METHUSELAH - Chapter VII - "Interlude, 2"
The police went in heavy. Why, nobody really knew; the protocol made sense on paper, but by anyone’s estimations, the unknown man was dead, or almost, after taking bullets to the chest and the head; being laid to rest in a cryogenic chamber meant for preserving bodies in death only pushed him closer to it. The coroners didn’t dare to open the freezer until armed support showed up, even as both of them wore pistols on their hip daily.
A mix of officers and deputies arrived, as well as the expected entourage of emergency medical service officers. The local stormchaser’s club briefly joined the party as well, to everyone’s confusion, before being sternly rebuked.
Among the crowd of conflicting badges, an argument ensued. Nobody could understand why the coroners didn’t remove the man from the freezer the moment they heard banging and moans coming from within. Certainly, zombies weren’t real, and anybody subjected to those frigid temperatures for any considerable length of time would be too weak to start swinging and kicking for a while after being freed. The inaction — the coroners tried to explain in their own nervous defense — stemmed from the simple fact that the man had a bullet wound to the head, one that left a gory, gaping ridge down the center of his skull. One of the sergeants on scene, a Sgt. Daniel Osmond, had enough of the back-and-forth pontificating between the coroners and everyone else. Oh, for fuck’s sake, just open the fuckin’ door, he yelled.
As the door was unlatched and the bed retracted, the man — his face frosted over and shivering with such force that the bed shook as if an earthquake was striking the town — limply fell off the bed and onto the floor. Two of the EMS workers caught him just in time before his head hit the ground. Immediately, the rest of the EMS fellows got to work: stripping him of his frozen and bloodied clothing, he was covered with warm blankets, and heatpacks were applied to the armpits, groin, and abdomen. An IV with warm fluids was immediately started.
“Keep him still, keep him still,” one of the paramedics directed. “Don’t move him.”
“You sure this is the right guy?” The paramedic tending to the IV looked at the coroners, who were standing around in shock.
“Yes. That’s him. I just — it has to be, but —”
“Where’s the bullet wounds?”
There was nothing. The man’s head was in one piece. There were no entry wounds in his chest, despite his since-removed shirt looking like bloodstained Swiss cheese.
“I’m telling you … this is him. This is the man.” He couldn’t believe it. The Coroner walked over to the freezer and began unlatching the doors, one by one, for everyone to see. It had been a quiet few weeks, and the only other body in house was the Mexican girl’s.
Once stabilized, the man was taken to the hospital, where his rapid recovery was astounding to all except him. There was no reason to keep him there for any long period of time, but still, the detectives questioned him relentlessly as he laid there on the bed, tired and bored. What’s your name? Silence. What happened over at the barn and ranch? Silence. He stonewalled them all until, in his impatience, bellowed on that he wouldn’t be participating in their useless line of inquiry.
After getting him cleaned and dressed, they read him his Miranda rights and cuffed him again. All of his strength seemed to return. A few zipties were looped around his wrists and forearms as well to prevent the embarrassment incurred on the Gillette Police Department from getting any worse, although the fault is hardly their own, considering the circumstances of the stranger they captured.
Detective Thomas McElroy kept close track of the eventful forty-eight hours that were thrust upon their small-but-growing city — with most of it taken out on him in person or through a telephone, courtesy of Lieutenant Roscoe Woods. Local news had already covered (incorrectly) the story of a meth-head terrorizing the café; you better lid this good, kid, the Lieutenant threatened, because once they hear this guy wasn’t actually put down, it’ll be in the news for weeks.
“Yes, sir.”
“Yeah. Do we even know who he is yet? Nothing came back on those fingerprints?”
“Nothing yet.”
“What’s taking them so dang long?”
“Sir, I really don’t know. I’ve got nothing for ya. I’m pretty pissed off too.”
“About what? Your officers’ screw-up, or the FBI finger-fucks taking their sweet ass time?”
McElroy’s face was flushed with anger and shame. “The FBI, sir.”
“Hmmph.”
April 1st, 1941, 1:51 AM.
Victoria was a worried mess; her husband didn’t stay out late so often, but after two days of fighting and bickering started by him knocking over an heirloom vase of hers on accident, he packed a bag and left the house. On days like that, she’d feel her age, then the vulnerability, then the sorrow for everything her husband was experiencing over a lifetime becoming much too long.
1:53 AM: Samuel burst through the front door.
“Sam!—”
“Turn that light off!”
“What’s —”
“TURN THEM OFF! ALL THE LIGHTS!”
She noticed the blood dripping from his nose and knuckles.
“Samuel — what on earth —”
“What did I say, Victoria? THE LIGHTS!” He darted from room to room, smacking the light switches.
Within twenty seconds, the house was entirely dark. Defeated, and too accustomed to her husband’s strange episodes, she remained seated on the couch.
“Get in here. Now,” she called out.
The footsteps in the dark approached the living room. Samuel’s dark shadow sat beside her.
“Hey, you. I was gone a while, wasn’t I? I apologize.”
“Two days.”
“The time just flew by.
“Sam. Your hands.”
“What — oh.”
“…What did you do?”
“The guy.”
“The guy?”
“Yeah. You know, the man who rear-ended you at the light last week.”
“OK …”
“OK? Well, we got into it, Victoria, what else do you want me to say?”
“… You killed him, didn’t you?”
“What? What? What kind of poppycock is that? Are you kidding me? No, but I think his nose is broken.”
“Samuel?”
“What?”
“Why are we sitting in the dark?”
“Somebody called for the police. I saw them flivvering up the road just as I turned left off Main Street. They’re driving up and down the streets with their stupid light and shining it in people’s houses like a bunch of crooks.” Flashing lights illuminated the neighborhood with waves of red and blue. “See? Here they are.”
“Should — should we hide in the bedroom?”
“No. They can’t see us from there. Not at this angle.”
“Samuel, why did you do that?”
“Why not, sweetpea?”
“Because I need you here, and not in jail.”
He sighed. “I know. I know … Shit. Shit!”
“What now?”
“I left the bat in the alley. Damn. That was a good bat. From our trip down to Louisville. Remember?”
“What if there’s fingerprints?”
“So?”
“They’ll know it’s you.”
“We’ve discussed this. I’ve never had my fingerprints taken.”
“No, Samuel — yes, I know we’ve discussed this — and you did.”
“… I keep forgetting that. Why does it keep slipping my mind?”
“I don’t know.” She ran her hand through his hair. “Maybe …”
“Maybe my brain is getting old, but the rest of me isn’t. Wouldn’t that be a hoot.”
“Maybe.”
“When were they taken again? I can’t remember for anything.”
“The anniversary dinner — our third year, Sammy —”
“Right.”
“You beat him senseless.”
“It was far past his time to get it.”
“He was my father, Samuel.”
“He was a goldbrick wino.”
“That may be, but — Samuel, that’s my father you’re —”
“Victoria?”
Again, she sighed. “…Yes, love?”
“What’s wrong with me?”
