Prelude:

          “There is breaking news coming out of Washington this morning,” the commentator read from the teleprompter. The screen shifted from a full-screen shot of the reporter to one of the reporter in a square of his own, and in the lower corner, an image showing the White House. “Apparently there has been an attack on the White House this morning. A large vehicle broke through the fence surrounding the south side of the White House just off the Washington Monument ellipse. The vehicle appears to have been a large SUV which, according to eyewitnesses, was traveling at a very high rate of speed before it slammed through the fence and careened directly toward the White House.

       “The vehicle exploded on the lawn approximately one hundred yards from the President’s residence where he did, in fact, spend the night last night. We don’t know if the vehicle was carrying a bomb, or if White House Security fired a weapon large enough to cause the explosion. There was only one man in the SUV, and according to the reports we are receiving, he was apparently of middle-eastern descent.

       “The president was awakened by the explosion, but according to his press staff, there will be no changes in the president’s schedule today.

        “In other news….”

 

Chapter One 

 Ambling through the room like it was a landscape being watched by a group of people on safari, the cat jumped up on the windowsill and watched the rain. 

“Bull, what the hell you doing?”

The cat, Bull Durham, licked a paw and watched the raindrops run down the window.

“It doesn’t look like it’s going to be a good day for chasing buffalo, does it.”  Bull roams the neighborhood 24/7, and visits Hap mostly when he’s cold, or wet, or hungry.  He has every pissin' spot within five blocks marked, and most of the females in the neighborhood are familiar with him. It is probable that Bull has fathered more kittens than the number of fans who show up for Saturday afternoon Mariner games.

Bull turns a disgusted eye toward Hap.

“Look at that rain, Bull! You want to go out in there?”

Nonchalantly, Bull turned his head back to the window, and started licking his fur.

Rain, during this time of the year, was a daily occurrence.  Generally it wasn’t a hard rain, like those big drenches that fall on the Texas panhandle, and it wasn’t a trickle rainfall like those you can walk through and hardly get wet.  I guess it was more just a “gentle” rain.  It made everything gray, and certainly not warm, but then if you wore a heavy coat, like you have to wear over on the other side of the mountains in the winter, you get all sweaty and uncomfortable. 

This time of the year many of the folks here in the city dress smart, warm, but not too warm.  They carry umbrellas and small, thin, leather carrying cases. In the mornings, they disappear into the many tall buildings populating the downtown section of the city; then later in the day, they emerge from the buildings and disappear into the streets toward the suburbs. Many do, but not all. Some of them live in this part of town. 

Hap picks up Bull Durham and takes him to his bowl near the garbage can. “Here ya go, buddy,” he says, pouring fresh, chunky, cat food into his bowl. “That’ll slow those visions of fresh hyena meat away for a while.”

The orange tabby meows approval, then puts his head in the bowl and starts crunching away.  Later he’ll find his favorite spot on the couch, snuggle in, and purr contentedly until sleep overtakes him.

Hap puts on his overcoat and walks down to the mission. 

“Mornin’ Hap,” Elaine says.  Elaine is a large, overweight lady who works in the kitchen. “ ‘Ju get wet this morning?” she asks.

“Mornin’ Elaine,” Hap replies. “Not too bad,” he says, removing his coat.

“Here, ‘hun,” she says, handing him a wet rag.  “The tables need wiping.”

Hap is two inches short of six-feet tall; thin, and he weighs in at 165 pounds. Most of the folks in the mission know him as a loner; but he’s always friendly and helpful.  He’s been working, and volunteering, at the mission longer than anyone remembers, even Hap. He has no memory of his life before he started showing up at the Mission; sometimes the visions he has confuse and disorient him.

When he finishes work in the rainy season, he usually heads back to his apartment, but on occasion he stops at Occidental Park to see if there’s anyone there he knows. Occidental Park is around the corner from Pioneer Square and near Safeco Field. The homeless in Occidental Park hunker down beneath blankets of newspaper, or cardboard, or whatever they can find. Sleeping humans on the park’s benches look like couch-sized potatoes The lucky ones stake claim over grates where warm air flows from dark and mysterious places.  Wine helps, too.

“Hey, Hap,” says someone sitting on a bench with only his eyes peering from the folds of a heavy blanket.

Hap looks down and sees one of his friends from the Missionary. “Hey, Freddy.”

“You got any hootch, man?”

“What do you need, Freddy?”

“A drink of most anything would do,” Freddy replied, shifting his large bulk under the blanket.

“You gonna get wet out here tonight, Freddy. Why don’t you go on back over to the Mission. Getta dry bed tonight.”

“Hap, you know old Freddy, needs a drink, bad.”

“If I find you something, will you go back to shelter?”

“Anything, man, anything.”

Hap walks to a nearby all-night grocery that deals mostly alcohol to the homeless people who sometimes find their way over from the park; and peanuts to baseball fans when the Mariners are in town.  He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a five-dollar bill and buys two cans of beer.  He escorts Freddy to a dry spot near a vent and pops open the beers.

“You know this is not what I should be doing don’t you?”

Freddy takes a long swig. “But that’s why you’re my friend, man.  You help a guy when he’s down.”

“I suppose,” Hap says, swallowing a cold drink of his beer. He looks out across the park and his eyes fill with a swank out-door-café on the Champs E’lysee in Paris. The man’s head, the one in the dark suit with his back to Hap, explodes when a bullet fired from a limo that had been sitting on the curb, hits him straight-on in the forehead. 

Hap shakes his head and drives the vision back. “C’mon, man, we gotta get you over to the Mission,” and together, they trudge through the darkened street.

“Hands up old man,” a voice says behind Hap.

Hap looks over his shoulder into the eyes of a young man wearing a dark hood over his head, and raises his hands.

“You too, old man,” the thug says to Freddy, poking him in the back.

“What’chu want?” Freddy asks, pulling his arms out of his blanket and holding them up.

“What do you think, you ol’ bastard.”

“We ain’t got much money, kid,” Hap tells him, “you need to be over in Pioneer where the people with money hangs out.”

The kid pulls out a revolver.  “Fuck you. Now give me your money.”

Hap pulls out the change from the five-dollar bill and the two cans of beer. “Here ya go.”

The kid takes the change, then hits him over the head with the revolver and runs away.

“You fucking punk, bastard,” Freddy yells after him, and throws his partially still full can of beer in the direction the kid fled. “That little son-of-a-bitch. Guess he didn’t want my money,” he said, holding out an empty hand.

Hap’s mind filled with black and white pictures of dead soldiers spread across a table with a bright light shining down from the ceiling. “That’s the one,” he said to the others around the table while pointing a finger at the picture.

“C’mon Hap let’s get on over to the Mission. They got some first aid over there; looks like you might be bleeding.”

The pictures faded into black and the other men around the table left the room. Hap shook his head and heard Freddy talking.

The next morning, Bull Durham, stretched and clawed at the corner of the couch. Using the keen sense of sight cats are endowed with, he looked about the room and saw nothing out of the ordinary; and he sniffed the air, in the hopes that something different than the usual smells in the room would tell him there was something he could pounce on and kill; his food bowl was empty and he was hungry.

Later that the morning, Hap came home, his head bandaged and sore.  He fed Bull, and fixed himself a sandwich with what was left of a container of bologna and some cheese in the refrigerator. Afterward he watched a little tv, then went to bed. 

In a dream he walked with three young children in an unfamiliar city park along a river.  They fed ducks and geese at a nearby pond from a bread bag filled with stale pieces of bread; then they ate a lunch of cheese and sandwiches from a basket someone had prepared for them. After lunch they walked to the river’s edge and tossed rocks in the water and watched the boats pulling water-skiers; then the children played on the playground equipment and Hap watched while they jumped, and ran, and laughed.

When he awoke he looked for the children before realizing it had been a dream. He thought about the children and thought they might be someone he knew, but he couldn’t think of a time when he actually had known any children, or ever been to a river park.  By now it was late afternoon and since he was feeling better, he walked back down to the Mission.

Chapter Two

 In high school, Lucy Hinkle was one of those girls who gave definition to the term “air-head.” It seems whenever you looked at her she was smiling, or laughing, and always talking: talking a lot and talking about nothing.  The boys loved the way her blonde hair bounced when she walked, they loved the way her blue eyes sparkled; and they loved how they thought she should model for Playboy someday. They were also impressed with how well she played a guitar and sang country-music at some of the  school assemblies.

Lucy thought Rocket Beaudro was cute even when they were in high school. By the time of their senior year he stood tall enough to measure six foot, in his shoes; he was lanky and she liked that, but what she liked the best were his big, blue eyes. Of course she and the Rocket, as he was known then, and now, never found themselves in the back of his truck out on old Finley road in the middle of the night where the other kids went to watch the “submarines race” back in the day.  Nor did they ever put down a six-pack, or two, together; at least not like the Rocket did with Mary Stoner, and Lizzy McBeth, and Elaine Hunter, and God only knows who else. Of course everyone knew those three girls were regulars out on old Finley road; and they didn’t much care who knew about it. In fact, they were known to approach the guys they were interested in going out there with and coyly asking for rides. Someone close to them once said they were never turned down. 

That’s not to say, of course, that those kinds of things hadn’t rolled through Lucy’s mind; after all, she did enjoy those very things with most of the football team that Saturday night before Homecoming their senior year.

“Hey Lucy, wanna go to a party tonight,” Lance Bennet asked, that fateful night.

Everyone knew Lance was the quarterback on the team; and there were  four or five of the girls in the senior class who knew Lance was good at much more than just throwing the ball down the field.  In fact, the only girl in the school who hadn’t fantasized about Lance was one lonely, and pretty-darned ugly, ninth grader who wore coke bottle lenses in her glasses, and no doubt had never even seen him.

“Sure,” Lucy responded, “where’s it gonna be?”

“I’ll pick you up and we’ll go together.”

Lance came to her house at eight and they drove out to Ronnie Hepner’s barn where Lucy quickly realized she was the only female there.

“Where are the other girls?”

“We took a vote Lucy, and decided you were the girl we wanted out here tonight,” he said, offering her a paper cup full of Jim Beam.

Lucy looked around and noticed most of the guys were looking at her. “Is that right, Lance,” she said, her heart rhythm quickening while she tossed the whiskey down.

“What did you boys have in mind? Maybe a little scrimmaging?”

“Yeah, something like that,” he said, refilling her cup.

By the time she got home, the sky was beginning to turn pink. She could hardly walk.   

Of course, the Rocket didn’t play football, so he wasn’t there that most infamous of nights in he Hepner barn. He mostly worked on his truck, and boxed groceries for the older ladies in town who shopped at Sherman’s down on Olympia. Mary, Lizzy, and Elaine knew the Rocket well though; in fact it was Lizzy gave him his name after one particularly eventful night on the river. She was the first.

Lucy, the head cheerleader that year, went after Rocket, but his schedule was full.  That’s why they didn’t hook-up, if you know what I mean, until after high school.

Here’s how it happened.  One summer night, a couple years after graduation, Lucy went into Shermans, down on Olympia, and there he was. 

“Hey Rocket,” Lucy said, purposefully in his aisle at Sherman’s one late summer night.

Rocket, on his knees, pricing a box of noodles for the shelf, looked up at her. She was wearing a short skirt and stood close enough so her knees were almost touching his shoulder. When he looked up, it wasn’t her eyes that caught his attention.

“Oh, hi Lucy,” he said, embarrassed that she caught him looking up her skirt.

“Whatchu doing?” she said, repositioning herself for him to look up at her again.

“Not much, just pricing these noodles,” he said, glancing up again and noticing this time that she had forgotten to put on any underwear.

“What time you get off, Rocket?”

“Midnight.”

“I’ll be back. Ok?”

Rocket’s heart rate sped up. “Sure, I’ll be here.”

When she didn’t show, the Rocket crawled into his truck and drove on home.  When he got there, she was waiting for him.

“Hi, Rocket,” she said, letting her voice sing a little for him.  “But better late than never, right?” She ran her hand over his shoulder and spoke directly to his face.

“Lucy, what are you up to?”

“Come with me, and I’ll show you,” she said, holding her car keys up. “Want to?”

Lucy went to beautician school right out of high school, then got a full-time job in a local beauty parlor.  She had rented a small apartment near the big grocery store on Washington.

Rocket crawled into the passenger seat of her car like a dignitary heading for some kind of a state meeting.  He lit up a cigarette and let the smoke curl about his now while he looked out the window into the dark of the night and thought about what exciting events the next few hours might bring. “Let’s go.”

That was the first night of too many to count; by the time summer faded into autumn, the Rocket had taken up residence with Lucy.

 

 Chapter Three

 When he got back to the Mission, dinner was being served, so he took a position in line. When he got to the serves, he saw Elaine.  “Hey, what happened to you?” she asked, “You’re all bandaged up.”

“Nothing much. Guess I shoulda ducked.”

“I guess. What’s the other guy look like?”

“An asshole.”

“Really? I think I know him.”

Hap looked incredulously at her.

“Just kidding, Hap.”

“You don’t really know him do you?” he asked in all sincerity.

“You sure it wasn’t my ex?” she asked, trying lighten the conversation a bit.

“Does he have orange hair?”

“Last I saw him he didn’t have any hair at all.”

“I don’t think it was him.  This was a kid, anyway.”

She filled his plate and when he shuffled away, he saw a shiny black car coming down an unfamiliar street, with the side window open and a man’s face he recognized was looking at him.

“Hey, Hap, watch it!” A large black woman with a shawl wrapped about her shoulders said, trying to keep from spilling the food on her tray when he bumped her.

“Sorry, I was just…”

“Well, sorry ain’t gonna get it around here, Bud,” she said, filling her cup with diet coke. “You just watch it, you hear?”

The large cafeteria-style room was filled with people who had spent most of the day trying to keep dry and warm in the streets.  Hap filled his cup with milk and looked for a place to sit.

“Hap,” somebody across the room yelled. Hap looked and saw Freddy’s arms waving in the air. “Over here, Ha….”

Hap ducked for cover and when he did his food plate went everywhere. Confused, but scared, he crawled toward the door.  People scattered back, giving him room.

“What the hell?” Someone asked, amazed at Hap’s behavior. “What’s he doing?”

Elaine shouted, “Give him room,” and came running to his aide.  “Hap,” she yelled, “Hap,” she repeated, pulling on his shoulder.

He looked up at her, and returned to the present. He stopped crawling and slowly go up.

Someone yelled, “Stupid bastard,” but Hap didn’t respond.  He knew where he was but he was confused.

“C’mon, Hap, let’s get you cleaned up,” Elaine said, escorting him to one of the back rooms.

“What happed?” Freddy asked, standing at the door, watching Elaine wipe food off Hap’s clothing and hair. 

“I had another one,” he replied.

“Another what?”

“He get’s visions,” Elaine said.

“What does he think, he’s Jesus Christ or something?”

“This is no time to try to be funny,” Elaine said, squeezing water from a rag, “he gets these more and more all the time. Haven’t you noticed?”

“You all right, Hap,” Freddy asked, delaying any response he might have to Elaine’s comment.

“Yeah, I’ll be ok.”

“I think he needs some counseling or something, but he doesn’t want to do it,” she said.

“I’ll be ok.”

Freddy looked deep into Hap’s eyes. “Maybe it was the mugging.”

“What?” she asked.

“Didn’t he tell you how he got all banged up?”

“I asked him, but he didn’t say much.”

“Tell her, Hap.”

“Kid had a gun. The one that mugged us. He hit me on the head with it. That’s all.  Just a flesh-wound. I told you, I’ll be ok.”

“Did he knock you out?”

“No, it wasn’t that serious.”

“Well, you take care of yourself,” she said, helping him to his feet. “Now let’s get back in there and get you some food.”

After he ate, he went back to the apartment and fed Bull Durham is dinner.

“I’m ok, Bull,” he said, petting the cat while it sat in his lap and purred demurely.  “I just don’t know where the hell these visions are coming from.”

As was his ritual, he watched a little tv, then went to bed. Then, as usual, he wrestled with the covers and pillows while he slept light enough to awake at the drop of a feather. 

Lying beneath a car parked in a street filled with rubble Hap used his ears and eyes to triangulate on the shooter.  The building that only minutes earlier stood proud on the other side of the round-about was no longer: piles of bricks, and shattered glass and an immense cloud of dust rolled away in all directions. Hap closed his eyes when the cloud surrounded him and the car he was hiding beneath; the sniper’s bullets stoppped. The dust covered Hap’s face; he started coughing, and was struggling to get a breath when he awoke.  Bull Durham sat beside him and meowed for breakfast.

  Soaked in perspiration, Hap looked at the cat, then reached out to stroke his fur. What the hell was that, he thought, thankful, once again that it was only a dream. Bull purred loudly and swung his head beneath Hap’s hand to find that spot where he knew he could find the greatest amount of pressure to rub against his neck and head. Then he purred again, jumped off the bed and looked over his shoulder, telling Hap it was time to fill his bowl with more bits and bites. 

  “You never give up do you.” Hap swung he legs over the side of the bed and suddenly the pain from the wound on his head returned.  Carefully, he ran his head over the spot where the revolver had come into contact with his skull and felt the bandages. He went to the bathroom and while looking at himself in the mirror, saw a  man wearing the mask standing behind him. Something was hurtling through the air at Hap’s head, he flinched and when he did, the present scene in the bathroom came back.  He turned and saw only Bull standing in the doorway, still meowing for his breakfast.

“Damn, Bull, hold on, will ya?”

Hap went to the kitchen cupboards and stood as though confused; the cloud had cleared and the sniper had started firing again.  He rolled from under the car opposite where the gunfire was coming from, pulled his Glock 38 from its holster and took aim, holding his arm steady on the fender of the car.

The sniper was firing at will, and had been long enough for Hap to know there was no reciprocating fire coming his way.  Hap watched patiently, waiting for the sniper to relax just enough to let his head appear from behind the window frame.  It didn’t take long and when Hap pulled the trigger on his gun, the sniper fell out the window onto the rubble filled sidewalk below.

When the vision left, Hap found himself sitting on the kitchen floor, leaning against the cupboards, wondering why this was happening with more and more frequency lately.  Glock 38, he thought, what the hell is that, I’ve never owned a gun. The visions were like movies; he was always in them, but yet never fully connected to whatever happened in them.  What bothered him was his total loss of consciousness of the present moment when the visions came to him.

He checked the clock over the sink and saw he needed to hurry if he was to get to the Mission this morning in time to help serve breakfast.

Wet, cold, weather meant more mouths to feed and the lines were long this morning.  Hap saw Freddy near the door.

“C’mon Freddy, let’s go help dish food this morning.”

 

Chapter Four

 It didn’t take long for Lucy to realize she didn’t know the Rocket as well as she thought. Granted, he was good at one thing; and that one thing would keep Lucy satisfied for the time being, but he wasn’t too good at too many other things; especially things that mattered – like having a good job.  He did have a job, but it wasn’t, in Lucy’s mind, a ‘good’ job.

“You working today?” she said, running a curling iron through her hair.

“Not sure, Luce. I’ll call down to Bodine’s and find out.”

He picked up the phone and dialed the number.  “No one’s answering.”

“What time do they open?”

“Nine.”

“What time is it, Rock?”

He looked at the digital clock on the kitchen counter. “Seven-thirty.”

Lucy sometimes wondered just how many tacos the Rocket had on his combination-plate, maybe he’s short one. It wasn’t that Rocket was a bad guy, he was simply missing some of the motivation Lucy had for work and meeting people. She loved Rocket, and she even hoped soon maybe they would get married.  She knew as time went by, she would change him into the man she knew he could be.  Meanwhile, she bided her time and enjoyed that one thing he did better than anyone she had ever known; including the boys she met in the Hepner barn on that cold Saturday night in high school.

Rocket had even fewer ideas about how to cook than he had about how to fix a leaking pipe.  Because he didn’t know anything about it, he relied on Lucy to fix all his meals, even on those days when he had nothing in particular to do since the Bodine’s didn’t need him. 

She went to the refrigerator and took out the eggs and bacon.  Rocket loved eggs and bacon; especially since his mother didn’t cook either, he’d not had many decent meals in his life.

“Would you like to help me, Rocket?”

Though it was only seven-fortyfive in the morning, he had already plopped himself on the couch in the living room and was watching “Good Morning, America.”

“What?”

“Would you like to help me?”

It was the last thing he wanted to do, but their relationship was still blossoming and he knew he should do something so he turned off the television and went into the kitchen. “What can I do?”

In a few minutes she had him setting the table, putting the bacon in a pan and scrambling the eggs while she went back into the bathroom and put the finishing touches on her make-up.  “You’re a sweetheart, Rocket,” she said, coming back into the kitchen.

When he turned and looked at her, all thoughts about bacon frying in the pan; eggs being scrambled, “Good Morning, America;” Bodine’s Garage, or anything else, completely left his mind. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, putting his arms around her and kissing her full on the mouth.

“Rocket, I have to go to work.”

“You can be late.”

“What about your bacon and eggs? Don’t you want to eat breakfast with me?”

“Later,” he said, snuggling his mouth against her neck, and running his hands over her backside.

“Rocket, honey, I don’t have time,” she said, then losing her breath, whispered, “for this. I can’t be…” she said, giggling, “… late.”

“They won’t fire you.”

“Rocket, I have to shampoo Mrs. Verstegen’s hair in twenty-five minutes. She will not want to wait for me.”

Rocket was relentless in his pursuit, and Lucy was weak in her resolve. In minutes they were sprawled across the kitchen table embraced in coital bliss. Had anyone come to the front door, or been in the front yard, they would have Lucy’s voice expressing the pleasure she had when the Rocket did what he did best.

Afterwards, in the bathroom she quickly brushed her hair hoping to get it back to some semblance of what it looked like earlier, she said, loud enough for him to hear in the kitchen, “You’re gonna get me fired.”

“No way.”

“Yes, way, you bad boy.” She smiled into the mirror.

Back in the kitchen, Rock worked on the eggs and bacon. By the time she was ready, the eggs were runny and the bacon was as limp as a man with erectile dysfunction. Standing, because she didn’t have time to sit, she tossed a few bites down and said, “Maybe you could watch Martha Stewart this morning and get some tips on cooking, these eggs might kill us both.”

“What’s wrong with’em?”

“They aren’t cooked, and I like my bacon crisp.”

“Didn’t hear you complaining a few minutes ago,” he said, smiling at her and pointing to the table.

She tossed a dish-towel at him, said, “I’ll see you about six,”  blew him a kiss and left out the front door.

Rock went back to the living room, plopped back down in front of the television and hit the ‘on’ button on the remote control. By the time Martha Stewart came on he was sound asleep.

At six, Lucy, tired, hungry, and worn out after a long day of washing, combing, brushing, coloring, and doing permanents, walked in the front door and went into the kitchen hoping against hope that she would find Rocket fixing her something to eart. What she saw was breakfast dishes, glasses, forks and spoons, toast crumbs and all – where they were when she left that morning.  The burner under the pan where the eggs were partially scrambled was still on.  She felt its heat, then she started warming up.

“Rocket!” she yelled, then again, “Hey, Rocket, where are you?” She went to the bedroom and found the bed like she had left it earlier, unmade; dry shaving cream lined the sink in the bathroom, a towel was lying on the floor; the television was on.  She went into the bedroom and changed her clothes; then she brushed her hair into shape, changed her make-up, and walked out the front door.

Five minutes later she slammed the front wheels of her blue 1978 Pinto against the sidewalk next to the Good Times Tavern; a place where she and the Rocket frequently hung out. She walked in the front door and looked over the clientele.  She didn’t see him, but she did see Charles Washington, sitting at the bar.

“Hey, Charles, you seen the Rocket in here today?” she asked, her eyes moving from his, scanning the room.

“Can’t say I have, Lucy.  Did you lose him?”

Looking into Charles’s deep, black eyes, she responded, “Yeah. I guess I did.  I don’t know where he is.”

“Take a load off, Luce,” Charles said, pulling a stool back from the bar for her to sit on.

Lucy sat down and ordered a beer. “I don’t know where he goes. I called down to Bodine’s and they haven’t seen him today either.”

“Probably went fishing, or hunting. Did you check his rods and guns?”

“Didn’t think of that,” she said, running her tongue along the edge of the cold schooner of beer; not realizing that Charles was watching her like a cat watches a fat mouse.

“I know ol’ Rocket-man,” Charles said, his biggest smile lengthening across his face, “He’s gone fishing with some of the boys.”

“Ya think?”

“Some of’em were in here earlier talking about it. Now that I think about it, seems like someone did mention Rocket’s name. They were going out by the Snake somewhere. I guess the steelhead are running.”

“Why didn’t you go, Charles?”

He watched her tongue slide over the rim of the glass. “I don’t fish, Lucy.”

She let the beer run over the lip of the glass into her open mouth, swallowed, then looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Me neither,” she replied, then looking more closely at him, she said, “I ain’t seen you in a long time, Charles. Where you been?”

“A long way away,” he said, smiling at her.

She liked his smile. “How far?” she asked, flashing her pretty eyelids at him.

“New York.”

“Never been there.”

“Furthest I’d ever been from Kennewick, before going to New York, was,” he stopped for emphasis, looked at the ceiling, then for humorous effect, said, “Finley.”

They laughed and soon were involved in a conversation that led them back into their high school years, then due to the influence of the alcohol, turned toward each other. By mid-night they were parked near the river lagoon in Finley, in the backseat of Charlie’s rental.

          “I haven’t been out here in ages,” Lucy said.

          “I was never out here at night,” Charles said.

          “Would you like me to show you what you missed?”

It was close to one in the morning when the tires on Lucy’s Pinto churned the gravel in the driveway. When the Rocket heard her pull in, he shut off the tv, and waited. 

“Where the hell you been?”

“Had to work late, tonight ‘hon,” she said, walking into the kitchen.  “You had anything to eat yet?”

He walked into the kitchen and leaned against the counter. “I ain’t hungry.”

“What did you do today? Did you forget to clean the kitchen after breakfast this morning?” she asked, scraping dried scrambled eggs of the pan. He didn’t say anything, so she turned her head toward him. “Did you?”

“Them ain’t the clothes you were wearing when you left this morning.”

“I had an accident at work, so I had to come home and change.”

“I was here all day. I didn’t see you,” he bluffed.

“I spilled some dye on my uniform, so I hurried home. It was about dinner time. You were nowhere to be seen. When I got back to the shop a bunch of high school girls came in.  Big dance, tonight and they thought we were open later than we are. Then when we finished, some of us went to dinner. I’ll fix you something; what do you want?”

Rocket decided to change the subject. “I went fishing this afternoon with some of the guys. Here, look what I caught.” He opened the refrigerator and removed a large, shiny steelhead.

“Looks good,” she said, happy that the conversation had turned.  “We’ll have it this weekend, ok?”

Chapter Five

         While the Rocket had that one thing he was good at, Lucy had a few things that she wasn’t good at: cooking, cleaning, being on time for anything, and taking her birth control pills. It wasn’t long after they ate the steelhead she began feeling ill in the mornings.  Sometimes at work, she had to excuse herself to vomit in the ladies room; and it wasn’t long after that she started missing her periods, then she started thinking she might be pregnant.

When she went into the pharmacy to buy a pregnancy test kit, the first thing she did was walk around the aisles, trying to look like she was trying to find something, but what she was really doing was trying to determine if there was anyone working the store that she knew. Seeing no one she knew, she found the aisle where the kits were displayed, grabbed one and tried to hide it in her hands while approaching the check out counter.  The clerk was a woman about Lucy’s age, but Lucy didn’t know her so she took a deep breath and laid the kit down. 

“Hi Lucy,” the clerk said.

“Hi,” she responded, thinking Oh my God, who the hell is she?

“These come in real handy sometimes,” the clerk said, swiping the kit across the barcode reader. “When me and Henry got pregnant, this is how we found out,” she said, holding the kit up. “You didn’t know Henry, he went to school over on the other side of the river.”

Lucy was so embarrassed she thought she might actually lose control of herself. “No, I don’t remember him,” she said, hurrying to get the kit into her purse and out of site. “See ya,” she said, walking toward the door.

“Bye. Tell the Rocket I said hey, ok?”

Lucy kept walking toward the exit door, pretending not to hear. She walked straight to her Pinto and drove home, where walked straight to the bathroom, and unpackaged the kit. Sixty-eight seconds later she watched the “positive test” color appear on the strip.

She re-read the instructions on the package and ran the test again.  Sixty-three seconds later the first test was confirmed. She was pregnant. 

Twenty-four weeks later, and just four weeks early, little Billy Hinkle was born: seven pounds, twelve ounces; nineteen inches; and pink all over.  Pink that is, until he was about five weeks old, then he started turning darker, and darker, and darker. That was when Lucy knew Billy’s real father was Charles Washington.

A few days later, Rocket was sitting on the floor with baby Billy lying on his back between the Rocket’s legs. Holding the diaper whose contents had caused his eyes to tear, Rocket said,  “Way to go, Billy. You got me all teared up, again.” He laid the dirty diaper aside and put a clean diaper on the baby.  Looking at Billy, he had to admit, there was something about this baby that seemed rather odd. He held Billy’s toes in his hand and rubbed them looking at how much lighter the underside of his foot was than the top.  “Lucy!”

