by Laurel Dewey
“I ain’t never heard her stand up for me like that,” Harlan whispered.
“If your husband is watching this, Mrs. Kipple,” the reporter asked, “is there anything you’d like to tell him?”
Arlene gave the question a good amount of thought before answering. She turned to the camera with every ounce of love she could muster. “You was a good man, Harlan. I should have given you another try. Maybe you wouldn’t be in this mess if I’d done that.”
That wasn’t what the reporter expected and all attempts by him to manipulate Arlene into vilifying her ex-husband were met with nothing but positive words for him.
“Anything else you’d like to say to Mr. Kipple?” the reporter stressed, eager for a crumb of denigration.
“Be smart, Harlan. Don’t do nothin’ ‘tupid,” she smiled weakly.
Harlan choked up and managed a sad smile. “I won’t, Arlene,” he said back to the television. He flicked the TV on mute and turned to Jane. “I wonder if she still likes my hair.”
Jane took the bait. “Speaking of your hair, Harlan. I think we need to alter your look even more.”
“Break out that black dye you bought—”
“No, not the dye. I’m thinking you ought to shave it off.”
He looked at her, aghast. “All of it?”
“No, just a stripe down the center,” she sarcastically replied. “Of course, all of it!”
“I don’t know, Jane. That’s gonna look weird.”
“You look like you stuck your head in a lawn mower, Harlan. How much worse will it look?”
He stood up and stared into the mirror above the bureau. “I’ll look like a Q-tip,” he scowled.
“Nah. Not a Q-tip,” she assured him, quietly surmising a polished marble on top of a giant puffer fish was a better analogy. “Trust me on this one, okay? There’s a razor and shaving cream on the sink in the bathroom.”
He reluctantly nodded. “You do have a plan, right Jane?” His voice sounded desperate for the first time.
“Of course. I always have a plan and then I have a plan that backs up that plan,” she assured him. The truth was she had a marginal plan and an even sketchier one behind that. But she was able to sell the statement with such confidence that Harlan was satisfied enough to gather more strength and move past his temporary panic.
He retreated to the bathroom. Jane felt the mounting tension creep up her spine and stiffen her neck. She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Checking the time, she factored that Hank was figuring out what else to bring her besides the lunchmeat, chips and other food items. Knowing him, he was whipping together his famous chicken salad and wondering how to keep one of those incredible hot dogs she loved to eat from his sports bar, The Rabbit Hole, looking good during the long drive. He was such an uncommon person to be able to read Jane so accurately. It took tremendous courage for her to fall into his comforting charms. She’d become so used to the physical or emotional abuse that past lovers dealt out, she had no idea how to navigate a relationship that wasn’t built on a foundation of turmoil. There were many nights over the past month when she’d lay awake and wonder why he loved her. What in the hell did he see in her? She didn’t acquiesce like so many other women. She didn’t bat her eyes at him and play dumb. She never sat by the phone waiting for his call. But there she was in that hotel room lying on the bed and unable to get him out of her tangled mind.
She turned the sound up on the TV to take her mind off of him. The news anchor teased the next story, featuring an announcement that Congresswoman Dora Weller’s replacement, Steve Crandall, was scheduled to make. The camera cut to an outdoor location that looked like Northeastern Colorado with miles of grassland in the distance. Crandall approached the microphone in a tentative manner and read poorly from his notes.
“I want to thank you all for coming out here today,” Crandall said in a weak voice. “First, I want to let you all know that Congresswoman Weller is doing great and her doctors are telling us that there shouldn’t be any lasting issues from the incident.”
The incident? Jane shook her head. It was a shooting, not an “incident.” But the word “shooting” was most likely erased from this puppet’s vocabulary by the people who pulled his strings. Jane was highly tuned into the dialect of those who agree to work under someone else’s thumb and do their bidding. Their pronouncements are always filled with sterile, “soft” words that sanitize discussions and never allow for forthright honesty. Honesty and candor are the red-haired stepchildren of politics as usual; they have to be beaten to a pulp and replaced with tolerable terminologies that train the public to accept illogical answers. Considering that Weller was shot, Jane was pretty sure she wasn’t “doing great” and that there would be “lasting issues from the incident.”
There was a frightening coldness attached to that throwaway statement by Crandall. But then again, he didn’t write it. This guy was so out of his element, it was pathetic. He stumbled on his prepared statement several times and repeatedly rubbed his forehead in a way that suggested he was totally lost. But as the camera pulled out, Jane saw Rudy standing in the background with several other officials. He never took his eyes off Crandall and from Jane’s point of view, it appeared as if he had Crandall on a very short leash.
“We’re here today to talk about the future,” Crandall said in a way that made Jane believe whatever “future” he was about to discuss was not his creation. “We have a lot of natural resources here in our great state of Colorado and I know that Congresswoman Weller agrees with me that we should not waste those resources.”
Jane frowned. The whole thing was bullshit. This idiot wasn’t having any deep discussion with Weller. While Jane never looked at Dora Weller as being part of any brain trust, she was very clear in her voting record and actions that she sought to protect land rather than exploit it.