She was taken aback. “What do you mean?” The palm of her right hand rested on the top of his left.
“I haven’t aged a bit since the war. I look exactly the same. People are starting to ask …”
“Ask what?”
“You and me, Vick.”
Two cars passed their sleepy house in the darkness.
“I know I’m looking older.”
“I — that isn’t what I’m getting at. It’s not that you’re looking older. You look just fine for your age. I should be there with you … but I’m not.”
“My mother,” she started, “Remember how long she kept her beauty? I swear, until she was sixty, men were breaking their necks trying to stare at her. Mine? I hit forty, and from there …”
“Vick —”
“What’s my excuse? What are my hardships? You take care of me so well. A maid once a week for the floors, for the hard stuff, and —”
“Vick, can I just — I wish —”
“Childless.”
“Yeah, goodnight Victoria, I’m going — oh, shit!” Right before a beam of light entered through the shades, Samuel hit the ground. “Vick! Get down!” He pulled at her leg. Placid and sad, she sat like a statue. Her husband didn’t see the lonesome tear fall from the corner of her eye.
“What gives them the right,” he whispered harshly, “to shine those damned lights in people’s homes? Is this legal? This illegal, I know it. What day is it tomorrow? Friday? I’m going to stop by that lawyer’s office across from the post office, after work.” With caution he rose from the floor, and dusted himself off. “I’m going to bed. Let’s go to bed, Vick.”
“I’ll be there in just a minute.”
“Are you alright?”
“No more fighting, Samuel. Please.”
“No more getting rear-ended by these boozehound idiots.” The bedroom door squeaked, and he collapsed onto the mattress.
There must be a mistake. There has to be, thought McElroy. Fuckheads can never get anything right.
He looked again at the printout of information that returned with the fingerprint query.
Samuel Henry Carmichael. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Date of birth: November 9th, 1892.
Listed near the bottom of the report was a number to contact a liaison had there been any questions or concerns with the information provided. Detective McElroy dialed the number and left a message, and fired off an email shortly afterwards. The impending conversation with Lieutenant Woods left a heavy stirring in his stomach, but there was no avoiding it. He knocked thrice on Woods’ door. The fat man waved him in as he hung up a phone.
“Well?”
“They fucked it up.”
“What …” He rubbed his eyes and sighed. “What do you …. Who?”
“The FBI, sir. Take a look.” He slid the report across Woods’ desk. The lieutenant took it into his clammy hands and thumbed through it.
“OK, but what am I looking at here?”
“The date of birth, sir.”
“And that’s … ok, right here. Date of birth … November ninth, eighteen …” He shook his head and threw the report at McElroy. “Damn it!”
“I know, but I —”
“This is what our fuckin’ tax dollars go to. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. Eighteen ninety-three, huh? … So? Did you dial the liaison?”
“Yes, sir. Left a message and sent an email.”
“I … I don’t know.” The lieutenant glanced at his watch. “Guy’s been stonewalling us since we yanked him out of the hospital. And, check this out — all of the bullet casings have been recovered, every damn one, but nobody can find a single bullet hole at the café. But there’s blood. Blood everywhere. He was hit. Every single time. Even the bullets are gone.”
“Every witness, all twelve of them, saw this guy get brained. What the hell were the coroners doing when they took the body? They didn’t take photographs or at least document anything at all in writing?”
“Cut them some slack,” barked Lieutenant Woods, rubbing his face in exasperation and exhaustion. “They’ve been working like dogs all week. First that couple, the meth’d out Bonnie and Clyde … then the Mexican girl, then this, and now those burned bodies they found at the ranch. All within a week. What’s funny to me, I’ll tell you,” he continued, “All these kids on their phones and not a single one has anything on camera, let me say. Not at the café or the ranch.”
“Yeah.”
“Alright. Well … the liaisons get back pretty quick, usually. Let’s call it a night. Seven-thirty … long day. Tomorrow, though, if we don’t have a corrected report, call them again and again. Keep calling until their phones go bust. And I want you to go to this guy and see if Samuel Carmichael is really his name. Maybe they only fucked up on the date of birth and nothing else.”
“Will do.”
“The ranch — I’m telling you, this guy and the ranch — it’s cartel shit. This whole thing is about to be out of our hands very soon. Don’t sweat any of this too much. I’ll be surprised if the feds don’t swing by first thing tomorrow morning and take the ball out of our court.”
McElroy raised his eyebrows. “Hopefully.”
“Alright. Go home. Get some rest.”
Those were magic words to Detective McElroy’s ears. Determination — and more so, curiosity — would keep him away from his needy pregnant wife if he didn’t tear himself away from the precinct. Sometimes, he didn’t mind much.
A second time, a third, and after a lengthy argument with the record department’s liaison during which profanity was used like paint on bare drywall, the Lieutenant held for a fourth time a fresh report professing with authority that Samuel Henry Carmichael — confirmed to be the man in the cell after he whipped his head in the direction of the Detective who whispered loudly the name — indeed was born on November 9th, 1892. Clearly, the Lieutenant sadly believed, the report was incorrect; and furthermore, Mr. Carmichael remained dead silent as if his mind was locked away in a wooden chest dropped to the bottom of the sea. He breathed, he ate, he lingered in the cell, sometimes walking in circles, sometimes laying immobile for hours on end, staring at the ceiling; but he spoke not a single word over the six days he was saved from the body fridge at the morgue.
It didn’t matter. It mattered none. In the back of the Lieutenant’s mind, not only were the alphabet agencies going to take the reins on investigating all of the events that began at the ranch and ended at the café, but repeated queries for fingerprints on Samuel Carmichael were bound to speed up the arrival of at least the FBI, the “fat, pasty accountants with guns”, and he wasn’t wrong. On December 22nd, 2015, the FBI, in conjunction with the DEA and the ATF, alerted the Gillette Police Department that they were going to be taking custody of the silent Samuel Carmichael, as he was a key witness to the carnage that happened down at the ranch where charred remains of more than fifteen men were found, not counting the possibly countless more reduced to nothing but ash. Both Detective McElroy and Lieutenant Woods were relieved; resources to handle the investigation were scant, and between the burned bodies and the resurrected Mr. Carmichael who was — by all eyewitness accounts — killed, what had been named one of the strangest weeks in Gillette’s recent history by local and national papers was way bigger than what the town could handle, notwithstanding the fact that Gillette was about to become the epicenter of a discovery that could’ve possibly changed the understanding of human nature forever.
On the same evening the FBI arrested Samuel, Detective McElroy took a personal day from work. He hadn’t slept all night; the heat in the house had gone bust and his wife lost her mother to a heart attack the night before. The one-two punch ensured he wouldn’t be sleeping at all. Your mother put you in foster care for two years, he desperately wanted to say, and here you are, twenty-two years old, crying over a woman who didn’t give two shits about you. Closing his eyes and pretending not to hear her sobs, nonetheless, was easier, and at some point, he drifted into real sleep.