“What?” she replied, coming into the living room from the bedroom.

“Have you noticed how dark little Billy is getting?”

Lucy’s heart stopped. “I guess I have, why?”

“Don’t look right to me.”

Lucy wanted to grab Billy and run far away.  The thick and heavy-rolling dirt cloud that she knew would, sooner or later, envelope them had finally picked up and was moving quickly toward its target. “What do you mean?” she asked, wanting to block the cloud.

“Look at this,” he said, holding Billy’s foot for her to see.  “Look how much lighter his skin is on the bottom than on the top.”

“Some babies are darker than others.”

“Yeah, they are.  ‘Specially little black babies.”

Lucy felt the cloud envelop her and swirl about her head. Light and sound in the room was sucked into its darkness, she was dizzy, disoriented and sick to her stomach. 

“Who’s this boy’s father, Lucy?”

“You are!”

“Lucy, you’re lying to me. Look at him. His father is a black man.”

The room continued spinning and not wanting to fall onto the floor, Lucy sat down.  “It was an accident, Rocket.”

“Accident? How the hell do you expect me to believe that? What, am I stupid?”

“It was a one-time thing, Rocket. I was looking for you at the Good Times and I ran across an old friend.”

“Who?”

“Please, Rocket, that’s not important. It was a one-time thing, I swear.” Her head hung over the table.

“You’re so full of crap! I’ve always known about you.”

“I know you have.”

“The famous slut who fucked the football team at Hepner’s barn. God, I thought maybe you’d changed. I thought maybe it was just me and you, Lucy.”

Sobbing, she replied, “It is Rocket, it’s just you and me. Nobody else.”

“Except Billy!” he shouted. “How can we go on when I know he is someone else’s son? Not mine.” Rocket grabbed his jacket and headed toward the door. “See ya around, Lucy.”

 

In later chapters, we’ll find that Billy’s son, Charles Washington, has spent years looking for him.

Chapter Five

 Years later. Lucy is singing honky tonk in the local Good Times tavern on weekends. Billy is five years old.  She get entangled with a series of men, she’s on meth, strung out, she leaves Billy home alone.  He starts a fire, burns down her house, and ends up in foster care.  He will experience a series of foster homes and people, then on one weekend the last family, while traveling to visit friends in western Washington, will be involved in a accident that kills everyone except Billy.  He is thrown from the car and lands in a tangle of ferns and blueberries. Unconscious, while the accident is investigated, he lies undiscovered.  A few hours following the accident, he awakes and walks into the belly of the largest metropolitan city in the Pacific Northwest: Seattle, Washington.

 By the time Billy was four years old, Lucy had  joined a country-western band. The members had heard her sing during some of the school-plays, and approached her to sing for them.  They called themselves “Honey Bee and the Hive,” and they played weekends, mostly in the Good Times tavern.

Lucy didn’t mind being the “Honey Bee,” the problem was everyone in town knew her as Lucy Hinkle, so she couldn’t fully inherit the persona, unless they went out of town, which was infrequent. Once they played in Pendleton, and she was a big hit down there. Pendleton folks were cowboy folks and she found she sang louder, and better, and with more spirit when they were doing the Texas Two-Step, than when the folks in Kennewick mostly danced the old “high school shuffle” most of them danced in high school.   

Most of the people who came in on the weekends were working class folks.  They worked hard and they played hard, especially on the weekends.

Lucy practiced during the week when the band jammed in Tommy Walsh’s garage over on Fourth and Vancouver. She had talked them into playing mostly Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton and Reba McIntyre’s songs. 

When she wasn’t practicing with the band, she fried hamburgers and fries down at the local hamburger joint on Avenue C, near the old bridge.  She enjoyed watching the high schoolers who came in after school. They reminded her of her days in school. 

She never thought much about the Rocket. He had gone to work for a wheat farmer up in the Horse Heaven Hills, south of town and, no one saw him much anymore.  Once the “Honey Bee” started singing in the Good Times, he had stayed away; then he moved. Somewhere down in Oregon someone said.

Billy was growing and spent most of his time with his grandma Hinkle.  Grandma lived out by the grain elevator and in those days that meant it was pretty quiet out there; not like today with the four-lane boulevard running through the neighborhood to the mall.  The grain elevator is still there, but it serves more as a cell-phone tower than a grain elevator. Back in those days, it was the westernmost structure in town; today it’s not far from the middle of town.

Grandma loved little Billy.  She had never expected or thought about a black baby in the family, but now that he was there, she knew she would never have loved a white child as well.  Billy was the best thing that had ever happened to her.  She worried about Lucy though. Lucy was running with what Grandma thought of as ‘rough characters.’ Mostly men who like to drink and raise hell, that’s who they were, she thought. If she’s not careful, she’ll end up pregnant again. I’m just glad she isn’t doing drugs or anything. Little did she know Lucy had been ‘experimenting’ with some of the guys she hung out with after the Good Times closed on Friday and Saturday nights. 

“How about another round?” she asked, barely able to stand in Franky Huntley’s kitchen. “I need another shot,” she slurred.

Franky picked up a bottle of bourbon and filled her glass. “Take it easy, Lucy. This is the end of the bottle.”

“We got more, don’t we Franky?” she asked, her legs feeling like a rubber chicken’s.

“I think there’s some beer in the fridge out in the garage. I’ll go check,” he said, leaving her alone in the kitchen. While he was gone, she lost consciousness and fell on the floor. When she fell her forehead struck the corner of the kitchen counter; there was blood flowing onto the floor while she lay unconscious.

Franky didn’t get her home from the emergency room until close to five o’clock that morning. She had six stitches in her forehead and she was hung-over. He put her in her bed, and left for work.

 Later that same evening, while reading to Billy before bedtime, Grandma, felt a sharp pain shoot through her jaw. She rubbed it with one hand, while the other held Billy and the book.

“You ok, grandma?” Billy asked.

“Sure, grandma’s fine,” she said, not sure she was. This pain had been irritating her for the past couple weeks. She had an appointment with the dentist, but it wasn’t until the next week. 

After putting Billy to bed, she went into her room and laid down on the bed.  While peacefully sleeping that night, her heart jerked but not enough to wake her. Then, starving for oxygen, her left ventricle went into a spasm and twelve minutes later, she was dead.

“Grandma,” Billy shouted from his bed the next morning. “Grandma.” When she didn’t come, he crawled out of bed and went to her room.  He crawled into bed with her. “Hi Grandma.” He pulled the covers up and lay beside her. “Grandma?” he asked, wondering why she wasn’t snuggling him against her.

Two days later, Lucy showed up to check on him; and two days after that the welfare agency knocked on Lucy’s door and took Billy. The charges were abandonment and on the day of the hearing to determine what to do with little Billy, Lucy was too drunk to appear. That afternoon he moved in the Debbie and Tom Miller, foster parents.

 
Chapter Six

 

  During WWII and the Cold War, plutonium was produced on the Hanford Reservation just north of Kennewick; plutonium needed for building nuclear bombs. Since its inception in the early 1940’s, thousands of people have worked there; and over the years, the area’s economy became forged by the big, governmental contractors who employed the plumbers, steamfitters, carpenters, engineers, and nuclear scientists who developed the reservation.

After the Cold War came to an end, and certain treaties with the former Soviet Union were drafted, the production of plutonium production stopped, and the Hanford Reservation became known as one the most highly contaminated areas in the United States. That was actually a good thing because now the workers are funded by big, government contracts to clean the place up.  It’s a multi-billion project that is expected to take many years to complete; and it will keep the economy of the area healthy for however long the clean-up takes. 

Claude Jenkins had spent that hot summer day in July encased inside a suit built to protect him from any accidental radioactivity in his work area. His job involved controlling the long, flexible tubes that sucked radioactive wastes from the thousands of holding tanks placed under ground maybe as long as sixty years ago. When Claude got off that day, he was in bad need of a cold beer.

He walked into the Good Times and sat down at a table with some friends he worked with. On the stage in the corner, near the dance floor, “Honey Bee,” was practicing with one of the other band members, “We Got Married in a Fever.”

“An appropriate song for this weather,” Claude said, drawing a cold drink from his schooner. “I nearly melted out there today.”

The men agreed it was indeed a scorcher, and then somebody said, “She’s pretty hot, too,” pointing to Lucy.

“No shit. I’ll bet she would be hotter than a pepper sprout,” Claude said, paraphrasing the lyrics to the Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash song.

“You know who she is don’t you?” Someone else asked.

Claude looked at her again, more closely this time.

“No.”

“Lucy Hinkle? Didn’t you know her in school?”

Claude runs his mental rolodex of names. “I don’t remember her.”

“Ever hear about the night the football team gang-fucked a girl out at Hepner’s Barn?”

“You’re kidding. Is that the one?”

“It is.”

“Didn’t she have Charlie Washington’s baby?”

“I’ve heard that.”

“Poor Charlie.”

“What do you mean, ‘poor Charlie!’ What does he make, a couple million a year playing linebacker for the Bears?”

Someone else said, “I heard it was two point six million.”

“That’s a lot of cash,” Claude said. “Were he and Lucy married?”

“No, I heard it was nothing more than a one night thing. Charlie was home from the university when she put her moves on him.”

“I guess Charlie thinks he’s exempt from helping her raise the boy.”

“You can tell by looking they don’t have any money.”

“She lost the boy to the welfare department a few months ago. Turns out he spent two days with a dead grandparent before Lucy come to check on him.”

“Wonder if Charlies knows about this?”

“Who knows?”

The conversation moved toward Charlie and his escapades on the football field when he was in high school, and to anyone listening to their conversation, it was apparent early that Charles Washington was one of the most respected people ever to graduate from Kennewick High School.

“We got married in a fever,” she sang, “hotter than a pepper sprout.” And Lucy Hinkle was one of the least. But Lucy didn’t know that. What she did know was there were a lot of men in Kennewick who wanted to spend time with her.

“Hey, Honey Bee,” the man dancing close to her microphone yelled at her. She didn’t recognize him and that was good.  She didn’t like spending time with men she knew, or men who went to Kennewick High School.  The baggage they brought always made her uncomfortable; it seems most of them knew about the time she spent with the football team in Hepner’s barn. How they thought bringing that up made any points with her was something she didn’t understand. 

She gave him a smile and the band started up a fast number made popular by Reba McIntyre.

“What you doin’ after work tonight, Honey Bee?” he asked, approaching her after the song was finished. She noticed him an hour earlier and liked how he wore his cowboy boots and Stetson hat. He was tall and slim and had a nice way about himself when he danced; something about him reminded her of a man with charisma, a man who influenced other men; a man who women were drawn to.  She also noticed how he didn’t stay with the same woman while he danced, and how he women on the sides were watching him. “Why you askin’ ‘Cowboy?’” she asked coyly, humoring him.

“Thought you might like to have some fun, that’s all.”

Lucy kept her eye on him for the rest of the evening and when the band stopped playing for the night, he came back to her. “You ready?”

“Sure.”

She didn’t get home until three o’clock the next afternoon, and when she did, she realized she couldn’t remember the Cowboy’s name. What she did remember was the powdery stuff he gave her, and how good and powerful it made her feel. The sex had been ten, twenty, maybe a hundred times better than it had been with Rocket; and she knew she was hooked. That night when she sang at the Good Times she looked for the Cowboy, but he wasn’t there.

It was another week before he came in again, and when he did, they locked eyes as soon as he stepped onto the dance floor. When the band took a break, she went to him.

“Where you been, Cowboy?”

“Had some business outa town, Honey Bee, why?” he asked, looking deep into her eyes.

“Just thought you might like to get together again sometime,” she replied, turning her hips away from him and twisting her legs together.

He leaned toward her and whispered in her ear, “How about tonight?”

The next day Lucy was begging the Cowboy for more drugs, and he provided her with what she wanted. Before a month had gone by after Billy was taken from her, she had gone a place in her mind occupied almost entirely with Billy and how she was going to get him back to a full week thinking only about more dope; and never once about Billy.

 

Chapter Seven

 

Debbie and Tom Miller had been fostering children since their oldest of two moved out twenty-some years ago.  The children they had fostered in the early years were now gone, most of them in their late twenties.

Some twenty years ago, when home were more reasonably priced, they bought a large two-story home with four bedrooms in a relatively fashionable part of town: on the main street which not only led into the heart of the city, but was also lined with old elm trees that had grown so far out over the street that driving on the street was like driving through a cave of limbs, leaves and shade.  Tom was a writer for the local newspaper and Debbie worked in the home. As the years had progressed, the purchasing power brought by their single income had fallen further and further behind, and they had become addicted to the income provided foster parents by the state.

At the time they brought Billy into their home, they had four other foster children: Andrea, Sofie, Ruby, and Jimmy. Their ages ranged from Andrea at seventeen, to Jimmy who was thirteen. 

“Who’s the new kid,” Jimmy asked.

“Billy Hinkle,” Tom told him.

“Where’s he gonna sleep?”

“In the other bed, in your room.”

“Fuck!” Each of the children had a room of their own, until now.

“Jimmy, watch your mouth,” Debbied scolded him.

Later that night, Jimmy and Billy sat on their respective beds.

“You make sure you just stay the fuck over there, Shorty,” Jimmy told him. “I don’t need no fuckin’ baby sleeping over here.”

“My name’s not, Shorty!”

“Who gives a shit. Shorty.”

“My name’s Billy.  Billy Hinkle.”

“You’re a nigger, Billy Hinkle.”

Billy looked at him with surprise in his eyes. “What’s a ‘nigger?’”

“You, little black dude,” Jimmy said, turning out the light. “You’re a nigger.”

“No I’m not. I’m Billy Hinkle.”

“No more talking, nigger. I gotta go to school in the morning.”

It didn’t take long for all three of the foster children to demonstrate their negative feelings toward Billy. When they were in school each day Mrs. Miller spent time with him. She soon learned Billy had a mind of his own.

“I’m not a nigger,” he told her one morning after the other children had left for school.

“Who called you that?!”

“Jimmy, he calls me it all the time”

“Well, you let me take care of that. Jimmy has no right to be calling you names.”

“What’s a ‘nigger,’” he asked.

“It’s a bad name, that’s what it is. I’ll take care of Jimmy and you tell me if he says it again, ok?”

“I’ll kick his fuckin’ ass,” Billy said.

“Billy! Where’d you hear that kind of talk?”

“My mom’s boyfriend. He said it all the time.”

“Who did he say it too?”

“Me.”

“Why would he say that to you.”

“He was mean.”

“Did he ever hit you?”

Billy sat quiet, head down.

“Well?” she asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

She approached him again, to give him a “motherly” hug, and he pulled away again. “Stop it, Bitch. I only want my Mom to hug me.”

Billy jumped off the chair and ran into another room where he sat in the corner of the room, by himself for a few minutes; then the emotion boiling inside him took over, and he picked up a small ceramic figurine off a shelf and threw it against the wall; then he picked up another one and sent it sailing off across the room and through a window. Before Mrs. Miller got to him, the entire shelf, knick-knacks, candles, and books were on the floor, and Billy was screaming, “I want my Mom. I want my Mom.”

By the time the other children arrived home, Mrs. Miller had gotten Billy settled down. He was lying on a blanket on a couch next to the windows looking out on the street in front of the house. Jimmy saw him lying there. “Hey, little nigger, you sick?”

“I’m not a nigger, Jimmy!” Billy yelled loud enough for Mrs. Miller, who was in the kitchen to hear.

“Jimmy, you come here!” she yelled.

But talking to Jimmy never helped. He had lived in a home where the father’s racial views were freely expressed. Jimmy had been taught to hate anyone with dark skin. He continued harassing Billy, and soon Billy took matters into his own hands.

Late one night, after Jimmy had gone to sleep, Billy touched a match to his bed.  By the time Jimmy awoke, the flames were already crawling off the tops of the curtains onto the ceiling. Fortunately, no one was injured, but by early morning light, the Miller home was nothing but a smoldering pile of scorched wood and ashes.

A few days later, Billy, who was never suspected of any foul play because Jimmy was known to sleep in bed, found himself living with Roger and Brenda Jones.

The Jones were a middle-aged couple who had never had children of their own; or a foster child.  Brenda, overweight, and a smoker, who liked a few afternoon glasses of afternoon wine had pleaded with Roger for years to have a foster child. He wanted nothing to do with it, their arguments, on occasion, turned violent. Once when she yelled at him, “If you weren’t such a blank, we could have had children of our own,” he knocked her across their bedroom, thinking it was the only way to shut her up.

“We would never be approved for a foster child,” he yelled at her.  “Look at us, a couple afternoon drunks who don’t even like each other very much.”

Still, Brenda wouldn’t give up; and out of nothing but the pure inertia of the years of pleading, fighting, drinking and arguing about it, Roger finally gave in. On the day the foster care people arrived Roger and Brenda had spent three days cleaning, straightening, dusting, arranging and hiding bottles. The put on their best clothes and met the supervisor with broad, warm smiles.

She was working on her second bottle of chardonnay the day the phone rang. It was foster care calling; they had been approved. Two weeks later, after Brenda madea  run to Wal-Mart and bought some cheap plastic toys for him, little Billy Hinkle entered their lives.

“Oh, look at him, Roger, isn’t he cute?”

Roger looked at Billy and wondered why, after all they had gone through, why they would get a black one.  “Yeah, he’s a cute one. Hi, Billy,” he said, patting the boy on the head.

“Hi,” Billy replied, pulling away from Roger’s hand.

The first thing they did was take Billy to McDonalds.

“All kids like McDonalds, don’t they, Billy?” Brenda asked him as they pulled into the parking lot.

Billy’s eyes lit up when he saw all the toys, and Brenda noticed. “After we eat you can go play, Billy.”

“I want to go now.”

“Our hamburgers will be in a minute,” she said.

“Let him go play, woman!” Roger interjected.

Brenda looked at him. “Now don’t get started already. We’ll eat, then he can go play on the toys.”

Tears welled up in Billy’s eyes. “I want to go play on the toys.”

“No.”

After Roger and Brenda were finished with their hamburgers, Billy was still eating his fries.

“Aren’t you going to eat your hamburger?” Roger asked him. “Look at him, he isn’t going to eat the hamburger,” he said, looking at Brenda.

She tried to get him to take a bite, but he pulled away; and with only half his fries eaten, said, “I want to go play on the toys.”

“You’ll eat that hamburger first, little man,” Brenda said.

After five minutes of pleading, Roger was angry with Brenda. “Goddamit, let the little guy go play, he ain’t gonna eat this shit anyway.”

Brenda told Billy to go play, then the tears that had been hiding in her eyes were loosed.

“What the hell you crying about?”

She wiped her eyes and looked out the windows, toward the bridge in the far distance. “Never mind.”

Ten minutes of play was all Billy got.  That evening they tried to get him to watch television; but he wasn’t interested, and the frustration the Miller’s were experiencing with him escalated. Soon they left him alone to explore the house and play with some of the toys she had bought the day before at the Dollar Store out by the mall.

Throughout the evening, Brenda excused herself to go into the kitchen to, “check on something,” where she would toss down a quick swallow of chardonnay.

Come midnight, and even though snockered, Brenda realized it was probably past time for Billy to go to bed. She found him in the corner of the room on the floor. “C’mon, dammit, it’s time for you to go to bed,’’ she said, slurring her words. When she looked closer, she saw he was asleep.

In time Billy was being left home to fend for himself for long periods of time while Roger worked at the newspaper and Brenda went shopping. He didn’t really mind, though not fully cognizant of it, he had actually trained them to stay away from him. When he got hungry he would go to the pantry and eat crackers, or peanuts.  Sometimes there would be cookies, or marshmallows and he sometimes he would get a little sick to his stomach.  Brenda had bought a few more Dollar Store toys so he had something to occupy himself with. 

One day when she came home, he had emptied all the bottom drawers in the kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms. “You little shit,” she yelled at him, but he didn’t really mind, at least she hadn’t called him a little “nigger.”

When the weather started warming up, Brenda started taking him to the city parks to play. She would sit on a blanket on the grass, sip wine from emptied water-bottles, read cheap novels, and sleep.

Once while sound asleep on her blanket, she heard someone say, “Ma’am.” She opened her eyes and saw the policeman staring down on her.

“Ma’am, is this your son?” he asked, pointing to Billy.

Flustered, embarrassed, she grabbed for her water bottle and tried to carefully hide it under a blanket fold. “Yes, he’s my foster child.”

“You need to keep an eye on him. We found him across the irrigation ditch, heading toward town.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Officer,” she said, I was just resting my eyes, “he sure got away in a hurry.”

“Ma’am it took us an hour to find you.”

She began picking up her things, and said to Billy, “Tell the nice man ‘thank you,’ Billy. We have to get home now.”

“Thank you,” Billy said.

“It’s no problem, Ma’am, but you’ll need to keep a closer eye on him.” He took her name and filed a report for future reference.

After the policeman left, Brenda turned to Billy. “You little shit, where the fuck you think you were going? You think you can get away from me, get me in trouble and shit? You got another think coming.” Slurring her words and having difficulty focusing, she grabbed him by the arms and shook him.

She looked over Billy’s shoulder and saw another mother who was watching her intently.  She let go. “You stay right here, little man, while I pick get my stuff.  We’re going home.”

When they arrived home, Billy was crying in the back seat. “Shut up,” she yelled at him. “You’ve embarrassed me enough today. Now get out of the car and go to your room. You’re grounded in there young man, until I say you can come out.”

It wasn’t until after dinner than Roger arrived home from work. As soon as he opened the door Brenda started talking.  She told him about her day and how Billy had been such a “bad boy” at the park that she had to bring him home and put him in his room.  She had been drinking all day and was in no shape to carry on much of a conversation.  Roger decided the best way to fight her was to join her so he poured himself a straight shot of Jack Daniels.  Soon both of them were inebriated and fighting.

“You wanted that little bastard, Brenda. It wasn’t me.”

“Like you’re some high and mighty with all your plans and ideas.”

“We ain’t ever had no kids in our house, Brenda, and this isn’t my idea of the good times we so often hear about parenting: having to take care of, and worry about him all the time. I think we oughta take him back.”

“Bastard,” she shouted at him.  She knew Billy was difficult, but her maternal instincts overpowered her sense of responsibility to the point that it blinded her. “That little boy needs somebody to take care of him.” She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke from her mouth, emphasizing her determination, and wisdom.

“Count me out,” Roger said, pulling another drink from his glass.

“No way, Roger, you agreed to help me with this, besides we need the money.”

Roger laid his head back against the chair. “I agreed to it only because you forced me into it.”  Then he stopped talking; the money issue was too powerful a notion to erase as easily as the boy might be to return to the agency.

“Ohh, you think you’re such a fucking ‘know-it-all’,” she said, her emotions bubbling.  “You’re a selfish son-of-a-bitch, you know that?”

“Fuck you.”

They argued into the late evening and never heard little Billy crying in his room with the door closed. He had crawled into his bed, wrapped the blankets about himself while he lay like a fetus, crying silently.

 The next morning, after Roger was up and gone to work, Brenda, hung-over, lit a cigarette and had a cup of coffee while Good Morning America droned on in the background. It was apparent Roger was not going to be supportive, but she had known that all along. She cried and fixed Billy’s a bowl of cereal and took it to him room. She also knew if she was going to get Roger on her side, she had be resilient with Billy. 

Opening the door, she saw him lying on his back on the bed, he rolled over and looked at her with no expression in his eyes. He had only slept a few hours.

“Here’s your breakfast,” she said, putting the tray on his bed. “I’m afraid after yesterday’s little display in the park, you’re going to have to stay in your room today.”

“I want my Mom.”

“Don’t try to be funny. You’re Mom’s a dope addict. Last I heard they couldn’t even find her.”

Tears filled Billy’s eyes.

“Eat your breakfast, I’ll be back to get your tray in a little while,” she said, not looking at him and closing the door. Billy threw the tray with the cereal on the floor and started screaming at her.

“I want my Mom! I want my Mom!” he yelled, hitting the door, tears streaming down his face.

Brenda had gone to the kitchen and could hear him screaming from his room down the hall.  She had a headache and not enough resolve from events of the past couple of days to hold her anger in check.

“Billy, quit that crying right now!” she yelled down the hall toward his room.

But he didn’t quit, his emotions were running to high, and he was scared. “I want my Mom,” he yelled and started kicking the door.

Brenda went to his room and opened the door; and that was when Billy kicked her in the leg.  She struck him and told him, “You stay right there, young man. I’ll be right back.”

She went to Roger’s workbench in the garage and fumbled about in the closet until she found what she was looking for, then returned to Billy’s room.

Opening the door to his room and storming in, Billy recoiled and cried, knowing something bad was about to happen to him. He jumped off his bed and bolted beyond her toward the door. When she caught up with him, he was in the front room, throwing whatever he could get his hands on onto the floor. She cornered him and he kicked her again, but she wrestled him to the floor, sat on him and wrapped the duct tape she found in the garage around his ankles and wrists.

“There, you little shit. I got you now,” she said, placing a strip of tape across his mouth.  She picked him up and took him to his room, laid him on the bed, closed the door and left.

A few hours later she went into Billy’s room and gave him a drink of water. “You be good and maybe I’ll get you something to eat later. Maybe even take off the tape,” she told him, replacing the strip of tape across his mouth. She cut the tape from his ankles and wrists and took him to the bathroom.  “You start kicking and screaming again and you’ll be very sorry.” Three times during that day she went to his room and took him to the bathroom; she knew better than to leave him to soil the bed sheets.

Over the next few days, Brenda realized taking care of Billy this way was fitting rather well into her schedule.  She took him his breakfast in the late morning, then something more substantial in the late afternoon; and walked him to the bathroom three times a day and while she smoked and drank her afternoon away. She didn’t really have to think about him very much at all.

 

Chapter Eight

 

Hap’s father was a classical music lover who played bass-clarinet in the Philadelphia String Quartet.  He taught Hap to love the music by teaching him early.  They would often be heard humming certain pieces to each other when they fished, or walked along the river, or when they camped or just sat together on the living room couch. Hap eventually went to college at a prestigious Ivy League school and ended up being trained by the government as a CIA operative. Because of his Cherokee blood, he spent four years in training to look like, talk like and move about in the Islamic world. 

 

He will uncover a terrorist cell in Saudi Arabia with strong ties to the United States and eventually become the prime witness in a federal court where a small band of terrorists located in the United States were identified.

 

After he testifies, it will become necessary to place him in a witness protection plan. He lands in Seattle, with a new last name and enough money to keep him comfortable.  While in Seattle a train will hit him and the head injury he sustains will cause him to experience amnesia.  Only bits and pieces of his past will forge forward into his mind as he wonders aimlessly about the homeless district in Seattle.

 

Hap’s real name is Robert John Brown, but the reader won’t know that until a later chapter.

 

Hap awoke with a start. Bull Durham was sitting beside him on the bed, licking his fur and meowing for Hap to let him out. Hap knew the cat had taken over the apartment, especially during the colder months of the year. Bull knew all he had to do was cry and Hap would either feed him, pet him, or let him out.

    During the days of summer, when the days were more filled with sun and wamrth, than cold and rain, Bull was gone: visiting his lady friends, and scrounging around the bins in the alleys, especially the one behind the Viet Namese restaurant at Pioneer Square.

    “C’mon,” Hap called Bull to the door to let him out. “You think you’re the boss of me, but you’re not,” Hap said, humoring no one but himself. He walked into the bathroom to check out his reflection in the mirror.  When he looked into the mirror, another vision appeared:

“Bob,” the voice on the other end of the cell phone said.

“Yes.”

“They’re in the Grand Hotel Baghdad.”

“You’re sure?”

“We followed them into the parking garage.”

“Ok, I’m on my way.”

Ten minutes later the team assembled outside the Grand Hotel Bahgdad. It was October, 2002, before the city was destroyed by war. To anyone else on street the four of them looked no different than any other group of Muslims in the area. Bob took charge leading the team into the hotel at the main gate. Bob and his partner, Grady, took the elevators near the lobby, one climbed the stairs and the fourth stayed in the lobby, as a look out. Each wore hidden mics and earphones.

“Mike, how’s the lobby?”

“Clear.”

“Eddy, anyone on the stairs?”

“Clear.”

Bob and Grady stood looking at the door with the shiny golden number, 429, they tucked their earphones under their shirt collars, and knocked on the door. A man he recognized as Abdul Fataah opened the door. “Ah, Al Saad and Sameer, come quick, come in,” he said, looking into the hallway.

Once inside, both Bob and Grady spoke perfect Arabic; the others in the room referred to Bob as, Al Saad, and his colleague, Grady as Sameer. These two men, both Americans with years of training in multiple languages, disguise, diplomacy, even acting school, had integrated this highly secret band of terrorists who were planning an attack an American soil with another terrorist cell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The attack would be on the White House, with the intent of assassinating the President of the United States. The men in the room were intelligence gatherers and planners.

“Rasheed, what is the news from Philadelphia?”

Rasheed, wearing a dark, blue turban, and a business suit, was from Saudi Arabia.  Overtly, he was in Baghdad on assignment with oil business from Riyadh; covertly he was here to plan this attack. “The men in Philadelphia say the final stages are near complete. Of course they need more funding and timing for the training of the team.”

