by Joe Nobody
He waited for the driver’s head to appear around the corner, worried the man wouldn’t leave his cargo door open while at the truck stop. Evidently, he wasn’t worried about the old pallets and packing blankets.
Dusty waited, the burning in his torso growing more intense now that he had nothing else to focus on. It’s now or never, he realized, summoning up the strength to stand and move to the rear of the hold. He folded the gun’s stock and stuffed it into his pack. Gingerly climbing down, he pretended to study the tires for a moment – hoping any prying eyes would think he was the driver or co-pilot.
He held the backpack in front of the wound, hiding the blood that was already soaking through his bandage-roll and staining his fresh shirt. Walking was pure torture, staying upright to avoid attention requiring every ounce of grit he could muster.
At the entrance to the busy truck stop, he noticed a small newspaper box stuffed with flyers for local real estate brokers. A familiar face smiled up at the injured man. There on the front page was his ex-wife, Maria.
After snatching up a paper, he made for the restroom, finally exhaling as he locked the stall door. Refuge with a throne and the image of his ex-wife, he mused. What more could a man ask for?
Hanging the ever-heavier pack on the door’s hook, he set about working on his wound. The red-soaked bandage-shirt was disposed of in the trash container, a wad of paper towels selected as a substitute. He was incredibly thirsty, downing an entire bottle of water in just a few swallows.
He couldn’t think of a way out. Walking was out of the question, hitchhiking posed the risk that someone would recognize him from the news reports. He could try and make it back to the truck that had delivered him here, but there was no way to know where it was going or how long it would take to get there. The arrival of a headache, followed shortly thereafter by a cold sweat made the situation even more dire.
All the while, Maria’s smiling face seemed to mock him. Those beautiful brown eyes had warmed his soul since the first time he’d met her; now their gaze felt belittling.
Stop it! He chided himself. Maria holds no ill will against you. The marriage didn’t work for her, but at least you took the high road as it ended. Call her.
His room-stall started spinning. Closing his eyes made it worse. He reached for the no contract phone inside the pack and dialed the number listed on the brochure.
“Champion Properties,” a friendly sounding voice answered.
“Hello,” he mumbled. “Is Maria in?”
“I’m sorry, but Ms. Weathers is out of the office right now. She’ll be checking her messages throughout the day. Could I let her know you called?”
Dusty hadn’t expected this. He didn’t want to get Maria in trouble, but on the other hand, he was desperate. A lie popped into his head.
“Yes… yes, please do. My name is Clarence Turner, and I’m calling from Midland Station. I’m relocating to Houston next month, and Ms. Weathers was recommended by a mutual friend, Tina Rodriguez. I’m only going to be in town for a short time, could you ask her to hurry?”
“Sure, Mr. Turner. I’ll let her know as soon as she calls in.”
Dusty left the number to his phone and ended the call. Clarence Turner was Maria’s father’s name, Midland her hometown. Tina had been her best friend in high school.
Time passed slowly in the stall. The pain, loss of blood, and confinement all combined to make it seem like days before the cheap, little phone began to ring.
“Maria?”
“Yes, Dusty. The message was cute. Are you all right? Do you know the FBI was at my house?”
He interrupted her, “Maria, I’m hurt… hurt pretty badly. I’ve lost so much blood; it feels like I’m going into shock.”
The voice on the other end changed, the words laced with concern. “Where are you? I’ll come get you right now.”
“I’m at a truck stop. I don’t know where though. It’s called The Gulf Station. You’ll have to look up the address. I’m in the men’s room, hiding.”
She didn’t hesitate, “Stay right there. Hang on. I’m on my way.”
Dusty finished the last bottle of water, his thirst unquenchable. Knowing that help was on the way improved his mental condition. He had hope… an out… a chance at escape.
He gently used another handful of paper towels to redress his wound, the blood flow about the same. He killed some time rearranging the pack, and making ready to leave once Maria arrived. He was weak, dizzy, and constantly feeling like he needed to vomit. The pounding in his head was relentless.
