A Conspiracy of Fear

by Mark Zubro

  I looked up. The sky was clear, the wind just a bit of a breeze, and the humidity bearable. I heard the hum of a distant plane that was not dusting crops and was flying away from us.

  “Have you found out the truth?” I asked.

  Millicent shook her head. “I’ve got bits of it. I saw a lot of the old family pictures. A couple of us grandkids kept asking questions. At first we couldn’t find anybody who wanted to talk about it. We learned to get better at it. Derek and a couple of us would compare answers we got from different ones of the old folks.” She drew a deep breath, scanned the horizon, and peered up and down the road. “We pieced together enough to figure out about Uncle Peter. He’d had a public life, so it wasn’t hard to track him down. Then I was with the sophomore year science fair conference in Chicago. I won. My research on uterine cancer, according to the doctors, looked promising.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “I’ll pursue it in graduate school some day, I hope.”

  I said, “You were in Chicago.”

  At that moment a vast swarm of starlings rose about a half a mile on our right between us and the westering sun. They looped and roped across the sky for half a minute and then came to rest and seemed to disappear onto the earth.

  She said, “I found his address on the Internet, got away from the group, and I went and knocked on his front door.” She rubbed her hands together. “I introduced myself. Told him I was from the family in Nebraska. He started to cry. Then he slammed the door in my face.”

  “He what?”

  Mildred had mentioned her granddaughter’s sleuthing. The son of bitch, Peter Fulham, had not said anything about family contact. A deliberate omission? Or the guy was playing me big time?

  “Slammed the door. I didn’t know what to do. We were leaving that afternoon, but my family went back that next summer when we took a sight-seeing trip to Chicago. My parents went out to dinner and a show. We were supposed to go to a movie down the street.”

  “You went back again?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do. This time some young guy came to the door. He didn’t tell me his name. He was kind of nice. He told me Mr. Fulham was too ill to talk to anyone.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last year.”

  Nor had Fulham mentioned this second visit.

  I said, “You were brave to try to see him.”

  “I didn’t even tell grandma I tried to see him, but I just wanted the truth.”

  I asked, “What were the clues that led you to believe he was gay in the first place?”

  Derek said, “It was the stuff Great-Aunt Abigail, Peter’s sister, said, or didn’t say. One time I was helping her with chores in the barn, and I just flat out asked her. That’s when things started to unravel. She kind of blabbed. She didn’t like how rough her brothers were. She warned me never to let that kind of thing happen between anyone in the family. That it was a horrible secret. She swore me not to tell.”

  Millicent said, “You could have told me.”

  “I promised.” He shook his head. “She died a couple years ago, the last of them, except Peter.”

  “And then our dads found out we were asking, and there was hell to pay. We got a lot of talk about fire and brimstone.”

  I said, “Sounds like you found out a lot.”

  “Some. Us cousins, our generation, get together at the family picnic each year. We compare notes about what we learn about the adults. There’s all kinds of secrets.”

  “What secrets?”

  “Who cheated who on land deals, who disappeared years ago. Who got cheated out of family inheritances, or who thought they were cheated out of family inheritances. They’ve been double dealing in this town for years.”

  “In Farthingdale? What is there worth double dealing over?”

  “Status. Power. Who can best who. Our great-great-grandfather Aaron was big on fostering competition. Maybe it’s been going on for hundreds of years. The touch football games at the annual family picnic are blood sports.”

  Derek said, “When I refused to play, it was a big scandal. My dad was really mad.”

  Millicent took out her cell phone and called up pictures. “This is the family picnic.” After we looked at a few of those, she said, “I also took pictures of all the family photos from years ago. I’ve organized them into categories, years and/or people or other prominent things. I’ve got a folder for all of the ones with Peter in them. I was afraid someone would destroy them, or we’d lose them in a fire.” She called those up.

  Her grandmother had shown me many of these.

  “Do you have recent photos of everyone?”

  She called up another file. “I change these each time I get a new set from a holiday or that damn picnic. Whatever.”

  “Can you email all of those to me?”

  It took her only a few moments to send the files across the ether. I checked my phone. They had arrived and were openable. I’d have to give the pictures a more careful look when I had time.

  I asked, “What did you find out about why Peter left town?”

  “We get different stories on that. I think they’re all mostly lies with little bits of truth. Near as I can figure, he was gay, and he ran as soon as he could.”

  Nothing about him being run out of town, but who really brags about doing that to a sibling to second, third, and fourth generation kids?

  “In all these stories did you ever hear the names Martin Usti or Huey Kemmler?”

  “No,” Millicent said.

  Derek shook his head. “Who are they?”

  “People your uncle may have known.”

  Only four cars had passed us in all this time.

  Derek leaned back and rested his butt on the front of the truck and placed the bottom of his right boot on the fender. I wondered if he was aware how much this emphasized what was already a prominent bulge. He said, “You should be careful and get out of town as soon as you can. The town passed an ordinance about not serving gay people. I don’t think you should be in town after sunset.”

  “Are either of you afraid?”

  Derek said, “I’m not. I got a girlfriend. She’s cool about me. She protects me. I’m going to college in the fall. I’ll be safe there.”