… Still, it didn’t come easily. At 2:09 PM he awoke with a terrible thirst, his heartbeat like a drum in his chest. As he drew water with cupped hands from the bathroom sink, he tried to recall the dream that haunted him. Something about a very old car — a Model T, possibly — rear-ending his wife, and the driver making a big stink about how he wasn’t a real American for not, in his words, ‘supporting the damn troops’. The driver yelling about this, as it turned out, was John Gotti. His wife hated it when he watched those mob dramas late into the night. Maybe the woman’s right, he thought, beads of water dripping down his neck.
… The troops. McElroy remembered: his cousin, a few years back, started an open-source internet database, entirely free, that could be used to find any soldier who had ever received a medal, provided that it was public information. The project started out small, but soon exploded with hundreds of thousands of entries submitted by tens of thousands of volunteers. It grew to include tens of thousands of entries for soldiers from fourty-five different countries going as far back as the Revolutionary War. There was even talk in the family that the ancestry website people used to make family trees would be buying the service, leaving cousin Adam a minor millionaire.
It’d be a long shot, but he figured he’d may as well try.
The bedroom floor creaked as he snuck back in for his laptop, careful not to wake his sleeping wife who, at some point, also crawled into bed for a midday nap. Lifting it off the nightstand, he crept back out and planted it onto the kitchen table. He opened the screen and saw the battery was almost dead at 14%. More than enough, he thought. When the web browser launched, he typed “ValorVault” into the address bar, and the simple interface appeared. He entered all of the corresponding information: SAMUEL in the first name field, CARMICHAEL for the surname, USA for country of origin. PITTSBURGH was listed as an optional place of birth, as McElroy doubted the validity of even that. Nonetheless, the inclusion of the city narrowed down the search from 11 results to 6.
The results were ordered from most recent to oldest. Some entries had photos; some didn’t. All were faces of young men — some stern, some serious, some lighthearted — and some had short biographies included. It was a fun idea, but by result four out of six, he was already looking through entries of men who served before the Second World War. By that point, he was paging through the results out of boredom.
Result six out of six was for a CARMICHAEL, SAMUEL HENRY. What a coincidence, McElroy thought with a smirk. That Samuel was given a Medal of Honor. The biography fascinated him: he was a Pittsburgh boy, just like their own perp, and after having been drafted, he fought in France and …
… DATE OF BIRTH: NOVEMBER 9th, 1892.
No fucking way, said McElroy under his own breath. No way. There was even a photograph — two, actually — of the award ceremony. The President was there, as were a few dignitaries. The man in the center was the soldier who received the Medal. That looks exactly …
No. No way. This can’t be.
Lieutenant Woods, as luck would have it, lived only three blocks away from Detective McElroy, an awkward situation that made McElroy’s taking of days off a sometimes troublesome proposition. There’d be no faking an illness or anything else of the sort. But he was able to be at the McElroy residence within four minutes after receiving a frantic phone call from the detective he considered the best in the precinct, although he’d never have McElroy know that.
He stood afront the front door and called instead of knocking, as McElroy requested. He was hurried in silently.
“You need to see this. Come here. Sit down.”
“This better be good, boy.”
“I promise it is.”
McElroy turned the laptop towards his superior. Only seconds passed before Woods understood exactly what he was looking at.
“What the — so, that is Samuel Carmichael.”
“Yes.”
“What’s with the black and white photograph?”
“Read this. Read it all.”
“OK … ok.” His eyes darted from left to right, top to bottom as he scanned the page. “This — no, this is him. But the date of birth is wrong.”
“November 9th, 1892. Same as the report.” McElroy read out.
“No. No, that’s bullshit.”
“How do you explain this?” McElroy navigated to another website dedicated to every Medal of Honor recipient since the award started to first be given. “Look.”
“… Same photo. Same … what the fuck?”
“I … and look. All of the details match. This is clearly him.”
“Go to the police department website. His booking photo’s been put up. Let’s put them side by side.”
Two minutes later, the task was complete — the booking entry (which also recorded his birthday as November 9th, 1892) was beside the old photo from Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House.
The likeness was exact.
Detective McElroy cleared his throat. “Maybe the fingerprints —”
“What? The fingerprint report is what led us to this mess.”
“I mean, not our mess.”
“I …” Lieutenant Woods was speechless. “You really think …”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. This could be some kind of a hoax, maybe. Maybe?”
“No. Too many bodies.”
“And the FBI — did they say anything at all?” McElroy shook his head in disbelief.
“No. You know how they are. They took everything of what we knew, which wasn’t much anyways, and left us in the dark.”
“You think they’ve figured this one out?”
“I don’t know. And I’m not willing to tell them,” said Woods. “I washed my hands of all this when they came rolling into town with the other alphabet boys. I want nothing to do with whatever they say is theirs. You’d be smart to do the same.”
“Yeah … but, the booking photo.”
“What about it?”
“His birthday.”
“Nobody’s gonna believe that. Truth be told,” Woods continued, “I really don’t at all. ATF, FBI … who else? DEA. They’re all in on this. I think this is just something that, I don’t know, they did to fool people.”
“You think he’s an undercover agent?”
“Yeah … yeah.” Woods shrugged his shoulders. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. I mean, if not that …”
“The guy down in Cheyenne. You know, the journalist who’s with those … what are they called?”
“The investigators?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I forget.”
“I’m going to point some of this out to him. See what he does.”
Woods sighed. “I mean, this is all public information. I don’t see why not. Keep me out of this. I need a stiff drink, so I’m going home. This is some weird shit.”
“I … there’s no other explanation. I don’t think the DEA or FBI or … the fucking ABC-123 would be so sloppy as to create a fake identity for someone and make the fake birthday to be in the 1800’s. Does that sound right to you?”
“It doesn’t. But a whiskey sour does sound right to me. I’m tired, McElroy.”
“You took the day off today?”
“Yup. When you called out, I said, ‘fuck it, I’ll do the same’. Things have finally gotten quiet. Good time to take a Thursday off, isn’t it?” He rose from the wobbly wooden chair. “See you Sunday?”
“Yeah. See you Sunday.”
“Alright. Bob ain’t gonna be there. Him and the missus are seeing family in Florida. Think you could lector instead?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“OK. See you Sunday. I’m fixing a few drinks and some steaks. You’re both free to stop by.”
The story, as it was presented by Detective McElroy, was compelling enough to Barry King, one of the journalists working with the jarringly-named Citizens’ Intelligence Agency. There was more than enough interesting material and Barry wrote a short article detailing the strange criminal who was seemingly at the center of the burned ranch outside Gillette, which was already gaining traction in the national news cycle. The story was, at first, a slow burn: only seventeen-hundred readers read the article in full during the initial week. The pace changed on January 2nd, 2016: a country music star with more than ten million followers across his social media accounts had shared the story, and from there, the name Samuel Carmichael exploded into public consciousness. By January 4th, “#SamuelCarmichael” was the number-one trending topic across all social media platforms; “#ImmortalSam”, at times, took the first spot but mostly stayed in second or third, competing with #Trump and other such tags.
