The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2)

by Vin Suprynowicz

  “Well, son, I don’t see what role a driver’s race should play in it. But let me put it this way. If you got in your car and drove a thousand miles to visit relatives halfway across the country, you’d carry credit cards and travelers checks, right? Would you carry more than ten thousand dollars in cash?”

  “No, sir, I guess not.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “And then you sponsored the Designer Drug Enforcement Act of 1986, which made it illegal to manufacture or possess not only drugs which had been listed as illegal, but even drugs with a chemical structure which is similar to a controlled substance, or which are” — Tony glanced at his notebook again — “‘represented or intended to have a stimulant, depressant, or hallucinogenic effect on the central nervous system of any given person,’ even if no one has actually gotten around to evaluating that molecule and showing why it should be declared illegal.”

  “You see, son, they were manufacturing new chemicals, new molecules, so fast that no one could keep up with them all, they called them ‘designer drugs.’ It was taking years to identify each one of these street drugs, analyze it, prove it was harmful, and get it listed. This streamlined the whole deal and nipped that in the bud, so they couldn’t peddle those harmful, mind-warping drugs to kids just by switching around a few molecules, a few atoms in the molecule.”

  “OK.” He jotted a quick note. “And it doesn’t worry you that this may prevent chemists from developing drugs, molecules, that could be useful to mankind?”

  “Useful? You may not realize, young man, that taking any of these drugs, marijuana, LSD, any of them, causes mutations, that the children of people who took these drugs, even years ago, can have birth defects, they can be born as disabled retarded mutants. Furthermore, if you’ve taken LSD or these other hallucinating drugs, even once, you can have flashbacks, years later. You can be driving down the road and suddenly you think some kind of monster is attacking you, people have had these flashbacks years later, just out of the blue, driven across the median into oncoming traffic and caused terrible crashes, fatalities.”

  “Gracious,” Tony scribbled in his pad. “I guess we don’t want to leave that out.”

  “I should think not.”

  “And then you managed to ban even chemicals that don’t have any of those effects, by themselves, but which can be used to manufacture these kinds of drugs.”

  “You’ve done your homework, son.”

  “Now, do any of these laws ever run up against the Ninth Amendment, sir? Some people argue Article One Section 10 of the Constitution doesn’t specifically give Congress any power to fight a War on Drugs, at all.”

  The ex-congressman smiled the smile of a weary warrior, realizing that once again he faced questions so puny he could swat them down with one hand behind his back. “Son, I’ll defer on questions like that to the superior legal minds of the gentlemen and ladies of the Supreme Court. If you’ll look up a case called Wickard versus Filburn, you’ll find the Supreme Court ruled in 1942 that an Ohio farmer wasn’t allowed to grow wheat in excess of federal price-support quotas, even though he intended to feed it to his own livestock, on his own farm, because doing so might ‘have an impact’ on interstate commerce in wheat. So no, I’m afraid that’s a dead letter. No, we don’t worry about your ‘Ninth Amendment,’ anymore.”

  And there it was. They ignored a Constitution that was supposed to limit their powers, they admitted it, and there was no court in the land where you could put them on trial and convict them on their own admission that they’d violated their own voluntary oaths of office to “protect and defend” that Constitution and its amendments, every day they were in office. No “due process” could reach them.

  But Tony couldn’t afford to break his rhythm. “Let’s see, in 1985 you co-sponsored legislation to ban the so-called ‘cop-killer’ bullets which were supposed to be able to penetrate an officer’s bulletproof vest, and in 1998 you made it illegal to manufacture, import, or possess any firearm which can’t be detected by an airport metal detector or x-ray machine, that right?”

  Tony didn’t bother mentioning that the panic over Glock’s “plastic gun” had turned out to be ridiculous. Advanced ceramics held some promise, but no matter what material you used to make the grips or magazine, no one had yet designed a safely functioning, multi-round handgun without a steel barrel and chamber, fully visible to any airport scanner — leaving aside the question of how you could square the Fourth Amendment with the warrantless searching of millions of Americans not suspected of any crime by “airport scanner” as a condition of letting them travel, in the first place.

