Literary Fiction/Romance
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Carter Crow has been wandering the country for years, denying and fleeing from the terrors of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
5-star praise for Light The Hidden Things:
Don McQuinn is the king of mind control!
“…From the beginning, you feel like you are right there in the story, feeling their emotions, reading their thoughts…a heartfelt, beautiful, and engaging story…”
It Feels True to Life
“As a psychiatrist…who worked with a number of PTSD patients…this book about a veteran with PTSD rings true to life. Not only that, it is movingly and beautifully written…amazingly evocative…”
Superb and worth buying!
“…Wonderfully crafted and researched, this novel should be read by everyone, not just those in or around the military families. Highly recommended. ”
an excerpt from
Light The Hidden Things
by Don McQuinn
Chapter 1
Carter Crow eased his pickup and the attached Airstream mobile home off the narrow road onto the potholed remains of an asphalt parking lot. He stopped and stepped to the ground with an almost swaggering economy of motion that suggested in a different time he’d have traveled on horseback and probably still could. Rangy, in levis and a short-sleeved blue work shirt, he broke the image by wearing laced field boots instead of a cowboy’s heeled ropers. Crisp features seemed almost aggressive, nothing like handsome. A bristle of close-cropped black hair glinted silver at the temples.
Reaching inside the cab, he brought out an off-white straw Stetson. Before putting it on he glanced at the barely legible message inked on the sweatband: Semper Fi, old buddy. Ride easy. Fine creases of a smile touched the corners of his mouth for the moment it took to put it on and tilt it just so.
Several yards to his left stood a dilapidated clapboard building that clearly was once a store-and-house combination. To his right the land eased down to Lake Connolly. Early morning sun turned wavelets into silver filigree on jade. Beyond that a tumbled blanket of forest green so dark it appeared to vibrate sprawled up mountain slopes. Above the tree line austere peaks of bare stone raked the sky. Last winter’s snow still patched them on this cloudless late summer day. Crow inhaled to the depths of his lungs, savored firs, the tang of frigid lake water, sun-drenched earth and plants.
When he returned his gaze to his immediate surroundings, however, he spoke aloud, a deep voice touched by a softening drawl that heightened the sadness of the words. “I’m glad you never saw what’s happened here, Smitty. Good memories ought never be broken.” He hesitated, then huskily, “No more bad memories for you, my friend. No more good ones taken away, either.”
Reasserting the present, Crow frowned at the opportunistic weeds claiming every break in the shattered parking surface. Three knee-high, scrawny Douglas firs strained for growth. The boarded-up windows of the old building stared back at him. A cement slab in front once held gas pumps; now it suggested a grave marker.
Still apparently talking to himself, he was gruff. “We made a mistake. We’ll just walk around a bit, then shove off.” He gave a quiet but unmistakable command. “Major, come.”
A mass of dog tumbled out to stand beside him. It grinned excitement. Muscles bulged under a brown coat relieved by white forepaws and a white blaze on its chest. A wagging tail slapped Crow’s leg. Concentrating once again on the distant scenery, Crow lowered a hand that settled unerringly on the animal’s head, a move of long companionship.
Frenzied yapping from the building spun them that way. They watched in disbelief as something like a white lint bunny shot out the building’s front door and vaulted off the porch in headlong charge.
A disheveled woman flew out in pursuit, her yells as strident as the yaps. Bare legs under cutoff jeans flashed in sunshine that emphasized the dirt smudges on her face. Despite the blue bandanna binding her hair, stray skeins rich as strong coffee flared out the right side and in back. A paint-stained black sweatshirt with sleeves cut off at the elbows fluttered and flapped.
Quickly, the small dog realized the unmoving targets of its wrath were not frozen into immobility by fear. Showing commendable wisdom, it skidded to a stop several yards away. After looking to assure the woman was coming fast, it commenced up-and-down hops that demonstrated unrelenting ferocity without actually moving it the least bit closer.
Tail wagging happily, Major advanced to investigate. Crow made a sharp sound, then said, “Major, sit.” The dog obeyed instantly, cocking his head from side to side, fascinated by this wondrous entertainment. He voiced approval in a thunderous woof. The white dog shrieked. Crow would have sworn it backed up in mid-leap like a dandelion puff hit by a stiff breeze.
The woman arrived just in time to whisk her pet out of the air. The move was so quick, the grip so sure, a final yap was squashed down to a muffled yeep. Clutching the animal to her breast, breathless, she demanded, “Call off that beast.”
Crow regarded her with the same detached amusement Major afforded her dog. He guessed her age as not that much younger than himself, which made her mature enough to consider rational dismissal of a puppy-grade confrontation.
Further evaluation of her expression knocked the props out from under that hope.
Too bad, he thought, and allowed himself a hidden sigh. She was attractive, despite all the signs of low-order grunt work. A bad sign; a woman brimming with the righteousness of hard labor was a fertile ground for trouble. And this one looked ready for war.
There were stains under her eyes. Crow was embarrassed by the conviction she’d been crying. He told himself he couldn’t possibly be a factor in her distress because the tears were long dry. He nevertheless felt completely in the wrong, clumsy, and generally outgunned.
Crow’s tip of the hat was slow. The antique courtesy didn’t do much for the woman, but oddly her pet seemed to calm a bit. With a deliberate look down at Major then back to the woman, Crow said, “That’s not right, ma’am.”
Confusion deepened her frown. “What do you mean, not right? That thing tried to kill Zasu.” Calling down the force of law, she added, “You’re trespassing.”
Major liked being the center of interest. Unfortunately, as dogs will, he yawned to relieve his excitement. The effect was like looking into a wet, red, suitcase full of teeth.
The woman’s arm around Zasu visibly tightened. Zasu squeaked. The woman said, “See? She’s terrified.”
Crow said, “Don’t blame my dog, ma’am. I made all the trouble. He’s just a mutt, doesn’t know about trespass. It’s me that’s out of line. I apologize.” He pointed to the cab and said, “Ride.” The dog jumped in. Crow pushed the door almost closed before adding, “He’s a good dog, ma’am. He’s big and he’s ugly enough to scare off a small storm, but he’s gentle. It’s not kind to call him ‘that thing’ or ‘that beast.’ He’s got feelings.”
The woman blinked without any loss of suspicious vigilance. “He seems to mind well. He’s just so big.”
Leaning back against the door of the cab, Crow said, “He’s a big old boy, that’s a fact. Packed tight. Go about one-fifteen, one-and-a-quarter. Called an American Bulldog. Not many around.”
Zasu squirmed and the woman’s frown dug in again. She said, “Very interesting. I want you to leave anyhow. He looks dangerous.”
Crow’s grin was open, crackling blue eyes and strong teeth. The weathered features warmed with it. “Dangerous is the furthest thing from his mind. He’s a gentleman.”
Tired of being left out of the conversation, the subject gentleman pushed his head out the open window and nosed Crow’s hat down over his eyes. While Crow straightened it, the dog’s tail striking the back of the seat was a metronome of friendliness. The woman forced a small smile and said, “Zasu and I will have to take your word for his character. You said he had a name? I didn’t catch it.”
For a moment Crow was completely taken by the changes her smile wrought. Hastily recovering, he said, “Major.”
Her hard look was back instantly. Turquoise eyes drilled Crow and he recalled that turquoise is a rock. She whipped out a cell phone. “That’s it, mister. Go. In five seconds I call 911.”
Wide-eyed, Crow pushed Major away from the driver’s seat. “What brought that on?”
“I don’t like being made fun of.”
“I wasn’t making fun.”
“Ha! Major? Who’d name a dog Major?”
“Well, me, for one.”
Thumb on keypad, she hesitated. “You’re not… you know, being smart? I mean it’s like me naming Zasu Ripper. Major’s a funny name.”
“I’m a funny man.”
The eyes practically flamed. “I never noticed. Naming a dog something like that’s cruel.”
“You obviously don’t know many majors, ma’am.” Crow fiddled with his hat, sincere as granite. “They’re a lot like other people, for the most part. And anyhow, people don’t always measure up to what they’re called. Like, my first name’s Carter, which is rightfully a last name, but my last name’s Crow. I’m not often mistaken for a bird. Just so for Major. It’s who he is. We talked it out when he was a pup. It doesn’t trouble him.”
She smiled again. This time it shimmered, like water waiting to boil, and suddenly laughter spilled through. Crow thought the sound almost overruled the tear stains. Too soon, it was over. It left him with the unsettling notion that it had escaped a bad place.
Crow decided to do something he rarely did. He made conversation. “You own this outfit?”
Half-turning toward the building, she said, “Somewhat.” There was no inflection and Crow could only see part of her face, but he was sure there was a grimace.
It brought Crow up short. It also reminded him to stay out of other people’s lives. Particularly their sorrows. He climbed into the pickup. “Sorry about the commotion.”
Petting the squirming Zasu, the woman waved off the apology. “No harm, no foul.” She paused, before continuing, “You come here for the fishing?”
“I did. Fellow that told me about it used to come here. Long time ago.”
“My uncle built all this. They—my aunt and uncle—lived in the back half. I’m bringing it back.” Challenge buzzed in the last. When Crow didn’t react, apology tinted what followed. “Maybe your friend knew Bake.” She tilted her head toward a wooden sign dangling at roadside from a metal pole. It hung endwise from its remaining chain and someone had punctuated the wood with a rifle so now it read BAKE’S: BAIT. The pole had suffered, as well. A large blotch of paint marked where a car had knocked it into an eastward list. The woman added, “There’s a county-maintained RV site on the lakeshore road, about a mile on.”
“My friend never mentioned knowing anyone here.” Crow started the engine. “Much obliged for the campsite tip. Is there a good place to eat back in town?”
“The Silver Dollar’s got okay pub grub. For a real dinner, try Martha’s.”
“I noticed Martha’s. Sign said home cooking.”
“Used to be. She’s got a cook now. Good as Martha, but no one’s got the guts to say that.”
Crow put the truck in gear as the woman walked away. Backing and filling, he took time to mark more details of the location. Beyond the broken parking sites and toward the lake were fire pits, squatting under leafy shade trees like an archeological find. Further down the slope a few firs towered, giants that knew the seasons of centuries. Rhododendrons grew at their bases. Unkempt and leggy, their vigor was careless splendor.
He watched the woman up the steps of the porch. She strode inside past a lopsided screen door hanging by one hinge. A breeze made it sway, uncertain as a drunken wink. The building itself apparently started life painted green. Then it was blue. The last time anyone bothered to spruce it up, they chose brown. Weathering had peeled off haphazard slabs of all three, giving the walls a mottled appearance that made Crow think of a very dead reptile. A few spots showed the original wood, gray with exposure but still sound, as if the old relic knew disrepair was temporary but pride was forever.
Turning away, Crow pictured a different time. People on the porch laughed, swapped stories, enjoyed. “Must have been special then,” he said toward the uncaring mountains.
Later, at the turnoff to the county campsite, he couldn’t decide to stay there or press on. Major dozed on his end of the bench seat. When the truck slowed he sat up to face Crow.
Crow said, “I know what you’re thinking. No way in the world that lady will ever fix up that wreck. You see she’d been crying? A woman like that, crying.” He shook his head. “You hear her laugh?” His words fell to a whisper that had the rasp of dry rope. “Nice. Not as nice as Patricia, though. You never heard her. Not sad underneath, like that lady. Except later, when…” He stopped abruptly.
Fool. She didn’t sound like Patricia. No one ever laughed like her. No one ever will.
He shrugged, twisted neck muscles gone stiff. He ended up looking at Major. His smile for the dog was crooked. “See how people crowd into your life? You have to be on your toes: Keep them out. Even the nice ones.” He made a noise in his chest. Not a laugh, not a snarl—a thing that wanted to be both. “Especially the nice ones.”
Crow drove into the campsite. When he spoke, forced cheer mocked a voice still struggling to pull free of dark reminiscence. “And what’s it mean when you ask someone if they own something and they tell you ‘Somewhat?’ What kind of answer is that?”
Major lay back down and curled in a tight ball.
Crow pressed on. “That’s your problem, you know? You’re a fine listener. Gifted, you might say. Conversation-wise, though, you don’t hold up your end worth doodly. Frankly, if it wasn’t for stodgy, you wouldn’t have any personality at all.”
Major’s wet snuffle had all the earmarks of a rude canine retort.
* * *
It was just coming dusk when Crow came out of the Airstream and settled to the ground facing the lake. The water was a flat black infinity stretching away toward hulking, slowly disappearing mountains. Rough, runneled bark of a fir pressed against his Pendleton wool shirt.
He liked the night. In the past it had been the place of stalking, of being stalked. Fear waited for darkness, ticking off the seconds of the sun, licking its chops. Daylight had fear; no question about that. It was different, though. Night time fear slipped into a man like a knife, slick and chill, turning organs into grease.
Until a man learned to use the night and its fear. A man became darkness. Became fear.
Crow knew this like few others.
The time of such things was gone, dead as the dust of the places where he’d learned. He exulted in their going. He never spoke of his pride in his skills. He tried not to think of those who discovered their skills couldn’t match his.
Some things refuse to leave the mind.
Still, for Crow, the night was true sanctuary. As he’d turned it to his benefit in a time of violence, so now he embraced it—and it him—when he needed peace. There was privacy. There was obscurity and, when things were best, invisibility. In the darkness he thought more clearly, sorted through the good and bad, threw out what he didn’t want in his head.
Night was when he closed his eyes, making the darkness perfect. Intimate. Solitary. When he talked to Patricia.
She made me think of you. Not because she’s alone. I like to think you never thought of yourself as alone. I want to believe you always knew I’d be back.
I’m not going to talk about that. I’ve said as much about all that as I’m able.
Remember how you always picked on me to tell you about my day when I came home from work? Graveled me at first, you asking about this, about that. Took a while for me to learn you really cared about what I did. Took even longer to learn I really cared what you did while I was gone, too. Even before Joe. When it was just us. You never believed I cared that much. You talked about doing the floors like it was a penalty. Can’t really argue. But they were our floors, my Patricia taking care of our home.
I still remember your face when I told you I’d show you the right way to make a bed. Never knew until that moment such a soft-spoken lady could have such a rough side to her tongue. Very strong lesson.
Then you tore me up again next day when I came home with the truffles and flowers. Said I shouldn’t ever try to bribe you. I did, though, didn’t I? I liked doing it. I don’t know why I never said how beautiful you were when I brought home something like that. You always sounded off, real sharp, but I never listened. I just watched what your face said, what your eyes told me. Did you ever know I’d buy one of those silly fancy candy boxes and just grin like a monkey all the way home because I couldn’t wait to see how you’d smile and put your hands together under your chin?
No. I never said. I’m sorry, babe.
So many sorries.
There I go again, coloring outside the lines. I said I’d tell you about today.
There’s a calamity up the road. I’m camped next to Lake Connelly. Old clown Major’s just behind me in the Airstream, out cold. Anyhow, lady’s trying to bring back an old store. Smitty told me about it. You remember Gunny Smith? His wife, Millie? Five boys? Yeah, them. The family that invented noise. He’s gone. Falujah. Anyhow, he knew the place long ago. Great little store to take care of fishermen, hunters, campers, vacationers. Place is a wreck. She means to make it work again.
Not a chance. A dreamer. I see them all the time. Think hard work and good intentions is all you need.
We believed it, didn’t we?
Anyhow, she told me about a place to eat tonight. I’m going. I don’t feel much like cooking. Or anything else, truth be told. I don’t know…
Aw, why don’t I just say it? She made me think of you. I hope you don’t mind. I mean, she’s not really anything like you—you know that could never be—but you know how things went, there at the end? I never understood how you felt. I remember the things you said, though. You were so good to me. The words were always right. I just never heard the music. I swear I never knew what you were feeling. I’d give my soul to hear you tell me so.
If I still have one.
The thing is, that lady’s got the same thing in her voice. I know that sound now.
Well, listen to Mr. Cheer. I don’t know what’s wrong with me this evening. Seems I can’t break free of things you and I really don’t want to talk about. Remember how you used to change a subject on me? I do. You ruined a lot of fine rants, woman. First thing I’d know, we were talking about something I never brought up or even thought about.
You still do it, thank God. Like when I sort of stumble and almost forget about who I am and all that. Or when the dreams come. You know you’re all I’ve got to hold onto when that happens.
I really hate to bother you with that, Patricia. After everything else… I’m getting better, though. I am.
Sorry to be so dull tonight. The day wasn’t that bad. Just me, missing you. I’ll be better by morning, for sure. After I get me some dinner and a good night’s sleep.
‘Cause you’re always there.
Chapter 2
There was little difference between high noon and dusk inside the store section of Bake’s Bait. Windows that once admitted grand scenery were blocked by plywood panels that shut out the day as well as the weather. For Lila, scrubbing walls, work lights provided garish illumination that magnified dirt and stains. Fumes from the bucket of cleaner made her eyes smart. For perhaps the hundredth time she promised herself she’d put in new, bigger windows. When she got another loan.
A quick squint at her watch was an unnecessary move. Zasu’s fidgets made it clear it was time to quit and, most important, time to get dinner inside woman’s best friend. Her anxious whine rose like a human question.
With Zasu frisking beside her, Lila stepped through an open door from the store section into the living area. It was still under repair, but the improvement was obvious. For one thing, the western windows were glass. Fading sunshine buttered the opposite beige wall, heightening the sharper colors of the shelved books flanking a dark blue sofa. Between the windows loomed a ponderous fireplace of rounded river rocks. A pair of chocolate-brown leather chairs faced the hearth. The richness of their color and scent coaxed with promise of enfolding comfort, a warm fire, a good read. To that end, each chair had its own table and light.
Lila loved the chairs. She saw them as aging friends, easy in their present, content with their past.
She stopped abruptly. Suddenly she couldn’t face cooking the usual solitary meal. She thought of Martha’s restaurant longingly and, by association, the man who’d driven onto her property earlier. He had calm eyes but she had a feeling they missed nothing. Dismay tightened her throat; he must have noticed she’d been crying. Chagrin conjured up a most unwanted and wildly inappropriate mental image of Edward Lawson. Aloud, she mimicked pomposity. “Banking’s a business. Loans are based on cold, hard facts.” Bitterly, the voice her own, she went on. “Creep. I’ll show him. Everyone.”
Zasu continued to lead into the next room. It was clearly waiting its turn for improvement. Only the chandelier identified a former dining room. Lila’s disapproval swept across the chest of drawers, a truly ugly standing wardrobe, a cot with a sleeping bag, and a small dog bed.
Two doors in the far wall led out, the one on the left to two bedrooms and the bathroom.
The latter had been Lila’s first project. She shuddered, remembering.
The pair proceeded through the second door and into the kitchen. That was another work in progress, but operable, with its own dining nook.
Mixing a bit of canned food with some kibble in Zasu’s dish, Lila continued talking aloud. Defensiveness clanked in the words. “I’ll bet it’s been a month since I went into town except to buy groceries or hardware. Hardware. Could there be any greater curse than an actual requirement to go shopping—not an urge, mind, but a genuine requirement—and the goal is hardware?” She put the dish on the floor. Zasu practically dove in. Lila addressed the refrigerator. “I’m entitled to some time away. Fixing up this place is a goal, sure, but not the meaning of life.” Seeking affirmation, she told the stove, “I’m taking a bath and putting on something pretty and someone else is cooking tonight.” She looked at Zasu, whose attention remained firmly fixed on her own task at hand. Nevertheless, Lila said, “I’m having a glass of wine, too. Maybe even a couple. How d’you like them apples?”
Zasu finally raised her head. She wagged a fluffy tail and put an indicative paw on her dish. It was a nightly plea which Lila ignored with equal consistency, but this time she missed it entirely. She was on her way to the tub.
An hour later Lila, hair in order but still a bit damp, certainly felt better. Hot water didn’t just make her clean, it freed her of the insidious weariness that sometimes crept into her muscles and morale like a virus. Nice clothes and a dab of makeup didn’t hurt either. Especially for woman whose life had somehow reached a place where it had more to do with driving nails than polishing them.
She wondered if the bright yellow sweater over the dark green blouse might be too much.
She decided she liked it and if the fashionistas of Lupine wanted to take offense, the stimulation would do them good. The sweater went well with the brown tweedy skirt and way too expensive shoes and both brought out her own natural color. Anyhow, dinner in Lupine was no occasion for the little black dress and pearls.
There was the practical aspect of the thing, too; a sweater would be a near necessity later. It was only a few days until September and at Lupine’s altitude, winter was already claiming the night.
“I will not freeze because someone thinks I ought to dress fancier. That’s nuts.” In the near-empty space the words had a touch of echo.
She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “I’m rationalizing out loud at unpainted walls. I do impressions of people I don’t like for an audience of one dog. I explain myself to major appliances. Damned right I’m going out.”
Her smile was wry as she turned away, but her shoulders were back.
Lila started down the porch stairs just in time to see headlights swing off the road. She recognized Van’s sleek sports car. It stopped between her and the defunct gas pump island.
Charles Vanderkirk unfolded from behind the wheel. In the glare at the front of the car, he loomed. Considerably over six feet tall and hugely broad-shouldered. The picture wasn’t lost on Lila. She reminded herself to keep her voice firm. Definitely noncommittal. “Evening, Van. What brings you out this way this late?”
He came closer. He had good features and a generous smile. “The construction business doesn’t have working hours, just deadlines,” he said. “I’m trying to make a deal with old man Tolbert for that property down the lake. Thought I’d stop and say hello. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“No, I’m just on my way to town.”
He bantered with her. “Town? You? What’s the occasion?”
“No occasion. I don’t feel like cooking, that’s all.”
“Too bad. You’re good at it. I wish you’d do more of it for me.”
“Thanks. Part of the image. You know, cook, sweep, have babies—the regular.”
“I never said anything like that. Yeah, I still think you ought to sell.” His gesture and expression said more about the building behind Lila than any words. “Someone like you killing yourself so you can sell beer and worms to a bunch of slobs who can’t remember their last bath isn’t a good thing. Is that sexist?”
Lila smiled, aware she’d been sharper than she meant. “Not entirely. And you forgot to mention you’d like to tear this place down and build something—What did you call it?—decent.”
“It was the wrong word. All I meant was…”
“I know, I know. We’ve had this conversation. Anyhow, you said you’d talk to Lawson about my loan.”
Van was slow to answer. “He asked if I agreed with your business projection numbers. I didn’t tell him I don’t. I didn’t tell him a small resort here won’t have a chance when someone builds a fancier place—and that day’s coming. What I said was, if anyone can reconstruct this heap into what it used to be, it’s you.”
Lila took the last step to the ground. In spite of herself, she reacted to him, felt surrounded by—included in—an aura of power, whether she exactly wanted that or not. Something primal going on there, she told herself, and tried to shove aside the attraction-aversion combination that disturbed her so. It didn’t entirely work: The truth was, he was attractive in all regards. He was likable, even if occasionally his blunt honesty felt a touch domineering. He was attracted to her and she appreciated his willingness to indicate it without pushing too hard. Now she smiled up at him and said, “Thanks. It was good of you to step up for me. But I’m not doing reconstruction. What it is, it’s overdue maintenance.”
Shrugging, Van ignored her small joke to speak almost sadly. “I didn’t like my conversation with him, Lila. Edward Lawson’s not just my banker, he’s an old friend. Holding back the truth’s the worst kind of lie.”
“I’m sorry.” She put a hand on his sleeve. “I never meant to put you in a rough spot. It’s just that when you offered…”
His interruption was brusque. “I hate watching you waste your time. Look, sell this place to me. You know I’ll make you a generous deal. I’ll build something big and modern. You’ll manage it. Good salary, living quarters, the whole nine yards. Who better than a beautiful woman who loves the place? My friend.”
“Uncle Bake and Aunt Lila left their home and business to me to be mine the way it was theirs. That’s what I want. What I’ll have.”
“You didn’t even know you owned this until a year ago, and they’d both been dead for years before that. How do you know what they wanted?” He was almost angry. “You’re letting sentiment dictate the answer to a business situation.”
In the face of his rising temper, she felt strangely reinforced. She told him, “I like sentiment. I like happy endings.”
Van opened and closed his mouth, clearly measuring his response. Finally, he said, “Happy endings don’t just come from soft music and wishing. They come from taking advantage of situations.”
Lila took her hand back. “I’ve seen a couple of situations.” It came out edgier than she meant, and she immediately softened her voice. “You’re a great guy. I’m glad I know you. You’re a tremendous help.”
“We could be better friends.” Again, he gestured at the building, acknowledging his rival. His smile was rueful. “I can’t seem to get past the competition.”
She said, “I’ve got to get my life in order before I think about anything else.”
“Right. Look, if you’re going into town, let me take you to dinner.”
“No, please. I need some time alone.” Her quick answer surprised her. She enjoyed his company. She didn’t really want to be alone.
“You’re here by yourself all the time. I worry about it.”
She fought past confusion, explaining to herself as much as to him, “And I appreciate it. I can take care of myself. It’s just that tonight I need to… I don’t know. Introspection, I guess. Okay?”
Van stepped back. “I’ll follow you as far as Front Street. Make sure you don’t get lost in the big city.”
They shared friendly laughter.
Chapter 3
Front Street was old-town Lupine’s main street, a fitting introduction to a very individualist community. Only the western side had buildings. The sidewalk on the eastern side was merely a border for the park on the bank of the Fortymile River. Years ago the citizens watched thousands of logs rumble past in that current, headed for the Lake Connolly sawmill.
No one then gave much thought to the day when the timber companies would have scalped all the mountains within economic reach. The day came. The companies moved on to more accessible trees. The loggers who had survived the incredibly dangerous work packed up their families and chased after them, pursuing the only jobs they knew.
Lupine fell like one of its lumbered firs. Not with a similar awesome crash; more like an exhausted groan. The school closed a full year before the last saloon parched out. A local wit lamented that it was bad enough the few remaining kids would grow up uneducated; worse, they were doomed to sobriety until they were big enough to run away.
Nevertheless, the town clung to its narrow valley with the brazen tenacity of a weed. When the new highway bypassed them it was almost the finish. The locals barely mustered the clout for an exit/entrance ramp for their two-lane macadam umbilical cord. Those who stayed scratched for a living. They called themselves Lupinions, it being a source of great pride that each had a strong position on everything and a lofty disregard for any other. They arranged to bus children to school in the next town and kept their church alive so they could meet at least once a week in mutual commiseration and pray for something better.
Still, for every old timer who passed away or pilgrim who set out for the larger world, someone straggled in. After decades of relative balance, the old-timers were startled to realize that, while they weren’t looking, the population had actually grown. The hippies found the place, fumbled around for a while, and most drifted off. A second church appeared. Soon, craftsmen and a spattering of artists found the rustic environment tickled their muse. Others, as anxious to avoid the outer world as the original settlers, raised berries or goats or cattle or whatever they could eat or sell. A few commuted to city jobs in the greater Seattle area. The advent of electronics and instant communications created a spurt of immigrants with exotic talents and a taste for clean air; they worked at home. A daycare popped up. The town taxed itself for a K-to-six school, a library, and three-man police department and chief. Outsiders came to hike, fish, hunt, and shop. Those practices sat well with Lupinions because the outsiders eventually went home but savory chunks of money remained.
Two who’d watched Lupine’s growth and change were in conversation when Crow stepped into Martha Short’s restaurant. Martha nudged her companion, Pastor Andy Richards. In a muttered aside she said, “Another fisherman. Want to bet?”
An elderly man of average height and build, Pastor Richards wasn’t one who’d draw attention to himself. His gray hair was short, conventional. He wore plain clothes and inexpensive hiking boots. His most obvious feature was a manner of inner peace and steady confidence. He laughed at Martha as easily as one would expect. He said, “My trade’s risky enough without betting money on people. Anyhow, I suspect you already know the man and you’re sandbagging me.”
Martha sneered and swept off. She greeted Crow with a professionally quick smile that didn’t detract from its genuine warmth. She asked, “By yourself this evening?”
At first Crow merely saw an older woman, small, with the assured air of one who’s accepted her years with pride in herself and her works. Behind her glasses lively dark eyes pierced like pins. One look into them and Crow knew he’d been measured, weighed, and evaluated. Probably far too accurately.
He smiled at her. “Yes, ma’am. Just passing through.”
Leading the way, talking over her shoulder, Martha said, “By yourself’s not good. We’ll have to spoil you a bit.” She gestured him to a seat at a candlelit table and put a menu in front of him. “My name’s Martha and this is my restaurant. We don’t serve strangers. Once you come through my door, you’re among friends. Something from the bar before you order?”
“Maker’s Mark and water side,” Crow said.
Eyebrows up, Martha turned just in time to speak to a passing waitress. “Estelle, this gentleman knows whiskey. Maker’s Mark, water side. He’s never been here before, and you know I’m partial to bourbon men, so be nice to him. Don’t water his drink. Not this time.”
Estelle grinned and left. Crow asked Martha, “What if I said I ate here three years ago?”
“You’d be fibbing.” Martha put her hands on her hips. “My hobby is knowing everything. I’m Lupine’s official nosy old biddy.”
“Unimaginable. Really?”
Martha winked at the sarcasm. “World class. If I was younger and prettier, I’d be a spy.”
“And if I was younger and prettier, I’d be all over you to join me for dinner.”
She made a face at the flattery and suddenly, Crow heard himself say, “My name’s Crow. Carter Crow.” Not entirely believing what was happening, he saw himself shaking her hand. He barely understood her to say something about “Pleased to meet you.” By then his hand was lying on the table and he was looking at it like it just flew in a window and attached itself to his wrist.
He stumbled into a lame-joke explanation. “If I’m going to be recognized every time I come here, I might as well have a name. I already know yours.”
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d told someone his name as a ploy to keep a conversation alive. Except—to be honest—at that rundown Bake’s. That made twice. In one day. He wondered if he was getting old.
As soon as Martha rejoined Pastor Richards at the hostess station, he said, “Interesting action between you two.” She continued to focus on Crow. Finally, the pastor said, “Well?”
With a glare and a voice that snapped like a storm flag, Martha said, “Well what?”
“You spoke with him at least fifteen seconds… That means you pried out his life story.”
“You calling me a gossip?”
The pastor looked unconvincingly repentant. “’Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses.’ Not that you’re an elder, of course. Nor would I ever call you a gossip. I think of you as our expediter of Lupine-centered information.”
Martha hid her giggle behind her hand and confessed. “You know, you’re right. I was bragging about how I poke into everyone’s business.”
“You keep important things secret and help anyone who needs it. We love you.”
“Oh, stop it. Go sing a hymn or something.” She brushed at him as she would a pesky fly.
Pastor Richards moved toward the door. “It’s a nice evening. I think I’ll just walk about a bit.”
“Come back soon.” She linked her arm with his, headed for the door. “I don’t get to spend enough time with you.”
He patted her hand. “It’s mutual, my friend. But why spend time with me? You already know everything about me.”
Fortunately for Martha there’s nothing in theology that forbids a lady burying her elbow in a pastor’s ribs. Nor any prohibition against said pastor yelping in respectable imitation of a small dog like Zasu.
* * *
While he waited for Estelle to return, Crow recovered enough to admire his surroundings. Martha’s place was an old home turned into a restaurant with tables and chairs from a long-gone era. Electric lighting was muted, candles graced the tables. Paintings and photographs on the wall added nostalgia. He was the only lone diner in a restaurant at capacity.
That wasn’t an unusual event for a man who prided himself on his distance from others. This time was different, however. He heard things in the forest-wind sigh of people speaking softly, intimately. He didn’t hear the words. He heard feelings that crossed between speakers as softly as moths chasing light, confirmations of togetherness.
As much as he determined to be separate, he resented being reminded of his loss. Patricia loved evenings out. To her, those other people were part of her experience. Because of her, it had been part of Crow’s.
That was then.
Their dinner evenings weren’t exactly frugal, but on his income, they were carefully monitored. They never ordered wine. Patricia insisted he have a drink before dinner. She knew how much he enjoyed it, and the look in her eye when he savored it made the cheapest bar whiskey go down like American Eagle Rare. Not that she’d let him order cheap stuff. She knew her man. When he ordered whiskey and water, she’d stop the waiter and name a brand. Then she’d send Crow one of those smiles that tells a man he’s being spoiled. Tells him he deserves it.
Crow basked in that smile like an old dog sprawled on sunbaked macadam.
How many times had that smile energized his hand, driven it across the table to touch her? How many times had he caressed her cheek and watched her tilt her head to it, her soft flesh pressing his toughened hide?
Did she ever think of that hand so covered in blood that it drew flies?
The thought pulled his head back as sharply as if he’d been hit in the mouth.
The thing in my head, trying to break free.
It’s not going to happen now.
He forced himself to picture other times.
The first time they took little Joe with them to an expensive restaurant. What Patricia called a splurge shop. Crow always felt a bit uncomfortable in them. In his eyes, people went there to work hard at eating. Patricia loved those evenings. She delighted in the fine food, the colors, the decor, the aura. It was a rare treat. She made the most of it.
That first time with little Joe she was the image of patience and reassurance. She made it clear she expected his very best behavior. She also held him close and told him the important thing was that he enjoy it as much as his dad and mom enjoyed having him along. She tickled him until he squealed, telling him they were taking him to show him off because he was such a handsome devil.
And he carried it off like a tiny duke. He called the waitress ma’am in a clear, honest voice. He ordered from the children’s menu as if he were dining at Mario Battali’s table. He only looked to Patricia after the waitress had taken all the orders and left. When she told him she was proud of him, he nodded and said, “That’s what I wanted.” Then, when dinner was over, the waitress brought Joe a huge slab of apple pie with ice cream and caramel sauce. She winked at him when she put it down and told him, “This is from me and the hostess. Call us in fifteen years or so, okay? But call me first.” Joe squirmed, but he held on to his dignity. He said, “I would, but I don’t have your number,” and she laughed and said, “We’ll give you the number when it’s time.” Crow thought Patricia would explode with suppressed laughter.
Crow remembered thinking he’d seen a boy’s mind straining to find the right path. He didn’t know how to tell him that. After the dessert was eaten, however, what he did say was, “You know, you’re a really great kid. Just so you know, I love you.” Joe, sober as any general, looked his father in the eye and just said, “Thank you, sir. I love you, too. I tried to do like you do.”
Crow’s eyes burned. The thing inside his head was chained again, forgotten.
That was the world.
It’s not that way anymore. No one has any right to ask me to be part of any world now. Not after how things turned out.
The only thing that matters is using up today.
When a man lost so much and seen so much, he deserves all the distance he wants. He’s earned separation.
Estelle brought his drink. She recommended the roast beef. He agreed. He was adding a smidgen of water to his whiskey to open the aroma when Martha reappeared at his table. She looked uncomfortable. She said, “Mr. Crow, would you mind sharing your table? I’m full, and a lady just came in that I don’t want to turn away or she’ll have to go down the street to the Silver Dollar. I mean, I’m not saying Jerry’s food’s greasy or unhealthy, but…” She rolled her eyes in powerful indictment.
Crow didn’t care if the unknown Jerry’s food was toxic. Inwardly, he winced at the prospect of small talk with some female full of household hints and oblique references to her delicate digestion. He pulled himself together, forced himself into social mode and put the best face on it he could. “Sure,” he said, “But only because you didn’t cheat me on my whiskey. This time.”
