Noble Warrior

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

  “Uhm…no.”

  “Disappear, Jeffrey. In a week, this will all be over.”

  M.D. hopped out of the car and then vanished into the dark of night. Jeffrey just sat there for a moment behind the steering wheel wondering what had just happened. He had no idea who had just kidnapped him, nor any idea of where the escaped convict was going.

  But M.D. knew his next destination. He was off to break into the home of Major Henry Jacob Krewls.

  Wearing only a stained white T-shirt and pair of tightie-whitey underwear, Krewls sat down in a worn brown reclining chair and zapped on the television with his black remote control.

  Day off, he thought. Cartoons. A shower. Shop for bananas and toilet paper in the afternoon, then home for online porn. He had the whole day planned.

  Then he saw McCutcheon. Krewls, still seated in his chair, dropped his spoon and a dribble of white milk ran down his chin. He had three firearms in the house plus a Taser, a nightstick, and a blackjack. The only thing within his reach: a box of Fruit Loops.

  M.D. scanned the room and took in the depressing details of Krewls’s solitary, blue-collar, single-guy life. Shitty furniture. Crooked paintings. The faint smell of lingering farts trapped in the air. It was a home without happiness, but McCutcheon had expected as much. More than expected it; he understood it. Krewls’s joy didn’t come from the house where he lived; it came from work. Abusing power fulfilled all of his earthly needs.

  Krewls waited for M.D. to speak. Waited for M.D. to flash a weapon. Waited for M.D. to give a command, bark an order, or make a monstrous gesture.

  He didn’t. McCutcheon just stood there, ice in his eyes. Each moment that passed unnerved Krewls more and more, until finally, unable to take the tension anymore, he spoke.

  “Please, I’ll, uh, do whatever you…”

  “Ssshh,” McCutcheon said, raising a finger to his lips. He pointed to the kitchen and walked out of the room, leaving Krewls alone in his chair.

  Krewls saw his opportunity to dash. To dart into his bedroom, grab the 9mm sitting by the side of his dresser, and blow a series of holes in M.D.’s head and chest. The hollow-points in his gun would create caverns in the kid’s torso big enough for a squirrel to crawl through.

  But he didn’t. Not because M.D. stopped him. McCutcheon was already in the other room. Krewls didn’t because he didn’t have the guts. He just couldn’t move his feet and muster up the will to make the dash for his arms. Like all bullies, once confronted, Krewls turned into a cowering sissy. He had a chance to make his move, he was being given a shot, and all he could manage to do was walk into the kitchen without even putting up a fight.

  “Sit,” McCutcheon ordered. Krewls did as he was told. M.D. reached behind his back and pulled out his knife. Raising it into the air, he twirled the blade around, reversed the handle so that the tip of the SERE pointed toward his chest, the grip toward Krewls, and set the weapon down on the table. The message was clear.

  G’head. Pick it up.

  Krewls looked at the blade, looked at McCutcheon, and lowered his gaze, shame filling his heart. This wasn’t an intruder who had broken into Krewls’s home; it was his karma—and as the old saying goes, Karma’s a bitch.

  “Let’s have a talk,” M.D. said. Using a dirty dinner plate as a makeshift tripod, McCutcheon propped up Jeffrey’s cell on the kitchen table. Once satisfied he’d framed his shot the way he wanted it to look, M.D. pushed the record button on the phone’s video camera.

  “State your name.”

  “Uhm…Henry…”

  “Louder!”

  “Henry Jacob Krewls.”

  “Occupation?”

  “What are you doing?”

  M.D. glowered. Krewls, still unsure of where all this was headed, decided to continue.

  “Commanding guard at Jentles State Penitentiary. Known unofficially as the D.T.”

  “How long have you been an employee of this facility?”

  “Nineteen years.”

  “Henry, have you ever physically abused a prisoner?”

  “Look, kid…let’s talk about…”

  M.D. raised his eyes. One glare was all it took. Krewls gulped then continued.

  “Uhm, yes. I have occasionally abused the rights of prisoners.”

  “How many times?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How many times, Henry? Ten? Twenty?”

