John Blackwell had told him not to buy too many of one item in any particular store to avoid arousing suspicion. Will respected John Blackwell, but he feared him too.
This was the last of the three ingredients he needed to make the TATP used as the detonator for their bombs.
He was on his way to the small, furnished studio in the five hundred block of Garfield that he had rented to start preparing the explosive crystals.
Will was strictly a country boy, born and raised. This was his first venture into the big city. It was a beautiful day, and he had enjoyed walking the busy streets and looking into the storefront windows.
Suddenly, he came to a halt.
In the window of a storefront was a photo of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
She was tall and blonde with shapely legs that seemed to go on forever. She was dressed in a tiny bikini that barely contained her ample bosom.
Will looked at the sign over the door, Northeast XXX. Another sign on the door said, “No one under eighteen permitted.”
Will’s exposure to the fairer sex had been almost nonexistent. From as early as he could remember, the pastor at his little country church had preached against drinking, dancing, and any other activity that might lead an impressionable lad into premarital contact with a female. When he was a senior in high school, he had kissed Becky Witherspoon behind the concession stand at the St. Clair County Rodeo, but Billy Weiss saw him and told his dad, who wailed the living tar out of him.
Even with all that going through Will’s mind, sometimes the body wins out.
As he stared at the voluptuous woman in the photo, he began to experience that familiar feeling that he had tried so hard to suppress.
He looked around and, of course, seeing no one he knew, threw caution to the wind and entered the store.
He couldn’t believe his eyes.
There were racks and racks of magazines and videos and funny-shaped gizmos hanging from hooks. Only in here there were no bikinis to cover the private parts. Everything was there to see.
He stared in amazement at pictures of men and women engaged the sex act. Being raised on a farm, he had seen the old bull go to work on the heifers, but he had never seen anything like this.
Suddenly a voice startled him back to reality. “You eighteen, boy?”
“Y-y-yes, sir,” he mumbled.
“Whad’ya want?”
“Uh, just looking.”
“Well, this ain’t no library. If you’s not gonna buy nuthin’, move on.”
Will looked around. In a bin were magazines wrapped in cellophane. The sign said, “Back issues of Busty Blondes. Five for five dollars.”
On the cover of the first one was the photo of the woman in the window.
He pulled some bills out of his pocket.
John Blackwell had given him money to buy the supplies and food, but he had found the hydrogen peroxide on sale and saved a few dollars.
He had just enough to buy the magazines.
Will wanted to look at his new magazines right away, but he knew that the others were waiting on the TATP, and making it was a long and scary process.
He poured the acetone into a large glass jug and slowly added the hydrogen peroxide, just like John Blackwell had taught him.
This mixture, along with the muriatic acid, then had to be cooled in the freezing compartment of the big refrigerator.
Having placed the ingredients in the freezer, Will ripped the cellophane off the magazines and, like Adam in the garden of good and evil, found carnal knowledge.
Will’s hands were shaking as he withdrew the ingredients from the freezer. It took all his concentration to add the muriatic acid to the acetone/hydrogen peroxide solution without spilling it.
Having accomplished this task, he placed the large jug back in the freezer. It would have to cure overnight.
He knew he should sleep, but the pull of the lusty blonde was just too strong. At last, he put the magazines away. When the passion had faded, Will tried to sleep, but his lust was replaced by fear and regret.
Words from the pastor’s sermons rang in his ears, and he could still feel the bite of his father’s strap just from kissing Becky Witherspoon.
He had sinned and followed the lustful ways of the world. He wondered how he could ever face his father or John Blackwell again. They would look at him, and they would know. He would be disgraced forever.
He tried to close his eyes, but escape into blissful sleep never came.
The next morning, Will pulled the jug from the freezer. White crystals covered the bottom of the jug. He poured the mixture through a filter and placed the crystals on paper plates to dry.
He tried to eat while the crystals were drying, but every bite he swallowed came right back out. He was weary and weak from lack of sleep, worry, and no food, and he jumped at the slightest sound.
When the crystals were dry, he carefully poured the volatile substance into a small metal cylinder and sealed the top.
He was on his way to put the cylinder in the freezer. The magazines were spread out on the kitchen table. From somewhere down the hall, someone shouted and a door slammed. Involuntarily, his arm jerked, and the cylinder slipped from his hand and fell to the floor.
The last thing Will Tucker Jr. saw was the smiling face of the busty blonde.
Chapter 8
Ox and I were patrolling the area just northeast of downtown when the radio came to life.
“All units in the northeast quadrant, report to the five hundred block of Garfield. An explosion has been reported.”
Ox keyed the mike. “Unit fifty-four en route.”
By the time we had arrived, fire trucks were on the scene. Smoke was billowing from the back of an old three-story that had been converted to apartments, but I didn’t see any flames.