Martha grinned and hurried away. From the corner of his eye, Crow caught her return. He rose. A familiar voice said, “Oh, don’t get up,” and the silence that followed hummed with surprise.
Crow recognized Lila instantly. The ravages of her day’s labor were washed away. The eyes were the same intense blue, but her mouth lacked the earlier grimness. Actually, it was a nice mouth, tentatively working at a shy smile. He thought back to the pleasure of hearing her unexpected laughter that morning. Despite the peculiar sadness lurking in it.
Sleeves of a lemon yellow sweater were knotted around her neck so it hung across her back like a shawl. Crow thought it was very effective, made more so by the green blouse and especially her candlelight-burnished hair.
“A pleasure, ma’am.” Crow looked to Martha. “This lady recommended your restaurant.”
Beaming, Martha said, “Well, isn’t that sweet?” She patted Lila’s arm. “I should tell you dinner’s on the house, but I won’t because I need the money.” Suddenly shrewd, her gaze flicked between Crow and Lila. “How long have you two known each other?”
Lila stammered. Crow stepped into the awkward moment. “I turned into her place earlier today. She gave me directions to the county park where I could put my mobile home.”
Martha’s inspection turned a bit speculative, but she spoke casually. “Well, you have a nice chat. You’ll love the food.”
Sitting across from Crow, the woman’s shyness seemed to deepen, but she held his gaze. She said, “You told me your name earlier. I should’ve done the same. I’m Lila Milam.”
“Lila Milam and Zasu. Could be a nightclub act.”
In her quiet laughter Crow thought he heard more of the troublesome sad undercurrent. Curiosity snagged his mind, but he shut it out and asked, “Would you mind if I call you Lila? Ms. Milam sounds like I’m talking to my sixth grade teacher.”
“Please do. I didn’t like my sixth grade teacher.”
“I did. Mrs. Murphy. Little bitty thing. Temper like a cutting torch.”
Entering into the improving atmosphere, she said, “I think I know how you found that out.”
He rocked back in fake surprise. “You went to our school?”
She sobered a little. “Look, I want to say I was too sharp today. I’m sorry about that. You see, it’s the store. Not just that. It’s…” She stopped and Crow saw all their budding enjoyment of each other’s company evaporate. Before he could react, she was rising. Politeness required he do the same. Surprised, she glanced around in embarrassment and hurriedly sat back down. Again, Crow followed her lead. Flickering candle flame accentuated her agitation.
Gently, Crow said, “Can I ask what’s wrong?” and a mean voice in his mind snapped at him to shut up and back off.
Looking away, she sighed. “I shouldn’t have interrupted your dinner. I’d never have intruded on you, but Martha can be so insistent and the Silver Dollar…” After a pause, she added, “When Estelle comes around, I’ll tell her I’m waiting for a table to open.”
Crow knew he should let it go right there and guarantee his solitude. Nevertheless, this felt more like walking away from someone injured. He said, “Did I say something out of line?”
“Oh, don’t be silly.” She brushed the air with both hands. The candle flame fluttered and she glared at it. “It’s just me. Ignore me.”
“Too late. Maybe before, when you were in dirty-faced urchin mode.”
Appreciation soft as smoke touched her features. She said, “It’s not only wanting to be alone. I was sure you’d be—you know, irritable—the thing with the dogs, and all. You’re being pleasant.” She looked away.
The inner voice shouted at Crow that explanations always led to complications. To compromise with it, he kept things light. “You’re saying you’re upset because I’m not upset?”
“Now you really are making fun of me.”
There was that look again, the one that said a decision had been made and forget the consequences. She went on, “Look, when Martha talked me into sitting here, I thought being alone tonight might not be my best move. I hoped maybe you’d be kind of grouchy and distant and I’d blab my troubles and you’d sit there like a lump and pretend to listen and then you’d be gone and I’d have gotten a lot of stuff out of my system, stuff you’d forget before you left the restaurant. Am I talking too fast? Never mind. Anyhow, that’s not how you are. If I talked to you like that, you’d try to understand, but then you’d decide I’m just another silly woman looking for sympathy. Did any of that make sense?” Before he could answer, she leaned forward in accusation. “I don’t need anyone’s sympathy.”
Crow took a good hit on his drink and sat straighter. “You always do other people’s thinking for them? Or do I seem so dumb you feel obliged to make a special effort for me?”
“I didn’t mean that. I just thought…”
“Let me tell you something. You got me right. I’m willing to pass the time with most people, but I never get involved. Never. Say anything you want. Tomorrow I’ll be gone for good. Like you said, you’ll feel better, and I won’t be bothered.”
She looked into his eyes briefly before studying the candle flame.
He silently cheered her uncertainty. He’d done the right thing and offered companionship. She’d never take him up on it. After all, only fools confided anything.
Why wasn’t that fact as satisfying right now as it had always been before?
Words tumbled out of him again. “I’ve been told airing a problem gives you better perception. I wouldn’t know. I do know to avoid making judgments. I get judged all the time. Mostly, it’s people saying that living outside regular society’s a refusal to accept responsibility. Who cares? I get along fine. Believe me, anything you tell me, that’s as far as it goes. I’m neutral ground.” Even as he heard himself speak he wished he could grab each syllable out of the air and crush it.
Her answer came slowly. “I have a feeling you earned the way you live.”
Estelle swooped down on them, order pad in hand, and he was saved from himself. Estelle said, “Good roast beef tonight, Ms. Milam. We’ve also got a chicken Marsala that’ll make you want to kiss the cook.” She poured their coffee without wasting time asking if they wanted it. She knew. This was Lupine.
Lila chose the chicken and Estelle left as fast as she came.
Crow said, “She called you Ms. Milam. That suggests you’re not one of the natives.”
“I’m not.” Lila looked puzzled for a moment, then, “Oh, you’re thinking about Bake’s place. That’s a long story.”
“We’ve got time. Will you have a drink?”
She hesitated for a long moment. “A glass of wine. Not until dinner comes, please. No story, though. It’s too messed up.” She ducked her head and peered up at him. Her eyes danced with surprising mischief. She said, “You don’t get involved, remember? And one of us has decided she doesn’t want to be involved either. Are we even?”
Crow’s jaw tightened. He never allowed himself to develop an interest in someone. Now he’d let it happen and she was closing him out. Turnabout. He laughed loud enough to draw attention from several diners. “More than even. More like ‘Take that.’”
She leaned back in her chair. “Okay, we’re good to go. Dinner, pointless small talk, and two strangers get on with our lives. Deal?”
“Deal.” He pushed the aside the candle in the middle of the table, reached, and they shook on it. He barely stifled a reflex that wanted to widen his eyes: How did a woman do so much manual labor with hands so small, or keep them so soft?
Chapter 4
Their bargain lasted through dinner.
Estelle was refilling the coffee cups one last time when a voice behind Crow said, “Evening, Lila.” She looked up, smiling. The voice continued, “Saw your car down the street and guessed you were here. I apologize for interrupting, but I didn’t want to go home without asking how things are.”
Pastor Richards positioned himself between them. Lila caught his frank interest in her dinner companion. It warmed her even as it amused her. Crow rose slowly.
Sudden awareness of their similarity intrigued her. Crow might be many things, but he was no preacher. Nor should there have been any hint of Crow in Pastor Richards. There was, though. She sensed each had touched flame and come away seared, yet affirmed in self.
A shiver pinpricked her spine. There was another impression from Crow. His quiet control whispered that he knew his own capability for violence. When Crow suggested the pastor join them, it barely penetrated her internalization. Fortunately, they started talking like old friends, unaware she remained practically withdrawn.
Male, Lila thought. That was quintessentially Crow. At least he didn’t wear his maleness like a feather in his hat. Pastor Richards was male, too, of course. A father figure, caring and open. Crow was approachable and determinedly unreachable.
Huge differences. Small similarities. Yet some invisible thread bonded them instantly.
She supposed there were women who’d find Crow attractive. If you could get interested in someone who looked like he’d been hammered out on an anvil. A nice sense of humor, though. Interesting eyes; icy blue. She wondered if he had any idea how his changing expressions sometimes revealed his thoughts before he spoke.
It was when he did speak of himself that he turned impenetrable. The way he described his lifestyle came without apology or boast. She realized with a small start that that was quite irritating: Everything about him just was. Not that she cared.
When she twisted her head her hair rippled across her shoulder. She almost reached to assure it wasn’t in disarray. She checked the move, not wanting them to notice.
That irritated her further. Why should she care? Especially about Crow. Stubborn loner. His problem. Everybody had at least one. She concentrated on the pastor. Crinkled smile lines at the corners of the eyes and mouth and the thinning hair made her think of time passing. His hands on the table showed the slightly enlarged knuckles of oncoming arthritis and the skin had a fragile-leather look. His eyes, though—that’s where you saw him best. Their calm green, like spring’s earliest welcome, were rich with the knowledge of certain renewal.
Pastor Richards interrupted Lila’s observations with a question. “So how’s your project going?”
“I’m dealing with it.”
For a moment it appeared Richards might pursue it. Instead he rose, saying, “You know I’ll help any way and any time I can,” and to Crow, “Sorry to interrupt.”
Crow said, “No trouble at all, Padre.”
As soon as Pastor Richards was gone, Lila said, “What’d you think of him?”
“He’s pleasant. His line of work, it’s kind of necessary. He likes you.”
Lila ignored the last. “That’s it? Aren’t you curious to know how long he’s lived here? If he’s got family? His denomination?”
“No.”
“How can you live like that? I mean, I’m not all that close to everyone, but I want to know something about them. I like to feel they’re interested in me.” She paused, eyes widening, and continued as if surprised and musing about it. “That’s why I’m here. In Lupine. I want to be where I belong. I have a dream, so that’s who I am. You, you’re just a prickly old cocklebur.” A sly smile took her back to her original manner.
“Character assassination. What happened to pointless small talk? What’s your pastor say about broken deals?”
She made a face of mock exasperation. Crow almost laughed aloud. Lila went on, “He’s the reason I’m living here, working on the store.”
Crow raised his eyebrows and waited. She said, “The day after I graduated high school I left home. I got a job keeping records for a company that supplied supermarkets. You’ve heard of left-brain, right-brain? This was dead brain. Just for fun one day I did some ad copy for produce. Stuff like ‘Our beets beat their beets” and “Maybe the other guy’s cantaloupe can’t but ours can.” I sent it to some other employees. Next I’m telling the boss I was just playing with the computer on my lunch hour. He fired me anyhow. The next day our biggest client hired me to write more.”
She stopped to sip her wine and Crow asked her, “Richards pulled you back to Lupine to do advertising?”
“You’re being funny again. Pretty lame. No, Lupine came later. Long story short, I worked in advertising a few years. Moved to Atlanta. Mother never forgave me for taking off. I didn’t find out Aunt Lila and Uncle Bake had passed away until Dad died—two years after them. I flew back to Seattle for his funeral. My mother hardly spoke to me. More years passed. Then I got a phone call from the pastor telling me she was gone.”
Crow watched reminiscence carry her elsewhere. He wanted her back. He said, “You can’t stop there.”
Her smile was polite. “I hated my life. Losing my mother was awful, even if we weren’t close anymore. I came back for the funeral. Being in Seattle again convinced me I had to do something different.”
“So the pastor helped you?”
“He saved me. How’s that for melodrama? Truth, though. He told me I owned the store.” She looked away.
Can he see—can he imagine—how this conversation’s gotten away from me? Yes, I wanted to talk, but I never meant to spin out my life story.
What’s he feeling? Interest? That lopsided grin; what’s it mean?
God, what if he’s just bored?
His eyes were endless. They spoke to her of too many hurts, too many wrecks. And unbreakable patience. When he spoke, his voice was soft, deeper. She heard a distant storm. “Richards told you?”
She found resolve, continued. “My mother despised Aunt Lila’s lifestyle. And Bake. They willed me their place, along with a small trust from their insurance. My mother never told me. Never left me anything, either. Funny, she thought I’d end up like Aunt Lila. And I will.” She tossed her head. “Pastor Richards loaned me enough to start renovating. I’ve never gotten far enough ahead to pay back any. I can survive on the trust money, but that’s it. He says because it’s such a large loan we have to keep it a secret.”
Crow tried to ignore the weight of her emotion. “Even I can appreciate him helping someone like that. I think I could be a helper. I’d never be the one helped.” He spread his hands. “No one knows where to find me.”
She leaned forward, fists on the edge of the table. “Why do you insist on being lonely?”
“Lonely’s a foolish word.” The uninflected words still told Lila she’d overstepped. As quickly as that, however, he was the one apologizing. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
Lila stared past him, regretting taking their meeting in this unfortunate direct
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It is early 1950. Joe McCarthy is cranking up his demagoguery and Joseph Stalin has intensified the cold war. In Washington, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI is fighting a turf war with the newly founded Central Intelligence Agency. Harry Truman is in the White House, trying to keep a lid on domestic and foreign politics, but the crises never stop. It should be a time of peace and prosperity in America, but it is anything but.
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“We want no Gestapo or secret police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail…Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him.”
CHAPTER 1
There wasn’t a mile of the county roads that he already didn’t know by heart, Chief of Police Mark O’Connell thought to himself. It was mid-December of 1949. The former special agent of the FBI had been in this new job for less than two months. It was strange how things worked out, he further pondered as he listened to the squeak of the well-worn windshield wipers on his police cruiser. He had always thought that he would retire from the FBI at age sixty with high honors and accolades. Then he and his beloved Helen could enjoy their retirement. Maybe they’d go to Florida, he had always thought. Maybe they’d buy a small motel and spend a busy, profitable retirement in God’s bright sunlight.
Instead, he’d been hounded out of the Bureau. His departure had been sudden, arbitrary, and—to his way of thinking—grossly unfair. Not that he’d had any recourse other than to leave. Then, shortly after his enforced retirement, he had accepted an offer from the town of Peterton, Oregon, to become their chief of police.
Peterton was a friendly, rainy community of forty-six hundred people-fifty-two miles southeast of Portland. It was populated primarily by the descendants of liberal New England Protestants who had migrated from East Coast to West across the northern United States late in the nineteenth century. And it was a predictably amiable blue-collar sort of place, complete with two gas stations, a hardware store, a general store, three groceries, a lunch counter, a restaurant where children were always welcome, and a branch of one of the smaller state banks.
The Dobbs Lumber Company, which operated a sawmill five miles away in Harrisville, was the main local employer. Peterton was a place of good hunting, great fishing, and little crime. It was not at all a bad place to live or to be a police officer, particularly if a man liked his relaxation.
The previous police chief, a gregarious, well-liked soul named Bill Lucy, had grown old gracefully in his job. Chief Lucy had retired after twenty-six years, having never seen a gun fired in anger. What more could a peaceable former FBI agent want?
He slowed down his car on state highway 45. There was a truck pulled to the side of the road, its lights flashing, its right rear tires on the highway’s soft shoulders.
O’Connell pulled to a stop. He switched on the flashing red lights on the roof of his car, a signal of caution to any vehicle approaching from ahead or behind. He stared at the empty cab of the truck. There had been no crash. The truck was intact. Its engine was running. So what was wrong? Why was he so suspicious about everything?
Recently O’Connell had entertained a lot of strange ideas. When he had started this new job, for example, he’d had the feeling that he was . . . well, being watched. Or followed. Or something. It was an instinct more than anything, a sixth sense developed during his fourteen years of field work for the Bureau and three years as a soldier in Europe. It was something he could not shake.
His wife, Helen, told him he was creating worries for himself. “We’re better off here,” she said. “A good job. A respectable community. Better for the kids.” They had two children, a boy, four, and a girl, eighteen months.
“No excitement and no challenge,” he’d countered.
“We have a nicer home here than we’ve ever had before,” Helen said, putting things in perspective. “And you have better working hours. You have dinner with your family every night. If we need extra money, I’ll get a job. The lumber company needs bookkeepers.”
“My wife work?” he’d asked. “No, ma’am, Not unless I’m dead and buried.”
The rain swept into his face that night as he stepped from the car, a heavy flashlight in his left hand. He recognized the truck as belonging to one of the logging camps.
Why then . . . ? Who then . . . ?
He walked to the front of the truck and stood in its headlights for a moment. That creepy, eerie feeling returned. He knew he was being watched now! He knew he was under observation by a pair of unseen eyes that very moment. He put his right hand on the stock of his service revolver and—
A man’s voice called unexpectedly out of the darkness. “Mark!”
O’Connell squinted toward the woods. He felt his heart kicking in his chest. He saw a movement and began to draw his weapon.
“Hey, Mark? Take it easy, would you?”
O’Connell shined his flashlight toward the voice. A bearded trucker stepped from behind a clump of small trees. O’Connell recognized him. He was a big, hulking man named Walt Kowell. Kowell lived in Hibbing, the next town toward Portland, and worked for Dobbs Lumber.
Kowell’s rain slicker was disheveled. His hand was at the fly of his trousers. “Can’t a man take a leak around here without someone calling the cops?”
O’Connell felt a surge of relief. His pistol had been a quarter of the way out of its holster. He pressed it back in.
“Kind of jumpy, huh?” Kowell asked. “I don’t think Bill Lucy drew his iron in thirty years.”
“I’m not Bill Lucy,” O’Connell snapped. “And that’s no place to leave a vehicle on a rainy night.”
O’Connell saw Kowell recoil, and the man’s bemused expression vanished. The rain poured down upon both of them. “I saw your truck,” O’Connell said in a more conciliatory tone. “So I stopped. Couldn’t you wait till you got home?”
Kowell shrugged sheepishly. “Not today.”
Another car went slowly by, framing them in its headlights as it passed. O’Connell waved the car on, indicating that there was no problem.
“Come on, Walt,” O’Connell said. “Get your rig out of here before someone skids into you. That’s all I’m worried about.”
In another three minutes Kowell’s truck had disappeared down the road. O’Connell turned back toward town. It was six o’clock in the evening. O’Connell had completed his drive along the roads immediately surrounding Peterton, a trip he made at the end of every tour of duty. Now he could go home to dinner. If anyone had a problem, the police chief could be reached at home. Or one of his two deputies could put in the time to solve it.
The nearly fatal problem for Mark O’Connell, however, was having too much time to think. At age forty-two, he had recently fallen into the habit of examining his life in assiduous detail. He’d put in all those years in federal law enforcement and he’d fought with distinction during the war. His résumé sparkled. Until recently all of his career decisions had looked good.
He’d served the FBI in the Atlanta office as well as in San Francisco, Tucson, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Seattle. Up until 1949 he’d never had a blemish on any professional record, either military or Bureau. But in 1949 funny things began to happen.
Those funny things, as he called them, were now the matters he struggled to put out of his mind. There had been the Great Wobbly Witch Hunt in Tacoma, a massive waste of time fully sanctioned by the FBI Then there had been the Great Handsaw Caper—as it had disparagingly become known in the Bureau—at the Krieger-McGhie Army base in Spokane, Washington. And finally there had been ‘Operation Morning Glory,’ a Bureau sanctioned investigation which had stretched from San Francisco all the way up to British Columbia. All of these, as the special agents liked to recall, were full-fledged wild goose chases.
But Mark O’Connell’s instincts told him that somewhere among these three cases he’d been onto something—something so subtle or so complex that even he, with all his experience, couldn’t recognize it. And whatever it had been, it had made him a marked man.
Helen told him repeatedly that he was imagining things. She even suggested that he should see a psychiatrist. “Professional counseling” is what she called it. After fourteen years of stress, who could blame a man for needing a little help sorting things out? A lot of soldiers needed just such treatment, and not even that much of it, when they had come home from Japan and Germany. No one held anything against them.
“I’m sure the citizens of Peterton would be pleased to know that their chief of police is seeing a head doctor,” O’Connell answered. No, he wouldn’t go. But temporarily he discovered a form of therapy.
At an army surplus store in Seattle, O’Connell found an old Dictaphone with a generous supply of recording reels. So instead of talking to a psychiatrist, he sat at home many nights and talked to himself. He stayed up well into the black hours of early morning on more occasions than he could count. When there was nothing else to do, and when the recent past seemed a more oppressive burden than he could bear, Mark O’Connell sat in the solitude of his cellar at an old workbench by the oil burner. He sipped local Oregonian beer from long-necked amber bottles and put his thoughts on the Dictaphone.
He carefully marked each reel and stashed the full ones in a tool chest.
This went on for a month. Then the horrible feeling gripped him again, starting early in early December. He was possessed by this unrelenting sense that the more he talked into the Dictaphone, the more scrutiny he was under. After that, every night had its own madness. He became obsessive about pouring his thoughts into the recorder, starting with the Handsaw case, moving through the Wobblies, then concluding with “Morning Glory.”
As he spoke, more thoughts came back to him. Little details that he’d never put into his final reports at the Bureau, tiny observations that hadn’t even merited being set in writing in his notebook.
During the days his nerves were taut, his expectations askew. He began to see the signposts of every ordinary working day—a truck traveling too slowly through town, a telephone that rang unanswered, a neighbor’s light flashing on and off for five seconds—in apocalyptic terms, the handwriting of a dire conspiracy against him.
Once, sitting alone in his basement at two-forty in the morning, instinct told him to turn. He did. His gaze rose and quickly settled upon the dark two-paned cellar window at the summit of the cellar wall about ten feet from where he sat. For a moment a bolt of fear shot through him. He was sure that through the darkness the face of a crouching man had been staring back at him.
He yelled, whirled in his swivel chair, and pulled a forty-five-caliber pistol from his drawer. He charged up the stairs and bolted through the living room of his home. He threw on the outdoor floodlight and burst outside through the storm door.
He stood on his doorstep, a preposterous figure in bedclothes, slippers, robe, and handgun, perusing a quiet, misty night in the peaceful Northwest. He stood motionless for several seconds. Again, not a rustle of a footfall on the wet leaves, not a car engine, not a crunch of a branch under a shoe.
Then he turned and reentered the house. In the dim kitchen he bellowed with fright a second time when he felt a human hand fall on his arm. He jumped.
“Mark! Mark!” It was Helen.
“What in God’s name—?” she began. She stared at the gun. “I heard you scream,” she said.
“I thought I saw someone,” he said. “Someone was looking through the cellar window.”
She thought about it for several seconds. Quietly he closed the kitchen door and extinguished the outside light. “Did you see anyone out there?” she asked.
“No.”
Helen exuded a long sigh. Then she reached to her husband and held him. O’Connell clicked on the safety catch of the pistol and pushed the weapon onto the kitchen table. He held his wife firmly. “I wish you’d talk to someone,” she said softly.
Several seconds passed. “Okay,” he said at length. “After Christmas. In January.”
“You mean it? You promise?”
“Yes,” he said. And he meant it. Helen was right, as wives so often are. It was time to get help.
But was he imagining things?
The next morning he affixed new bolts to the doors of his home. As for the basement window, he placed a cardboard screen across it. No one—real or imagined—would be peering through. That same evening he was again in his basement talking into the recorder. Okay, so it was a little nutty, but he felt better making a spoken record. And as for the recorded reels themselves, the more than two dozen that he’d now completed, there was no use leaving them sitting around. He placed them all in an orange crate, removed a loose panel from the basement wall, and hid the entire collection.
For the next few days, Christmas took his thoughts in a more pleasant direction. On a day off he took Helen to Portland to see the holiday lights and do some shopping. Helen bought some toys for the children and an electric razor for him. He slipped away for a few minutes to buy his wife a wool sweater, plus some eau de toilette—the new fad from France—from one of the perfume counters. Even after eleven years of marriage, he wasn’t sure what Helen wore. But it smelled nice on the salesgirl, so he bought it. It would soon be Christmas and he wanted something nice for the woman he loved.
CHAPTER 2
In the third week of December 1949, Washington, D.C. was shivering through its coldest winter in a dozen years. Ice hung from the cherry trees along the Potomac. A mantle of snow adorned both Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials. Even Pennsylvania Avenue, where traffic crawled in both directions, seemed more like New Hampshire than the center of the American government.
In the White House in the waning days of the old decade, things were warmer. Sixty-three-year-old President Harry S. Truman dug in for an increasingly acrimonious battle with the Eighty-first Congress. He fought with the nation’s legislators over everything from increased social security benefits to public housing to his scaling back of military expenses in the post-war era.
If Truman looked for solace in the tide of world events, he found none there. In 1949 the President had succeeded in breaking the eighteen-month Soviet blockade of West Berlin with massive American airlifts of food and medical supplies. But Joseph Stalin was freshly invigorated at home. He had so thoroughly terrified the heads of his puppet governments throughout Eastern Europe that he merrily launched a new generation of purge trials in Russia.
In Asia, the North Korean government made ominous noises about reuniting their country in a manner they saw fit, and using their huge army to do it. Nearby, General Chiang Kai-Shek and his pro-American Kuomintang Army had been driven from the mainland of China to Formosa. The U.S. consular staff would soon follow. In Europe, the Fourth French Republic teetered on the brink of ruin. Even in England, Truman’s final and most loyal wartime ally, Winston Churchill was out of office.
From the perspective of the American capital, enemies were ascendant and friends were halfway into their graves. It was a time when the support of public opinion deserted the President and galvanized around the conservative senator Robert Taft, grandson of the three-hundred-pound former president, as well as the increasingly vocal, hard-drinking, and mean-spirited Joseph McCarthy. There was even talk that if the lid could be kept on the little guy from Missouri for two more years, a possible presidential candidacy by Dwight Eisenhower, the former supreme allied commander, might rescue the country.
Ike was the president of Columbia University. If only he would announce whether he was a Democrat or a Republican, matters would be clarified. I was just five years after a war that compromised all humanity, and already the world was again on its way to hell in a hand basket.
As a final response to Pearl Harbor, the United States had sought to reorganize its intelligence community in 1946. The Japanese attack on Hawaii had taught a lesson. Inquiries during the world war had revealed that there had been significant indications before December 7, 1941, that Imperial Japan was up to something. Crates of documents, retrieved after the fact, had lain around unused and unnoted by American military and naval commanders in the years 1939 through 1941. Information that could have saved thousands of lives had been ignored.
Why? No single effective unit of the government had been equipped to assemble and analyze foreign intelligence. Thus, in the early months of World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Office of Strategic Services, the nation’s first official espionage and counterespionage agency. But after the war the OSS ran afoul of special-interest lobbyists. The military intelligence services and the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover insisted that in peacetime the OSS would only duplicate the efforts of existing agencies. Eventually President Truman came to agree and abolished the OSS
Within a few months, however, the President acknowledged his mistake. Whatever the faults of the 0.S.S., it had been a single agency collecting and evaluating foreign intelligence and sending the information into the Oval Office. Without a central agency Truman received an avalanche of contradictory, superficial reports.
One day, confused, irritated, and ill informed, he exploded to his Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes. “As soon as possible,” raged the President, “we’ve got to get somebody or some outfit that can make sense out of all this stuff!”
Truman expressed the same wish in identical letters sent on January 22, 1946, to his military adviser, Admiral William Leahy, Secretary of War Robert Patterson, Secretary of the Navy John Forrestal, and Secretary of State Byrnes. These four men were asked to consider themselves as the National Intelligence Authority. They were to plan, develop, and coordinate all foreign espionage and counterespionage activities.
Within a few weeks the four had assigned funds and personnel from their own departments to the authority. They formed what they called the Central Intelligence Group. To head the new C.I.G., Truman appointed Rear Admiral Sidney W. Souers as the Director of Central Intelligence.
The appointment caused grumbling in official Washington. Souers was an admiral in the naval reserve and his civilian employment was currently as an executive in the Piggly Wiggly grocery chain in Truman’s native Missouri. He had no experience in intelligence matters. Or, as some Capitol wags put it: “He wouldn’t recognize a spy, but he sure knows fruits and vegetables.”
Yet President Truman wanted a reliable method of being kept informed. So this, for a while, satisfied him. But the setup was unsatisfying to many others, including the directors of military intelligence and J. Edgar Hoover, all of whom continued to fear the erosion of their own powers.
There was also another man who found the arrangement unsatisfactory: Allen Dulles. Dulles had been one of America’s most successful spies during the two world wars. Princeton-educated, from a staunch Republican family, Dulles nonetheless had the President’s ear and friendship.
Dulles agitated for a change in the intelligence system. Dulles had spent World War Two in Switzerland where, as the Swiss Director of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, he had worked on intelligence regarding German plans and activities. He had wide contacts with German émigrés, resistance figures, and anti-Nazi intelligence officers, many of them staunchly anti-Communist.
Simultaneously, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg of the Army Air Corps succeeded Admiral Souers in June 1946. Vandenberg was named chiefly because he was the nephew of the powerful Senator Arthur Vandenberg, and managed to last only about as long as his predecessor, slightly less than a year. He in turn was succeeded by Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, whom Truman personally didn’t like and whom he privately referred to as “a third-rate navy guy.” America’s new spy establishment, in other words, was off to a staggering start.
Yet, during Hillenkoetter’s tenure, Congress passed the National Security Act, unifying much of the American defense establishment. The act also replaced the National Intelligence Authority with a new structure called the National Security Council. Similarly, the Central Intelligence Group was abolished and replaced by a stronger and more independent unit.
It was called the Central Intelligence Agency.
Its purpose was to gather and coordinate information from outside the forty-eight states. The agency would have no official police or law enforcement powers. And, in turn, the new CIA was to be responsible, in theory, at least, to the National Security Council. President Truman then appointed Allen Dulles, as the agency’s first director.
Thus the embryonic CIA moved into the battered old complex that formerly housed the United States Public Health Service at 2430 E Street in the gashouse section of Washington known as Foggy Bottom.
The complex bordered on an abandoned brewery and sat amidst a squalid jungle of underbrush, enclosed by a wire fence and topped with barbed wire. From this location, and for many years thereafter, little green government buses ferried passengers, frequently mysterious men bearing secret messages or documents, to and from the Pentagon and the White House. And at this humble inception, the one-hundred forty-acre spread that would eventually house the CIA in bucolic Langley, Virginia, was merely a gleam in Allen Dulles’s eye.
But it was a beginning. And like most beginnings, it had its awkward moments.
CHAPTER 3
Unlike the relatively new Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation in was housed in baronial splendor toward the end of 1949. The headquarters were at Constitution Avenue and 10th Street, in a suite of fifth and sixth floor offices at the Department of Justice. J. Edgar Hoover presided from a corner throne room, surrounded by his ablest assistants in adjoining chambers. This was a straight-arrow squeaky-clean place with light green walls, deep pile carpets, mahogany paneling, and countless American flags. A visitor to the Director’s office, if he were kept waiting in the anteroom, would be faced with an armada of plaques—given by various religious, fraternal, school, and state police organizations—that heaped praise upon the Bureau and its Director. A revolving rack carried scores of pro-FBI editorial cartoons, mounted individually on hard cardboard backing. If these displays left the observer ready for more, there were also some of the more macabre relics of earlier Bureau adventures.
John Dillinger’s death mask, for example, was in a glass case in the same anteroom, along with the straw boater Dillinger wore when gunned outside a Chicago movie theater. Completing the display was the Corona- Belvedere cigar from the pocket of Dillinger’s bloodstained, bullet-ridden shirt.
Yet behind the scenes, the Bureau increasingly reflected the disparity between the public image and the gritty, sweaty, day-to-day operation of American law enforcement. Though the Director was an American folk hero, Hoover had never led an investigation and had never personally made an arrest. Despite being photographed weekly with an array of weapons, he had never learned to use a handgun. Yet the image of the Bureau before the public had never been more immaculate.
Hoover flitted about the country at his own whim, stayed in the finest hotels as a guest of management, and had his picture snapped hobnobbing with celebrities such as Milton Berle, Shirley Temple, Toots Shor, Bing Crosby, and Jimmy Cagney. Hoover always loved Cagney for his performance as an FBI agent in the 1935 Warner Brothers production, G- Men, a film that molded public perception of the Bureau. And the weekly radio serial, This Is Your FBI, remained a hit in its sixth year on the air.
The Bureau reflected Hoover’s personal biases: he loved capital punishment in all forms, he hated the fact that women could now vote, and didn’t care for people of color. He threw around insults with great freedom: “pinhead,” was a favorite for an agent who was falling into disfavor or soon to be sacked.
There were few far right causes he couldn’t champion. Almost daily the FBI was preoccupied with cases of a political slant or which emanated from a political favor. Hoover, completely ignoring the FBI’s charter, personally assigned FBI agents to gather domestic intelligence on people he didn’t like or whom he suspected of un-American activities.
In October 1949, for example, eleven members of the Communist Party of the United States had drawn prison sentences of three to five years apiece for advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government. They hadn’t done anything other than express their opinion. But in the climate of the day, that was enough to land them in prison.
The second perjury trial of Alger Hiss was concluding in Manhattan, also. All indications were that Hiss would go to prison too. The best was yet to come, however, as a section of Bureau spear carriers on the fifth floor inquired into the affairs of one suspected Soviet spy, a disloyal American named Martin Sobell. The investigation of Sobell had also suggested some other American accomplices named Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
After the war, the U.S. had tried to protect its nuclear secrets. But American had been stunned by the speed with which the Soviets had initiated their first nuclear atomic test, “Joe 1”, on August 29, 1949. The consensus: atomic secrets had been leaked from the American research labs. Whoever had done it was going to pay a big price. That much was a “given.”
On these same premises, in a small, stuffy office in a far corner of the sixth floor, Special Agent Thomas C. Buchanan sat at a black Royal typewriter. He typed out his final account of an investigation involving a securities swindle. Recently put out of business were a pair of Miami-based land developers who had raised money and sold home sites from the Catskills to Sarasota. It was the kind of a case—hundreds of small investors burned by a pair of slick carpetbaggers —that provoked Buchanan’s righteous indignation. The case had ended with indictments, convictions, tons of favorable publicity for the FBI, and the recovery of almost sixty percent of the loot. Within the next month, checks would go out to most of the investors. Buchanan was proud of his work.
He stopped typing for a moment. Buchanan reread his report. One could never be too careful in choosing one’s words. Not only did Buchanan’s immediate superior, Francis W. Lerrick, Assistant Director for the mid-Atlantic region, read all completed files, but Hoover also liked to read reports at random. Here trouble could materialize from nowhere. Hoover’s attention might settle upon anything. One ten-year veteran of the New York office was abruptly transferred to Topeka when his report contained a quote from a Canadian ballistics expert who’d been used as a witness during a trial.
“We keep all foreigners out of Bureau business!” Hoover had said in an aggressive memo.
On another occasion a Special Agent in Atlanta found himself ordered to lose fifteen pounds in three weeks. A final case report had included his medical records, revealing his six-foot one-hundred-ninety-five-pound stature. Hoover had been placed on a diet by his own physician the previous Monday.
Buchanan typed the final two paragraphs. He leaned back in his chair and carefully reviewed the report from start to finish.
Had anyone walked into the office at that time, he or she would have seen a sandy-haired man of thirty-two, a handsome very American looking guy with a square jaw and dark blue eyes. He wore a white shirt and a red and blue striped tie. The jacket of his navy blue suit was draped over the back of his chair and his brimmed fedora, mandatory for all special agents, rested on a coat rack in the corner.