“These are tough times for many of us in Colorado and around the country,” Crandall continued. “It’s vital that we attract established companies and promote our state as one that is forward thinking. With that said, I’m here today standing in front of rich grassland that is currently not be used to its full potential. I’m aware that the approximately one thousand acres seen behind me has been hotly debated in the news and is a point of contention with many environmentalists as to how this ranch land might be utilized. I realize that Congresswoman Weller dealt with a lot of these issues already and made the decision to let the land stay as it is, preferring to opt for an open space agreement. However, after an extensive overview, that agreement was found to have various loopholes attached to it that could complicate the fair use of this acreage in the future. Obviously, we do not want to embark on any agreement that could potentially excise this valuable area from future use.
“Now, I’m fully aware of the environmental concerns many of you have regarding oil and gas and fracking. And let me be clear that this is not what is being considered for this acreage. We think we’ve created a sustainable solution that will put this land to good use and not create any damage. In fact, our plan will actually improve the integrity of this area and be quite sustainable.”
Sustainable. He said it twice, two sentences in a row. Jane knew it was a loaded word and that whatever followed, usually carried a caveat. “Sustainable” could mean anything—from actually improving and maintaining the land while protecting it from misuse, thereby “sustaining” its integrity, to turning the land into a zone where no human are allowed.
“I want to introduce to you Mr. Andrea Bourgain. He is the CEO of The Wöden Group. He’s flown all the way to the United States from his home in Belgium. Please welcome him!”
Crandall turned the microphone over to a handsome, gray-haired man in his late sixties. Bourgain spoke with a peculiar accent that blended French and German intonations. Jane quickly brought out her computer and did a search on Wöden. But the first few links that popped up had nothi
ng to do with the Belgium company. Jane clicked on one link and read the first sentence:
“Together with his Norse counterpart, Odin, Wöden is a major deity of Germanic paganism.” Jane stared at the word, “Odin.” It was a little too coincidental that it happened to be the same name of the corporation that was attached to a fleet of automobiles, one of which just happened to be driven by Rudy and parked near the Anubus crash. While Bourgain prattled on about how wonderful it was to be “in your beautiful state,” Jane did a further search on Wöden. “For the Anglo-Saxons,” the story acknowledged, “Wöden was the psychopomp or carrier-off of the dead.” Jane shook her head. Of all the names a company can come up with, why in the hell would they choose a name that historically was connected to a pagan god known for carrying off the dead?
Jane called Harlan to check on him. “You okay in there?”
“Yeah…” he replied with little enthusiasm. “I guess so.”
She focused back on Bourgain and his comments.
“We at The Wöden Group are very excited to have this opportunity for expansion into the United States. Thanks to the influential, forward thinking minds who helped make this happen.” While it was subtle, Bourgain turned his body slightly toward Rudy, who was still standing behind the podium.
Jane immediately did a comprehensive search for “The Wöden Group, Belgium” and found their company’s website. After scanning page after page, she still couldn’t figure out what they did, except that their motto was, “The forefront of innovative science begins here.” Buried deeply at the bottom of one page was a single link titled, “Vaccine research.” She clicked the link and found a page that had fewer than two paragraphs. It stated that The Wöden Group “was focused on pioneering research into cutting edge vaccine technology.” But aside from a few fluffy statements that followed, it appeared that Wöden’s interest in vaccines was either still in development or not their main objective. So why in the hell did the CEO fly over from Belgium to stand in front of a desolate swath of grassland in northeastern Colorado and wax poetically about the “natural beauty” of this area?
Then a light went on in Jane’s head. The only controversy Dora Weller ever dealt with was her denial of a Biotech firm’s desire to buy up grassland. She sided with the eco-crowd’s demands to keep the land away from “those damn capitalists.” While Jane was a proud capitalist and avoided being in the same breathing space as the eco-Nazis she loathed, there was something about the smoothness of Bourgain’s statements that concerned her. It didn’t take her long to uncover an article that mentioned Dora Weller and Wöden in the same paragraph. Two years prior, Weller had rejected the final plan from The Wöden Group to purchase one thousand acres in northwestern Colorado for “research purposes.”
Jane searched valiantly and found nothing that explained what kind of research was planned. Nothing on Wöden’s site was explanatory. In fact, there were links on their site that had more photos than text. It almost felt to Jane as if the website was there because the company felt they had to have a presence on the Internet but they weren’t about to divulge much more than pabulum. While Bourgain continued to take questions from reporters and answer them with well-crafted but benign responses, Jane clicked on all the links again on Wöden’s site and only looked at the photos.
Most of them looked like stock shots, including images of beakers in a laboratory, flowers in a meadow and a sun rising in the distance across a field. She clicked again on the vaccine link and focused on the three photos that were there. One was a syringe filled with a yellow liquid. “Jesus,” Jane said out loud. She flashed on the discordant hallucination she had after being knocked out by S.B. She could still see it clearly as if the scene were presented in front of her. How strange, Jane mused. When she’d blacked out in the past due to too much booze, her hallucinations never gelled long enough for her to have a cogent memory when she awakened, let alone have a crystal clear recall of the event hours later. But sitting on the bed in that motel room, Jane could easily close her eyes and generate the scene as it unfolded. The floor was littered with hundreds of plastic syringes, all filled with a golden serum. And there was the old man standing at his desk, looking at Jane and holding the white binder with IEB written on the cover.