  “I didn’t do those things single-handed, son. But I played a role, yes. I believe I can say I was always there for our fine police officers.”

  “And what do you say to these people who argue that the Second Amendment was written by people who had just fought the American Revolution, that its specific purpose was to make sure the average citizen would always have the kinds of weapons necessary to kill government soldiers and police, the way George Washington and James Monroe did?”

  “Well, what do you think? Damnedest nonsense I ever heard. A right to kill police officers? I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but I don’t think even the NRA would argue we shouldn’t protect our police against criminal gangs!” snorted the ex-congressman, citing the nation’s largest gun-control organization, which had always held that every existing gun-control law should be rigorously enforced.

  “You sound like a man who’s had some hands-on experience, Mr. Ambassador. You started out as a county prosecutor back in the sixties, trying some of these kinds of cases right here in Ocean City.”

  “I did. That’s taking me back a ways.” The old man chuckled.

  “Then in 1995 Bill Clinton named you ambassador to the little Latin American nation of Apesta, where you coordinated U.S. military anti-drug missions from the Multi-national Counter-Narcotics Center. I believe there was even a New Jersey fighter wing involved.”

  “The 377th Fighter Wing flew cover for our drug interdiction efforts in South America, that’s correct.”

  “Wow. That’s some front-line action. You had quite a career. You must be very proud.”

  “I just tried to do my part.”

  “And having had thirty years to watch the results, any regrets? Any of those laws you’d like to see repealed, any that you’ve called on the people now in Congress to repeal?”

  “Repeal? No, I don’t think so. We gave law enforcement the kind of tools they needed. But now young man, if you’ll excuse me, I’m afraid I’m going to have to wrap this up. It’s been a pleasure, but nature calls.”

  “Oh, sure, sure. Didn’t mean to hold you up. Appreciate your time, sir.”

  The white-haired old man took hold of the edge of the table and pushed himself upright, took his cane, nodded and smiled to the old couple sitting at the far end of the table, raising one eyebrow in a secret joke about eager young reporters, and set off with a purposeful stride toward the restrooms. Tony “Mark Ritchie” Waranowicz stood up as well, headed toward the refreshment table, eyeing the white plastic tub half-full of unopened cans of diet soda embalmed like corpses in a bath of cool water that had once been crushed ice and, on the next table, the fresh-from-the-supermarket tray of cut-up vegetables and “ranch dip.” But then, at the last moment, he altered course, veering to follow the former congressman down the short hallway toward the restrooms when he saw the old man would be alone there for a few moments.

  “Sir, I just had this one more question,” he said, hurrying his steps.

  “Yes?” asked the old man, stopping and turning around, balancing both hands on his cane, obviously growing impatient.

  “Just wondered if you’d ever asked yourself, sir, ‘What would happen if you fought a War on Drugs, and somebody fought back?’”

  “What?”

  At which point Tony “Mark Ritchie” Waranowicz, still closing the distance between them at
a hurry-up pace, drew the “ZT” brand carbon-coated steel combat knife with the special “No Fingerprints” handle from the Velcro sheath where it had been resting, point in the bend of his elbow, along the inside of his left forearm under his heavy cotton long-sleeved shirt, and slid its sturdy black blade upward between the ribs of the former congressman’s chest. He’d had to reject the Gerber, the Eickhorn, even the old Fairbairn-Sykes knives as too long, their handles sticking out well into his palm, finally settling on the newer ZT, at slightly less than 10 inches. It took some strength to get the blade through the chest muscles, he’d practiced the thrust multiple times on a couple of raw, defrosted turkeys tied to a tree in the woods behind his house. Then he worked the blade from side to side a little, making sure it had sliced completely through the major muscle of the former ambassador’s heart.