  McCutcheon sought honesty and Krewls knew it.

  “More than that.” Krewls hunched his shoulders. “Hundreds of times. Maybe thousands. May I have a drink of water?”

  “No.”

  Silence fell over the kitchen. Fifteen seconds of it, the video camera recording each passing tick of the clock. Krewls shuffled in his chair, leaned his elbows on the table, and gazed downward, growing visibly more uncomfortable moment by moment.

  “Have you ever arranged for sexual violence to occur against any of the people in your custody?”

  The question hung in the air like a gray cloud, and Krewls, still looking downward at the cheap, floral patterned tablecloth, swallowed hard. A moment later he raised his eyes and looked directly into the camera.

  “Yes.”

  “How many times?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Henry…”

  “Many times. Many, many times.”

  The first few minutes were long and tedious, but McCutcheon had been trained by Stanzer in the principles of criminal interrogation. Television cop dramas sexed up the art of grilling a perp and made it seem like a little glaring, a few hard slaps, and a couple of large, looming threats were all it took to get a lawbreaker to admit to their crimes.

  McCutcheon understood that the best tactic to get what he wanted from Krewls lay in exploiting his psychological weakness. The art of effective interrogation offered a variety of strategies for this. Sometimes policemen used the ploy of “good cop, bad cop,” whereby one officer played the role of friend, one the fearsome foe, and a criminal would admit their sins to the good cop in order to keep the bad cop from dropping the hammer on them.

  Another common strategy was the technique of maximization, whereby a litany of horrible consequences would be laid out in such gory detail that an accused perpetrator would spill his guts in order to reduce the harshness of their inevitable sentence. They knew they did the deed, they got caught for doing the deed, so, as opposed to trying to maintain the lie that they were innocent, they’d choose the path of bargaining for a lesser, “not maximized” consequence.

  Scholars estimated that almost fifty percent of suspected criminals confessed to their crimes under the duress of interrogation. Why did it work so well? Fear.

  Fear made people talk, and while Krewls was most certainly terrified by the sight of an ex-con he’d horribly abused standing alone in his living room with a large knife, M.D. understood that to get Krewls to really sing he’d need to tap the prison guard’s deepest, darkest inner fears in order to get his plan to work.

  What was Krewls most afraid of? M.D. asked himself. Deep down inside, beyond all the masks and all the bravado and all the outwardly tough-guy appearances, Krewls was nothing more than a scared little boy filled with shame.

  McCutcheon saw evidence in the details of Krewls’s home: in the cartoons on the television, in the sugary cereal with milk, in the messy room. All so childlike. McCutcheon saw evidence in his body language: in the way Krewls sagged his shoulders, looked at the floor with downcast eyes, and spoke softly. But the cross on the wall next to the picture of his deceased mother proved to be the final piece of the psychological puzzle.

  Why would a man who believed in God act in such an ungodly way? Why keep a large photo of your stoic-looking dead mother on the wall, staring out into the room with a look of disappointment and disapproval with the dates of her birth and death etched on the picture’s frame? Krewls wasn’t a heartless Hitler; he was a wounded little boy carrying an immense amount of guilt.

  He didn’t start as a monster. He
probably didn’t even view himself as a monster. It had all just sort of snowballed, which let M.D. know that it wouldn’t take much to get Krewls to snap. He’d even probably been hoping to get caught. When McCutcheon put the video recorder in front of Krewls, he wasn’t offering the man punishment; he was offering the prison guard a chance to cleanse his soul.

  Krewls took it, and much to his surprise, but not to M.D.’s, once Krewls started to confess, once he began talking, he found it nearly impossible to stop.

  He began to tell tales of horror. Of things he’d done to Pharmy. Of things he’d had Pharmy do to others. He told stories about purposefully bringing in spiders and wasps and bees to spook the men in solitary. There were tales of requesting prisoner’s wives to perform oral sex on guards in order to enter the visitation room. From cockfights to contraband, negligence to nastiness, Krewls spoke for almost forty-five minutes, pouring out story after story of abuse, neglect, and consciously concocted trauma.

