(no subject)

31.
“Hero”

The following week was filled with the expectable pomp and circumstance. Archie, Tooley and he were given a lot of publicity about being involved with the “Hospital Shoot Out,” as the headlines called it.

Archie was being nominated for some kind of medal for ex-FBI men. Tooley was going to be honored by the state Policemen’s Organization for being repeatedly shot in the line of duty. Pappy heard from the Governor’s Office that he was going to get a “Meritorious Civilian’s Citation for Bravery” for driving the van under fire. All of it was fairly overwhelming.

But none of it was anything compared to the response that Porter Gates was seeing. He had been on National TV news from coast to coast. The FBI had contacted him about joining them, but he was having to consider that offer. You see the state Republican Party was considering the fact that they had a seat in the Congress opening up, and a hero was just the kind of man they would like to put forward to fill it. With Jeff Barsimmons volunteering to be his campaign manager the boy looked like a shoe in for the job.

The shooter, it turned out, was Wiley Earl. They had figured that he was always some kind of pervert, even when he was working at the boy’s camp. He had lured the boys to someplace private and that was where he’d kill them. He had been able to stop himself up until the camp shut down, put him out of work and that set him off and that made him start killing again. Nobody had any idea why the killings had been so ritualistic or timed so precisely, spaced two weeks apart each time. But these were little things, and when taken with the end of the horror, not very important.

Porter had been the only State Trooper to squeeze off a shot at Earl, and hit him four times in the head at fairly close range. The damage had been sudden and complete.

In this town that was something that a great many people would have paid to get to do. There had not been a single tear shed for Wiley Earl. Nor was a second thought given.

It all seemed to be happily finalized. "Two decades of horror ended with four slugs," was what one radio reporter said.

To everybody it seemed that this was the way of the world. At least it seemed that way to everybody but Hannibal Agamemnon.

To Pappy the whole thing felt like a wader with a rock rolling around in the foot. It was going to take undoing the whole thing to get to the problem, but he couldn’t let it sit like it was.

He had always been a troublemaker.

 

© 2005 by C. Wayne Owens

(no subject)

32.
“Well Enough”

Two of the three people that Hannibal Agamemnon was going to interview for this case were dead.

The eyewitness, Melanie Custer, was almost surely dead, though when and if they would find her body would be in doubt until and if they did.

Wiley Earl, the number one suspect, was also gone. The one they saw as the spider, sitting in the middle of a web of death, had been summarily dispatched in a hail of gunfire. If he had lived there were a lot of questions that Pappy would have liked to ask him. Those answers remained unraveled ends in that web of mysteries. But would he have chosen to have someone who killed children and shot at hospitals alive long enough to answer questions, if that also left him alive to kill more?

There was a strong voice, the kind old films used to portray as an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, called to him from within. Deep inside his heart that voice whispered the same question, over and over. That voice kept asking, was he the killer? Would the killings stop now because there was a goat? Was the real killer getting away, just because this man took up a gun and shot at some people?

Was Wiley Earl crazy? Was he crazy enough to murder children or just crazy enough to shoot at strangers? It was now in doubt if they would ever know.

It was just that sour note of uncertainty that stuck in Pappy’s craw. And, it is well know the man doesn't have a sticky craw to begin with.

Life seemed to be getting back to normal, and all seemed right with the world. That feeling was unsettlingly alluring. Almost addictive.

Pappy got to fish with his grandson, and Bel got to fix mammoth dinners for every relation within a three state area.

Tooley was promoted to the rank of Sheriff, a position that had gone without filling since Pappy retired three years ago.

It looked like Evan Turley was joining the FBI and Porter Gates was well on his way to the Republican nomination, with Jeff Barsimmons as his campaign manager. The word from the smoke filled back rooms was that the boy could move as high on the political ladder as he was willing to climb.

Things were wrapping up just a bit too quickly and a might too tight for the old man to rest easy about it.

He didn’t know what he would have found if he had been able to look, but it did bother him that the FBI took the body of the murderer to their laboratory for study before he could take the slightest look at it.

It seemed there was no Earl family to be present or pay for a memorial service or funeral. He would be laid to rest, if there was any rest he could find, in the most remote corner of the cemetary in a plot without a headstone. The outcast would remain such for all time.

The Custer home was being sold for back taxes.

The Chambers family was moving to South Dakota as soon as their farm land was bought by someone.

Then Pappy had the dream that changed everything.

 

© 2005 by C. Wayne Owens

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