It was magnificent. I could see the whole world resplendent below me like I was in a rocket ship headed into outer space. There were other riders on other steeds, some brown, black, chestnut, but the mighty war horse between my legs was the only white one.
They moved aside respectfully as we glided by. “Look, there's Italy,” I proclaimed. It did resemble a boot when viewed from high up in the clouds. I thought we were just out for ride but our journey turned out to be something quite unexpected. It lasted a few minutes or an eternity, I did not know, having lost all sense of time in my new world.
We arrived at a camp around dusk. We landed smoothly and I dismounted in one easy leap, the white steed stood still. He said in his rich baritone voice, “go ahead and meet your soldiers.”
I seemed perplexed, uneasy.
“Go,” he demanded.
“I told you, Great One, I am no soldier.”
“You are now. Go over to the camp, you will see, you are the general.”
I still had my doubts but the determination on his face forced me to go, although reluctantly.
Tents were set up , guards were posted with weapons I had never seen before. I approached apprehensively. “Halt! Who goes there? Advance and be recognized.” A guard yelled from somewhere in the darkness.
I froze, not knowing what to do or say.
“I said, advance and be recognized, stranger!”.
I did as the guard demanded.
When I came into the light the guard's whole demeanor changed, he popped to attention and saluted. “I'm sorry general, I did not know it was you, sir. Please forgive me.” The other guard stood at attention and likewise saluted.
I was unsure of myself but for some strange reason, I immediately adapted to the role I was recruited to play. “That's quite all right, guard. What is the status of my troops?” I inquired, like I would know.
“All secure, sir. Security watches set at all perimeters. Its been a quiet night so far and we hope it stays that way.”
“Very well, carry on guard. I'll be in my quarters if there is any trouble.”
“Yes, sir!” the guards said in unison.
It was surprisingly easy to find my quarters. It was in the middle of the tent city and it was ten times larger than the others, with two guards posted outside. The guard popped tall and saluted. The quarters were magnificent befitting a man of my stature, a general. Very spacious with a huge bed and an old time bath tub. Standing by the tub were two beautiful maidens waiting to fill the tub with piping hot water for my bath. It was great to be king or the general.
I shyly stripped off my mortal rags and entered the steaming tub that smelled of flowers and mint. The maidens bathed me from head to toe and all spots in between, it was nothing short of heavenly. I wanted to remain there forever but decided I needed some sleep after my long and eventful day. The ladies dried me again from head to toe and help me slip on a monogrammed robe made just for me.
On the bed was a pair of similarly adorned silk pajamas which I slipped on and slid in between sheets that were also made of silk. I went to sleep quickly, and course dreamed of the steed. We flew high over the clouds for miles and miles, it was wonderful.
Suddenly and abruptly, however, I was awakened from my slumbers by a guard, who seemed agitated and extremely worried. “Sorry for the intrusion, sir, but the perimeter guards have reported enemy troop movement. An attack is eminent. How shall we proceed?”
“Assemble my company commanders in ten minutes in the situation room.”
“Aye, sir.” The guard hastily left on his mission.
I don't know how I found the secret meeting room but before I knew it I was standing before a group of men putting forth our battle plan. I was the General, an important man, I marveled at the gravity of the situation as I stood before my troops. It was the most important day of my life.
“Mr. Shannon. Mr. Shannon!”
I heard a shrill voice calling like a siren hag of old calling me into the depths of the sea.
“Mr. Shannon!” Again that shrill voice, even louder.
I was transported out of the magical world I was in, the land of the steed and the epic battle that was poised ready to take place, through clouds as thick as a wool blanket. I could feel my mortal senses returning as I awoke in a sterile white environment with a nurse, also in white, standing over me, shaking my shoulders violently.
“Mr. Shannon, wake up. It's time for dinner. You sleep way too much.” The nurse in white said.
The world of the white steed just a distant memory, I looked around at a room full of beds, men wandering around aimlessly as if they were in a trance, drooling, screaming to themselves.
“Time to eat general,” the nurse laughingly said. She walked away shaking her head.
Revenge of the Fog
A thick fog settled in over the crowded interstate cutting visibility to zero. The pre-dawn rush hour traffic slowed to a crawl. Behind the wheel of my Mercedes Coup I wiped my front window in an effort to see the road ahead. “Damn fog, I can't see Jack.” I said out loud as I strained to keep my coup from plowing into another car, a light pole or whatever there was to crash into on that abysmal morning Just a thick fog that's all it was.
“Fog Comes Alive and Kills Motorists,” I saw the headline flash through my brain like a demented nightmare, a horrific bad dream. I laughed. “How absurd.” But still a chill ran up my spine at the thought of such an occurrence as bizarre as it sounded.
Horns were honking, tempers were rising, but we were stuck in a bumper to bumper disaster waiting to happen. I wiped my windshield with the back of my hand but it was clear, it was just the fog. I couldn't see the front of my car much less the rear of the car in front of me.
Crash! The sound of crunching metal to the right of me, followed by more horns. I know the sound of a fender bender when I hear one. Snap! Crunch! I heard an unfamiliar sound like a giant wooden stick being broken, followed by a loud crashing metallic sound. “What the hell?” I said, as I craned my neck to see the source of the bizarre dissonance.