  I hoped that was so.

  Millicent took off her hat, wiped sweat from her forehead, replaced the hat, and said, “My mom’s a big deal in the community. I’ll be okay until I get out of town.”

  They both hugged me. Derek lingering a moment, whispering in my ear, “I want a life like you and Mr. Carpenter have.”

  This was not the time to say, with corpses plopping in your path, death and destruction seared in your memory? I knew what he meant. He wanted a boy to fall in love with, settle down with forever. I said, “Someday you will.”

  THIRTY

  Saturday - 7:51 P.M.

  It was early evening and the first tendrils of sunset were beginning to spread across the plain. Stray bits of evening shone in the eastern sky. The kids got in their truck and left back toward Farthingdale. I headed toward Ogallala. Three miles on a car came up behind me. At first I thought it might be the kids again, but the front grill of this truck was different. I slowed so it could pass. Its headlights filled my car as it stayed a foot off my bumper. This time I didn’t think it would be safe, not near dark on some rural road to try an abrupt stop. I floored it. He kept pace.

  I took out my cell phone. I put it on speaker so I could drive hands free. I clutched the steering wheel as I roared south. I called Todd Bristol and put my lawyer to work on getting every local, state, and federal agency anywhere in a thousand miles of this highway and the nearest towns coming to my rescue. I called Scott. I told him what was going on.

  He spoke in soothing tones. “You’re going to be all right. I wish I was there with you.”

  I wished he was too, and I was glad he wasn’t.

  No need for both of us to be killed. Was I being too dramatic? This struck me as a time for
high drama indeed.

  Darkness began devouring more of the land. I saw no cars in front of me and no lights on either side of the road.

  I said, “I’m going to set the phone to record. So I won’t be able to talk for a few minutes. I’ll call as soon as I’m safe.”

  He said, “I love you.”

  “I love you.” I hung up and hit record. My car was now doing ninety. At that speed it couldn’t take that long to reach some place inhabited. I hoped.

  It was over sixty miles from Hyannis to the Kingsley damn, and I’d been on this side of that town. Next to the dam had been Stetson’s gas station. I wondered if I’d get that far and even then if the inmates would be helpful.

  Going ninety in the growing gloom was harrowing, but going that fast, within twenty minutes, I saw lights glowing in the far distance. The vehicle behind me began to move into the lane next to me to pass or push me off the road? I didn’t slow. I leaned forward as if that would make the car go faster. In less than a minute, I could discern the outline of the gleaming white gas station and convenience store. Then in the distance, I saw a light flashing yellow. I was approaching the intersection. I eased off the gas pedal. Going this fast, I thought if I slammed on the brakes, I was likely to turn the car over.

  I tapped the brakes then roared into the gas station. I missed the gas pumps by six inches and wound up six feet into the dirt on the other side of the parking lot. I looked behind. A black truck with four foot high wheels breezed through the yellow light. There was a screech of brakes. A van full of kids managed to turn aside just before they’d have been crushed. The truck roared on.

  I trembled from the adrenaline rush and fear. I had to will myself to loosen my white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. A few patrons spilled out of the convenience store. One old guy in a cowboy hat and too large jeans on his portly frame tapped on my window.

  I lowered it.

  He said, “You coulda been kilt driving like that.”

  I gazed up at him, remembered my patient husband and his remonstrances, took a breath, and said, “Yes, I know.”

  The cops showed up two minutes later. We talked. They took my statement.

  I called Scott. He said soothing and reassuring words that I don’t remember. He promised to call Todd.

  As I rocked the car to get it out of the ruts I created in my crazed stop, I thought, why was I being chased? Scott had been shot at. That’s what we’d been told. It didn’t make sense that they wouldn’t tell me I’d been a target, or maybe the shooter didn’t get around to me, or the shooter got interrupted, or was being chased here a locally directed phenomenon? Yokels trying to scare the gay guy? Or a very real attempt to kill me that I had barely thwarted?

  So it always has been for minorities, and so it continued to be. When would it end? I suspected not as long as humans roamed the earth. Here there seemed to be a conspiracy of fear. Why Nebraska? Why now? Why me? Not in the cosmic sense or the self pity sense of why me? But in the what the hell was going on way? They were after the two of us? Pursuing the investigation in Nebraska was somehow a threat to the killer? It couldn’t have been Fulham. He was inside with us. Someone connected to Fulham going after him and us after all these years, or the two events weren’t connected? I couldn’t see how they would be.

  Homophobes to right of them, homophobes to left of them, homophobes in front of them volleyed and thundered, to abuse an old poem.

  The cops escorted me to the airport. The plane engine revved, and we’d begun to taxi down the runway when the pilot slammed on the brakes. We rocked for a couple seconds. The pilot announced over the Intercom, “We’ve got a problem. We need to turn back to the terminal.”

  I hurried to the pilot’s cabin. Still an open one on this small of a jet. “What kind of problem?” I asked.

  “A bomb threat.”

  “Shouldn’t we stop and get out rather than bother taxiing back?”

  So we did.