If it had it not been for a turn of fate and the course of history, Buchanan might have been the architect he’d planned on being when young. He had grown up in a comfortable town in the southeastern quarter of Pennsylvania. His mother was the daughter of anti-Fascist immigrants from Italy. From her he learned to speak Italian as a boy. She had come to America as a teenager and now taught the third grade in the local school. His father had been a medical doctor in family practice.
As a teenager Thomas had shown an uncanny aptitude for numbers, sciences and languages. He had set his heart on going to Princeton University, his father’s alma mater.
The turn of fate: A massive heart attack claimed Thomas’s father at age forty-three in August 1932. His mother moved the family closer to Philadelphia, where they took up residence with his mother’s unmarried sister. Thomas was enrolled at a private academy in Chestnut Hill, in accordance with his father’s will. Here he demonstrated again his exceptional aptitude in sciences, math, and language. He took up French and built an impressive academic record.
Princeton accepted him as a full-tuition student. Lehigh University, however, offered him a full scholarship in engineering. This was 1936, and his father had not died wealthy. He went to Lehigh, graduated with high honors with a minor in Romance Languages. He wished to continue on for his graduate degree in architecture.
Then the course of history interfered. The Second World War began. Buchanan served as an infantry captain in the United States Army’s North African and Italian campaigns. He was part of the 1st Armored Division which participating in Operation Torch, a combined British-American pincer operation against Rommel in North Africa. The allied operation outflanked and outgunned their German, Vichy French and Italian adversaries. They bypassed the Axis defense on the Mareth Line in late March 1943 and squeezed the Axis forces until Axis forces in Africa surrendered in 13 May of 1943. The invasion of Sicily followed two months later, during which Buchanan won two silver stars and as many purple hearts. It was, by the terminology of the time, a “great” war, for Thomas Buchanan. Privately, he was happy to have survived it. He never expected to.
As an American officer fluent in Italian, he became an interpreter for his unit, as well as an adviser to the command of the American Fifth Army, following a transfer to a unit where he was needed for his language skills.
His unit encountered dogged resistance from retreating German forces as they moved north. But Buchanan had been among the first American soldiers to reach the center of Rome late night on June 5, 1944, initiating the liberation of the magnificent ancient city. Rome had been the first of the three Axis powers’ capitals to be taken. Its recapture was a significant victory for the Allies and the American commanding officer who led the final offensive, Lieutenant General Mark Clark.
In Rome the next day, more units of English and American troops rolled in. Massive crowds came into the streets, celebrating, cheering, waving and hurling bunches of flowers at the passing army vehicles. Later, Buchanan watched as Pope Pius XI appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s and addressed the thousands of Italians who had gathered in the square. It was a giddy time, marking a turning point in the war. Almost simultaneously, the Allied invasion of Normandy was taking place, also.
Buchanan stayed in Rome for three months. Then, his reputation as an interpreter growing, he was sent to Paris shortly after that city’s liberation. He was assigned to an intelligence unit, working with officers of de Gaulle’s Free French forces, as well as with the American command. He was next and finally sent on to Berlin, where he worked again in intelligence. For four months he worked daily with officers of the Soviet Red Army, mostly tank and artillery commanders who had helped capture the city. At first, he liked his Russian peers. Quickly, however, he grew to distrust them.
Berlin in those days was a crucible for Buchanan, a learning experience he would never forget. The city was devastated. Utilities functioned sporadically. Civilians wandered in sullen crews, dazed and confused, clearing the streets and looking for missing relatives. Piles of rubble made driving hazardous. A few diehard snipers made any movement even more hazardous.
But the similarities between the four parts of the divided city ended with the physical ruin. The different sectors —- American, British, French and Soviet — reflected the languages and cultures of the occupying forces. West Berlin was an island within the larger East German zone of Soviet occupation. It had a free press and cultural and economic links with the outside world. From the beginning, Soviets confiscated the newspapers licensed by Western occupation authorities. Soon thereafter, they declared the western newspapers “contraband” and arrested anyone in possession of one. They quickly began to tell their people that the occupiers were new fascists, which “explained” why most German Army and intelligence people and scientists had tried to surrender to the British and the Americans. Buchanan, in dealing with the Soviets, quickly learned what a big fat lie their entire system was.
In the bargain, he acquired a skill in the Russian language and learned some subtleties about the American’s wartime ally “of convenience,” such as the difference between Red Army intelligence and the secret state police. In the larger bargain, he got a close candid view of how the Soviets set up little spy cells in the west, the espionage tradecraft often following in the larger path of black market activities and bribes. He had seen the same thing in Rome with the underworld people who had moved in quickly after Mussolini’s soldiers had retreated.
When he left the military with an honorable discharge in early 1946, he was restless, as well as haunted by the war. His experiences were never far from his thoughts. At a V.F.W. meeting, he ran into a retired colonel who had commanded his unit in Sicily. The colonel told him that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was hiring.
“The work can be interesting and the employer isn’t likely to go out of business,” the colonel had said. “If you decide not to make a career of it, it still won’t look bad on your résumé. I know some people, Tom. I’ll write you a letter of recommendation.”
Buchanan entered the Bureau’s training school, in April 1946. A fourteen-month tour in Chicago was his first assignment where, by chance, he occasionally partnered with an old Army buddy, a fellow officer whom everyone called “The Bear.” The latter, a fellow officer, had also served in Italy and who had also joined the Feds. It was a pleasant and fortuitous reunion.
Aside from that, Buchanan didn’t have the commanding physical presence or bulk that typified many enforcers of American law, nor did he have the traditional gang busting mentality for which the “G-men” had become the heroes of the gullible public and tabloid press. But he did have an outstanding analytical intellect, a persistent nature and a remarkable instinct for analyzing a crime scene. This he coupled with an easy, calm, honest manner which was his basic nature, though those who knew him best knew he had his flashpoints: He could resort to quick explosive physical force when pushed too far. The overall equation inspired confidence in people and made them willing to talk to him. As a result, for his age, Buchanan was as fine a detective as the Bureau had to offer.
And yet, and yet.
He also felt unsettled, a man in transition, but from where to where? The war had deeply disturbed him. He found few people he could discuss it with other than fellow veterans. There was pain that he felt but couldn’t describe, things that had happened in combat that he chose not to remember, and faces of enemy soldiers, some alive, some in death, that he wished would go away but which he knew never would. All of this, he battled every day. Socially, he was normal and perfectly presentable. Privately, he felt his psyche was in tatters and the war had turned him into a reclamation project. But if that was the case, so it was the case with most of the world, and almost everyone who had survived the fighting. So he kept it all inside him, as much as he could.
… Continued…
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Misdirected
by G. M. Rogers
Chapter One
Jake ran his hands over Madison’s bare shoulders. He gathered her long golden hair into his hand and pushed it to one side, exposing a clear avenue between her ear and her collarbone. Jake peppered the crook of Madison’s neck with little kisses. His full, warm lips brushed her soft, pale skin, causing her to shudder. Goose bumps speckled her flesh as the fine hairs on her body stiffened in response. She shivered.
He locked his arms around her back, pulling her closer, her bare breasts pressing against his chiseled chest. Jake’s cologne filled Madison’s nostrils as she breathed him in. He kissed her shoulders, his mouth wide and soft, his lips trailing. Madison wanted him. Jake’s touch was captivating, his scent intoxicating.
Madison relished the feeling of his flesh against hers, his warmth washing over her as he caressed her, kissing her deeply. Jake’s tongue was pushing its way into her mouth as his hips pressed against the inside of her thighs, forcing her legs wider. Madison invited Jake in, her body language blatant with desire.
Madison clawed at Jake’s back, pulling him deeper. He filled her, stretched her: the sensation was satiating, she had been longing for his touch.
Her hands slid down, grasping his buttocks, hinting that he thrust faster. Jake’s speed increased, his momentum unrelenting.
Soon Jake had shifted too far forward.
He pushed harder as Madison cried out in pain. His hips were digging into her inner thighs; a burning pain radiated through her groin as he inched his pelvis higher.
Jake was smothering her, her face smashed by his heaving chest. Madison began to hit him, swinging wildly at his back.
She was panicked. Her head pounded as her blood pressure lurched, its rise driven by fear. She kept swinging until her hands were tired and her arms were heavy with fatigue. Jake continued to thrust, ignoring her attempts at deterring him.
Finally Madison was able to turn her head away, gasping for air from under his arm. She screamed out, her voice filled with terror.
Jake stopped abruptly.
He pulled back and looked at Madison. She was horrified.
“How can this be?” Madison cried out.
Dane was looking down at her with a menacing grin, a satisfied and twisted look plastered on his terrible face.
“What’s wrong, sweet tits?” Dane asked, his grin turning into a mocking pouty-face.
Madison started to scream as she backed away. Her knees were pulled to her chest as she grasped at the bedding for leverage, the sheets clenched in her hands.
“This can’t be happening, this isn’t real,” she yelled as she reeled backward in horror.
“HELP!!” Madison tried to scream. “HELP,” she tried again, her cries for help stifled for some unknown reason, only squeaks and whispers escaping her lips.
The alarm went off.
Madison woke with a start. She was awash in a cold sweat; her skin crawled in waves as the sound of her startled heart pounded in her ringing ears. She was still clenching the sheets, her complexion as pale as the sheets were white. She looked around, searching the room for Dane from the safety of her grandmother’s quilt.
Relief slowly washed over her as she realized she was in her own bed, looking up at her own ceiling; Dane was nowhere to be found. Madison reached over to turn off the alarm that was still screeching its morning alert. She took a moment to shirk the emotional hangover caused by this latest nightmare.
Dane was the bogeyman in all of Madison’s dreams these days.
Apparently being dropped from a cliff while looking into the face of evil stays with you for a bit; it lingers, squatting in your psyche like an uninvited guest.
Madison reached for the pencil on her nightstand to try and reach the itch that was aggravating the hell out of her from under the cast she had been hauling around these last weeks.
Thankfully it wouldn’t be part of her wardrobe for much longer; she only had a week to go before its removal. Aside from the constant discomfort of its weight and the persistent irritation of the plaster, it was a visual reminder of Dane’s recent presence in Madison’s life. Every time she looked at it, or struggled to live with it, she was reminded of Dane’s violence and the terrible acts he’d committed that fateful day.
Madison hoped that once the cast was gone, maybe some of Dane’s ghosts would go with it.
Madison spent a few more minutes lying in bed reflecting, digging to scratch the deep-seated itch, moving her feet around under her quilt and searching for cool spots in the bedding.
She explored the emptiness of her bed with her feet. It triggered a pang of heartache. Losing Badger was like having an appendage severed. Amputees often speak of feeling like the limb is still there—well, Madison could still feel the phantom presence of her little dog. Sometimes at night she still felt the weight of his tiny body curled beside her, his head still resting on her shin.
Madison missed Badger. There were no more excited welcomes. Badger no longer met Madison at the door, hopping and lunging, demanding his proper greeting.
“Looks like I’ll be depressed again today,” Madison frowned, her brow furrowed as she looked at a photo she kept atop her chest of drawers. The photo was of her mother and Badger. The picture was taken not too long before Madison’s mother fell ill. It was a photo that captured a wonderful family moment.
William and Elizabeth had just returned from a ten-day fishing getaway. Madison had retrieved the camera to snap a photo of her father as he arrived home with his prize trout. That was when Badger began his assault on Madison’s mother. Elizabeth had stooped down to the dog’s level so that he could be given his proper greeting. The moment her bent knee touched the ground the rascal began to repeatedly lick Elizabeth’s face with his lightning-fast, razor-thin tongue. Elizabeth laughed and tried to hold her hands up to shield herself from Badger’s slobbery attack.
Madison snapped the photo. She caught the whole ridiculous episode on film. William’s prize trout took the backseat to Badger’s hilarious assault of Madison’s mother. Elizabeth and Badger were front and center in the photo in their playful pose. William’s hand and the tail of the prized trout graced only the back right corner.
Madison rolled from the bed, using her good arm to help prop up her torso, allowing her feet to hit the floor with some balance. She took one more moment to glance at the photo before she commenced her morning struggle to get ready for work. She didn’t have to work. In fact, her father insisted she take it easy, but she had to keep busy. Madison knew if she kept busy, kept moving, she wouldn’t have to think. She couldn’t be left alone with her thoughts; they were too much to bear.
Just as Madison got to her feet, her phone rang. Hall and Oates’s “Maneater” blared from the cell until Madison answered. “Hey, Luce,” she greeted, her tone stale and sullen.
“Hey, Maddie, how’s it going this morning?”
“Shitty,” Madison answered.
“Well, that’s an improvement over yesterday when you said, “Why keep going?”
“I guess that will be the bright spot to focus on for today,” Madison said in a very sarcastic tone.
“Let’s go to breakfast before you head to the store, we can meet at the Light House—my treat,” Lucy offered.
“No, I don’t feel like going out… people stare.”
People did stare. Iron Bay was a small community, and exciting things didn’t happen very often. Some people believed Madison’s story, that Dane tried to kill her and killed Badger, and others believed Dane, and thought Madison was nuts.
“You will have to face the world some day; why not today?” Lucy tried to be positive, persuasive.
“Maybe at lunch, it will give me time to psych myself up.” Madison was reluctant.
“I’m gonna hold you to that, Maddie: you need to get back out there. I’ll pick you up at the shop, we can walk down to the restaurant together.”
Madison said goodbye to her friend and continued working on motivating herself to function.
Madison shuffled to the bathroom; her eyes watched her toes peek out of her pajama bottoms as she inched forward. The weather was already unusually cold. The morning temps were somewhere in the low thirties, and that was chilly even by Iron Bay standards.
Madison was stiff in the morning. Having to sleep in a propped position all night, the cast on a pillow, the pillow on her chest, really put a crick in her back.
She was sure the fall hadn’t helped either. For weeks it had felt like every inch of her was bruised. Every shallow breath and every minor movement had been painful for a while.
Madison stood in front of the pedestal sink, her toes curling against the icy tile as she looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was stringy and oily. She had bags under her eyes deep enough to pack a bathrobe in. She hadn’t tweezed or waxed, washed or primped: she simply no longer cared.
This once-attractive, vivacious young woman was now happily disheveled, uninterested in the attention of the opposite sex, basically uninterested in the daily routine of giving a shit about anything at all.
“You should at least shower; you wouldn’t want to offend the delicate sensibilities of the customers,” Madison said to her reflection, as though she were trying to persuade herself to care.
Madison forced herself into the shower, her casted arm hanging precariously out of the curtain while she struggled to wash her long hair with her functioning hand. She stood in the shower, the hot water pounding against her back, washing away the fog of her latest nightmare.
Madison stood in the shower stall for a considerable amount of time, the steam billowing into the small bathroom, streaking the walls, and clouding the mirror. Madison turned the handles, closing the spigot on her antique fixtures now that the water was running cold. She carefully stepped over the lip of the rolled cast-iron tub, her feet landing on the plush white bath mat, red from the heat of the blistering water.
Madison leaned to her right toward the back of the door and snagged a towel hanging there from the day before. She wrapped her hair in it, swirling the towel loosely around her head, with only one hand to guide the terry cloth into what looked like a loose and askew turban.
Madison reached into the whitewashed willow basket under the sink pedestal for a towel to wrap herself in. She shook the towel, undoing its tidy fold, and clenched one corner between her teeth. She then reached for the other corner with her right hand. She tucked her chin to her chest, the towel still hanging from her mouth as she pulled the white cotton bath sheet around her torso. She used a twisting motion to pull the towel’s other corner and tuck it tightly, allowing it to hang from her frame like a strapless dress.
Madison stepped up to the sink and lifted the gauzy striped hand towel from its decorative bronze hook, its cream-and-gray stripes perfectly coordinated with the bathroom’s décor. Madison leaned forward on tiptoe to wipe the steam from the mirror.
She cleared away the fog and stood, staring at herself in its reflection. Madison no longer cared to look. She had once preened, tousling her long twisted locks, pleased with who she was. Madison no longer felt that way. She felt ugly. She was disgusted by her own image. Dane had damaged something deep within her. She struggled daily to deal with what she let him do.
“How could you be so stupid!” Madison scowled, as she spoke to her reflection, her voice elevated and tinged with disgust.
Madison dropped the towel to the floor and went to her room to dress. She stood in the open wardrobe, shivering, unable to cross her arms for warmth because of the cumbersome cast.
She scanned the many garments, all so cute and youthful. Madison shut the doors, uninterested in donning any of the pieces hanging, looking so carefree. She went over to her chest of drawers and rummaged to find something more appropriate. She fished out some old jeans and her favorite camp shirt. It was a well-worn flannel. It had a warm palette of large plaid print, its fall coloring well suited for autumn wear.
The problem with Madison’s plaid-shirt choice was the cast. Madison would have to cut open the left side of the shirt and remove the sleeve to get it over the lump of plaster she was cemented into.
She had several other shirts that had already been altered to accommodate the apparatus, but they weren’t her anymore.
Madison looked at herself in the mirror and realized she had morphed. She was no longer the vibrant, easygoing girl she had once been. She no longer wanted to pretend to be bubbly and friendly. She wanted to do what she wanted to do. And that meant no more pastels, or skirts, or care of what was fashionable. Madison was going to put on her favorite camp shirt, and nothing and no one was going to stop her.
Madison pulled on her knickers and jeans. She pulled a bra from the top drawer and set it on her bed. She turned and headed downstairs with purpose. Her wet, tangled hair bounced along with her bare breasts as she headed down to the kitchen.
She came to a halt in the doorway. Her father was leaning incredibly close to Aunt Sara, as though they were having a deeply intimate conversation.
Aunt Sara was Madison’s mother’s younger sister. She came to town when William told her of Madison’s situation. A recent divorcee, Aunt Sara had limited attachments back in Wisconsin. Her husband of ten years had recently left her for a younger woman.
“Thankfully I never procreated with that jerk,” Aunt Sara would offer at the end of every conversation about her ex.
She had been in Iron Bay for over a month. Madison wondered why she hadn’t returned home already; clearly Madison and her father could manage by now.
Perhaps Aunt Sara was lonely and enjoyed the company. She was alone now, after all.
Sara Porter had been dumped by her husband because he started to give it to a girl twelve years his junior.
Sara discovered that her husband had been indiscreet with this young woman when she found a note from his paramour in her office mailbox.
Apparently Ashley (the little slut’s name) not only was in love with Daryl (the husband) but she was now with child. Ashley’s note read as follows:
Mrs. Porter: You don’t know me, or about me I’m sure, but my name is Ashley Jamieson. Your husband and I are in love and we have conceived a child from that love, who is due later this year. Please understand that I never intended to hurt you, but your husband loves me and will be leaving you. Again, my apologies,
Ashley Jamieson
The thing that was so hurtful about Daryl’s indiscretion was that Sara had forgone having children because Daryl hadn’t wanted any, and Sara was happy to please Daryl. Now she was no spring chicken, single at forty, and childless.
“Daryl is a son of a bitch,” Aunt Sara would enthusiastically offer anytime he came up in conversation.
Madison loved her Aunt Sara. She was in her late teens when Madison was born and was the source of many happy childhood memories. Aunt Sara took Maddie to the beach and camping, and spent many summer weekends with her when William and Elizabeth would want to spend time alone.
At first she helped care for the house and provide emotional support to William while Madison was still in the hospital. Eventually she lent a hand to Maddie as she struggled to care for herself, inhibited by her injuries. Aunt Sara brushed Madison’s hair and wiped her tears when all of Madison’s grief would spill over.
This wasn’t the first time Aunt Sara had stayed with Madison and her father. When Madison’s mother passed, Aunt Sara stayed to help her brother-in-law, who was devastated by the loss of his wife, and comfort her niece, who had lost her mother.
Although Sara had lost her sister, she found relief from her despair by caring for William and Madison.
Sara had stayed; she stayed until it seemed as though Madison and William were back on their feet.
Well, here she was again, keeping a promise to her late sister, watching over her niece and brother-in-law. Madison found great comfort in having Aunt Sara around; she had never realized it before, but Aunt Sara was a great deal like her mother. It was like catching a rare glimpse of her mom. Whenever Sara turned a corner or Madison overheard her speaking from another room, it was like her mother was there. Aunt Sara seemed to fill a deep and empty space: it was nice.
It seemed she was now filling a deep and empty space for William as well. Her father had his hip on the counter’s edge, with one hand on the lip of the sink and the other clutching a coffee mug while leaning in to Sara, who was also leaning in toward him. Their body language was all-telling.
Madison walked right through. She didn’t care at this very moment what was going on between them. She was on a mission to get to the tool shed.
William and Sara drew away from each other as Madison stormed through the kitchen toward the back door. They were startled, as though they had been caught with their pants down, but they were also dismayed to see Madison skulking through the kitchen, topless, headed out the back door.
Madison opened the kitchen door to the enclosed back porch. The crisp September morning had filled the porch with quite a chill. She stepped out and shuddered as her feet hit the cold wooden floor. Madison pulled a pair of wellies from the boot tray that sat beneath a row of hooks where a variety of coats and outerwear were hung.
Madison quickly shoved her feet into the rubber boots and pulled a scarf from one of the brass hooks. She swirled the scarf around her neck the best she could, given the handicap the cast created.
Madison opened the door to the stairs that led to the back yard and stomped down with purpose, her feet squeaking in the wellies as she clomped along. She covered her bare breasts with her right arm as she trudged, the scattered fall foliage crunching beneath her feet as she stormed to the shed through the back yard.
William and Sara were slow to react. They were both still trying to process what they had just seen.
William ran to the window above the kitchen table and watched his daughter barrel toward the shed, shirtless, in only a scarf and rubber boots. He turned and looked at Sara.
“I think she has lost her mind,” he stated, his eyes wide and his tone perplexed.
“Well don’t just stand there, let’s get out there and make sure she isn’t going to hurt herself,” Aunt Sara commanded, jolting Madison’s father into action.
They both scurried onto the porch, quickly deciding to grab jackets on the fly, the cool morning air a shock to their systems. They busted into the shed, causing the door to fly open with a loud crash as they frantically approached Madison.
Madison had her back to them. She was standing at the workbench; the sound of a saw squealing and whirring cut through the air.
William yelled at Madison, his calls going unanswered as the noise from the saw washed him out. He slowly approached her, placing his hand on her shoulder.
Madison turned abruptly, the cutting wheel on the Dremel tool still running on high. Madison had a serious but purposeful look, her brow set sternly.
“What!” she yelled at her father over the noise of the saw.
“What are you doing out here half naked and using power tools?” William asked loudly, trying to project his voice over the squealing device.
“Ridding myself of some ghosts,” Madison replied as she turned back around and commenced sawing into the cast. Plaster dust flew into the air as Madison ran the saw’s small cutting wheel along the length of her forearm. She had to be careful not to cut too deep.
While Madison’s father supervised, she notched a seam into the cast.
“Aren’t you going to stop her,” Sara questioned in disbelief as her brother-in-law just stood and watched as his daughter removed the cast herself.
“No,” William barked. “Let her do it, maybe she needs to take control.”
Aunt Sara backed into the shed’s corner, sat on a stack of milk crates, and watched William watching Madison.
Madison pulled the saw’s plug from the wall and set it on the bench in front of her. She strained, struggling to split the cast with one hand. William placed his hands on her shoulders and gently guided her to face him.
“Let me help you,” he said, his voice hushed as he spoke to Madison in a loving tone.
Madison put up her right hand and tipped her chin back and out of the way as her father grabbed the cast firmly on each side of the channel Madison had etched into its plaster. William pulled. The plaster creaked and groaned in protest as William pulled with all his might. He pried, his knuckles white under the strain as he struggled to release his daughter from the cast’s physical and emotional hold. William gritted his teeth, his face a shade short of crimson as he yanked.
Suddenly the cast gave with a crack and a tear. Bits of plaster scattered to the floor. Madison looked at her father’s labored face. Tears welled in his eyes as his glance met his daughter’s. They stood together, filled with overwhelming emotion. The reality of what they had both recently faced was finally being addressed. Madison was shirtless, with her aunt peering from the corner as William and his daughter quietly came to terms with the reality of the tragedy they had both escaped.
William stood and looked at his daughter, knowing that freeing her form that cast had set something free in her spirit.
The light in her eyes shifted. The dim haze of helplessness and depression seemed to lift immediately. A new look washed in. It was a look of indifference. William optimistically viewed it as a new and stronger resolve.
”I didn’t think that thing was ever going to let go,” William laughed. His relief was not from the removal but from the weight it seemed to lift from his daughter emotionally.
Madison quickly shifted to a new topic.
“Did I see the two of you together in the kitchen this morning?” Madison asked as she rubbed her freshly paroled arm.
“We were just talking,” Aunt Sara interjected from the shed’s corner.
Madison leaned to the side, peeking around her father who stood between her and the view of her aunt.
“It looked like flirting, or even close intimate chatting,” Madison continued, giving her aunt an inquisitive look.
“There might be some feelings,” William blurted, not knowing how else to approach the subject.
“Can we continue this talk inside, my tits are freezing,” Madison bluntly announced as she headed for the shed door.
William looked at Sara and found she had the same look of awe on her face as he did. Madison was never one to be this forward or outspoken. She had always had a fun and direct sense of humor, but she had never been that forward before. William held his hand out to Sara, helping her to her feet. He shrugged as he watched Madison trudge forcefully toward the house’s back door; she scattered leaves with every step.
William and Sara followed Madison to the house, hand in hand.
They dropped off their coats and shoes in the back porch before entering the kitchen. They found Madison leaning against the sink, her arms folded. She had thrown on a sweater she found on a hook on the way in.
“So, are the two of you… you know?”
William and Sara were speechless. They were unsure how to approach the subject. They looked at each other then at Madison.
“We seemed to have bonded while you were recovering.” William was once again flushed; this time it wasn’t from the strain.
“We wanted to wait for the right time to tell you, Maddie, we weren’t sure how you would take it,” Aunt Sara added.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I think…. I think, whatever. It’s about time Dad got back on the horse. At least I like the person he has chosen.” Madison winked at her dad.
“You shifty devil, how long had this been going on?”
“Just a few weeks,’ William admitted.
“I think we felt the connection right away but we tried to fight it at first, worrying that maybe it was inappropriate,” Aunt Sara added.
‘Well, I think it’s great,” Madison said with a satisfied grin. “Besides, sound travels in this old house, the heating registers are all connected. You weren’t as sneaky as you thought you were.”
William and Sara stood in the kitchen, smiling with embarrassment at the thought that Madison already knew everything.
Madison walked out of the kitchen and headed to her room to finish getting dressed.
Her favorite shirt was still waiting on the bed with her bra. She dropped the sweater she was wearing to the floor and kicked it to the side. She slipped both arms through the straps with ease. Now the tricky part: she tried to reach behind and close the hooks but her broken arm was stiff. It had been locked in one position for several weeks and although large movements were simple enough: taking off a sweater, putting on a shirt… stretching to reach and bend in an awkward position was still a bit tough, but something was better than nothing.
Madison simply turned the bra so the clasp was at her belly, simplifying the hooking process. She took the shirt and pulled its left sleeve over her newly freed arm. What a wonderful feeling. She watched her hands work in unison as they buttoned the flannel. It was funny how an act so simple could suddenly become so profound. Madison knew she would never take anything for granted again.
She returned to her bathroom, anxious to finally do something about her hair. She stood in the mirror, still disgusted by her own reflection. The resentment she had for Dane and the fact that she let him get away with so much still stared back at her. Madison quickly ran a brush through her hair, another one of those acts now simplified by the use of both hands. She grabbed her bag and headed downstairs: she was anxious to get to work.
Chapter Two
Dane Buckman was bent. He was a dark and twisted soul. Although he was never treated for mental illness, many teachers and caregivers had suggested to his mother that he needed some type of medical attention. Dane may have skirted therapy and meds as a boy, but he was, at the very least, a sociopath. Dane had always acted with his own enjoyment in mind. He cared not for the feelings of others and knew that he was always right, no matter what.
Dane was a mischievous, manipulative child. He was often in trouble at school and at home for seldom severe, but definitely devious actions.
Dane’s tendency to entertain himself with the discomfort of others became more frequent as he grew older. His already warped mind coupled with the constant abuse he sustained from his mother, and the lack of discipline from his father, elevated Dane’s desire for his perverted brand of fun.
Dane flipped the lights on in his garage. He ran the sleeve of his gray knit sweatshirt gingerly over the front of his Charger, brushing some dust from its obnoxiously yellow hood. He needed to make sure it was spotless before commencing his usual morning workout.
The fluorescent lights of the garage glinted in the paint’s shiny surface as Dane caught his reflection, using his fingers to correct a stray hair at his forehead.
He was eager to get the day’s lifting in before he headed to the mountain for a celebratory weekend.
A lot had transpired in the last few weeks and he was looking forward to a little R&R.
Madison had presented quite the challenge when she awoke in the hospital after the incident and started pointing fingers. She blamed Dane for her fall at the lake and even told the authorities that she suspected he had sexually assaulted her once while she was passed out at her home.
Of course, she was telling the truth: Dane was responsible for the fall and he did assault her sexually, but he looked forward to the challenge of shirking that responsibility and persuading the powers that be that he loved Madison and had only wanted to save her.
Dane held his ground, sitting in the hospital room, a look of shock and disbelief across his face as Madison pointed at him, tears running from her eyes as she detailed the events of that day. She coughed as she sobbed, choking on her own fear and grief.
Madison went on and on, shaking, wracked with anger at the death of her dog,
Dane remained steadfast, his performance unbroken. He had everyone convinced that Madison was delusional, everyone except her father and close friends, who knew Dane had harmed her before.
The Sheriff’s Department took her seriously, forwarding her statement to the chief prosecuting attorney, Margaret VanHeusen. Ms. VanHeusen was thorough, a real ball-buster. She was intimidating, with her black hair twisted in a tight-up do that seemed to accentuate her severe facial expressions.
Regardless of Ms.VanHeusen’s dedication to justice, there were no eyewitnesses to the incident other than those who saw Dane frantically trying to save Madison. There was no conclusive physical evidence that pointed to anything other than Dane’s account.
As far as the claim of sexual assault… with Madison being unsure, and the lack of physical evidence, that was dropped along with the investigation into her claimed attempted murder. The prosecutor’s office explained that, “Without eyewitnesses or stronger physical evidence, it’s a simple case of your word against his.”
Dane grabbed a bottle of water from the mini-fridge that was recessed below the flat screen and set it on the floor next to the weight bench. He loved thinking about the day he was cleared of wrongdoing. Dane smiled as he pulled off his shirt and flexed his arms in the mirror, knowing those were the very arms that terrorized Madison and put an end to his little problem.
Dane paid his respects to his powerful and capable appendages with a kiss to each bicep as he flexed, then retrieving the weights from their stand.
Dane lifted, admiring his form, admiring his angular jaw, admiring the precision with which he had duped not only Madison and her father to trust him once again, but the police and the prosecutor into believing he was innocent of Madison’s charges.
Dane pumped, curling each dumbbell, working up a sweat, adrenaline coursing through his bulging veins.
“You are incredible,” Dane grunted as he pulled the weight to his chest, winking at his fine form in the large plate-glass mirror.
“You are untouchable,” he assured himself, continuing to compliment himself in the third person.
“You deserve this weekend away, you crafty devil.” Dane grunted as he started another rep, focusing on his triceps.
Dane lifted and admired himself until he was ready to head into the house for a shower and to pack for his romp at the mountain.
Chapter Three
Mt. Hematite was ablaze with the reds and oranges of the changing fall foliage. Dane took in the autumn view from the hotel window as he turned down the bed. The garish polyester bedspread and its floral print were in perfect coordination with the widely striped drapes.
Dane drew the drapes closed before he reached into his pants’ pocket to place its contents under his pillow. He stripped down to his shorts and climbed into the bed.
Dane reclined, his hands tucked under the pillow, where he felt for the items he had just stashed there. He felt for a condom and retrieved one. He pulled down the waistband of his silken boxers and gave himself a bit of a fluff, rolling his penis between his thumb and fingers, so he could apply the prophylactic.
Then he plunged his hand back under the pillow, feeling around for the compass.
He held the compass in his hand under the pillow, rubbing its smooth crystal face with his thumb, searching for the chip in its surface.
He closed his eyes and focused on the events that took place the day he received this little trophy. The feelings that the small brass treasure stirred were deep and powerful.
He continued to caress the compass, his urges building as he waited for his date to emerge from the bathroom.
Dane came out to the mountain to celebrate his victory over Madison and the legal system.
He knew he couldn’t trust his celebration to just anyone, so he had hired a professional. Dane didn’t want some whiny girl who would complain or get squeamish, so he trusted his fun this weekend to a pro.
Mindy was the best. She and Dane had partied before, and tonight he planned to fulfill his fantasies. Emboldened by his skillful dodge of prosecution, Dane was ready to complete acts undone and fulfill a latent fantasy. Invincible, unstoppable, and insatiable, Dane was fully prepared to take his newfound appetite and bite deeply into every situation.
Dane continued to wait for Mindy to emerge from the can. He pulled his hands out from under the pillow and decided to caress something else.
Dane brushed his hand over his silk boxer shorts, his arousal heightened by the sensation of the soft fabric brushing against his skin.
He kept rubbing, the friction of his shorts causing his excitement to grow.
“You better hurry up and get out here,” Dane yelled at the closed bathroom door. “I’m starting without you, there’s no tip at the end of the night if I have to start without you.”
“Just a minute,” Mindy yelled from the other side of the door, “ I just want to make sure I’m looking extra-special for you.”
The door began to open and Dane looked on as Mindy emerged wearing the sundress he had provided. Its cut and pattern was eerily similar to the dress Madison had worn.
Mindy’s hair was hanging loosely, with a beachy wave twisted through the long, light-brown strands.
“You need to go back into the bathroom and splash water on the front of that dress,” Dane explained.
“It’s chilly in here… but you are the customer,” Mindy sighed.
Mindy returned, the dress splashed, but far from wet enough. Dane jumped from the bed and wrapped his arms around Mindy, walking her to the sink, his erection jutting out, expanding his shorts. It was jabbing her in the back prodding her along.
“Nice pup tent,” Mindy joked as Dane led her to the bathroom sink, his penis stuck in her back like a gun at a hold-up.
“No joking,” Dane barked, his mood suddenly darkened.
Dane reached around her, forcefully twisting the handle, the spigot blasting cold water with more force than the shallow sink bowl could handle. The icy water sprayed on the walls and over the bowl’s edge, pooling on the floor.
Dane used his left arm to hold Mindy in place as he used his right hand to bring the cold water to her breasts, splashing her in quick, forceful bursts.
Dane cupped the pouring water and brought his hand to Mindy’s breasts, again and again.
Mindy soon voiced her discomfort, “Dane, it’s cold, my breasts are getting sore from the pounding.”
“Turn around,” Dane commanded.
Dane lessened his grip and held Mindy’s shoulders, guiding her to face him.
Dane ran his hands over Mindy’s hardened nipples, obviously stiffened by the encounter with the cold water. They were poking through the thin fabric of the dress, her entire breast clearly visible.
“That’s what I was looking for,” Dane mumbled with a low breathy tone.
Dane grabbed Mindy by her hair, pulling her head, arching her back, exposing her neck.
Dane pulled at the dress exposing Mindy’s breasts. Her nipples were still stiff, while goose bumps speckled her flesh.