Scape, screech! Next I heard a metallic scraping noise as if a huge piece of metal was being dragged across asphalt. Then a bang, like something had been slammed to the street with great force.
It was not quite daylight, miraculously the fog seemed to clear and visibility was being restored. But what I saw then I wished I hadn't seen, couldn't believe that I would ever see, but I did. The fog itself had morphed into huge white creatures that looked to be fifty feet tall. They were wispy like clouds, but had a monstrous shape resembling an animal of some sort.
“Dear, God! No!” I screamed as one of the cloud creatures picked up a Ford truck and hurled it through the air just missing my Mercedes by a few feet, landing on and instantly crushing a Cadillac SRX.
There must have been ten or twelve of them. One punched his huge fist through a car's windshield, pulling out the driver, holding him in the air momentarily, and then flinging him across the street onto the other side of the interstate. Cars were flying everywhere, a big fireball from burning vehicles lit up the early morning sky like it was daylight. Fear gripped me as I saw one of the fog monsters heading toward my vehicle. I braced myself for impending doom.
But then something quite remarkable and miraculous happened. The sun, the glorious sun begn to peep out from behind the horizon. The rays seemed effect the monsters like they were vampires, they shrieked, emitting a high pitched sound as they began to evaporate. The one that had latched on to my vehicle dissipated into thin air right before my terrified eyes. As quickly as they came, they were gone, leaving only the destruction they had wrought on dozens of vehicles and hundreds of motorists. I sat dumbfounded, numb, in my Mercedes, not believing what had just happened.
The headlines in the paper the next day read: “Dozens of motorists killed in a chain reaction vehicle accident due to unusually thick fog at rush hour yesterday morning.”
The Politician
He wa
s a powerful political pundit, bent on the total destruction of his opponent. Old school was his method, cut throat, stab you in the back, shady back room deals. Samuel J. Waterhouse, from the great state of Tennessee took no prisoners in the all-out war to win re-election. He had more enemies on Capitol Hill than friends, but frankly he'd say, “I don't give a damn. They don't vote in my state, so screw 'em.”
He had an old bag of a wife named Margaret, who he despised, but to keep up appearances Sam had to pretend to act as if he adored her in public. God he hated her, wanted her dead and she felt the same way about him. She just stayed with him for the money and his power.
Sam had a mistress by the name of Felicia, who he adored. But she was a greedy conniving little tramp who milked him for every dime she could. He had her set up in a beautiful condo with her own Mercedes 450L convertible and an expense account big enough to choke a horse. “Damn, bitch. I'm gonna cut her loose, if she don't ease up a little bit on my bank account. I ain't made of money, little tramp.” Sam would say, but not to Felicia. But she had heard the rumors and was not too happy about them.
“Who does he think he is?” Felicia would say. “Like I would have sex with some asshole like him if he wasn't paying me and I'm talking about a lot. Let him cut me loose. I'll have him killed just for the fun of it.”
Early in the morning, the sun just peeking over the horizon, welcoming a brand new day, a bloated nude body was found floating in the family pool. It was none other than Senator Samuel J. Waterhouse, from the great state of Tennessee. Due to his normally bloated size and his present condition, it was hard to tell how long he had been floating.
The body had been discovered by the gardener Jose Torres, when he had entered the back of the property to trim the trees. No one else was home, strange he thought, Mrs. Waterhouse was usually home that time of the day.
The medical examiner Sam Thomas arrived on the scene amidst a swarm of uniformed police officers, plain clothes detectives ,Secret Service, CSI and news people trying to get the latest scoop. A dead senator, under questionable circumstances, now that was news.
Sam did his preliminary assessment on the senator's body and saw no visible signs of trauma, except a small lump on his forehead. He surmised at that point death could be from natural causes such as a heart attack, stroke, or the senator could have possibly drowned, it was hard to tell. He would have to get him on his autopsy table to find out for sure. Due to the body being immersed in cool swimming pool water, the time of death was going to be difficult to pinpoint with any degree of certainty.
The autopsy result: Sam Thomas, the city's Chief Medical Examiner found that death was due to drowning. There was indeed a wound on the senator's forehead caused by a blunt object, but the blow was not sufficient enough to have caused his death .The senator had a blood alcohol level of 2.1 at the time of his death and the really bizarre thing was Sam had found salt water in his lungs vice fresh water. Therefore the senator was drowned in the ocean not the pool which also led to the ME's conclusion that the cause of the senator's death was indeed murder. The time of death was between eleven the night before the body was found and two o'clock that morning.
The detectives had no eyewitnesses, no murder weapon, and no clues as to who might have caused the senator's demise. The crime scene rendered nothing of value in their investigation because the swimming pool was just where the body was ultimately dumped and not where the murder actually occurred. No forensic evidence was found in the pool or the surrounding area. There was nothing, like the senator had been dropped into the pool from outer space. To make things worst none of the neighbors had seen or heard anything suspicious the night of the murder, no noises, no suspicious vehicles or activity in or around the property, nothing.