“Good. Abdul, have you wired the monies to the designated banks?’

“Yes.”

“Sahir, what have you to report?”

“The all high Osama has given us the permission we seek for follow up once the White House is leveled to the ground.”

“Good. Saar, have you found the weapons?”

“Yes, Sameer and I have made contact with the “insider” in Syria. In two months he will be ready.”

“Two months?”

“He reports that he must complete all the paperwork involved in the transaction so that there will be no suspecting eyes when the operation is completed. There is need for additional surveillance to carry out his duties.”

“I see,” the leader, Abdullah, said, handing out a list of names, duties, and responsibilities to be carried out before the next meeting which was scheduled one month away.

It had taken six years of study and preparation for both Bob and Grady to get to a point in their careers where they were ready to go undercover in the middle east; study and preparation that began when Osama bin Laden declared war upon the United States in the late eighties. Their first port of entry in Europe had been Paris where they infiltrated the culture with menial jobs in the city. Their assignment was to make contact with the Muslim world in Paris; to “feel out the city” and it’s Muslim guests for “any radicals that might be living and planning attacks on the United States, or any of its allies.” 

Robert (Bob) John Brown was born and raised in Philadelphia.  His father, a mail-clerk who studied classical music and played in for the Philadelphia String Quartet, was not an educated man.  His mother, a half-blooded Cherokee Indian, worked in a bakery; and during the second World War, tossed rivets in the wing building section of a plant that manufactured DC-6’s for the war effort.  Neither parent graduated from a college, but they made sure there was sufficient funding for Robert when he reached the age to go to college.

When he was a young man, Bob’s father taught him classical music; it’s history, the composers, and the music they made, and the influences they placed not only on each other, but on the world at large. When they went fishing, or walking in the park, or just sat about with nothing in particular, it was common for Bob and his father to hum classical movements together. Years later, when Bob became a father, he would do the same with his son.  

Bob chose Columbia College in New York City where he studied literature, classical music and languages.  It soon became apparent he was highly proficient in the study of languages. By the time he graduated he had become fluent in French, Russian, and Arabic.

“Sahir, please stand up.”

Bob looked quickly at the man giving the instruction. This was out of the ordinary and immediately he thought something had gone wrong. He stood as instructed and looked back at the man.

“What is this?” he asked, standing and walking toward Bob.

“What is it, Abdul?” Bob asked.

Abdul ran his hand along Bob’s shirt collar, reached in and pulled out the wire leading to his earphone.

“What is this?” he said, holding the earphone.

“I listen to music, Abdul.”

Abdul pulled on the wire leading inside Bob’s shirt. Then he stepped to Bob’s side and felt the wire leading to a transmitter inside the waistband on the backside of his pants.

Grady pulled his Glock 38 from inside his jacket, and pointed it at the others in the room. “Stay calm, brothers,” he said, moving back toward the wall to more easily bring Abdul into his visual field. “No one get excited and no one gets hurt.” He maneuvered himself along the wall so Bob could join him, without being in the line of site of his weapon, and together, they moved toward the door.

Both of them stood with their backs to the door, Grady’s handgun keeping the others calm, when Bob kicked the door with his boot signaling Eddy to enter the room. When the door opened, Eddy, assault rifle in hand, opened fire, killing the others, including Abdul.

By the time hotel security was notified of gunfire on the fourth floor, the CIA operatives were in their cars heading toward the airport.

          Once in the United States, the team headed for Philadelphia to make contact with the terrorist cell they had uncovered in Baghdad.

          Suddenly Hap woke up when he heard Bull crying at the window, telling him he wanted in. Hap rubbed his head and felt the confusion about the vision he had just had weave its way into his conscious thoughts. All he could see of the vision was enough to ask himself, Baghdad, was I ever in Baghdad? What the hell?

    Later that night he met Freddy in the Mission for dinner. The room was full, as always with the downtrodden, the weak, the mentally challenged and the drunk and wasted people of the neighborhood.  While they ate, Hap told Freddy about the vision. “They’re like dreams, Fred. As soon they’re over, I know I’ve had one, but then most of it is gone and I can only remember a little.  This one today left me with strong feelings about Baghdad.”

    “Weird, Hap,” Freddy said, spreading butter across the top half of a bun he had just ripped apart with his fingers. “You ever been to Baghdad?”

    Hap laughed. “I don’t know, never thought about it.”

    “You don’t know if you’ve been to Baghdad?” Freddy asked, knowing full well Hap could have been there. He knew Hap had trouble with his memory ever since he met him, about a year ago. Before that, neither Freddy nor Hap knew much about Hap’s past.

    Hap chewed on a piece of chicken leg and let his mind wander into the meaningless past. His entire memory base seemed to originate with a sudden awareness of being in a hospital bed, where the doctors and nurses didn’t know his name and somehow he remembered being relieved that they didn’t.

After his release, Freddy had taken him back to his apartment and reintroduced him to Bull Durham.  And a few days after returning he received the first he could remember of a series of monthly checks made out to Bob Montgomery.  Prior to the accident that landed him in the hospital he had known the checks made out to Bob Montgomery were for him, but he also knew that his name wasn’t Bob Montgomery.  After the accident he had no recollection of anyone named Bob Montgomery and could only surmise that that was his real name. Who was sending the checks was a mystery he couldn’t solve.

“Baghdad. There’s a lot of bad shit going on there; war and all. I can’t imagine myself ever being in such a place.”

“Maybe it was before the war. I’m betting you were in the army, Hap. Probably stationed there.”

“Maybe.”

Freddy lifted a fork-full of mashed potatoes to his mouth and savored the warm, melted butter. “I don’t think we ever had troops stationed in Baghdad. Did we?”

“You’re asking me?” Hap asked, taking a last bite of his meal. He wiped his mouth then, looking through the window, watched the busy traffic on First Avenue. While Freddy continued eating, Hap fell into a melancholy state and started humming.

“What’s that?”

“What?”

“What you’re humming. What is it?’

“Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.”

“Where’d you learn that?”

Hap’s eyes refocused on the cars passing by, then slowly slid over the Freddy’s. “I don’t know. It’s just in my head.”

“But how is that you know the name of the music you’re humming?”

“Doesn’t everyone know Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata?”

Freddy laughed at Hap’s comment, and replied, “Sure, just ask anyone of these people in here. My money says probably all of them, except me. I never hear of no Moonlight Sonata, before.”

Something in Freddy’s face brought another face to Hap’s mind. A man of eastern descent whose name Hap could almost remember: Abdullah? Ahmad? Mohammed? No. Hashi? Obama? Then the vision flooded him: someone was referring to him as “Sahir.”

 Jim – Freddy and Hap had to be friends before the accident that put Hap in the hospital.  Otherwise, how would he be able to connect up with his living arrangements and income?

New thought:  someone from the witness protection plan might want to ‘check up’ on him. Then his true identity could be revealed.

 
Chapter Nine

 

After lying tapped and alone for five days, little Billy tears had dried up; he lay quietly and wondered why he was such a bad boy. He thought it might have been his mother that made him bad, but he didn’t really think so.  He missed her and when he thought of her, his eyes felt like crying, but they stayed dry.  He thought maybe it was Jimmy who fired his anger worse than anything until he met Brenda Miller. His skin was raw where the tape held tight to his skin. He slept a lot.

“Hello, Billy,” Brenda said, opening he door. “You need to go pee-pee?”

One favorable thing Brenda had done was keep Billy hydrated and she made sure he didn’t make a mess in his clothes or, more importantly, the bed that she would have to clean if he did. She unwrapped his wrists and ankles. “Nasty burns you got there, buddy,” she said, noticing the damage to his skin.

Billy sat quietly and said nothing. She had him and he knew it; there’s was no longer any use to be defiant of the woman.

She stripped the tape off his mouth. “Ooh, nasty,” she said, bending forward to inspect the sores on his cheeks and lips where the tape had been removed and replaced many times over the past week. “Let’s go,” she said, directing him toward he bathroom.

“Can I watch tv?” Billy asked.

Knowing his wounds would raise concerns when the welfare lady came by for her first scheduled visit next week could be a problem, she decided to give him a strong warning and then another chance to behave. “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll let you watch tv if you make me some promises.”

His soft face turned toward hers. “Ok.”

“First you must never kick Mrs. Rogers again.”

“Ok.”

“Second, you must do what I tell you to do.”

“Ok.”

“When I tell you to do it.”

“Ok.”

“Third, you must never argue with me again.”

“Ok.”

They struck a deal and soon Billy was roaming the house freely; and being the model child Brenda had always envisioned. When the welfare worker came to visit, Brenda put Billy in long pants and a long shirt to cover the wounds on his wrists and ankles. The sore near his mouth could have been a problem, so she put a band-aid over it and hoped the lie she would tell, if asked, would be sufficient.

“She should be here anytime soon,” she told Billy. “Remember, you don’t tell her about Mrs. Rogers putting you in your room.  You tell her everything is good, that you like it here.”

Billy had no expression on his face, but he said, “Ok.”

“Is that all you can say?”

“No.”

“When I talk to you I want to hear something other than, ‘ok’.”

“Ok.”

She slapped him across the face. “What did I just tell you?”

“Not to say, ‘ok’.”

“Ok. You gonna say it again?”

“No.”

The lady from the welfare agency arrived as scheduled and came into the Miller’s front room dressed in slacks and shiny blouse with golden necklaces.  Her hair was blonde and Billy thought she was pretty, like his mother.

They sat down and Brenda served tea in plastic cups and cookies from Wal-Mart.

“How are you, Billy?”

“Fine.”

“Let’s see,” she said, looking into her manila folder with the documentation. “I see you have been with the Millers for, eight days.” She took her eyes away from the folder and looked back at him. “And how is everything going for you here?”

“Fine.”

“Do you have a room of your own?”

His eyes went to Brenda’s. On the outside it looked as though he was seeking reassurance before he answered the question, like all children do when questioned by an unfamiliar adult, but inside he was terrified at the reference to his room.

“Tell her you do,” Brenda said, sensing his fear.

“Yes.”

“Do you have toys in your room?”

“Yes.”

“What do you have?”

“Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker.”

“Star Wars toys?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to your mouth?” she asked, bending forward to look more closely at the band-aid on his mouth.

Brenda panicked; her eyes widened, just a bit. Looking like a snake had just crawled over her feet, she realized she had forgotten to tell him what to say if this came up. Billy turned scared eyes toward Brenda.  The welfare lady picked up on the subtle interactions between the two of them.

“He fell.”

“Oh? Where did this happen?”

“He was playing outside,” Brenda said, improvising as fast as she could.

The welfare lady turned toward Billy. “What happened, Billy?”

“I was running,” he said, looking at the floor.

“Where were you running?”

“Outside.”

“In the yard?” she asked, leading him .

“Yes,” he said, then added, “I wasn’t looking where I was going, and I ran into the tree.”

Brenda’s heart fell into her lap. She couldn’t believe he was making up a story to protect her. “Poor little guy,” she said, “there was blood everywhere, but we got him cleaned up and he’s doing fine now.”

Later the welfare worker noted, “Roger and Brenda Miller: foster child - Billy Hinkle.  Mrs. Brenda Miller and Billy Hinkle were in attendance. Mr. Hinkle, though requested, was not in attendance. The house is older with three bedrooms; front, living room; screened porch on the street side; kitchen and two bathrooms with an attached garage.  It appears satisfactory in terms of cleanliness and general care: none of the windows are cracked or broken, the locks on the doors work, Mrs. Miller reported the furnace was recently inspected, the kitchen and floors were clean, the appliances look old, but apparently are in good working order. It appears Mrs. Hinkle is taking care of her responsibilities. 

Billy was nervous, but that’s to be expected. He is a recently turned, six year old; is with the second set of foster parents, and still new in their home. When questioned about a band-aid on his mouth, a subtle “tension” appeared between he and Mrs. Hinkle. I could not surmise whether it was faulty perception on my part, or a reality on theirs.”

In a post note, she added, “I found it curious that on a warm-spring day, Mrs. Miller had Billy clothed in long pants with a long-sleeved shirt. I expected him to be in shorts and a t-shirt on a warm day like this.”

 She filed the report in her folder titled, “Miller,” and laid the report aside to be filed until the next visitation, scheduled fours weeks away.

After the welfare lady left the house, Brenda said, “Billy Hinkle, you little stinker. You told a good story this morning.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Miller,” he said.

“Just for that, you can stay out all day. Just don’t go out in the street.”

Billy’s heart soared, and he ran into the yard. 

As the weeks went by the sky became bluer and the days longer, and hotter. It’s not uncommon in the eastern Washington desert for the temperatures to reach into the upper nineties in late June, early July. Billy was playing outside more and more all the time. He had met a few playmates who lived next door and they would spend the entire day outside playing amongst the big trees that lined the street.

Billy had learned to stay away from Mrs. Miller. It was obvious she had what some would call a short-fuse; and Billy didn’t like to see her when it was ignited – especially when he was that lit it up. He had also learned that he had the greatest freedom from her in the late afternoon, after she had finished a bottle of her favorite wine. 

Roger was gone most of the time, and Billy was glad about that. When Roger came home, they both would drink wine and whiskey and fight and argue, and sometimes Billy found himself locked in his room again; sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a week; but she never used the tape on him again.

“Billy,” Brenda called for him at the front door. When she spotted him in the neighbor’s yard, she yelled, “C’mon, I have to go to the store and I want you to go with me.”

Billy dropped his head and walked back to the house. He didn’t want to go anywhere with her; he wanted to keep playing. “Do I hav’ta?”

“Yes, c’mon now.”

She put him in the back seat and strapped him into his safety harness, crawled into the front seat, lit up a cigarette, turned on the air-conditioner and pulled the car out on the busy street. “We’re going to Wal-Mart. I thought you might like to go in and look at the fish.”

“Do I have to,” he said, noting the odor of wine in the car. She had taken him to Wal-Mart many times by this late date in August. Every time, she posted him at the fish tanks and told him to stay there until she was finished; sometimes it was hours before she reappeared.

“You don’t like the fish?”

“I do, but I don’t want to see them today.” He picked up a Star Wars toy lying in the seat beside him and started playing with it.

When she parked the car, she turned toward him and said, “If you don’t want to go in, you don’t have to. I’m only going in to pick up some milk and bread and eggs. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

“Ok.”

Forty-five minutes later, when she walked out of Wal-Mart, her shopping cart heaping, she saw the ambulance. It was parked behind her car. She didn’t panic, she watched carefully, and walked her cart slowly toward the scene, an aisle away. When she got close enough to see inside the ambulance, Billy was lying perfectly still.  He was blue and the emergency services people were strapping him down, putting needles in his arms, and an oxygen mask over his face. 

To Brenda, it appeared little Billy Hinkle was dead. She checked the windows of her car and saw they were in the “up” position; she was only going to gone for a few minutes, but she had forgotten to open them for him.  Looking down the street at the reader board at the bank, it read, “101.1 degrees.” Brenda moved slowly, looking, watching, then passed her car and pretended to go on to another car, farther out in the parking lot.

Soon the ambulance left the parking lot and headed toward the hospital, while the police inspected her car.  When they went into the store, no doubt to find he owner, she hurried back, unloaded her cart into the trunk, and drove away.

Later that afternoon, there came a knock at her front door. When she heard it, she went to the basement and through the basement window watched and waited for the two uniformed policemen to leave. She went back upstairs and sat at the kitchen table, her head in her hands, and she tried to resolve what she should do about the situation.  Roger might know what to do? But then he would just be an ‘I told you so’ about it. I could get in the car and just drive away. Maybe I should call the hospital and see how Billy’s doing?

She picked up the phone and dialed the hospital.

“I was just wondering how the little boy who was picked up at the Wal Mart today is doing?”

“Ma’am, we don’t yet have an identity for the child. Are you family?”

Brenda felt trapped. “No, just family friends. That’s all.” She wondered if the lady on the other end had been informed that the car had disappeared from the parking lot.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am, I can’t share information with anyone except immediate family members.”

“Ok,” Brenda said, hanging up the phone.

There came another knock on the door. She peeked and saw it was another policeman.

“Mrs. Miller?” he shouted. “Are you in there?”

Brenda headed for the basement again.

“If you are in there we need to talk to you.”  He knocked on the door a couple more times, then walked away.

Brenda could feel the perspiration forming on her forehead and underarms. The panic she was feeling was deepening into levels unfamiliar to her. What to do? What to do? Oh God, what do I do? She climbed the stairs, grabbed her car keys off the hook by the back door and stepped out. I’ve got to get away from here. I’ve got to think.

“Ma’am,” the officer said, coming around the corner of the house. “We need to talk.”

Brenda panicked. “I didn’t meant to be in the store that long! I was only gonna get some bread. I forgot to roll the windows down. I didn’t mean to hurt Billy.”

          The officer turned his face to his collar-mike and said, “Pete, she’s in the back with me.”

          “Ma’am, what is Billy’s last name? Is it the same as yours?”

          She told the officer Billy was a foster child, and that he had been with them only a few months. While Pete made a call to child protective services, Brenda went into great detail about the problems they had had with Billy, how he was obstinate, undisciplined, how her husband didn’t even want him in the house, how she had worked so hard with Billy to let him know how much she loved him.

          “How’d he get those scars on his wrists and ankles?”

          “Oh, those. They were there when we got him.”

          “Did you ever ask him about them?”

          “Sure, I did.”

          “What did he say?”

          “He told me his mother’s boy friend used to tie him up.”

          The policeman looked hard at her, and said, “Uh-huh.”

          Brenda knew he didn’t believe her, but what else could she say under these circumstances; she wasn’t going to admit any wrong-doing. No yet, anyway.

          “Ma’am, I’m  afraid you’re under arrest.”

    “For what? I told you I’ve been working hard to create a safe and sound living….”

    The policemen interrupted her, “Ma’am, do you realize you have yet to ask if Billy is alive or dead?”

    “Is that what I’m being arrested for?”

    “No, ma’am, it isn’t, but it seems to me you’re spending an inordinate amount of time telling us how good you’ve been to Billy, yet you left him in car with the windows rolled up for over thirty minutes, then fled the scene of the investigation, and have resisted our attempts to contact you this afternoon.”

    Brenda was so frightened she felt like she was in a darkened cave. “How is he? Is he dead?”

    “You lucked out, Mrs. Miller.  Billy isn’t dead, but he isn’t going to be same little boy anymore. Brain damaged, you know,” he said, pulling his hand-cuffs off his belt. “You’re being arrested, Mrs. Miller for endangerment, and resisting arrest. 

    He read her the Miranda rights, cuffed her, walked her to his cruiser, parked on the main street out front, and put her in the back seat.

“Is he going to be all right?” 

 

Chapter Ten

 

Toward the end of the third week in the hospital, Billy was sent to his third foster home.  Jerry and Anita Williams, a loving couple with two children, were expierenced foster parents who felt an altruism toward children who’s parents couldn’t raise them properly. Jerry, a real estate developer, wore Armani shoes, gray suits, a gold wristwatch, and a large ring on his left hand that looked like a World Series ring. He drove a new BMW Boxer. Anita, a strikingly pretty woman, taught English at Kennewick High School, wore casual slacks and blouses that fell perfectly over her slim frame, she wore with her red hair straight, with a small bit of lickstip, and no other make-up.

The children, Isaiah, who was ten; and Marie, who was seven, were the children Jerry and Anita had envisioned: both were handsome and bright. The foster child in their home, Tommy Casaday, had been known for his abusiveness in prior foster homes, however, since he had been with the Williams, he had shown substantial improvements. Tommy was fourteen and had been in foster homes since he was three years old. Never one to be chosen for adoption, part of Tommy’s outbursts were directly related to his feeling of rejection throughout his life; still her had improved at the Williams’ and they attributed much of his improvement to the attention they gave him and the way they included him, like their previous foster children, into their family-life.

When Billy, now eight years old, arrived; he tended to drag one foot when he walked and his overall coordination showed the ill effects of the oxygen deprivation and elevated temperatures he experienced in the back seat of Brenda Miller’s car.

The Williams’ children, raised from birth in this environment of acceptance of other children, opened their arms to Billy immediately. Tommy Cassaday became noticeably dark and troubled with Billy.

“The doctors said they were amazed at how little damage was done due to being trapped in that car,” Anita said, told her husband, referring to Billy’s condition.

“He looks like a sweet kid, Anita.”

She commented on the dark cloud forming over Tommy, and they tried to keep a closer eye on him that afternoon.

 After dinner, Billy was amazed to learn the Williams’ had a swimming pool in the back yard. He was equally amazed when everyone was given a swimsuit and invited to get in.  It was a first for Billy; he had never seen a swimming pool before, and he was shy about getting in.

“C’mon, Billy. The water’s fine,” Jerry said to him from the shallow end.  “The water isn’t deep on this side of the rope,” he said, pointing to a blue and white rope with white floats attached running from side to side.  “You can walk to the rope on this side.  It’s too deep for you on the other side though.”

“Billy,” Tommy said, “Go ahead and jump in, maybe you’ll drown.”

“Tommy!” Ms. Williams said, “that’s no way to welcome Billy to our family.”

“Don’t care,” he said, beneath his breath.

Billy felt the intimidation Tommy initiated over him, and was very uncomfortable. He chose to sit and watch for a while.  He didn’t know any of these people, and he was naturally shy on this first outing.

“Do you want to wait a while?” Jerry asked Billy.

“I’m ok,” he said sitting down on a concrete step and holding his head down.

“Hey Billy,” Marie said, “you’ll like it. C’mon.”

Billy looked at Marie with her blonde hair tied in a loose bun at the back of her head with lots of individual strings running in all directions, and her bright, blue eyes. He wasn’t sure he had ever seen anyone so pretty as Marie. “No thanks,” he said, almost too low for anyone to hear.

When Anita came out of the house, wearing a two-piece bathing suit, Billy’s head almost snapped off his neck.  He thought Marie was pretty, but Anita was spectacular with her long legs, and ample breasts hidden behind the top of her two-piece.

“Hi, Billy,” she said, sitting down beside him. “Do you know how to swim?”

He told her he didn’t, and he told her had never seen a swimming pool either. Billy discovered early in their conversation that he was very comfortable talking to her. She asked him if he would like to sit beside her, by the pool, and dangle his feet over the edge. 

“How do you like that?”

“It’s nice,” Billy said, thinking that was what she wanted him to say; and it was, as long as she sat beside him. But before anyone knew, Tommy had snuck up behind Anita and Billy and shoved Billy into the water. Terrorized, he didn’t know the water was only a few feet deep. He flayed about until he found the bottom and stood up. In the meantime, he had taken water into his mouth and throat and was coughing violently.

Tommy was scolded by the Williams parents and sent to bed without ice cream and cookies. 

Later that night, after Billy and Tommy were put to bed in the same room with twin beds, Tommy said, “This one’s mine,” referring to the bed he was in; the one nearest the window. 

“Ok,” Billy said, sitting on his own bed. The room was decorated like none he had seen. Model airplanes hung from the ceiling, and the ceiling itself was painted with clouds. On the walls were movie posters from Star Wars and others that Billy didn’t recognize. On the wall there were two desks, each with a computer. 

“What are those, tv’s?”

Tommy laughed and said, “Are you crazy, man? Those are computers.”

          Billy ran his fingers over one of the keyboards. “That one’s mine, man,” Tommy said. “You use the other one.”

          “I don’t know how.”

          “Figures a nigger like you wouldn’t know how to.”

Billy suddenly remembered Jimmy Miller and how he had called him that name, always with a taunt. “I’m not a nigger!” Billy yelled at him.

“Yes, you are.”

“I am not,” Billy yelled, and attacked him with his fists, shouting, “I am not! I am not!”

The first blow landed on Tommy’s lips and cut them deeply.  Blood was flowing profusely by the time Mr. Williams responded to the fracas he heard from his bedroom, down the hall. The second blow landed on Tommy’s right eye and it was swelling quickly. When he opened the door, the boys were locked in a tight embrace, wrestling on the floor.

Jerry broke up the fight and went immediately into a damage control mode, trying to sort out what had happened.  It didn’t take long.

“He called me a ‘nigger’,” Billy said, crying. “And I’m not one.”

“Did you,” Jerry turning toward Tommy, asked.

Tommy, head down, holding a bandage on his lip, said, “Yeah.”

“You do know that’s a bad word, Tommy!”

“My dad says it all the time. What’s wrong with it?”

“When people use that word, they are either ignorant of what it means, or they are trying to hurt the black person they are talking to, or about.”

“My dad says all black people are niggers.”

“Well, he’s wrong, and you need to know we will not tolerate the use of that word in our home. Do you understand?”

Tommy, head still down, said, “Yes.”

“I think you need to apologized to Billy. What do you think?”

Tommy drug a foot across the carpet, looked up at Billy then looked away. “Sorry.”

Later that night, while Billy slept, Tommy woke up and went to the closet where he found a baseball bat.  Creeping carefully toward Billy’s bed, Tommy pulled the bat up over his head, then with all his might, swung it toward Billy.

 
Chapter Eleven

 

“Lucy Hinkle.” Upon hearing her name, Lucy looked at the intercom and wondered what she was supposed to do. “Lucy Hinkle,” the voice said again.  She looked around the room and someone said, “You look confused. Are you Lucy?”

A few minutes later, someone escorted her into an office area where she was shown a hard, wooden chair and invited to sit. A lady introduced herself, and Lucy, because she wasn’t focused well, had to ask her name, again.

“Marlene Digby,” the lady said.  “I will be your counselor while you are here.”

“Where am I?” Lucy asked. The entire morning had been a jumble of movements, van rides and people.  She knew she had been in the hospital earlier that day, but since then she had become confused about her whereabouts and circumstances.

“You are in the hospital Lucy. Did you forget?”

“Hospital?”

“Yes. Do you know why you are here, Lucy?”

“In Kennewick?”

“No, you are in Spokane, Lucy.”

Lucy looked at Ms. Digby and the wall behind her. She felt like she was dreaming, but she knew she wasn’t. The confusion persisted and she shook her head indicating that she did not know why she was there.

“You are here because you have a head injury.”

“What, did you say?”

Ms. Digby repeated what she had said.

“Head injury?” Lucy asked, pivoting her head on her neck from side to side. “Me?”

Ms. Digby punched a button on her console. “Mr. Greenwood, would you step in here please?”

In a few minutes the door opened and Mr. Greenwood stepped in.  He was every bit of six foot, four inches, and so wide, he had to turn sideways to come through the door. “You called?”

“Take her to her room. She’s incoherent right now, and needs some time to sort out what’s going on.”

Greenwood took Lucy by the arm and escorted her back to her room; a place where she had been residing for the past six years.

“You ok, Luce?” asked Greenwood, holding her arm while assisting her down the hall.

“I don’t know. So confused today.”

“You’ll be ok, Ms. Hinkle, you’ll be ok.”

Once Lucy was returned to her room, she lay on the bed and rested. It had been a busy day, and she needed to rest. A few hours later she awoke, and when she did she was lucid again.  She remembered.

It was late that night after work, and she was leaving with a man she’d met in the Good Times. His name was Armando Gonzales and she felt attracted to his tough, machismo style. Armanda had a wide smile; a silver necklace; black pants and shirt; a wide, silver belt buckle; a white cowboy hat; and black cowboy boots. He spoke English as well as anyone, but with it, he brought a sexy accent that also attracted Lucy.

“I like the way you sing, Honey Bee,” Armando told her between numbers, earlier that night. “You have a nice way about you,” he said, flashing her his white and very broad smile.

She thanked him and asked if there was any number he would like to hear her sing.  “No, any song you sing ees like a breath of fresh air to my ears.”

Like so many men she had met at the Good Times before, she watched him dance with many ladies that evening. He was a good dancer, and he ladies liked dancing with him.  Always smiling and smooching up to the ladies when he could; he often would look over their shoulders and wink one of his big, brown eyes, at Lucy.

During the break he approached her and asked if she would like to dance with him. “Maybe,” Lucy said, playing coy, “but it’s hard to dance and sing at the same time.”

“Get one of the band members to sing, then you can dance with me.”

Under ordinary circumstances, and management’s decree, band members weren’t allowed to interact with the patrons; but Lucy had learned long ago, the rule was loose and unenforced. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, turning back toward the band.

She made the arrangements with the other singer in the band and she was on the dance floor with Armando. It didn’t take him long to invite her to a party after the Good Times closed. 

“It’s at my friend Juan’s house. They’re all good guys and we won’t have any problems, I promise.”

She held him at arm’s length, and while letting a small smile form, she looked into his face. “You sure?”

“Cross my heart,” Armando said, crossing his arms.

At the party, Lucy found herself in a sea of Hispanics who were drinking and dancing to a CD player on the counter near the kitchen.  The music was mostly Mexican ballads, and soon Lucy let down what little guard she had and started having fun.

“Have you lived here long?” she asked Armando.

“No, I just got here about three weeks ago.”

“From Mexico?”

“No, Fresno,” he said, smiling that bright smile she found so alluring, while at the same time, pulling her close to his body and placing one hand on her backside.

“So, are you like, legal?”

