“Well, someone fill me in,” the governor demanded.
Trader wanted to offer many false details, but he knew how the governor would react to their sudden language barrier. The press secretary indicated through sign language that Andy should relay the day’s events to Crimm, which Andy did.
“What’s your recommendation?” the governor asked Andy after being subjected to the story, which seemed lacking in veracity and rationality.
“I agree in taking no chances,” Andy replied. “Keep security tight, sir, but this matter needs to be thoroughly investigated. Frankly, I am concerned that there are important facts we don’t know, despite Mr. Trader’s alleged eyewitness account. No offense,” he directed this at Trader, “but what you supposedly saw and what actually happened may not match up. I have two questions, for example: What happened to the bucket? And did anyone else happen to see the shooting?”
Trader replied through hand signals that the bucket was at large and the only other witnesses may have been the crabs and the trout. Trader felt certain this would settle the matter.
“If the bucket is at large,” Andy pointed out, “then this might suggest that you let the crabs and trout go before the altercation occurred. Because you certainly wouldn’t witness someone burning up and then think to toss the crabs and the trout in the river, now would you?”
Trader shook his head no as he recalled the crabs and trout sailing through the air in a cascade of tap water. They splashed into the river and then he and the fisherman began to fight and say ugly things to each other. Trader must have set the bucket back on the ground, or perhaps the fisherman did. By now the police would have found the bucket and taken it in as evidence. He wasn’t sure why, but he had a bad feeling that the bucket was going to cause him a problem.
The governor lit up a Cuban cigar. “Tell me,” he said to Andy. “If we could locate the crabs and trout, would that help us?”
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” Regina retorted. “What good would they do, and how would you know they’re the same ones we let go?”
“DNA,” Andy replied. “If they left any cellular material in the bucket, even just a trace, it could be matched back to them. For example, people don’t realize how many cells their eyes shed. You rub your eyes and have eye cells all over your fingers and then you touch something and deposit these cells. Every living creature has unique DNA, except identical twins.”
“So maybe the crabs’ eyes shed cells in the bucket?” The governor was fascinated. “How do you know all this?”
“I’ve always been interested in forensic science and criminal investigations, Governor. My father was a police officer in Charlotte.”
“What is he now?”
“He got killed in the line of duty, sir.”
This touched the governor deeply. He had always wanted a son and was not at all impressed with his daughters and rarely enjoyed their company. In truth, Bedford Crimm was starved for someone sensible and non-female to talk to, and he had forgotten that he was concerned that Andy and his wife might have an affair.
“Let’s pour a little brandy and smoke,” he said as he turned a magnified watery eye on Andy. “Do you play pool?”
“Not very often, sir,” Andy replied.
“But what about this awful man on the loose?” Mrs. Crimm worried.
“Tell one of the other troopers the story,” the governor ordered Andy to tell Trader. “Tell him to get the rest of the EPU on the case and let’s have the National Guard fly around, checking for that car with New York plates, and perhaps have a presence downtown, too.”
“You may want to consider having us set up checkpoints at the tollbooths, too,” Andy suggested. “In case this alleged Hispanic serial killer tries to leave the city,” he added with a hint of disdain as he stared Trader right in the eye. The press secretary glanced away.
“Excellent idea,” the governor agreed, increasingly impressed with this young man. “We need to locate the crabs and the trout. Tell Trader to start looking since he’s the one who saw them last.”
“Sir, you can tell him yourself,” Andy politely said. “He can hear, he just can’t talk or at least wants us to think he can’t. And I might suggest we have a more objective person look for any witnesses.”
Andy had no doubt that should Trader find the crabs and trout, he would make sure they were never seen again. The fat, mendacious pirate–press secretary would probably boil them alive and eat them, Andy thought with disgust as he anticipated the governor’s reaction when he read the essay he intended to post as soon as he could find a computer. He gave Trader a harsh, threatening look.