  It went beyond a mere admission of guilt; holding on to all the hateful things he’d done had been toxic to his heart, and by speaking his truths to the camera Krewls began to experience the liberty of confession. Tears came. Tears of shame, hurt, and sadness. He admitted to feeling lonely, scared, and threatened. He wasn’t a bad person, he claimed. Just a sad one, and he’d done all these things as a means to cover up all the pain he felt inside.

  But he was done with all that now. A new man, he swore. McCutcheon had shown him the way, and Krewls vowed that from this day forward he would nevermore be the tyrant he once was.

  It felt good to get this off his chest. He felt lighter. Better. Even spiritual, he said. This confession would help Krewls turn a new page in his life. And help Jentles turn a new page in its own forward-looking history.

  “Thank you,” Krewls said, his face wet from crying. “Thank you. From this point forward I am a changed man.”

  McCutcheon turned off the camera and checked the cell phone to make sure he’d gotten everything. Fifty-eight minutes worth of footage. All of it perfectly recorded.

  “What are you going to do now?” Krewls asked rubbing the tears from his eyes. Wow, did he feel better.

  M.D. tapped the screen and began navigating his way through the TOR software so that any digital footprints he might leave couldn’t be tracked.

  “YouTube,” M.D. said as he hit the upload button.

  The words smashed Krewls in the head like a hammer. McCutcheon didn’t need to explain how the rest of the events would unfold. Krewls could easily piece it together.

  YouTube would lead to media attention. Media attention would lead to journalists. Newspeople chasing the story would lead to more media attention, which would ultimately lead to an official investigation to determine whether or not any of the activities described in the video were true.

  Which they were.

  Krewls would be arrested, indicted, and tried in a court of law.

  Then sentenced.

  To prison.

  Maybe not the D.T. but most certainly a dark and loathsome penitentiary, and on the hierarchy of prisoners in jail there was only one rung lower than Cho Mo in any facility.

  Former cop or prison guard.

  There was no way around it. Krewls could try to go on the lam and run like a fugitive, but he knew he’d never make it past McCutcheon.

  M.D. reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick wad of cash. “I found this in your drawer. Eight thousand dollars in cash. Seems like a bit of an underpayment but still, I’m taking it.”

  Krewls remained frozen with fear. M.D. picked up the cell phone.

  “There. Uploaded. Wanna see?”

  McCutcheon flipped the phone around and showed the screen to Krewls. He read the title of the video.

  REAL-LIFE PRISON GUARD CONFESSES

  TO YEARS OF HORROR & ABUSE

  WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC!

  Krewls turned his attention to the lower right hand corner, underneath the black edges of the video, and saw the viewer count change from two to three. In under a minute, three people had already clicked. Krewls started praying. Perhaps the footage would disappear into oblivion? Maybe it would die an undiscovered death like so many other videos posted to YouTube that never draw even a handful of clicks? Krewls began to convince himself about his fairly decent chances. With so much white noise out there on the Internet, so many people uploading so many crazy things each and every day, perhaps no one would be intrigued by the title M.D. had selected.

  The view count clicked to five. Then eleven. Before another sixty seconds had passed, twenty-three people had already clicked on Krewls’s confession.

  Krewls took his eyes off the screen and looked at McCutcheon. Krewls had played a role into turning M.D. into a killer, but McCutcheon wanted to choose a different path for exacting his vengeance.

  A bloodless revenge, served cold.

  I don’t want to take his life, M.D. told himself before he’d broken into Krewls’s house. I just want his destiny to unfold. But Stanzer…

  McCutcheon picked up his knife and put the eight thousand dollars in cash back in his pocket.

  “Where’s your cell phone?” M.D. asked.

  “On the counter.”

  “I need it.”

  M.D. scooped up Krewls’s phone and looked at the screen. Guy didn’t even use a passcode lock. McCutcheon put it into his pocket. Krewls reached out and grabbed M.D.’s arm.

  “Please,” Krewls said. “Don’t.” His eyes were red and bloodshot.

  M.D. glared at the hand that clutched his sleeve, and the memory of the guy not named Timmy flashed across his mind.