We parked our black and white at an angle, sealing off the street, and headed to the front of the building to push back the gawking crowd of onlookers that had poured from the surrounding homes.
Ox had to move our car to make way for the coroner’s van. Someone hadn’t survived the explosion. Reporters with cameramen in tow flooded the scene and crowded against the firemen’s barricades.
Finally, a smoky fireman emerged from the building and passed close to our post.
“Whatcha got up there?” Ox asked.
“An explosion for sure. Not much fire, just a lot of smoke, but the one unit is trashed. One casualty.”
At that moment, the medics wheeled a gurney with a black body bag to the waiting van.
The next morning at squad meeting, Captain Short filled us in on the details.
“Officers from the bomb squad and forensics have been analyzing data collected at the scene. Our first thought was that some guy had been cooking crystal meth, but empty bottles of hydrogen peroxide and boxes of muriatic acid were found at the scene. This guy was building the detonation device for another bomb.
“We talked with the landlord of the Garfield building to get an identity on the victim. Not surprisingly, the name listed on the rental application was John Jones, and his former address was a fake.
“The victim was just a kid. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. His prints weren’t in our system, so we have no clue as to his identity. The coroner cleaned him up as best he could and took his picture, which I’ll be handing out to each of you.
“We’ll be starting a canvass of the area to see if anyone knows the kid. We may never know who he is unless someone comes forward and reports a missing person. The bad news is that these creeps that bombed the parade are still in town, and it’s obvious that they’re not through killing.”
The captain’s words were unsettling. I couldn’t help wondering what a twenty-year-old kid was doing making bombs. What kind of lif
e had he experienced that made him believe destroying other people’s lives was okay? Then I remembered seeing footage of little kids in Vietnam carrying automatic weapons and grenades. It’s a really messed-up world.
Someone in the department had leaked the photo of the victim to the press, along with the details of what had been found in the apartment. His picture was prominently displayed on the front page of the Kansas City Star. The Avenging Angels had captured the headlines once again.
Ox and I were assigned to help canvass the area around the blast site. We were on Independence Avenue with photo in hand asking every shopkeeper if they had seen the boy. We hit pay dirt at Walgreen’s.
A checkout girl remembered ringing up several bottles of hydrogen peroxide for the boy. She thought he was cute and had tried to flirt with him, but he was really shy. We called in our report and continued our canvass.
It soon became obvious that we weren’t the only ones canvassing. Several shopkeepers said that others had approached them with the same photo, asking questions.
Reporters.
We caught up with them at our next stop, Northeast XXX.
A young woman with the boy’s photo was quizzing the creepy guy behind the counter.
“Yeah, I seen him in here. I ain’t in trouble, am I? I asked if he was eighteen, and he said yes.”
“No, you’re not in trouble. Did he buy anything?”
The man thought for a moment. “Yeah, he bought a package of those,” he said, pointing to a rack of magazines. “Back issues of Busty Blondes. Five for five dollars.”
The young woman was smiling as she tucked her notebook in her purse and passed us on her way out the door. The reporter had evidently confirmed her suspicions about the magazines with her source within the police department.
The next morning, the front-page headline read, “Avenging Angel Found with Angels of His Own.”
The story talked about the boy’s purchase and that the magazines had been found in the rubble of the apartment. This information hadn’t yet been released even to us.
The initial stories about the perpetrators of the parade blast had characterized them as zealots, pious religious fanatics, but the evidence of the girlie magazines cast doubt on that theory.
Maybe they were sinners just like the rest of us.
Chapter 9
The old barn was deathly still when John Blackwell entered. The front page of the Kansas City Star was rolled up in his clenched fist.
He turned to a man with red swollen eyes and drooping shoulders. “Brother Will, I’m so sorry for your loss. Your son was a good man, but Satan is a powerful adversary. Romans 6:19 tells that perhaps more than anything else, Satan has succeeded in twisting and perverting sex. He has taken what is good and right and replaced it with lust, pornography, adultery, rape, and homosexuality. Pornography is the first step on a very slippery slope of ever-increasing wickedness and immorality.”
Will Tucker couldn’t bring himself to look Blackwell in the eye. “We tried, Brother John, the missus and me. We warned Will about the temptations of the flesh. We done all we could, but the young-uns these days is surrounded by TV and ads and music that causes them to lust.”
The murmur of agreement from the men seated around Will Tucker was cut short as Blackwell raised a clenched fist into the air.
“Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. Young Will yielded to the temptations of the devil, putting our cause in jeopardy. The Lord of hosts saw fit to punish his transgression with the very fire that he has given us to lay waste to the idolaters.”
When Blackwell saw his minions shrink in horror at his condemnation of one of their own, he softened his approach.
“The scriptures tell us that where there is good, there will be evil. We would be foolish to believe that Satan would stand idly by while we wage holy war on his subjects. But the scriptures also tell us that if the Lord is with us, who can stand against us?”