By the end of the week, the mainstream media had caught on. Conspiracy theories abounded; the “shoddily-crafted fake identity” hypothesis seemed to dominate the public narrative, but the existence of records of a Samuel Carmichael who was identical to #ImmortalSam as per the photographs of the Medal of Honor ceremony and various associated newspaper articles couldn’t be ignored. The chances of Samuel Henry Carmichael in 2016 being a doppelganger of the Samuel Henry Carmichael born in 1892 were slim, but still entertained; those who continued to believe it after both were born not just in the same city on the same day of the same year, but in the same hospital, as it was revealed, were increasingly ridiculed by masses who were truly starting to believe that maybe, just maybe, the two men were one and the same.
Whoever Samuel Carmichael actually was, he played hardball at the Campbell County Detention Center where he was being held. Agent after agent interrogated him. He maintained a deadly silence. There was nothing in this world that could’ve been used to pry a confession out of him: no sentence, no punishment, no exotic form of execution or torture. The days went on. By that point, most were convinced that there was nothing that could compel Samuel to play by the rules of the living — at least, nothing legal. This went on for two weeks, during which an email chain between agents was leaked. It confirmed the miraculous: Samuel Carmichael, indeed, was one-hundred twenty-three years old. The man who received that Medal of Honor for his service during the Great War against the Huns was, indeed — in the greatest affront to everything man dared to proclaim as incontrovertible biological truth — the very same man who escaped the police car three weeks a month earlier and terrorized those café patrons. The world, in a day — as everyone had known it — changed the moment the FBI was forced to admit that the email chain, and the information contained therein, was legitimate.
Every network, at every time, was covering the story. Every single media outlet, hoping to capitalize on the views and the clicks, whipped up headlines that hundreds of millions paid attention to every single day. People were glued to their televisions, their phones, their computers in ways hyperbole or other such creative language cannot adequately portray. The price of commercial time slots on the established television networks skyrocketed to historic levels due to the record media consumption. Clickbaiters caught on quickly; webpage sidebar advertisements almost ubiquitously featured phrases such as “SAMUEL’S SECRET” for nutritional supplements, exercise regimens, and diet plans. Streamers and podcasters claiming to have known him claimed also to know the secret to his youth, which could be anyone’s for a monthly subscription of $9.99 that would unlock premium content accessible only to the paying few. Others appeared on television with their own stories of Samuel: a man on Long Island who spoke to him about motorcycles, a shop foreman in Omaha with a heavy Texan accent, his wife, a real estate agent who had listed Samuel’s old home for sale, a hotel clerk, the children of neighbors from Long Island and Pittsburgh whose parents had known him — this all existed in the absence of any real information other than what was admitted by the FBI, which was facing an internal scramble about how to handle the cosmic mystery in their custody — much to the relief of a few Red-rotten actors across several government agencies who needed time to cover their asses and clean up the mess they started while the nation was distracted with the Immortal.
… Samuel Carmichael. The Secret Man living forever amongst the dying was hidden no more. His name pierced the global consciousness as a pin pops a balloon. Crowds gathered outside the Detention Center, holding signs with messages of encouragement, of wonder, signs that plead for him to share the secret of eternal youth.
Mail started pouring in — at first a trickle, and then an avalanche. The Campbell County Detention Center’s administration sought legal advice on exactly what they could do about the torrential downpour of mail coming in from all around the world. Just trash them, one attorney said after he heard the inmate wasn’t interested in reading any of it. Get his permission to trash all the damned mail, and put out a press conference saying … he’s alive and well and doesn’t … you know, want any mail. This isn’t hard to figure out.
They followed the advice of the attorney. The Warden of the Detention Center, Andy McMullin, called for a press conference to be arranged. Only the media would be allowed. Anyone without press credentials wasn’t allowed within three hundred feet of the Detention Center’s perimeter. After a brief introduction by the State Governor — proving that, indeed, he did want his finger in every pie — the Warden spoke. It went smoothly enough; he could barely answer any questions, but he did comment on Mr. Carmichael’s good health and seemingly sobering attitude, as he seemed to be more open to cooperation as time went on. At the end, he announced all mail incoming and already-arrived was to be immediately destroyed in a secure manner, and, walking off the stage, reporters shouted questions at him that he knew he couldn’t answer. Leave it all to the FBI, the attorney advised him earlier. It’s their investigation now, after all. You’re just a warden. Even if you’ve heard anything from your friends at Gillette PD, you don’t say a word, you hear me? Unfortunately for the feds, the Warden, in quite a few words, told the crowd that the ball was in the Feds’ court, and to expect their response to the bewildering episode of crime and mystery that so gripped the nation.
At that suggestion, the Bureau gnashed its teeth. “Uncovered” within its ranks was the Gardeners’ Plot — the Red Army and its massive network of clandestine drug manufacturers and distributors working in tandem across two dozen regional “ranches” to amass enough funds to challenge Federal and State governmental authority in several key regions of the continental United States — and a handful of those who exposed it were a part of it, and a few of the higher ups who weren’t apart of it felt outnumbered by those who were. Special Agent Voskanyan, the last honest Agent to know much about the Red Army, had washed his hands of it all when his sudden retirement was saddled with eight extra years worth of paid time off after a mysterious boiler explosion at the Chicago Field Office, during which several agents were killed and he was critically injured; after returning, he left the Bureau and pursued private detective licensure in the State of California. With the objective and professional chain of custody from the Red Army investigation compromised, the so-called investigation revealed a startling fact: every individual identified at the ranch, except for Indrajit Chaudury, was an independent contractor with Levere. This elite private military contractor was specifically established to grant key Red Army operators access to select government resources and information through varying levels of security clearances. Chaudury was to be sent off a hero: the story they spun was that he was an undercover agent keeping tabs on the Red Army. The public would be given a story of selfless service given freely by an immigrant who exemplified with dignity the American Dream; a statue would be erected at Georgetown; a low-traffic records archive at the Department of State would be named after him; and all would be forgotten by the end of the winter. There were four key men in the Gardeners’ Plot who couldn’t be accounted for: [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and Giorgios Stavropoulos, but Claude — the well-regarded stranger who, for decades, was the right man who appeared at the right places at the right times — shook hands with some Red agents in the FBI’s Chicago Field Office, shared a pleasant account of a rare tea he was delighted to sample with two bright-eye’d nuns in Prague, and uttered but a few words regarding Giorgios Stavropoulos and the others: Leave the last two alone. They’re changed men. As for the others, well, you can drop the charade; I know they’re with you. They’ll win their election, give you all kickbacks, further your agendas, and everyone will go on their merry ways, so you’d better just leave it all alone.
… And left alone they were. Forgotten. Nonexistent as subjects of interest to all Federal agencies. The Custodian had spoken; men obeyed. Claude smiled from thousands of miles away as he retired his old life and put on the new man. Massachusetts ended up being only a stop on a longer journey, after all. The sun rose upon the mountain that cradled his humble cottage to the sound of bells and chimes. Giorgios was to arrive any day; well-recommended by Claude, the community was to accept him with open arms for an indefinite amount of time.