Dane ran his tongue, hot and velvety, down the length of Mindy’s neck, straight to her erect nipples.
Dane pulled her left nipple between his lips, drawing it into his mouth. Dane sucked hard, Mindy expressed her discomfort by reaching for Dane’s groin.
Dane bit down, Mindy shrieked, crying out in pain. She struggled to pull away from Dane’s hold. Heat radiated though her left breast as the trauma of Dane’s cruelty took hold. Dane pulled back to view his handiwork. Mindy’s nipple was split on both sides, a small trickle of blood running along the side of her breast.
“Jesus Christ, Dane, not so hard!” Mindy shouted, as she gave him a dirty look.
“Sorry, just got carried away,” Dane smirked apologetically. “Just wondered what you tasted like.”
“Maybe it’s time for me to taste you,” Mindy suggested as she pushed Dane back and knelt before him.
Mindy pulled down the silk boxers now soaked from the splashing. Dane’s generous erection sprang free, its raincoat still snugly applied.
Mindy took Dane into her mouth as only a professional could. Dane arched, forcing himself deeper, Mindy’s professional mouth capable of accepting it all. Dane caressed the back of Mindy’s head, his hands entangled in her hair.
Mindy massaged Dane’s testicles as she relaxed her throat, bringing Dane even deeper, her bottom lip grazing the very base of his shaft.
Dane inched closer to orgasm, so he needed to intervene. He grabbed Mindy’s shoulders and eased her to the tiny bathroom’s floor. The small gray tiles were submerged beneath a puddle created by the overflow of the diminutive sink. Dane laid Mindy into the water, the cold ceramic sending a shiver through her thin frame.
“I want you to lay on your side, with your left arm under your head at the elbow.”
“I’ve had some weird requests, Dane, but that one is really bizarre.”
“The customer is always right,” Dane reminded his date.
Mindy laid down, her arm positioned as Dane had requested.
Dane ran his hands through the water on the floor, and then through Mindy’s hair, in an attempt to give it a wetter appearance.
When Dane had set the stage, he had one final request for poor Mindy. “I want you to hold very still, as though you are unconscious.”
“That’s fuckin’ weird, Dane,” Mindy said as she started to sit up.
“No, lay back down, trust me, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to act out a little fantasy.” Dane did his best to turn on his charm and smile his sweetest smile, putting Mindy at ease.
Mindy returned to her submissive position, left arm tucked beneath her head.
Dane began to run his hands over her, feeling her cold flesh, brushing the soaked fabric of the sundress over Mindy’s hardened nipples.
Mindy winced as Dane bumped the injured breast.
“Sorry, forgot.” Dane gritted his teeth with an apology.
Dane always treated Mindy with respect. This was a business transaction; it would be rude to mistreat her on purpose (the bite to the nipple aside).
Mindy went back to her limp and unanimated state; Dane was aroused. He could remember that day after Madison fell. How her nipples looked under the drenched sundress. The way the fabric clung to her unconscious body. Dane could still picture the way her hair floated in the constant push and pull of the shallow water on the point’s ledge.
“I’m going to move you now,” Dane warned Mindy, “keep still, stay limp.”
Mindy did as she was told. Dane picked her up and pulled her to him, her relaxed body flopping just like Madison’s did that day when Dane cradled her in his arms. Today would be different though, because today he would have his way with her. He didn’t have enough time then, but he did now.
Dane positioned Mindy over his lap, his right arm supporting her back, as her shoulders and head hung over his forearm. Dane used his left hand to pull up the dress, its wet cloth clinging to her body as he shifted it past her breasts.
He ran his hand over her, exploring her, enjoying the way her cold wet skin felt under his outstretched palm. Dane stopped; he hesitated, cupping Mindy’s bare abdomen with his palm. “I got ya… finished you off, you parasite, you will never see the light of day.” Mindy peeked, concerned about the dialogue Dane was having with her lower half. She closed her eyes. Dane often had bizarre ideas, his sexual tastes had often been extraordinary, so she figured this was just one of his games.
Dane ran his fingers over Mindy’s sex, making sure to press hard enough to feel its moisture.
Mindy was turned on. To her dismay, Dane’s strange, sick game was appealing to her as well. Dane shifted, positioning himself, readying for penetration.
Dane pulled Mindy’s seemingly lifeless body onto himself. His arousal had been heightened by this reenactment and had engorged his already generous instrument, causing even a working girl to take notice.
Mindy found it very difficult to hide her pleasure. Dane’s girth was filling her, reaching every luscious spot.
She held as still as possible. Dane pulled her again and again, an orgasm rocketing through her body, making her continued stillness almost impossible. Mindy shuddered, her legs quivered. She peeked to see if Dane had noticed. Dane was deep in thought. Mindy’s release went unnoticed as Dane fucked her. His eyes were still closed, his lips pursed tightly… Dane was somewhere else.
Dane relived that moment on the ledge at Lake Paramount when he sat with Madison’s unconscious body, aching to molest it. He hated her. He hated her and wanted nothing more than to fuck her unconscious body.
Raping her would have been the one act he knew would be most hurtful, therefore the most satisfying. To rape a woman, to violate her in such an intimate way, was the ultimate show of control and force. Dane had sort of date-raped a few girls but he never got in trouble, because in the end they all wanted it (or at least that’s what Dane thought).
Mindy could feel another orgasm building, Dane’s sizeable member easily commanding it. She wanted to move, to touch him or herself. Just as Mindy thought she might risk going for it, Dane came. He came, and as he did he pulled Mindy to his chest and held her. He whispered in her ear, “Fuck you, Madison.”
Dane’s eyes popped open. His trance was broken and he found himself suddenly and acutely aware that he had Madison to thank for his newfound power. It was Madison who had helped Dane discover the new depths of his darkness.
Dane had enjoyed his professional relationship with Mindy; he could do whatever he wanted. She never argued or got squeamish. She was a pro, but the kind of fun he was in search of would require a naive girl. A young woman whose experiences had been limited, someone he could dupe, just like he did Madison.
Now, Dane had been playing his little games of dominance with these stupid girls for years. He had spit on them and forced them into embarrassing situations and assaulted them every which way.
Dane’s needs were more complex now; his desire had escalated, making dates uncomfortable would never be enough again, he wanted more. Dane needed to push the limits. He had never felt the way he had with Madison, and he needed to find that feeling again.
Dane uttered Madison’s name just as he released Mindy. He scooted back, shocked by the sudden sense of self-awareness he was experiencing.
“I’m sorry,” Dane said, apologizing in Mindy’s direction.
“No worries, love, johns call me by other girls’ names all the time.”
Dane looked at Mindy, a vacant stare planted on his face,
“I need you to get out,” Dane barked.
“Alright, love, where is the cash?”
“In my wallet, take an extra fifty for the nipple,” Dane directed, his tone now flat as he stared at the bathroom wall.
Mindy took off the sundress. She draped it over the back of the chair that was tucked under the desk-TV stand combo. She threw on her own clothes and proceeded to rummage through Dane’s wallet for her fee, plus fifty.
“See ya later, hot stuff,” Mindy twittered as she headed for the door. “Maybe I can pretend to be conscious next time and do that thing you like with my tongue.”
“Get out!” Dane yelled, his patience wearing thin. “There isn’t going to be a next time.”
Mindy scrambled out the door, giving Dane the finger while cursing him under her breath. “Good, you fucking weirdo, the whole corpse thing was a bit much anyway.”
Dane sat in the bathroom alone, his bare behind in the pool of recently splashed water, his thoughts reeling. He had a hunger that needed feeding, and he would need to feed it soon.
Dane pulled the spent condom from his now flaccid penis, leaving it crumpled on the floor. Its freshly ejaculated contents oozed from its rolled opening and spilled onto the carpeting.
… Continued…
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Secrets of a Real-Life Female Private Eye
by Colleen Collins
Secrets of a Real-Life Female Private Eye is a part-memoir, part-reference nonfiction book based on the experiences of a professional private investigator and writer. Audiences: researchers, writers, detective-fiction fans, armchair detectives and anyone curious about the real world of private investigators! It also offers readers interactive features to enhance their reading experience.
Here’s a sampling of topics:
- Advantages and dangers of being a current-day female P.I.
- Tools of the trade, including interactive crime maps, Google maps, investigative equipment and smartphone apps
- Case examples, from ghost hunting to criminal investigations
- Investigative tips, including how to find lost pets, handy Google searches, where to locate court files, free online searches, ways to defeat a cyberstalker, how to send an untraceable email
- A study of three classic TV female private eyes
Praise for Secrets of a Real-Life Female Private Eye:
“Discover what the life of a female private eye really is about, without the fluff and sound effects. Secrets of a Real-Life Female Private Eye may even help you develop a passion for becoming a private eye yourself!”
an excerpt from
Secrets of a Real-Life
Female Private Eye
by Colleen Collins
Table of Contents
Introduction
Popular Misconceptions About Female Private Eyes
The First Private Investigations Agency
Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency
A Possible Photo of Kate Warne
The End of Kate’s Career
Chapter 2 Being a 21st-Century Female P.I.
What Is It Like Being a Female Private Eye?
Is It Dangerous to Be a Female Private Eye?
Chapter 3 Is It Advantageous to be a Female P.I.?
Do Clients Prefer Female P.I.s?
Emotional Management
When Lawyers Call on Female Investigators for Services
Chapter 4 Tools of the Trade
Crime Maps as an Investigative Tool
How Our Private Investigations Equipment Changed Over a Decade
I Want You to Put One of Those GPS Things on My Boyfriend’s Car
Sleuth Gear: From the Silly to the Serious
Sleuthing Crimes with Google Maps
Chapter 5 Rock n’ Rollin’ with the Cases
“Danger” The Flirts, 80s disco song
Power Plays in Murder: Three Cases
Stalked Online by a Disgruntled Subject
Stalked Online by a Cyberstalker
Tracking a Felon Across Three Counties
The Violent Side of Process Services
“GhostBusters” (Who you gonna call?)
What Is a Paranormal Investigator?
My Informal Investigations at Various Haunted Hotels
Related Articles and Resources on Paranormal Investigations
“Undercover Agent for the Blues”
The Best Disguise in the World
Bored to Death: A Private Eye’s Bad Undercover Techniques
The Day I Worked Undercover as a Golfer
The Night I Worked Undercover as a Pole Dancer
How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?
The Case of the Stolen Marijuana Brownies
Merry Christmas! You’ve Been Served!
My Husband’s in the Alley Going for Krispy Kremes!
The Day I Learned to Respect Ace Ventura, Pet Detective
Flying Burritos and a Rolling Surveillance
The Day The Sheriffs Escorted Us to Another County
When the Amazing Race Reality Show Called and Invited Us to Audition
Chapter 6 Tips from a P.I.
Finding People: A Few Free Online Searches
Finding the Name Behind a Bogus Internet ID
Googling Made Easy: A Few Search Tips
How to Defeat a Cyberstalker
How to Find a Court File
How to Find a Lost Pet
How to Minimize Bad Reviews on Google
How to Protect Yourself from Cell Phone Theft
How to Remove Your Name Being Tagged on the Internet
How to Send an Untraceable Email
Chapter 7 Coming Full Circle
Appendix A: Favorite Sites
Appendix B: Articles on Private Investigations
Appendix C: Three TV Female Private Eyes
The Thin Man TV Series: Nora Charles
Honey West: TV’s First Reel Private Dickette
Moonlighting: Maddie Hayes
Appendix D: Lady Sleuth Cocktails
Book Excerpt How to Write a Dick: a Guide for Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths by Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman
Book Excerpt How Do Private Eyes Do That? by Colleen Collins
Chapter 1
History of the Female Private Eye
Private investigators have captured our interest and imagination for years. Edgar Allan Poe, the father of detective fiction, first wrote about private investigators in his 1841 novel, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, where he introduced us to the fictional detective Augueste C. Dupin. Some claim Poe’s inspiration for Dupin was the first real-life ex-con French private investigator, Eugene Francois Vidocq.
The First Private Investigations Agency
Born in 1775, Eugène François Vidocq lived a colorful life that included stints in jail throughout his twenties. In the early 1800s, Vidocq offered his spy services to the Paris police. Because of his often-successful criminal past, they figured
In 1833, Vidocq established the first known private detective agency, Le Bureau Des Renseignments (Office of Intelligence), again hiring ex-cons. Local law enforcement weren’t very happy with his new enterprise. Rather than hire women to conduct investigations that required a female, Vidocq adopted the dress and mannerisms of women himself.
A little over twenty years later, Allan Pinkerton, who founded Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, hired the first female private eye, Kate Warne.
Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency
In 1850, Allen Pinkerton established a private security force to investigate various railway and industrial crimes, which eventually led to his agency investigating criminal cases as well. At times, when public police organizations’ forces were insufficient, they also used private services such as Pinkerton’s. Over time, the Pinkerton operatives also assisted in the investigation of international crimes as there were no such investigative agencies equipped to do so.
The Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency coined the logo “We Never Sleep” along with an open eye (hence, the now-popular term “private eye”).
Pinkerton’s business card, with the motto “We Never Sleep”
In 1850 (some sources say in the early 1850s), Allan Pinkerton and a partner established the North-Western Police Agency outside Chicago, one of the first private detective agencies in the U.S.
As I learned starting a private detective agency, it’s one thing to open such a business, another to successfully market it. Although there were other private detective agencies starting during Pinkerton’s era, his became the premiere agency because of his marketing acumen. Didn’t hurt that he had connections in high places: At the Rock Island and Illinois Central Railroad for which Pinkerton had previously investigated numerous cargo theft cases, he had the support of the president of the company, George McClellan, later Major General George B. McClellan in the Civil War, and McClellan’s attorney, a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. Both McClellan and Lincoln agreed to use Pinkerton’s private investigation services.
Kate Warne Demanded to Be a Private Detective
In 1856, Allan Pinkerton hired his first female private eye, Kate Warne. Within the U.S., she is widely acknowledged to be the first female private investigator.
There is little biographical information about Kate Warne, although sources claim she was born in 1833 in New York, and her husband died soon after they were married. She had no children. Some people think Kate made up this back history for herself because single women during this era who were intent on having their own careers, especially in a field dominated by men, courted scandal.
In 1856, she apparently responded to an ad for detectives at the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. In his book Criminal Reminiscences and Detective Sketches, Pinkerton describes Kate as “a slender, brown haired woman, graceful in her movements and self-possessed. Her features, although not what could be called handsome, were decidedly of an intellectual cast… her face was honest, which would cause one in distress instinctly to select her as a confidante.”
Pinkerton presumed she was there to inquire about a clerical job. She wasn’t. He later wrote that he “was surprised to learn Kate was not looking for clerical work, but was actually answering an advertisement for detectives he had placed in a Chicago newspaper. At the time, such a concept was almost unheard of. Pinkerton said ‘It is not the custom to employ women detectives!’ Kate argued her point of view eloquently — pointing out that women could be ‘most useful in worming out secrets in many places which would be impossible for a male detective.’ A woman would be able to befriend the wives and girlfriends of suspected criminals and gain their confidence. Men become braggarts when they are around women who encourage them to boast. Kate also noted, ‘Women have an eye for detail and are excellent observers.’”
Pinkerton eventually hired her as his first female detective on August 23, 1856.
By 1860, Pinkerton had hired several more women to be detectives, calling them his “Female Detective Bureau.” Warne became the supervisor of the Female Detective Bureau.
She played a key role in numerous investigations. In 1858, she participated in the Adams Express Company embezzlement case in which an expressman, Mr. Maroney, was suspected of stealing $50,000 from the company. Warne, whose skillset included adapting accents and different disguises, befriended Maroney’s wife and through her, accrued evidence about his theft that eventually led to Mr. Maroney’s conviction (he was sentenced to 10 years in prison). Thanks to Warne, $39,515 of the stolen money was returned to the Adams Express Company.
Pinkerton and Warne often represented themselves as a married couple to gain entry to certain social circles and situations.
Warne Helped Thwart an Assassination Attempt on Lincoln
Perhaps Kate Warne’s most famous case was her role in helping foil an assassination attempt on President-elect Abraham Lincoln during his travels to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration. According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s website article “Saving Mr. Lincoln,” Warne accompanied Pinkerton, and four other operatives from his agency, to Baltimore where Pinkerton had heard a plot to assassinate Lincoln would take place. According to other sources, she both helped to coordinate the operatives as well as to devise a strategy for getting Lincoln safely from Baltimore to Washington, D.C.
Different sources refer to Lincoln’s fervent opposition to the investigators’ strategy, which required him to go undercover, because he didn’t want people to view him as cowardly. But Pinkerton, Warne and others had enough evidence of a plot to convince Lincoln to go along with their plan. In it, he played Warne’s invalid brother, whom she was taking by street car to Washington, D.C. Warne must have had an appealing, charming personality because this was one of several incidences in which she cajoled people to do her bidding. In this particular case, she convinced the conductor to leave the back door of the street car open so her sickly brother could enter the compartment with privacy.
That night, as the carriage traveled to Washington, D.C., Warne, Pinkerton, another operative named George Bangs and a personal friend of the President’s, Warren Hill Lamon, took turns staying up all night to guard the President-elect. In a sense, she was one of the models for the future Secret Service.
A Possible Photo of Kate Warne
Considering she excelled in her profession as a private detective, often going undercover for cases, it’s not such a surprise that there are no known photos of her. I know P.I.s who specialize in undercover work and surveillances, and they take care to not post photos, or have public pictures taken of them, to maintain their anonymity. This appears to have been Kate’s approach, too.
However, many believe there is one photo of her, in disguise as a Union solider, in the below photo (she’s the “man” standing behind Pinkerton, the bearded gentleman seated on the right):
Possible photograph of Kate Warne (standing behind Pinkerton)
Why do people think the soft-faced soldier is Kate Warne? She was known to have been traveling with Pinkerton at this time. The person has no facial hair, and the physicality matches Kate’s (slim, brown hair).
The End of Kate’s Career
On January 28, 1868, Kate Warne passed away suddenly at the age of 35 from pneumonia. Pinkerton was at her bedside. She is buried in the Pinkerton family plot in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. Pinkerton is laid to rest next to her.
In his memoirs, Pinkerton credited two of his operatives for establishing the Pinkerton National Detective Agency as an efficient, honorable organization: Timothy Webster, an agent who was executed during the Civil War for espionage, and Kate Warne.
Chapter 2
Being a 21st-Century Female P.I.
What Is It Like Being a Female Private Eye?
Despite the thousands of private investigators throughout the U.S. (PI Magazine estimates there to be approximately 60,000), and the wide variety of specializations (from insurance investigators to accident reconstruction specialists to pet detectives), many people still view private investigators as Sam Spade clones. Meaning, they’re men, they’re tough, they carry heat, they talk like Bogie.
Ah, the lasting allure of noir.
Busting a Few Myths
Just as not all school teachers or plumbers or attorneys are tough, not all private investigators are tough. Tough as in (to quote the fictional private eye Sam Spade) “When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it.”
But if we’re talking tough in terms of being a successful business person (handling day-to-day business, managing clients and subcontractors, making more money coming in than going out), then yes, qualified, experienced private investigators are tough. Carrying guns? Some private investigators do, many don’t. And although most P.I.s are men, PI Magazine estimates 15 percent, and that number is growing, are women.
Women Private Investigators vs. Women in Law Enforcement
In her dissertation The Feminization of Private Investigation: A Sociological Analysis, Jessica S. Pearce reasons that in occupations where authority and force are not the norm, women face fewer barriers, less stigmatization and diminished role conflict. Several consequences for females in a private investigation work environment are:
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Less intense socialization than females in police work.
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Shorter, less concentrated training periods because there are fewer requirements that guide physical training and certification.
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A diminished necessity for skills that are viewed as more masculine, such as strength, bravery and size.
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Fewer reasons to give males precedence over females when it comes to assigning cases because private investigators are not in a position “to protect and serve” as they are in law enforcement.
My Personal Experience as a Woman P.I.
In a recent issue of PI Magazine, the author of this book was listed as one of the “new wave” of women private investigators, so I suppose I have a good idea of what it’s like to be surfing in today’s P.I. waters.
I’ve never thought of myself as a shrinking violet, but I’ve certainly become more assertive in my work. Occasionally people still assume I’m the agency secretary, not its president, but I’m happy to say those assumptions occur less and less. I have excellent business relationships with my fellow P.I.s, men and women — I’ve never met a male P.I. yet who doesn’t treat me as a peer. And for the record, I don’t carry a gun, but I know women P.I.s who do.
I’m friends with several women private investigators who work in other states. Our friendships came about when they hired me or I hired them. One was a crime reporter before taking over her father’s, a former FBI special agent’s, P.I. agency. Another is the president of a fast-paced, high-profile agency.
What do I love about the work? The research. Digging for evidence. Really love finding the clue, the missing piece, the proof that solves a case. After more than a few dangerous episodes while serving legal papers, I’m not wild about process services, and I’m getting to the point where I’d rather poke a stick in my eye than sit on a lengthy surveillance.
What Other Women P.I.s Think About the Profession
Below are several Internet articles either written by female P.I.s or written about them. To read an article, click on its link.
L.I. Moms Bring Woman’s Touch to Private Investigation (CBS New York)
Women sleuths find success in Delaware (forum Private Investigators Union)
Female PI builds successful business from her Quilcene farm (Leigh Hearon Investigative Services)
For these married Denver detectives, truth is more fun than fiction (Westword, a story about Colleen Collins and her husband-P.I.-partner)
Is It Dangerous to Be a Female Private Eye?
I get asked this question a lot. I suppose people read and see fictional private eyes doing all kinds of dangerous, risk-taking actions in books and film so they assume that’s how it is in real life, too. My general response is that, like many things in life, it’s wise to practice common sense and take precautions when necessary. When you go to a store at night, don’t park in a dark, isolated area–better yet, go during the daylight hours. That kind of common sense stuff.
But even saying that, I’ll add that private investigations can be dangerous at times if the person isn’t paying attention and taking precautions in certain situations. Two of these potentially dangerous situations I’ll list below.
Process Services: Get In, Get Out
Unfortunately, it isn’t uncommon to experience danger while serving legal papers. A process server in our state was murdered several years back in the course of his serving papers.
When my husband and I started our investigations business, we would sometimes talk to the people to whom we were serving papers. The person might ask, “What are these papers? What am I supposed to do?” And we’d take the time to explain that the attorney’s name and contact information was listed on the papers, and that they should contact the lawyer with their questions.
These days, I limit my conversations to verifying the person’s identity and to briefly explaining that I’m serving business or legal papers to them.
Then I leave.
In other words, I get in and get out. No dawdling. If they say, “What are these papers about?” I might say over my shoulder as I’m walking away, “Contact the attorney listed on the papers.”
But I’m not hanging around to chat.
This past year, I had two women go ballistic on me after serving them legal papers. Both times, the women followed me to my car, yelling and screaming and calling me a few colorful names. One was waving her fists and I knew if I stopped, one of them would likely land on me.
But did the danger level differ because I was a female versus a male P.I.? It’s conceivable that people might stereotype a female P.I.as being more vulnerable, but to my mind, it wouldn’t have mattered if a man or woman had served papers to those two women. What was important was for me to not engage in a verbal confrontation, and to leave immediately.
Surveillances in Bad Neighborhoods
In the past, I’ve conducted surveillances in some bad neighborhoods, and yes, I have felt more vulnerable being a female P.I. in those instances. My safety precautions have included:
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Ensuring that all my doors are locked
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Parking in an area that isn’t isolated
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Not moving around a lot (or conducting other activities, such as turning on the motor or the inside lights) that draw attention to my being in the car
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Leaving if the situation feels dicey.
This past year, our investigations agency morphed into a law firm-investigations agency, and I’ve been conducting more legal investigations on behalf of the law firm (preparatory work for litigation), and less surveillances. That’s fine by me.
Chapter 3
Is It Advantageous to be
a Female P.I.?
Do Clients Prefer Female P.I.s?
In her dissertation The Feminization of Private Investigation: A Sociological Analysis, the author Jessica S. Pearce stated that “Women in private investigation may face fewer barriers because they may be the preferred gender by their clients” and that she anticipates “some reference to gender preference by the clients of the respondents.”
We’ve had three kinds of cases where a person typically requests a female P.I.: honey traps, women’s events, and a man-woman P.I. team.
Honey Trap Cases
At my agency, there have been times when a client requests a female private investigator. Sometimes those requests have been for honey traps, also called honey pots, which is when a female client pays for a female P.I. to flirt with a boyfriend or husband to see if he flirts back. Conversely, a man might want to hire a male P.I. to flirt with a girlfriend or wife, too, but in my personal experience, only women clients have placed honey trap requests. Although some P.I. agencies specialize in honey trap cases, we have never accepted them. We believe a private investigator’s role is to objectively document evidence, not induce it.
Women’s Events
We have had several cases where a man requested a female P.I. because he suspected his wife was seeing another woman. Because a male P.I. obviously couldn’t participate in an all-women event, the request was made specifically for a female P.I.
I have gone to women’s bars and all-women events to observe if a certain woman was flirting or being romantically demonstrative with another woman. A husband once hired me to attend a pole-dancing function to observe if his wife was there with a boyfriend. I have to be honest — I should have been in better shape before attending that pole-dancing event; nevertheless, I got the evidence I needed. I share that experience in this book (The Night I Worked Undercover as a Pole Dancer).
Man-Woman P.I. Teams
There are clients who are keen to hire a husband-wife P.I. team to position themselves as a romantic couple at a restaurant, a couple staying at a hotel and so forth. In such situations, a sole P.I. (man or woman) would stand out, so being a P.I. husband-and-wife team has been advantageous in such cases.
I discuss several of these cases later in this book
Emotional Management
Most people who contact a private investigator are in an emotional juncture in their lives, often at a point of crisis. It is crucial for a private investigator to work well with a client who is angry, sad, confused, possibly even feeling disoriented.
Working with Emotional Clients
According to the article “Are Women More Emotionally Intelligent Than Men?” in Psychology Today, April 2011, emotional intelligence tests show that women have an edge over men when it comes to successfully managing the four parts that comprise emotional intelligence: self-awareness, managing one’s emotions, empathy and social skill. This indicates female P.I.s have an edge over their male counterparts when handling emotional clients.
In the article “Gender Differences in Emotional Health” by Dennis Thompson Jr., the author considers women to be better than men at reading people’s emotional reactions.
On boundless.com, in a segment titled “Gender and Emotions,” it states that in “multiple studies, women have fared better than men at using nonverbal cues to determine things such as which romantic couple out of two is an actual romantic couple” and “who is lying about something.”
In my experience running a day-to-day private investigations agency with my husband, we haven’t always fallen into the gender categories laid out above. Although I have been generally better at dealing with emotional clients, I’ve fallen short when it comes to reading nonverbal dues. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve sat on surveillance in a bar, watching a man or woman to see if they’re being unfaithful, and my husband has been the one to catch the nonverbal cues. Once while sitting for multiple hours in a dark bar, watching a young wife talking to a young man (not her husband, who was our client), I said to my husband-P.I.-partner, “They’ve been talking for nearly three hours without so much as a flirtatious wink or smile or touch. I don’t think she’s having an affair with this guy.”
To which my husband said, “I just walked past them. Their knees are touching.”
I laughed. “Knees? Please. It’s a crowded bar!”
But based on my husband’s observation of their knees touching, we stayed and nonchalantly followed them out of the bar. Guess what? When they got to her car, parked in the shadows at the far end of the parking lot, they began kissing madly.
In the next article, my former P.I.-partner, now a lawyer, discusses why attorneys sometimes prefer to hire a female P.I. to work a case.
When Lawyers Call on Female Investigators for Services
By Shaun Kaufman
Although there are circumstances where either a male or female investigator will do, sometimes it really helps a lawyer to have a female P.I. handle certain investigations, such as when:
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A male investigator, because of stature, voice and mannerisms may intimidate recalcitrant witnesses (especially children and women) resulting in a situation where witnesses are “scared off”
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An investigator must get access to a government or private sector executive who is worried that a male may “turn them in” or otherwise chastise them with supervisors
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A witness must be interviewed in depth about a delicate, touchy subject such as sexual behavior or some other concern that requires discretion, because female investigators are seen as more empathetic, more compassionate and less clinical than a male investigator
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A subpoena or other legal paperwork needs to be served on a mistrustful or cautious witness. A female investigator (who doesn’t look like a cop) can catch these wary subjects off guard and give them the paperwork without tipping off what her purpose is.
I have practiced law for a couple of decades, and during that time I’ve learned that a handful of investigators, male and female, should be kept available for certain types of cases. A man may be useful if size and voice are the only means to get a statement, or to get someone served.
The Attributes of a Female P.I.
This is how I first learned about the attributes of a female P.I. I was a baby public defender in the mid-1980s. As the new lawyer in the office, I was assigned the newest investigator, a new hire. (By the way, public defender investigators are truly private investigators — they carry no badge, no gun and they have no official privileges to search or arrest.)
This new investigator was a Jewish mom from the suburbs who had recently lost her doctor husband to a heart attack. She wore hand-knit sweaters and granny glasses. She favored seersucker dresses and L.L. Bean clothes. She had been to some Eastern college, and spoke like someone who came from a privileged background. She drove a new Volvo. She would never get on a Harley, never touch a gun, and she had no retired cop buddies. By contrast, the lead investigator in the office was a retired police detective who used intimidation and bluster to get what he wanted (which didn’t always work.)
Immediately, I noticed that the new female investigator brought extraordinary compassion and empathy to her case work. She was tenacious and worked harder than her male counterpart. She had drive, and never shied from any task. People in housing projects and trailer parks took to her. She got interviews, and served witnesses with subpoenas in those places.
Over the years, I saw other women working as private investigators bring similar traits to their jobs.
A Recent Case
In a recent case, Colleen and I met with a local attorney who needed interviews in a case where his client, an adult, had been charged criminally for some conduct that took place in front of children. A young, troubled child witness had to be interviewed quickly and thoroughly before the other side got to him and tainted his view of the events.
The attorney had asked if I would conduct the interview. Ten minutes into the discussion with him, I knew that Colleen could speak to this boy without frightening him or causing him to shut down. I felt that the child would like Colleen, and she would get more information from him, so I suggested she be the lead investigator on the case.
She met with the boy, his mother, and ultimately got a great video interview that lasted over an hour. On top of it, she built enough rapport with the mother so as to make it easy to serve a subpoena on a later date. This was all accomplished using the very same compassion, sensitivity and intuition that I discussed earlier.
Beneficial Traits of a Female P.I.
From my perspective, here are some traits that make a female P.I. perfect for an investigation:
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They are non-confrontational, which in turn encourages witnesses to share confidences.
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They are intuitive, and they see the case as a whole
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Women will work to outdo male investigators because they know that they start with a disadvantage.
Beneficial Traits of a Male P.I.
In all fairness, there are also times when a male P.I. is perfect for an investigation. For example, if I have a difficult witness who knows the law (usually someone with plenty of personal experience with the courts), then it is often helpful to use a male P.I. whose presence demands attention.
One of the best weapons in a male P.I.’s arsenal is his voice. He can command someone to stop, and prevail more often than not. I have never used investigators of either sex to put “muscle” on subjects, but I have no objection to a muscular P.I. going to a doorway and letting people see his conditioning. This is especially true if the subjects have been thumbing their noses at less-intense approaches.
Conclusion
I will conclude by saying that a good investigator, female or male, must work tirelessly and with dedication. Female or male, a great P.I takes his/her character traits (empathy, intuition) and uses them on the job to get the best investigative results.
Chapter 4
Tools of the Trade
In this chapter, I discuss different types of investigative equipment and tools I’ve used, from physical items such as GPS devices to Internet resources. This isn’t meant to be an all-inclusive list of tools in the investigative business — there are entire books written on this subject — but a highlight of various devices, gadgets and services.
The chapter contains the following articles. To read a topic, click on the link.
Crime Maps as an Investigative Tool
How Our Investigations Equipment Changed Over a Decade
I Want You to Put One of Those GPS Things on My Boyfriend’s Car
Sleuth Gear: From the Silly to the Serious
Sleuthing Crimes with Google Maps
Let’s start with the first article, using online crime maps in investigations.
Crime Maps as an Investigative Tool
Crime mapping has been used by law enforcement analysts for years as a tool to not only see current crime trends, patterns and hot spots, but also where crimes are likely to occur in the future.
Crime maps are also a useful tool for private investigators — for example to assess if other criminals are committing similar crimes in a particular neighborhood (which might indicate an alternate suspect).
In my investigations agency, we have used crime maps to show that our client acted reasonably in self defense because he lived in a high-crime area. In several other premise liability cases, we learned through crime maps that there were repetitive patterns of violent activity in the immediate vicinity of businesses that failed to provide adequate surveillance outside their premises to protect their customers. One of these businesses was the high-profile Aurora theater shooting case. This theatre sits in a well-known high-crime area, yet the theater failed to protect its customers, the movie-goers, by providing outside surveillance cameras to monitor any problems. Also, despite sitting in a high-crime area, the theater didn’t lock the back door of the theater, which James Holmes had entered freely prior to the shooting to case the theatre…then later, he entered by the same unlocked door to shoot movie-goers.
Free Online Crime Maps
Below are links to several free, public crime maps (two of them also offer free, downloadable crime map apps). Click a link to check out the service.
crimemapping.com: Developed by the Omega Group to help law enforcement agencies throughout North America provide the public with recent neighborhood crime activity. In checking this map for our state, only one city was listed.
crimemapping.com Mobile: Free app for iPhone. Must be at least 17 years old to download.
SpotCrime: Claims to be the most comprehensive online source for U.S. crime maps. In searching our region, we found current crime data for larger cities and old crime data (dated 2011) for smaller cities. You can also browse crime by state, set up crime alerts for a location and report a crime. The key map is handy for quickly identifying types of crimes.
Trulia Crime Maps: This crime map from Trulia, the real estate website, is in its beta stage (as of the writing of this book). It pulls crime data from SpotCrime and Everyblock. Only a handful of regions are available, but for those cities currently available, the results are impressive: the number of crimes in area, a “heat” map that provides a color range for number and types of incidences in a block, cross streets of crimes and a crime trends graph.
Neighborhood Update: This service pulls crime data from law enforcement agencies in the U.S. who are Ops Force (patrol analysis software) customers. We checked a major city in our state and there was no data. We then checked Los Angeles, California, and there was no data. We’re guessing not too many law enforcement agencies are using Ops Force?
RaidsOnline: This public crime map claims to be the public face of a more robust crime-sharing and analysis system for law-enforcement. It took longer to load on our computer, but we easily found results for a handful of cities in our region (interesting, though, not the larger metropolitan cities). In checking crime data stats for a nearby city, the results were up-to-date (compared to other crime maps that offered month-old to years-old data).
RaidsOnline Mobile: Currently, this app is for iPhone or iPad.
How Our Private Investigations Equipment Changed Over a Decade
When we started our private investigations agency back in 2003-2004, we invested a chunk of money in equipment upfront. We were starting on a shoestring budget (like many P.I.s), so we took great care to think about what equipment we absolutely, critically needed. Therefore, the first question we asked ourselves was…
What Kind of Investigations Will We Be Conducting?