He pulled back and looked at her. “If I said, ‘no,’ would you have come here with me?”

“Oh, sure, of course. I was just . . . asking.”

“So it doesn’t really matter? Is that what you are saying?”

“No, it doesn’t matter,” she said, feeling the alcohol and putting her head on his shoulder.

They danced for a while longer, then Armando asked if she would like to go to his place for a while. Though it didn’t really matter, especially since the alcohol was, once again, making her decisions for her, she agreed.  When they got into his car, he took out a plastic bag and rolled a joint, which they shared on the way.

 The next morning, Lucy awoke with a splitting headache.  Before opening her eyes, she pulled the sheets up around her neck and wondered if she had any aspirin; then she opened her eyes. When she did, she realized she wasn’t in her own bed; and she heard a car door slam.  In a moment, the front door flew open and two masked and armed men came into the apartment shouting Spanish words she didn’t understand. They wanted her to get out of bed, so pulling the sheets up, to protect her nakedness, Lucy stood.  That was when she realized she was in a strange apartment with two men pointing guns at her, yelling at her in Spanish, and she was alone.

What was his name? She thought. “Armando?”

“Si, donde esta Armando?”

She had no idea how to respond, and she could see the masked men were getting more and more frantic.  They were kicking things, and slamming doors, then they started shooting.  That was when Armando stepped inside the front door and started shooting back. Then another man, stepped inside and did the same.

Lucy fell immediately to the floor when the shootings began, and crawled beneath the bed. In a few minutes, one of the masked men fell dead beside the bed, his head oozing blood, and his gun slid just a few feet short of Lucy’s face. She grabbed it, and out of a state of panic reserved only for those who realize their lives are seconds from ending in a burst of violence, aimed at a pair of legs she saw at the door and fired. Someone fell at the door, gasping in pain. Then she saw another pair of legs appear at the door and she fired again. Two men down, both groveling in pain. Without forethought or preparation, the terror still screaming in her ears, she shot both men again, killing both of them.

Three dead. Where’s the other? She thought, lying still in her hiding place. She heard footsteps and the door slam. Knowing she was now alone, again, she crawled out from under the bed, and that was all the memory she had.

Later, back in Digby’s office, Lucy told her she remembered and gave her a brief run down of the events of that night; something Ms. Digby had heard maybe a hundred times, from Lucy.

“But I don’t remember anything after that.”

“There were four men, Lucy.  The one that escaped the apartment looked back inside the side window.  He shot you.”

“Shot me?”

“Yes.”

“Was it serious?”

“Yes.”

“When did this happen?”

“Four years ago,” Digby replied thinking she herself might go mad if she had to go through this routine with Lucy many more times.

 

 

Chapter Twelve

 

Billy felt the bat brush against his head and slam into his pillow. Fortunately, there was enough light coming through the windows that his eyes did not need to adjust to the dark.  He knew immediately that Tommy was trying to hit him with the bat. “Stop it,” he yelled, grabbing Tommy by the arm; then wrestling the bat out of his hands. Frightened and emotional, tears streamed from his eyes, and he ran from the room to the Jerry’s and Anita’s bedroom door. “Help!” he yelled opening the door.

“Billy,” Jerry said, already awake from the prior commotion coming from the boys’ room. “What’s the matter, son?”

“Tommy tried to hit me,” he said, sobbing.

“He did? Why did he do that?”

“I don’t know, he had a baseball bat,” he said, between sobs, “and he tried to hit me when I was asleep.”

Jerry Williams jumped out of bed and ran down the hall to find Tommy, but Tommy wasn’t there. “Tommy!” shouted Jerry, “where are you, boy?” he yelled, louder. “You can’t hide forever, Tommy, come on out.” He searched the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, and rest of the house. He thought Tommy was either too well hid, or he had escaped the house and was outside somewhere. 

Back in Anita’s bedroom, Anita held Billy in her lap and held him close. She asked if he had been hurt, and he said, “No.”  Then she felt the growing lump on the backside of his head. When she went into the kitchen, she saw a shadow near the laundry room door.

“Tommy?’ she asked, gingerly. “Is that you?” She walked into the laundry room and saw him hiding. When she turned on the light, he jumped forward, and delivered the full brunt of the baseball bat on her forehead. Anita went down like a deer in the woods. Tommy scrambled out of the laundry room and headed back down the hall, toward the bedroom.

Outside, Jerry looked along the fence and in the street. He didn’t see Tommy anywhere. When he opened the front door, Tommy was waiting for him and slammed him in the back of the head with the baseball bat, then walked outside and headed down the street.

An hour later, Billy regained consciousness. The electric clock next to the Williams’ bed said, “4:30,” and he noticed it was still dark outside. Confused, he stood up and walked into the hallway.  When he checked the other rooms he found both Jerry and Anita Williams lying where they had been clubbed; and he found their two children dead in their beds. 

He picked up the phone and dialed “911.”

When the ambulance arrived, Billy was lying on the couch. The emergency technicians checked him over and determined the bruise on his head was superficial and probably in need of nothing more than a bag of ice; still he had been unconscious so he was strapped onto a gurney and sent to the emergency room at the local hospital.

When it came time to identify him, they learned of his foster-child status and called the child welfare services number. In a few days, he was placed in his next foster home.

The day after Tommy Casaday went on his rampage in the Williams’ home, he was caught hiding down by the river near the bridge. At fourteen, he had killed three people: the two Williams children and their mother, Anita. The child protective services people were dumbfounded by his violence, especially since the latest reports had been favorable regarding his progress. He was incarcerated for six months in the local juvenile facility before his case went to trial where he was tried as an adult and sentenced to thirty years in prison. The newspapers covered every move made by the legal system throughout the entire ordeal; from the grisly killings, to the juvenile facility, to the trial, and eventual sentencing.

By the time it was over, Billy turned nine years of age and was settled in with the Harold and Monica Anderson in still a better part of town.  The Andersons were a middle-aged couple with no children, two big dogs and lots of savvy about how to deal with children; they had fostered tens of foster children; and had one of the best records in the state in terms of success as foster parents. 

For the first time in his life, Billy felt accepted, even loved. By his eleventh year, he had been regularly attending school for two years. Monica Anderson, a teacher, worked closely with him and his teachers, and Billy felt good about school; and though he still had a slight “dragging” of one leg, he ran and jumped on the playground, and made more friends than he ever thought possible.

The summer following his sixth grade year the Andersons planned a trip to visit distant family in Lake Stevens, a small community north of Seattle. Billy had never been on the western side of the state. Mrs. Anderson developed a curriculum of places to see, things to do and record on the video camera and computer.

Billy, excited to see Seattle, felt he heart race when the car entered into the Mercer Island tunnels which led to the floating bridge over Lake Washington.  When the car emerged from the tunnel, he saw the lake and the city on the far side with the tall, sky-scraping buildings just behind the home covered hill on the far shore.

After a day of site seeing they headed north out of Seattle on a two-lane back road. The distant Cascade mountain peaks in the east, running north and south, glistened with snow contrasted against a perfectly blue sky. The traffic was light and they were running a little late. Harold Anderson was pushing his new Lexus faster than the speed limit allowed.  When the car in the other lane started moving across the center line, Harold pulled his SUV to the right just far enough to get the right front wheel into the gravel lining the side of the road.  The wheel grabbed the gravel more tightly than the left wheel was grabbing the road and the resultant inequality pulled the car further toward the ditch. Harold pulled the wheel back to the left to compensate and when he did he lost control of the SUV, and it crossed the yellow-line and slammed into a family of four heading south towards Seattle. 

 

Chapter Thirteen

 

Herb Schmidt, Jerry McDermott and Larry Yetter, teachers at Kennewick High School, met everyday for lunch in the biology labs. Conversation generally centered around school events, their personal lives, gripes and complaints about everything from presidential politics to the principal.  The ‘really’ good kids in their midsts were a constant and comforting presence in their lives; but just as good news is generally left out of newspapers, these men generally didn’t discuss the good kids. It was the “knuckle-heads” that fostered most of their attention. Today was different; a minority student in the school had just received a four-year, full-ride scholarship to a prestigious Ivy-League back east.

“Quite an accomplishment,” Schmidt said. “I was sure Charlie would end up getting a football scholarship.”

The others agreed, but then McDermott, reinforcing the obvious, said, “He was probably the best student I ever had in any of my physics classes.” A bachelor of many years, he slipped a sandwich from his perfectly folded wax paper, and continued. “I think he might have known more about it than I did.”

Yetter agreed, saying Charlie had, “aced every test in calculus I gave this year. No one in my twenty-seven years of teaching has done that.”

“I can understand him being brilliant though, both his parents are scientists,” Schmidt said.

That next year, Charles Washington, a strapping six-foot, fully developed, handsome, black freshman, entered Columbia College in New York City. Four years later he graduated magna cum laude in Political Science, virtually assuring his entry into the law school at the highly prestigious Columbia University, the graduate-school extension of Columbia College.

Charles lived near poverty during his years in New York City.  The scholarship paid his tuition and boarding expenses; but to eat, he had to work.  During the first three years he worked as a page in a local law office.

“Where you from, Charles?” one of the attorneys asked one slow day.

“Washington state.”

“Long way from home.”

“It is,” Charles replied.  “But I’m going back, for the first time, this weekend.”

“Vacation?”

“My father’s sick.”

“Nothing serious I hope.”

“They’ve given him only a few weeks to live.”

Saturday afternoon his plane touched down at Sea-Tac, and since he had a four-hour layover to kill, he took a bus to the Pike’s Place Market in the heart of Seattle, near the waterfront. His father had taken him here many times when he was a young boy, and he wanted to watch the fishmonger’s toss the salmon across the counter-top to the packagers after a sale. Next to aerial shots of the Space Needle and the ferries on Eliott Bay, it was the second most common image shown on television stations across the country when one of the local major sport teams was featured on national television. He purchased a small, colorfully beaded necklace with a wood-carved whale he thought his mother would enjoy; and a Mariner baseball for his father from one of the merchants in a place where everything from newspapers, to rutabagas, to crab and salmon, to scarves and t-shirts were sold.

Four hours later he boarded the plane that would fly him over the Cascade Mountains and back into his desert home, Kennewick.  That night he found his father in intensive care at the local hospital.

“Got you something, Dad,” he said. “Something to remind you of all those trips over the mountains we used to take to watch the Mariners.”

His father was on a ventilator and couldn’t talk, but he looked at Charles and indicated how pleased he was for Charles to be with him. He reached out and took the baseball and signaled he wanted a pen, which he then took and signed his name to the baseball. Then he handed the baseball and the pen to Charles.

“You want me to sign it too?”

His father shook his head affirmatively, and Charles signed the baseball and gave it back to him.  Tears leaked from the corners of his father’s eyes and he tucked the baseball away, next to his body in the bed.

Later that night, after leaving the hospital and feeling a sadness he had never known, Charlie decided he needed a cold beer.  The Good Times Tavern was on his way back to his parents’ home, so he parked his rental car and went inside. Immediately the loud, raucous crowd reminded him he was home.

“Hey, Charlie,” someone in the back shouted. He scrunched his eyes and looked through the smoke-filled room to see a couple of his old high school football buddies sitting in the corner.

“Hey, where the hell you been, Charlie?”

“Yeah, we heard you were back east somewhere.”

A fresh pitcher of beer was delivered to the table and soon they were talking about the old days. Charles explained to them about Columbia and why he was back; then to change the subject started asking about some of the other guys they had all been friends with. After a while, a band started playing and his two buddies found a couple young ladies to dance with, so Charles moved to the bar.

A few minutes later, Lucy Hinkle, walked in and started asking him questions that told him she had no idea he had ever left town. They talked a while and he found himself enjoying her company more and more.  Months later, as he recalled the evening with Lucy, he realized it had been the beer more than anything else that landed him in the backseat with her out near the old Finley lagoon.

As the years went by, Charlie forgot about the night with Lucy; until he decided to return to a class reunion six years later. That was when he learned that Lucy had been shot in the head at some drug dealer’s place east of town.

“What happened to her?”

“Last I heard she was in some home up in Spokane.” Nancy Gunderson, a tall brunette who still looked like a high school student, stirred the swizzle-stick in her drink while she talked in a quiet corner with Charles.

“How tragic,” Charles said.

“Yeah, I don’t think anyone knows what happened to her son.”

“She had children?”

“Only one. A little boy,” she said, swizzling her drink again. She looked deeply into his eyes, and said, “He was like you, Charles.”

“Like me? What do you mean?”

“He was black.” 

Charles’ heart sunk. “Black? Like me?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“No.”

“Everybody here always thought it might be yours, Charles.”

He dropped his drink on the table; he thought he might be having a heart attack; he got up and asked her to come outside with him, so they could talk more.

Walking casually along the river bank outside the hotel where the reunion was being held, Charles asked, “Everybody?”

“Lucy made sure everyone knew you and she had a ‘fling’ out at the Finley Lagoon. Then when she gave birth to the little boy, everyone who had doubted her had little reason to continue.”

“What’s the little boys’ name?”

“Pretty sure it was, Billy. I saw him once, what a little cutey pie. I wished he were mine when I saw him.”

“Where is he?”

“Last I heard he had been put into a foster home, somewhere here in Kennewick.”

“How old would he be?” Charles asked, mostly himself and counting silently backwards. “Eleven,” he said, answering his own question.

The next day Charles drove to Spokane.

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

On one of those summer nights where you can leave your coat at home, put on a pair of short pants and just breathe in the perfectly, and naturally, conditioned air, Hap and Freddy sat on a park bench in Pioneer Square. Watching the people was a favorite of Freddy’s and this was Friday night: lots of people were out enjoying the city’s evening ambience in the old Pioneer Square area of Seattle.

“Hap, you ever see the kids down in this part of town do anything good?”

“Sure, Freddy. Haven’t you?”

“Seems to me all they do is harass the homeless people over at Occidental Park. I saw one them kids the other day, wearing them scarves and headrags, harassing ol’ Rickman over there on one o’ the benches.”

“Anybody do anything about it?”

“Not that I could see. This kid, he just kept pointing his finger at ol’ Rickman. Making fun of him and stuff. Then I saw him actually kick Rick’s shoe. He kicked it so hard it fell off.”

“That ain’t right. Why didn’t somebody get the cops?”

“Well, I started to go find the cops, you know they’re over there all the time, but you think I could find one anywhere when I needed one?”

“I suppose not.”

“No, sir. Nowhere to be found.”

“So what happened to the kid?”

“Ol’ Rick just pulled back his fist, and belted that little son-of-a-bitch right in the nose.” Freddy bent over he was laughing so hard.

“Good for ol’ Rickman. The kid got what he deserved, huh?”

“I’ll say.”

Just then Hap saw a bright light reflect off the side of a black, shiny car driving by, and it triggered another vision.

“Oh shit,” Freddy said when he saw Hap drift off into what appeared to be sleep. “You gonna be gone long?” he asked. “Damnit, Hap, you know I don’t know how long you gonna be gone here now. It sure looks weird to the people walking by for me to be sitting next to sleepin’ man. Why didn’t you do this over’t Occidental? Nobody cares over there.” Hap leaned toward Freddy and appeared to be quietly asleep against his shoulder.

In his vision, he saw heavy black curtains placed over a window. The only light was the single 100-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling. Four hooded men, dressed in blacks and grays, sat in chairs circled around Hap who was seated in the middle. The men in the outer circle were interrogating him, and they kept referring to him, in Arabic, as Al Saad; and he understood what they were saying.

The man in the middle chair, was him, and like an out-of-body experience that occurred in most of the visions, he heard himself tell them he had been born in Mecca, and was trained in Afghanistan with Al’ Sadr who was soon to become one of the most vicious terrorists in the world. His told them his mother’s, and his father’s name, who his brothers and sisters were, where he had gone to school, and how he had found his way into the jihadist movement; all highly developed lies constructed for this very situation. Somehow Hap (Al Saad) knew he would undergo this situation in this room lit only by the single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. 

Hap watched in amazement, and wondered who these men were; and how he knew he was Al Saad. After the interrogation, he watched them beat him with their fists, boots, and clubs.  No noises, other than the slugging and whacking were heard. Al Saad did not yell out, or protest in any way. 

“This is to initiate you into the Al’ Baama Brigade,” one of the masked men told him. “Should you ever reveal any of the secrets of our brigade to anyone outside, remember what happened here and know, in retribution, it will happen again and only cease when you are dead.”

Then Hap heard his own response, “As you wish. Long live, Allah,” which he spoke in Arabic.

The men then escorted him from the room and down a long hall to a door on the side of the building, and into a car, which then drove to an undisclosed location, where someone opened the door, and pushed him out. He landed on a hardpan, somewhere on a back street near the airport in Philadelphia. Dazed and disoriented he picked himself up and started walking.  Eventually he flagged down a taxi and had it drive him back into the city.

On the way the taxi driver asked him if he was ok.

“I’ll be ok,” he said.

“You speak English perfectly,” the taxi driver said, sounding his middle-eastern accent. “From your looks I thought you were Arabic.”

Caught off guard by a taxi driver he hadn’t taken a good look at, he responded, “Oh, yes, I was raised here in Philadelphia. Twelve years of America public schools will squeeze any trace of an accent away.”

“Yes, I suppose, yet you dress in the ways of the old country,” the driver said, straining his neck toward his rear view mirror.

“Just drop me off near Franklin Square, on North 7^th and Market.”

“Ok.”

Once inside his apartment he locked the doors, and went into his bedroom, kicked off his shoes, and retrieved a cell phone from inside the closet where he had it hidden.

“Jack?

          “I made it.

          “Yes, tonight.”

          He listened for a few seconds to the voice on the other end; then closed the phone and put it back in it’s hiding place inside the closet.

“Hap! Hap! Wake-up.”

Hap heard Freddy’s voice coming the thick fog, created by the vision, that felt as thought it had just rolled in off the bay. When the fog cleared, he realized he had gone into another vision. “How long have I been out?”

“Just a few seconds, I think. Not very long at all; but man, this is embarrassing sitting here with all these rich people looking at me, sitting here with a sleeping man on the bench.”

“Sorry, Freddy.” Hap sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“What was this one about?”

“I got the crap beat outa me.”

“What? The crap beat outa you?”

“There were three or four men. No, four. They were asking him.” Hap stopped.

“Who?”

“I think it was me. Not sure. I seemed to be watching someone who was being interrogated by these four men; only the man under the bright light was me.”

“Hey, I used to have dreams like that.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, back in my acid days. I thought of myself back in those days as a kind of a travelin’ man. You know, Carlos Castenada stuff – he called them out-of-body experiences.”

Hap looked at Freddy incredulously. “Out-of-body experiences?”

“You know, you get this sensation that you’ve actually left your body and you can look down and watch yourself do whatever you’re doing.”

“That’s exactly what it was,” Hap said, staring off down the street.

“You mean inside your vision, right?”

“Yeah. I was watching myself being interrogated by a group of what looked like Al’ Queda terrorists.” He sat quietly thinking. “And after the questions, they beat the crap outa me. I mean, they couldn’t have really been Al’ Queda. Could they?”

“Hap, you know Harborview is just up the hill.” Freddy pointed to the massive hospital up the hill. “They have a psycho ward up there, you know.”

“Stop it Freddy,” Hap said, the he turned and looked into Freddy’s face, and said, “I feel like I’m standing at an open door looking in on what these visions are about. I think I led some kind of violent life before coming here.”

 

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

The end of this story will involve Charles Washington finding Hap just as he and Billy are about to be slain by members of the Al’ Baama Brigade.  The brigade has been looking for him since the trial. We won’t really know how they find him, they just will.  Maybe it will be due to a comment Hap makes while someone is listening: maybe an Islamic in the Mission overhears some of their conversation and reports it to someone who has connections in Seattle to the jihadist underground.

 

 

Hap’s son is looking for him.  He will hear a man humming classical music to a young boy outside a theater in Seattle, and looking quickly at him will discover it is his father.

 

Back to Hap….daily doings in Seattle….light easy fare…...

Summer – sleeping on the benches with his buddies

Freddy – getting sick, or in the hospital.

More visions – testifying against the bad guys.

Maybe a vision about Bob (Montgomery)? The witness protection

 

 

If the traffic had been lighter that afternoon, the ambulance would have arrived sooner, but then it probably wouldn’t have mattered. By the time the flashing lights of the fire trucks, ambulances and sheriff’s cruisers were on the scene, the family of four were all dead and the Lexus was nothing but a twisted fire-ball of metal, melted vinyl, and glass.

Two hours after the mess was cleaned off the road and the flashing lights were gone, Billy’s eyes opened.  He was lying on his back and the first thing he saw was the trees around him, reaching for the sky. In what seemed like only a micro-second ago, he was looking out his window at the snow-peaked mountains in the east.  Now he was lying in a huge, tangled, clump of blackberries and ferns, growing some thirty feet away from the road. Disoriented and confused, he lay still for a few minutes and tried to figure out what had happened; then he started crawling out of the entangled bushes. Scratched and bruised, he emerged, and still saw nothing that looked familiar.  Where’d the car go? Where are the Andersons? He looked in every direction, and still saw nothing familiar, so having no idea where he was, or what he should do, he started walking along the busy road.

It didn’t take long for a car to pull over.  A window went down and a woman with dirty-blonde hair asked, “You need a ride?’

“No, thanks,” Billy replied, remembering what someone had once told him about speaking with strangers. “I’m just going home.”

“Ok,” the lady said, then the driver of her car pulled back out to the road.

Then a few minutes later, another car pulled over.  “You ok, son?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.  Just going home.”

          “I can give you a ride,” the man said.

“That’s ok.  Thanks.” Billy kept walking.

In an hour he reached a crest where, when he walked over the top, he could no longer see where he had started. The sun was beginning to dip low in the west and he was hungry, and scared.  That was when the blue truck that he would grow familiar with pulled over and someone jumped out, grabbed him and shoved him in the cab. 

“What are you?” he shouted. “Are you going to take me to the Andersons?”

“Who are the Andersons, kid?”

“My foster parents. I don’t know what happened to them.”

“We don’t know no Andersons, kid.”

“Where are you guys taking me?” Billy asked, looking at the driver who was smoking a cigarette.

“We’re the United States Agricultural Service,” said the man who sat at Billy’s right, in the passenger seat. When he smiled, Billy noticed what teeth he had were brown.

“What’s that?”

“We’re farmers,” the driver said, spitting big wad of brown tobacco out his window.

“Yeah, that’s it,” the passenger said, “we grow agricultural commodities.”

“You need a job, kid?” the driver said. Billy noticed the man had sores under a scraggly beard, on his cheek.

“What? I’m just a kid, I don’t need a job.”

“We got one for you anyway,” the man behind the wheel said.

“You’re gonna love it, too,” the passenger said.

The driver suddenly extended a hand toward Billy and said, “Name’s Ed,” then he motioned toward his friend and said, “and that there’s Matthew.  What’s you name, kid?”

“Billy.”

“Well, Billy, we’re glad to meet you,” he said, pulling a bottle of beer from between his legs to his mouth. Billy watched the beer run through the neck of the bottle into Ed’s mouth.”

“You’re not supposed to drink beer when you drive.”

“Oh, hey, Matthew! Look here, we got us a lawyer on board.”

Matthew laughed and took a swig from his beer also. “Mighty young for an attorney-type, kid.”

Billy didn’t know what they were talking about. He found the entire experience confusing and scary, and he started to cry.

“C’mon, kid. We’re not gonna hurt you, stop crying. You a little baby?”

“Where you taking me?” he asked, between deep sobs.

“Just up the road, not far now,” Ed told him. “Really, kid, it’s going to be all right. Settle down, now.”

The blue truck turned east off the main road, onto a side road that led toward the mountains.  Soon it was dark, and raining, and Billy could see only the tall trees and winding road in the truck’s lights ahead.  In a while, Ed pulled the truck onto a dirt road that led into the thick woods. An hour later, after crossing three bridges over rivers whose raging waters Billy could hear, they pulled into a clearing where a well-worn, single-wide mobile home appeared in the truck lights.  Limbs, hanging over the roof-line dripped rain-water on an old rusty barbecue resting outside the front door; lawn chairs, covered with some kind of green slime, lay on their backs on the ground; an old mattress leaned against the backside of the trailer, and there were beer bottles, pop cans, and one of a pair of lady’s shoes lying near the front door.

“Get out, kid,” Matthew said, opening the door and ducking his head into the rain.

Billy crawled out of the truck and felt his shoes squish in mud. 

“C’mon,” Matthew said, pulling Billy by the shirt toward the front door that Ed was opening.

Billy’s nose scrunched up when he smelled the inside of the trailer; he thought it smelled like poop.

“You hungry kid?” Ed asked, scrounging through the kitchen for food. “We got something in the freezer,” he said, pulling out three frozen dinners. He opened the microwave sitting on the counter, tossed all three dinners in, closed the door, started the microwave, and pulled a couple beers from the refrigerator; one for himself, and one for Matthew.

Matthew turned on the television and plugged a porn tape into the VCR. “You think she’ll be here tonight?” he asked Ed.

“Said she would.”

Billy sat quietly on an overstuffed chair and watched a man and woman having sex on the television. He was still having trouble with his emotions, but at least he wasn’t out in the rain, and there was food cooking in the microwave.

After they had dinner, Ed picked up a flashlight, a handful of blankets and a pillow, put on a rain jacket, and took Matthew by the hand. “C’mon,” he said, “time for bed, kid.” It was still raining outside, and Billy couldn’t see where they were going because the flashlight was moving too fast for him to follow.  In a few minutes they were behind the trailer where Billy saw a small shed. “It might rain a lot, but it ain’t cold at night, so you’re gonna sleep out here tonight, kid.” He unlocked the lock on the door, opened it, and stepped inside. “There ain’t no lights, but you don’t need any,” he said, tossing the blankets down on the cold floor. “There’s a little light coming in from the trailer,” he said, pointing at the small window in the side of the shed.

“I’m cold,” Billy said, scared, and not liking the prospect of sleeping in the shed with no heat.  “I don’t want to sleep out here.”

“Shut up, kid,” Ed said, “we got company comin’ tonight and you’d be in the way.”  He folded the blanket out and had Billy lay down on the pillow, the put the other blanket over him. “See, that’ll work,” he said, walking out the door and locking it behind him.

During the night Billy heard the two men and the woman who arrived later, talking, and laughing inside the trailer. He was cold and the sounds they made, coming out of the warm trailer into his cold and lonely shed, made him cry.  They didn’t come get him until almost noon the next day.  

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

After the conversation with Nancy Gunderson at the class reunion, Charles had to talk to Lucy; so the next morning, when the Department of Social and Health Services’ doors opened, he was waiting for them. Using his attorney status, it wasn’t difficult for him to find out where he could locate Lucy. Two hours later he was driving into Spokane.

He had called ahead on his cell phone; located Marlene Digby, and told her what he had on his mind.  She was waiting for him when he arrived.

“She has limited recall from her earlier life. Many times I’ve asked her about her son, and each time I ask, I get a blank stare.”

“Do you think she knows she has a child?”

“Hard to say. With these types of head injuries, we never really know what they are able to remember or think, unless they tell us. I’ve heard of patients who appear to have little, if any recall about a loved one, then out of the blue, sometimes ten, fifteen, even twenty years later, start speaking either about them, or directly to them.”

“And Lucy’s never said anything about her son?”

“Not yet, Mr. Washington. Who knows though, maybe today will be the day.  Were you a family friend?”

“We went to school together.”

“Did you know her son?”

“No, I never met him.”

“And what is your concern?”

Charles looked at the floor for a while, then slowly shifted his eyes to hers. “I may be the father,” he said, feeling a twinge of emotion.  “I had no idea, until last night.”

“And someone spilled the beans.”

“Apparently the beans were spilled long ago. I was just the last one to fall out of the jar, I guess.”

“Come, let me re-introduce you to Lucy.”

Charles felt a clamminess develop in his palms. It had been a long time since he last talked with Lucy and though he wanted her to remember him, he was convinced she wouldn’t.

“Lucy? Do you remember this man?” Gunderson asked, after knocking and entering Lucy’s room.

She looked at him, then looked back at Ms. Gunderson. “No.”

“Are you sure? Look at him again.”

She scrunched up her nose, and wrinkles on her forehead formed while like a radar screen, her eyes scanned Charles’ face. “He’s a good lookin’ one ain’t he,” she said to Gunderson, “but I don’t know him.” She turned back to Charles, and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Charles Washington.”

Suddenly she took on the look of someone who has heard something familiar, but can’t place it. “Charles Washington,” she said. “Do you know Billy?”

“No, I…” he said, but wasn’t able to finish because Ms. Gunderson broke into the conversation.

“Lucy, who is Billy?”

Lucy’s eyes went back into the darkened place they were before she heard Charles’ name.

“Who is Billy, Lucy?” Gunderson asked again, looking at Charles.

She sat silently staring at her hands.

“Charles Washington,” Charles said again.  Her reaction was the same as before.

“Do you know Billy?”

“Tell me about Billy, Lucy,” Charles said.

“He’s a little boy.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No, they took him away from me.”

“But do you know where he is?”

“They won’t tell me.”