Claude knew only gratitude. It welled up in his heart like the floodwaters that once upon a time cleansed the whole world. He fell to his knees, and, facing the sun, he bowed deeply, touching his forehead to the fertile soil. Lord God, Heavenly King, I thank you for this moment. I thank you for this day, for You the Good Shepherd has rescued me, and …
There was one last loose end.
Methuselah.
He couldn’t sleep. His cellmate was talking to himself, cursing under his breath about mites crawling under his picked-at skin. Danny was the kid’s name. Barely twenty-one years old and already hooked on meth.
“Carmichael, you can’t fucking tell me there’s no fucking bedbugs.”
“It’s in your head, Danny-boy,” said Samuel, as the ghost of a smile haunted his face. His cot was stiff; he turned on his side and shut his eyes, welcoming any sleep that came his way.
“Shut the fuck up you fucking liar. You’re in on this. You want me out of the cell and you’re putting this shit in my bed. Don’t lie to me. I’ll beat your fucking ass if you keep lying to me.”
Without warning, four guards appeared at the cell door.
“Carmichael. Let’s go. You’re out of here.”
Samuel sat up in his bed and eyed the guards.
“Where am I going?”
“I don’t know. But you’re leaving. Let’s go. C’mon.”
There was no time to be suspicious. He hopped down from the bunkbed.
“Turn and face the wall. Mecker, you too.”
The two men obliged. Six guards rushed into the cell. Three zipties were placed around Samuel’s wrists as three sets of hands pressed his body against the wall. The other two guards gave Danny the same treatment, sans zipties.
As the guards led him out, cheers and jeers were heard from around the cellblock. No joy of liberation swelled in Samuel’s heart. Something was up. The guards were pushing him quickly out of the jail. They shuffled him through the processing bay and out the crumbling vestibule and into the night, onto an unmarked bus where men armed to the teeth watched him be pushed down the aisle. He sat in the third or fourth-to-last row of seats. Every window was tinted and behind steel bars. The bus was dark and the stink of tobacco filled his nostrils. There was no fear; only curiosity. Samuel knew his crimes. He knew there’d be no real life for him left other than watching his jailers grow old and die, whoever they’d be. No life other than outlasting prisons built one-hundred, two-hundred, a thousand years down the line, assuming the country and its courts would last that long. Indeed, such was a fantasy of misery, as he’d be escaping time after time whenever given the opportunity, and maybe there’d be a good bit of fun to be had doing so, and really, he only ever had to be successful once.
… But, of course, there is no difficulty in finding pools of fantasy to float in as one is trapped in a dark, dark bus at almost midnight, surrounded by soldiers starved for real action.
“Carmichael,” a voice called out, followed by footsteps that drew near to his row.
“That’s me.”
“We’re giving you a shot. Hold still.”
“Sure.”
Three men approached: one stood besides him with a knee on the seat, blocking the view of the window and holding down the left side of Samuel’s body; one restrained him from his right; and the third held a syringe that poked right into his shoulder.
“You’re going to fall asleep within a minute.”
“Sure.”
“Hey,” the masked man to his right said, “Thanks for being cooperative, bud. We appreciate it.”
“Sure.”
“It’s really something else. You don’t look a day over thirty, if that.”
“I didn’t ask for it.”
“I know, Samuel.”
“Everyone I knew is dead.”
“I’m sorry, bud.”
“Are you married?”
“Just this year.”
“You love her?”
“Too much.”
“Good man. Write to me in fifty years and let me know how it all went.”
The man responded with a pat on Samuel’s back, and a compassionate squeeze of his shoulder. After that, a fuzziness like coarse felt enveloped his brain. He was neither asleep nor awake; just comfortably in-between — although certainly not Betwixt — and the hum of the bus’s engine lulled him sometimes to a strange sleep and sometimes from it. Here and there he was, in a field of dandelions down near the Missouri River, where the wildflowers and coyote-calls and hazy farmers’ afternoons are girded by the Loess Hills and the Interstate; there was the gazebo he built for Victoria in 1930, in the springtime; he rocked there for some time, whistling, spying a pair of robins playing mid-air, wondering when the stiff Long Island humidity would surrender and retreat; he was then in Soissons, a Soissons with trenches long overgrown and covered by the floral green of time’s advance, and there he stood alone in a grassy byway that was once a no-man’s-land, searching for something, but for what, he had forgotten; there was the ranch outside Gillette, the meeting of the Red Army, where he sat up front with Jack and McCarthy and Singh, and there was no presentation nor fiery speech, but silent weeping as everyone’s face was in their hands, a somber fog caressing everyone present, rain falling hard on the barn; the Three Sisters of Galahad, again, icy and stark and seen from a distance, standing with defiance against a southerly wind, far older than he, beckoning him to draw closer, closer; the sunken glade by the Ohio River he’d fish and frolic at with Victoria when they still lived in Pittsburgh; the Old Market in Omaha during winter’s last gasp when the icy brick roads bode well with a blue sky and warm sunlight; the charm of Sayville’s docks at dusk, when families still dressed up for evening walks; there was the record store that opened up in the summer of ’74, down on Main Street in Bayshore, and he was flipping through the rows of vinyls, but the sleeves were all black, save for labels like “MOM’S FUNERAL”, “2001 TAX RETURNS”, “TELEVISION AND RADIO REPAIR BILLS, 1960”. They were numerous, the other such pleasantries and visions and treats of slumber, and he picked up his head and opened his eyes for a moment before falling into it again, and he was standing alone at a podium. The room was a grand one, with granite of varying textures and colors arranged in arcane ways that painted the floor with symbols he’d never seen before; there were columns and colonnades, walls of fine woodwork from which faded bunting was hung; and paintings of colonial scenes, and families huddled together in Conestoga wagons moving across the plains, and old New Amsterdam and the antebellum South all adorned the place, and to Samuel’s left, just beside the podium, a statue of Apollo was placed. His warlike face twisted with burning-white anger, and he turned is head towards the right, addressing Samuel.
“Where’s your rifle?”
“The war’s over,” said Samuel impishly.
“I see.”
“I’m sorry, but …” Samuel motioned with his head towards a sheet of paper sitting on the podium. A microphone appeared; he switched it on, tapped it once or twice, and read to an empty audience. Good afternoon. My name is Samuel Carmichael. I am honored to be in the presence of fit and proper countrymen like yourselves, and to receive this medal which …
“Son?”
Samuel turned towards the statue, but it was gone; in its place was President Coolidge, with disheveled hair and a torn white shirt as if he had been brawling.
“Oh … Mr. President.”
“What are you doing here, son?”
“I — I’m accepting the medal. You see? Here, this paper, this is the, uh, the speech that —”
“I’m sorry to say, Sergeant, but the war isn’t over.”
“It’s not?”
“No. Only just starting, to be frank.”