My P.I.-business partner had been a trial attorney for nearly two decades, and had trained many P.I.s in his practice, so he thought we’d primarily be conducting litigation support (which includes tasks such as locating witnesses and conducting interviews, serving legal papers, researching court records).
At the time there were no licensure or registration requirements in our state for private investigators, so we opened our business doors within a matter of weeks. As we had guessed, our first clients were lawyers who knew my business partner and hired us to conduct litigation support (AKA legal investigations). Interestingly, that wasn’t the bulk of our work, however. Instead, the majority of our work came from multiple divorce attorneys who hired us to conduct surveillances. Soon afterward, an insurance company contacted us and requested us to do the same. So being able to conduct effective surveillances and produce quality evidence played a big part in what equipment we needed to buy.
Our Initial Equipment Purchases
Although we had a longer list of what tools we needed, here are some of the key items:
A good-working car. We had our favorite car-repair shop do a through once-over on the car because the last thing we needed was to be stuck somewhere with car problems. We got new tires. We stocked a bag with surveillance items in the trunk so we could be ready to go at a moment’s notice (the suitcase contained items such as water, flashlights, blanket, change of clothes, an extra camera, notebook, pen, batteries, and so forth). We wanted to tint the windows, but never got around to it.
Cell Phones. Only one of us had a cell phone in 2003, and both of us needed to be reachable in real time. These days, neither of us can imagine being without our smartphones.
Proprietary Database. From day one, we were locating witnesses for attorneys, and we wanted access to a proprietary database that would help us gather information more quickly and efficiently than juggling a variety of public resources, so we signed up with a proprietary database. In general, such databases are available only to P.I.s, law enforcement officers, consumer-credit professionals and others with a need to know. These database companies conduct careful background checks on all applicants, and they monitor the usage carefully. Each search typically costs money, although some are free.
These proprietary databases cull their information from many different public record searches. I once asked a customer rep if she knew exactly what public records her proprietary database pulled from, and she said, “There’s so many, it’d take me a day to tell you just some of them.” One proprietary database advertises they pull from billions of public records.
A good print camera. Because attorneys had a hard time trusting the evidentiary integrity of the digital camera back in 2003, we spent money on a top-quality print camera, along with a long-distance lens. We only used it for approximately one year and a half, though, as our attorney-clients started trusting the digital age more.
A good digital camera. We invested in one good digital camera in the beginning, as well as a long-distance lens.
A video camera. We needed to document people in action, especially for the insurance company, so a video camera was essential. Just as some of our attorney-clients didn’t trust the digital age in 2003, neither did the insurance company. After every surveillance, we had to courier to them the original video tape. By the time we stopped working for this insurance company two years later, they still didn’t trust digital data. We figured they’d be changing their stance on that in the near future.
But they didn’t. Three or four years later, their new P.I. contacted us. What video tape equipment did we recommend? We strongly suggested he consider using digital video equipment — not only was tape equipment going the way of the dinosaur, but when he eventually moved to digital it would be an extra cost to transfer tape to CDs or other media. Also, it was going to become more difficult to play tapes in courtroom situations as tape-playing devices grew older and more problematic, and digital images were clearer, easier to review and so forth. “Yeah, I know,” he said, “but the insurance company refuses to use anything other than tape.”
I would bet good money that insurance company feels differently today!
As Our Business Expanded, We Purchased More Equipment
As business picked up, and both of us started going out in the field to conduct surveillances, we needed several digital cameras and video cameras. As digital video cameras became less expensive, we purchased several of those, too.
When we were invited to conduct undercover investigations by several national retail companies, we began investing in covert gear. Below are a few of those items:
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Video camera built into a purse.
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Pinhole cameras. Literally how they sound — the lens fits through a hole, such as through a button in a shirt.
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Small camera that fit onto a keychain.
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GPS devices.
Note: It is critical for a P.I. to understand and comply with state and federal laws regarding the use of such device to avoid charges of stalking and wiretapping. Seems so obvious, and yet there will be some renegade P.I. who uses a GPS illegally, gets caught, and is lucky if he only ends up paying thousands of dollars to an attorney to keep him out of prison. We know because a local P.I. got into such trouble after illegally attaching a GPS device to a woman’s car. He ended up paying $8,000 in legal fees to a lawyer who managed to keep the P.I. out of prison.
Equipment That Was a Waste of Money
A cigarette-lighter-camera. The directions were printed in such tiny font, we needed a magnifying glass to read them, but we diligently read every word nevertheless. Despite our effects to understand the lighter-camera, we could never get it to work properly.
A wristwatch with a built-in voice recorder. The instructions were so complicated, and badly written, we finally returned the watch-device to its manufacturer and got our money back.
Then Along Came the Smartphone
When it comes to equipment these days, I first grab my smartphone. It takes excellent photos and video, which I can immediately send to the lawyer. Below is a sampling of other apps I currently use:
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Flashlight app. Why carry a clunky flashlight when you can just turn on your flashlight app? There are different flashlight apps available — I use one called Flashlight that has a large On-Off switch, easy to see in the dark.
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Magnifying glass and flashlight combo. Sometimes I need to read the fine print in a document or capture an image and zoom in on a part of it for closer inspection. For both of these tasks, I use the app Lumin.
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Document Scanner. I’ve gone through several of these as I discover better document scanner apps. A few years back, we had a hand-held doc scanner we’d take into courthouses and other places to scan docs. The thing was a hassle to carry and cumbersome to use, but we loved being able to scan our documents on-site and download a digital file to our computer.
My current favorite scanner app is CamScanner that lets me capture an image, crop/enlarge a portion of it, choose what format I want to save it in (pdf, jpeg, etc.), as well as the option to email (or send via another venue, such as text message) on the spot.
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Motion Detector: I use an app called VM Alert, which detects movement and stores the footage. Later, I can send the video by email or as an attachment to a text message to a client. Another option is to send the footage to YouTube (it’s easy to set up a private YouTube account so only those with permissions, such as clients, can view the video).
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Homesnap: This is the name of the app. With it, you can take a picture of a home, get a download of information about the house, such as homeowner history, sales prices, home description, neighborhood stats and more.
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Voice recorder. Handy for capturing voice recordings for interviews. I use one called Recorder that is straightforward to use. For an additional cost, users can purchase supplemental features such as an audio visualizer and more playback controls, but I haven’t had the need to add on features. Interestingly enough, I’ve seen this exact same app in several movies where reporters shove their smartphones with the recorder app running (instead of a microphone) into someone’s face.
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GPS. There’s a variety of GPS apps for smartphones on the market. My favorite also offers vocal turn-by-turn instructions and traffic alerts.
Having a smartphone means my equipment bags (yes, I used to carry at least one) are now reduced to a single smartphone. I also use my iPad on cases because it’s sometimes handy to work with a larger screen. One of my favorite iPad apps is Evernote, which lets me take notes, pictures and voice recordings — which I can then send via email to a client.
Sometimes I look at all that old equipment in our office and think of all the money we spent for things we no longer use. I suppose some of the older cameras will be collectors’ items someday, like rotary phones, typewriters and old phone books.
I Want You to Put One of Those GPS Things on My Boyfriend’s Car
This kind of call has come into our agency a lot. And it’s not always a girlfriend or wife who’s upset that their boyfriend/husband is fooling around…men call, too, wanting to know what their girlfriends/wives are up to.
What Are These GPS Things?
Let’s start with a definition of GPS, Global Positioning System, which is an assemblage of satellites that orbit the Earth that people with ground receivers use to pinpoint geographic locations. For most equipment, the location accuracy ranges from 10 to 100 meters; with special military-approved equipment, accuracy can be pinpointed to within 1 meter. GPS equipment has become sufficiently low-cost so that almost anyone can own a GPS receiver (some of you may have GPS trackers in your own vehicles).
In the past, we used GPS tracking devices in our work, and we were always extremely careful that their use was legal before we attached one anywhere. It is illegal for a P.I. to attach a GPS device in/on a vehicle that his client doesn’t own. No way around it unless the P.I. wants to court a felony. We’ve had potential clients ask us to attach a GPS device on their boyfriend’s, girlfriend’s, spouse’s car, and we always ask, “Is your name on that vehicle’s registration?” No? Sorry, then attaching any such device is illegal.
Also, we never assumed that a husband’s or wife’s name is on the registration for their spouse’s vehicle. We’ve had husbands and wives claim their names are definitely on their spouse’s vehicles, but we always double-check (surprising how many times both spouses’ names are not on the registration).
Sleuth Gear: From the Silly to the Serious
There’s all kinds of spy equipment for sale on the Internet. Some of it is downright silly, while other tools are truly useful. When we were first starting our detective agency, we invested in some downright dumb stuff, like a cigarette lighter than had a hidden camera. We actually thought some of the stuff — like the lighter-camera — would come in handy, but no, it never did. Not once.
Below is a sampling of some spy equipment, from the silly to the serious. As of the writing of this book, these links are valid. But things can change quickly on the Internet, so if you find a link no longer works, try running a search in your browser on key words in the item (for example “passive GPS logger”).
Keep Tabs on Your Child with a Passive GPS Logger: Put this GPS logger in your child’s backpack, then later download its data to check where your youngster has been by date, time, location, even speed of travel. Keep in mind that if your child is over 18 and living elsewhere, legalities regarding privacy rights dictate that you shop for another gift.
Samples of passive GPS loggers
Store Items in a Secret Place. Hide money behind an outlet that’s really a secret wall safe, store jewelry in a beer can. Sounds silly, but what burglar would look in a beer can for a diamond necklace?
Take Memos with a Voice-Recording Pen. You can write with it or talk into it. If you’re tempted to record others’ conversations with it, be sure you’re in a public place where those being recorded have no expectation of privacy (such as in a coffee shop, store, on the street); otherwise, you can be charged with eavesdropping, which depending on the state you’re in could be a felony offense.
Clip a Video Camera on Yourself. For the lazy who don’t want to point-and-shoot, or to take video without being obvious, this ClipIt Laser Cam can be clipped on your shirt pocket, belt, handle of your purse, backpack strap…wherever you can clip it.
Sleuthing Crimes with Google Maps
Face it, we live in a world under surveillance. From cameras posted at road intersections and business parking lots to cameras we install in and around our homes to portable cameras in our cell phones.
And then there’s Google Maps, which seems intent to document not only every street and region in the world, but also within businesses. But who am I to complain? When I’m investigating a case and need to see a photo of a street or home, I go to Google Maps.
Imagine my surprise one day when I decided to look up my home address…and I saw a photo of my P.I.-partner-husband, staring straight at me in front of the house! Obviously, he was staring at the Google Maps truck as it drove down our street, and it captured him checking it out. I saw he was holding something in his hand, so I zoomed in on the photo, and saw it was a camera.
Curious, I asked him about it.
Me: “Where were you going?”
Shaun: “Out on surveillance.”
Me: “Did you see the Google truck drive by?”
Shaun: “Yeah, I was reading the word ‘Google’ across the front hood, and saw the camera sticking out of the top.”
Me: “Did it bother you?”
Shaun: “No. I was actually amazed how the world is being documented.”
Crimes Being Documented by Google Maps
More and more, all kinds of activities, including crimes, are being documented by Google Maps. Below is a sampling of crimes it has pinpointed:
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In 2007, officers in Racine, Wisconsin, arrested Dean Brown for possession of 18 pounds of marijuana. Around his neck he wore a GPS unit that pinpointed the coordinates to all his other plants in the area. Cops easily found these plants by plugging these same coordinates into Google Earth.
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Dwight Foster didn’t want to go through the hassle of legally disposing his boat, so he abandoned it 15 miles south of Pensacola, Florida. A sheriff’s deputy searched through an archive of Google maps and found the boat had previously been berthed at, guess where? Dwight Foster’s dock. Dwight was arrested for illegally dumping a boat, which carries a $5,000 fine and 5-year jail term. If he’d gone through the hassle of properly disposing the boat, it would have cost him $18.
In my own cases, I’ve searched home addresses on Google Maps, and seen vehicles parked in the driveway or in front of the residences. This isn’t a sure fire way to detect what kind of vehicle a person drives, but it gives me leads. I also use the street view feature to check the surrounding area for optimal surveillance spots and planning my route.
A word to the wise. Regarding the use of Google in general, keep in mind that your searches can be retrieved by authorities. Recently, a gentleman named Jeff Gundlach was robbed by art thieves. He gave investigators a critical tip: He suggested they check who had recently googled the unique name of his grandmother because that would be how the thieves learned about the value of the paintings and their location. The police did just that and found the thief.
Chapter 5
Rock n’ Rollin’ with the Cases
In this chapter, I’ll discuss different cases I’ve worked on, from the dangerous to the funny, each with its secrets, challenges and lessons learned. I’ve also included paranormal investigations, AKA ghost hunting, because of the interest people have in this type of investigation.
The cases are in the following categories, all named after songs befitting the classification. To read a type of case, click on one of the below song title links.
Danger by The Flirts (Dangerous Cases)
Ghostbusters by Ray Parker, Jr. (Paranormal Investigations)
Undercover Agent for the Blues by Tina Turner (Undercover Cases; Disguises)
How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away by Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks (Funny Cases)
“Danger”
The Flirts, 80s disco song
Although the work of a twenty-first century private investigator consists of a lot of fact-finding and report writing, there are still times the work gets dangerous. I’ve had more than a few scares while conducting cases, from subjects who get violent to people who have sic’d their dogs. Articles about the cases are listed below — to read an article, click on its link.
Power Plays in Murder: Three Cases
Stalked Online by a Disgruntled Subject
Stalked Online by a Cyberstalker
KND Freebies: Compelling urban fantasy EARTH’S REQUIEM is featured in today’s Free Kindle Nation Shorts excerpt
A sexy, dark and compelling urban fantasy by the always surprising Ann Gimpel…
Aislinn has walled herself off from anything that might make her feel again — until a wolf picks her for a bond mate and a Celtic god rises out of legend to claim her for his own.
Earth’s Requiem (Earth Reclaimed)
by Ann Gimpel
Resilient, kickass, and determined, Aislinn’s walled herself off from anything that might make her feel again. Until a wolf picks her for a bond mate and a Celtic god rises out of legend to claim her for his own.
Aislinn Lenear lost her anthropologist father high in the Bolivian Andes. Her mother, crazy with grief that muted her magic, was marched into a radioactive vortex by alien creatures and killed. Three years later, stripped of every illusion that ever comforted her, twenty-two year old Aislinn is one resilient, kickass woman with a take no prisoners attitude. In a world turned upside down, where virtually nothing familiar is left, she’s conscripted to fight the dark gods responsible for her father’s death. Battling the dark on her own terms, Aislinn walls herself off from anything that might make her feel again.
Fionn MacCumhaill, Celtic god of wisdom, protection, and divination has been laying low since the dark gods stormed Earth. He and his fellow Celts decided to wait them out. After all, three years is nothing compared to their long lives. On a clear winter day, Aislinn walks into his life and suddenly all bets are off. Awed by her courage, he stakes his claim to her and to an Earth he’s willing to fight for.
Aislinn’s not so easily convinced. Fionn’s one gorgeous man, but she has a world to save. Emotional entanglements will only get in her way. Letting a wolf into her life was hard. Letting love in may well prove impossible.
Praise for Earth’s Requiem:
Gutsy heroine & hot romance
an excerpt from
Earth’s Requiem
by Ann Gimpel
Prologue
Aislinn tried to stop it, but the vision that had dogged her for over a year played in her head. She squeezed her eyes shut tight. Mental images crowded behind her closed lids, as vivid as if they’d happened yesterday. She raked her hands through her hair and pulled hard, but the movie chronicling the beginning of her own personal hell didn’t even slow down. She whimpered as the humid darkness of a South American night closed about her…
Her mother screamed in Gaelic, “Deifir, Deifir,” and then shoved Aislinn again. She tried to hurry like her mother wanted, but it was all too much to take in. Stumbling down the steep Bolivian mountainside in the dark, tears streamed across Aislinn’s face. Snot ran from her nose. Her legs shook. Nausea made her gut clench. Her mother was crying, too, in between cursing the gods and herself. Aislinn knew enough Gaelic to understand her mother had tried to talk her father out of going to the ancient Inca prayer site, but Jacob hadn’t listened.
A vision of her father’s twisted body, lying dead a thousand feet above them, tore at Aislinn. Just a few hours ago, her life had been normal. Now her mother had turned into a grief-crazed harridan. Her beloved father, a gentle giant of a man, was dead. Killed by those horrors that had crawled out of the ground. Perfect, golden-skinned men with long, silky hair and luminous eyes, apparently summoned through the ancient rite linked to the shrine. Thinking about it was like trying to shove her hand into a flame, her pain too unbearable to examine closely.
Aislinn was afraid to turn around. Tara had already slapped her once. Another spate of Gaelic galvanized her tired legs into motion. Her mother was clearly terrified the monsters would come after them, though Aislinn didn’t think they’d bother. At least a hundred adoring half-naked worshippers remained at the shrine high on the mountain. Once Tara had herded her into the shadows, her last glimpse of the crowd revealed one of the lethal, exotic creatures turning a woman so he could penetrate her. Even in Aislinn’s near-paralyzed state, the sexual heat was so compelling, it took all her self-discipline not to race to his side and insist he take her instead. After all, she was younger, prettier— It didn’t matter at all that he’d just killed her father.
…Aislinn shook her head so hard it felt like her brains rattled from side to side in her skull. Despite the time that had passed since her father’s murder, she still fell into these damned trance states where the horror happened all over again. Tears leaked from her eyes. She slammed a fist down on a corner of her desk, glorying in the diversion pain created. Crying was pointless. It wouldn’t change anything. Self-pity an indulgence she couldn’t afford.
Pull it together, the weak die.
Even though she wasn’t sure why life felt so precious—after all, she’d lost nearly everything—Aislinn wanted to live. Would do anything to hang onto the vital thread that maintained her on Earth.
A bitter laugh bubbled up. What a transition: from Aislinn Lenear college student, to Aislinn Lenear fledgling magic wielder. A second race of alien beings, Lemurians, had stormed Earth on the heels of that hideous night in Bolivia, selecting certain humans because they had magical ability and sending everyone else to their deaths.
It was a process. It took time to kill people, but huge sections of Salt Lake City sat empty. Skyscraper towers downtown and rows of vacant buildings mocked a life that was no more. In her travels to nearby places before the gasoline ran out, Aislinn had found them about the same as Salt Lake.
Jacob’s death had merely been a harbinger of impending chaos—the barest beginning. The world she’d known had imploded shockingly fast. It killed Aislinn to admit it—she kept hoping for a miracle to intercede—but her mother was certifiable. Tara may as well have died right along with her father. She hadn’t left the house once since they’d returned a year before. Her long, red hair was filthy and matted. She barely ate. When she wasn’t curled into a fetal position, she drew odd runes on the kitchen floor and muttered in Gaelic about Celtic gods and dragons. It was only a matter of time before the Lemurians culled her. Tara had magic, but she was worthless in her current state.
The sound of the kitchen door rattling against its stops startled Aislinn. On her feet in a flash, she took the stairs two at a time and burst into the kitchen. A Lemurian had one of its preternaturally long-fingered hands curved around Tara’s emaciated arm. He crooned to her in his language—an incomprehensible mix of clicks and clacks. Tara’s wild, golden eyes glazed over. She stopped trying to pull away and got to her feet, leaning against the seven-foot tall creature with long, shiny blond hair as if she couldn’t stand on her own.
“No!” Aislinn hurled herself at the Lemurian. “Leave her alone.”
“Stop!” His bottomless, alien gaze met hers. “It is time,” the Lemurian said in flawless English, “for both you and her. You must join the fighting and learn about your magic. Your mother is of no use to anyone.”
“But she has magic.” Aislinn hated the pleading in her voice. Hated it. Be strong. I can’t show him how scared I am.
Something flickered behind the Lemurian’s expression. It might have been disgust—or pity. He turned away and led Tara Lenear out of the house.
Aislinn growled low in her throat and launched herself at the Lemurian’s back. Gathering her clumsy magic into a primitive arc, she focused it on her enemy. Her tongue stuttered over an incantation. Before she could finish it, something smacked her in the chest so hard she flew through the air, hit the kitchen wall, and then slumped to the floor. Wind knocked out of her, spots dancing before her eyes, she struggled to her feet. By the time she stumbled to the kitchen door, both the Lemurian and her mother had vanished.
An unholy shriek split the air. Realizing it had come from her, Aislinn clutched the doorsill. Pain clawed at her belly. Her vision was a red haze. The fucking Lemurian had taken her mother. The last human connection she had. And they expected her to fight for them? Ha! It would be a cold day in hell. She let go of the doorframe and balled her hands into fists so hard her nails drew blood.
Aislinn walked out into blindingly bright sunlight. She didn’t care what happened next. It didn’t matter anymore. A muted explosion rocked the ground. She staggered. When she turned, she wasn’t surprised to see her house crack in multiple places and settle. Not totally destroyed, but close enough.
Guess they want to make sure I don’t have anywhere to go back to.
Her heart shattered into jagged pieces that poked her from the inside. She bit her lip so hard it ached. When that didn’t make a dent in her anguish, she pinched herself, dug her nails into her flesh until she bled from dozens of places. Fingers slick with her own blood, she forced herself into a ragged jog. Maybe if she put some distance between herself and the wreckage of her life, the pain sluicing through her might abate.
As she ran, a phrase filled her mind. The same sentence, over and over in time to her heartbeat. I will never care for anyone ever again. I will never care for anyone ever again. After a time, the words etched into her soul.
Chapter One
Two Years Later
Aislinn pulled her cap down more firmly on her head. Snow stung where it got into her eyes and froze the exposed parts of her face. Thin, cold air seared her lungs when she made the mistake of breathing too deeply. She’d taken refuge in a spindly stand of leafless aspens, but they didn’t cut the wind at all. “Where’s Travis?” she fumed, scanning the unending white of a high altitude plain that used to be part of Colorado. Or maybe this place had been in eastern Utah. It didn’t really matter much anymore.
Something flickered at the corner of her eye. Almost afraid to look, she swiveled her head to maximize her peripheral vision. Damn! No, double damn. Half-frozen muscles in her face ached, her jaw tightened. Bal’ta—a bunch of them—fanned out a couple of hundred yards behind her, closing the distance eerily fast. One of many atrocities serving the dark gods that had crawled out of the ground that night in Bolivia, they appeared as shadowy spots against the fading day. Places where edges shimmered and merged into a menacing blackness. If she looked too hard at the center of those dark places, they drew her like a lodestone. Aislinn tore her gaze away.
Not that the Bal’ta—bad as they were—were responsible for the wholesale destruction of modern life. No, their masters—the ones who’d brought dark magic to Earth in the first place—held that dubious honor. Aislinn shook her head sharply, trying to decide what to do. She was supposed to meet Travis here. Those were her orders. He had something to give her. Typical of the way the Lemurians ran things, no one knew very much about anything. It was safer that way if you got captured.
She hadn’t meant to cave and work for them, but in the end, she’d had little choice. It was sign on with the Lemurians—Old Ones—to cultivate her magic and fight the dark, or be marched into the same radioactive vortex that had killed her mother.
Her original plan had been to wait for Travis until an hour past full dark, but the Bal’ta changed all that. Waiting even one more minute was a gamble she wasn’t willing to risk. Aislinn took a deep breath. Chanting softly in Gaelic, her mother’s language, she called up the light spell that would wrap her in brilliance and allow her to escape—maybe. It was the best strategy she could deploy on short notice. Light was anathema to Bal’ta and their ilk. So many of the loathsome creatures were hot on her heels, she didn’t have any other choice.
She squared her shoulders. All spells drained her. This was one of the worst—a purely Lemurian working translated into Gaelic because human tongues couldn’t handle the Old Ones’ language. She pulled her attention from her spell for the time it took to glance about. Her heart sped up. Even the few seconds it took to determine flight was essential had attracted at least ten more of the bastards. They surrounded her now. Well, almost.
She shouted the word to kindle her spell. Even in Gaelic, with its preponderance of harsh consonants, the magic felt awkward on her tongue. Heart thudding double time against her ribs, she hoped she’d gotten the inflection right. Moments passed. Nothing happened. Aislinn tried again. Still nothing. Desperate, she readied her magic for a fight she was certain she’d lose and summoned the light spell one last time. Flickers formed. Stuttering into brilliance, they pushed against the Bal’tas’ darkness.
Yesssss. Muting down triumph surging through her—no time for it—she gathered the threads of her working, draped luminescence about herself, and loped toward the west. Bal’ta scattered, closing behind her. She noted with satisfaction that they stayed well away from her light. She’d always assumed it burned them in some way.
Travis was on his own. She couldn’t even warn him he was walking into a trap. Maybe he already had. Which would explain why he hadn’t shown up. Worry tugged at her. She ignored it. Anything less than absolute concentration and she’d fall prey to his fate—whatever that had been.
Vile hissing sounded behind her. Long-nailed hands reached for her, followed by shrieks when one of them came into contact with her magic. She snuck a peek over one shoulder to see how close they truly were. One problem with all that light was it illuminated the disgusting things. Between five and six feet tall, with barrel chests, their bodies were coated in greasy looking brown hair. Thicker hair hung from their scalps and grew in clumps from armpits and groins. Ropy muscles bulged under their hairy skin. Orange eyes gleamed, reflecting her light back at her. Their foreheads sloped backward giving them a dimwitted look, but Aislinn wasn’t fooled. They were skilled warriors, worthy adversaries who’d wiped out more than one of her comrades. They had an insect-like ability to work as a group using telepathic powers. Though she threw her Mage senses wide open, she was damned if she could tap into their wavelength to disrupt it.
Chest aching, breath coming in short, raspy pants, she ran like she’d never run before. If she let go of anything—her light shield or her speed—they’d be on her and it would be all over. Dead just past her twenty-second birthday. That thought pushed her legs to pump faster. She gulped air, willing everything to hold together long enough.
Minutes ticked by. Maybe as much as half an hour passed. She was tiring. It was hard to run and maintain magic. Could she risk teleportation? Sort of a beam me up, Scotty, trick. Nope, she just wasn’t close enough to her destination yet. Something cold as an ice cave closed around her upper arm. Her flesh stung before feeling left it. Head snapping to that side, she noted her light cloak had failed in that spot. Frantic to loosen the creature’s grip, she pulled a dirk from her belt and stabbed at the thing holding her. Smoke rose when she dug her iron knife into it.
The stench of burning flesh stung her nostrils and the disgusting ape-man drew back, hurling imprecations at her in its guttural language. Her gaze snaked through the gloom of the fading day as she tried to assess how many of the enemy chased her. She swallowed hard. There had to be a hundred. Why were they targeting her? Had they intercepted Travis and his orders? Damn the Lemurians anyway. She’d never wanted to fight for them.
I’ve got to get out of here. Though it went against the grain—mostly because she was pretty certain it wouldn’t work and you weren’t supposed to cast magic willy nilly—she pictured her home, mixed magic from earth and fire, and begged the Old Ones to see her delivered safely. Once she set the spell in motion, there’d be no going back. If she didn’t end up where she’d planned, she’d be taken to task, maybe even stripped of her powers, depending on how pissed off the Lemurians were.
Aislinn didn’t have any illusions left. It had been three years since her world crumbled. Two since her mother died. She’d wasted months railing against God, or the fates, or whoever was responsible for robbing her of her boyfriend and her parents and her life, goddammit.
Then the Old Ones—Lemurians, she corrected herself—had slapped reason into her, forcing her to see the magic that kept her alive as a resource, not a curse. In the intervening time, she’d not only come to terms with that magic. It had become a part of her. The only part she truly trusted. Without the magic that enhanced her senses, she’d be dead within hours.
Please… It was a struggle not to clasp her hands together in an almost forgotten gesture of supplication. Juggling an image of her home while maintaining enough light to hold the Bal’ta at bay, Aislinn waited. Nothing happened. She was supposed to vanish, her molecules transported by proxy to where she wished to go. This was way more than the normal journey—or jump—spell, though. Because she needed to go much farther.
She poured more energy into the teleportation spell. The light around her flickered. Bal’ta dashed forward, jaws open, saliva dripping. She smelled the rotten crypt smell of them and cringed. If they got hold of her, they’d feed off her until she was nothing but an empty husk. Or worse, if one took a shine to her, she’d be raped in the bargain. And forced to carry a mixed breed child. Of course, they’d kill her as soon as the thing was weaned. Maybe the brat, too, if its magic wasn’t strong enough.
The most powerful of the enemy were actually blends of light and dark magic. When the abominations, six dark masters, had slithered out of holes between the worlds during a globally synchronized surge linked to the Harmonic Convergence, the first thing they’d done had been to capture several human women and perform unspeakable experiments on progeny resulting from purloined eggs and alien sperm.
Aislinn sucked in a shaky breath. She did not want to be captured. Suicide was a far better alternative. She licked at the fake cap in the back of her mouth. It didn’t budge. She shoved a filthy finger behind her front teeth and used an equally disgusting fingernail to pop the cap. She gripped the tiny capsule. Should she swallow it? Could she? Sweat beaded and trickled down her forehead despite the chill afternoon air.
She’d just dropped the pill onto her tongue, trying to gin up enough saliva to make it go down, when the weightlessness associated with teleportation started in her feet like it always did. Gagging, she spat out the capsule and extended a hand to catch it. She missed. It fell into the dirt. Aislinn knew better than to scrabble for the poison pill. If she survived, she could get another from the Old Ones. They didn’t care how many humans died, despite pretending to befriend those with magic.
Her spell was shaky enough as it was. It needed more energy—lots more. Forgetting about the light spell, Aislinn put everything she had into escape. By the time she knew she was going to make it—apparently the Bal’ta didn’t know they could take advantage of her vulnerability as she shimmered half in and half out of teleport mode—she was almost too tired to care.
She fell through star-spotted darkness for a long time. It could have been several lifetimes. These teleportation jaunts were different than her simple Point A to Point B jumps. When she’d traveled this way before, she’d asked how long it took, but the Old Ones never answered. Everyone she’d ever loved was dead—and the Old Ones lived forever—so she didn’t have a reliable way to measure time. For all she knew, Travis might have lived through years of teleportation jumps. No one ever talked about anything personal. It was like an unwritten law. No going back. No one had a past. At least not one they were willing to talk about.
Voices eddied around her, speaking the Lemurian tongue with its clicks and clacks. She tried to talk with them, but they ignored her. On shorter, simpler journeys, her body stayed with her. She’d never known how her body caught up to her when she teletransported and was nothing but spirit. Astral energy suspended between time and space.
A disquieting thump rattled her bones. Bones. I have bones again… That must mean… Barely conscious of the walls of her home rising around her, Aislinn felt the fibers of her grandmother’s Oriental rug against her face. She smelled cinnamon and lilac. Relief surged through her. Against hope and reason, the Old Ones had seen her home. Maybe they cared more than she thought—at least about her. Aislinn tried to pull herself across the carpet to the corner shrine so she could thank them properly, but her head spun. Darkness took her before she could do anything else.
* * * *
Not quite sure what woke her, Aislinn opened her eyes. Pale light filtered in through rough cutouts high in the walls. Daytime. She’d been lucky to find this abandoned silver mine with shafts that ran up to ground level. It would have drained her to constantly have a mage light burning.
Is it tomorrow? Or one of the days after that? Aislinn’s head pounded. Her mouth tasted like the backside of a sewer. It was the aftereffect of having thoroughly drained her magic, but she was alive, goddammit. Alive. Memory flooded her. She’d been within a hairsbreadth of taking her own life. Her stomach clenched and she rolled onto her side, racked by dry heaves. Had she swallowed any of the poison by accident?
A bitter laugh made her cracked lips ache. Of course she hadn’t. It didn’t take much cyanide to kill you. Just biting into the capsule without swallowing would have done it. She struggled to a sitting position. Pain lanced through her head, but she forced herself to keep her eyes open.
The world stabilized. She lurched to her feet, filled a chipped mug with water that ran perpetually down one wall of her cave, doubling as faucet and shower, and warmed it with magic. Rummaging through small metal bins, she dropped mint and anise into the water. Then a dollop of honey, obtained at great personal risk from a nearby hive. When she looked at the mug, it was empty. Her eyes widened in a face so tired any movement was torture, and she wondered if she’d hallucinated making tea. Since she didn’t remember drinking the mixture, she made another cup for good measure.
Liquid on board, she started feeling halfway human. Or whatever she was these days. As she moved around her cozy hobbit hole of a home, her gaze stole over beloved books, a few odds and ends of china, and her grandmother’s rug—all that was left of her old life. By the time she had developed enough magic to transport both herself and things short distances, most of the items from the ruins of her parents’ home had been either pilfered by someone else or destroyed by the elements. She’d come by her few other possessions digging through the rubble of what was left of civilization.
Aislinn sighed heavily. It made her chest hurt and she wondered if the Bal’ta had injured her before she’d made good on her escape. She shucked her clothes—tight brown leather pants, a plaid flannel shirt, and a torn black leather jacket—and took stock of her body. It looked pretty much the same. The long, white scar from under one breast catty corner to a hipbone was still there. Yeah, right. What could have happened to it? There might be a few new bruises, but all in all, her lean, tautly muscled form had survived intact. Before the world had imploded, she’d hated being a shred over six feet tall. Now she blessed her height. Long legs meant she could run fast.
She wrinkled her nose. A putrid stench had intensified as she removed her ratty leather garments. Realizing it was her, she strode to the waterfall in one corner of her cave and stood under its flow until her teeth chattered. Only then did she pull magic to warm herself. It seemed a waste to squander power on something she thought she should be able to tolerate. Besides, despite sleeping, she still hadn’t managed to totally recharge her reserves. That would only happen if she didn’t use any more magic for a while. Aislinn thumbed a sliver of handmade soap and washed her hair, diverting suds falling down her body to clean the rest of her.
Something threw itself against the wards she kept above ground. She felt it as a vibration deep in her chest. It happened again. She leapt from the shower and flung her long, red hair over her shoulders so she could see. Soapy water streamed down her body, but she didn’t want to sacrifice one iota of magic drying herself until she knew who—or what—was out there. Mage power would alert whatever was outside to her presence, so she snaked the tiniest tendril of Seeker magic out, winding it in a circuitous route so no one would be able to figure out where it came from. Seekers could pinpoint others with magic. That gift was also useful sorting out truth, but it wasn’t her main talent, so it was weak.
She gasped. Travis? How could it possibly be him? He didn’t know where she lived. Had her Lemurian magelord told him?
“Aislinn.” She heard his voice in her mind. “Let us in.”
Us no doubt meant his bond creature was with him. When Hunter magic was primary, humans had bond animals. His was a civet with the most beautiful rust, golden, and onyx coat she’d ever seen. Should I? Indecision rocked her. The reason her cave meant safety was no one knew about it. No one who would tell, anyway. She dragged a threadbare wool shift—once it had been green but there were so many patches, it was mostly black now—over her head and shook water out of her hair.
A high-pitched screech reverberated in her head. It sounded like something had pissed off the civet. Travis shouted her name again. He left the mind speech channel open after that. Locked it open so she couldn’t close it off. Edgy, she wondered if he was setting some sort of trap. Aislinn thought she could trust him, but when it came right down to it, she didn’t trust anyone. Especially not the Old Ones. The only thing that made working with them tolerable was that she understood their motives. Or imagined she did. She still hadn’t forgiven them for killing her mother. Poor, sick, muddled Tara.