  “Hey! What the hell?” asked the old man, before he dropped his cane and started coughing.

  Tony caught the slumping old-timer, settling him into a sitting position in the little chair beside the old-fashioned wall-mounted pay phone. Tony squatted down, leaned the old man’s cane between his knees, and patted the Fearless Drug Warrior on the back for a few moments until the old man went still.

  In the movies, people died instantaneously. In real life, it could take a couple of minutes.

  “That’s OK, sir,” Tony said, respectfully. “Don’t you worry about wetting your pants. I don’t think anyone will mind.”

  He then withdrew the knife and slid it into the dry peat moss in the bottom of a nearby brass urn full of plastic plants. Not much blood was showing, given the way the chest muscles had clenched. The knife might or might not turn up in a search, depending on whether matters were handled by local police whose main job was writing tickets to beachgoers who parked illegally — which was kind of redundant, given that any out-of-towner parking near the beach could be presumed to be parking illegally, thus generating a big share of the little town’s annual revenues.

  Being caught with the knife bearing blood of an identifiable type would have been the only way to link him to the hit. This way, once he walked out the door, he had no more connection to the former congressman than any of 100,000 other beachgoing tourists in town today.

  It had been about a five-hour drive, staying well within the speed limits. They figured there might be some kind of after-the-fact scan of surveillance tapes looking for Rhode Island vehicles, which explained his current Connecticut plate. He could make it home without having to generate any motel bills. He’d even topped off his tank around lunchtime back in New York state, paying cash, so there’d be no credit card purchases of gas in New Jersey, either. Though he would stop somewhere and duck into a roadside men’s room to shave off his three-month-old mustache and take scissors to his Beatles-style hair. None of his ID photos showed the mustache or the longer hair — the guy who’d conducted the last interview with former Congressman Franklin Roosevelt Howard would simply disappear like he’d never existed.

  In and out, clean as a whistle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The five well-dressed men and one woman in business attire had just cleared the luggage carousels at T.F. Green Airport in Warwick when they spotted the older black man in the black jacket and chauffeur’s cap, holding the white sign that bore the name of their party — actually, the name of the senior judge who’d called to arrange their limousine.

  “Yes sir, I’se the one,” smiled the old black man, who displayed a well-trimmed, Uncle-Remus-style white mustache and beard. “We’s in the white van right through them slidin’ doors there. Everyone got all their luggage? Here, let me hep you with that, ma’am.”

  The party of six district judges had just returned from a week-long, all-expenses-paid summer conference on sentencing enhancements sponsored by the federal Department of Justice at a nice fishing lodge in Canada. Two of them had actually presented a paper on the need to give sentencing judges more latitude, arguing mandatory minimum drug sentences were crowding the prisons and doing more harm than good.

  But Windsor Annesley had been very clear. The one-year grace period had ended. The Fearless Drug Warriors had made no effort whatsoever to call off their War on Drugs as required, and there would no longer be any consideration granted for cold feet or half-measures. Proposing to “switch from incarceration to forced medical treatment” would not earn the perpetrators a single day’s reprieve, any more than Washington and Jefferson would have settled for anything less than complete independence from Britain once they’d won at Saratoga and fought the British to a standstill at Monmouth Courthouse and watched the French come in on their side.

  The victims of the Drug War had suffered for a full hundred years without fighting back, but now the Fearless Drug Warriors were on notice: They had only one option, which was to declare all drugs legal and freely available — not even a required warning label on the side of the package — immediately. They had frittered away all opportunity for compromise. They had launched this war, and now they would find out what it was like to be on the front lines of a war they themselves had declared, a war they had refused to call off, an unlimited war with no constitutional restrictions, no quarter asked or given.

  Uncle Remus got all the luggage arranged in the back of the van, hearing the clink of quite a few duty-free liquor bottles which he knew had not been checked by Customs, since judges flew with gold badges which exempted them from all the strip-search humiliation to which the peasant classes — the victim classes — were routinely subjected.