“Who — who is it? The Huns again?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
The President stared through a window at the far end of the room. “They’re hard to see. But we were warned. It’s been years, now.”
“What are we going to do?”
“What are you going to do? Well, son, this is an order. You’re going to keep going, and you’re going to assault the general’s position when the time is right.”
Somehow, to Samuel, it made sense. “Yes, sir.” He nodded, and a smile grew across his face. “Yes, sir. I know we can do it. Our army —”
“Sergeant …” the President interrupted, the corner of his deep frown catching a tear that fell, his head hanging in regret. “There is no army, son. It’s just you.”
“Just me?”
“You are the army.”
Samuel, too, frowned. He closed his eyes and sighed. When he opened them again, he was surrounded by rubble, and a harsh stinking wind blew the debris about.
“Repel the attack,” said the President, still looking at the floor. “Do your best. You’re the last of your kind.” He turned and walked towards a coatrack some feet away. A hat hung from it; he fixed it to his head, and, stepping over a pile of shattered wood and crumbled plaster, he disappeared into what remained of the surrounding city.
The small light above the podium flickered. Samuel traced its cord to an outlet in an unbroken section of wall. As he placed his hand on the cord to pull it out, he heard a voice echo from behind.
“Lad.”
He turned around. The man was older, with ruddy skin clean-shaven; Fenian of smirk and spirit, his woolen clothes were immaculate; he spoke with a decidedly Irish accent, and Samuel spotted Victoria’s rosary hanging from his woolen vest. He was peering into the grand room through a busted window frame.
“Yes?”
“The light stays on, lad.” He winked and walked off, whistling the Tantum Ergo, confident amongst the ruins.
A day or two had passed. As if a switch was flipped, Samuel woke up in an earth-toned room with green accents. The almost-new linoleum tiles were off-white. He was bathed — which was deeply unsettling — and he wore a sweatshirt and sweatpants, god-awful rags he ranted about to Victoria when he’d spot someone wearing them in public.
A flurry of knocks was heard on the door.
“Mr. Carmichael, are you decent?”
“Y-yes.” He positioned himself in the corner of the room furthest from the door.
Four men walked in, dressed similarly as the men on the bus. They wore cloth balaclavas that covered the bottom halves of their face. All kinds of tactical gear they donned: bulletproof vests, boots, helmets, the like. Two had rifles drawn; the other had theirs slung around their backs. All four had pistols on their belts.
One of them, the tallest one at maybe six-foot-six, continued to speak. “How’re you feeling, Carmichael?”
“Where am I?”
“That’s not what I asked. How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine, but —”
“You’ll get all the answers you want soon enough. Turn and face the wall.”
There was no use disobeying. Not at that time, at least. He touched his nose to the wall and a squadron of zip ties attacked his wrists.
They then placed a black cloth over his head.
“Can you breathe?”
He nodded.
“OK. We’ll guide you. Just walk with us.”
After many turns and twists through what he presumed were hallways and corridors, seven or eight doors opened and closed, and finally, the black cloth was removed from his head.
“Samuel Carmichael. Please, take a seat.” Afront him was a table oriented longways to his left and right, with one seat on his side, and three people seated across from him, two men and one woman. The man in the center addressed him, while the other had laptops before them and typed away.
“Where am I?”
“Samuel, again, take a seat, and we will talk. Nobody’s here to harm you, bud.”
He glanced over both shoulders. The men who walked him into the room remained therein like tensioned rubberbands, ready to snap into action at the slightest disturbance. He sat down on the chair, his bound wrists rubbing against its wooden back.
“My name is John Fowler. I’m the senior liaison for Eleven-Gold, a contractor for the Federal Government. We’re in the private military contracting, operations management … uh, public relations management, and human resources sectors, and I personally oversee a three-way contract between the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice, and Eleven-Gold.” Suddenly, a smile — genuine, no doubt — grew wide on his face. “How are you doing, Mr. Carmichael? You’ve had quite the escapades the last few weeks.”
“… What? Is this —”
“Samuel, I assure you — despite the armed personnel at your back, this is a relaxed environment. You aren’t in any danger, and you aren’t in trouble. So, let’s talk about things like men. You like beer? You want a beer? Hey, one of you — let’s get our guest a beer.”
Samuel hated to admit that a beer sounded great.
One of the guards shuffled towards the door. His footsteps quickened and became silent.
“I trust you, Mr. Carmichael. You’re not a danger. But you are … unique.” He was an expressive man who spoke with dramatic hand movements and frequently over-emphasized words.
“Why, thank you.”
“So, yes — I am not legally required to tell you where you are right now, or really even the nature of this facility, but I can share some details about that, at least — about what we do here. This is a holding facility for … extra-legal VIP incarcerations, if you will, although we haven’t had any of those for some time, and we know you’re no terrorist. But you are someone who …” Fowler looked off into the corner of the room, tapping his chin with the end of his pen. “Well, you are someone who was exposed to certain, uh, trade secrets that were utilized for … uh, independent administrative projects started by certain people within various, uh … agencies of the Federal government.”
Samuel opened his mouth to say something, but Fowler waved his hand. “So, we are here to both debrief you and advocate for you in an arbitration capacity of sorts to ensure that, going forward, you receive appropriate compensation for what you were subject to, and also to ensure that what you are required to give in the name of both corrective and preventative justice is fair to all parties involved. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” An attentiveness and presence of mind that hadn’t been with Samuel for years returned; his wide eyes maintained sight with Fowler’s.
“OK. So …” He leaned over to the woman and glanced at the notes on her laptop. No, don’t mention the beer, delete that, he told her under his breath. Hey, you guys want a beer, too? I can go for one, you know …
The door behind Samuel opened again and a beer can was placed in front of him. A plastic straw stuck out from it.
“Ah, too late, guys,” Fowler said, laughing to himself. “Enjoy it, Samuel.”
May as well. Samuel leaned forward and sipped from the straw. It was a stupid way to drink beer, but it was beer all the same.
“Good. So … alright, are you two ready?” The man and woman besides Fowler nodded. “Excellent. Good. Samuel, this could take thirty minutes, this could take three minutes, or this could take a few hours. It all depends on you. So, what I’m going to do here first is ask you a series of questions. Just like a deposition, just respond with yes or no, but you are allowed to give more information if you want.
Samuel said nothing.
“OK, Bob, pass me the questionnaire.” Fowler cleared his throat. “OK. Good. On June 19th, 2013, you were approached by Jack Montgomery Morrisey and impressed into his services. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“OK. On June 19th, 2013, were any legal documents outlining contractual expectations and obligations between you and Jack Montgomery Morrisey in exchange for goods and/or services ever presented?”
“No.”
“Can you, then, agree that there was nonetheless an illegal service contract presented to you informally through the means of speech?”
“…”
“I might clarify that any answer, yes or no, will have no bearing on decisions made regarding your future. It is only for our record-keeping purposes.”
“…Yes.”