“Are you his mother?” Charles asked.

She wrinkled her forehead again, thinking. “I think so. He was my little boy, I think,” she said, staring out the window.

“Who was his father?” Charles asked.

“His name was like yours,” she said, looking intently at Charles. “and he had dark skin like you.”

“His name was Charles, like mine?”

Lucy’s eyes softened and she slid back into the dark place again.

Two hours later he was on his cell phone with the welfare offices again, trying to locate the foster home where Billy had been assigned. After a couple more days of investigation, he learned about Billy’s travails through the foster home program; he also learned that Billy had vanished. No one knew if he had been in the Anderson’s car when they were killed. No one knew if he had been burned beyond not only recognition, but beyond detection in the smoldering remains of the car.  The assumption was that the fire had simply consumed him.

Three months later Charles walked out of his legal firm’s offices in Washington DC and flew back to the Pacific Northwest. There was no evidence that Billy survived the car crash; nor was there any evidence that he didn’t.

Harold Anderson’s brother, Mickey, told Charles how Harold and Monica had never been able to have children of their own and had tried to compensate by working with the foster home program for many years. Charles learned they had had close to twenty foster children in their home by the time Billy arrived. Mickey told him he was convinced Billy had been with them on the day of the accident. “Wouldn’t he have shown up somewhere if he hadn’t been?”

Two days later, with camera, voice recorder, notebook, and the accident report in hand, Charles stood at the scene where the accident had taken place. He studied the road and tried to visualize what had happened. He studied the black and white photographs of the skid marks and walked to where they would have been, he checked how fast the car was traveling; and he read the names of the family in the oncoming car. He walked the area, took pictures, made notes and when the day was bereft of good light, he drove back to his motel room. 

The next day he interviewed the police and the firemen who responded the day of the accident.

“That road’s killed a lot of people over the years and it’s only getting worse with all these new homes being built,” a deputy told Charles. “The commissioners dropped the speed limit out there right after that accident. They put in new lights and markers; but people don’t like to change old habits.”

“How do you know the boy was with them?”

“They told us he was.”

“Who was that?”

“Who told us?”

“Yeah, who was that?”

“The state investigators said they had a young boy in the car with them.”

“Did you find his body?”

“No.”

“Well how can you say he was in the car then?”

“You should talk to the coroner about that. I can tell you this: it was an odd thing all right. We found the man and woman without any trouble. They weren’t in very good shape, I’ll give you that. But I always thought we should have found that boy too. The report says he was ‘apparently’ consumed by the fire.”

“I read that too.”

“It took a few days to learn there was even a boy involved. You know, we find only two bodies, but then we get this report about the boy. I know the coroner’s office went back out to the scene about four or five days after the accident and dug up a bunch of dirt and stuff. You know, looking for evidence.”

“And they didn’t find anything; it’s right here in the report.”

“No.”

“So all we have is ‘circumstantial evidence’ that the boy was in the car.”

“But, if he wasn’t wouldn’t he have shown up somewhere by now?” the deputy asked.

“I don’t know,” Charles said, “but I’ll tell you this. I don’t think that boy was killed in that accident, there’s not one stitch of evidence telling us he was.”

It didn’t take long for Charles to extinguish all the leads he could muster. A week later he was back at work in DC; still he couldn’t stop thinking that he had a son out somewhere out there in the wide, wide world.

Chapter Sixteen

 

Billy didn’t sleep that night.  Sometime before sunrise the rain stopped and when the sun came over the mountain peak to the east, sunlight streamed through the cracks in the walls. Cold, hungry, and lonely, Billy positioned himself in the fetal position, pulled the blanket up over his shoulders, and cried. He thought about his mother and how she used to keep him warm and comfortable, sometimes; but mostly he thought about his grandma who used to take good care of him.

As the sun rose in the sky, the light penetrating the wall cracks, moved back toward the wall. Not long after it disappeared, someone came to the shed.

“You awake in there?” Billy recognized Ed’s voice.

“Yes,” Billy said, listening to Ed fumble with the combination lock on the door. When it loosed, Ed opened the door and looked in on Billy who was lying on the floor.  “You get cold last night?”

“Yes.”

“You look all right. C’mon, we gotta go to work.”

Billy slowly crawled from under the blanket and followed Ed to a barn located further behind the trailer in the woods. Made of cedar planks, with doors that barely closed, the barn had lost its plumb many years ago. Billy thought it might fall over while he watched. Inside Ed showed him where he tools were kept, especially the hoes and rakes.

“You’ll be using these most the time,” he said, grabbing a hoe. “Do you know how to use it?”

“No.”

Ed took Billy outside and demonstrated the proper techniques of hoeing to him.

“Here you give it a try,” he said, handing the tool to Billy.

Billy cut a few weeds and gave the hoe back to Ed.

“Oh no, that’s now how it works! You don’t give me the hoe. You go to the field and use it, just like I showed you.”

Billy stood silent, watching Ed’s face.

“You understand?’

He didn’t understand who Ed and Matthew were; he didn’t understand who the woman was who visited them last night, and he didn’t understand why he was with these people. What he didn’t want to do was show any ignorance, so he shook his head in the affirmative, as though to say he did.

“Good. Now follow me and I’ll show you where the field is so you can get started.” He took the hoe from Billy and started walking further back into the woods. When they reached a large clearing, Ed showed Billy where they planted their crop.

“You can’t plant in one big area, it’s too visible; people in the air look for patterns. We plant in the spaces around the natural bushes that grow here. You can see where last years plants were,” he said, pointing to places that Billy didn’t undertand.”

“What you’ll do is hoe the ground up. Like this,” he said, showing Billy how to turn the soil with the hoe. “You do a good job and I’ll bring you some lunch later on.”

“I’m hungry now,” Billy said, his stomach growling.

“Work first, then food.  Now, show me how to turn the soil with the hoe.”

Billy worked the hoe like Ed had showed him, turning soil in an approximate one foot square area.

“That’s good,” Ed said, “just keep doing that in all the places where you see the field has been worked before.”

“You want me to do all this before I can have some food?”

“You get a good start and we’ll see about the food,” Ed said, disappearing into the woods back toward the trailer.

 Billy watched him walk away, then took the hoe and sat down on a nearby rock. He didn’t understand why he was here, other than to do the work Ed, and probably Matthew, didn’t want to do. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t have something to eat. The last meal he had eaten had been breakfast with the Anderson’s yesterday, before they disappeared. When he started thinking about his mother, and grandmother, tears welled in his eyes and spilled over onto his cheeks; then he started sobbing loudly. No one could hear him.

Two hours later Ed showed up to inspect his work. “What the hell you been doing out here?” Ed asked, showing anger. “I told you to turn this soil, and you have done nothing,” he said, swinging his arms toward the field.

“I’m hungry.”

“I told you you’d get something to eat after you got your work done. Now get your ass on it, or you won’t eat anything today.”

Billy whimpered, but got up and started hoeing the field.

“That’s better. Now keep going, and maybe I’ll find some food for you.” He turned away again and disappeared into the woods.

Meanwhile, Billy hoed the field until his hands and arms were so tired he could hardly hold them up; then he sat on a rock in the middle of the field, and hoped Ed would return soon with something to eat. He didn’t understand why Ed couldn’t give him something to eat. He did understand that he didn’t like Ed, but he knew he didn’t want to make Ed mad. Billy sensed something in Ed that was sinister and scary.

After resting a while and successfully not thinking too much about his mother and grandmother, he got up and started hoeing the field again.  Just before the fell far enough in the western sky that he would have to stop on account of darkness, Ed walked back into the field.

“Is that it?”

“What?”

“Is that all you got done?”

Billy was amazed Ed wasn’t satisfied.  He could hardly stand up he was so tired from hoeing the field. “Yes.”

“This is a sad start for you Billy. If you’re going to do what is expected of you, you’re going to have to work a little harder.”

Billy didn’t know how to react; so he started to cry.

“Knock off that shit, little man! We don’t need no cry-babies around here. Ya hear?”

Billy started sobbing.

“I said, shut up the fuckin’ crying!”

Billy was sobbing convulsively.

Ed ripped his belt from his waist band. “You want something to cry about, little man?”

Billy tried, but he couldn’t stop. Ed drew the leather belt back at arm’s lenth, and struck Billy across the face. “I said, Shut the fuck up!”

The welt appeared instantly, running across Billy’s face from above his left eye, across his nose and cheek on the lower right side.  He picked up the hoe and tried to swing it at Ed, but Ed caught it with his hands and laid it aside. “You little shit!” he said, pulling Billy across his knee and pummeling his behind with the belt. “I’ll show you who hits who here.”

When he finished beating Billy, he took by the arm back to the shed and shoved him inside. “You just sit in there and think about what you’re going to do to make Ed happy tomorrow.” He closed the door and locked it again.

Billy buried his head in the pillow and sobbed until he fell asleep; but for he second night in a row, he didn’t sleep well. Dreams and nightmares interfered with his sleep.

“Grandma what are you doing?” he asked, watching her weave leather belts into a quilt she was making.

“Making you a quilt, Billy.”

“Why are you using belts?”

“To keep the evil spirits away from you. When you sleep with this quilt, they will leave you alone.”

Billy awoke and pulled the skimpy blanket around his chin. From inside the trailer he heard laughter, and people’s voices, and country music. The laughter didn’t die until late in the morning hours, and once again, when the lights streaming through the cracks between the planks in the walls disappeared against the wall, someone started fidgeting with the lock on the shed.

“C’mon,” a voice said.

Billy looked and saw Matthew.

“I’m hungry.”

“C’mon, I’ll get you some cereal, or something.”

The trailer was a mess. Empty beer bottles were on the floor, on the television, the table in front of the couch, in the sink, on the couch, and in the refrigerator.

“Damn good party last night. You shoulda been here.”

Billy wondered why he wasn’t.

“Look there’s Ed’s feet,” Matthew said, pointing down the hall to where a pair of feet stuck out of the bedroom door into the hall. “I guess he was too tired to make it to his bed,” Matthew said, laughing out loud.  “You ever have that trouble? Too tired to go to bed.”

Billy could only hear the rhythm of Matthew’s voice; the room started twirling slowly at first, then faster, and soon Billy collapsed on the floor.

“What the fuck?” Matthew said, surprised to see Billy fall. “Hey, Billy, you ok?” He ran to Billy’s side and moved his head around, trying to revive the boy. He ran back to the kitchen and filled a glass with cold water and tossed it on Billy’s face.

“Hungry,” Billy said when the water woke him.

Matthew helped Billy sit up, then helped him to the table where he filled a bowl of cereal with milk. “Here you go.”

Billy finished the bowl in a matter of minutes. “Can I have some more?” he asked, bringing the bowl to his mouth so he could drink the remaining milk.

Matthew filled the bowl again and filled it with milk.  “Did you have anything to eat yesterday?”

“No.”

“Are you fuckin’ with me?”

“No.”

“That bastard, Ed. I told him you would need some food if he was going to have you work the field yesterday. I was on a buying trip, otherwise I woulda fed you Billy.”

“More?” Billy asked, drinking again the milk from the bottom of the bowl.

“What the hell you doing?” Ed yelled from the hall near the bedroom.

“Feeding the boy!”

“I told you not to do that. How will we ever get him trained properly if he’s has a gut full of food?” Ed stormed into the kitchen and knocked the cereal bowl onto the floor.

“Ed, if he doesn’t eat he won’t have the strength to work the field. Now leave him alone while he eats.” Ed picked up the bowl and when he started to refill it, Ed struck him in the face with his fist.

“Gawdamit! What the fuck you do that for?”

“I told you, asshole, no food until he does his work!”

“You stupid s.o.b!” Matthew yelled, just as another fist shoved its way into his face. He fell back onto the floor near the television. He got up, mad, and charged Ed.

The fight was ferocious and soon everything from the television to the toaster on the kitchen counter was lying on the floor. Eventually Ed fell against the door and landed in the front. Battered and bloody, Matthew jumped out the door onto Ed and seemed to have the upper hand until Ed picked up a monkey wrench lying on the ground and started coming at him.

“Ed! Stop!” Matthew yelled, running away from him. “You stupid shit! How do you expect to get the crop in if you’re going to fight with me?”

Ed slowed, then stopped, and pointing the wrench at Matthew said, “You feed that kid again and this’ll be embedded in your skull, you understand?”

“Crap, Ed, how can you say that? The kid’s gotta eat.”

“I told you, dumbshit, if he works with a full belly, he won’t do what we tell him.”

“Ok, so we feed him twice a day, but we don’t let him finish his plate!”

While the argument raged in front of the trailer, Billy snuck out the back door and fled into the woods.

 

 Chapter Seventeen

 

          Early June can be an exceptionally beautiful time of the year in western Washington. It will still rain, but this is the time of year when the sun begins to make more frequent appearances.  The buds on the cherry trees that line the University of Washington’s campus swell and burst populating the trees with millions of pink blossoms; crocuses pop up in lawns, and around building foundations; and brilliantly yellow daffodils fill pots and small landscapes all over the city. The city itself shakes off the gloom of winter and sparkles with a brilliance reserved only for this time of year. People in the streets trade their winter gray and brown jackets and umbrellas for the red, yellow, and blue shorts, t-shirts, and tank tops of summer.

          Hap sat in Occidental park watching a group of Mariner fans work their way through the homeless toward the multi-million dollar play-field known as Quest Field. They were a colorful lot, staying close to the sidewalks surrounding the square, rather than walking across the park and therefore, near the sleeping potatoes, wrapped in gray blankets, on the park benches.  Fans worked hard not to stare at the homeless folks; but Hap noticed most every one of them would, at some point, toss a quick glance.

What he enjoyed most was the children; hopping and skipping with their Mariner t-shirts and flags and signs with their parents carefully herding them toward the stadium.

“Hi there,” he said to a young boy who walked a little closer than most.

“Hi,” the boy replied, walking on by.

Hap turned and watched the boy. He looked about seven, or eight, and there was something about him that Hap couldn’t quite place. Was it the way the boy walked, or the way he held his backpack strap? Or was it simply his shoes?

Hap shifted his weight on the bench, letting his head rest against the back. The vision came slowly.  

“Michele, did you get Louie’s back-pack? Mom said it was on the kitchen table.”

She held it up, and said, “Right here, Dad.”

“Ok, let’s go then,” he said, opening the front door. They walked to the car and put the backpack in the backseat; then drove to Louie’s school and waited for him to emerge. Once the last bell of the day announced school was out, Louie, one of the first kids out the door, emerged on the run and headed for his Dad’s car.  An hour later, they were at the old Veteran’s Ballpark to watch the Phillies play the Atlanta Braves. They ate hot dogs, and cotton candy, and drank Coka-Cola, and they laughed and marveled at the players who played baseball better than anyone else in the world could play the game.  And while the Braves beat the Phillies that day, and they were sad, they were not too sad.

On the way home, they told corny jokes, laughed, counted the number of cars who had nines in their license plate numbers, and hummed classical music together. Louie was particularly adept at humming classical music, it was something his dad had taught him when they used to take walks in the park and visit the zoo.

Hap opened his eyes, then closed them again. The day was warm, the sun was breaking through the new leaves on the sycamore trees growing in the park, and he was peaceful. The vision had been very pleasurable and he didn’t want to let it go just yet. He was afraid if he moved about too quickly he would lose the images he had just experienced; they were some of he most pleasurable visions he could remember.   

Sometimes Hap’s visions whisked him away to places he didn’t know; places far away: bizarre places where danger lurked at every corner. And some of them were casual, more like light dreams, or even memories.  The one thing they all had in common however was that none of them were of things he knew about, or was connected to; yet after they occurred he often felt as though the places and experiences were in some inexplicable way a part of him.

Leaving his head to rest on the back of the bench, he and took a deep, slow breath. Who were those children? He struggled to remember their names. Michael? No, a girl’s name: Maria? No. Mary? Miranda? Mish…Mich….Michele, that was it, Michele. And he was, mmm, what was it? Larry? Larson? Luigy? No. Louis…mmm…Lou..Louie! That was it Michele and Louie. He tried to remain the gloam of the vision: the ball park, the cotton-candy, the walk back to the car, the children’s laughter and giggles, and the music they hummed together. He wanted to keep the memory of the vision; and he wanted to know who these delightful children were.

Hap thought back to his earliest memory. He was in a hospital bed and there was a man sitting in a chair, reading a magazine, in the room with him. 

“Hey, Hap, you’re awake!” the man with the magazine said.

During those first few moments of consciousness, Hap didn’t know who the man was talking to.

“Who?” Hap responded, bleary eyed and filled with confusion.

“You, dog. You’re name’s Hap ain’t it?”

He rubbed his eyes and looked about the strange room. “I don’t know?”

“You don’t know your own name? It’s Hap, man. Hap’s your name.”

Nothing about it sounded familiar, but hard as he tried, he couldn’t remember his real name, and he didn’t know where he was.

“Where am I?”

“Man, you got hit by a train. You’re in the hospital. You been in here for three weeks.”

“A train hit me?”

“Knocked you a country mile. You don’t remember that?”

Hap struggled to remember. “No.”

“I’ll be right back, Hap. Somebody need to know you’re back.”

In a few minutes the room was filled with nurses, orderlies, interested hospital people; all stranger. They expressed a great deal of delight to see the man who had been comatose for three weeks looking back at them and talking.

“He don’t know his own name,” the man who had been reading the magazine said.

“That’s normal, Freddy,” someone said to him. “Comatose patients are almost always terrifically confused when they first wake up. Their memories are almost always weak, and sometimes they never get them back.  Others regain most of their memories in a matter of minutes, hours, maybe days. He’ll be all right. He’ll come back.”

Hap looked at the man and realized he knew Freddy’s name; but what was Hap’s name? All he knew was, Hap, but he knew that wasn’t the real one.

“Why do you call me Hap?” he asked the man once the crowd cleared.

“Everybody know you as Hap. It’s because you always smilin’. Look at you, you smilin’ now.”

“Did you know me before the accident?”

“Sure, everybody know you Hap.”

“Who is ‘everybody?’”

“You know, man, everybody down at the Mission and over in Occidental Park. All the folks that hang out there, they all know Hap.”

In the days and weeks following his awakening in the hospital, Freddy was with Hap constantly.  He showed Hap where his apartment was located, south of Quest Field, and where Occidental Park and Pioneer Square were, as well as the Mission on First Avenue. He reintroduced him to everyone and it became clear to Hap that these people all knew him; but he had no recollections of anything prior to that day in the hospital. He didn’t now any of the people Freddy introduced him to; nor did he recognize his apartment, the things in it, or the locale in which it was located.  

Freddy took Hap to the railroad tracks and showed him where the accident had happened. “I was with you, man. It happened right here,” Freddy said, pointing to the intersection where Freddy had been hit by the train. “It was late, man. You were drunk and sleepy. I told you earlier to go on home, but you didn’t want to. You said it was too nice a night to go home with that cat of yours. What’s his name?”

“Bull Durham,” Hap answered.

“What? You know your cat’s name, but you don’t know mine?”

“You’re Freddy. I know that.”

“Yeah, but how did you know the Bull’s name. I didn’t know it, so I couldn’t tell you.”

“I don’t know. It just came to me.” Hap saw the cat in what would become the first of hundreds of visions he would eventually have. It was in the vision, that he remembered feeding and talking to Bull Durham, the cat. The vision lasted only a second, maybe two. The huge visions came later; the ones that seemed to put him to sleep.

“What was my name before the accident, Freddy?’

“I don’t really know. Soon as you showed up, people started callin’ you Hap.”

By now they had walked from the site of the accident back to the park. It was late and the weather was threatening with rain, so Hap said goodnight to Freddy and walked back to his apartment. While he walked, he hummed Brahm’s Lullaby, and thought of the two children, Michele and Louie. The further he walked, the weaker his memory of the vision became. By the time he arrived at his door, he was humming another classical piece; and most of the pieces of his memory of the vision of Michele and Louie he had earlier, disappeared into the cerebral mists where most dreams and visions go.

 
Chapter Nineteen

 

Forests are beautiful places where nature provides home to wild animals, and birds, where rivers flow and merge on their way to the ocean somewhere down at sea level, and where people find their own peace and refuge. Warm and green in the summertime, people flock to forests in campers and tents to fish, and hike, and rest. Cold and often, white with snow in the winter, forests can be daunting places for people to survive. Forests are also places where people can hide from other family members, enemies, the law, each other.  

Billy, ran away from the field where he had been shoveling and turning the soil, into the dark forest. He ran as hard as he could and he ran as far as he could before coming to a river to wide to cross. Sitting under a clump of bushes for protection, he listened for Ed and Matthew, but all he could hear were some winter wrens and the rushing water in the river.

Darkness comes early around the mountains, and Billy could tell the day was getting late. Hearing no one after him, he crawled out of the bushes and started following the river. Had he been a little older, he might have known to follow the river downstream, but he was still a young boy; he turned upstream and started moving along the river.

When it got to dark to continue, he stopped and tried to find a comfortable place to lie down and sleep. As the night evolved, it got colder for him.  Soon he was shivering as his body tried to keep warm. The night sounds in the forest scared him and he didn’t know what to do next. He tried doing some exercises to stay warm and that worked some, but soon he fatigued and sat down. The exercise raised his temperature enough for him to lay down and doze for a few minutes; then when his temperature dropped again, he awoke.

A mist started moving into the valley along the river, and a gentle drizzle developed. Billy felt the moisture working its way into his dirty clothes, and soon he was miserable with shivering and sleep deprivation.

In the early morning hours when light began filtering into the valley, he started walking on upstream. Starving, cold and wet, he eventually came across an old dirt road. Looking both directions, he couldn’t decide which way to go, so he started walking on the downhill side of the road. After walking for a couple of miles, he saw the Ed’s blue truck coming from a distance. He jumped in the bushes and watched Ed and Matthew drive by slowly.

“Billy!” Ed shouted. “Billy, where are you?”

Billy sat quietly, hiding in the bushes, until they drove past, then stepped out on the road and started running as fast as he could run.

“There he is,” Ed said, looking in the cracked glass of the rearview mirror. He slammed on the breaks and quickly turned the truck around.

“I see him,” Matthew said.

Billy, running almost uncontrollably down the road, looked over his shoulder at the truck and when he saw it turning around, lost his balance and tumbled out of control onto the hard road. When he stopped rolling, he jumped up and ran into the woods.

“Whoa, he took quite a fall didn’t he?” Matthew said. 

Ed laughed, and stopped the truck at the point where Billy ran into the trees. “Let’s go get him,” he said, jumping from the truck.

It didn’t take long for them to run Billy down, and when they did Billy started sobbing again. “You’re just a fuckin’ crybaby,” Ed said, picking him like a roll of carpet and taking him back to the truck. “You’re gonna be sorry you ran from us, you little shit,” he said, grabbing a rope from the back of the truck and tying Billy’s ankles and wrists. He laid him in the bed of the truck, strapped a strip of duct tape on his mouth; then drove back down the road to the trailer.

“Ed,” Matthew said, “we gotta feed him when we get back.”

Ed didn’t argue this time, so when they got back he went into the freezer and pulled out a pizza and popped it into the microwave. Matthew untied his wrists, and removed the duct tape so he could eat. Before he finished his pizza, he fell asleep, head on the table.

Matthew picked him up and put him on one the beds in back.

Ed watched Matthew take care of Billy, and said, “What’re you some fuckin’ mother or somthin’?”

“The kids gotta have food, and he’s gotta have some sleep. You think he slept last night out there in the forest? It was cold and wet last night. If weren’t no careful he’ll get sick and die on us.”

Ed turned on the television, and hit the play button on the VCR.

“Is that what you want? You sick fuck?” Matthew yelled at him.

“Look, I said it once and I don’t need to say it again, if we want that boy to work for us, then we gotta train him and that training includes keeping him in his place. If he thinks we’re gonna kiss his ass and keep him warm and fuzzy, he won’t do shit.”

Later that evening, Ed took Billy back out to the shed and locked the door.

Over the next few weeks Ed and Matthew took Billy with them to work the field. It was early spring and they would be planting the crop in late April, early May. They fed Billy breakfast in the mornings; and when they stopped for lunch, they fed him as well; after the evening meal, which was always something brought from the freezer and nuked in the microwave, Billy was tied up and put back in the shed for the night.

Eventually Billy stopped crying. He wore the same clothes each day that he had worn the day they captured him; when he started to stink, they would put him in the shower and wash him down. After a few weeks, Matthew bought him some clean underwear and occasionally he would get a freshly washed pair to put on; his other clothes were never washed. It didn’t take long for his hair to grow beyond his shoulders, and then wearing dirty and tattered pants and shirt, he took on a wild look that brought a comment from Ed, “He looks like he just crawled out of a cave somewhere.”

Matthew laughed and replied, “Where’s his club? Shouldn’t he have a club over his shoulder?”

Meanwhile Billy continued shoveling the dirt and turning the soil. He had learned that when he didn’t do as he was told, Ed’s belt would burn into his hide; it wasn’t something he enjoyed, so he kept working. His hands were calloused, he had holes in his knees, and his shoes were just about gone; but he kept working, turning the soil.

After a month of hard work, the field was ready for planting. Matthew showed Billy how to mound the dirt, and plant the seeds. It took them a week to complete the planting.

“See Billy, when the crop starts to grow, it will come up at pretty much the same time as the ferns and other plants that come out in the spring. That way the crop is as close to invisible from the air as if it weren’t even there,” Matthew told him.

“From the air?” Billy asked, turning his face skyward.

“Yeah, we don’t want the helicopters to see it.”

“Why?”

“Because, Billy, it’s marijuana we’re growing.” Matthew was surprised at Billy’s questioning. He had thought about the fact that Billy wouldn’t know anything about what they were doing.

“Marijuana? What’s that?”

“It’s sorta like tobacco, Billy. You smoke it.”

“Yuk, I don’t like smoking. My mother smoked cigarettes all the time.”

“She did?”

“Yeah, like you and Ed. You guys like to smoke cigarettes.”

“Sure we do. You sure you don’t wanna try one sometime?”

“No way.”

Matthew smiled at Billy, then started wrapping the rope about his ankles. “Time for bed, Billy.” 

 

Chapter Twenty

 

Spring is a time in Seattle when the weather is still cold and unpredictable. People on the sidewalks downtown have yet to doff their winter clothing and they still carry umbrellas back and forth between work and the parking garage, or bus stop, and where they work. The folks who hang out at Occidental Park still hunker down near the air vents near the buildings at night, or the lucky ones find space in the Mission to spend the night. The rain falls in the spring, not unlike during the winter months, but it gradually takes on a misty context rather then one of drizzle and pour.

Hap doesn’t spend too many winter or spring nights at the park. Though the checks he receives from the government each month are small, he’s one of the lucky people who can afford a place to sleep every night. After the accident that stripped him of his memory, with Freddy’s help, he learned he could take the checks to the Washington Mutual bank over on Pike and Sixth and deposit them into an account that matched the name on the checks, and the identification card in his wallet: Bob Jones. The money was enough for him to pay his rent, keep his place warm in the winter, buy a few groceries and enough beer and wine to keep his supply up. He had no idea how this worked, he had never known anyone named Bob Jones, but Freddy told him how he had gone with him to this bank to deposit checks before.

Hap had been confused at first about the apartment, he thought it belonged to someone else since he didn’t recognize any of his stuff; but after a while he accepted the fact that it was his.

“All I know’s this, we started calling you ‘Hap’ practically the day you showed up.  Not many people here know the real names of the others anyway, so it didn’t matter.”

“Is your real name, Freddy?”

“No, my real name is Marty Drake. Ok?”

“Ok, Freddy.” They smiled together at the humor.  “I must be this, Bob Montgomery, then. But I’ll be damned if it rings any kind of bell with me.”

“Hell with it,” Freddy said, “you’re Hap and that’s all anybody around here cares to know.”

Hap smiled at the memory while he stroked Bull Durham’s fur and watched his television while the misty night surrounded Seattle. “What do you know, Bull?” Hap asked him, “Do you think any of it matters much?”

Bull purred and moved off the couch into Hap’s lap where he searched one way then the other before finally settling down into a comfy position.

“As I thought,” Hap said. The television droned and soon Hap, sleepy, laid his head back on the couch and began to doze. The next vision arrived like a deer sets his hoof on the carpeted forest floor, softly.

He sat in a hardwood chair that matched the wood throughout the wood: maple. The chair was higher than the others in the room, and there were people sitting along the side of the room, they seemed to be listening to him speak. He was wearing a sweat-shirt, a pair of sweat pants, and a stocking cap with hairs that had been colored gray curling about his ears, the long scraggly beard he had worn before was trimmed and also colored gray; he felt very uncomfortable. Since he had returned to the United States and his style of clothing, this was not him; and it was not accidental. When he talked into the microphone, he could hear his voice when he talked, but he couldn’t make out the words. He noticed though that the sound of his voice sounded like someone else, not his.

He strained to hear what he was saying, then someone fired a shot and deer’s hooves started slamming into the dried brush and small branches, and that was when the hunter’s knew in what direction it ran.

“Yes, that’s him,” he heard himself say, then saw himself pointing across the room.  He was pointing at a man, also bearded, but wearing a turban and robes, rather than traditional western fashion.

