Authoring Amelia

by Lia Conklin

  Amelia shook her head vehemently.

  “But I don’t just want to hand this over. I want someone to tell us what it means. The FBI won’t do that. They’re not going to just call us up and say, ‘By the way, that audio you dropped off for us? Well, the guy is this terrorist wanted for the such-and-such and he confessed to killing your family. So glad we could help.’”

  “True,” she conceded, “but you’re not going to go to Al Qaeda and ask them whose voice is on the tape, either.”

  “Maybe a private investigator?” Amelia suggested. “We’ve got evidence from the explosion that suggests it was intentional. Maybe a private investigator could help put the pieces together?”

  “And how will they link this to the explosion? Even if you discover whose voice is on it, that doesn’t prove anything, only that he threatened your father.”

  “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” Amelia exploded. “I mean, my mother and brother are dead, the gas company won’t take responsibility, the government and Al Qaeda are out of reach, so what can I hope for?”

  “Okay, okay,” Connie acquiesced, softly capturing Amelia’s hands in her own. “It’s a possibility. But before we figure that out, there is something I’d like to share with you. Are you up for some good news?”

  Chapter 71

  Amelia wasn’t quite ready to drop the flash drive but decided good news would be a welcome interruption, so she simply leaned back in her chair and watched Connie tug out a newspaper from underneath the corner of the safe. It was the New York Times. Connie thumbed to a page and set it on the table in front of Amelia.

  “Not the front page, but I think it’ll do the trick.”

  Amelia had not even taken it in her hands when she saw her father’s picture and under it the heading “Missing Newspaper Reporter: Victim of USDHS or Bodily Harm?” In a second, Amelia snatched it up and began to read.

  Former newspaper reporter Robert Kingston of the Free News Press has been missing since April 12th. He was last seen at the Houston International Airport in the custody of TSA agents. Family and friends believe that Kingston may have been detained as a material witness due to his political views and contacts with Middle-Eastern informants. Kingston was best known for coverage of the London Bombing in 2005. If you have any information regarding Robert Kingston’s whereabouts, please contact the New York Times, c/o Ana Kowalski.

  Amelia looked up at Connie in stunned silence. She knew she was supposed to be pleased, but all she felt was bitterness.

  Connie smiled back at her before saying, “Sealed case or no, this article gives someone a chance to anonymously let us know where he is.”

  “This is fabulous,” Amelia said with forced excitement. “How did you do it, Connie?”

  “Ana’s a friend at the New York Times. We went to school together and have worked together on a number of stories. She covers the immigration beat, so I thought this was a good tie-in.”

  “Do you think someone will respond?” Amelia asked, half hoping Connie would say “No,” and her father would be lost forever to the brutal throes of injustice that were turning out to be more just than Amelia had first believed.

  “We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, why don’t I send your flash drive,” she said picking it up and waving it at Amelia, “to the New York Times? Maybe someone can identify the voice.”

  “Connie, you’re a genius,” she declared, with real enthusiasm this time. “But not because your idea is any good,” she clarified. “You just made me think of an even better one!”

  “Humph. Is that how it is?” Connie replied with feigned hurt.

  “Yep. So, I’ll take the flash drive,” she said, standing up and taking it from Connie’s hand. “I know just the person who can figure it out for us.”

  With that, she gave Connie a quick hug. Then depositing the flash drive in her grandmother’s coat pocket, she walked out the door.

  Chapter 72

  She was waiting with her ear to the receiver for someone to pick up, but unlike last time, with little anticipation. She looked forward to hearing his voice, yet she dreaded what she would have to tell him.

  “Weiland Ranch,” she finally heard and in spite of herself, she felt a burst of enthusiasm.

  “Russ! It’s Amelia. It’s so nice to hear your voice!”

  “Hey, Amelia. It’s good to hear yours too. What the heck have you been up to?”

  They bantered for a bit, but it was Russ’s news that would open the door to her inevitable confession.

  “I just got back from Tahoe,” Russ announced. “It, and he, was fabulous. We really hit it off. I’m going back out in another month or two, this time for a few weeks. We want to see if we can tolerate each other for more than a week at a time.”

  “Wow, Russ. That’s fabulous. I’m so excited for you. I truly hope everything works out between the two of you.”

  “You don’t sound that excited, Amelia. What’s up?”

  “Am I that transparent?” Amelia laughed. “Well, Russ, I made a super big promise to someone in exchange for some super important information, and that super big promise involves Jason and Lake Tahoe.”

  “Okay, wait a second. Can you start from the beginning?”

  So, Amelia gave him the briefest possible version of her missing father story.

  “It even got written up in the New York Times,” she said, giving him the information he needed to find the article. She then went on to explain why she had needed Bull’s help and how she had gotten it.

  “Russ, I’m sorry. I was desperate, and it just came to me. I know it’s a big ask, but is there any possible way you can help? I could pay your friend for it. Turns out my father left me a lot of money.”

  Russ was more sympathetic than Amelia could have hoped for. He insisted that Jason would understand and would go out of his way to make Bull’s stay memorable.

