Founders' Keeper (A David and Martin Yerxa Thriller - Book 1)

by Ed Markham

  The news broadcast showed images of bomb disposal technicians emerging from a police canopy erected on the stage platform, followed by video of Farnsworth himself. Still unconscious, the speaker lay half-naked, stripped of his explosive vest and handcuffed to a rolling hospital gurney. The video showed EMT’s loading him into a heavily guarded emergency response vehicle.

  “Tonight we have new information about the heroic steps taken by the FBI agents who discovered Farnsworth’s plot and neutralized the threat he posed to thousands of innocent Americans. We’ve also acquired exclusive new cell phone videos of the critical moments. Although the FBI does not release the identities of active agents—and so we can’t tell you the names of the heroes whose faces we’ve blurred in these videos—we’ll speak with FBI Section Chief Carl Wainbridge, who leads the team responsible for thwarting this attack. We also have new details about the potential scope of the threat, which was much greater and more horrific than initially believed. And finally, we’ll explain how Sunday’s near-catastrophe is connected with Edith Vereen, the so-called Colony Killer, and the gruesome series of murders that terrified much of the East Coast in recent weeks.

  “We’ll begin our coverage tonight by sending you out to . . .”

  As the anchor introduced a correspondent standing live on the dusty grass of the National Mall, David leaned against his kitchen counter and turned down the volume on his television.

  He thought about Spencer Farnsworth, and the brief opportunity he’d had to interrogate the speaker the day before.

  Still recovering from the fugu toxin David had injected into his neck, Farnsworth looked drawn and weak—his expression despondent.

  “I serve the many, not the few,” he’d said in response to David’s questioning, his speech slurred and his eyes unsteady.

  Something in his voice had reminded David of his mother during her final days, and he’d felt a misplaced sense of remorse for Spencer Farnsworth.

  “You serve the many, not the few,” David had repeated. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I grew tired of watching the minority dictate the course and the progress of the majority. Sacrificing myself and a few others was a small price to pay to put this country back on course.”

  “A few others?” David had said, the compassion he’d felt toward Farnsworth sliding away.

  “You think you’ve done your nation a service today,” Farnsworth said to him. “But you haven’t. Some people would be dead—a paltry price to pay in order to frighten the country away from opportunistic ideologues like Philip Goodman.”

  “Tell me about Edith Vereen,” David had said.

  The speaker’s eyes had fallen. “Our coming together was pure chance,” he said, his gaze far away. “When we first met, I’d planned only the final act and the Committees of Correspondence posts building up to it—my way of throwing meat to the ideological wolves. But as soon as I saw her, I recognized a kindred spirit—a fellow wounded soul—and I realized she could play a part in this.”

  “Why did she know you as Levi Harney?”

  Farnsworth had exhaled deeply. “Any one of my preparations could have tied all this back to me, so from the start I adopted the alias of my enemy for my research.” He’d paused, his gaze growing distant. “I had to tell her who I really was—she didn’t recognize me at first. I still insisted she call me Levi.”

  “Did she know what you had planned?”

  “She knew, but she didn’t understand my true intentions. She thought we were on Goodman’s side—that we were punishing those who were violating our Constitution. She believed I planned to sacrifice myself and Goodman in order to galvanize his adherents, rather than repel them.” He’d paused then before adding, “I did not enjoy deceiving her. But it was necessary, even as sick as she was, to provide her with a reason to despise each of her victims. She was a creature fueled by hatred.”

  These words brought back for David what his father has said to him the night before: For these murderers, the root cause is always the same; they hate themselves and they want others to suffer.

  Farnsworth had stopped answering David’s questions at that point. But before leaving the speaker’s room, David had added, “I’m sorry you lost your wife. I’m sure she would have been proud of all you’ve accomplished in her memory.”

  The speaker’s head had dropped back onto his pillow, his gray-blue eyes settling on one of the empty corners of his room.

  Now David stepped away from his kitchen television. He walked to his refrigerator and reached for the beer, but his telephone’s ringing interrupted him.

  “Pop,” he answered. “How was the drive back?”

  Martin cleared his throat. “Fine. Reflective.” He was quiet for a moment. “I still can’t believe Farnsworth was behind all this.” He chuckled. “I guess trying to wrangle all those clowns in the House would drive anybody nuts.”

  Early that afternoon, father and son had said their goodbyes out on the street in front of David’s home. Martin wore a knee brace to stabilize the sprain he’d suffered jumping the fence behind 513 A Street.

  “Good work, boy,” he’d said

  “We got lucky,” David had answered. He hadn’t been able to let go of all they’d missed—all that could have gone wrong. He’d thought of the photograph of the speaker and Jonathan Reilly he’d seen in the deputy director’s office. He realized Farnsworth had been in his old friend’s ear from the start—talking him away from the clues David and his team had assembled concerning Edith Vereen.