Then another man appeared, the one who was asking the questions. His hair was close cropped, he wore wire-rimmed glasses, a gray suit and black shoes; he carried an open file folder in his hand and looked at it occasionally.

“Did you serve as a covert agent in Iraq before the war?”

“Yes.”

“And what was the name you were assigned while carrying out that duty?”

“Al Saad.”

“Were you able to infiltrate this cell in Philadelphia?”

“Yes.”

“And how did you accomplish such a dangerous feat?”

“I was able to infiltrate a group of terrorists in Baghdad. While with them, this plot was created and developed.”

“Did you have a role while with them?”

“Yes, my job was to procure the necessary weapons.”

“And were you able to carry out that duty?”

“My reports were fabrications. I reported being in contact with a group in Syria who would provide the weapons through their contacts in the United States.”

“Did such a group, as far as you knew, exist.”

“No.”

          “And what is the status of the group you were working with in Baghdad?”

          “All dead.”

          “I see.”

          The questioning then turned toward the defendant. “Were you in this man’s presence on the day of the attempted attack?”

“Yes.”

“And did you have prior meetings with him?”

“Yes.”

“Were there any others at these meetings?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me how many?”

“It varied, but there was a core of about four or five others there.”

“At each meeting?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know their names?”

“Yes.”

“Can you name them?”

“Yes. There was Al Rasheed, Mohammed Al Idris, Mustafa Akmed Al Manaan, Abdulah Songo, and Jafar Al-Awdah.”

“And which is this man” he asked, pointing to the defendant.”

“Mustafa Akmed Al Manaan.”

“Were you ever in attendance when this group of men discussed attacking the White House and the ensuing plot for assassination of the president?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell the court what you heard?”

“Mustafa Akmed Al Manaan was the leader of the group. He had ties overseas to the Al’ Queda group I had infiltrated in Baghdad.”

“Did you ever hear him refer to Abdullah, the leader of the cell you infiltrated in Baghdad?’

“Yes, but of course, after Abdullah’s assassination and my arrival in Philadelphia there was no further contact. However, he spoke of Abdullah many times. Abdullah’s group had laid the groundwork for passports, money, and training prior to Abdullah’s death.”

“Can you give the court any specifics in terms of Mr. Akmed Al Manaan’s involvement in this plot?”

“He made the final call to the men in the field, giving them the final go-ahead the day of the attempt.”

“And what was your role that day, Mr. Brown?”

“I had a button wired to the inside pocket of my trousers. When the call went out to the men in the field, I reached into my trouser pocket and pressed the button which was connected to the feds who were surveillanceing those men.”

“And how did they know who these men were and where they were located?”

“That was my function in the cell; to position the men in the field.”

“Who assigned you that function, Mr. Brown?”

“Mustafa Akmed Al Manaan.”

Bull Durham suddenly stood up from Hap’s lap and stretched. Hap’s eyes opened and the dream turned to cerebral fluff, but not before he was able to recall the scene and know he had been on the stand testifying against a man who looked of eastern descent.

 

 

Chapter Twenty One

 

In a small Philadelphia mosque, a small group of Islamist extremists, angered by their leader, Mustafa Akmed Al Manaan, being sentenced to life in prison for an assassination attempt on the president of the United States; and the government’s continued prosecutions of the men who had been involved, began planning revenge.

Omar, the man at the head of the table spoke. “Robert Brown, the man who took the name Al Saad, is a dog who’s life has been shortened by his covert spying into our most holy organization”

“Yes,” the other men at the table agreed.

“He has been hidden by the United States government into the witness protection plan and I don’t know how difficult it will be to find him; but we must, at all costs find this unholy vermin and take his head for delivery to the White House to make our statement about the severity of his activities; and also as a statement about our resolve.”

“Praise to Allah,” the men recited in unison.

Omar Jalil, a Taliban trained recruit from Afghanistan, had been sent to serve in the United States, first as a holy man working with the Philadelphia Muslims who attended this particular mosque, and second to enlist soldiers in their cause. He lived in a respectable part of the city, drove a new SUV, belonged to one of the many Rotary Clubs in Philadelphia and often spoke publicly against the extremists within his faith, but worked covertly to enlist others who did adhere to extremist philosophies.

“Because of this unholy dog, the Al Baama brigade has disbanded, however in the name of our all-powerful Allah, we will keep retain that name for our organization. To achieve our tasks, we must be ever vigilant that no one on the outside know of our existence.”

“Praise to Allah,” the men responded.

“But how will we find this Robert Brown?”

“I have contacts who tell me it is close to impossible to break through the secrecy and deception of the US government. Protected witnesses are given new identities, and money. They are moved to places far away from their families, and their loved ones do not know where they are either. They are told to change all their old habits; if they were fishermen, no fishing; if they were joggers, no more jogging.”

“How do we break this code, Omar,” a man at the table asked.

 ‘My contact also told me there are ways; but he said none are guaranteed.”

“And what are those ways, Omar Jalil,” the man across the table asked.

“Many of those who are found are found because of their own stupidity. They are not allowed to ever contact members of the family they have left behind; many cannot stand the isolation and will break the rule.”

“So we find the sons of this pig and steal their mail?”

“Yes, but we have to be very careful that the son does not know we are doing such a thing.”

“Yes, Omar, but how do we monitor his mail without him knowing?”

“We watch him. If he is contacted by his father, he will try to reply; either by mail, or by traveling to him.”

“And how do we follow him to the airport and onto a plane?”

“All we have to know is where he flies to. He will send mail home to his wife and children.”

“So we would continue to monitor his mail.”

“Yes.”

“And what do we do if his mail is delivered in a locked box?”

“We have skeleton keys, we also have contacts working in the US mail services who can sometimes retrieve mail.”

“How do we find the son once he has arrived to where his father is now located?”

“We have contacts in every city, dog breath. All one would have to do is provide a picture over the internet and our people can follow him when he gets off the plane.” Omar looked at the men’s faces around the table and was satisfied with the intensity they displayed for achieving the purposes of the operation.

“Imagine the chaos we will create with this dog’s head stuck on a post outside the White House.”

“Victory is ours, Omar! Praise be to Allah.”

“My contact also tells me if the protected man uses a particular medicine, he can be traced through pharmaceutical databases. We would need someone to infiltrate the database, but we don’t know if Robert Brown takes any of these medications.” He stopped and watched his men, then added, “We could also break into the government offices where the witness protection databases are kept.”

“Can we do that without the government knowing?”

“You forget, ass mouth, we have people who work in these buildings: the cleaning crews can serve valuable assistance if needed.”

Three days later, while Louie Brown walked from his car to his office building in downtown Philadelphia, a man across the street with a telephoto lens attached to his camera took a series of pictures of him. In the late hours of the night, a custodian, who was paid ‘under the table’, unlocked an office door and scavenged through the mail on Louie’s desk. He found only business letters and a few pieces of junk mail.

Over the next three years, Louie was followed and surveillanced by members of the brigade.  They had gained access to not only his desk and computer, but also to his home mail; they had both his credit card and social security numbers. Through what they learned about him, they also set up surveillance on his sister, Michele, in Atlanta, Georgia, and his mother, Robert Brown’s wife, in Philadelphia. After three years of surveillance, they had nothing from these sources. Still, they were determined.

Not long after they began running the surveillance on Louie, it was decided to attempt a break-in at the Witness Protection offices in Philadelphia. At midnight, on the prescribed rainy night, three of the brigade’s members met the custodian in a darkened area in an alley doorway. The men wore masks and the custodian, who had been paid enough to drown any guilt he might have otherwise harbored, opened the door for them and escorted them up the elevator to the fourth floor offices.

“I don’t see the cameras, are they hidden?”

“No, this building doesn’t have cameras.”

Once inside they opened file drawers, and desk drawers, but didn’t find anything particularly helpful. However, one of the men, Othman Kabir, who had been a computer expert for the US government, was able to open the hard drive files and get into the Witness Protection database. Once inside he downloaded the information onto a thumb-drive, and they quietly exited the office. No obvious traces of their entry into the building were left behind.

“I have found the information, Omar,” Othman told him over the cell phone connection.

“Good, say no more on this line and let us meet to share what you have found.”

Half and hour later they were sitting inside a quiet coffee shot in the downtown district of Philadelphia.

“I printed the information for you, Omar.” He reached into the attaché bag he was carrying on his shoulder and pulled out a file folder. “I realize the need for security on this matter, therefore there is only this one printed copy from the thumb drive file.” He slipped the report from the folder and handed it to Omar.

“So the evil one’s new identity is Bob Smith, and he lives in Seattle, Washington.” Omar sipped his coffee, and continued, “His head will soon rest on the White House fence.”

“Praise be to Allah,” Othmar replied.

“I will send this to our brothers in Seattle, in the name of Allah.”

“Perhaps you should also send them a picture of this Bob Smith’s son, Louie. We still have it on file.”

“I will. Maybe they can put it to good use.”

The next day, Abu Bakr Qadeer, a Seattle real estate broker, specializing in commercial properties, had spent the morning with some Amazon.com executives who were looking for warehouse space. When he returned to his office, he opened his private email from which he usually communicated with his wife during the day and found a message from Omar Jalil in Philadelphia. Abu didn’t know know Omar, but when he read the subject line of the message he knew it was something needed his undivided attention. It was a code adopted by the jihadists living in the Unites States to recognize one another’s messages.  It simply read: OBL.

Abu opened the email, read the message telling him about Bob Smith, an enemy of the jihad living in Seattle. The picture wasn’t attached to the email as this was too dangerous. Omar had embedded it into the body of the message itself.

Abu picked up his phone and dialed a number.

“We have a target.”

The next morning, three men sat together at a table in a Starbucks on Pine and 7^th in downtown Seattle. They looked like ordinary men about the Seattle area: light jackets; expensive pants, ties, and shoes; with folded umbrellas near their chairs. To someone watching from a distance, they would see the men smiling and laughing among themselves: a casual observer would have believed these businessmen were simply taking a break from their cluttered offices somewhere nearby. These men, however, like many of their counterparts achieved a certain level of satisfaction knowing they were plotting the destruction of the America, right under the noses of those they intended to destroy.

“What was his name?”

“Robert John Brown.”

“And now?”

“Bob Smith.”

“In the name of Sweet Allah, how many Bob Smith’s are there in Seattle?”

“Hundreds, maybe thousands. There are too many to count in the telephone book.”

“I doubt he lives in a palace. We could reduce the number of Bob Smith’s to investigate by the neighborhood they live in.”

“That’s right, the witness protection plan doesn’t provide them a fortune to live on.”

“How about the type of car he drives. This Bob Smith probably doesn’t drive a new SUV either.”

“Look at the people in this coffee shop. I’m sure he doesn’t dress as nice as these people either.”

After further discussion regarding how they might reduce the list of Bob Smith’s, Abu brought out the picture of Hap’s son,     Louie, and passed it to the other two men.

“Maybe we can find a Bob Smith who resembles this picture enough to make the connection.”

They knew the task wasn’t going to be an easy one, but the decided if they enlisted more men in the area, they would eventually find Bob Smith.

          “Why don’t we get some posters of son around town. Maybe that would draw him out.”

“Great idea! Something like, ‘Have You Seen This Man,’ across the top with a phone number to call. Then all we have to do is monitor the calls.”

In a few weeks a totally invisible brigade of men, some obviously of middle-eastern descent, and some not; men who silently prescribed to the jihadist movement, began running surveillance on the Bob Smith’s they had found in the telephone book. In time they had narrowed the list down to those who lived in modest homes and apartment houses. Not long afterwards, they narrowed that list even further by the cars these men drove.

Hap wasn’t included in any of the lists: he didn’t have a telephone, nor did he own a car.

Two weeks later, the Seattle Muslims received word from the Al Baama Brigade in Philadelphia: they had intercepted a blank post card of a place called Pioneer Square on it,  addressed to Louie. The postmark read, “Seattle, WA.”

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

 

Most of the year the weather in Seattle is gray, cold and rain-soaked. The people living there either accept it as fact saying it is the price they must pay for all the beautiful forests and rhododendrons that grow wild, or they become clinically depressed and combat their depression with either drugs like paxil, or they go to Arizona for the winter months. It is no secret to the world-at-large that it rains in Seattle, constantly.  

That’s why most of the outside world believes the summer months in Seattle are rainy and cold; but observant folks who watch Mariner games all summer on television in other parts of the world soon realize, just like the residents of the city, that there are few rainy days in Seattle in the summer.

Summer in Seattle is when flowers bloom everywhere, from window boxes on the homes, to municipal boxes positioned throughout the city, to even empty lots where people who buy wildflower seeds spread them.

Summer in Seattle is time when tourists from all over the world come to visit the Space Needle, and the Farmer’s Market on Pike, positioned only a few blocks from the middle of the bustling downtown area. Tourists are the ones carrying umbrellas on perfectly sunlit days when the water of Eliott Bay sparkles with sunlight.

Summer in Seattle is place where hundreds of thousands of people line the banks of Lake Washington to watch the Blue Angels rip through the airspace among the city’s skyscrapers, and over Lake Washington where unlimited hydroplanes race at speeds over a hundred miles per hour.

Summer is time when the homeless people in Occidental Park don’t have to worry about freezing to death at night; and hope escalates for a hand-out from a Mariner fan, or two, walking through the park on the way to Safeco Field.

Sunny days and the warmth they bring are also ideal for growing marijuana. This is what brought Ed and his old, best friend, Matthew to the area. They made a ton of money with their marijuana fields in California, but after getting raided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and serving their respective prison sentences, they decided the forests of western Washington might provide them more anonymity than what they had farming in the more open areas of California.

After making several trips to the area and scouting for places to set up, and after making the move, they had more success than expected. They had developed the farm, located inside the Snoqualmie National Forest just east and north of Carnation, Washington, with such precision that it was invisible from the air and in such a remote location; the chances of discovery were much less than the fields they had worked in California.  The first few years had been good. Good enough for Ed to purchase a nice home in Redmond in one of the nicest neighborhoods in town. When he and Matthew needed some rest and recuperation, they would spend a few days there. 

Once they decided to expand their operations to more available space across the ravine from where they started, the farm’s production increased exponentially; but they needed help; so when they saw young Billy walking along the road that day, they kidnapped him.

The kidnapping hadn’t been without planning. They didn’t want to hire someone who would turn them in to the authorities.  It was a matter of trust, and they trusted no one, not even each other.

“We could kidnap somebody,” Ed said, whittling wood on a cool evening last autumn.

“That could be problematic,” Matthew responded, tossing an empty beer bottle against a tree outside their trailer.

“Yeah, it could. It’d have to be a kid. Someone we could control and train.”

“Of course you’re kidding.”

Ed was more hardheaded than Matthew. His high school buddies, like Matthew, figured him one shoe short of a pair. They also knew once he latched onto an idea, letting go was like using your hands to pull a tire off a truck. “How hard is it to control a kid? You knock them around a little. You now, build some respect so they don’t think they can get away with anything.”

Matthew, more diminutive in stature but not brains, was the glue that held the two together. “So you want to kidnap a kid.”

“Well, not exactly kidnap him.  Kidnap means we want money from someone who wants him back. This would be more like…,” he hesitated trying to thing of how to finish his sentence.

“Slavery,” said Matthew.

“Yes, that’s exactly it. Someone we don’t have to pay, only feed and provide some kind of shelter for.”

“Isn’t slavery against the law, Ed”

“So is cultivating and selling weed. I don’t see it as too much a bigger crime than what we’re already doing.”

Matthew opened another beer and took a long, slow swig. “I don’t know, maybe it’ll work.”

“There’s no ‘maybe’ about it, shithead.”

          Matthew felt Ed’s emotional state escalating. It was something he knew about; it explained the scar than ran over the top of his head, and it explained why Matthew had decided long ago not to cross Ed too far.

          “I don’t know, maybe it would,” he said, wondering what they would do after they were through with the kid; and how the kid would survive when they left the farm for long periods of time.

          Matthew, resting against a tree on a particularly hot summer day, watched Billy removing weeds nearby, and reflected over that conversation with Ed, before they grabbed Billy three summers ago. Granted they had trained Billy, now thirteen, for the jobs they wanted him to do, and though they took him with them back to California for the winters; those questions had yet to be answered.

Matthew closed his eyes and for a few minutes fought sleep in the warm sun; then suddenly a thrashing noise coming from the direction of the trailer woke him.

“I need a hamburger,” he said, thinking it was Ed coming. Then hearing nothing more he turned, expecting to see Ed; but what he saw instead was a man in an ATF shirt pointing a rifle at him.

          “You’re under arrest,” the man said, his rifle locked on a spot between Matthew’s eyebrows. Another ATF man approached Matthew, then handcuffed him.

“Let’s go.”

Once again fate spelled an escape for Billy. From behind a bush, in the field, he watched the ATF men capture Matthew. When they walked him back toward the trailer, Billy suddenly felt free again.

Summer in Seattle is also when the hikers who prefer dry hiking emerge from their winter cocoons. Such was the day for Billy when, after waiting for the ATF vehicles, with Ed and Matthew in them, left in a cloud of dust away from the farm.

          First he went into the trailer and filled himself with food; then he grabbed the barbecue lighter fluid, a match, and the newspaper lying on the kitchen. When he got to the shed out back, he picked up a few small twigs lying nearby, stuffed the newspaper along the bottom edge of the shed, placed the twigs on top, drenched the whole thing with lighter fluid, then touched the lighter to the paper. In moments the shed was engulfed in flames shooting toward the bright, blue sky.

          Afraid someone would see the smoke and come looking, Billy disappeared into the forest.

 

 Chapter Twenty-Three

 

          Robert Brown arrived in Seattle with a new social security number, a new driver’s license, a new address, and alone. His new name, Bob Smith, was as close to perfect as one could get in terms of having a name that would not distinguish him from anyone else.

          Bob and his wife, Jennie, had a troubled marriage from the early years. She couldn’t accept him being gone for months, and a few times, years, from her and the children the marriage somehow produced. With children in their twenties, and long before the trial started, he and Jennie decided to end the marriage. When Bob was assigned to the witness protection plan, the government, including Bob saw no need to protect his ex-wife, or children.

          After living in Seattle for two years with no contacts with anyone from his previous life, Bob struggled with the isolation.  He missed his children, immensely.

          “Bull, you ever had any kids?” Bob asked him one day while they were wiling away some cool autumn days.

          Bull only purred and rubbed his head against Bob’s hand.

          “Not sure, huh. Oh, that many,” Bob said, playing as though Bull was talking to him.

          “Ever miss any of them?” he asked, stroking the fur between Bull’s ears. “Me too.”

          The cat jumped down and went to his dish.

          “I have only two,” Bob said, not missing Bull, and talking more to himself than the cat. “Louie went to the Penn State, he’s an accountant with some big firm in Philadelphia. Makes big bucks.  Michele went to the Harvard Graduate School of Education you know. Big school, big bucks. Now she works as an elementary school teacher in Atlanta.”

          Bull jumped up on the windowsill.

          “You’re not listening are you,” Bob said. “My kids used be the same way.” Bob stood up, and looked out the window. “Not much to see out there, Bull.” He walked to the cat and rubbed him behind the ear. “Not looking for your children are you?”

          Later that same day, Bob walked down to Pioneer Square and watched people, then he walked the few blocks to Occidental and struck up a few conversations with some of the homeless folks. He felt a kinship with the homeless, and a jealousy; they at least had the same names they had been born with, and if they cared to, they could call their kids anytime. Of course, few did, but the point remained the same; Bob could not contact his kids.

          By this time, Bob had found the Mission over on First Ave and had started volunteering there.  He thought it funny how they had stuck him with the name ‘Hap’ the first time he walked through the door.  People had always told him he had a friendly face, but no one had nicknamed him because of it; and under the circumstances, it was good to have a meaningless moniker.  He decided ‘Hap’ would work better than Bob, so he kept his first, and real, name secret.

          In time he and Freddy became close. Freddy was taller than Hap, and he had a few years on Hap. A former fisherman on huge trawlers that fished the waters off the coast of Alaska, Freddy wore an old, worn out, pea-coat, and dark blue stocking cap. Long dark hair escaped from under the cap and curled about his ears; one of which sported a small rhinestone. Homeless, “temporarily,” he always said; he was frequently invited to sleep on Freddy’s couch during cold and wet weather.

          “You too good to Freddy,” Freddy once said to Hap, speaking in the first person to reduce any embarrassment associated with what he wanted to say.

          “What do you mean?” Hap asked.

          “Letting me sleep here and all. That’s all.”

          “You’re a good man, Freddy. I don’t want you to freeze out there.”

          The two men were together often, even to the point that when Hap received his monthly check, made out to Bob Jones, he and Freddy would walk to the bank together. Though Freddy had become a good friend, he was careful to keep the name on the envelope and the check concealed until he was standing directly in front of the teller in the bank.

          Freddy never noticed his clandestine behavior.

          One night after he had been in his apartment for a couple of years, just after he went to sleep, the dream began.

          “Louie, wha’d you do with the worms?”

          Louie leaned back, making the boat shift its weight and position in the lake, “Here they are,” he said, extending the container to Hap. “There’s a ton of’em in there.”

          “Feels light for a ton,” Hap said, holding the container in his hand. When he opened it, it was full of red catsup that spilled across his hand and onto his pant leg.

When he looked up he was standing on a sidewalk in Baghdad, and someone near where he stood was lying in a pool of catsup. No, it’s blood.

Then he heard gunfire. They’re shooting at me, he dropped to the sidewalk; but when he looked for a shooter, the street was empty. He got up and stumbled over the dead body lying on the sidewalk now covered with wet, slimy, squiggling, worms from the worm container he still had in his hand.

He bent to pick one up and touched Michele’s hand coming up from below. Michele, so good to see you again.

          The next morning, he was fraught with grief over not being able to contact his children. Tears filled his eyes and the agony he felt was as large as what he had experienced when his father passed away. He sat at the table with his heads in his hand, then fully aware of the danger he was about to create, he addressed an envelope to Louie, put a stamp on it, then walked to the nearest mail box, and dropped it inside.  The envelope was empty, he simply wanted Louie to notice the Seattle post mark.

          Later that night he and Freddy got drunk; and it was even later that night when Hap, in a bit of a drunken stupor, walked into a passing locomotive under the Alaskan Way Viaduct. Unconscious, and lying across a parallel set of tracks, the memory of anything from his previous life was stripped away. 

After Hap was released from the hospital, Freddy showed him where he lived, and where he banked.  Freddy also re-introduced him to Bull Durham.

          “He’s a good cat,” Freddy said. “He knows your secrets and he’s going to keep them to himself.”

          “Secrets? What secrets do I have: other than who I am, where I came from and how long I’m going to not know these things?”

          Freddy chuckled at Hap’s humor, while Hap handed him an envelope.

          “What do you make of this?” Hap asked.

          “Who is Bob Jones,” Freddy asked him after he read the name on the envelope.

          “I have no idea,” Hap responded.

          “I think it is you. You never told me your real name.” He opened the envelope and found a check made out to Bob Jones. “I know about this. You receive a check like this every month. I’ve seen you take it to the bank and deposit it; but I never saw the name you used ‘til right now.”

          The next day Hap took the check to the bank and was surprised to hear the teller refer to him as, “Hap.” After depositing the check; he walked back to the apartment confused about most everything, and humming Mahler’s “Second Movement.”

Two weeks later, when Louie picked up his mail, he found the postcard with the picture of Pioneer Square on the font, and blank on the backside, except where someone had addressed it to him. Odd, he thought, turning it back over and looking at the picture on the front. He had never been to Pioneer Square, he didn’t know where it was. He threw the postcard into the trashcan beside his desk.  Then later when he looked down he saw the postmark and realized who had sent him the blank card.

 

Chapter Twenty-Four

 

          Charles Washington flew back to Washington DC, and two months later was back in Seattle. He took the shuttle from the airport to the rental car agency, charged a car against his credit card, loaded the car with his bags and drove back toward Lake Stevens where the accident had occurred. He retraced his steps through the area, then contacted each of the people he had interviewed when he was there the first time. It didn’t take long before the feelings of discouragement and desperation started telling him he wasn’t going to find Billy. That’s when he enlisted the aid of Daniel Foster, a private investigator.

          Dan Foster had no unusual or distinguishing traits. He stood five foot nine, weighed a hundred and forty-five pounds, wore running shoes with his khaki Dockers. His hair was short-cropped and he wore a wedding band on the ring finger of his left hand.  

          “Everybody thinks he died in that car crash,” he told the Foster, handing him the copied documents from the coroner and the sheriff, along with pictures he obtained from the welfare services that operated the Foster Care program. “I just don’t believe he did.”

          “If he was in that car, I don’t know how he was able to survive it.”

          “Dan, I was involved in a car accident, many years ago. It was my fault, I went to sleep and the car rolled four times along side of the road. When it came to rest I jumped out just before it burst into flames.”

          “I don’t understand what that has to do with this.”

          “There was a passenger in my car that night. He was thrown a good forty feet from the car.”

          “Did he survive?”

          “No, he didn’t.”

          “Sorry.”

          “No, Dan. The point is simply that not all people involved in car accidents stay in the car.”

          “Wouldn’t he have been in a seat belt?”

          “The only locked seatbelts were the ones around Mr. Anderson and his wife. All the others were loose.”

          “Maybe he unhooked it.”

          “Then the investigators would have found teeth, or bone fragments, or something metallic, maybe a button, or a ring.”

          “I guess.”

          “Look, Dan, I just want you to go from the basis that he was in the car, but when it caught fire, he wasn’t.”

          “We can do that, but was the area around the accident searched?”

“The people who were here that day, that I interviewed all said they thought someone else did.  There’s no mention of a search in any of the documents.”

          “So everybody thought somebody else did a search.”

          “It’s water under the bridge, Dan. Where do we go from here?”

          “John Walsh.”

          “The guy on tv who looks for, what is it..?”

          “America’s Most Wanted. Sometimes he puts missing people on his show.”

          “Do it, Dan.”

          “Then there’s the Amber Alert.”

          “You’re good, Dan. Let’s go for it.”

          Fourteen hours after the Amber Alert went out across country, they got a call from the lady who had offered Billy a ride that day. “I saw that boy,” she said. “He was walking along highway 22, we asked him if he wanted a ride, but he said he was walking home and didn’t want a ride.”

After the call, Foster called Charles, “Now we know he was in the area, after the accident.

Four days later, they received another call. “I saw that kid just the other day,” the voice on the other end of line said. “I run a small gas station and grocery here just south of Carnation on the main road down towards Fall City. I seen this kid comin’ in here just a few days ago. He was with a couple of older men; rough lookin’ bunch, they were too dirty and scroungy lookin’.”

“Did you see what kind of vehicle they were driving?”

“It was an old blue truck. Looked like a Ford, probably late ‘70’s. It was in pretty bad shape, window had a big crack in it. Rust all over. Come to think of it, there weren’t too much blue on that truck, but that was the color it mostly used to be.”

“What were they buying?”

“Gasoline and some beer.”

“Have you ever seen them before?”

“Well, now I ain’t thought much about that before, but I’ll tell you what: I do remember that ol’ truck coming in here quite a bit. I used to have a truck like that, only mine was in much better condition.”

“You didn’t get a license plate number did you?”

“No sir, but if it comes in again, I’ll write it down and give you another call.”

A week and a half later he called back.

“Hey, I got that license number from that ol’ blue truck. They was in here again today.”

“Was the kid with them?”

“Yeah, but he stayed in the truck this time. You want that number?”

“Yes.”

“It was BVR 2389.”

After further investigation with the licensing division of the Washington State Patrol in Olympia, Foster learned the truck was registered to Edward J. Ridley. His address was listed in Redmond. When Dan tried to call him, he got a recording telling him Edward Ridley was in California for the winter months. When he drove through the neighborhood, he thought they must be on to the wrong Ed Ridley; the home with the address listed on the license registration was not the kind of home one would expect an old, blue, Ford pick up in the garage; maybe a Hummer, but not an old Ford.

Foster parked his car and walked up to the house. No one answered the door, so he walked around the side of the garage and looked through the window. Inside he saw the old, blue, Ford pick-up truck, broken windshield and all.

Later that afternoon, Dan drove back into the neighborhood in a van with “Daniel’s Cleaning Services” painted on the side. Small, round windows, designed for peeking from the inside, were ingeniously camouflaged by the artwork on the outside. Inside a computer monitor and a printer sat against one side, a recliner in the middle faced a small television near the front, and a singlewide mattress rested against the back door.

The next morning, the garage door opened and the blue truck backed out and drove down the street. Foster fired up his van and followed. Thirty-five minutes he was following the truck into Carnation, where he turned south, then stopped on the edge of town at a small gas station and grocery. Foster parked in an inconspicuous spot and waited. The truck’s driver gassed up, then pulled back on the road where four miles later he pulled off onto a dirt road leading back into the forest. Foster stopped his van, took a few pictures of the road, marked it on a map, then drove back to the gas station.

After introductions Foster asked the proprietor, “Was that the truck?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Foster, that was it all right.”

“And the driver, you recognized him”

“Oh yeah, he always drives, and he usually has someone with him. The other guy, and the boy.”