  “Anything to help you out, Amelia. But Amelia, why didn’t you tell me any of this before? I never even knew your mother and brother had passed away. I thought we were better friends than that,” he admonished. “But that doesn’t matter now. I know now and I’ll do what I can.”

  “Russ, you really are the best. I’m sorry I didn’t confide in you earlier. And now, at the risk of pushing my gall to the limit, I need to ask for your help with one more thing.” She winced as she said it, but Russ’s “Sure!” was so immediate she knew he was not put off.

  “I need another favor from Bull. Can you think of any way I could convince him?”

  They discussed the problem for a while longer, and when Amelia hung up, she was ready to dial the next number.

  “Yes, Mr. Goldfield, it’s ‘that freckly girl’ again. And no, I’m not calling to renege on our agreement. In fact, I’m calling to sweeten it, but I need something in return.”

  Hanging up the phone, she fished the flash drive out of her pocket. She pilfered a padded envelope from her grandmother’s desk, addressed it, and then slipped the drive inside. Who could have ever foretold what a helpful figure Bull would be in her life. Absurd! She mused.

  Chapter 73

  Before dropping the envelope off at the post office, Amelia purchased a round-trip ticket for Bull to Lake Tahoe for a two-week January vacation. Then she dropped the tickets in the envelope to consort with the flash drive before she sealed it and sent it on its way. The other envelope she mailed to Jason held a four thousand dollar check for an escort and friend of Jason’s, Hannah Lee. Though formerly known as Harold, Amelia decided what Bull didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, and what he did know would certainly help her.

  So now it was time to wait.

  She didn’t have much time to wait, however. By the time she got back to her grandmother’s from the post office, she already had a message from Connie to get her butt over there; they had gotten a bite.

  “What did she mean by that?” her grandmother asked, having overheard the message and not sure whether to be turned off more by the word “butt” or the
enigma, itself.

  “Just the lawsuit, Grandma. We’re following a couple threads, and one just paid off. I promise when I know more I’ll fill you in on everything,” she insisted as she planted a kiss on her grandmother’s forehead before rushing towards the door.

  “Oh yeah, Grandma, can I take…”

  Her grandmother just waved her on from the kitchen. “You’re in luck dear,” she answered, “I’m being a homebody today. And when are you getting that license so I don’t have to worry about you driving around illegally?”

  “Oh yeah, that,” Amelia said sheepishly. “Sorta been on the back burner.”

  “Well, let’s move it to the front, shall we?” she replied. “What about a game of Scrabble when you get back?”

  “Only if you accept Spanish words too, Grandma. Otherwise I haven’t got a chance!”

  “Alright, but that means Latin, French, and Yiddish are free game as well,” she countered.

  “Yiddish?” Amelia laughed. “Since when do you speak Yiddish?”

  “Since my Jewish hairdresser has been teaching me for ten years,” she bragged.

  “Okay, Gramma. You win. English it is. I’ll see you later.”

  “L-A-T-E-R,” she called after Amelia, “worth seven points.”

  “Fourteen, Gram,” Amelia called back. “I’m on a double word score!”

  Chapter 74

  Although Amelia had her own news to share, this time she would let Connie lead with hers. She could see that Connie, in her excitement, would have it no other way. Amelia had but barely opened the door when Connie was already propelling her towards the kitchen table. Bypassing her customary cup of coffee, she began to spill the news before Amelia touched her butt to the seat.

  “We got it. The tip. Ana just called me this morning. She got a call from a guy that claimed to be involved in some way with your father’s case. Ana got the feeling that he was his attorney, but she couldn’t be sure. Anyway, this is going to print tomorrow.” She thrust Amelia the draft of the New York Times article.

  Missing Reporter Held Secretly at MDC

  Robert Kingston, a newspaper reporter of the Free News Press, who has gone missing since April 12th of this year, may actually be found among the ranks of hundreds of others who have suffered the misuse of the material witness statute.

  The material witness statute allows for the involuntary detainment of witnesses until which time their testimony is presented to a grand jury or in a criminal trial, provided that they both possess information ‘material’ to the case and pose a flight risk. Since 9/11, however, the government has employed an expansive view of this statute in its War on Terror, using it to indefinitely detain and question hundreds of persons without due process. Only a handful of those detained ever testify in a court proceeding. As a result, the practice has been under fire by civil liberties organizations for violation of Fifth Amendment rights. In spite of a recent ruling by the federal appeals court in New York that found the misuse of material witness warrants unconstitutional, the case of Robert Kingston may demonstrate that this misuse continues.

  Robert Kingston, was last seen on April 12th when he was detained by airport security at the Houston International Airport. An anonymous source with ties to Kingston’s case claims that Kingston was first held as a material witness at the Houston Federal Detention Center and later transferred to the Metropolitan Detention Center where he is now being held. According to the source, the US government has not charged Kingston with a crime and has not offered ‘sufficient and compelling’ evidence that warrants his indefinite detention as a material witness. The source insists that Kingston’s legal team is doing everything possible to “overcome the obstacles and stall tactics” the government has placed before them. “We are optimistic,” the source reports, “that we will soon be able to reunite Mr. Kingston with his family.”