One thing the detectives felt relatively confident about was they were dealing with amateurs and not professionals. A professional would have known that if the victim was drowned in the ocean then the M.E. would find salt water in the lungs. Or of course that could have been a detail they overlooked, it was always that possibility. The perpetrators of the crime wanted it to look like the senator had simply hit his head while inebriated and drown in his own swimming pool. Such was obviously not the case.
Interesting things the detectives found out in the course of their investigation: The senator had a five million dollar life insurance policy that paid double in the event of accidental death. Hell of a motive for the wife who was the sole beneficiary of the policy and also in line to receive a sizable inheritance of property and cash in the event of the senator's death.
He had a mistress, Felicia, who was also reportedly in line to receive a big inheritance and the rumor was the senator had discussed shortly before his death that he might “cut the little slut” out of will entirely. She certainly had good motive to have the old man whacked.
Then there were his no good, dead beat, drug head sons, one of which had been in prison standing in line to try and receive a chunk of change from a dead senator and father in this case. They were certainly persons-of -interest for the detectives to take more than a cursory look at in the course of their investigation.
To add to the laundry list of suspects the senator had a whole array of political enemies, one in particular, Bill Fredricks, who would be a shoe in to win the next election with Waterhouse out of the way. Whether his enemies hated him enough to murder him, that was hard to say.
Also come to find out the wife had a lover, a Salvador Baglio, who was a seedy con man with a shady past who would probably be thrilled to have the senator out of the picture. She also had a sister, Emma Longstreet who was said to be ill and had fell into hard times of late.
The detectives were overwhelmed with suspects, any one of which could be guilty or it could be someone that they were not even aware of at the onset of their investigation. They felt from the very beginning the wife was the best suspect because she had the most to gain. However, she had an alibi for the night of the murder, her poor sick sister had swore she was with her that night. Besides, whomever drowned the senator would have had to carry his 280 lb dead limp body from the water to the beach and ultimately dump him in the swimming pool. No way Mrs. Waterhouse could have done it, not alone, at any rate. She was still a suspect even though she had an alibi. She could have hired someone else to kill the senator.
After checking on the wife's phone calls the detectives found nothing unusual. They found only calls to her sister, her two sons, and her lover, along with routine business calls. They checked bank accounts and found no transactions that seemed out of the ordinary.
The two sons yielded a similar result, although somewhat more interesting. They had made calls to known and suspected drug dealers that led the detectives to believe that might be dealing themselves. Since this wasn't germane to the case they were working on they passed it along to narcotics for further investigation.
Mrs. Waterhouse's lover's phone and bank records also showed nothing unusual. There were periodic payments from Waterhouse for his services but other than that nothing that was out of the ordinary.
Then came Felicia, the senator's mistress, she was a real piece of work the detectives discovered. Apparently he wasn't her only sugar daddy, there were several others, one of them his rival and a vast array of other political types. The Beltway was her playground, and she was playing it for all it was worth. Her phone and bank records were so haphazard it was hard to tell if she had been in contact with and paid someone to kill the senator. She certainly had the means and the motive, but there was no smoking gun or paper trail leading back to her.
The investigation was going nowhere. There were no solid leads or any suspects that didn't have an ironclad alibi for the night of the murder. After several months and thousands of pages of testimony the detectives were no closer to finding the senator's killer than when they had first begun. A man was dead, a high profile individual and they couldn't even find one person they could conceivably pin a murder rap on, it was frustrating.
But one thing the investigators never considered was maybe all of the suspects were in fact guilty. I figured that was the only way it could have happened when I first started the case because that angle was the only one the investigating detectives had not pursued. I'm Michael Parsons, FBI, and I specialize in cases that other less talented and knowledgeable detectives, even a whole team of crack police officers can't solve.
I started going through the thousands of documents and statements that they had compiled through the course of their investigation, the murder book looked like a set of encyclopedias there were so many volumes. I had to find the week link and after that the whole conspiracy would come tumbling down like a house of cards. I decided to start at the beginning, a good place to start and the same place the detectives did on the original investigation. Canvassing is not one of my favorite things but it has to be done. I just hoped that maybe one of the neighbors had remembered something they didn't at the time of their first interviews.
Close to giving up after re-interviewing several of he neighbors I decided to try an address right across the street from the senator's house that seemed to have been missed on the original canvass. I rang the doorbell and waited, at first no response but I could hear a little dog yapping somewhere inside the house. I waited patiently, no answer, so I decided to give it one more try.
“Who is it?” a timid voice of what sounded like an elderly lady, answered from behind the door.
“I'm Agent Parsons, FBI ma'am,” I said, holding up my shield to the peep hole. “I need to ask you a few questions.”
She opened the door and peeped out. I showed her my badge again and flashed a big friendly smile that I hoped would elicit her confidence. It worked because she opened the door all the way. “How can I help you young man, I'm just an old lady?”
“I'd like to ask you a few questions about Senator Waterhouse. May I come in?” I said already pushing my way pass her and into her plushy decorated living room.
Simply Shorts Too Page 5