Twice he started to call her back, illogical visions forming in his mind. At one point, he was sure she’d forgotten, a minute later convinced she changed her mind and decided not to come. Each bout of paranoia grew stronger, more difficult to fight off. He then began to worry he was going insane.
A voice called out, a hint of humor in the tone. “Clarence Turner, your wife is here looking for ya. She doesn’t look happy.”
He almost ignored the use of the fake name, the pain and thunder in his head making reasoning difficult.
He managed to stand and unlock the stall, his legs wobbly and weak. A few difficult steps, and then he was looking at Maria, concern painted on her face.
“If you bleed all over my car seats, I’ll be pissed.”
Somehow, she managed to get him into her car, the smell of leather and her favorite musk permeating the interior. He fell asleep before they had exited the lot.
He dreamed about being irate with her. She was pushing him along, encouraging him to walk into some strange place. He didn’t want to go, the car’s seat comfortable and safe, the smell of her reminding him of cool spring mornings in their bed. The dream continued, his beautiful Maria becoming angry, insistent that he enter the new place, pulling on him physically while chiding him mentally.
Tim Crawford gradually worked his way around the perimeter of law enforcement personnel behind the hotel. He recognized one of the cops, the officer obviously bored with the task of keeping a throng of curious onlookers well away from the site.
Making sure his press ID wasn’t visible, Tim made his way over to his acquaintance and smiled. “What’s going on, McCormick?”
“Move on, Crawford. I don’t want anyone to see me talking to you right now.”
Taken aback by the rude response, the reporter from the Houston Post feigned hurt feelings. “Jezzz McCormick, what the hell did I ever do to you?”
“Nothing that I know of, and I want to keep it that way. There’s a busload of feds crawling around here, and that makes my captain nervous. Shit rolls downhill, and I don’t want to be at the bottom of an avalanche.”
The reporter snorted, dismissing the less than talkative cop with a wave. “Whatever.”
Crawford considered joining the gaggle of other reporters, most of the on-scene press from the local news channels. Their fancy vans, bright lights, and handheld cameras had been herded into a corner of the hotel’s parking lot, a thick wall of police between them and the downed tower.
Judging the isolated press pool as the last place he’d gather any real information, he continued to casually saunter through the field, at least as close as the authorities would let him. That was close enough to be in awe of the disaster.
On an average day, the high-voltage towers were overlooked by the average citizen. When standing upright, they didn’t attract attention like a building of the same stature. People drove and jogged and walked their cocker spaniels past them every day, hardly giving the critical structures a second glance.
That all changed when the tower fell. The length of crumpled steel lattice looked like the spine of a slain giant, felled after a ferocious battle. The thick cables, randomly strung along the ground and draped over the crumbled metal, resembled the great beast’s entrails. Dark patches of burned grass were the bloodstains – scarred soil where the life had drained from the titan. The entire scene had a melancholy feel, the carcass of a mighty warrior surrounded by an army
of human ants.
Being naturally nosey made Crawford a good reporter. That unrelenting curiosity, combined with a higher than average IQ, propelled him to the rank of journalist. An innate distrust of his fellow man garnered him rewards and accolades, and at that moment, he smelled a story hidden in the mundane explanation provided by the authorities. Failed structural integrity my ass, he determined, staring at the fallen monstrosity.
The first piece of visual evidence of a cover up was the plow mark. Looking to the reporter’s eye like some sort of odd crop circle taken from a photo shopped tabloid picture, a gash in the field started 50 yards away from where the tower had stood and followed a perfectly straight line to the now-mangled base.
There wasn’t any fallen debris close to the trench, and the grass was flattened on each side. Something had ripped through the field on its way to the tower – a meteorite or projectile of some kind. He’d seen similar scars in the earth while working in Iraq, furrows of tilled, desert sand left after American tanks had fired their massive cannons. Yet there was no tank or anything else that would explain the damage.