“Ever catch any names?”

The proprietor scratched his chin and thought it over. “I once heard this one call the other’n, Matthew. Can’t think of any other.”

Later Foster called Charles and gave him a progress report along with information about the location of the place he was going. “I’m going to go back to the road and drive in. I don’t know how far back into the forest the road goes, but I’m going to scope out the situation, you know, I’ll act innocent and tell them I have the wrong address if it comes to that.”

“Be careful, Dan, and give me a call as soon as you get out.”

Foster crawled into the back of his van and changed into his “cleaning” clothes: tan overalls with “Daniel’s Cleaning Service” stitched on the back, boots, long-sleeved shirt. Then headed on back down the road toward the turn off where the blue truck had disappeared earlier.

When he pulled into the area where the trailer sat, he saw the blue truck. It was parked in front of the trailer. Foster parked the van inconspicuously behind a tree and got out.  By the time he closed the door on the van, the driver of the truck was coming toward him, and he didn’t look like he had a big welcome on his mind.

“What’s up? You lost or something?”

“I might be,” Foster said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I didn’t see a number of the road leading in here, but it seems to be in the general vicinity of the address I’m looking for.”

The driver asked him what the address was and it sounded close, but he chose not to say anything.

“Wouldn’t have a glass of water would you?” Foster asked, feeling the man’s eyes scanning him and his van.

“You sure you’re lost?”

“Oh yeah, shoot. What other good reason would bring me to drive down that long road into your place?” He laughed and asked, “Your not Sam Westerhouse are you?”

“Sam who?”

“That’s the name of the people who want their place cleaned. Oh, I’m Daniel McKinnon,” Foster lied, extending his hand.

“Ed,” Ed replied, shaking McKinnon’s hand. “Come on in, I’ll get you some water.”

Inside the trailer, Foster’s stomach nearly gave up on him. The stench was severe; he figured sewage must run out onto the ground somewhere nearby. The place was filthy, certainly no place where people would be expected to live.

Ed grabbed a glass out of the sink and filled it with water. “We don’t wash our dishes too often, this ok?”

“Yeah, sure,” Foster replied, bending low to look out the window to the back. “You live out here all the time?”

“Yeah, we’re trying to get some money ahead so we can move into something more respectable, in town.”

“You married?”

“No.”

“You said ‘we.’ I thought maybe you were.”

“That ain’t too much your business is it, Mr. Cleaning Service Man?”

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. Just a comment.” He had to swallow slowly to keep from choking on the water. “You know.”

In the back, Foster saw a shed with a door open. Inside there were stacks of fertilizer bags and insecticides; along with a pile of blankets and a pillow.

“You sleep in the shed?” he asked, swallowing another drink of water.

“Sleep in the shed? Why you askin’ so many fuckin’ questions?”

“Nothing really. I just saw some blankets in the shed, and I don’t see a dog anywhere.”

Then, while he was talking, he saw someone coming toward the trailer from a path he hadn’t noticed before. It was another man, and a young boy.

“I think it’s time for you to go,” Ed said. “I got work to do around here.”

Billy walked through the door and looked at the strange man standing there with the glass of water in his hand. When Matthew stepped inside, the grabbed Billy and pulled him back outside.

“Who’s the kid?” Foster asked, putting the glass back in the sink.

“Time to go mister.”

“Yes,” he said, checking his watch, “I don’t have much time to find the Weyerhauses.”

“Who?”

Foster realized his mistake. “Westerhouses.”

Ed followed him out to his van. “Go on, get outa here,” he said looking into the van.

Foster turned the keys and Ed stuck his head in the window. “Hey what’s all that stuff you got in there?”

Foster slammed the van into “reverse,” gunned the engine, turned the van around and headed out. In his rear views he could see Ed following in his blue truck. The road was treacherous in places, and Foster came close to going over the edge of a deep ravine. He checked his speedometer on one of the bridges, it showed fifty miles per hour. Safe travel couldn’t have called for anything over fifteen, but he couldn’t slow. He had to make it to the main road, so he kept pushing the van.

When he could he checked his rearview for the blue truck. It was right behind him. He pushed the gas pedal down a little further and lost control of the truck. It slammed into a tree and he cut his head on the steering wheel. 

“Get out!” Ed shouted. “Get out of the truck.”

Foster rubbed his head, then looked at his bloody hand. Somewhat stunned, he opened the door and stepped out.

“What the fuck you really up to, Mr.Cleaning Service Man. Huh? What!” Ed shoved Foster up against the van and hit him full in the face with his fist. “You’re some kind of a fucking spy, aren’t you!”

“No, no. I’m not a spy. I clean houses, and I live in my van.”

“Don’t fuck with me!” Ed shouted, hitting Foster again.

Foster saw his fist coming toward his head, and when he ducked, Ed’s slammed into the side of the truck. Foster hit him back, knocking him down. Soon they were wrestling on the ground, punching, kicking and shouting obscenities at each other. Foster picked up a piece of wood and swung it at Ed, but Ed was a larger man, and stronger. He knocked it away, then picked it up and started swinging it at Foster. In a few minutes, Foster lay bloodied, and dead on the ground.

Ed, panicky, pulled Foster’s body back to the van and dumped it into the back, then drove back to the trailer to get Matthew. He found him in the trailer with Billy.

“Put the boy in the shed, we have to take a trip.”

“Are you driving that man’s van?”

“Listen, godamit, don’t ask any fuckin’ questions, just put the boy in the shed and let’s go!” Ed yelled, agitated far more than usual.

When Matthew hesitated, Ed grabbed Billy and carried him out of the trailer where Billy saw the van turned sideways; one of the back doors was open. Inside the van he saw the man who had earlier been standing in the trailer with a glass of water in his hand. There was a lot of blood on his head; and Billy thought he looked dead.

 “C’mon, asshole!” Ed yelled at the front door.

They climbed into the van and Ed told Matthew, “Asshole was a spy. Look at all the equipment in the back.”

Matthew turned around and for the first time saw Daniel Foster’s body. “What the fuck! You killed him?”

“We got in a fight. He grabbed a piece of wood and was going to kill me with it. I took it away from him.”

“And killed him with it?!”

“I had no choice.”

“We’re in some deep shit, Ed. You killed a man.”

“He was snooping around. You know we have guns to keep intruders away.”

“But we’ve never had to use them!”

“If he’d walked into the field you would have.”

“Maybe, but he didn’t.”

“Godamit, don’t fuckin’ argue with me. I’m going to drive down where the truck is, then you follow me. I’m gonna drive this truck over the cliff out on Tolt River.”

“So I’m gonna be an accomplice.”

“You don’t have a choice, asshole. You already are.”

Ed stopped the van, Matthew got in the truck and followed him until he was high above the Tolt River on precarious edge of the road over a large ravine where a river ran deep, and far below. Ed got out, put the van into neutral and with Matthew’s help, pushed it over the edge. The van tumbled to the bottom where it landed with a huge explosion of water, upside down, then it sunk into the river.

Nine days later the farm was raided by the ATF.

 

Chapter Twenty-Five

 

    Hap went to bed that dreary night thinking about his accident and what Freddy had told him about his name. There was much he didn’t know about himself: his name, where he came from, how he happened to be here in Seattle, and what all these visions he kept having meant. Some of them had been violent with shootings, killings and threats of his life, but he wasn’t able to remember very well the things that occurred in the visions. He wondered about a character that frequently popped up in his visions: a man named Al Saad. Generally he was left with only thinly veiled thoughts, emotions of fear, or happiness, or sometimes gloom befell him after the visions.

Bull jumped up on the couch and purred at him. “What do you want, Bull? You mangy cat, you have no worries, you know. You know who you are and what your name is.”

Bull meowed again and ran his head against Hap’s hand.

“Want out?”

Hap went to the door and when he opened it, he saw a young boy standing in the hallway. “Hi,” he said to the boy. “Are you looking for someone?”  The boys stood there, looking back at Hap, saying nothing. He looked to be about ten, maybe eleven years old, his hair was black, his eyes a deep brown, and Hap thought his skin was the color of a light, milk chocolate. “Are you lost?”

“I’m hungry,” the boy said, trying to look past Hap into his apartment.

“Are you with anyone? Friends, your parents or somebody?” Hap looked into the empty hallway, hoping he wasn’t about to be raided by a gang of thugs.

“No.”

“Where are they?” Hap asked, his eyes scanned the hallway again.

“I don’t have any.”

“C’mon, you have to have parents. Don’t you?”

“Do you have any food, mister?”

Hap opened his door wider and invited the boy in to his apartment. “I don’t have a lot of food, but I have some,” he said. “Is there anything you like?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Peanut butter ok?”

“Yes.”

Hap went to the kitchen and put together a peanut butter sandwich for the boy, and tossed a few potato chips on the plate. “How about a pickle?”

“Ok.”

“Glass of milk? Milk always goes well with peanut butter.”

“Ok.”

Hap decided to have lunch with the boy so he fixed himself a sandwich and invited the boy to join him at the table. “How long since you ate last?”

“I don’t remember,” the boy said, stuffing his mouth with the sandwich. 

“My name’s Hap, what’s yours?”

“Billy,” he replied, then added, “Billy Hinkle.” He ate a few more bites then asked, “What’s your last name, Hap?”

Dumbfounded, Hap didn’t know how to reply. “I get these checks from the government at the first of the month. They’re always made out to Bob Jones. I guess that’s my last name.”

“You don’t know for sure?”

“I have memory problems Billy. I’m not sure.”

The continued eating their sandwiches quietly, both lost in their own thoughts, then Hap asked, “Where do you live, Billy?”

“Nowhere.”

“You have to have a home somewhere. Are you from Seattle?”

“No.”

“Well then, where are you from?”

“Kennewick,” Billy said.

“Where?”

“Kennewick.”

“Is that in Washington state?”

“I think so. It’s over the mountains.”

“Eastern Washington,” Hap said, “I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never been there.” He cracked a potato chip with his fingers, and put a piece between his lips. “How did get across the mountains?”

“With the Andersons, they were my foster parents.”

“And where are they now?”

“I don’t know. I lost them.”

“Lost them?”

Billy looked Hap in the face for the first time. Tears welled in his eyes, and he said, “I don’t know what happened. We were riding in the car, going to see some friends of theirs, then I was in a pile of bushes.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I woke up in a pile of bushes and when I crawled out, they were gone.”

“Did they stop and leave without you?”

“I don’t remember.”

Hap wondered how anyone could be so cruel as to drop a child off and drive away. “Did you know where you were when you woke up?”

“I just walked away. Down the road.”

“How long ago did all this happen?” Hap asked, thinking by the way the boy looked in the last couple of hours, or days.

“I was nine then. Now I’m twelve.”

“Three years?” Hap asked, incredulously.

“Ed and Matthew picked me up on the road. I’ve been working for them until yesterday.”

“Working?”

“They were arrested yesterday. The cops took them away while I hid in the bushes. After they were gone, I burned the shed down and walked away.”

“You burned the place down?”

“Just where I always slept.”

“Where?”

“It was the shed in the back. Ed locked me in there every night.”

“Why were they arrested?”

“The grow marijuana out in the forest. They got caught.”

“And you said, you worked for them?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did they ever pay you?”

Hap knew the answer before Billy said anything. He saw it in Billy’s facial expression.

“No,” Billy said, quietly. 

Hap wondered what he was going to do about Billy. He couldn’t throw him out of his apartment, there was something about the boy that he liked. He had a soft way; he wasn’t pushy, or angry. Hap thought he was a nice young boy.

“Want to go for a walk with me?” Hap asked Billy. “I like to go down to the square and watch people. I have some friends down there you might like to meet. Want to go?”

“Ok,” Billy said, then he asked for another sandwich.

“Sure, Billy.”

After he ate his second peanut butter sandwich, they walked down to the Pioneer Square. “Ever been here before?” Hap asked him.

“No.”

They sat on the bench for a while and watched the people moving through the square, then Hap took Billy to Occidental park where he introduced him to few of his acquaintances from the mission. He wanted to introduce him to Freddy, but Freddy wasn’t there this time.

They walked a few blocks down a side street to a St. Vincent’s and Hap bought Billy a couple t-shirts, and pairs of pants. They found a pair of shoes too that fit Billy and then they walked back to Hap’s apartment.

While walking down the street, a poster hanging on a light poster caught Hap’s eyes. Across the top it said, “Have You Seen This Person?” and below it was a picture of someone Hap thought he knew. I know him. I know that person. Who is it?

When they got back to the apartment, it was getting dark outside and Billy asked if he could spend the night. Hap told him he could, but that tomorrow he would help Billy find his people.

“But I don’t have any people.”

“Billy, everyone has people, somewhere.”

 
Chapter Twenty-Six

 

    The day Louie Brown arrived in Seattle, the sky was packed with dark, gray clouds and rain was falling so hard the traffic on I-5, where the speed limit is seventy miles per hour, had slowed to a crawl. While checking into the Westin Hotel in the downtown section of the city, he asked the clerk behind he desk, “How far to Pioneer Square?”

“Just a few blocks down First Avenue, actually, sir.”

“And where would First Avenue be located?”

The clerk tried to explain, but then told Louie he might as well take a taxi since the walk wasn’t short enough for a pleasant stroll, and it was raining.

Louie took the elevators to his room on the 48^th floor and looked out the windows at the city below. He’s down there somewhere, Louie thought, watching the cars on the streets below.

In thirty minutes, Louie was walking the sidewalks of the Pioneer Square area. He took the postcard from his pocket and went to the location from where the picture on the card had been taken. The picture had been taken during a bright sunny day; and while Louie stood looking at the picture and the square, he felt the rain dripping down the back of his neck. He spotted a bistro and went in for a cup of that world famous Seattle coffee.

“Have you seen this man?” he asked the waiter, showing him a picture of his father.

“Doesn’t look familiar. What’s his name?”

Louie, stumped and embarrassed because he didn’t know what his father’s name, said, “Robert Brown.”

“Common name, but I can’t say I’ve seen him.”

Louie felt a slight tremor in his hands. He hadn’t planned on using his father’s name, and while he had thought long and hard about whether to use his father’s picture, he had pulled it out and shown it to this total stranger like it was a new car; but when the waiter asked the question, he suddenly felt stupid. Two big mistakes and I just got here! I should have used an alias; no one will know his real name anyway, and don’t use the picture unless you think you’re close.

He left the bistro and walked back into the square, then decided to walk further south on First Avenue. Rain continued pelting him, but it wasn’t a particularly cold rain; so he kept walking. He crossed the street onto the block where the Mission was located and a poster caught his eye. When he looked more closely he saw himself. Across the top, the heading said, “Have You Seen This Man?”

“My God,” he said out loud. What is this? Who put this here? Then he looked around to see if there were others anywhere nearby. How many of them are there? Beneath the picture was a phone number to call. He thought about writing down the number, but then decided to remove the poster itself. With his heart in his throat, he hailed a taxi and returned to his room and picked up the phone. He didn’t see the homeless people lining up for dinner at the Mission just two doors down from where he had removed the poster.

“Hello? Michelle?”

“Yes.”

“This is Louie, I’m in Seattle and you’re not going to believe what I found here! There are posters hanging in the area where the postcard came from with my picture on them.”

“Oh my God! Are you sure it’s you?”

“No doubt about it,” he said, then he read the heading to her.

“Louie, is it somebody trying to lure Dad out of hiding?”

Louie admitted his heart and mind were racing so hard, he hadn’t thought of that angle. “Do you think they were able to trace him here to Seattle, too? How would they do that, the WitPro program is locked tight as a drum.”

“Remember what they said about how there’s hardly been any breaches of the security when the witness follows all the rules. Maybe Dad broke more than the one he broke by sending the postcard.”

“What do you think I should do? If I stick around, sooner or later, somebody will see me and call the number.”

“I told you I didn’t want you to go there.”

“I know, but you’ll remember we agreed Dad may be in some kind of trouble, otherwise why would he send the card?”

“I know. Still, I think you need to leave Seattle as soon as possible!”

Louie thought it over, then said, “No, I have to stay. Something’s going on here and I have to find out what it is. Either Dad is already in trouble and I’m too late, or the shit’s getting ready to clog the fan. For his sake, I have to find him.”

“Why don’t you call the federal Marshall’s office. I’m sure there’s one in Seattle.”

Louie scratched his head, thinking. “I think if Dad wanted them notified, they would have responded by now.”

“If that’s true, then don’t you need to know?”

“Make sense,” he replied, then added, “I’ll call them in the morning.”

The next morning, Louie drove south into Tacoma. When he returned his short-cropped hair was hidden below a wig of a lighter shade of brown that fell below his ears. In a second hand store he purchased an old worn, Seattle Mariners baseball cap; a couple slightly worn sweatshirts, one with the Sonics logo on the front and the other with an advertisement for Mexican beer; a couple pair of blue jeans; a pair of old sneakers, and a dark, gray woolen jacket that was missing some buttons.

Later that afternoon, Louie went back to Pioneer Square and started walking the streets in the area. This time he noticed the Mission. Strange to find something like this here amongst all these upscale furniture and carpet shops, bistros, sidewalk cafes, and art galleries.  Then he turned down a side street and found Occidental Park where the homeless people of Seattle drape the benches; and sit together and alone beneath the tall sycamores, smoking and drinking from bottles camouflaged by brown paper bags; and by their mere presence, intimidate the tourists, which today, included Louie Brown. He stood at the far corner of the park and watched knowing there was simply no way his father would be here.

By the end of the day he had found five more posters of himself, but he felt safe in his disguise, and he didn’t want anyone to see him taking them down, so he left them hanging where he found them. He also knew he was going to have to change his strategy of “just walking” around the neighborhood if he was going to find his Father.

 

Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

Hap knew his dreams and visions were disturbing, but after each time he awoke, they faded quickly; about all he could surmise was that in his previous life there had been some kind of danger and maybe a family. Since he couldn’t bring up details, he didn’t worry too much about them. “The doctor told me they’re probably due to the head injury,” he told Billy. “They either come on unannounced during the day, or they happen when I go to sleep. Funny how real they are, then how they just sorta go up in smoke after I wake up.”

“I have bad dreams too,” Billy replied.

“What do you dream, Billy?”

“Can’t remember either. Once I dreamed me and my Mom went to the zoo. The animals all had flowers on their heads and the zookeeper was drunk.”

Hap found more enjoyment with Billy than anyone he could remember. Freddy came around once in a while, and they sometimes met him at the Mission and ate with him, but Hap had to admit, he was becoming attached to Billy, and he was pretty sure that the feelings were mutual with Billy, too; after all, Hap had taught him how to hum classical music and he was quite good at it.

“Don’t you think you should notify the authorities about him?” Freddy once asked.

“I will,” Freddy responded, “but so far he’s enjoying himself here. Look at him feeding those pigeons. Did you ever see such joy on a boy’s face.”

“Hap, he could be somebody’s kid! They could be frantic trying to find him. Why don’t you call the child welfare offices and see if anyone’s looking for him. He told you he had been in a foster home, didn’t he?”

Hap knew Freddy had a good point, he understood someone could be out of their heads looking for him; still Billy fulfilled something in Hap he couldn’t put his finger on. “Ok, you watch him for me and I’ll go down to the Mission and make the call.”

About a half hour later, Hap returned.

“D’ju get a hold of’em?”

“Sure did,” Hap said, smiling. “They told me Billy Hinkle was killed in a car crash on highway 9, north out of Seattle heading toward Lake Stevens, three years ago.”

“What?”

“He was with his foster parents when the car hit a logging truck.”

“So what about his natural parents? Isn’t there somebody looking for this boy?”

“All they would tell me about his biological mother was that she was in a psychiatric hospital somewhere in eastern Washington. She was shot in the head some years ago, and no one ever claimed fatherhood.”

“Damn, poor kid.”

“I guess he can stay with me a while longer. What do you think?”

“Why not, doesn’t sound like anyone else gives much of a shit about him.”

“I ran out of popcorn,” Billy said, coming back to the two men sitting on the bench.

“Need more, huh?” Hap said. “Tell you what. I’ll get you some more, but first give ol’ Freddy here the first few bars of Beethovens’ Fifth.

Billy hummed the notes and beamed for Freddy. “Know what it is?” he asked, his eyes riveted on Freddy’s smile.

“I don’t, but I’ve heard it lots of times.”

“Beethoven’s Fifth, right Hap?”

Hap smiled at him and said, “You go it, maestro.”

Billy looked at Freddy. “Want another one?”

“Sure, what else you got?”

Billy hummed the first few notes of Pachelbell’s, Canon. “Do you know that one?” Billy asked Freddy.

“I have heard that one before too,” Freddy said, but I don’t know what it is.

“It’s Pachelbel, right Hap?”

“You got it, Johann.”

Freddy looked at Hap and asked, “What else do you know so much about?”

Hap shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea how I learned this stuff, but we’re going to go to the symphony on Saturday, right Billy?”

“Yes. Can we go down there now and look at the posters?” Billy asked. “You ‘member don’t you, you said we would.”

“Sure, we can go the Art Museum and the Farmer’s Market, too, if you want?”

“C’mon.” Billy grabbed Hap’s hand and started pulling him.

Standing outside the grand Benaroya Hall, Billy craned his neck back and wondered how glass could stand so tall and turn a corner and not break. “How do they bend the glass like that?”

Hap walked Billy around the base of the Hall, showing him how the glass only “looks like it bends” because, “it is actually made of many flat, rectangles of glass.”

“Look, Billy, on Saturday it will be the Youth Symphony playing; kids not a whole lot older than you.” Hap scanned the notice to see if the price of tickets was listed. Finding it, he said, “And only 8 bucks for a ticket. Not bad. Hey, look Billy, they’re going to be playing Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2. Great music, my boy, great music.”

“Proko…who?”

“Proko..fy..ev,” Hap said, slowly enunciating each syllable. “His music was edgy stuff in his day. A Russian who fled to America long before the Revolution in Russia, then when he returned, was held in low regard by the Russians because they thought he had become to American. He died writing music for the Communists rather than for himself, or for the world for that matter.” Hap realized he was mostly talking to himself, so he decided if Billy could hear a few bars, it might help; so he started humming the music. “That’s the first selection,” he said after a few bars. “You try it now.”

Billy had him repeat it, the he mimicked what Hap had hummed, perfectly.

“Very good! Let’s try the next one.” Hap hummed a few bars of the second selection, and one again, Billy followed suit to the note.

“You’re good at this. What do you think of the music?”

“It’s weird.”

“Wait ‘til you hear the symphony play it. You’ll be amazed at how much better they are.” 

Hap and Billy walked hand and hand down the hill to the Seattle Art Museum. It was closed for reconstruction, so they walked on up to the Farmer’s Market. “Ever been here, Billy?”

“No.”

“Come on, we’ll go watch the fish guys throw fish.”

 

Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

    The barrista left work later than usual that day, tired and frustrated over having to work the busy morning hours while two of his co-workers took the day off to go to a party down in Portland. He had only been with the bistro three weeks and already he was frustrated with his co-workers and his boss for his lax attitude. He pushed his hair back from his forehead, adjusted the shoulder strap on his carrying case and stepped into the crosswalk leading to the bus stop. A horn honked and he had to jump out of the way of car pulling into the crosswalk; when he did he saw the poster on the lamppost.

At first glance, it didn’t register that he had seen the man featured in the poster earlier, but he stopped, and looked again. It was the man who had been in earlier looking for his father. The guy had shown him a picture of his father. What was his name? He said his father’s name was. . . Roger? No, Robert. Yes, Robert . . . mmmm, it was a real common name. Jones? No. Williams. No.  Smith? Smith  . . . Robert Smith? No. Robert Brown, that was it. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone and dialed the contact number listed on the bottom of the poster.

“He was in the bistro this morning having a cup of coffee. He showed me picture of his father and asked if I had seen him. Said his father’s name was Robert Brown.

“No, he didn’t have any other name. He was real nervous though.”

Abu Bakr Qadeer listened on the other end of the phone, then asked,  “Did he say how long he’s been in the city?”

“No, he didn’t say anything else. Just the picture and the name of his father. I’ll keep an eye out for him. Maybe he’ll come in again.”

“Thank you,” Abu said, “please do.”

After they hung up, Abu called his number two man in the Seattle brigade, an American named Chris Wallison, and told him of the barrista’s phone call.

“Unfortunately his information is useless. Who thought we would get a call about an actual sighting of his son?”

“He must be looking for his father too. Maybe we should get both their heads.”

“You might have a good idea, but I think we need to find this Louis Brown.”

“He could lead us to the pig we seek.”

“Yes, he could, then we would have them both.

Later that afternoon, Abu called for a meeting of his brigade the following day. “We have a new development. Allah is being good to us.”

          The next afternoon the brigade met in the basement of their mosque. They were a secret group of men subscribing to the fundamentalist beliefs that Muslims were called by Allah to kill all infidels in the world. They were no different than the hundreds, if not thousands of such groups found throughout the United States.

          “We have learned that Louie Brown, the son of Robert Brown, as you know, is in Seattle. We know this from two sources. First, I received a phone call from a man who sells coffee in one of the bistros in the square. He said the man, who we know is Louie Brown, showed him a picture of his father and told him his name. Unfortunately, Louie Brown doesn’t know his father’s name, so he used his real one: Robert Brown. The coffee salesman saw one of our posters and called me yesterday.  

“Second, our brothers in Philadelphia intercepted a postcard with a picture of Pioneer Square, postmarked Seattle, just like this one,” he said, holding the picture for all the men to see, “addressed to his son Louie. It was a blank postcard and obviously an attempt on the part of the father to make contact with the son. Apparently even the infidel father’s, when separated from their children suffer the loss. 

“It is imperative that we find Louie, then let him lead us to his the pig we so fervently seek.”

          He pulled a sheet of paper from a folder and began assigning men to shifts to cover the Pioneer Square area. “We will cover this area twenty-four hours a day until we make contact and achieve our mission. I know many of you work and have families so if you need to trade times with someone else, please do so; however there will be no excuse for anyone missing a shift. Remember it was this Robert Brown who lived among us and spied on our brethren. Five of them are in American prisons for life because of it. 

“If you have special circumstances, or need help with anything, let me know. We must be successful in this endeavor, Allah is watching.

          “Praise be to Allah,” he said, raising his arms upward, then he faced eastward, knelt, and led the men in prayer.

          The first shift started immediately after the meeting. Each lasted for six hours with three men walking the streets, sidewalks, and alleys. They sat in outdoor cafes and sipped coffee, and visited the stores while looking, watching, listening, and following, suspected men who resembled Louie.

Not one of them looked for, or suspected, that Robert Brown, might be found among the homeless crowd just around the corner in Occidental Park, or in the Mission on First Avenue, just two blocks south of the Square.

 

Chapter Twenty Nine

 

Three weeks later, Louie still walked the Pioneer Square area. He believed he had covered the core of the Pioneer Square neighborhood, so in addition to some retracing of his former searches, he began expanding into the blocks adjacent to the square area.

He had grown comfortable with his disguise, but he had decided he must use the picture of his father. Without the picture it be impossible to find him. He had checked the hospitals, and even the police station and found nothing. Still, he believed his father was somewhere either in, or near the area, otherwise why would he have sent the mysterious postcard.

A few days later, he walked into an upscale oriental carpet store, just a block down from the square, and a block up from the Mission. Louie was tired, and discouraged, since he had decided not to show anyone the picture of his father, he had had no luck. He wasn’t anywhere closer to finding him than he had been when he first arrived. Feeling dejected he was walking along the aisles with his head down.

“May I help you, sir?” The man looked like he was probably from India, or at least his family had come from there, he wore a turban, and expensive pants and a shirt with gold buttons. Hap thought if he didn’t know better, he might be in New Dehli. Thinking further, he was reasonably sure he hadn’t. 

Louie reached into his pocket and pulled out the picture of his father; and asked the man from New Dehli, “Have you seen this man?”

The man looked, at a distance, at the picture,

Louie said, “His name is Robert Johnson. He been missing for three years. I’m his son, and I’m trying to find him.”

The man looked closely at the picture, then he took it from Louie and held it closer to his bifocal lens. He held it one way, then the other, and he turned it over and looked at the backside. “I don’t believe I’ve sent this man, sir,” the man said, “you’ve lost your father, that is indeed a sad situation,” he said, “let me ask the people in back if they have seem him.” The man turned and walked into the back room, where  he accessed his cell phone, and punched in a number.  “Yes, he is carrying a picture of the pig we seek, and he told me the pig is his father. This is the pig’s son, Louie. He’s wearing a disguise.” He described how Louie was dressed with his long hair, then said, “Yes,  and he’s in my store, as we speak.”

Meanwhile, Louie gazed absentmindedly looked at the carpets, running his fingers over them, feeling their texture; and he gazed at the people on the sidewalk outside and the traffic on the street. He was uncomfortable knowing that a man, whose name he didn’t know, had just walked away with the only picture he had of his father.

A few minutes later the man returned and handed the picture back to Louie. “I’m sorry, sir, no one here recognizes this man.”   

“Thank you,” Louie replied, “if you do, would you contact me at this number?” Louie handed the man a business card with his name and number on it. “I just got these a few days ago,” he said, “this is the first one I’ve handed out. Maybe you will be the one to see him.”