  “Remove your fingers or I will snap every joint in your hand.”

  Krewls, unable to offer anything more than puppy dog eyes, released his grip and McCutcheon headed for the door, a ghost about to disappear.

  Target one, executed.

  McCutcheon left the house and vanished.

  Krewls, still at the kitchen table, dropped his head into his hands, no idea what to do. Then he spied something. A small item. Sitting on the cheap floral tablecloth, an option for his destiny revealed.

  There they were, lifeless yet profound. A pair of shoelaces.

  Three hours later McCutcheon sat in the corner booth of a red-and-white diner in the city of Lansing, Michigan, making sure to face the front entrance at a diagonal angle so he could see every patron that either left or entered the establishment. To his right, thirty feet away, a path to the restroom. Beyond that a swinging door that led to the kitchen, which was sure to have a back exit to the street.

  From this point forward, any place he entered would need at least two ways out.

  He eyed the menu. Chicken-fried steak. Deep-fried catfish. French-fried potatoes, home fries, mozzarella sticks, deep fried.

  A waitress approached.

  “May I please have a large salad, no dressing, no croutons, extra tomatoes, carrots, and cucumbers?”

  “Sakes alive, that sure is healthy.” The waitress’s laugh caused her rosy cheeks to jiggle. “Sure you don’t wanna try the meat loaf?”

  “Just a salad, please. But a big one.” M.D. smiled. “I’m kinda hungry.”

  “They ain’t that big.”

  “Can you make it a double?”

  “You want two of ’em?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “A double it is.” The waitress jotted down a note and scooped up the menu. “That sure is one heck of a memorable order. Most folks who come in this time of day are looking for taters, beef, and gravy.”

  McCutcheon held the grin on his face, but behind his smile he knew he’d just made a mistake. Being remarkable, standing out in any way, was not what he wanted to do. Being notable made him memorable, and being memorable made him easier to track.

  Hunger, he realized, had clouded his judgment. So had a lack of sleep. He ought to know better than to order something so atypical in a place like this. It was an amateurish slip-up, a silly blunder, but serious enough to c
ause M.D. to hit the pause button and take stock of his situation. Yes, he wanted to go, go, go, but upon deeper reflection he knew he couldn’t continue at this pace. If he did, more errors would continue to stack up. Avoidable ones. The kind that might cost him his life.

  Sometimes, he realized, the fastest path forward required putting on the brakes.

  M.D. took a deep breath. Slow down, he said to himself. Take some time, recuperate, and think things through.

  In the Notes section of Jeffrey’s cell phone, McCutcheon opened a new, blank page and typed in the word “NEEDS.” Underneath, he typed the letters F, R, T, and P, each on its own line.

  F stood for Food. His body needed nutrition. Check. Though he’d slipped up in the way he’d ordered his salad, M.D. knew a plump, pleasant waitress in an unexceptional part of town that he’d never been to before would not be his downfall.

  No need to be paranoid, he thought. No one was chasing him. At least not yet.

  R stood for Rest. Best plan would be to jump on a bus so that someone else could do the driving, and he could shut his eyes for a few hours on the way to his next destination. Not a bus out of Lansing, though. After the gaffe with the salad, M.D. decided it would be safer to depart for his next destination from a different city. This led to the T section of his list: Transportation.

  After eating he’d steal a car, drive somewhere within a two-hour radius, dump the vehicle, and catch a Greyhound. He’d have to be careful about where he stepped off the bus, though. Best for it to be a city he’d never previously visited. This meant he’d need yet another form of transportation afterward. But what, steal another car? No, something more efficient, more nimble, and stealthy. A motorcycle. Yeah, that sounded good. But not a hot one. A bike that he’d purchase. But how?

  He looked at Krewls’s phone and decided to deal with the details of this part of things a bit later.

  Overall, each move McCutcheon plotted would allow him freedom and mobility, but changing the mode of how he would get from place to place three times in the next twelve hours felt like a smart way to cover his tracks. It was the Squiggly Line Theory, no direct paths from A to B. No patterns, no footprints, no discernible sequences, or designs. Move, vanish, move, vanish, move vanish, then appear.