Crawford pulled his smart phone, tapping the screen a few times until he found the weather. Three days ago, a thunderstorm had rolled through north Houston, the highest recorded wind speed reaching 38 mph, from the west. The tower had fallen as if it were pushed from the southeast. If the story were to be believed, wouldn’t the failure have occurred during the storm? The last few days had been calm.
The most suspicious aspect of the entire affair was the presence of the feds. As McCormick had stated, the place was thick with them. Sure, the tower was a major hit to the north side’s infrastructure, some 350,000 people now without electricity. Sure, it was possible such an incident might provide the federal boys a chance to get out of the office on a slow day. But it had taken him two hours to arrive, snarled in gridlock due to the powerless, non-functioning traffic signals. Guessing that the tower had fallen three hours ago, he asked himself how long would it take the FBI to figure out this wasn’t a terrorist attack and leave. They sure seemed to have officially labeled the cause very, very quickly – unless they already knew.
Pulling out his digital camera, the reporter snapped a few pictures from the best angle. Visual extravagance was the realm of broadcast news; his story would be told mostly with words.
While he zoomed in on the base, movement caught his attention. Two men wearing Houston Power and Light hardhats were strolling over to speak with what appeared to be an FBI agent. After about five minutes of animated pointing and uncomfortable body language later, the electric company workers headed for the parking lot. Crawford moved to follow.
They were just closing the trunk lid of the white Ford sedan, complete with HL&P logo, when Crawford accosted them. “Excuse me guys,” he said, flashing his press ID, “I was wondering if I might ask you a couple of questions?”
“Sorry,” the older one replied, holding up his hand, “you need to speak with law enforcement. We have no comment.”
“Okay,” Tim replied, a sense of disappointment in his voice. “If you want your company to take the heat for this, that’s up to you. My editor is good to go with the lack of maintenance angle.”
“What do you mean, ‘lack of maintenance?’” responded the younger guy, despite the harsh look from his partner, “There wasn’t a lack of maintenance on shit.”
Crawford shrugged his shoulders, “That’s not what the FBI is telling me off the record. Word is, the tower hadn’t been properly inspected or maintained, and that’s why it went down.”
The older man stiffened his spine, flashing Crawford an annoyed look. “Bullshit. Pure, unadulterated cow droppings. Metal fatigue, poor maintenance, or nothing else I know of had shit to do with that tower coming down. We don’t know what kicked it over, but sure as God made little green apples, HL&P had nothing to do with it.”
“How do you know?”
The younger guy stepped forward and lowered his voice, “Off the record, okay? I’ve never seen anything like it. The steel in that support is four inches thick. An entire section is just missing… gone. Now, I’ve used just about every technology out there to cut steel. Saws, lasers, plasma torches, you name it. Nothing can slice metal and leave a smooth edge like that… nothing. We examined it at a microscopic level, and there wasn’t any fatigue. It was like someone just snapped his fingers, and the metal wasn’t there anymore.”
“How… is there… what could do that?” Crawford asked, trying to piece it all together.
Shaking his head, the older man opened the car door, signaling his coworker to do the same. They had already said too much. “Nothing Mister, nothing of this world.”
Grace pumped the soap dispenser, wringing the yard dirt off her hands at the kitchen sink. As she rinsed them under the tap, her gaze focused out the window, happy with the placement of the new flowerbed. When it bloomed in a few weeks, she’d have a lovely splash of color to make washing the dishes less of a chore.
She’d just reached for the dish towel when the phone mounted nearby rang. Durham? She hoped, hurrying with the drying and reaching for the receiver.
“Hello.”
“Ms. Kennedy, this is Eva Barns,” sounded a distressed voice. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I don’t know where else to turn.”
“What’s the matter, Eva?”
“The police were just here and arrested Hank,” the woman sniffled, “They said he was conspiring against the government of the United States of America.”