“Thank you,” the man said, he read the name and number on the card, then put it in his shirt pocket. He extended his hand to Louie, and wished him good luck in finding his father. 

When Louie stepped out of the store and on to the sidewalk, the three men on Abu’s clandestine assignment followed him; one across the street, and two behind.

 

Chapter Thirty

 

          Five days had gone by since Foster last called Charles Washington. He was going to call me back as soon as he left that place out in the forest! Charles had tried calling him three or four times each of those days; and he was sure something bad had happened. He found a Seattle telephone book in the library and made a copy of all the Fosters listed and began calling all them, thinking that he would eventually find a family member who might know about Dan’s whereabouts.

          On the seventh day, still with no communication from Dan, he made contact with a family member.

          “Yes, he’s my uncle.”

          “I’ve been in daily contact with him for a number of weeks, and he was going to call me right back the last time I talked to him.”

“How long ago was that?”

“He never did call me back and I still haven’t heard from him. I thought maybe someone in your family might know where I could locate him.”

          “I’m the only family he has in the Seattle area, and we don’t really talk that often. I don’t know where he is.”

          After talking a minutes, she gave Charles another number to call in San Diego, “But I doubt anyone there will know where he is, I don’t think there’s been any contact between then for years.”

          After they hung up, Charles rang the number in San Diego and soon learned that not only had they not heard from Dan in years, they didn’t really care to hear from him any time soon. 

          Charles sat at his large maple desk and looked at the map of the United States he had framed over the fireplace. Somewhere out there I have a son, he thought. And somewhere out there I have an investigator who told me he had found him. He was going to a farm area, east of Seattle, and said he would call when he got back, possibly with Billy. Something has gone wrong.

          The next day, Charles was on a flight to Seattle.

          The first place he drove to was Dan’s office address on Queen Anne Hill. It was mid-day on a Tuesday; the office door was closed and locked. He went into some of the adjacent businesses, and discovered that some of the people in those stores were wondering what had happened to the private investigator too.

          “He comes in early every morning, like clock-work,” the man in the insurance office next door told Charles. “If you find him, have him give us a call.”

          Charles went back to his car and pulled the address of the farm Dan had given him over the phone. He didn’t know where Carnation was so he stopped at a convenience store, bought a small bag of peanuts and asked the clerk how to get there.

          “Carnation? Isn’t that somewhere down toward Portland?”

          “I don’t think so, I was told it was east of Seattle.”

          “East? Oh, you mean out that way,” the clerk said, pointing straight north, toward Canada.

          “Young man, you need to learn your directions,” Charles said, pointing east. “It’s that way.”

          He found the maps on a nearby rack and opened the one to Washington state. “You ever looked at one of these?”

          “Oh, yeah, I saw those when I was in school. I didn’t get how they worked thought.”

          Charles found Carnation on the map and jotted directions on the back of one his business cards. “You should study this in your spare time. Makes life less confusing when you know where you are.”

          “Hey man, I know where I am. Right here. You wanna buy some cigarettes?”

          “No thanks.” Charles went out to his car and looked at the streets running by to see how to find his way to I-5, the main freeway that links the west coast to Vancouver, BC, to the north and San Diego, California, to the south.

          An hour later he was in Carnation, sitting at the light where either a left-turn or a right-turn must be made he peered through the windshield wipers and read the signs. The road to the left led out toward the Tolt River and points further up the mountains, the one to the left led toward Falls City. Charles turned right and a few minutes later saw the name on the road sign that Dan had given him over the phone.

          He had never seen such dense forest and he was beginning to think he was going to have to find a place to turn around; he thought he might have taken the wrong road. A few hundred feet further and the road widened into a sort of natural cul de sac with a trailer-house parked on the far side. There were no cars about; the place looked dilapidated and old. 

          He stopped the car and sat quietly for a few minutes thinking that maybe the sound of his car approaching might bring someone to the door. After waiting a few minutes, he turned off the engine, and honked his horn. A few more minutes went by, then he opened the door of his car, and walked to the door of the trailer. He hoped Billy had never been in this place; then he wondered that if he had, how did he ever get to such a place. He knocked on the door; then he knocked again; still no one answered, so he walked around the trailer, looking for signs that would tell him either someone was in the trailer and not wanting to open the door, in the general vicinity, or that there was, in fact, no one around. In the back he noticed there had been a fire and a small shed and burned.  There were scorch marks on the backside of the trailer and a tree, near the shed and had been burned, but nothing else.

          He walked back to the front door and of trailer, knocked one more time, then put his hand on the knob and turned it. It was unlocked. He gently pushed the door in and asked, “Anyone home?” Still hearing nothing, he pushed the door further open and repeated himself.

          What he saw once he stepped inside the trailer was disgusting: filth everywhere, dirty pots on the stove that were weeks, if not months, beyond needing to be washed; beer bottles in the sink, on the floor, on the couch; partially empty whiskey bottles on the counter and kitchen table; pornographic magazines with pages torn out; the garbage can was full and had overflowed onto the kitchen floor, the living room floor, and the hallway: empty pizza boxes, empty cans of beans, more beer bottles and tea bags; and the refrigerator held four bottles of unopened beer, catsup and mustard, and an empty container of milk.

          He walked down the hall to the bedroom.  There was one bed with only a mattress and a couple of filthy blankets piled on the floor. A pillow without a pillowcase lay on the piss-stained mattress. Dirty clothes lay strewn about the room and pair of muddy boots stood guard over an empty wine bottle.

          It was apparent there was a problem with the sewage, so he didn’t even go into the bathroom, other than to check to see if anyone was hiding there.

          He saw no signs of a young boy in the trailer, but as he took one last look at the counter he noticed a business card lying on it. He picked it up and read, “Daniel’s Cleaning Service.” Below the title was a phone number that looked familiar to Charles. He opened his cell phone and cell phone and dialed the number.

“You have reached the number for Daniel’s Cleaning Service. I am not able to come to the phone right now, however if…”Charles recognized the voice, it was Dan Foster’s.  He’s been here, or someone here has come across him has. This has to be the place Dan was coming to visit. But this place looks like it hasn’t seen anyone for a while either. He put the business card in his pocket, left the trailer and walked around to the back again. This time he saw a trail that clearly led back into the trees. Later he drove back into town.

His rental was running low on gas, so when he came to the gas station/convenience store on the southern part of town, he stopped and went in. “Ever see this kid around here?” he asked, showing the clerk a picture of Billy.

“Lot of people looking for that kid,” he said, fingering the edge of the picture.

“A lot of people?”

“Some guy came in here a couple weeks ago, looking for that same kid.”

“What did he look like?”

“Mr. Foster, you mean, or the boy?”

“So it was Dan Foster.”

“Yeah, you know the cleaning guy.”

“Cleaning Guy?”

“He was driving a panel truck. Said, ‘Daniel’s Cleaning Service’ on the side. Is he in some kinda trouble with the law?”

“Listen, did you tell him you’d seen the kid?”

“Yeah, up on Echo Glen Road. There used to be a couple of marijuana growers living up there. Everybody knew about them. They got busted a few days ago. ATF agents came in all over the place, man. It was cool.

“Anyway, they had the boy with them a few times. Not all the time, but sometimes one of them guys would come in to pick up some beer or a few cans of chili, you know stuff like that. The boy only came in once, if I remember right.”

“What did he look like?”

“’Bout nine, ten years old, I guess. Little black boy, like you, not that you’re a little boy. of course. Hey, d’you know that kid?”

“He’s my son.”

“No shit! Man, you don’t look nothin’ like those guys that had him. They was white to the bone, you know what I mean? And scary too! Ever’body in town knew what they was up to, back in them woods, though,” he stopped and looked at Charles, then said, “How’d your boy get with those two?”

“I’m not sure. Billy has been lost to his family for a long time. We’ve been looking for him.”

“Well, I hear that place is scheduled for cleaning out real soon. They already went in and cleaned out all the weed. They burned it a few days ago.”

“Did the police get Billy too?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t seen any of’em since the raid. The last time I saw any of’em was about that same time. I saw the cleaning truck going norht through town though. It was odd.”

“What do you mean, odd?”

“Pretty sure one of them maryjane boys was drivin’ it, the mean one. I think his name was Ed. I heard the other one call him that a few times in the the store. The other one was following close behind in the old blue truck.”

“Where were they going?”

“Up the Tolt I guess. A little later both of’em stopped in here and bought some beer.”

“Up the Tolt?”

“River, it runs the other way outa town.”

“You mean north, in the opposite direction from Falls City, right?”

“Yep.”

“And when they cam back, did you see what they were driving?”

“Yeah, they were both in the blue truck.”

“You didn’t see the panel truck when they came back?”

“Nope.”

“You sure the boy wasn’t with them?”

“Didn’t see him.”

Charles extended his hand to the clerk. “Thanks for your help.”

“No problem,” he said, watching Charles leave the store.

Charles pulled out of the parking lot and turned north, heading for the road up along the Tolt River. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, he just prayed that Billy hadn’t been in that panel truck, because he was almost certain Dan Foster was, and he was just as certain that something bad had happened to him.

Charles headed out of Carnation toward the Tolt rivershed, looking for some sign of Daniel’s panel truck. It didn’t take long to find the damn on the lower Tolt River. Then he drove for miles along what looked more like a lake than a river. Finally, as the day was beginning to shorten, the far end of this swollen, lake-sized, river, he found the small river that fed it.  The road continued on into the woods, paralleling the river to some degree, and the road’s surface became less ‘vehicle friendly’ at that point; it bacame narrower and it began to climb. He thought he must be crazy to follow this road into what he thought uncharted territory might look like.

Eventually, he came to a high point in the road, and stopped to look over the edge. When he did, he saw vehicular tracks leading over the edge of the road. Standing dangerously close to the steep precipice, he looked and far below, lay the mostly white panel truck lying on its side, partly emerged in the water.

Charles’ first impulse was to climb down the mountain side, but the more he searched for a safe path, the more he realized there was no way he would be able to make the steep descent safely.  He opened his cell phone and dialed 911. In less than fifteen minutes a helicopter appeared and began floating in the air above the canyon. By now it was dark and he watched the spotlights come and light up the panel truck; then a wench began lowering two men down into the steep ravine.

An hour later Charles watched them place a body into a tethered gurney and lift it to the helicopter. He could tell from his vantage point, the body wasn’t a small boy. Then the two men who were originally dropped into the ravine were pulled back into the machine hovering above; then the helicopter lifted, and disappeared into the cloud cover, leaving Charles where he had been before the helicopter showed up: standing alone on the high precipice, only this time he stood in total darkness.

He opened his cell phone and redialed 911. He wanted to know if they knew there may have been a small boy in the vehicle. The 911 operator patched him into the county sheriff’s office, where he was able to ask a deputy the question.

“Sir, I’m sure the men made a thorough search of the vehicle. Why are you asking?”

“My son may have been in that van.”

An hour later Charles was sitting in the sheriff’s office talking with a deputy. After he told them the entire story, an Amber Alert was issued for Billy Hinkle that went nation-wide.

In less than three hours a call came in; someone had seen Billy in Pioneer Square with an older man who appeared to be homeless. Before noon the next day they had five more calls reporting the same. One of the callers identified Hap. 

 

Chapter Thirty One

The Seattle days were getting shorter. The Mariners had completed another season with the wins coming in fewer numbers than wins, but the fans in Seattle weren’t surprised, and the numbers of fans who really didn’t care much anymore rose another notch on the ladder of Mariner apathy. Some figured times like the old ones in the Kingdome were just around the corner, where they could call in and ask, “what time’s the game start today?” And the answer would be, “What time can you be here?”

Hap was in the kitchen, fixing breakfast for him and Billy when the knock came on the door. “Just a minute,” he yelled, sliding the freshly, fried eggs onto a plate. “I’m fixing breakfast.”

He went to the door and opened it. The man standing there looked vaguely familiar. “Can I help you?”

“Are you Robert Brown?”

“Never heard of him,” Hap said.

“Do you go by the name Robert Smith?”

The crinkles around Hap’s eyes stretched while he narrowed his eyes to more closely inspect the person asking the questions. He was slightly taller than Hap, he wore shiny shoes, a nice pair of gray slacks, a plaid shirt, and a brown, suede jacket. 

“Sometimes, why do you ask?”

“Does the name Louie, or Michele, mean anything to you?”

Hap scratched the back of his neck; then he remembered the eggs. “Hold on a minute will you? I got a boy whose breakfast is getting cold.”

“Do you mind if I step inside?” the younger man said.

“No, come on in. Shut the door, though, will you?” he asked, disappearing down the hall humming Mozart.

In a few minutes Billy appeared. “Can you believe it, this urchin just appeared at my door a few days ago. If you’re here looking for him, it was me that called child welfare,” he said, withholding the fact that they had told him Billy was dead. Those were words he didn’t want Billy to hear.

“No, I’m not hear for Billy.”

“What’s your business?” he asked, spreading butter across a piece of toast.

“I’m looking for Robert Brown.”

“Told you, I don’t know him.”

Billy pulled a small photograph notebook from his jacket pocket. “Here, I want you to look at these.”

Hap wiped his hands, then took the notebook and sat down. He opened it and slowly turned each page, large enough for only one shapshot. “Who are these people?” he asked.

“Keep going, maybe you’ll recognize someone by the time you get to the back.”

Hap turned the pages more and more slowly. Louie had placed the picture in chronological order according to age. The opening photographs were of Hap and his wife, Marie; then Michele showed up, then Louie. The further back into the notebook he got, the older the people in the pictures became. He looked at the last picture the longest.

“It’s me, isn’t it.”

“It is.”

“And this one,” he said, turning back to a picture of Louie, “is you, isn’t it.”

“Yes. Do you know who we are?”

“What do you mean?”

“We are family. You are my father. I am your son, Louie.”

Hap listened and looked intently. “This is your sister,” he said, pointing to her picture.

“It is, and her name is Michele, Dad.”

Hap held the notebook with both hands. His eyes turned toward Louie’s. He asked, “How did you find me?”

“Do you remember sending this?” he said, pulling the postcard from his pocket.

Hap took the card and looked at the picture, “Pioneer Square,” he said, “I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Dad, I found you a couple days ago. You were with this young man,” he said, casually pointing to Billy, “Billy, right?”

“Yes,” Billy replied.

“I’ve been following you around some. I didn’t want to blow your cover.”

“Cover? What do you mean?”

“I saw you talking with your friend, Freddy. After you left I approached him. He told me about your accident and how you’ve lost your memory. You must have sent the postcard before the accident. Since it was blank, I took it as a clue to where you were and a call for help.”

“I don’t need help, but what do you mean by cover?”

“Dad, you testified in federal court. Do you remember?”

Hap looked confused.

“Of course you don’t. Well, you did. You put four Islamic terrorists behind bars for life for their attempt to kill the president.”

“Who?”

“The President of the United States.”

“I did?”

“Yes, and after you did, the government put you in a witness protection plan. That’s why you are here in Seattle with a new name.”

“The government named me Hap?”

“No, the guys down at the Mission did that, Freddy told me about it.”

“I don’t know what name they gave you, but usually you get to keep your first name.”

“Robert Smith. That’s why the checks are coming in each month, and that must be why they are made out to Robert Smith,” Hap said, wonder filling his face. “So what is this cover?”

“That’s it, new name, new city, all former contacts with the family, friends, and colleagues, cut off.”

“Because these four terrorists have friends, don’t they. Are they looking for me?”

“More than likely, Dad. That’s why I waited to approach you. I think they are in the area. Have you seen the posters around town?”

“Which posters?”

“The ones with my picture on them asking ‘Have You Seen This Man?’”

“Those are you?” Hap knew what he was talking about, he had seen one of the posters. He suddenly remembered standing for a while looking at the handsome young face in the picture. “I remember, now. Yes, it is you isn’t it.”

“Yes, but Dad, who put those posters up? And why?”

Hap’s blank face said it all to Louie.

“The terrorists friends. They don’t know about your amnesia. They think you’ll see a picture of your son and call the number on the bottom of the poster. That’s how they’re trying to find you.”

Hap laid his head against the back of the couch. The information was coming at him in warp-speed. He needed some time to process.

“Hap, can I have some cereal?” Billy asked.

“Yes, Billy, you can have whatever your like.”

“Who is this boy?” Louie asked.

“A waif. An orphan. A terrific boy,” Hap said, more for Billy’s benefit than anything else. Then he lowered his voice and said, “A boy some people that some people think is dead.”

“What?” Louie asked, keeping his voice low.

“I’ll fill you in later,” he said. “We’re going to the symphony on Saturday. Would you like to join us?”

“I would love that, Dad. But I’m worried I might be the conduit to you. The terrorists are close; they must be in the neighborhood because the posters are all over the square and surrounding area. The main thing right now is that I found you, and other than your amnesia, you’re in good health.”

“Have I been overseas?”

“Yes, you were over there for years, and only occasionally came home to see us. Mom told us of the importance of your work, though. We were so proud of you; and we still are, Dad.”

“This explains the visions and the dreams,” Hap said, his eyes drifting away. “I have visions of things I don’t remember: shootings, explosions, Arabic men, and men talking in Arabic and me understanding them. I’ve had dreams recently about children. I think there was a boy and a girl; we went fishing, or to the park, or somewhere. It must have been you and Michele. What about your mother, you’ve not said anything about her.”

“Mom would have joined you in witness protection, but the two of you were divorcing when the trial was taking place. It was decided that she wouldn’t go with you.”

“Divorced? Whatever for, look at her, she’s so beautiful.”

 

Chapter Thirty-Two

 

 Once contact with Louie had been made, Abu pulled his men in to discuss a change in strategy.

“We no long need three men in the square at all times, so we’ll pull back to two. Each will be responsible for working together to watch this pig’s son until we have enough information to put the final the brigade pulled back from three on duty for each shift covering the twenty-four hour period, to two.”

“Abu, we should take this stinking infidel out today. Do you not remember the brothers he has put behind bars for life?” one of the men shouted.  Others joined in by raising their voices in support.

Abu held his hand in the air. “No. My brothers, if we act to quickly we only increase the probability of the authorities knowing who we are. We have much higher goals to achieve, where martyrdom may be required. Because our numbers are still low, we cannot afford to start losing members, yet.

“Once we know all we can know about this man, then we make our move. I do not want the beheading to occur in his apartment. It must be carried out in a place where the blood and body can be disposed of without leaving signs. We have yet to procure such a place.”

“Can we not take him into the forest?”

“That is probably what we will do, however we would have to get him into a car without suspicion, and out of town without detection.”

“That will not be difficult, Abu. You must remember some of us have been to the training camps.”

“How can I forget?” Abu said, rubbing his chin with a thumb. “We must carry the message deep into the America heartland if we are to accomplish the will of Allah.

“So, men,” Abu continued, “I have altered the schedules to the following.” He passed the sheets around to the men. “We begin immediately. At the end of each shift, one of the pair must make a full report regarding the comings and goings of the infidel, Robert Brown.”

The first shift began as soon as the meeting drew to a close when a  pair of men drove to the neighborhood and parked their car outside the building where Louie Brown had met with his father the day before.

“I am hungry,” Mohamed, the driver, said. “Let’s get something to eat.”

Inside the apartment, Louie and Hap discussed Billy.

“Dad, you can’t keep this boy. He belongs to someone and they have to be looking for him.”

“Louie, I told you I called the child welfare people and they are not looking for him,” he said, stroking Bull Durham’s fur.

“Because he was reported killed in an automobile accident? How can that be possible? Did they find a body in the car?”

“I didn’t get the details, all I know is what they told me, and they told me they couldn’t give me any more information because I’m not related to him.”

“Billy,” Louie said, turning to the boy, “were you in a car wreck of some kind?”

“I don’t know.”

“Billy, you have to something like that. A car wreck is not something people forget.”

“All I remember is waking up in the bushes, and the car and my foster parents were gone. I don’t remember a wreck.”

“Is it possible he was thrown out of the car and went undetected during the investigation, and woke up after the cops were gone?” Louie asked.

“Louie, anything’s possible. Look at me and my situation.”

“Dad, where’s your phone book, I want to call the child welfare services.”

“I don’t have a phone, Louie,” he said, letting the cat down. “Why don’t we take a walk down to the square, I’m sure you can find a phonebook in one of the stores.”

They opened the door to leave and Bull darted into the hallway.

When they left the building, a block behind them, on the street, a small, white Honda two-door sedan slowly followed. As soon as it was obvious where they were going, the Honda parked and the two men from the brigade casually exited the car and started following them on foot.

While Billy and Louie talked with Freddy, Billy played on the Monument to Firemen nearby.

“I think you should give them another call,” Freddy said. “They might have something to new to tell you. I know, if his my kid, I’d be lookin’ for him.”

Louie looked across the street and saw a pizza shop. “You guys stay here if you want, maybe they have a phone book over there.” As soon as he turned, he found himself facing two men. They looked beyond him; obviously toward his Dad, Freddy and Billy. Then they focused in on Hap.

“Is that boy with you?”

“That one right there?” Hap asked, pointing to Billy.

“Yes.”

“He is, but who . . .”

One of the men went to Billy and asked him, “Are you Billy Hinkle?”

Louie stepped forward and offered, “I was just going to call child services.”

“You don’t need to do that, Sir. We will take care of the boy.”

“What is your name?” the other man asked Hap.

Looking bewildered, he said, “Robert Brown, I guess.”

“Mr. Brown, you are under arrest for the abduction of Billy Hinkle. You have a right to remain silent . . .”

“Hold it,” Louie shouted. “He didn’t abduct that boy! The boy found him!”

“That’s right,” Hap joined in. “he came to my door. I’ve just been taking care of him for a few days.”

Billy tugged at the man’s arm who was holding him. “That’s right, Mister.”

After further discussion where the agents heard the entire story regarding Billy, including his time spent at the marijuana farm, and how he landed on Hap’s doorstep, the undercover agents decided they didn’t have enough evidence to arrest Hap; but they did take his name and address, along with Louie’s, then they took Billy into their custody.

“No,” Billy cried. “I don’t want to go to another foster family.”

“Billy, you’re father is the one looking for you,” the agent told him.

“I don’t have a father. My mother told me he was dead.”

“Billy, you do have a father, and he is a very good man. He’s been looking for you for a long time.”

The officer turned to Hap and said,  “Mr. Brown, there will be an investigation, and we will be in touch.”

“Thank you,” Hap said.

“Hold on.” Louie stepped closer. “Officers, there’s more going on here than you might realize.”

“What’s that?”

          “I’m afraid my father’s life is in jeopardy.”

          “How’s that Mr. Brown?”

          “Do you remember a few years ago, the terrorist attack that was foiled at the White House?”

          “The White House in Washington DC?”

          “My father is responsible for those men being sentenced to life in prison. He’s in the witness protection plan.”

          “Are you also?”

          “No. He got lonely, broke the rules.”

          “I don’t remember,” Hap said, keeping his eyes on Billy.

          “He sent me a postcard, that’s how I found him. We’re from Philadelphia.”

Officers turned to the other. “Robert Brown, Philadelphia, undercover agent who broke the case against the terrorists. I remember that!” He turned to Hap and shook his hand. “Nice work, Sir.”

Hap looked nonplussed. “Your welcome, I guess.”

“He was hit by a train after arriving here in Seattle. He has amnesia. Doesn’t remember anything before the accident,” Louie told them. “I’m confident there are friends of the brigade looking for him, right here in Seattle.”

“What makes you think that?”

“There are posters hanging in town with my picture on them asking anyone who’s seen me to call them. I wear a this disguise everywhere I go,” he lifted his wig just enough so they could see he was telling the truth. “There is absolutely no reason for them to put these posters up for any reason other than to draw my father out of hiding. Fortunately though he had seen the posters, he didn’t recognize me; so he didn’t do anything about it.”

“You should call the WitPro number any time there’s a problem, Mr. Brown. You were given those instructions in the training, weren’t you?”

Hap shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t now. I don’t remember the training.”

Billy, nervous throughout this exchange because he doesn’t want to go with these men, sat down and started crying.

“We need to take him to the station.” He got Louie’s cell number and told him someone would be in touch immediately; then they left with Billy. 

Across the sidewalk, near the pizza store, stood the men from the brigade. They had watched the agents approach Hap, take the boy, then stand in conversation before leaving. One of the brigadiers used a cell phone to describe the events, as they happened, to Abu.

“We’re not ready yet,” Abu said. “This is a new development. Did anyone know he had a young boy with him?”

“No, Abu, no one did.”

They two men kept their distance and continued following Hap and Louie until they disappeared back inside the apartment building for the evening.

Later that evening, Louie’s cell phone rang. It was a federal agent with the Witness Program. He asked Louie a few questions to determine his identity then they set up a meeting.

 

 

Chapter Thirty-Three

 

          The next morning at seven Hap and Louie stepped quickly from their building and into the backseat of a Ford Cruiser that arrived only seconds before. As soon as they were in the backseat, the Ford sped off. By the time it had gone a block, the small, white Honda pulled away from the curb and began following at a distance.

          Both the driver and the other man in the front seat were thirty-some years old, they both wore their hair cropped short, and both were dressed as typical northwesterners: khaki pants; dark socks with dark shoes; and long sleeved shirts, buttoned at the sleeve. The driver wore a dark brown jacket, the passenger – blue.

“Mr. Brown, are you in jeopardy?”

“My son thinks I am,” he said, looking at the young man in the passenger seat.

“Do you think you are?”

“Yes, what he says makes sense.”

“Is it true you are a victim of amnesia?”

“I have no memory past an accident involving a locomotive here in Seattle a few years ago.”

“You are his son, is that right?” the passenger in the front seat asked.

“Yes, I am.”

“And I understand there are posters of you hanging in the Pioneer Square area asking anyone who sees you to report to this number,” he said holding up one of he posters.

“That’s right.”

The driver kept his eye on the road and the rear-view mirror while he drove about the city streets until he entered the freeway and headed north.

The man in the passenger seat asked how he found his father, and Louie explained.

“Mistake, Mr. Brown to make that kind of contact, now we’ll have to start all over.”

“You mean I’ll have to move to another city, new name again and all that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not right now I hope!”

“No, sir. You’ll have a little time to get ready. But we have to be ready; they could try to make their hit anytime time, any moment actually. We have no way to know if they have found you yet. Your son is a smart-cookie, sir. His disguise is a good one. I would never recognize him after looking at the picture on the poster. Chances are good they haven’t found you, yet; but given enough time, they will.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“But we have a proposal for you Mr. Brown.”

Hap looked at him. “What?”

“We would like to get these guys.”

“Go on,” Hap responded.

“We would like to set up a sting operation. Take some of the bastards out. You know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“We would like to use you as bait to draw them in.”

While they talked a carpenter, walked into Hap’s apartment building and approached the supervisor. In a few hours, before the Ford returned, the carpenter walked out of the building, got into his truck and drove away.

Meanwhile, inside the white Honda, someone was talking on a cell phone to Abu. “They pulled out onto I-5 and are headed north. We are at a distance behind.

“No, they do not know we are here. We will stay close.”

“Let us know when they are returning. We must plan the hit this afternoon. I don’t like what is going on and the longer we wait, the infidel may be whisked from under our noses. We will have to scrap our plan to take him to the woods; he must be killed immediately. I’ll put the plan into motion as soon as we hang up.”

“We will stay close, Abu and let you know when they get to where ever they are going or begin returning.”

In the Ford Cruiser, while the operation was being discussed, one by one, six men disappeared into the apartment building, and unmarked cars began parking along the sidewalks adjacent to the building.

An hour later the Ford Cruiser pulled back in front of the building and Hap hurried into the building. Louie stayed behind.

“Are you sure he will be ok?”

“He’ll be back with us inside an hour or two. Perfectly safe and sound.” The Ford Cruiser pulled away from the building and headed back to the freeway. “We can’t stick around. If they’re watching, they need to see us get completely away.”

Thirty minutes later, an older model Oldsmobile pulled parked along side the building where three men got out, and two remained. The three men walked into the building and walked very quietly to Hap’s door. They stood silent and listened. Hearing nothing, one of them knocked on the door. They waited, then knocked again.

Inside Hap heard the knock just as he ducked into the new door the carpenter had installed inside his bedroom closet into the adjacent apartment.

The men in the hallway never noticed the building was empty. One of them knocked again. Still no answer. He wrapped his fingers around the knob and slowly turned it: it wasn’t locked.

The door slammed open and the three men from the brigade burst through the door. They spread out and went room to room. When Abu went into the bedroom he saw Hap lying on his bed, asleep. He pulled the long sword from his pant-leg and pulled it high over his head, then with a mighty swoop he swung it down. When he did, six Federal Agents stepped from the closets, and bathtub, assault rifles cocked and ready.

“Sorry, asshole,” the lead agent said, pointing his rifle at Abu. “You missed.”

So it was without bloodshed that the Seattle brigade met with a most sinister end that day in Hap’s apartment. The three brigade members in the apartment were cuffed; and outside, the two men waiting in the car were read their rights and taken away with them.

A week later, Robert John Williams took up residence in Santa Barbara, California.

 

END