  The six judges arranged themselves in the van, which easily had room for twice that many passengers. The lady judge and one of her male colleagues chose the rear seat. When they thought no one was looking, they surreptitiously held hands.

  “Everybody got their belts fastened?” the driver asked, cheerfully, as he got in and started her up, rolling slowly for the first forty yards away from the terminal. “It’s the law, you know, I gots to ask! Ha ha!”

  Then he slowly braked to a stop at the side of the access road, put the van in park with the engine running, opened his door and unfastened his own seat belt. “Just gots to take care of one more thing,” he said. “This just take me a moment.” Taking his clipboard, the driver walked along the side of the van toward the back, where his passengers assumed a warning light had probably told him his tailgate was not properly fastened. He did not stop at the tailgate, however, but stepped up onto the curb and continued walking back toward the terminal, another thirty yards, where he approached a security guard, indicated the clipboard in his hand, and said he wanted to report a problem — he had no idea why, but the serial number on the van he’d been given didn’t match the one that his clipboard said he was supposed to be driving.

  And then, six seconds later, with a blast audible a mile away, the van disintegrated into a flaming mass of twisted metal, shooting a tower of black smoke and orange flame — and assorted pieces of six District Court judges — two hundred feet in the air.

  Once they got back up to their feet and checked to make sure they weren’t missing any body parts, the security guard raced toward the flaming wreck to see if anyone had survived. Uncle Remus, on the other hand, moved more slowly. In fact, he took off his cap, scratched his head, and under his breath asked no one but himself, “Say, how that War on Drugs be goin’, anyway?”

  Miraculously, one bottle of duty-free Canadian whisky survived intact.

  * * *

  Assistant prosecutor Sturm Wolfson — who’d walked Sgt. Phil Robichaux through his carefully rehearsed testimony at the inquest into the shooting death of unarmed business owner Leroy Johnson — had gotten an advance in grade, which translated into a nice raise and a nicer office, for his work on the big Windsor Annesley case. That was one guy who wasn’t going to be causing them any more trouble. Plus, one great side benefit of that kind of high-profile case was that few drug defendants were bothering to even try to put up a defense, anymore.

  All juries in such cases were now ca
refully screened through the so-called “voir dire” process to remove anyone who might be tempted to acquit or go for a lesser included charge or otherwise question the judge’s orders to convict based on the laws being “too Draconian” or “unconstitutional” or any other such bullshit, the result being that Wolfson’s office currently had a better-than-98-percent conviction rate in drug cases, even when the defendant was just some junior sidekick dweeb driving the delivery van who’d been too dumb to turn state’s evidence as fast as everybody else.

  So the vast majority of defendants played it smart and pleaded out to the best deal they were offered by their so-called “defense” attorneys — who’d be jailed for contempt or even disbarred if they tried to challenge the validity of the laws or even tell the jurors they had every right to acquit, to judge the law as well as the facts of the case, even in open defiance of the judge’s orders. Just let one of those piss-ant public defenders mention a jury-rights ruling like U.S. v. Moylan or U.S. v. Dougherty, “The pages of history shine upon instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge, for example acquittals under the fugitive slave law.” Ha! See how fast they found themselves in the slammer on a contempt citation if they tried to tell a jury about that crap!

  Long and short of it being, Sturm had wrapped up his full docket of cases early this afternoon and should be home in plenty of time for his son’s fifth birthday party.

  In fact, he’d already slowed down to turn into the driveway of his spacious half-million-dollar Cape Cod-style house in suburban Cranston when he spotted the Mexican gardener with the hood up on his rattletrap pickup truck, lawn mowers and other gear stowed in the back, parked right across the street. “Senor!” the man shouted as he saw Sturm slow down, smiling and walking toward him and pointing to the Mexican’s own cell phone, which he held in his left hand, “I doan suppose you have a cell phone I could use?”