Jane continued to click on every link on Wöden’s website and she was about to give up when she spotted an innocuous image that made no sense. It didn’t fit. But there it was. It was a photo of a goat in a grassy field, staring up at the camera. There were no other animals featured on the entire site. She reread the company’s motto: “The forefront of innovative science begins here.” But there was absolutely nothing that linked what those innovations were and why they included a single photo of a goat in a field of grass. The news conference ended and Jane stared at the walls. She cautioned herself to not read too much into all these strange syncs. But ignoring a sync or odd coincidence was also not something she favored. She’d learned the hard way that sometimes the truth is standing right there in front of you, but you can’t see it because you either don’t believe that truth can be that obvious or you choose not to see it. But either way, it never stops the truth from operating and continuing to its logical conclusion. It was like a morbidly obese woman looking at her body in the mirror and seeing a healthy person staring back. She could deny she was dangerously fat all day long but when her heart gave out after the third rack of pork ribs and she was gasping for her last breath, the only thing standing between her and the afterlife was the truth.
Turning back to the TV, the scene cut back to the newsroom and the anchor desk.
“Officials tell us that they still believe escaped fugitive Harlan Kipple was involved in some manner with the Weller shooting,” the anchor reported as the same shot of Harlan in the crowd was shown again. “However, sources close to the investigation are telling us they are not ruling out the possibility of an accomplice.”
Jane’s jaw dropped.
“Police are asking anyone who was at the scene and who was taking cell phone video to please contact them with any footage of the event.”
For a dead woman, she was suddenly becoming a potentially lively suspect.
CHAPTER 17
How in the hell was this possible? Jane turned off the television and sat with her racing thoughts. She was witnessing chaos unfold and seeing firsthand the manipulation of lies and half-truths in order to condemn an innocent man. And now they were seeking an accomplice of Harlan’s? What was going on here? Were they going to ID Jane or some other innocent soul? If it was Jane, how would they explain her “death” and now resurrection? The whole thing defied logic and yet there it was. The first article she found online that mentioned an accomplice was followed by over five hundred comments, all of them basing their opinions on false information. But that didn’t stop the armchair jockeys from firing off a damning missive from the comfort of their desktop computer. Reading through the top rated comments, it was clear to Jane that Harlan’s name was forever ruined. He’d been effectively turned into an evil scourge, with people fantasizing about “taking him out” and “doing the world a favor.” One man wrote with impeccable spelling and grammar, “If that peace of shite had himself an acomplis, than that pirson shuld dye 2.” Great, Jane thought. If she was discovered to be that “acomplis,” the idea of being taken out of this world by someone that stupid made her shudder.
It also made her angry and a boiling fury began to roll inside her. Except for a few conspiracy type websites she found, nobody was giving Harlan the benefit of the doubt. He’d already been tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Romulus looked to be pulling the strings on this fiasco, feeding false information to the media who seemed to have forgotten how to investigate a story. And there was a story here. But how would it get out to the public? If the mainstream media outlets had been methodically corrupted to this extent, what chance was there to push the truth forward?
Harlan emerged from the bathroom.
Still just wearing the overalls and no shirt underneath and with a cleanly shaven head that sported four noticeable cuts from the razor, he looked like he should be sitting on a ramshackle porch down in the Bayou, shucking corn.
“Well? What’s the verdict on my new look?” he asked her.
She had no clue how to respond. “Let’s hope the flannel shirt dries soon and you can find the hat I bought you.” Checking the time, she let out a hard breath. Hank was probably heading out soon to purchase the cell phones and other items. It would take him about two and a half hours if he drove like a demon and three hours if he kept the rental van under eighty miles an hour. Knowing Hank, he’d show up with the hood of that van hot as a pistol.
Finding one of the pine needle beers, she handed it to Harlan. “Here.”
“Kinda early in the day for that, don’t you think?”
“Thought it would relax you. And maybe I can get a contact high.”
“You tryin’ to get me drunk, Jane?”
“No.” She replaced the beer in the case, feeling stupid for offering it to him. She went over the plan again with Harlan, making sure he understood everything. “Don’t open this door for anyone unless you hear my name,” she counseled him in a grave tone.
“I won’t, Jane.”
The hours passed and Jane tried to rest but her mind wouldn’t stop chasing down options of how to extricate Harlan from this mess. Yet, every prospect she considered led to ten more complications.
“Know what I’m thinkin’?” Harlan said out of nowhere.
“What’s that?”
“After you see Hank, we oughta just take off and head to New Mexico.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “And do what?”
“You know what, Jane.”
“It’s not happening, Harlan. I’m not seeing her. She’s probably not even at the halfway house anymore,” she added, knowing full well Wanda was scheduled to be there through the week.