  He’d also recognized that a man like Farnsworth would have had access to Judge Perry’s home address, and how “Levi Harney’s” August visits to the Alderman Library at UVA had corresponded with Congress’s summer recess.

  But that wasn’t enough, David thought. You wouldn’t have caught him that way.

  An hour after Goodman’s rally began, a final pre-scheduled blog post had appeared on the Committees of Correspondence website. Omar told David the post contained a long confession from “The Patriot in the Shadows,” who’d claimed to be Philip Goodman.

  “This last one didn’t include all the same encryptions,” Omar had said. “So it was easy for me to trace it back to 513 A Street. Knowing that house was registered to Levi Harney, we would have assumed Goodman was behind everything.”

  The Bureau’s bomb technicians—who’d managed to successfully diffuse the device on 513’s front door—had discovered a laptop containing all the previous “Patriot in the Shadows” blog posts in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

  “Would have made a mess of the front of the house,” one of the technicians had said to David, “but the blast wouldn’t have destroyed the evidence Farnsworth left behind implicating Goodman.”

  With all that proof pointing to “Levi Harney,” David had few doubts whom the Bureau would have blamed for the attack.

  Standing in the street beside his father, David had said, “If Omar hadn’t found that video of Farnsworth and Vereen, or if he’d found it ten minutes too late . . .”

  “Quit that kind of thinking,” Martin had interrupted. “Retrospection’s a killer in our business. Keep your eyes off your rear-view mirror or you’ll go nuts.”

  Retrospection’s a killer, David had repeated to himself, thinking of all the ghosts from his past. He wondered if it was time to let some of those ghosts rest.

  Martin had squeezed his shoulder and added, “Let it go, David. Luck was on our side this time.”

  Then, to David’s surprise, Martin had wrapped his arms around him and added, “I’m proud of you, son. Your mother would be proud too. She always was.”

  Now, as he felt the warmth of the setting sun on his kitchen counter, David thought of his mother and her words to him about not being alone. He glanced out at his small back patio as he and Martin spoke on the telephone.

  “I just turned on the news,” David said. “They roped Carl into an appearance.”

  “I’m sure he’s thrilled,” Martin said, laugh
ing. But his laughter faded quickly, and he said, “You been watching things? The talking heads can’t stop chattering about Farnsworth and Vereen—what their actions say about our country, and whether they were an inevitable byproduct of our deep national division, or some bullshit like that.” He grunted. “It makes me sick how we placate terrorists this way. Foreign or domestic, we play right into their hands—flash their pictures all over the news and talk about their ideas and their causes. Farnsworth will probably end up writing a bestseller from prison, and they’ll be movies made about Edith Vereen.” He laughed bitterly.

  Both men were silent until Martin said, “Heard anything more from DHS about the militia groups?”

  “Pretty quiet.”

  “No uprising?” he said sarcastically.

  “No uprising. Lots of gatherings—like they were waiting for a sign. But no confrontations with federal authorities. But who knows what would have happened if Farnsworth’s bomb had gone off.”

  They were quiet then, considering all the what-ifs.

  “There’s something I forgot to ask you,” David said, breaking the silence. “Something that’s been bothering me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What happened to Rhode Island?”

  “I don’t understand,” Martin said.

  “Goodman would have been the Georgia victim, and Edith Vereen killed eleven people—one in each colony state except for Rhode Island.” He paused. “I’m worried there’s another body out there that we never found.”

  Martin was quiet for a moment, but then he let out a small laugh. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “No one from Rhode Island signed the Constitution.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier,” Martin said. “Rhode Island didn’t send a delegate to the convention. They were invited, but they didn’t attend. Farnsworth and Vereen knew their history.”

  As David shook his head, his father asked him, “You going to see Butch any time soon? I got attached to that girl these last few weeks.”

  “We work together, so that’s likely.”

  “Don’t be a smartass. And don’t bite my head off when I say this, but I can feel something there between you two. She’s a keeper, and I think you’d be a fool not to go after her if you ever decide to give up being a loner.”

  David didn’t answer, and Martin said, “All right, I won’t beat a dead horse. Anyone that’s received a commendation from the president doesn’t need my advice.”

  David thought of the phone call; the president had personally congratulated him, Lauren, and Martin on a job well done. David had also received a note of sincere thanks for his “heroic action” from Philip Goodman, as well as a firm handshake from Deputy Director Jonathan Reilly.

  “It takes a man to admit when he’s wrong, and I was wrong,” Reilly had said pompously, not mentioning his friendship with Farnsworth. “I’m grateful for the work you put in on this, Agent Yerxa.”

