were having some trouble with your motorcycle, so we drove around the cemetery looking for you.”
“You were out cold and bleeding,” Lester Carlson said.
“I don’t know what hit me,” Blake said. “Someone got me from behind.”
“Possible concussion,” one of the ambulance personnel said. “But that leather jacket of yours saved your life. The knife wounds are pretty superficial. The leather jacket stopped the blade. You’ll be OK.”
* * *
Chapter 32
“Kath, are you going to be OK up north there?” Bobby Doyle’s wife, Alice looked with concern as Katherine continued packing a small suitcase. They stood together in the small guest bedroom of the 2-story home that Alice and Bobby Doyle lived in. Katherine started to reply and then stopped and laughed. Her own voice interrupted her in the room. The radio was on and tuned to WEET where they were re-broadcasting some of her past shows. She had talked to Forrest and the station manager at WEET that morning and requested a brief leave of absence.
Forrest had introduced today’s show by announcing that she would be away for a short vacation and that WEET would be playing back some of “our greatest hits” in her absence.
“Bridget Monroe will be at her favorite nudist colony for a week or so taking a short vacation and getting an overall body tan,” Forrest told the radio audience. “Any of you listeners out there see her, take a picture and get it into me.”
“I’ll be fine,” Katherine said. “Listen to me, will you.” She laughed as she and Alice paused to listen to her voice from the radio.
“The cover of Cosmo has this article on 12 things you can do to please your man,” a male voice was saying over the air. “And I flipped it open and glanced at the article there in the store and my wife hardly does any of these things. She doesn’t even own a garter belt.”
“Of course, it didn’t occur to you to actually buy the magazine, pay real money for it, and bring it home to your wife so you could show the article to her,” Katherine queried.
“Well no,” the male voice admitted.
“When was the last time you brought home anything for her?” Katherine asked. “Not a new coffee pot, I don’t mean that. Not an electric can opener. Please. Some flowers, a book, a box of chocolates. Anything, but just for her. And please don’t go saying you bought her a garter belt—just for her.” There was a long pause.
“Work, dinner, TV, bed. Get up in the morning and start all over again. No wonder your wife is bored and doesn’t want to have sex with you anymore.”
Katharine stood and turned the radio off. “They’ll manage without me for a week or so.”
Alice looked at her with concern. “He’ll be out of the hospital by the time you get to Massachusetts.”
“I know, and I know he’ll be fine. But I’ll go see him, figure out if he is coming home again soon. I can’t live like this—his going off like this. Chasing his past. Always chasing Vietnam.”
Alice nodded. “You can stay here forever, Kath. Sleep over here and just use your house in the day. Things will work out.”
She had been staying with Bobby and Alice for the past several days—afraid to be in the big house alone at night after the incident with the intruder. And then yesterday the call had come from her husband.
“Somebody tried to get me, Kath,” he had said, with an almost unnatural calmness. “Some goon slashed my tire on the bike and then busted me on the head and stabbed me. At the cemetery where they were supposed to bury Kevin Flanagan. My leather riding jacket saved me. I’m OK. Really, I’m OK.”
Katharine hugged Alice and turned to Bobby LeBow who had just entered the room. “Ready for that ride to the airport you promised.”
Bobby looked hard at her, but picked up her suitcase. “The thing is Kath, I’m serious now. Guy sneaks into your house here in Ohio; a few days later Blake gets jumped up in Massachusetts. It’s what we in police work call a series of bad coincidences. So be careful, will you. That prowler in your place the other night could have been looking for Blake. And he may still be.”
Katharine paused and touched Bobby LeBow’s shoulder. “I know, Bobby. I know. We’ll both be careful.”
* * *
Chapter 33
Hudson Richardson finished looking through a packet of official papers and slipped them back into a large official envelope with U.S. Marines stamped on the front. “Thanks, Ralph. I own you one. Tell you what, I’ll promise to vote for you for Lieutenant Governor. That gives you at least two votes—yours and mine”
Ralph Willock laughed his slow, booming guffaw that he used when he wanted to show his good nature.
The two men sat in the front reception room of the Willock Funeral Home in Belton, Massachusetts. Hudson reached out and touched one of the heavy crystal candleholders on the table between them. Willock stood.
“Gotta get going. “Gotta get over to Town Hall and talk to the Finance Committee. Did you find ou
t what you wanted to find out?”
“I think so,” Hudson Richardson said. “Kevin Flanagan was shot. He didn’t die in a chopper crash. The autopsy report is pretty specific. Shot seven times with high caliber bullets, probably from an M16 rifle. Shot by his own guys, it looks like to me.”
“A damn tragedy,” Willock said. “All that shooting going on and somebody makes a mistake and fires at one of his own men. Fucking shame.”
“It bothers me, Ralph.”
“Why? The war is over Mr. Reporter. Bad things happen. Accidents happen.”
Hudson Richardson and Ralph Willock walked out the front door and stood for a moment on the steps in front of the funeral home.
“You got that vet fellow who served with the dead soldier staying with you?” Willock asked. “Somebody stabbed him over there at the Memorial Day service, I hear?”
“He was in the hospital for two days,” Hudson said. “Had no place to go, so I told him to come stay with me for a bit. He wants to find his buddy’s body in the worst way. Bury him and put it to rest.”
“Kids,” Willock said. “Fuckers from the fraternities at the university. Stole the casket as some sort of joke.”
I guess so,” Hudson agreed. “Why else would you want a few bones from Vietnam?”
“Any word on who stabbed your house guest?” Willock wondered.
“Total mystery,” Hudson replied. “Doesn’t know a soul in Massachusetts except me. State Police are asking around, but they don’t know.”
“I’m betting on one of those homeless street people from Northampton or Amherst,” Willock said. “More and more of them out on the streets these days.”
“I guess so,” Hudson said. “Could be that. Blake there, that’s his name, doesn’t have any enemies. No friends either. See you around Ralph.”
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