“Aislinn.” A different voice this time. Metae, her Lemurian magelord. The one who’d made it clear two years before that, magic or no, they’d kill her if she didn’t come to terms with her power and fight for them. “Save your comrade. I do not know if I will arrive in time.”
All righty, then. Aislinn wondered if it would be possible. The civet yowled, hissed, and then yowled again. Travis made heavy, slurping sounds, as if at least one lung had been punctured. Dragging a leather vest over totally inadequate clothing, Aislinn slipped her feet into cracked, plastic Crocs, and took off at a dead run down a passageway leading upward. The Crocs gave her feet some protections from rocks, but not from cold. She veered off, trying to pick an exit point that would put her behind the fighting. When she came to one of the many illusory rocks that blocked every tunnel leading to her home, she peeked around it. No point in being a sacrifice if she could help it. Travis wasn’t that close of an acquaintance. No one was.
A hand flew to her mouth to stifle sound. Christ! It couldn’t be. But it was. Though she’d only seen him once, that horrible night in Bolivia when her father had died, the thing standing in broad daylight had to be Perrikus—one of six dark gods holding what was left of Earth captive. Bright auburn hair flowing to his waist fluttered in the morning breeze. Eyes clear as fine emeralds one moment, shifting to another alluring shade the next, were set in a classically handsome face with sharp cheekbones and a chiseled jawline. His broad shoulders and chest tapered to narrow hips under a gossamer robe that left almost nothing to the imagination. The dark gods were sex incarnate, which was interesting since the Old Ones were anything but. Promises of bottomless passion had been one of the ways the dark ones seduced Druids and witches and all those other New Age practitioners into weakening the gates between the worlds.
Heat flooded Aislinn’s nether regions. She wished she’d paid better attention when humans who’d actually run up against the dark gods had told her about it. Something about requiring human warmth to feed themselves, or remain on Earth, or…shit, her usually sharp mind just wasn’t there. She couldn’t focus on anything except getting laid.
Her groin ached for release. One of her hands snuck under her clothing before she realized what she was doing. No! The silent shriek told her body to stand down, damn it. Now was not the time…and Perrikus definitely not the partner. Her body wasn’t listening. The next parts to betray her were her nipples as they pebbled into hard points and pressed against the rough wool fabric of her hastily donned shift.
Wrenching her gaze to Travis—and her mind away from sex—she was unutterably grateful he was still on his feet. Wavering, but standing. The civet, every hair on end, stood next to him, a paw with claws extended, raised menacingly.
“You know where the woman is,” Perrikus said, voice like liquid silver. Aislinn heard compulsion behind the words. Hopefully, so did Travis. “I followed you here,” the dark mage went on. “I heard you call out to her. So, where is she? Tell me and I’ll let you go.” The civet growled low. Travis spoke a command to silence it.
“I’m right here.” Aislinn stepped into view, glad her voice didn’t tremble, because her guts sure were.
“Aislinn,” Travis gasped. He lurched in a rough half circle to face her. “I’m so sorry…”
“Can it,” she snapped. The civet hissed at her, probably since she’d had the temerity to raise her voice to its bonded one.
“Okay.” She leveled her gaze at Perrikus. “You said he could go. Release him—and his animal, too.”
That lyrical voice laughed. “Oh, did I say that? I’d forgotten.”
“Let him go and I’ll, ah, give you what you want.” Should buy me a couple minutes here. “Just turn off the damned libido fountain. I can’t think.”
His hypnotic gaze latched onto hers. “Why would I do that, human? You like how it feels. I smell the heat from between your legs.”
“Bastard. I liked it a whole lot better when I thought you were just a comic book character.” Aislinn wondered how much juice she had. This was one of the gods. Even if she was at her best, she didn’t think she’d be able to prevail in anything that looked like direct combat. “What do you want with me?” she asked, still trying to buy time to strategize. It wasn’t easy with what felt like a second heart pounding between her legs. She wanted to lay herself at his feet and just get it over with.
“What do you think?” He smiled. Fine, white teeth gleamed in that perfect jaw. “Children. You have power, human. Real power. And you’ve only now come to our attention.” He walked toward her, nice and slow. Sauntered. His hips swung with his stride. She saw he was ready under those sheer robes. Unfortunately, so was she, but she clamped down on her craving.
Aislinn ignored the moisture gushing down her thighs and reached for her magic. Travis limped over, joining hands with her. The civet wedged itself between them, warm against her lower leg. She felt the boost immediately. Even the sexual hunger receded a tiny bit. Enough to clear her mind. “On my count of three,” she sent. “One, two…”
“No. Do just the opposite. He won’t be expecting it. Pull from air and water. I’ll blend fire. Aim for his dick. It’s a pretty big target just now.”
Power erupted from them. Even the civet seemed to be helping. Since she’d never worked with an animal before, she wasn’t certain just how the Hunter magic worked. Aislinn concentrated hard to keep the spell’s aim true. Travis was injured, so she took more of the burden.
Perrikus chanted almost lazily. Maybe he was drunk on his own ability, so egotistical he wouldn’t guard himself. Her spirits soared as soon as she realized Travis’s gambit had worked. Perrikus was using the counter spell for air and water. He hadn’t counted on the tenacity fire would give their working. Moments later, a muffled shriek burst from him and he grappled for his crotch.
“Bitch.” No honey or compulsion in that epithet. He lunged for her. Aislinn sidestepped him neatly, letting go of Travis. In half a crouch, she trained all her attention on their adversary. Hands raised, she began a weaving she hoped would unbalance him. Air shimmered at the edges of her vision.
“I am here, child. Take your comrade to safety. He carries an important message from me.”
“Me—”
“Do not speak my name aloud. Go.”
The shimmery place in the air sidled in front of Perrikus. Fiery edges lapped hungrily at his nearly transparent robes. Not waiting to be told a third time, Aislinn shooed the civet into Travis’s arms, draped an arm around him, and pulled invisibility about the three of them. The last thing she heard as she guided them toward the warren of passageways leading to her home was Metae baiting Perrikus. “I was old before you were hatched. How dare you spread your filth?”
“W-where are we?” Travis’s voice gurgled. It had taken time to help him cover the half-mile back to her cave. The civet made little mewling noises as they walked, sounding worried about its human partner.
“About two hundred feet below whatever’s happening up there.” Aislinn flung a hand upward. “Do you have Healing magic?” She pushed him through the thick tapestry that served as a door to her home and caught the civet’s tail between fabric and rock. It hissed at her, and then ran to Travis, light on its feet.
He nodded.
“Use it on yourself. It’s not one of my strengths.” Aislinn knew she sounded surly, but couldn’t help herself. She’d never wanted anyone anywhere near her home. And her body, ignited by Perrikus’s execrable magic, screamed for release. Nothing she could do about that so long as she had company. Not much privacy in the one room she called home.
“Make a power circle around me.”
Grateful for something to do, Aislinn strode around him three times, chanting. She felt Travis pull earth power from her as he patched the hurt places within himself. Satisfied he had what he needed, she retrieved her mug, got one for him and made tea. In addition to goldenseal, she added marigolds to the decoction. Both were supposed to have healing qualities. By the time she finished brewing the tea, his color had shifted from gray to decidedly pink. His eyes were back to their normal brown. Moss green was his power color. She wondered if it was sheer coincidence the civet’s eyes were the same odd shade. She understood her Mage and Seeker gifts. The other three human magics—Healer, Hunter, and Seer—remained shrouded in mystery.
Aislinn looked hard at Travis when she handed him the tea. Dirty blond dreadlocks hung halfway down his back. He was well past six feet, but thin to the point of gauntness, his skin stretched over broad shoulders. A leather belt with additional holes punched in it held baggy denim pants up. Battered leather boots, split along one side, and an equally worn leather vest over a threadbare green cotton shirt made him look just about as ragtag as she always did. No one ever had new clothes. She just patched what she had until the fabric fell apart. Then she looted amongst the dead, or possessions they’d left behind, for something else she could use.
“Thanks.” He took the tea and shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “You have books.” Surprise burned in his tone. “How did—?”
“You didn’t see them,” she broke in fiercely, thinking that’s what happened when you had people in your house. They saw things they weren’t supposed to—like books banned by a Lemurian edict.
“Okay,” he agreed. “I didn’t see a thing.” He hesitated. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Did you fix your body?” Aislinn grimaced. Gee, that didn’t sound very friendly. Pretty obvious I’m trying to change the subject. “Uh, sorry. I’m not used to entertaining.”
He dropped his gaze. “Yeah, I’m better. I’m not used to being anyone’s guest, either.”
“How’d you find me?” she blurted. Not all that polite either, but she really did want to know.
“Metae and Regnol, you know, my Lemurian magelord, told me to give you this yesterday.” Scrabbling inside his vest, he drew out an alabaster plaque. It was about the size of a domino and contained an encrypted message. “I tried to make our rendezvous on time, but everywhere I turned, something went wrong.” He paused long enough to take a breath. “I won’t bore you with the details, but it was past dark when I made it to the coordinates. You weren’t there, but I knew you had been. Traces of your energy remained.” He ground his teeth together. “I also sensed the Bal’ta. Because I feared the worst, I called the Old Ones—”
“What?” she broke in, incredulous. “We’re never supposed to—”
“I know that.” He sounded dismayed. “I was desperate. They’d told me not to bother reporting back in if I didn’t get the message to you. Anyway, they didn’t even lecture me for insubordination. Metae told me where to find you. And a whole bunch of other stuff about how she’d wanted to tell you herself, but couldn’t break away from something or other.”
Aislinn gulped her tea. It was hot and made her mouth hurt, but at least the lust that had been eating at her like acid, ever since Perrikus had turned those gorgeous eyes on her, receded a bit. Maybe it might, just might, leave her be. She’d even been wondering about a quickie with Travis—after he’d healed himself, of course. Heat spread up her neck. She knew she was blushing.
“What?” He stared at her. The civet had curled itself into a ball at his feet, but it kept its suspicious gaze trained on her.
“Nothing.” She put down her mug and held out a hand for the plaque. “Let’s find out what was so important.”
Nodding silently, he handed it to her before sinking onto one of several big pillows scattered around the Oriental rug. The cat followed him. “Do you mind?” He pointed at a faded Navaho blanket folded in one corner of the room.
“Help yourself.”
“Thanks.” He unfolded it and draped it around his shoulders. “Takes a lot of magic to do Healings. I’m cold.”
With only half her mind on him, Aislinn held the alabaster between her hands. It warmed immediately and began to glow. She opened herself to it, knowing it would reveal its message, but only to her. The plaques were like that. The Old Ones keyed them to a single recipient. Death came swiftly to anyone else who tried to tamper with their magic. Metae’s voice filled her mind.
“Child. Your unique combination of Mage and Seeker blood has come to the attention of the other side. They will stop at nothing to capture and use you. The Council has conferred. You will ready yourself for a journey to Taltos so we may better prepare you for what lies ahead. Take nothing. Tell no one. Travel to the gateway. Do not tarry. Once you are there, we will find you. You must arrive within four days.”
“What?” Travis had an odd look on his face, as if he knew he shouldn’t ask, but couldn’t help himself.
She shook her head. Alone. Destined to be alone—always. Sadness filled her. Images of her mother and father tumbled out of the place she kept them locked away. Memories of what it had felt like to be loved brought sudden tears to her eyes.
“Come here.” Travis opened his arms. “You don’t have to tell me a thing.” The civet growled low. He spoke sharply to it and it stood, arched its back, and walked to a spot a few feet away where it circled before lying down.
Mortified by how desperately she wanted the comfort of those arms, Aislinn dropped to the floor and crawled to him, taking care to give his bond animal a wide berth. The blanket must have helped because when she fitted her body to his it was more than warm. The sexual heat she thought she’d moved beyond flared painfully in her loins. When he cupped her buttocks with his hands and pulled her against him, she wound her arms around him and held on.
“There,” he crooned, moving a hand to smooth her hair out of her face. “There, now. Let’s take comfort where we can, eh? There’s precious little to be had.” He laughed, sounding a bit self-conscious, before adding, “Even I could feel Perrikus’s spell. Got me going, too.
He closed his lips over hers. She kissed him back, too aroused to be ashamed of her need.
Chapter Two
The gateway to Taltos. How the hell was she supposed to find it all by herself? Travis was long gone, making a journey jump to wherever he lived. At least that’s where he said he was going. Aislinn blew out a breath, feeling guilty. She hadn’t exactly asked him to go, but she’d hinted strongly that she needed time to herself. Travis was sweet—and a surprisingly adept lover. A reluctant smile tugged at her lips. She hadn’t expected him to be so skilled. Or so attuned to what she needed, which had been rough and tumble sex without much in the way of seductive undertones.
The smile vanished abruptly. Ever since she lost her family, she’d made a point of staying away from anything that could turn into an emotional entanglement. It hurt too damned bad when you lost someone you loved. She could go the rest of her life without that kind of pain again, thank you very much. Doesn’t matter, it will be months before I see him again. If then.
Relegating her tryst with Travis to the infrequent dalliances she’d given in to when need outweighed reason, she gazed about her cave. It wasn’t much, but it was all the home she had and she was loathe to leave it. Aislinn shrugged off her ambivalence about the upcoming journey. Since her instructions were to take nothing and tell no one, she sure wouldn’t be wasting any time in preparations. Only problem was she really did need to figure out where she was going. She closed her eyes and sifted through Lemurian memories that had been embedded within her at the time of her initiation. She kept two fingers centered in tattooed marks—black ink in the form of ankhs and stars—on her opposite arm as she concentrated.
Rather than a map of how to get to Taltos, what filled her mind was the Harmonic Convergence of August, 1987 and its globally synchronized surges. The Surge three years ago had been the last one as far as she knew, though there’d been many prior to it. Resentment filled her and she ground her teeth together. Of course it had been the last one. The dark gods had used it to leapfrog their way to Earth. They didn’t need to mastermind any more of them since they were already here.
Her parents had taken her to a remote location in the mountains of Bolivia during that last Surge. There’d been a surprising number of people, given it had taken several hours of strenuous climbing on slippery, muddy trails to get to a sundial supposedly placed by the Incas. Or, maybe it had been the Aztecs. She couldn’t exactly remember. She’d been tired and not listening especially carefully to her father lecturing about the history of the Convergence as they made their way to the ancient shrine. He talked about it all the time. It was his life’s work, he and Doctor José Argüelles. They’d spent over twenty years tracking every aspect of it at power points all over the world. This wasn’t the first time he’d taken her and her mother to some remote location to view a Surge.
While the trek had begun in thick jungle, they’d climbed beyond the line where trees grew to an arid, high plain, pocked with huge craters and the ruins of primitive dwellings. Small scrubby plants dotted the landscape. Herds of llamas grazed nearby. Aislinn had been fascinated by their huge, liquid eyes and long, graceful necks. When she reached out to touch one, her father had called her back telling her they weren’t nearly as friendly as they looked. The journey had taken most of the day. Light was fading when they reached the sacred power point. Her father told her about dozens of such spots scattered around the globe. “People are gathering there, too,” he’d said with a knowing smile.
Her parents offered her cocaine leaves to chew. They’d given her a mild high. When the ground around the sundial began to undulate, she’d chalked it up to the drug. The rest of the crowd had rushed forward, though, chanting something in a guttural language. A vast hole had formed in the earth and two naked alien beings had swarmed out of it. Several of the worshippers threw themselves at the feet of the things, chanting fervently.
The creatures had been so horribly inhuman, with eyes that radiated infinite power and colors shifting and changing under golden skin—Christ! An army of zombies wouldn’t have looked any more terrifying—or shocked her more. Danger rolled from them in waves, setting her teeth on edge and making her stomach ache. Though she hadn’t known it then, one was Perrikus, the other D’Chel. That had been the beginning of the freaky part. And her world had unraveled right along with it.
With a despairing look on her face, her mother had whispered in Gaelic so garbled it was tough to follow, telling her and her father to fade into the shadows behind nearby ruins. They’d begun a surreptitious retreat when one of the things materialized right in front of her father. One minute, he’d been behind them, the next he was in front of Jacob Lenear, blocking his way. Jacob stood six foot four, but the glowing figure, was at least half a foot taller. Up close like that, multi-hued eyes glowed menacingly. Shiny black hair hung past his waist. The colors flowing into one another under his skin had a hypnotic quality.
“Where do you think you are going, human?” The last word sounded like a curse.
“It’s late,” her father began, spreading his hands in a placating gesture. “And—”
Those had been his last words. The thing reached out quick as lightning, wrapped a long-fingered hand around Jacob’s neck, and snapped it. It happened so fast the only part Aislinn remembered clearly was her mother screaming. The humans who had welcomed the abominations began to chant something like, “Kill the unbelievers. Bring on the New Age. New Age. New Age. New Age…”
A woman had stepped forward then, and tugged at the other alien being’s arm. Dark hair blew in her eyes. She was half-naked, her small, conical breasts painted with runic symbols. “I am Amaya, queen witch of this coven. Where are the others? I was told six of you would emerge.”
The thing smirked at her and shoved reddish-gold hair over broad shoulders. “If you ever speak directly to me again, it will mean your death. Depending how closely your kin followed orders, our brothers and sister are already here. This is not the only power point in this world.”
Looking mildly shaken, Amaya lowered her hazel gaze and slunk backward. She joined hands with several others. They raised their voices in a song that only partially muffled Aislinn’s mother’s wailing. Draped over her husband’s body, red hair dragging in the dirt, Tara Lenear’s Irish heritage came to the fore as she shrieked a wake for her beloved. Aislinn tried to join her, to hug her father one last time, but in what was one of her last sentient moments, her mother had stopped screaming and hustled them off the mountain.
It was only later, after the madness took root, that Aislinn realized it would have been far more merciful if Tara had joined Jacob that day. Her mother hadn’t been the only one to lose her mind in the face of the invasion—the six dark gods hadn’t lost much time creating gateways for their hell spawned minions to scare the crap out of people—but Aislinn had needed her mother, goddammit. It didn’t take long for the truth to sink in: she’d lost both her parents on that South American mountain.
Then the Lemurians had shown up with their own brand of alien power. While they’d dealt fairly with her, Aislinn knew it was because she was gifted. The chilly indifference with which they’d dispatched humans who were either crazy or without magical ability still felt like an affront. She’d been raised to believe all life had intrinsic value. The first time she’d floated that idea to a Lemurian, he’d laughed for a good thirty minutes. She hadn’t brought it up again.
Aislinn’s face twisted into a grimace. Even three years later, the memories horrified her. She shut her eyes, squeezing them so tightly colors flashed behind her lids. Her father and mother were dead. They couldn’t help her anymore. There was no percentage in thinking about either of them. All it did was make her sad.
Pressing harder on the tattoos, she asked the Old Ones how to find Taltos. When the answer came, she understood she’d known all along. It was part of the embedded memories, but she’d been so upset by Perrikus—and thinking about her parents—she’d been at cross-purposes with herself.
Confident the gateway would show itself to her, assuming she survived the journey, Aislinn wondered about her invitation. Insofar as she knew, other than the brief indoctrination she’d gotten once she’d accepted her magic and agreed to help the Lemurians, no additional training had been offered to any other human. Had any of them ever been invited into the Old Ones’ domain before? Was she the first? The thought excited and frightened her at the same time.
“Let’s see.” She ticked off on her fingers. “Mage, Seeker, Seer, Healer, Hunter.” The spectrum of human powers. She had both Mage and Seeker talents. Her Mage gift gave her facility with spells. Most humans had only one skill. It was unusual, but not unheard of, to have two. Travis, for example, was a Hunter, but he had Healing talent also. Why would the Old Ones suddenly take such an interest in her? So what if one of the dark ones planned to rape her? It wasn’t any different than they’d done with countless human women. A harsh laugh escaped. Actually the Old Ones and the enemy had one thing in common: a blatant disregard for human life. Aislinn figured the Old Ones were simply using her and others like her as pawns in their million-year-old battle against Perrikus and his cronies.
Feeling confused and vulnerable—and angry that her compliance with Metae’s orders was a foregone conclusion—Aislinn mapped out her journey. She needed to get to a sacred mountain in northern California. It was about a thousand miles from her current location, so it would take several jumps and at least two days. Maybe even three because her magic would need time to recover.
Take nothing—that’s ridiculous. I have to take food.
No, she argued with herself, I can hunt. Probably better to follow Metae’s instructions exactly.
A familiar voice broke into her reverie. “Aislinn.”
“Travis? Didn’t you go home?” She winced. He’d been kind to her. He deserved better. “Uh, sorry. Didn’t mean to be rude.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. I went home. Just wanted to tell you I hope I see you again.”
Sudden tears sprang to her eyes. She brushed them away. “Damn it, Travis,” she hissed, mind voice almost a growl. “Do not start caring about me. I don’t think I could stand it.”
“We’ve all lost a lot, Aislinn. Don’t let it blind you to the rest of your life.”
She began to answer, but he severed the link. She sent magic spinning out to resurrect it, but pulled it back almost immediately. Travis was a complication she did not need right now. What she needed to do was get moving. On her feet before the thought was done percolating, Aislinn stripped off her shift, then dressed carefully in layers, snugging into long underwear and wool pants that used to be black, but had faded to gray. A red flannel shirt—it clashed with her hair, but so what?—topped by a leather vest and her torn black leather jacket completed her usual mercenary for hire outfit. She glanced down at herself and laughed. There’d been a time when she’d actually cared what she looked like. Now the only thing she cared about was if her clothing was warm and functional.
Eying her boots, she shook her head. She needed to be on the lookout for a replacement pair. She tossed a battered rucksack over her shoulders to hold some of her clothes in case it was warmer than she thought it would be, made sure she had a water bottle and her cook pot, and held a westerly location in her mind.
Aislinn arrived at her planned destination easily. Under the watchful eye of a weak sun trying hard to put out a little warmth, she patted the walls of a deserted tin mining shack a couple hundred miles from her home. Compared with her last journey, the first leg of this one had been easy. The next few should be, too, at least until she traveled into terra incognita. When she couldn’t picture her location, she wasn’t sure quite what she’d do. Coming out in unknown terrain was always risky.
She’d been to the tin shack a couple of times before. Once when her mother was still alive, and later when she was first teaching herself how to use magic to travel. The miner who’d built the humble structure had left a diary about losing his wife to cancer. His pain, splashed across the grime-streaked pages of a journal, had pierced her heart. She thought about going inside to see if the journal was still there, but resisted. She didn’t really have time to spare. Aislinn reached out cautiously with her magic to see if any threats were near. And froze.
She wasn’t certain what she sensed, but it had wrongness stamped all over it. She hadn’t expected to run into trouble so soon and it rattled her. Silent in her cracked leather boots, she faded into the hut through a door hanging half off its hinges. The diary was right where she’d left it, tucked into a clear, plastic bin so rodents wouldn’t chew it to bits. Drawing power, she looked through the walls of her shelter.
Ghost army. Had they seen her arrive? Shades of human dead, robbed of life far too soon, roved the countryside in packs. They holed up in what was left of the cities, too. Not unlike feral dogs, they refused to leave. Enough of them could suck the life out of you, which was how they swelled their ranks. Aislinn ground her teeth together. While easier to fool than instruments of the dark, she couldn’t afford to take chances. Dead was dead and shades would kill her just as eagerly as Bal’ta. Her corporeality was an affront to them.
Because they weren’t magical, they shouldn’t be able to sense her. If she just sat tight, she could wait till they moved on, but that might make her late. The alabaster had given her four days’ time. It seemed like enough, at least if everything went smoothly. She peered at the ghost army again with magic-enhanced senses. As she watched, one of them pointed a bony finger her way. She sat up straighter. Shit. They must have seen her flicker into being after she’d first arrived.
She girded herself for moving on, pulling magic, visualizing a location, when the shades closed in. They slithered through the walls and surrounded her. When she reached for her magic, a barrier stood between her will and the reservoir that held her power.
What the hell? They’re not supposed to be able to do that. The reek of long-decayed flesh pricked her nose. She stifled a gag. Skeletal fingers with strips of flesh hanging off them reached for her. A high-pitched, wavering howling filled the air. Chills ran down her back. The shades sounded hungry. Aislinn forced herself to really look at the remnants of humanity surrounding her. “Did this shack belong to one of you?” she asked, her gaze scanning the group.
“Aye. What’s it to you?” One of the men stepped forward. Even dead, with flesh peeling off him in strips and a caved-in place where it looked like someone had buried an axe in his skull, it was obvious he’d been a big, powerfully built man.
Aislinn met his dead, brown gaze. “I read your journal. I’m sorry about your wife.” She hesitated. “I know what it is to lose someone you love.”
“Do you now?” he snarled. Half-eaten away lips drew back from teeth with exposed roots.
“Yes,” she said simply. “Both my parents were killed. And all my friends.”
The man stepped closer to her. Raising a hand, he ran it down her arm. Then, more familiarly, cupped a breast. “Warm,” he breathed, showering her with rancid breath. “So warm.” His hand tightened on her, pulling her close.
Swallowing revulsion, Aislinn laid a hand over his. “Don’t you want to see your wife again?”
He tossed his shaggy head. Long gray-flecked dark hair crawling with maggots swatted against her body. “Stupid girl,” he brayed. “If you’re going to give me some prattle about heaven, don’t waste your breath. Stopped believin’ when Betty died.”
“Doesn’t matter what you believe.” Aislinn met his gaze. “Spirits of the dead live on, but you have to pass the light to know that.”
He was kneading her breast now, rubbing the exposed bone of his fingertips over her nipple. “And how would you know, missy?”
She wasn’t certain, but Aislinn thought she saw hope flicker behind his dead eyes. “Because I have to believe I’ll see my parents again one day. Either I’ll be killed in battle, or after I’m through fighting for the Lemurians.”
He dropped her breast as if it burned him. A hissing sibilance passed his lips, spraying her with spittle. “You’re one of them. Turned by the other side.” Outraged shrieks battered her ears. The dead closed in on her.
“Grab her,” one of them shouted.
“We need her.”
“She’s warm.”
“Lemurian magic might bring us back.”
“Oh no, it won’t,” Aislinn countered, swallowing pity and fear. “They’re the ones who killed most of you. Remember?” She hurried on, “If you keep on killing the few of us who are left, who will avenge your deaths?”
The remains of a plump woman sidled close. She stroked Aislinn’s hair, sending ice chips into her guts. “Warm,” she mumbled. “I remember what it was to be warm.”
The miner shoved his body between them. “Go,” he hissed at Aislinn. “You do devil’s work. We will let you leave, but you must make me a promise.”
“What?” Aislinn wondered if she’d have to lie.
“Fight those who killed us. I want revenge.”
We all do. Sucking in a deep breath, and letting it out, she decided to take a chance, hoping the Lemurians weren’t in her head to listen. “Once the dark are defeated, if that’s even possible, I give you my word I will do what I can to see that the Old Ones return to Taltos and remain there.”
The man turned to the rest of the ghost army. Aislinn hadn’t been paying attention, but when she looked it seemed most of them had crowded into the miner’s shack. Bodies merged into bodies in one stinking, gelatinous mass. “What do you think?” he demanded.
“She spoke true,” one ventured.
“Aye, I thought she’d lie to save her sorry hide,” another spat.
Realizing her jaws were clamped together so hard they ached, Aislinn opened her mouth. Some of the dead were determined to keep her, while others argued one more life couldn’t possibly help them. She reached for her magic again, inhaling sharply when she didn’t sense th
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2013 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards
Bronze Award, Drama Category -Fiction
Poignant and powerful…
Can a broken warrior make his way safely past the demons of guilt and memory on the
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Part love story, part fantasy adventure, part family drama, Along The Watchtower is the moving chronicle of the recovery and personal growth of a severely wounded Iraq War vet.
5-star praise from Amazon readers:
A wounded vet’s journey of recovery in two worlds
“…With compelling storytelling, coupled with a writing style that vividly paints a clear picture of
both worlds, I was captivated by Freddie’s character even though I am neither a veteran nor a gamer. …a very imaginative story that crosses multiple genres.”
This seemed so real
“I have never been where Fredrick has been, but I could see it through his eyes. That is the best thing I can say about a book I loved. That it made me think and that I got lost in the telling.”
an excerpt from
Along The Watchtower
by David Litwack
I awoke on a slab.
No. Too soft for a slab. Softer than a corpse would need. Not a slab but a stretcher.
A fog swirled in my brain. I picked through its wisps, searching for a thought to cling to. Then my combat training kicked in. First rule—assess the situation. I steadied myself and tested my senses, starting with touch. I flexed each finger until it grazed the pad of the thumb. So far, so good. Next I listened. Not much to hear. More of a hum than silence. But I could feel a vibration nearby, a throbbing like the heart of a dying beast. My sight might tell me more, but I was afraid to open my eyes. Instead, I sucked air in through my nose.
The smell of jet fuel. Then a wind so strong it rippled my cheeks into folds.
I was outside on a runway. Alive.
Minutes later, motion as my stretcher was wheeled up a ramp and locked into place. A gentle hand rested on my arm. A sting on the soft skin at the crook of my elbow, a needle inserted. Then, still in silence, a bump from below, wheels separating from tarmac.
I knew what that meant. Farewell Iraq. Hello Ramstein.
While the critical care air transport climbed, my mind churned, still trying to plan the raid. Not that morning’s patrol into Al-Nasiriyah, but the World of Warcraft raid scheduled that evening with my guild. Gaming was how I always coped, at least until that morning when it nearly got me killed.
I started gaming after Dad died and kept playing when Joey would go on a binge or while Mom prayed through the garret window to the ocean. I even played after Richie ran off. But I shouldn’t have been gaming that morning. I should’ve been focused on my job as First Lieutenant Frederick Williams, leading my squad into bandit country. Instead I was channeling Sunstrider, head of the Lightbringer guild, trying to figure out how to get past the trolls at Blunderbore’s Gate.
I still didn’t know the cost of my inattention.
When the IED went off, I felt a shock wave but heard no sound. Maybe my eardrums had imploded. But the impact rattled the roots of my teeth. Then the pain in my legs hit, like shards of glass fraying the nerves. My first thought: not the legs. Better to die.
I’d been training to dunk on that old basket at base camp and had just managed to curl one knuckle around the rim. Not bad at five foot ten. Now, like everything else I’d ever hoped for—blown away.
Then I remembered. The archangel collapsing on me, spilling blood on my chest.
The fog in my brain turned into a movie screen, replaying images from that morning. The roof of the Humvee blown off, the sky above turning from blue to white to red. The medics cutting open my shirt.
“Help the archangel first,” I yelled, though I couldn’t hear my own words. “It’s not my blood.”
I watched their lips move and tried to read them. Concussion, they seemed to be saying. The blast had battered my brain. It must be my blood since I was soaked in it.
And while I tried to block out the pain, the oddest of thoughts struck me—I’ll never make it to level eighty.
Just what I had coming. Nine months and seven days in Iraq, my squad patrolling a hot zone, and I’d been daydreaming about a raid in a fantasy game. When the IED went off, I should’ve died.
I grabbed the edge of the stretcher and tried to roll onto my side. Big mistake. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t hear my scream. The CCAT nurse rushed over and fiddled with some tubes. Everything started to spin like the plane was in a dive. I blacked out.
It happened sometime after that. Dreams of a fantasy world like in the game. Of course, I was frightened at first. But then I figured, what the hell. Couldn’t be worse than this place.
Chapter One
A Ringing in the Ears
I awoke to the tolling of a bell.
Not the sweet chime of vespers or the carillon of noon. This bell had a more somber sound, one that I’d dreaded since childhood. With each lingering clang, my bed quilt weighed more heavily upon me until it felt like a paladin’s shield on my chest.
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced my mind to envision a different place, a garden I’d played in years before. I was nearly there, could picture the dust motes floating across the light that filtered through gaps in the pergola. I could almost smell the flowers.
Clang. The garden vanished in a burst of black smoke. The scent of flowers was replaced by the stench of charred wood. I pressed my hands to my ears.
Clang. On the seventh toll, I flung off the quilt and jumped out of bed.
Why wait for Sir Gilly to burst into my chamber and announce what I already knew? I’d knelt by my father’s bedside the night before, saw his face so pale, watched his lips struggle to speak.
“Stay strong, Frederick,” he managed to say. “And beware the cunning of the spinning wheels.”
“But how?”
“Focus,” he said, “on what you hold most dear.”
I’d prepared my whole life for the trials, and now they were upon me. I could feel them coming closer with each clang of the bells. For my father, the king, was dead.
***
I grabbed my sword and rushed into the hallway, buckling my scabbard as I went. It was well into the night, and the candles along the wall had burned low. Their flickering cast gloom into the corners of the vaulted archways, and the wax dripping down their length sculpted ghastly shapes over their sconces. I hurried past. When I reached the office of the lord chamberlain, the door stood open. He was waiting.
I’d known Sir Gilbert since birth. He had been my mentor in all things that mattered and my father’s before me. By the time I was ready to be trained, his features had settled with age. The most prominent were jowls that hung about his chin and jiggled when he laughed. When I was little, I thought they resembled fish gills, and so I called him Sir Gilly.
I spent more time with Sir Gilly than with my father. He was an affable man, quick with a jest or a magic trick. But when I was seven, everything changed. My mother died that year, and I became the sole heir to the throne. I knew then that someday the future of the kingdom would depend on me. Now that time had come.
The gleam was gone from Sir Gilly’s eyes. His jowls trembled, but not from laughter.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “He was your father and my friend. A great man. But neither of us has the luxury to mourn.”
I understood. I’d been taught all my life about the Burning Legion, and the treaty that kept the Horde at bay. But the treaty relied on magic bestowed on the reigning king. Now Stormwind was without a reigning king, and the magic that protected it would begin to fade. For the next thirty days, I’d be tasked with the trials and only if I overcame them would I succeed my father to the throne. If not, the Horde would overrun the Alliance—the end of life as we knew it. For all my lifetime of training, I felt unprepared.
“What happens now, Sir Gilly?”
“For a start, you must stop calling me Sir Gilly. I am the advisor and you the dauphin until the days of anointment are finished. If you prevail, I will be Sir Gilbert, lord chamberlain, and I shall call you Sire. If you fail, what we are called will no longer matter.”
“I won’t fail,” I said, wondering if failure were possible. For the past millennium, an unbroken line of Stormwind kings had kept the world of Azeroth free.
His gaze bore into me, no longer my mentor, no longer my friend. But every bit the advisor.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because of everything you’ve taught me.” I rose to my full height and lifted my chin. “And because I’m my father’s son.”
“You’re a brave dauphin, but you know nothing of what’s to come.”
“But all your teachings, the stories of trials past—”
“Mean little now.” He leaned on the oaken table, his fingers splayed wide against the wood grain. It was a familiar pose, the teacher urging his student to comprehend. “Each generation is different, each trial unique. Every prince must stare into the spinning wheels alone.”
I felt a fluttering in my stomach, a tightening in my chest. Sir Gilly must have seen my distress, because he came from behind the table and rested a hand on my shoulder, as he’d done so often when I struggled in training.
“Come, Dauphin. Walk with me.”