  David had looked Reilly in the eye as he shook his hand, saying nothing.

  “You coming up to Philly any time soon?” Martin asked. “Or are you tired of the old man?”

  “How about next weekend?”

  He could hear his father smile through the phone.

  “Beautiful,” Martin said. “We’ll get steaks at Esposito’s and grill out.”

  The two men said their goodbyes, and David returned to the refrigerator for the beer. He grabbed two, twisted off their caps, and walked out onto the back patio.

  The evening was warm, and the sun was making steady progress on its descent toward the horizon. The sky was a deep orange.

  David handed Lauren one of the beers and took a seat beside her at the patio table. She smiled at him, and her green eyes—rimmed with just a touch of dark makeup—seemed to sparkle in the fading light.

  “Cheers,” she said.

  They clinked bottles, and David took a long drink.

  Author’s Note

  Thanks for reading Founders’ Keeper. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

  As a self-published author, I have few advertising or marketing resources. Apart from readers recommending my books to friends and family, I’m dependent on Amazon’s computers, which rely on a book’s ratings and download frequency to determine those titles that appear front and center in the Kindle catalog.

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  All my thanks,

  Ed Markham

  Preview of Son of a Gun, the sequel to Founders’ Keeper

  Sunday, November 3

  Chapter 1

  QUINCY BURRIED HIS face in a bed of damp leaves and rummaged. After he’d satisfied himself and his nose, he took a step away from the pile, lifted a hind leg, and claimed it for himself. Quincy’s, he thought, and trotted farther down the trail.

  “Stay close, Quince,” Barb called out as she made her way along the packed dirt of the forest path. As she spoke, puffs of steam escaped from her mouth into the hard November air. The sun had only just reached the tops of the surrounding red maple and elm trees, which were uniformly bare.

  At the sound of Barb’s voice, Quincy turned his yellow head toward her, panted once, and then continued to make his way deeper into the woods. Barb let him go. He was a good dog, and she knew he wouldn’t go too far if she shouted reminders to him from time to time. She pulled a hand from her jacket pocket and pushed her curly, straw-colored hair away from her face. It wasn’t yet 7:30 in the morning, and she felt alone and at peace with her dog and the woods.

  After following a small bend in the path, Barb stopped and squinted at a nearby tree trunk. It was a horse chestnut—or a conker tree, as her English grandmother would have called it—and she could see round holes stippling its crusty bark.

  “Oh, shoot,” she said, stepping off the path to examine the tree more closely.

  She made her way carefully among the fallen sticks and leaves of the forest floor, mindful of her age and the trouble she’d be in if she had a fall out here with no one around to help her up.

  When she reached the tree, she leaned forward, peering at the edges of the round holes. When she saw that they were the rough gouges of birds and not the smooth bores of recently matured Asian long-horned beetles, she let out a sigh of relief.

  The long-horned had made a sudden and quite-unwelcome appearance in northern and central New Jersey in the late 1990s, and although the state’s DNR had announced the insect’s successful eradication, Barb was still on the lookout for signs of a resurgence. A retired entomologist, she considered herself an able pair of eyes in the ongoing fight against invasive species.

  Making her way slowly back to the walking path, Barb shouted for Quincy and scanned the surrounding forest. She missed him on the first sweep, but on the second she caught a glimpse of his blonde tail as it waved above a slight mound of earth forty yards away. She could tell by the frantic cadence of his wag that he’d found something, and she hurried her pace, calling his name and hoping to stop him before he could make a mess of himself. “Quincy! Whatever you found, leave it!”

  As she drew alongside the mound, Barb expected to see discarded food, or a tattered squirrel carcass. When she saw the child’s shoes, she stopped and gasped. A big breath of stream escaped her mouth and disintegrated into the autumn air.

  The boy was wearing green low-top skateboarding sneakers, and the toes of his shoes pointed straight up at the sky. As Barb walked slowly around the mound, which was cove
red with downed brown and red leaves, the rest of the boy came into view as though a curtain were being pulled away, revealing his body inch by inch. She saw that he was wearing blue jeans with grass-stained knees and a brown snowboarding jacket. A camo-green backpack lay beside him.

  Barb told herself the boy was only taking a nap, though Quincy was bouncing nervously on his front paws, and there was something plainly wrong with the way the boy’s arms were laying extended at his sides. Then she saw the dark patch that had soaked the front of his coat.

  The child’s face was very pale beneath his brown hair—too pale, she realized as she took a step closer. It wasn’t death that made him look like that.

  When Barb realized the boy’s face was concealed behind a white mask, her hand came up to her mouth and she let out a horrified moan.

  To keep reading Son of a Gun, please click here.