Grace was sure she had understood the distraught message; however, the caller’s suppressed tears made it difficult to know for certain what was going on. “Eva, now settle down, everything will be all right,” she said in as soothing a voice as she could muster. “Can you tell me who arrested Hank?”
“They were from El Paso. Some wore jackets that said they were from the FBI, others had coats with ‘ATF’ embroidered across the back. They searched our house and wouldn’t let me call anybody for help. They handcuffed Hank and walked him out to a car like he was a common criminal, Ms. Kennedy.”
Grace was taking it all in, the mention of ATF, or Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, raising the bar of seriousness. “Okay, Eva, let me get dressed, and I’ll be right over.”
Twenty minutes later, Grace pulled into the driveway, her arrival anticipated by Eva pacing anxiously on the front porch. “I don’t want to go in there,” the distraught woman announced. “It’s like my home has been violated.”
The woman was terrified, clutching a wrinkled handkerchief and seemingly unable to focus on anything for more than a few seconds at a time. Guiding her to a wooden swing, Grace gradually settled Eva down, interlacing soothing reassurances with the occasional question. The story that unfolded didn’t make any sense, and that fact concerned Ms. Kennedy more than anything.
Eva claimed the FBI men kept harking on Hank, pressing him over a recent visit to Dusty’s gunsmith shop. Over and over again, Eva had listened to her husband deny any wrongdoing. “What’s so terrible, Ms. Kennedy, is that I know he wasn’t telling the truth. A woman learns those things after so many years of marriage, I guess. I’ve never known Hank to act like that.”
Grace studied the woman carefully, the attorney inside of her unable to place blind trust in anyone. Eva appeared to be telling everything she knew about the situation. “What else did they ask him about, Eva?”
“That was all I heard. Dusty this and Dusty that… they kept asking Hank about some invention and how Dusty’s workshop got damaged. For a little while, I thought they had come to the wrong address. I even told the one young man that Dusty Weathers lived down the road, but he ignored me.”
Evidently, the FBI’s lead agent didn’t buy Hank’s story either and arrested the man. They had hauled him off three hours ago, a pale, handcuffed Hank peering at his wife out the back window of a government SUV, a tear running down his cheek.
“Eva, let’s go down to the courthouse and find out what’s goi
ng on. If we hurry, we might be able to see Hank before they transport him elsewhere.”
Wiping her eyes with the handkerchief, Eva nodded. Fortifying herself after a horror-filled glance toward the door, she managed to go inside to gather her things.
As they drove to Fort Davis, Grace warned Eva that she wasn’t a criminal attorney. “But you’re the only lawyer I know,” Eva had responded.
The two women arrived at the Jeff Davis County Courthouse a few minutes later. The old building served as both the county seat and the county jail, a few small cells in the basement. In reality, there wasn’t much crime in the area, and most of the time the small facility was empty.
As they parked, Grace pointed out several black SUVs and basic, factory equipped government sedans. “I think we may have gotten here in time, Eva. It doesn’t look like the federal officers have left yet.”
The two women trotted up the limestone steps and pushed open a heavy, frosted glass door. They were met with the smell of old wood and floor wax. The main entrance led to an atrium of sorts, rings of offices bordering the open space. As they headed for the sheriff’s portion of the building, their footsteps echoed off the marble floor, the sound ominous as it bounced through the otherwise empty building.
The tranquil atmosphere was broken as Grace opened the door to the sheriff’s office, a wall of voices and other activity greeting the two visitors. As the two women entered the lobby, everyone stopped to look up, the attention making their entrance even more difficult.
Sheriff Clay was standing nearby, talking to a uniformed deputy and reading a report at the same time. Looking up, the local lawman interrupted his conversation and approached the two women.
Nodding, he said, “Mrs. Barns, Ms. Kennedy.”
“Good afternoon, Sheriff. We’re here to see Hank Barns. Eva has asked me to represent her husband.”