He led me up to the parapets of the castle. Despite the pre-dawn haze, I could make out the land below. I looked out past Elwynn Forest to the village of Goldshire, with its thatched-roof cottages and patchwork quilt of green pastures stitched together with stone walls. But beyond them, looming over the houses and fields, I could see the mountains of Golgoreth, high, jagged peaks where the world of the Alliance ended and the realm of the Horde began. Already, storm clouds gathered over the ridge. As I paused on the ramparts to watch, a wind gusted from the east, an unnatural gale that roared in my ears and caused ripples in my skin.
“You feel it?” Sir Gilly said. “Their power builds in the hope that you will fail. Everything is changing now, different than what you’ve come to expect.”
“How so?”
He stretched a trembling finger toward the distant mountains.
“Their evil flows like fog on a November day, seeping into everything. When your father died, the protection he gave to the countryside began to weaken. It will grow weaker still until only the walls of Stormwind provide protection. At the end of the thirty days, they too will fail.” He turned to me, his face inches from mine. “First lesson: you must not, under any circumstances, go beyond the castle walls during the days of anointment.” His brows wriggled and knotted. “And the castle itself will not be safe. The mist will enter the smallest of cracks and transform into strange beings, the source of the trials.”
I took two quick breaths and steadied myself as I’d been trained. “Tell me what I must do.”
“Second lesson: you know about the watchtower?”
I nodded. As a child, I’d sneak up there to play but knew well how it changed during anointment.
“None but you may go there for the next thirty days. For as you know, following the death of a king, the advisor is charged with mounting two bejeweled disks, one facing east and one west, transforming the watchtower into a dream chamber—a place where the dauphin must go to dream, twice each day, at sunrise and sunset. What you are shown and how you respond will determine the fate of the kingdom.”
“What will I see?”
“That, I cannot say. No prince before you has left word, written or spoken, about what he saw through the spinning wheels. Most claimed they remembered nothing at all. Others refused to tell. But in some mysterious way, what you dream will influence how you respond to the trials. The answer lies in the castle, if you have the courage to explore.”
“Explore? But I know every inch of this castle. I’ve wandered throughout it since I was a child.”
“Ah, but you were never a child during anointment. The castle you know will change. Stairways will come into being where none existed before. You’ll go down them, but when you turn back, they’ll be gone. Archways and tunnels will appear, leading to odd chambers where you’ll meet the beings I spoke of. Some will be guides—elves or priests or mage. Others will mean you harm, spectral demons, agents of the Horde. Assassins.”
“How will I know the difference?”
“Trust what’s in your heart. If that’s enough, you will save Azeroth for another generation. If not—” A sorrow came over him, weighing down his features. “I’ve lived too long. I put your father through this and now you. I wish I had died before this day.”
I’d never seen him so downcast, my source of knowledge and strength. I fingered the hilt of my sword, as I had at the start of so many training sessions. My grip on the braided leather tightened.
He looked at my hand and shook his head.
“No, Dauphin. You cannot fight this enemy with a sword.”
“But to defend against assassins?”
“It’s not your body they seek to harm. These assassins can’t threaten your being.”
“Then what is their purpose?”
“To extinguish your spirit. To make you abandon the kingdom to darkness. Their purpose is despair.” He turned toward the watchtower, standing erect, every inch the advisor. “Come. It is time to begin.”
Chapter Two
Ramstein Air Base
An echo of an echo. A dream interrupted by hushed voices talking the way people do near the deceased at a wake. One voice gruff, a man’s, possibly a smoker. The other mousy, almost a squeak. Three fingers pressed on the inside of my wrist. Thick fingers.
“His pulse is strong. Let’s give it a try.” The man’s voice rose. “Freddie, can you hear me?”
I recognized the name. Freddie. Short for Frederick. A name that must be me. Then panic. I’d been dreaming of castles and kings. Why would I want to be Freddie?
“Try his rank,” the woman said. “They’re trained to respond by rank.”
“Lieutenant Williams.”
An image flitted across my mind. Iraq. An explosion. My mind recoiled. I groped about in the darkness, trying to find the castle again.
“Did you see that?” the man said. “His eyelids twitched.”
“Lieutenant,” the woman said, louder now. At least I was no longer deaf. “Can you wiggle your thumbs?”
There was somewhere else I needed to be, something important I was supposed to do. My mind was a jumble. When I couldn’t fit the puzzle pieces together, I sent a signal to my thumbs.
“Wonderful.” A touch on my palm. The woman this time. Slender fingers. “And can you squeeze?”
I did. She squeezed back. At least I wasn’t alone. I’d always worried hell was being alone for eternity.
“Good. Now your toes.” I felt a draft as she removed the sheet. “Can you wiggle your toes for me?”
I concentrated and wiggled my toes. She sounded pleased. But then I reached for the next level before I was ready. I tried to bend my knee.
My back arced like an electric shock had run through me. I wanted to scream but had forgotten how to make a sound.
“A convulsion, Doctor?”
“Don’t think so, Mary. More likely pain.”
“Should we keep trying to wake him?”
I waited, not understanding the question but feeling it was important. The pain kept distracting me. Please, send me back.
“No. He needs more time. We’ve done all we can here. Put him back under and we’ll send him home. Let the boys in the States do the rest. He has a long road ahead.”
I wasn’t sure what “under” meant, but I had questions before I got there. What road was he talking about and why was it so long? I shifted my weight onto my elbow and tried to sit.
Oh Christ, my legs.
The smooth sense of plastic gliding across the small hairs on my arm. The pain subsided. My mind began to drift.
A bright flash. Soldiers screaming. Dogs barking. Where was my castle? Where was my quest?
Then slowly, sweet darkness. And the dream resumed.
Chapter Three
The Bequest
Sir Gilly led me to the death chamber. Already I could feel the mist from the mountains creeping into my bones, intruding like a malaise. The trials weighed heavily upon me. That, and the watchtower. But Sir Gilly insisted I bid farewell to my father first.
“We’re in unfamiliar territory,” he said, “and I know little of the right path. But of one thing I’m certain. We can do no good by forgetting our humanity.”
We stopped outside the entrance. He grasped me by the elbow and whispered, as if the ghost of my father might hear, describing the protocol of succession, though he’d explained it twice before.
“The king’s remains will lie in a casket on a gold pedestal. Once the pallbearers remove the cover, you’ll see a gray shroud covering his face. I will peel it back to below the lips. Bits of clay will cover your father’s eyes and mouth. Look until you recognize him, then nod. I’ll give you a parchment to sign and seal, your first act as the dauphin. Then kiss his forehead, a last goodbye. Be prepared for the taste of death, like dust in winter. Take a moment. He was your father as well as the king. When you’re ready, I’ll replace the shroud and close the cover for the last time. As a sign of respect, back away from the casket, never turning until you’re out the door. Do you understand?”
I was too numb to do anything but nod.
“You must answer, Dauphin.”
“Yes.”
“Say ‘I do, Advisor.’ I’m sorry, Frederick. It’s the law. We must follow the proper form.”
“I do . . . Advisor.”
Once we entered the death chamber, Sir Gilly did as he had described. I stared at the corpse, the muscles of my shoulders throbbing as if I’d held them stiff throughout the months of my father’s slow decline. I loved him and was heartbroken to see him die. But more than anything, I dreaded becoming king.
***
Minutes before sunrise. We stood by the portal at the base of the watchtower, an opening so narrow, only a single man turned sideways could pass through. I took a deep breath and entered. Inside, twin staircases spiraled upward around a stone core. In normal times, one was designated for the ascent and the other for the descent, but as with so many things in the days of anointment, the rules had changed.
“Use the leftmost one at sunrise,” Sir Gilly said, “and the right for sunset.”
“What if I encounter an assassin blocking my way? May I escape on the other side?”
“Obey the rules, Dauphin. Do not deviate. Any encounter with a spirit or demon is meant to be.”
I scurried up the hundred and one stairs to the top of the watchtower, pausing on the last landing to wait for a red-faced and out-of-breath Sir Gilly. He needed a moment before entering, giving me a chance to survey the chamber.
I hadn’t been to the watchtower in many years, its allure nothing but a relic of my childhood. I noted how age had changed the place. On the surface it looked less imposing, as all memories of childhood do, a musty room, perfectly round and six paces across. The tangle of beams that supported the point of its cupola was less impressive now, hung with spider webs and covered with droppings where birds had made their nests. The elaborate molding that some artisan had added centuries before had been worn smooth by rainwater and time.
But one thing was the same, exactly as it had been etched into my memory when I was little. Two circular windows breached the battlement walls. Oculi as Sir Gilly had taught me, great eyes that looked out across the land from this, the highest point of the castle. One faced east and the other west. And now, two platforms had been placed before them. On top of each was a disk framed by a golden rim, with a kaleidoscope of gems in the center—amethyst and amber, emerald and bloodstone. I reached out to touch them, but Sir Gilly stayed my hand.
“No, Dauphin. Your role is to sit and dream.”
He motioned to a wooden stool facing east. Once I was settled, he turned to go.
A sudden agitation overcame me.
“Wait, Advisor. Stay.”
“It is forbidden.”
“Stay only this first time.”
“I cannot. I must be gone before the sun is up.”
Before I could say another word, he fled as if the dawn’s first rays might scald him. The sound of his bootsteps trailed away as he raced down the stone stairs. I was alone.
I left my post and went to the western side to peek past the disk toward the darkened valley below. For an instant, I thought I caught a glimpse of something, two riders approaching through the jungle of Stranglethorn, out of the mist at the base of Golgoreth. Assassins?
I watched until my eyes watered. Nothing but shadows. I shook off the sense of dread and returned to the morning oculus. A red glow had begun to dance on the mountaintops. The sun was rising, casting light over the farms of Goldshire and the trees of Elwynn Forest, lands dependent on my protection. I took my seat once more on the wooden stool and glanced through the gems, doubtful anything would happen. I waited.
At once, I was staring into the teeth of a hot wind whistling through the oculus from the mountains, chasing the rays of the sun.
And slowly, the wheel began to spin.
Chapter Four
VA Hospital Stateside
I stared into a pair of Coke-bottle glasses wedged between a green crepe cap and a mouth-and-nose mask. The magnified eyes behind the glasses crinkled at the corners, a hint of a smile.
“You’re awake,” a muffled female voice said. “About time.”
“How . . . long?” Each word burned as it forced its way up my throat.
“You sure you want to know?”
“Uh-hum.” It hurt to talk.
“Almost two weeks. Medically induced coma.”
“Where . . .?
“VA Hospital. West Roxbury, Massachusetts.”
“Why . . .?”
“I guess they couldn’t find out much about you. No family. Last known home on Cape Cod but grew up in Jamaica Plain. We were the closest so they sent you here.”
I tried to shake my head. Not what I was asking, but I was afraid to move.
“Why . . .?”
“Oh. You mean why are you here. I’ll let Dr. B. answer that. You should drink some water. We’ll need to take it slow. You haven’t had anything in a while.”
I nodded, mostly by blinking. The least movement made my head throb.
She brought a plastic cup over and stuck a straw into my mouth. I took a sip, swished the water around with my tongue, and swallowed. It felt tight going down. She withdrew the straw and waited. I must have looked like hell. Her eyes narrowed, then crinkled again. A latex-gloved hand reached out and stroked my forehead.
“You’ve had a rough time, Freddie. Okay if I call you that? I’m Dinah, your nurse. You know, like,” she half sang, “someone’s in the kitchen with . . . No need for formality here. But we’ll do everything we can for you. You’ve served your tour and you’re home now.”
Home. An image flashed in my mind. A gingerbread house, one of fifteen around a green with a steepled tabernacle overlooking them all. Ours was the runt of the litter, tucked into a half-lot at the end and farthest from the ocean.
The front door for some reason was painted purple and had frosted windows with palm-frond cutouts. Joey used to tell me they were cannabis leaves. Richie claimed they looked like snowflakes. But I knew they were palms. The steeply pitched roof had white scalloped trim, and a tiny balcony on the second floor overlooked the green. The house had four and a half rooms, a kitchen and sitting room downstairs and two bedrooms up—one for my parents and the other for the three of us boys. The half was a garret with a single circle-shaped window where Mom used to sit and pray to the ocean.
The first time I saw it, I was ten. Mom was so happy that day—the ocean at last. The five of us raced each other into the house and scrambled up the staircase to the garret to check out the view. Dad and Mom, Richie, Joey, and me. And now only I was left.
And not much of me, from the look on Dinah’s face.
I blocked out the thought. My mind wanted no part of Iraq. But I wasn’t ready for memories of home either.
I mumbled one word. “Morphine.”
The eyes behind the Coke-bottle glasses sagged, and the green crepe cap nodded. I felt a tube along my arm shift. Then sleep.
***
I stirred to the sound of Nurse Dinah removing the metal cover from a plate of scrambled eggs. Two days had passed, and I’d managed to spend a fair part of them conscious. I’d graduated from water to juice to soup, and now this. I was actually starting to look forward to solid food.
Dinah’s cheerful voice serenaded me as she positioned the tray.
“Big day today, Freddie. A hearty breakfast. But we’ll need to sit you up first.”
She pressed a button on my bed control and a voice responded.
“Yes?”
“This is Dinah, can you send Ralph in?”
A moment later, Ralph filled the doorway to my room. He was dressed all in white—white smock, white trousers, white shoes—and wore a mask and cap like everyone else. And he was huge, almost needing to bow his head to get into the room. I bet he could touch the rim with either hand standing flat-footed.
“This is our newest patient,” Dinah said. “Lieutenant Williams, but he answers to Freddie.”
Ralph nodded, then bent down and reached out a latex-gloved hand to shake mine.
“Pleasure.”
Another mask, another smile. This time I could tell because his great brows slanted upward. I thought I might like Ralph. I suspected I’d be seeing a lot of him.
Dinah and Ralph moved to either side of the bed, grabbed the pad beneath me, and curled its folds into their fists.
“Get ready, Freddie. Take a deep breath.”
I did.
She counted to three and they slid me back toward the head of the bed. I let out a yelp.
“Sorry Freddie. Best way is to do it quickly.”
Then they raised the back of the bed. It was my first time sitting since Iraq.
Ralph started to leave but came back, placed a great gloved paw on my head and rubbed the stubble.
“Hang in there, kid. It’ll grow back.” His voice rumbled like he had his own built-in echo chamber and seemed to linger after he was gone.
Dinah helped me with the meal. Though it was a modest portion, I didn’t think I’d be able to eat it all. Somehow I managed to down every bite. When I was done and the tray shoved out of the way, Dinah cleaned me up, then hovered over me.
“Are you ready for Doctor B.? He thinks you’re well enough to get evaluated.”
“Haven’t you poked me enough?” I was glad to be speaking in full sentences.
Dinah tapped her head.
“Concussion test. Only you can tell us how well your brain’s working. I’ll let Dr. B. know you’re ready.”
She gave me a little wave and followed Ralph out the door.
Now that I was half upright and alone, I did my first self-assessment, like evaluating intel before a patrol or health and resources in Warcraft before a raid. Only more personal.
I tugged at the neck of my hospital gown, enough to peek underneath. My chest had been shaved and was covered with EKG cups. Tubes ran out of my body in various places, a catheter and lines for antibiotics and morphine. I reached up to my head where Ralph had patted. Peach fuzz. The CCAT guys must have suspected damage to my brain and shaved it. Maybe they were right. Machines beeped around me. I watched the peaks and valleys of the heart monitor. No flat line. I was still alive. Finally, I took a deep breath and slipped the sheet back.
The good news—both legs were still attached. But a black brace enveloped the right one from hip to ankle, secured with Velcro. Metal hinges locked the knee straight.
I peeled back a strip of Velcro as gently as I could, wincing at each fraction of an inch. When I’d removed enough, I spread the brace. Scabs and scars decorated both legs. But the major damage was an angry incision held together with what looked like staples running from mid-thigh to below what was left of my knee. It still oozed along the edges.
When I heard footsteps down the hall, I reset the Velcro and replaced the sheet.
A second later Doctor B. came in, a chunky man with enough wrinkles around his eyes to tell me he’d treated a lot of veterans. He seemed friendly enough, though it was hard to tell through the mask. He’d been to see me before, but mostly just to read my chart and nod. This time, he pulled over a chair and settled beside me.
“How are you, Lieutenant?”
“You tell me.”
“Okay.” He checked my chart for the third time. “Let’s start with your eyes.”
He took a penlight from his smock pocket, tested it on his own eyes, and then pointed it at mine. The light was bright but tolerable.
“Follow the light,” he said.
I did, as he moved it from left to right and back again.
“Very good. Now a few questions. Can you tell me your name?”
“You know my name.”
“I’m not the one whose cognitive abilities need testing. Please. We need to follow the proper form.”
“Why?”
“About sixty-eight percent of the wounded we see also suffer from traumatic brain injury. It’s the signature wound of these wars where you guys are subjected to IEDs and other kinds of blasts. No shrapnel hit your head. That’s why they shaved you, to be certain there were no hidden wounds. The brain scan was clear, but you were pretty groggy when they pulled you out. Non-penetrating head wounds can damage the brain without leaving a mark.”
“You think my brain’s fucked up?”
“Just being thorough, Freddie. We use the Glasgow coma scale to measure consciousness, ranking from three to fifteen. Three is alive but unresponsive. You were a five on the CCAT, an eight in Ramstein. Let’s see if I can get you to the next level. Now please tell me, what’s your name?”
Another game. Still trying to level up.
“Frederick Williams,” I said. “Lieutenant first class. You want my serial number too?”
He chuckled awkwardly. “No. That’ll do. Do you know where you are?”
“Only because they told me. VA Hospital, West Roxbury.”
“And who won the World Series last year?”
“You think I’d forget that?”
“Please cooperate. I’m trying to establish you have memory from before the blast.”
“Red Sox.”
“Thank you.” He scribbled something in his notebook, then looked up. “Any headaches?”
“No . . . Yes. I can’t tell with all the drugs you’re giving me.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Now, please count down by nines from a hundred.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
He tapped his index finger to his head. “Different part of the brain.”
“My brain’s okay. It’s my leg that’s fucked up.”
“We’ll get to that. For now, humor me.”
With an honors degree in architecture, this ought to be easy. But I’d discovered some things didn’t work as well as they used to. I thought a second, then rattled the numbers off.
“A hundred, ninety-one, eighty-two, seventy-three—”
“Impressive. A lot of people can’t subtract that fast even without a concussion.”
“No more questions until I get mine answered.”
Dr. B. laughed. “Fair enough.”
“Why are you all wearing masks? Am I contagious?”
“Just a precaution. IEDs are bad, medically speaking. It’s not enough to plant explosives. They pack them with rocks and gravel. Stuff that can cause infection. The soil of Iraq is contaminated with nasty bacteria called Acinetobacter. Both your legs were pockmarked with debris from the blast. Some of the fragments might have carried the bacteria. It’s generally drug resistant and spreads easily. You’ve shown no signs of infection yet. That’s good, but protocol requires we quarantine you for a while longer. Now, is it my turn?”
“One more.” My throat tightened, and I had trouble getting the words out. “What happened to the archangel?”
Dr. B. gaped at me and set his clipboard down.
“Have you been having dreams, Freddie?”
I began to panic, then realized how strange my question must have sounded.
“The archangel’s a nickname, a handle for Specialist Sanchez, Pedey Sanchez. He was with me in the Humvee when—” My voice trailed off. “You probably don’t know.”
He slid his chair closer and took my hand.
“I’ve read the report, Freddie. I’m sorry. Sergeant Sanchez was killed instantly, his whole chest was blown—”
I turned my head away, one of the few things I could do without pain. I wished I could walk so I could run out of the room.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “That was insensitive.” Then after a pause, “The archangel’s an interesting nickname. Why did you call him that?”
It took a minute before I could answer. This was a lot harder than subtracting by nines.
“He was ugly as sin, a shaved head, looked like the top of a bullet, and brows that almost hid his eyes. But they were the gentlest brown eyes I’d ever seen. And he wore this medallion, a two-handed great sword on a cross. A warrior and a saint. Last guy you’d expect to be religious. He approached every patrol like a prophesied event. Used to give each of us a little Bible quote before we headed out.
“He was twenty-five like me, but married with an eight-year-old son. He’d call them twice a day. Before every patrol, he’d touch the cross with two fingers, say the names of his wife and kid, and then kiss the two fingers.
“Pedey was part of my guild in World of Warcraft. His character was a Draenei priest and his favorite spell was the archangel spell because it increased healing. That’s why he took it as his character’s name. The archangel. Looked like a demon but had the soul of an angel. And he’s dead because of me.”
The doctor waited. It was his turn for questions, but he seemed smart enough not to push it. I tried to stay quiet too, but the words slipped out.
“Can I have some morphine now?”
“Are you in pain?”
“Only if I try to move.”
“Then why do you want morphine?”
I closed my eyes. “Just give me some, please.”
“We’re trying to bring you back, Freddie. Morphine’s the wrong direction.”
“I can’t walk. Morphine’s my only way out of here.”
“Lieutenant,” he said loudly enough to make my eyes pop open. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yeah. Well, you weren’t there.”
“No. But I know you didn’t plant that IED or pack it with gravel to do maximum harm. And you didn’t start the war. You just fought in it.” He stood and fiddled with the IV tower, poking at the bags, most likely to give his hands something to do. After a minute, he pressed his thighs against the bed and leaned over me.
“I know it’s hard, Freddie. I see too many boys sent home like you. But escaping reality isn’t the way back.” When I didn’t respond, he sighed. “Okay, I’ll give you something to help you sleep. But first, you should know what happened and what the road back looks like.”
I nodded. The dreaded road back.
“You were badly injured. In any other war, you would have died. Today we’re able to get a wounded soldier from the battlefield to a Critical Care Air Transport to a hospital within forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Your leg was hit hard, a 155 mm fragment full force. Shattered the patella and broke off the platform at the top of the femur. The quad tendon ruptured. Damned near severed an artery too. The medics did everything they could to stabilize you. Then you were taken by CCAT to Germany. You had multiple surgeries there to repair the artery and remove dozens of bits of shrapnel and gravel. They managed to save not only your life but your leg. Then they flew you to Andrews and from there to here. We fixed what we could. Rebuilt the femur, patched the patella, reattached the tendon.”
My throat felt suddenly dry as cotton. “Did it work?”
“That remains to be seen. Your leg sustained a lot of damage. Time will tell if the nerves are okay.”
My brain was well enough to suspect the implications, but I tuned it out.
“So no more basketball? Before the attack, I was training to dunk.”
I waited for him to answer. I couldn’t read the expression under his mask, but his silence was deafening. I forced a swallow.
“Will I be able to walk again?”
He hesitated, apparently not one to make false promises.
“That may be up to you. Lots of rehab. You’ll have to relearn how. But you’re young and were athletic, so that will help. Your brain needs to reconnect with that area of the body. Pain is the start of that reconnecting. Think of it as a marathon, not a sprint.” I could see him wince under the mask. “Sorry, bad analogy.”
He wrote out a prescription for something to help me sleep and turned to go.
“I’ll give this to the nurse.” But before he left, he grabbed my chart. After flipping to the third page, he shook his head.
“What now?” I said.
An upturn in his crow’s feet showed he was smiling. “I was checking your height. Five foot ten. You’re too short to dunk.”
“That’s what they all said.”
He replaced the chart on its hook. “This is going to be a long journey, Lieutenant, but I’ll be with you the whole way. Think of me as your guide. And there’ll be others as well.”
He paused in the doorway. I could see him grappling with something he wanted to say. When he finally spoke, his voice was pained.
“You’re not responsible for your friend, the archangel. But you should know that when he fell on you, he probably saved your life. The fragments that killed him were headed for your heart. A lot of people helped save you, Freddie. The archangel was one more. Don’t let his sacrifice go to waste.”
… Continued…
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an excerpt from
The Last Dragon Home
by Glenn T. Ryan
Chapter 1
‘Come on, Mollie. It’s time to go.’
‘I really don’t feel like it. Can’t I stay home?’
Esmae frowned at her daughter. ‘No, you’re not old enough to stay here by yourself. What if a group of bandits came to rob us? What would you do?’
Mollie looked around the bare cottage. ‘What would they take? Two chairs, a table, the mirror that isn’t big enough to see your whole face in? I doubt whether they’d be able to lift our beds.’
‘That’s not the point. I wouldn’t care if they did take what we own. I would worry about you the whole time I was at the fair. Maybe if you’d let me teach you some more magic?’
‘Not that again, Esmae. I already know enough to get by.’
‘Well, you don’t know one tenth of the amount required to stay home by yourself. Maybe that should be a lesson to you. Now grab your coat and let’s go. Bring a scarf as well. And one more thing…’
‘Yes?’
‘Since when did you start calling me Esmae?’
Mollie Adkins smiled at her mother and followed her out the door.
For a long time they scrunched along the dirt path that would take them to the main road, pulling their coats tighter around them as they marched. The stars were clear overhead, and the moon was the thinnest sliver of yellow. The wind found the smallest holes in their clothes and whispered through to their skin.
‘Why don’t we buy a horse, Esmae?’ Mollie asked as she huffed along.
‘You know why.’
‘Yes, but wouldn’t it be good for times like this? No walking everywhere. We’d be at Gibbon by now.’
‘I thought you didn’t want to go to the fair anyway. Now you’re telling me you want to get there faster. Look, we’re at the crossroads already.’
Mollie didn’t answer. She stood in awe as carriage after carriage passed her by, all heading north along the main road.
She had never seen so many horses before; each of them was magnificent in stature. Every single noble, peasant and merchant in the surrounding villages of Danmurk Shire snaked their way to Gibbon, passing close to Mollie. She smelled the musty horses and gawked at the painted carriages they pulled.
‘Keep going, Mollie,’ said her mother. ‘It’s impolite to stare.’
The two joined the line and weaved their way along the road. Heads down they marched, until Mollie’s calf muscles began to ache with the endless walk. Her mother was about to tell her not to lag when a voice called out to them from a nearby cart.
‘Hoy, you ladies.’
Mollie and Esmae stopped and turned. A small carriage drawn by a single steed pulled alongside them.
‘You two wanna lift? Save yer legs?’
The driver of the cart was a thin, pink-faced man who had blond stubble poking recklessly from his cheeks.
‘Yes!’ Mollie said.
‘Ah, do you know who we are?’ Esmae asked in complete surprise.
The driver rubbed the front of his nose.
‘Yeah. S’pose you an yer young’un are the Witches of Danmurk … right?’
‘We have been called such things.’
The driver shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not my fault if Danmurk is full of superstitious tookers—’ He stopped short, eyeing Mollie. ‘Er, people.’
‘Very well. Thank you. As long as you keep minding your language.’ Esmae ignored the driver’s hand and instead turned to help Mollie on the rear of the cart before gracefully climbing on herself.
‘Name’s Terry, by the way,’ the driver announced with a yellow-toothed smile.
No one answered.
They rode in silence. Soon, an expensive looking carriage tried to pass them. It came close enough for Mollie to see inside. She smiled when she saw the family within had two boys her own age.
‘Hello,’ she called across.
The passengers glanced over to see who was greeting them. They saw Mollie’s grinning face, her glinting blue eyes and her waves of hair that were blacker than the night sky. They took in her face and the light dusting of freckles on her high cheeks.
They also saw Esmae, who looked almost identical to Mollie except that her hair was in a bun and her eyes were lined with small wrinkles—no freckles either.
They were unmistakable.
The boys went pale with fright and crouched below the window. The boys’ father slid the curtains shut and their mother urged the driver to speed up. They passed quickly—no one dared look back.
‘See, Esmae! That’s why I should have stayed home.’
‘Never mind,’ Esmae whispered, rubbing her daughter’s cheek. ‘Why don’t you try talking to the horse?’
Mollie shrugged and closed her eyes.
‘Hello,’ she spoke into the animal’s mind.
Suddenly the cart jerked and swayed, causing Terry to hoy and howl and reach for his stash of sugar cubes to calm his horse.
‘Don’t be frightened. I won’t hurt you,’ Mollie said as she gripped the armrest to keep from falling.
The beast blew fiercely through its nose and tried to turn its head to face her. ‘How can I hear you with my head and not with my ears?’ he demanded.
‘It’s something I’ve always been able to do,’ Mollie answered in a soothing voice. ‘Please don’t be scared.’
‘I thought only animals knew how to talk to each other like this!’
Mollie could hear his voice inside her head, deep and gruff. ‘Some humans can too. Not many though—actually, just mother and me. What is your name?’
The horse was silent for a while.
‘Bramble,’ he answered. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk while I’m working. My master wouldn’t like it.’
‘He seems nice though,’ Mollie replied. ‘Except he smells like old wine.’
‘He is nice. I guess I don’t like the idea of talking to you. It’s not natural.’
‘What harm is there in talking? I know it’s not much further to town, but we can pass the time by chatting. Have you ever been to Gibbon before?’
The horse said nothing.
‘I said have you ever been to Gibbon before?’
Still no answer.
Mollie flopped back in her seat and shook her head at her mother.
‘Never mind,’ said Esmae, patting her daughter’s shoulder. ‘You’ll meet lots of other teenagers tonight. They will talk to you.’
‘We both know that’s a lie.’
Esmae took a deep breath to argue, but then stopped herself and sighed.
‘True. But there are a few items I need from the fair and I couldn’t leave you at home alone. So I tell you what—how about we try to have fun? No matter what other children—or horses—say. We can just pretend they don’t exist. We can roam around the fair like we own it. How does that sound?’
In the distance, Mollie could see several massive fires burning on Gibbon’s fairground. Around the big fires came the smaller glow of nearly one hundred lanterns dangling from wooden posts. She could faintly hear a mix of laughter, excited squeals, voices selling cheap tickets for sideshow games and hawkers hollering for business.
‘You’re right. I say we do it,’ said Mollie and gave her mother a wink. ‘Watch out Gibbon, the Witches of Danmurk are coming!’
Chapter 2
The lights were getting brighter.
The wind blew the smells of exotic meals and cooked meat to Mollie’s nose.
Her anticipation mounted with each clop of Bramble’s hoofs, until at last, they entered the wooden gates of the Gibbon Fair.
It was more wondrous than Mollie had thought possible, and she was at once glad that Esmae had forced her to come. There were stalls selling fabrics and lace, stores selling delicious rare food, and there were sideshows.
‘Not so bad after all?’ Esmae asked, raising her voice to be heard.
‘I guess not. It would be better if there weren’t so many people.’
‘You’ll be fine. Here’s a few coins. Have fun, and I’ll meet you back here in an hour.’
Mollie slowly walked off and found the part of the fair with the fewest children. She spied a game where the player had to throw a small hoop around a pole. It didn’t cost much, and the main prize was a silver bracelet with a delicate heart-shaped charm.
Mollie stared at it and thought about how lovely it would be to own something as precious as jewellery. She imagined it in the empty top drawer of her bedside table, shining against the bare wood.
She paid the attendant and threw her hoop. It went spinning off to the left of the pole, nowhere near the target.
The attendant, a large woman with a mole on her forehead, laughed at Mollie’s throw. ‘You’ll have to do better than that!’ she squawked.
Not to be outdone, Mollie paid for another turn.
The lady hastily grabbed the money with a dirty paw and stepped back to watch.
When Mollie held the hoop this time, she noticed it felt much heavier on one side. It had been weighted to cheat the player out of a fair throw.
Two can cheat at this game, Mollie thought as she focused. She let her mind reach out and touch the elements around her. For an instant she heard her mother’s voice in her head. We never use magic for personal gain, Mollie. Her eyes went back to the bracelet.
She quickly looked around to make sure no one was watching, then swung the hoop through the air. As she did this, she let her mind feel for the elements around her. Esmae called this gathering. She gathered air together to make small currents of wind to keep the hoop flying straight. At the right instant, she used the earth’s power to pull the soaring ring downward.
Shooomp, spin, spin, spin.
The hoop lay flat on the ground, the pole standing proudly in its centre.
The attendant put a chubby hand over her mouth. ‘A direct hit! No one’s ever done that before!’
‘Can I play again?’ Mollie asked in a sweet voice as she took the bracelet and slipped it over her wrist.
At that moment, a small family approached the stall—Mollie recognised them as having passed her earlier when she and her mother rode in Terry’s cart.
The father spoke quietly to the hoop lady, whose eyes widened and fixed on Mollie.
‘No more games for you,’ she barked when the father had finished speaking to her. ‘Once you win you can’t play again. Now go away before I box your ears.’
Word spread quickly through the fair that there was a girl with blue eyes and black hair who could cheat at the games.
Every time Mollie tried to win a prize at a stall, she was ignored or told to go away.
Her money sat useless in her hand. The coins felt like cold, heavy stones.
Everywhere she went, people stared at her. She could see them making way for her; parents were pulling children in the opposite direction. Not one would meet her eyes.
Mollie rubbed her eyes with her sleeve and decided to look for Esmae. But everywhere she looked, there were more people, whispering, pointing. She wanted to call for her mother at the top of her lungs so she could go home, but instead, Mollie turned and ran to the back of the fair.
She sat down on a rock and breathed heavily, hiding her face in her hands and wishing her mother had just let her stay home.
She stayed that way for a few minutes then heard someone calling to her. She slowly looked up. At the back of the showground, tucked away in a corner and surrounded by a knot of children, was a large painted van. On it was a picture of a ferocious looking dragon and a dazzling pink unicorn.
A sign above read:
CUDGEL’S WONDERS: WHITESTAFF AND WENDY
‘Come and see the mythical beasts,’ called a short, bald man. ‘Only one gold coin to look.’
Mollie crept hesitantly over to him. ‘Are they real?’ she asked.
He looked down at her and wiped his thick black moustache. He had a large stomach and eyes the size of peas. ‘Of course they are, yer dimwitted child! Give ol’ Cudgel a gold coin and see for yourself.’
‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘It’s not like I can spend it anywhere else.’
Cudgel took the money with glee and pointed her to a large, barricaded wagon.
‘The only way to see ’em is from up there. Walk up that plank and look down into the enclosure. You’ll see the marvellous beasts for yerself. Next!’
Mollie walked over to the walkway and followed it up and onto a viewing platform. From this raised level she could see down through the barred roof of the wagon.
The structure was divided into halves by a walkway. One side contained Wendy, the unicorn. Her enclosure was no bigger than Mollie’s bedroom. There was straw on the ground and a trough that contained little water. The windows were boarded over so no one could sneak a free peek at the mysterious creatures.
Mollie focused on Wendy. It was instantly obvious to her that she was not looking at a unicorn. All she saw was a painted horse that had a paper cone stuck to its forehead with white, gummy glue.
Mollie felt sorry for the horse. The only view she would have had from inside the barred cage would have been the sky above or the opposite enclosure, which was identical in size and shape.
‘Your master must be very cruel to dress you up like that,’ Mollie said to the horse.
‘What do you mean, child? Dress me up like what?’ Wendy’s voice answered inside Mollie’s head.
‘You know, paint you pink and stick that silly thing on your head.’
‘Well, I never!’ squealed Wendy in reply. ‘Are you insinuating I am not a real unicorn?’
‘It does look like—’
‘Look like what? You have never seen anything as beautiful as me. You’ve never seen anything so—AHHHHHHH.’
The horse screeched and bucked. ‘The butterflies!’ she yelled. ‘They’ve come for me again.’