“OK. From this point on,” he said, glancing to his left and right to ensure his assistants were keeping pace, “the illegal service contract presented to you informally through the means of speech will be referred to simply as the ‘contractual agreement’. Now, on the aforementioned date of June 19th, 2013, as means of enforcing the contractual agreement, Jack threatened you with severe bodily harm — not death per say, as he understood your … condition, but severe bodily harm, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“OK. And when Jack made the aforementioned threats, did you believe that he would execute such threats had you acted against the terms of the contractual agreement?”
“Yes. Certainly.”
“OK. In believing the threats would certainly be executed, were the crimes and acts you committed under his employment committed under the duress of fear of such threats being carried out by Jack?”
“No. Well, I don’t think so.”
“Please explain.”
“I can’t die. I was never scared of Jack.”
“Were you scared of the pain associated with such threats that Jack made?”
“Scared? No, but …”
Fowler waited patiently.
“There was an aversion to being in a situation I couldn’t escape.”
“A situation that you were threatened with?”
“Yes.”
“Please explain.”
“I can’t remember the exact words. But he was going to weigh me to the bottom of the Pacific. Him or some other guys. I didn’t want to be alive on the bottom of the ocean forever.”
“OK. Right. Yeah … deep lake.” He leaned over to the woman and quieted his voice. Next to that, write ‘refer to audio recording seven-A-three’.
Samuel leaned forward and sipped from the beer.
“… OK. Good.”
“And on the aforementioned date of June 19th, 2013, when you were impressed into his services, the length of service to be rendered by you, Samuel Carmichael, was to be two years exactly, correct?”
“Correct. Around two years, yeah.”
“OK. OK. Good. Now, Samuel … we don’t have to go into everything that happened as a result of your, uh, direct activities between the start of your, uh, impressment and its abrupt end at the ranch, on December 15th, 2015. We have more than enough, uh, intelligence … maybe evidence is the better word to use here … we have enough evidence that any testimony of what you were doing, and where you were during an assortment of killings throughout that year would be superfluous. Nevertheless, is there anything you would like to say about anything that happened during your time with Jack Montgomery Morrisey?”
“Are you asking me if there’s anything I’d like to say about anything at all that happened over two years?”
“Yes.”
“OK.” Samuel cleared his throat. He inhaled a deep breath and exhaled, preparing the room for a serious confession. “Are you ready for this?”
“We’re ready.”
“Fine. Here I go.” Samuel shut his eyes. “I had the best ice cream of my life at a shop called The Conepetal Creamery in Omaha, right off Farnum and 40th.”
Fowler was no stickler. He leaned forward onto the table and broke out into entertained laughter for almost a minute. The other two joined him, with the young pretty woman making eye contact with Samuel and smiling. He composed himself and nodded to everyone in the room.
“Oh boy. You bastard,” he continued as more laughter escaped his chest. “Drink your beer, young man. OK. Whew, that was a good one. Now, I’m going to ask you a very direct question.”
“Fine.”
“Did you murder Jack Montgomery Morrisey, Tanner McPherson, and Indrajit Chaudhury at approximately 2:35 AM on December 16th, 2015?”
There was nowhere to hide. Nothing left to do, nothing left to say. The tank was on ‘Empty’ and the tires were bald. End of the line.
“Yes.”
Everyone in the room looked at each other with surprise. Fowler’s eyebrows raised, and he peeled away the glasses hanging on the bridge of wide nose. He fiddled with them in his hands.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen … that was quick.” There was no laughter. “We’ll be home in time to get a few hours of sleep before school’s out and the kids make a ruckus. Short Fridays are the best Fridays, I must say.”
“… Friday?”
“Yes.”
I was taken from the jail on Tuesday.”
“Yes, well, about that. We gave you two — oh, what does it say here … — two quadruple-doses of the sedative on the bus, considering your, uh, resistance to medicines and other substances.”
“How’d you know?”
“…How’d we know that medicine barely works on you?”
“Yes. What gave you that impression?”
“What — what gave us that impression? Sammy, we’ve … you know, my clients conduct surveillance. That’s their job. We know about your latent, uh, coke habit. You do more blow in one day than three guys could do in a week.”
Samuel nodded in agreement. “… Fair point.”
The room opened up again with mild laughter.
“Alright. Samuel … this is what’s going on. You have, as I see it, two options … well, not as I see it, but as my clients have set out for you.”
Nothing from Samuel.
“It will be difficult to say right now which department or entity exactly of the Federal Government will be admitting liability, but considering that Jack’s involvement in the whole, uh, plot could be interpreted as him technically working for one of the dummy contractors established by Mr. Tanner McPherson — for which, as you may not know, there is a paper trail regarding this, the idiots — you are eligible, if you seek to pursue legal action — which could prove to be either a quick or a terribly long process, although, of course, you have nothing but time on your hands — for a minimum payout of roughly … twenty-nine million dollars.”
One of the armed guards behind Samuel whistled.
“A comfortable payout indeed,” continued Fowler, “But you’re looking at three consecutive life sentences in a maximum-security prison, one for each man killed on December 15th, 2015.” Fowler discussed the murders with no hesitation on his face; they were bland facts, merely negative conditions to be taken into account when considering the best deal for a client he barely knew. “So, even as a rich man, Mr. Carmichael, you’re looking at God-knows-how-long in a maximum-security prison. The payout, as per Federal law, will be public, and as the man who cannot die, not only will every rat bastard looking to make a name for himself on the cellblock be on your back and up your ass with beatings and … and violence and whatnot, but with twenty-nine million dollars in your commissary account … they’ll bleed you dry for protection money, and you may accept whatever offer comes you way just to keep yourself sane. I’m telling you, Samuel — you won’t find a single minute of peace. You’re no criminal — that’s the greatest shame of what Jackie-boy did to you — but as long as the United States of America and her various misbehaving little Departments that pay me enough to drive my three boys to football camp in an Escalade with bullet-proof glass and armor plates in the doors continue to exist and keep records, or at least pretend to keep records, you’re locked in there with nothing but stupid, violent apes whose most eloquent thoughts of the day will be making the best ham and cheese the block has ever smelled using only a radiator and whatever garbage junk food could be smuggled into the cell. And, mind you, this will never end. Three life sentences for a man who cannot die, served under dehumanizing fluorescent lights and a chilly temperature meant only to pacify you.”
Samuel thought. His eyes were glued to a corner of the room where the two walls met the ceiling.
“Gen-pop, Samuel,” Fowler stated with a craggy smile. “Super-max. This … this isn’t 1923 anymore. The golden-hearted criminal who reads and plans a family and was just a broken man down on his luck is nothing but a Hollywood trope that sells tickets to movies and DVDs and intellectual property rights and the original soundtrack with the closing song that played when the anti-hero finally finishes serving his sentence and returns to his neighborhood a changed man to a loving woman who waited for him all those years and his teenage kids who’ve magically forgotten their dear father murdered a 15-year-old girl after snatching the Louis Vuitton bag Santa gave her for Christmas two years prior, but not before raping her and leaving her innocent lily-white face a magnificent pile of mincemeat that not even the morticians could restore. No … those people … that isn’t you. Well, it shouldn’t be you. You’re free to choose whatever. But … this second option.”