Blackwell smiled as he saw their heads nodding with approval.
“This war is not over. It has just begun, and we must gird up our loins and prepare for the battles that lie ahead.”
Chapter 10
Maggie and I were settling into married life pretty well. The new apartment was a blessing. I’m not sure our marriage would have survived without the second bathroom. I missed my old recliner, but I have to admit that I really enjoyed curling up beside Maggie in our new two-seater.
Maggie is still an active real estate agent and likes to work from home, so the new office was a real hit. A lot of her work is done in the evenings when folks are home from their jobs. I would hear her in there talking on the phone or pecking away at the computer while I read or watched TV.
Our new kitchen was big enough for a full-sized table, so now we could each spread out with our cereal bowls and newspaper without infringing on the other’s space.
I think I might have mentioned that Maggie had converted my morning cereal to something with more fiber and less sugar. She has always been more health conscious than me. When we go out to eat, she is nibbling on a salad or grilled fish while I’m glomming down something greasy smothered in gravy.
It’s one of the few things we just don’t agree on. We both stand our ground. It’s like the old immovable object coming in contact with the irresistible force. But just like the Colorado River that slowly carved the Grand Canyon out of solid rock, Maggie began chipping away at my health issues.
One morning, I found two purple capsules lying beside my cereal bowl.
“What are these?”
“Those are for your prostate.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my prostate. Doc Jones said so the last time he stuck his hand up my ass.”
“Exactly when was that?”
“Um, four years ago.”
“I thought so.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my prostate. I can pee, and I can still get it up pretty well. Besides, I don’t like to take drugs.”
“These aren’t drugs. They are all-natural ingredients that help you maintain a healthy body.”
“My body doesn’t need any help.”
That’s when Maggie brought out the big guns. She produced an article and started reading, “Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer found in American men, other than skin cancer. It is the second leading cause of cancer death in men. One man in six will get prostate cancer during his lifetime. Fifty percent of all men over the age of fifty have enlarged prostates.”
“But Maggie—”
“Don’t but Maggie me! I waited all my life for just the right man to come along, and at sixty-seven you just don’t know how many years we’ll have together. I don’t want to lose you, and you’re too damn stubborn to take care of yourself, so I guess it’s up to me. Now swallow those capsules. They won’t kill you, but they might keep you alive.”
Then came the icing on the cake.
She smiled and gave me her pitiful look. “You’ll do it for me, won’t you?”
What else could I do?
Sure enough, the capsules didn’t kill me. In fact, I didn’t feel anything different at all. I mentioned this to Maggie. She told me that natural stuff doesn’t work like drugs. The effects are cumulative over time.
One evening we had just polished off a large pepperoni lover’s from Pizza Hut. I was wiping the grease off my fingers when Maggie delivered her next salvo in my health transformation.
“Walt, we eat entirely too much meat and grease. We need to do a colon cleanse.”
“Say what?”
“A colon cleanse. Over the years, especially as we grow older, mucous and fecal material build up in your colon.”
I looked at the glom clinging to the bottom of the pizza carton. That thought wasn’t how I wanted to finish off my meal.
> “There’s nothing wrong with my colon.”
“Oh really? And just how do you know that?”
“Well, everything I eat seems to come out—eventually.”
“Experts say you should clean your colon of mucous, fecal matter, and parasites every year. Have you ever done it?”
“Parasites? What are you talking about?”
“You know, tapeworms, stuff like that.”
I looked at a piece of stringy cheese on the side of the box and noticed a queasy feeling in my stomach.
“Is this all really necessary?”
“Let me tell you a story. When Elvis died, they did an autopsy. His colon was filled with over seventy pounds of impacted fecal material—mostly old cheeseburgers and fries.”
This was way more information than I wanted to hear about my most cherished idol. “So how does this cleanse thing work?”
She produced a bottle of pills. I guess it was a foregone conclusion that we were both going to be cleansed.
“We just take five of these at bedtime, and in the morning nature will take its course.”
Dutifully, I swallowed the pills.
At 6:00 a.m. the next morning, I had a rude awakening. It felt as if a volcano was about to erupt in my lower regions. Fortunately, the bathroom wasn’t far, and I waddled toward it with my cheeks clinched shut.
My butt hit the seat just in time, and in the next three minutes everything I had ever eaten from last night’s pizza to the hot dogs I ate after my senior prom came pouring out. I staggered from the bathroom, a beaten man.
Maggie greeted me in the kitchen.
“Now doesn’t that feel better?”
Actually, it felt like my asshole was on fire, but I smiled and said, “Yes! That was just grand!”
I opened my paper, drank my coffee, and ate my cereal, but before I had finished the comics, the fiber kicked in. I felt another rumbling in my stomach and made a beeline for the bathroom.
[Lady Justice 04] - Lady Justice And The Avenging Angels Page 5