Mollie watched aghast as Wendy threw herself into a blind rage. The horse kicked through the bars and barged the walls with her shoulder. She chuffed and whinnied and made a horrible commotion.
‘Stop!’ Mollie pleaded. ‘You’ll hurt yourself!’
‘Don’t mind her,’ a soft voice whispered in Mollie’s brain.
Mollie’s eyes searched for the speaker. ‘Where are you?’
‘Over here. In the other cage.’
Mollie looked down toward the room opposite Wendy, and there, lying on a straw bed, was what Mollie guessed to be a dragon.
‘She thinks magic butterflies come to steal her beauty when she’s not looking. She also thinks she’s the last unicorn on Earth.’ The dragon’s voice was husky and faint.
‘Well… She is definitely unique,’ Mollie replied.
‘Well put. Very tactful.’
Mollie smiled at him.
‘My name is Whitestaff. But I guess you know that already from my picture on my master’s van.’
‘Yes. My name is Mollie.’
‘I know I don’t look much; most children who come to see me are very disappointed. They expect a larger, more ferocious looking animal, don’t they?’
Mollie didn’t know where to look.
‘I guess so.’
‘Don’t be embarrassed, human. I know only too well. I’m so weak I can hardly lift my head. I only wish I slightly resembled that proud looking dragon in the painting, not a miserable lump of white scales. Then I’d give them a show.’
At the finish of his sentence, Whitestaff broke into a coughing fit. Mollie waited patiently for him to finish.
‘Where do you come from? Why are you so sick?’ she asked.
‘I don’t really know. I have an idea, but it’s a long story. While we are asking questions, why can you talk to animals?’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘My family is a bit … different.’
Whitestaff narrowed his gaze on Mollie and sniffed the air.
‘Yes, I can see that right enough.’
Chapter 3
‘I’m not a witch if that’s what you’re thinking, though everybody calls me one. I don’t have warts and I don’t have a cauldron.’
‘No, that’s not it at all. I smell something about you. Something special…’
‘I’m a sorceress,’ Mollie continued over the top of him. ‘Not a witch. The two are very different.’
In the opposite cage, Wendy had calmed herself and began slurping water from her trough.
‘You smell good to me. Like strawberries and sugar.’
‘Thank you, Wendy.’
‘What for? Who are you? Aren’t I the prettiest unicorn in the world?’ Wendy asked, looking at her reflection in the trough water, already forgetting the first two questions.
‘Are you saying you know magic?’ the dragon asked in his rustling whisper.
‘I know some,’ said Mollie. ‘But I wish I didn’t.’
‘That seems strange to me. If I knew magic, I would be out of here in a flash.’
‘Yes, but when you know magic, no one will talk to you. They avoid you and make up stories about you. You can never have any friends. It’s terrible.’
‘No one talks to me anyway, except Wendy, and she… well…’
The two looked over to Wendy, who was singing to her reflection.
‘Yes, well it’s different when you’re a girl. I’ve never had one friend in my life. Except my mother, I suppose.’
‘How many do you think I’ve had, human?’
Mollie’s face fell. ‘None.’
‘That’s right. It looks like you and I are in the same boat. The only difference is you don’t have a cage.’
‘You poor thing! Can’t you get out somehow?’
‘No. I’m too weak to walk even a few steps. And believe me, I’ve tried. But I have managed something, see. I’ve made a peephole in the wood here so I can look out. If only I were small enough to squeeze through.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’
Whitestaff thought for a moment then his face brightened.
‘Why, yes there is! The voices! You’ll probably be able to hear the voices.’
‘What voices?’ Mollie looked over to Wendy, then back to the dragon.
‘No, no, no. I’m not mad. These voices are real, right enough. I can hear them now. Listen.’
Mollie obeyed and strained her ears. She thought she could hear something through the hubbub of the fair. She listened for a moment more, but the sounds faded.
‘I can hear them calling me. Other dragons maybe? Calling through the night.’
‘I thought I could hear something,’ Mollie offered.
‘I’m not surprised,’ Whitestaff replied. ‘You really are fantastic.’
‘You don’t think I’m bad, or… weird?’
‘Definitely not! I think you are the most wonderful human I have met!’
‘What about me?’ Wendy demanded, rejoining the conversation.
Whitestaff gave her a smile. ‘You are lovely too, Wendy.’
‘I think you two are both great,’ Mollie blurted. She couldn’t wait to tell her mother she had finally made some friends.
‘All right, girlie. That’s long enough.’
Cudgel’s voice made them both jump. He was standing at the bottom of the platform with the lady from the hoops game at his side.
The lady jabbed her round elbow in Cudgel’s mid-section and whispered something.
‘All right, Audrey, all right,’ Cudgel said to the woman. He turned back to Mollie. ‘Get down I said.’
‘Just a minute longer, please sir. I only just got up.’
Cudgel looked to the woman beside him and the two began to whisper to each other.
Glad for the distraction, Mollie quickly turned back to the dragon.
‘What do you want me to do? Tell me fast.’
‘Look inside Cudgel’s van for anything strange or unusual. I need to know where those voices are coming from and why. They might hold the key—’
‘Hurry up girlie, or Audrey and I will come up and drag you down by the hair.’
Mollie looked down and saw Cudgel beginning to climb up towards her, his face red and sweaty despite the cool night air.
‘Fine, I’m coming,’ she said, and quickly made her way down.
Mollie rushed past Cudgel’s groping hands and back towards the nearest crowd. She mingled in with the people and decided to watch Cudgel and the hoop woman from a safe distance.
Audrey appeared fussed about something. She was waving her arms and pointing.
She’s still angry I won at her stupid game, Mollie thought.
Cudgel was shrugging his shoulders and wiping his moustache. Every now and then he would shake his head and chuckle. The woman stomped off after the exchange and Cudgel began crying out for business again.
What do I do now? Mollie asked herself.
Chapter 4
Back in his cage, Whitestaff wondered the same thing: What do I do now?
On four shaky legs, he managed to stand briefly, walk a few steps, and then collapse in a huffing heap.
It’s useless. There is nothing I can do.
‘Dragon,’ a voice called to him through the dark, ‘make your way home. Join us once again.’
Whitestaff lifted his head to listen.
‘I want to,’ he said aloud, ‘but I don’t know how.’
‘Come home… Come home… Be with your own kind.’
‘I’m trying to, but I’m trapped. I’m not strong enough to get out.’ Whitestaff’s tone was pleading and helpless. ‘Why can’t you hear me?’
‘Come home, dear dragon. We need you here.’ This time it was a female voice that beckoned.
Whitestaff tried fruitlessly to stand again. He struggled with his legs and beat his tiny wings until he could no longer move.
The voice began to fade.
‘Don’t go,’ he wailed.
But it was too late. The calling had stopped.
‘What are you doing, dragon?’ Wendy asked from her bed of straw.
‘Nothing, Wendy. Go back to sleep.’
‘How can I sleep with you making that terrible noise? What’s the matter?’
‘Just tired, Wendy. It’s been a difficult day.’
‘Were you calling that girl back? She’s great, don’t you think?’
Whitestaff nodded. ‘Yes, she certainly is special. I bet she could have helped too. Never mind.’
‘Helped what? Don’t tell me you’re trying to escape again. I thought you gave up on that idea.’
‘I had. Until I saw Mollie, that is. For a second there I thought I had a chance. I finally found someone who could help. Did you hear those voices before?’
Whitestaff waited for Wendy’s answer. He got a soft snoring sound instead.
Who are they, those voices that keep calling me? Why am I here? Am I the only dragon alive? Where did I come from? These questions repeated themselves in his mind as they so often did.
In his earliest memory, Whitestaff was surrounded by trees. He could hear birds whistling and insects zooming past his ears.
He was hungry, but he couldn’t move. None of his muscles worked. Then, as the light faded from the day, he heard footsteps.
Crunch, crunch.
Somebody, or something, was coming closer to him. It was a human: a man. Whitestaff felt a sharp stick prod his soft scales. He gave a small gasp of pain. The man then picked him up and carried him to a barn, fed him, and gave him water. The next day the man stuck him in a cage. He had been Cudgel’s prisoner ever since. Most of that time had been spent alone, until a few years ago, when Cudgel painted Wendy.
At first Whitestaff was relieved he had been found and fed. His relief didn’t last for long though.
One day Cudgel tried to make Whitestaff do tricks. He figured that rather than show an ordinary dragon that just lay there, he’d make more money showing off a dragon that could stand on its head, or balance on one leg.
Of course, Whitestaff couldn’t even stand properly, let alone do somersaults, so Cudgel would often get very mad.
‘What’s the use of yer?’ he’d shout. ‘Useless bag of bones, yer are. I feed yer and water yer, and yer just lie there!’
Following this speech, Cudgel would poke the dragon with his stick, digging in the sharp end between Whitestaff’s scales.
Cudgel gave up after a few wasted months, but the scratches from that dreadful stick remained.
Back in his cage, the dragon gave a shudder.
Don’t think about it, he told himself. Not this close to sleep anyway.
Whitestaff scratched a niche in his straw, ready to doze at last, when he heard a noise.
‘Psst.’
He waited silently for a minute or two, then shook his head and rested it down on the straw.
‘Psst. Whitestaff, it’s me, Mollie.’
This time the dragon knew the sound was real and his head shot back up. He smiled at the familiar voice.
‘Mollie! You came back.’
The girl was wedged between a large tree and the outside wall of Whitestaff’s enclosure. She’d waited until Cudgel was attending a customer then stealthily cut behind him and into her hiding place.
The man would never look in her direction because he was only interested in guarding the viewing platform, not the area around the cage. Why would he look for people on the ground when no one could see inside from there, only from above?
Mollie, however, didn’t need to see the dragon or the unicorn to speak to them. She merely had to be close.
‘Of course I came back,’ she said. ‘Didn’t I tell you that I was going to help?’
Whitestaff brightened at her touching words. ‘You did indeed.’
‘Well, this is what friends do,’ the young girl insisted. ‘They help each other.’
‘I’m sorry for doubting you, Mollie. It’s just I’ve never had anyone count me as a friend before, unless you count Wendy.’
‘Me neither,’ Mollie admitted. ‘But I’m sure you would help me the same way, right?’
The dragon answered straight away. ‘Yes, I would. I definitely would.’
‘Well, tell me what you want me to do again. What about those voices?’
The beast took a deep breath. ‘I think the voices I hear are coming from Cudgel’s van—the one with the painting of me and Wendy on the side.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Well, I want you to find the source of the voices. Find out who is calling me and why. Can you do it?’ His words came out in a rush.
Mollie’s legs and stomach shivered with excitement. ‘You bet,’ she said.
And with that, she crept away.
Chapter 5
By now it was getting late. Parents were taking their yawning children away from the dazzling fires of the Gibbon Fair and into the less interesting night. The din was dissolving, and the smells of the fair were being carried away by a frigid wind. Everything was slowing down. Most of the stalls were being packed away, but some were giving last customers a chance to test their skill.
‘Leaving so early?’ Cudgel called as the people left. ‘Why not spend yer last few coins on a once in a lifetime spectacle. Roll up and see Cudgel’s Wonders.’
Mollie’s long black hair was perfect for hiding in the night. She teased the strands and let her locks fall about her, hoping they would provide her with some camouflage.
There was about a twenty-yard gap between her and the brightly painted residence of Cudgel.
Mollie took a sharp breath and held it while she scurried over to the rear of the van. The first twenty paces went by in a blur, but the last ten took forever.
She could see Cudgel out of the corner of her eye. He was trying to convince some more people to part with their gold and was about to turn around and point out the enclosure. He began to turn his body in her direction. Five yards to go and he was nearly facing her, two yards and she could see the side of his face, one yard and Mollie dived behind the large wooden wheel attached to the van. Once there, she slowly let out her breath.
She waited for Cudgel to shout out, or worse, to run over and catch her, but he didn’t.
She was safe. For now.
With her back pressing firmly against the thick spokes, Mollie turned her head and looked for a door or a window. She found one of each. The door was closed and padlocked, but the shutters on the window were open a fraction.
Mollie tiptoed over to the shutters and pulled them back as gently as she could manage.
The left shutter gave an awful screech, so she left it alone. The right one was stiff but silent, so she pulled it out as far as it would go and poked her head inside.
The first thing she noticed was the stench. The smell was a blend of rotting fish and stale bread.
Mollie wrinkled her nose in disgust.
It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. She could see a table with only one chair, a dinner plate with scraps still on it and a heavy-looking chest that was clamped shut with a sturdy lock.
The most peculiar thing in the van was a giant egg sitting on a furry mat.
Mollie could see it had been broken in half, a sign that something large had hatched out of it years ago. The egg’s surface was gold, flecked with a deep green. But the strangest thing was that in the middle of the egg, was a floating mist, like a sphere of hovering dew, with a rainbow of colours shimmering through it.
Mollie gaped in wonder.
I bet this has something to do with those voices. I have to tell Whitestaff!
She ducked back to her wheel and peeped through the spokes. Where is he? Mollie thought when she couldn’t see Cudgel. Oh well. Better hurry before he comes back.
Mollie made a mad dash over to her hiding spot between the tree and the mobile barn.
‘I saw it,’ she said, brimming with excitement.
‘What was it?’ asked the dragon.
‘It was an egg—a gorgeous, broken egg with a kind of watery ball floating in it.’
The dragon thought about this.
‘Are you sure, Mollie? Do you think that’s where the voices are coming from?’
‘I’m positive. It was really the only thing in the whole van,’ she said. ‘Apart from a bad smell.’
‘I must see it for myself,’ Whitestaff said. ‘The voices keep telling me to come home, so the egg must have something to do with getting there. Don’t you think?’
‘Yes, I’m sure you’ll know what to do when you see it. It looks magical and wonderful.’
Whitestaff nodded to himself.
‘Mollie,’ he said. ‘Do you think that, um, it is my egg?’
‘What do you mean?’
The dragon looked up at the moon for a moment, lost in thought. ‘Well,’ he said presently, ‘maybe it’s the egg I came out of. Maybe Cudgel kept it.’
‘Yes. You could be right. Do dragons come from eggs?’
‘I guess so. I can’t remember being around other dragons. I must have come out of the egg, alone.’
In the distance, the sounds of the fair were all but gone, and the chirping of crickets was louder.
‘I have to get near that egg, Mollie,’ the dragon said. ‘If I have to be locked up in here for much longer, I’ll go crazy. I’ll begin to believe in the magic butterflies Wendy sees.’ Whitestaff paused for a while and gave a deep sigh. ‘Plus I’ll never see you again, either.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Mollie.
‘Cudgel will take me to another town soon, to another fair. We only stay in the one place for a day or two. I expect we’ll leave at sunrise, or a bit after.’
Mollie realised he was right. Her insides suddenly went heavy and her face sagged.
‘Just when I find someone who’ll talk to me,’ she whispered.
At that moment something yanked the hair on the back of her skull so hard her head snapped backwards.
‘Gotcha, yer little mullytill!’ a voice shouted from behind her.
It was Cudgel who had grabbed her and swore.
‘What the Latos do yer think yer doing?’ he shouted, his mouth right next to her ear. ‘Trying to steal my animals no doubt!’
Mollie was too petrified and in too much pain to answer. She couldn’t even shake her head.
Cudgel didn’t care anyway. He was pulling her towards his van, yelling and cursing all the way.
Chapter 6
Mollie became suddenly aware that nobody was around—everyone had left the grounds and all the fires had been put out.
Mollie felt like she was having one of those nightmares where it’s impossible to wake up or scream. She tried to yell once, but her lungs seemed to have no air in them so only a rasp came out. The van was getting closer, and Cudgel’s grip was getting tighter.
She took a deep breath, ready to squeal as loudly as she could, then wham!
They hit something very tough.
Cudgel fell to the ground and rolled like a large ball. Mollie spilled out of his grasp and smashed her new bracelet on a rock.
What was that? She looked up to see her mother.
Esmae stood over the two. Her face was grim and her jaw was set tight.
‘Just what do you think you are doing, manhandling my girl like that?’ she demanded.
Cudgel was slow to regain his wits. ‘Where did you come from?’ he asked groggily.
Instantly, Esmae was three inches from his face, without appearing to have moved her body.
Cudgel took a frantic step back.
‘Answer my question,’ Mollie’s mother commanded; her voice was poisonous.
‘S-she,’ he pointed to Mollie, ‘was near the, um, the, um… my creatures,’ he finished.
‘Did she pay you?’ asked Esmae, moving closer to the back-stepping man.
Mollie had never seen her mother like this. Sure she’d seen her angry before, like whenever Mollie gave cheek when she was younger, but this was something else. Her mother was moving like a sleek cat, ready to maim her prey.
‘Yeh-h, s-she paid.’
‘WELL?’ Esmae yelled.
But Cudgel didn’t answer. He was cowering on the ground, unable to move. Mollie knew why.
Her mother was using a powerful magic on him. She made the earth suck the little man to the ground with enormous gravity, but that was not all. Mollie could see Esmae blending fire and water to create an energy blast that would blow Cudgel to the other end of the showground if it hit him. She was poised to deliver the magical blow when a speaker interrupted, and the beam of energy disappeared into the air.
‘Are you ladies all right?’
Mollie looked over and saw Terry, the man who had generously allowed her and her mum to ride with him to the fair.
Nobody spoke for a while then Esmae said, ‘Yes, we are fine.’ She released Cudgel from her invisible hold. ‘Come on, Mollie.’
Mollie ran over and took her mother’s hand.
When Cudgel realised he was free, he unleashed a torrent of abuse, calling Esmae and her daughter witches and mullytills, and promising that someday they’d pay.
Esmae shot him such a threatening look that Cudgel scampered back to his van, his stumpy legs almost blurring with speed.
‘What was that about, my ladies?’ Terry asked, clearly puzzled.
‘Just a misunderstanding, that’s all.’ Esmae turned to her daughter, ‘Are you fine?’
‘Yes, Esmae.’
‘No you’re not, you’re shaking. Come here.’ Esmae took Mollie in her arms and held her until she was still.
‘Listen, I’m heading back to Danmurk,’ Terry said. ‘I could drop you off home on the way if you like.’
Esmae gave her daughter a soft kiss on her forehead.
‘That would be lovely. Thank you, Terry.’
Terry took Esmae’s arm and led the two to his small cart.
This time, Esmae allowed Terry to help her on.
The two chatted away, making small talk while Mollie listened, her head resting on her mother’s shoulder.
‘You two really should get yerselves a horse,’ Terry said. ‘Not that I mind givin’ you a ride at all, just the opposite.’
‘Mollie would agree with you there, Terry. She was saying that very thing on our way to the fair. Maybe we should get one after all, if we can save enough. It is a good idea.’
‘Why is it a good idea if someone else says it?’ Mollie asked.
‘Now, Mollie, don’t be rude. As I was saying, Terry…’
Mollie rolled her eyes and decided not to listen to the rest.
She looked to the starlit sky and saw a large group of bats flying silently overhead. The bats made her think of Whitestaff and how much he would love to fly free in the night sky.
Sorry I couldn’t help, Whitestaff.
After a long time travelling, they arrived at the intersection of the road that would lead the two Adkins women home.
Chapter 7
‘Well, goodnight ladies,’ Terry said as he slowed the cart to a halt.
‘Goodnight, Terry,’ Esmae said.
‘Night,’ mumbled Mollie.
‘You’re welcome to stop by for dinner anytime you like, Terry,’ Esmae added.
Mollie’s eyes went wide, as did Terry’s.
‘That’d be lovely, Esmae,’ he said. ‘I just might do that. And by the way, I only live a step away from here, in the house with the red coloured roof. So if you ever need anything,’ he winked at Esmae, ‘you’ve only to ask.’
‘Come on, mother,’ Mollie said, yanking the older woman’s arm. ‘I’m tired.’
‘I bet you are. Thank you, Terry. You are quite the gentleman.’
‘Not a problem. Hoy, Bramble, let’s get home ourselves.’
The horse nodded politely to Mollie as if apologising for his former rude behaviour, then clopped off. Mollie and her mother watched them until they were out of sight.
‘I was so scared when I saw that man grab you,’ Esmae said as soon as they began the walk home.
‘Me too.’
‘Why was he mad with you, daughter?’
For the rest of the journey Mollie told her mother about Wendy and Whitestaff, the voices calling him and the egg she had found. Her mother listened and didn’t interrupt once, unless it was to ask for more details or for clarification.
The story finished as the two neared their small cottage in the woods.
Inside, Esmae lit some candles and Mollie scrubbed her teeth with soot from the fireplace. They both sat on Mollie’s bed and talked.
‘Sounds like you and this dragon got on well,’ Esmae said.
‘Not as well as you and Terry. I still can’t believe you actually invited someone over!’ Mollie said with a shake of her head. ‘But as for Whitestaff, he didn’t think I was strange or weird at all. I feel sorry for him, all alone and trapped like that. Was he really a dragon though? I didn’t think they were real.’
‘Oh, they are real,’ her mother answered. ‘Or were. You see they disappeared a long time ago. No one knows where they went, but most people were glad to be rid of them.’
‘Why?’ asked Mollie in surprise. ‘Whitestaff was so nice; he wouldn’t hurt a baby bird.’
‘Well,’ Esmae said as she considered the question. ‘Dragons were like people, like men.’
‘How?’
‘Some men,’ Esmae continued, ‘are nice, while others are not.’
‘And?’
‘Let me give you an example. Take Terry—’
‘Do we have to?’
Esmae gave her daughter a smirk.
‘Take Terry. He knew that the townsfolk call you and me witches, but he didn’t care. He did the right thing by us anyway.’
‘He looks funny, and he needs a bath,’ Mollie insisted.
‘Yes, he may look funny, but he showed us he has a good heart. He didn’t care about who we are; he just did the right thing.’
Mollie nodded. ‘It was nice of him to drive us around.’
‘Now about Cudgel. He is also a man, but he is a cruel one. He keeps those animals all locked up just so he can get rich. And he hurt you.’
‘So what you’re saying is that some men, no matter how they look or smell, have good hearts, while others are bad.’
‘That’s part of it, yes.’
‘And you think dragons are the same?’
‘Yes I do. You see, you can judge a person by their deeds. Terry showed us a good action, while Cudgel showed us a horrible one. I suppose dragons are just the same.’
Mollie yawned. ‘I can see your point. But I think I might get some sleep now. Can you start the fire tonight?’
‘Of course. But one more thing…’
‘Hmmm?’
‘If our actions tell what sort of people we are, you need to think about your actions. You are getting older now—as much as it pains me—and, it’s time to become the person you want to be. The person you will become will be defined by the things you do, see?’
With that, Esmae blew out the candles, shut Mollie’s door, and made her way in the dark to the fireplace.
Mollie thought about her mother’s words.
What sort of person do I want to be?
She rolled about in her blankets.
I want to be brave. No more being scared of people.
She thought about Whitestaff in his enclosure, looking at the world through his tiny peephole. I want to help those who need it, and I want to be a good friend.
She tossed her pillow over, and imagined Wendy thrashing about and singing to herself and getting worse each day. The more she thought, the less sleepy she felt, and slowly as the hour passed, a plan formed in her mind.
I know what I have to do.
Mollie snaked off her bed so as not to make a noise, and with a new determination, sneaked out of the bare little cottage. She made her way along the dirt path she’d trodden not long before, hoping to be back before the sun rose and woke her mother.
Chapter 8
Whitestaff didn’t sleep much either. He was sure one of his two hearts had broken at the sound of Mollie being dragged away by Cudgel. He had not been within earshot when Esmae interrupted, so he didn’t know if Mollie was safe or not.
That poor girl.
He rolled on his back and watched the grey clouds drift past the black sky, and gave a loud sigh as some bats flew overhead.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Wendy asked from her side of the wagon. ‘I can’t sleep with you making all that noise.’
‘Here we go again,’ Whitestaff groaned. ‘We had this same conversation about an hour ago, Wendy. Don’t you remember?
‘No’
‘Well, nothing is wrong. Go back to sleep.’
‘Something is the matter, I can tell. Plus, you’re lying on your back; you’re sad again.’
‘You got me. Something is wrong.’
‘Is it that child, that girl? I guess she was nice. Pretty too, like me.’
‘Yes, Wendy, like you. We’ve said all this before.’
‘So why are you so sad?’
Whitestaff yawned. ‘It’s not her that upsets me. It’s me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Cudgel got her and I couldn’t save her. I’m just stuck in this stupid cage. I made a friend and let her down in the first five seconds.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Wendy said. ‘Even if you weren’t in the cage, you could hardly save anyone. You’re too weak, remember?’
Whitestaff pursed his rough lips. ‘Thanks a bundle, Wendy.’
‘No problem. Now you can be quiet and go to sleep.’
But of course, he couldn’t. His mind was cluttered with too many thoughts. Was Mollie fine? Would he ever see her again? What was the egg she saw, and would it somehow take him home?
He didn’t know the answers, so he just kept asking the questions over and over until exhaustion took him to sleep.
Chapter 9
Mollie Adkins ran towards the main junction. The night, which had started off very cold, was now positively freezing. Mollie wished she’d thought to wear shoes. Her feet were sore from slapping the packed dirt and the cold was beginning to make them tingle.
I could go back for my shoes, but I really don’t want to waste any more time.
She jogged on. The junction came into view, and after a few moments she was in the middle of the crossroads.
She looked toward Gibbon, then to Danmurk Shire.
After some thought, she headed south to Danmurk. She remembered that Terry had said he didn’t live far from where he’d dropped them off, so she ran along the main road to look for a house with a red roof. It wasn’t long before she did find such a house and, sure enough, the wagon they had travelled in was stationed in the yard.
Bramble was dozing in front of it.
‘Bramble,’ Mollie said gently as she approached. ‘Wake up.’
‘Huh? What?’ Bramble shook his head to wake himself.
‘It’s me, Mollie.’
‘Oh! What are you doing here, girl? Get back to your own house before I make a noise and wake my master.’
Mollie had expected Bramble’s less than warm reception. ‘I’ve come to help a horse,’ she said.
‘I don’t need help, now go home.’
‘Not you,’ Mollie said as she moved closer. ‘Another horse. And a beast. They’re being kept in a cage at the fair.’
‘Another horse you say?’ asked Bramble.
Mollie knew this would get his attention. Horses always looked out for each other.
‘Yes, she’s being kept hostage in a cage, and she’s gone mad. I want to help her and the, um, animal in the cage across.’
‘She? Latos, child! Why didn’t you say so?’ At once the horse stood up and lifted his chin. ‘On my back and let’s get moving. A gentleman always rescues a lady.’
Mollie climbed on, grinning eagerly.
‘Just get me to the Gibbon fairgrounds before the rooster crows, Bramble. I’ll do the rest.’
The two made madly their way through the dark. The icy wind stirred behind them, flapping Mollie’s clothes and rustling the leaves in the trees.
‘So who is this horse to you?’ Bramble asked as he galloped.
‘Well, I made friends with her while I was at the show. Her master has her all dressed up like a unicorn in this tiny cage. The cage is a wagon with no windows, only bars on the roof.’
‘You made friends with her, you say?’
‘Yes, she was quite friendly really.’
There was an awkward silence as they travelled.
‘I’m sorry I was rude when we first met. It’s just strange talking to a human. I wasn’t ready for it, that’s all.’
Mollie suppressed a smile. ‘That’s okay.’
‘You said there is another animal that needs rescuing. Is it a horse?’
‘No, it’s not a horse.’
Bramble ran on.
‘What is it then?’
Mollie hesitated. ‘It’s a dragon, and it’s in a lot of misery.’
‘It can’t be a dragon,’ the horse said, ‘they don’t exist anymore.’
‘This one does. But he is very lonely and very sick. I promised I would help him.’
‘And what of the horse? We are going to help this horse, aren’t we?’ Bramble’s voice became very stiff.
‘Yes, we will help her too.’
‘Because, child,’ Bramble continued, ‘if you tricked me into helping you and this, this dragon… you will find me less than amused.’
‘Bramble, I did promise to help the dragon, but they are in the same wagon. We can save Wendy as well.’
The horse’s body suddenly went rigid beneath Mollie’s hands and he made no further attempts at conversation. The only sound was the steady rhythm of hoof on dirt and the wind shaking the trees.
Mollie could see the fairgrounds before too long, and she was glad to be at their destination.
‘I’ll wait here,’ Bramble said, stopping short of the low wooden fence that surrounded the grounds. ‘Bring her to me when you’re done.’
Chapter 10
Mollie slid off Bramble and made her way to the back of the fair.
All the vans and stalls around her were silent, apart from the odd cough or snore. Mollie felt as though she was creeping between sleeping dogs and that any minute one of them would wake up and attack her. She shuddered at the thought. What would happen if someone did find me?
Mollie had a vision of the fat lady with the mole finding her and taking her to Cudgel. He in turn would drag her around the yard by the hair, swearing at the top of his voice. Then all the people from the vans would come out and laugh or throw things at her.
This thought gave Mollie pause. She hid at the base of a thick tree and gathered her wits.
Don’t be silly, Mollie, she told herself. You have friends in trouble, and if anyone does find you, bite them and run.
She looked up and saw the picture of Whitestaff and Wendy painted on the side of Cudgel’s van.
They’re the reason you’re here. If you were trapped and alone, you would want someone to free you. So stick to the plan!
Head down and feet light, she skulked past the van and over to the enclosure. Mollie climbed up the ramp and onto the viewing platform so she could see the captives inside.
‘Whitestaff. Wendy. I’ve come back!’
Wendy woke from her sleep and blinked at Mollie casually, as if the young woman had always been there.
Whitestaff rolled onto his stomach and opened his green eyes. He gave a small shout when he saw his friend through the iron bars above.
‘Mollie, you’re okay! That’s fantastic! You have no idea how glad I am to see you!’ he said.
‘It’s good to see you too, Whitestaff. I had to come and see you to say goodbye.’
‘Goodbye?’
‘Yes, I’ve come to break you both free!’
Whitestaff cheered but Wendy snorted gruffly.
‘What if I don’t want to be free?’
‘Why would you want to stay all cooped up like this?’ asked Mollie in wonder.
‘Well, for starters,’ replied Wendy, ‘I get all the food I want. Also, people come from everywhere to stare at my beauty. I will not leave this place. It is my home.’
Mollie’s mouth was agape. ‘You can’t possibly want to stay here, Wendy. Horses are meant to run wild and—’
‘WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?’ Wendy shrieked. ‘I AM NO COMMON HORSE.’ She spat the word as though it were a dirty thing that had crawled into her mouth.
‘I AM THE VERY LAST UNICORN.’ She huffed loudly and turned her back on the both of them.
‘Don’t mind her, Mollie. You know she’s…’ Whitestaff didn’t know how to finish, but Mollie knew what he meant. Any animal would go crazy if it were locked up in a cage for years on end.
‘Whitestaff,’ said Mollie, putting Wendy temporarily out of her mind, ‘how can I get you closer to the egg?’
‘You’re not going to, Mollie,’ answered the dragon.
‘What ever do you mean? I’m sure we can think of something.’
‘Of course we can think of something. All I do is think of ways to escape this prison, but not if it means risking your safety again.’
‘And why not? I came all this way to help.’
‘I know,’ the dragon said patiently, ‘but last time Cudgel caught you, and I thought something terrible had happened.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Look, Mollie. I’m stuck here with nothing to lose. If Cudgel catches me breaking out, he won’t do anything he hasn’t done before. But what if he catches you? What if he learns you are special? He’ll put you in a cage for sure then you’ll be stuck like me.’
‘And you don’t think I’ve already thought of that? I know this is dangerous, but we have one chance at this, Whitestaff. Tomorrow you’ll be gone and there’ll be no way I can follow you. Now are you going to accept my help or not?’
‘What if it all goes wrong and you get hurt? I’d never be able to forgive myself. Friends don’t put each other in harm’s way.’
‘True, but if I were stuck in there without any chance of going home, how do you think you would feel? Rotten, that’s how. And wouldn’t you be doing the same thing, I am right this instant?’
Whitestaff thought for a moment.
‘Yes,’ he said to her through the bars. ‘I would do the same thing you are doing now.’
Mollie nodded. ‘Good. Now stop worrying and tell me what to do.’
‘Okay, here is my plan,’ the dragon said.
Mollie leaned closer.
‘I’ll get Cudgel to come out here, when he does— you sneak in and get the egg. Then, when Cudgel goes back into his van, slip me the egg then run away as fast as you can. Hopefully you’ll be gone before he notices the egg is missing.’
‘How will you get him to leave the van?’ Mollie asked.
‘I’ll pretend I’m sick. Or better yet, I’ll pretend someone is stealing me. That would bring him out.’
‘Okay,’ Mollie said. ‘I’ll wait behind his van.’
She turned to walk away.
‘Wait, Mollie. Before you go… I might not see you again and, well, I don’t know what to say.’ The dragon stared after the girl with his massive eyes. ‘Thank you, you have been kinder than anyone I have ever met.’
Mollie gave him a smile and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘I hope you make it home.’
Chapter 11
Mollie quietly made her way to the back of Cudgel’s van. She looked anxiously at the sky; sunrise was still a long way off. She drew her clothes tighter around her when she realised she was shivering.
Am I really that cold?
Before she had time to think, there came a deep, heart-wrenching moan from Whitestaff’s cell. Mollie was about to get up and investigate before she caught herself.
Don’t be daft, Mollie. That’s the signal!
The next series of events happened in a slow moving fuzz to Mollie. As she was trying to gather her wits, Cudgel came bounding out of the van with a thunderous clatter and raced over to look on his precious animals.
‘Help! Thief!’ he yelled.
Mollie was crouched behind the van. She could see Cudgel’s bare feet kicking up dirt as he ran.
In a nervous rush, she dashed around to the front of the van and leapt in the open door. The egg was exactly where it had been when she had spied it through the window earlier. She picked it up hurriedly, not even smelling the filthy odour around her, and hopped out the door and back behind the van.
From there she searched for a place to hide.
Thump, a heavy hand landed on her shoulder. Mollie looked up to see the round face of Audrey, the woman from the hoop-throwing game. Her mouth was grinning and her fingers tightened around Mollie’s collarbone.
‘Cudgel,’ she shouted. ‘I’ve got her. Come quick!’
Mollie hugged the egg tight, and twisted out of the women’s grip. She ran blindly towards Wendy and Whitestaff.
It was too late when she realised this was a big mistake. Cudgel was of course still in there, tending to his dragon, and she was heading right for him.
With Cudgel in front and Audrey behind, Mollie had nowhere to go but up onto the viewing platform.
She bounced up the flimsy walkway and looked down. Cudgel was about to enter the moaning dragon’s cage when he heard Mollie coming up the ramp. He craned his neck to see her through the bars and met Mollie’s eyes with his own.
It took Cudgel a second to realise what was happening, and when he saw the egg in Mollie’s arms, his face burned red with anger.
Whitestaff stopped mid-yelp, and Wendy, who was wondering what all the commotion was about, batted her eyelids and clopped up and down nervously.
Mollie could hear Audrey puffing and panting behind her. She was hopelessly trapped. Her mind raced for a solution. Thankfully, one came.
‘Butterflies!’ she shouted.
Cudgel, who was about to come out of the enclosures and nab the girl hesitated at the word.
It was a big mistake, for upon hearing it, Wendy went into a kicking frenzy. Just like before, she kicked an