Under Fowler’s closed laptop rested a black leather folio. Wrestling it from underneath and opening it like a restaurant menu, he gently pulled a neat stack of stapled papers and tossed it in Samuel’s direction.
“One of you. Cut his zipties,” Fowler commanded, motioning towards the guards standing behind Samuel. One of them moved forward and snipped the restraints from his wrists.
“Go ahead. Take a look. Albion-upon-the-Dakotas, it’s called. Fantastic place, really.”
There are no comforts against the cold when swept under a dark current, but Samuel’s curiosity, in some capacity or another, still existed. He thumbed through the packet, looking at the pictures.
“Samuel … the cleanest option that my clients wish to pursue is that of plausible deniability. Thus, the second choice. Albion-upon-the-Dakotas is a maximum security … rehabilitation facility. To call it a prison would do the great work being done there an indecorously pedestrian injustice. What it is, really, is a correctional community for unexampled cases as yours … as you, an individual whose health requirements — particularly mental and emotional health, and, as you’ll see on page four, second paragraph from the top, under the heading spirituality of trauma — are beyond those of what could be provided by the public, or even private, incarceration … uh, infrastructure as it currently exists. Father James Knowles, the Lead Coordinator of —”
“I’m sorry,” interrupted Samuel, the agitation visible in his eyes, “who?”
Fowler looked confused. “Father James Knowles. Do you know him?”
“… Father?”
“Oh — right. He’s a Catholic priest. They all use —”
“I know what they use.”
“Well. Albion-upon-the-Dakotas is under the careful stewardship of the Society of Jesus. I’d ask if the religious overtones of this establishment was somehow an issue, but considering your position, Mr. Carmichael, you can’t afford to have any issues with this arrangement.”
Samuel looked away in defeat.
“Three hots and a cot. Well, including dessert thrice a week, four hots. Or, three hots and one cold, if it’s ice cream. Access to computers, a library … the, uh, Interlibrary Loan System if you need something hard to find … is that what it’s called? I can’t remember … college classes, if you’re interested. Oh, the cot? In a bedroom of your own. It’s a bed, not a cot. There are room inspections twice a week to make sure you’re keeping the place clean, but other than that, you can keep your own affects upon their approval.”
Samuel suddenly remembered something. “… My things. Jack was …”
“Yes. We’ve retrieved them. Down at the safehouse in Gretna, I believe? Or Mound City? Anyways, they’re going to be tied up in the investigation as evidence for a while.”
“What’s the catch?”
“The catch? No catch, once the investigation is done, we’ll get you your —”
“No. For this Allybon place.”
“Oh. Right. Albion. Well …” Fowler again cleared his throat. “This is the catch. Ever read George Orwell’s 1984?”
“No.”
“OK. Well … here’s what we do. Here’s, really, what I do. I bury you alive in non-disclosure agreements if you agree to go to Albion. What that means — you cannot mention a single word of anything to anyone about your involvement with anyone or anything that had proximity to the organization you worked for. Your life will be a big blank from the day before you met your good buddy Tex to the day that you leave this facility. As for the public side of things, we’ll handle that. You’ll be nothing but a funny little thing that popped up in the news and on the internet to everyone except the most unhinged, unwashed conspiracy theorists. Mr. Carmichael — excuse my forthrightness — but Eleven-Gold will enforce these contractual agreements to the letter.”
“I’m sorry, I’m confused.”
“What’s confusing?”
“Why would this start the night I met Tex?”
“Well, Tex works for Precision Mechanical. So did you. Who owned Precision Mechanical, Samuel?”
“… Jack.”
“There you go. Bingo, baby. Speaking of babies — unfortunately, that baby does need to be thrown out with the bathwater. No more Tex.”
Samuel, again, fell silent.
“Mr. Carmichael … I … I cannot express to you how serious I am about the binding nature of these NDA’s. If you break a single letter …” Fowler’s face went stark and stony, his eyes wild and intense. “A single … fucking … letter, what will happen to you is worse than anything that Jack could’ve thought of. Do I make myself clear?”
Samuel shook his head. More than any kind of intimidation or fear, Samuel felt exhaustion from the attempts of men to exert authority over him. “Sure.”
“I know. Again, excuse my frankness, but I need to make that abundantly clear. So … Carmichael. What do you say?”
“What were you saying about this Father James Whatever?”
“Oh! Right. Mr. Knowles is the warden, so to speak. I forget his official title. It’s much less aggressive than warden. But, anyways — he is a psychologist, by trade. He’s taken an interest in you, and the only other binding clause in this contract is that, every so often — I don’t know, it’s his decision, maybe once, twice, thrice a week, who knows — you’ll be sitting down with him for counselling.”
“Unbelievable. Therapy nonsense.”
“Yes, Mr. Carmichael. Therapy nonsense indeed.”
“I can’t tell anyone anything about the last two years of my life. But these guys know everything already? Does that apply to them?”
“That’s an excellent point that I missed. No, Samuel, the non-disclosure agreements apply only to anyone outside the walls of Albion.”
“While I’m there … it’s fine?”
“Yes. Talk freely about anything with anyone there. We’ve prepared similar NDA packages for all staff there anyways, so — we hope, at least — that ship will be tightly run. So … what’s your choice? Rotting away in Supermax until kingdom come? Or having the semblance of a life at Albion?”
“What’s my sentence if I pick Albion?”
“Indefinite, Samuel.”
He was silent.
“You killed three men.”
“Barely remember it,” shot Samuel.
“Those circumstances are outside the purview of what I do here.”
There was no thought required. The choice was an easy one.
Yet, choosing felt like surrender. To what, Samuel didn’t know.
He rubbed his eyes in frustration.
“Albion.”
Fowler let out a small cheer. “Well, great! That’s just great. Not even lunch time. Mr. Carmichael, congratulations on making a great choice. Nina, go tell Henry to wheel in the paperwork. You wait here with Mr. Carmichael, Quentin. You know what to do once the paperwork is all done, right?”
Quentin nodded his head. “Yeah, Mr. Fowler. I’ll take it from here.”
“Excellent. Guys, I’m outta here. I’m going to bounce the kids from school. Too nice of a day for them to be cooped up in that musty old brick building. Now that, Mr. Carmichael, is a prison. You should see the place … you should see the principal, too, the way she tortures these kids, that old fat bitch …” Standing up, he stuck his laptop and folio underneath his arm, and extended his opposite hand for a handshake. “Mr. Carmichael. Thank you for your cooperation. It’s been a pleasure. I think you’ll understand when I say I hope to never, ever see you again.”
The hand hung in front of Samuel for two or three seconds. Reluctantly, his hand connected with Fowler’s. The handshake was brief, and, pulling away, Fowler disappeared beyond the doorway in the far left corner.