  “Of course,” Connie jumped in the moment Amelia’s eyes lifted from the page, “being held in this legal limbo is no laughing matter. We have no idea what will happen next. We assume your father’s legal team will continue to challenge his detention, which may lead to his release, or his being charged.”

  “Charged? On what grounds?”

  “That’s hard to say. All I can say is that since most material witnesses within the context of the War on Terror never actually testify, I doubt that your father will, either. Typically, they are either released or charged with a crime. The crimes can be as sensational as terrorist activity or as mundane as opening a social media account for a suspected terrorist.”

  “So, all we can do is wait,” Amelia conceded. She knew that Connie wanted her to feel excited that they had found him, but excitement wasn’t among the crowd in her bag of emotions. Relief? Okay, she’d give him that, to know he was okay. Worry? Maybe, for what he had to face. Frustration? Absolutely, for there he was, a location attached to his name and no way to hold him accountable for his real crimes, crimes the government lacked the imagination to trump up. Anger? Always.

  “In the meantime,” Connie said, interrupting her introspection, “I’m sure this will create a few waves. Maybe enough of them to pressure the U.S. government into making a different decision.”

  “Oh, God,” Amelia exclaimed. “If this creates waves like you think it will, my grandma will never again be able to hold her head high at the Governor’s Tea!”

  Chapter 75

  Only after Amelia left Connie’s did she realize what finding her father really meant. She realized he held so many of the answers she had sought, and although she felt vindication in his captivity, she needed him to release her from hers. She needed him to tell her the meaning in all the bizarre twists and turns his life and hers had taken. What had he really done? Who was the man on that recording? What had really happened that spring night that had turned their lives to winter?

  In spite of her every pore that cried out for the answers she knew he could provide, she would have to wait. And though her grandmother did not need another advantage in the game of Scrabble that poured across the dining room table, Amelia’s mind, on the verge of knowing the truth, distracted her from finding an adequate place for the ‘X’ she picked on her second turn. In the end, she subtracted it from a score of fifty-two, along with a ‘J’ and an ‘H’.

  That night even Donovan could not visit in her sleep as the ‘X’ in executive power and explosion danced through her dreams like some sadistic episode of Sesame Street that excommunicated journalists and took the axe to the U.S. constitution.

  Chapter 76

  The weeks that followed as she waited on the outskirts of her father’s legal purgatory seemed to drag on and on. Amelia was also a spectator on the distant sidelines of the Honduran saga that continued to play out thousands of miles away. She discovered that her stepbrother had finally been released from the hospital, but it had become clear that his mother’s coma was permanent. Until someone made the more permanent decision to end it, that is. In the meantime, the two hundred thousand dollars her father had buried took the sting out of the hospital bills she continued to pay and the start-up money she transferred to her stepbrother.

  She was somewhat a bystander in her own life as well. After weeks of hurried discoveries into the hidden aspects of her past, this new pace of waiting left her detached and restless. Her nausea had increased, and she could no longer pretend that it was only her past that mattered. Yet, only closure, she knew, would release her to move forward.

  There was the constant pall of sadness, too, as she waited. Her changing body and the dreams that came at night—and those that infiltrated her days—were a constant reminder of Donovan. She had pushed from her mind her romantic illusions of the nuclear family, but the ever-present waves of his memory tested her levee of resolve, exploiting each weakness.

  And there was Jonathon. Now that he was no longer in the picture, she realized how much she missed him. She knew, if given the chance, they would have loved. Maybe not with the same intensity as she had loved Donovan,
but she felt sure that under the tenderness of Jonathon’s love hers would have responded. It was a moot point, she knew. How could he have continued to love her knowing she was to have another man’s baby? It wasn’t a question she needed him to answer and, more than anything, she was relieved that she would never have to explain to him a stomach that was already bulging and a father held in legal limbo.

  Amelia knew, however, that she would have to explain both of these counts to her grandmother sooner or later. She couldn’t expect her to stay in the dark forever. But before she could prepare for this inevitability, the need to explain one of the situations came about sooner rather than later. Amelia was just descending the stairs when she heard voices at the front door. When she got to the kitchen, she saw her grandmother’s back and through the opened door the pencil and pad of a reporter.

  “Is it true, Mrs. Kingston that your son is being held as a suspected terrorist?” Amelia overheard as she made her way to her grandmother’s aid.

  “What? What are you talking about?” her grandmother sputtered, a mixture of confusion and indignation upon the wrinkled face that would appear in the paper the following morning.

  “Hey, hey!” Amelia shouted, wedging herself between her grandmother and the reporter. “Leave her out of this. If you need to talk to someone, talk to me. Now Grandma,” she gently commanded, “let me deal with this. I promise to tell you what it’s all about after. Please, Grandma,” she pleaded when her grandmother showed no signs of moving, “just go into the living room. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  She watched as her grandmother reluctantly made her way towards the living room, looking back over her shoulder to shake her head.