  Seconds later a squad car with sheriff stenciled on the side pulled up with the siren wailing and lights flashing. Fire trucks and ambulances and other police cars roared up behind.

  They hustled us away from the plane.

  The sheriff, Oscar VonDonk, took me aside. “Mr. Longergan, the owner of the newspaper up in Farthingdale, called us a few minutes ago. He said he got an anonymous tip that there was a bomb on your plane.”

  “But who knew I was flying here? Who knew this was my plane?”

  “We don’t think much of the threat. We don’t get a lot of bomb shit out here, but we don’t take chances. Just like big cities, we check everything.”

  The pilot had locked up the plane when he stepped away for meal breaks and to stretch his legs, both normal activities. No one reported suspicious activity or seeing anyone near the plane. The pilot had supervised the two men when they refueled it.

  So for an hour every inch of the plane was inspected.

  I called Scott and Todd and updated them. Then I phoned Longergan and thanked him. I asked, “Who do you think might have called in a threat?”

  “We’re the same as anywhere, old hatreds, new hatreds. Their world is disappearing. It’s my world too, but I’m not as afraid. I simply did the right thing. I wish I could have done more.”

  After the police, the bomb people, and the pilot assured me everything was safe, we took off. A last harassing empty threat? Most likely.

  Scott and I Skyped as I flew.

  He said, “We’ve got people on our side, willing to warn you.”

  “I guess that’s progress.”

  He said, “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  I asked, “What’s happened in Chicago?”

  “I talked to Molton. The surveillance video hasn’t shown a thing. They found ammunition and guns in the offices of GAY Press.”

  “They what?”

  “Molton told us they had an office in the building across the street.”

  “I remember.”

  “McMullen stopped there today to check on possible water damage. He immediately called the police. It didn’t take them long to discover the weapons were the same caliber and type as the bullets and gun used in the attack, but in fact, not used in the attack. Forensics didn’t match.”

  “Same ‘type’, but not the same gun.”

  “Exactly. Planted.”

  “The killer was too stupid to think the police would be able to tell whether or not the bullets that hit things five stories below and across the street were the same? We’ve got a stupid killer?”

  “Or one who doesn’t care, or one who just needed enough time to misdirect the investigation.”

  “Enough time to get back to Nebraska to attack me?”

  “But why?”

  “The events are somehow connected?”

  “But how?”

  “Maybe the killer was somebody from Fulham’s past.”

  “Then why wait for some public forum and make it look like I was the target?”

  “It’s kinda not making sense.”

  “So far.”

  “I wish I was there with you.”

  “And me with you.” I shook my head and looked out the window of the plane then back at his face on the computer. He was in our electronics room. “I’m going to follow up with the newspapers in St. Louis and interview the reporters there.”

  “Are you taking notes?”

  “I’ll record them and email them to you. We’ve got the software that will translate them to print.” I gave him a summary of what the people I’d talked to said.

  “I feel sorry for Derek and Millicent. Sounds like kind of a big successful farm family, and any family has oddballs and misfits.”

  “Oddballs and misfits depends on your perspective. We’d be oddballs and misfits in a lot of people’s opinion.”

  “I hope I’m both.” He smiled at me across the electronic universe.

  I said, “As long as you’re my oddball, I’m content.”

  He talked about his plans fo
r the next day which included another visit to the hospital and to his daily rehab. His doctor wanted to see him every day now for a while with his new wound, just to be on the safe side.

  I napped for all of ten minutes. I hunted through my pockets for pain pills, but all I found was the small vial of WD-40 still nestled in the bottom of the pocket under my phone. My head hurt, but I’d forgotten the pain pills back in Chicago. During the activity of the day, I hadn’t noticed the pain. Right now the wound itself throbbed. I wondered if maybe being so high up in the air might be somehow enhancing the effect. It hadn’t seemed to on the way out.

  To try to distract myself, I hunted through the pictures I now had on my phone. I organized all the baseball ones the mother had found. What work she must have gone through to contact all these papers. She must have monitored things for years. There were shots of when Peter was young. I tried to guess which one, if any, of the people in them with him might be Huey Kemmler.

  Millicent had pointed out who was who in the cast of characters, his brothers, sister, and parents in particular. I inserted names under the ones I could remember.

  There were shots from his final year in baseball. I wondered if I was looking at Martin Usti.

  When I got home, I rushed into Scott’s arms. We fucked like bunnies for an hour. Then I took pain pills, and then we ate leftovers and talked.

  Sean was still in intensive care. “The problem is,” Scott said, “they don’t know what kind of life he’ll have. Brain injuries are tricky. I know you know that. Right now he’s in an induced coma. They’re going to bring him out of it maybe next week. Then we’ll know.”

  “Poor kid.”

  He added, “That Libnum guy from the entourage?”

  I nodded. I wouldn’t soon forget the look in his eyes when he whispered to me that he couldn’t move as he lay on the floor of the gallery.

  “He’s begun to get some movement back in his arms and legs. They’re real hopeful about his prognosis.”

  “Great news.”

  “Yeah, I went to see him. He was really glad you stopped to talk to him the other day.”