“Stay away from the crabs and trout,” Andy warned him.
He waited until Trader limped off before taking the First Lady aside for a private word with her.
“Listen,” Andy said. “I hate to impose on you or intrude upon your privacy in any way, First Lady Crimm, but it looks like it may be a long night and I’m wondering if I could borrow a computer for just a minute so I can check something.”
“Why certainly,” she replied, and she couldn’t wait to lead him upstairs to her private parlor where she spent many secret, delicious hours sitting at her antique Chinese desk, shopping the Internet.
She felt a tingle of salacious excitement as she led Andy up the stairs and sat him down in her chair.
“Do you need me to show you how anything works?” she asked, leaning over him and brushing her big, trussed-up bosom against the back of his head.
“No, thank you,” Andy said as her perfume excited an allergic reaction and he began to sneeze. “If you can just leave me for a moment. I’m afraid this is classified police work and for my eyes only, ma’am.” He sneezed three more times.
“What are they doing up there?” the governor jealously asked, looking in the direction of upstairs. “What in thunder are they up to? Who’s sneezing?” he demanded as his wife smeared her lipstick a bit and mussed up her stiff hair as she made her way back downstairs.
Andy posted his next essay, which he had finished early that morning. The timing could not be better, and he got up from the desk just as Regina lumbered into the parlor and demanded to know what he was doing.
“Mama’s all messed up like you two were making out,” she delicately offered. “And it’s just a good thing Papa can’t see what she looks like!”
“She wasn’t messed up a minute ago,” Andy replied. “She just showed me to the computer and left. And she looked exactly as she did when we were all at the dinner table.”
“What are you doing in here?” Regina’s tiny eyes were bright with suspicion. “I bet you’re Trooper Truth, aren’t you!”
“What a thing to think,” Andy said.
“Prove you’re not!”
“It’s rather difficult to prove a negative,” Andy replied as Regina squeezed her way past him and sat before the keyboard.
She logged on to the Trooper Truth website and made a startled sound when she noticed there was a brand-new essay. She clicked on it immediately.
“See,” Andy said. “You tell me. Is it possible Trooper Truth could be off writing a new essay and yet be here with the First Family for a light supper at the same time?”
“Well, I guess you’re right,” Regina said as she eagerly began to read.
A WORD ABOUT ANNE BONNY
The Most Notorious Female Pirate Who Ever Lived
(Note: Many authorities on pirates differ in their accounts of Anne Bonny.)
by Trooper Truth
Her story begins with her birth in County Cork, Ireland, on March 8, 1700, the illegitimate daughter of a successful Irish lawyer named William Cormac and his wife’s maid, whose name never made it into the records. When the scandalous tryst was revealed, William had no choice but to flee from Ireland with his new family and settle in Charleston, South Carolina, where he no doubt befriended Blackbeard and corrupt politicians. Soon enough, William became a very wealthy merchant and lived on a plantation just outside the city.
Not much is known about Anne as a child, except that she was a beautiful redhead with a ferocious temper that prompted her to kill one of the servant women with a carving knife after the two of them squabbled. By the time Anne was old enough to pick out her own clothes, she began to dress like a man, and many male admirers began to call on her. Uninvited sexual advances were met with such violence that one suitor ended up bedridden for weeks.
(Note: I pause here to emphasize to you, the reader, that Anne’s behavior almost from the start would indicate that she was a sociopath with bad genetic wiring that, unfortunately, she would pass down through the generations to present-day Virginia, where one of her direct descendants is currently employed in a position of great influence and power.)
When Anne was sixteen, she continued on her blighted path by getting tangled up with a poor worthless sailor named James (Jim) Bonny, who was determined to have her family’s plantation for himself. He decided the easiest way to do this was to marry Anne, whose attire he either didn’t notice or didn’t seem to mind. Anne’s father did not approve of Jim Bonny, and the newly wed couple did not get the plantation or even a decent room should they have wished to stay with Anne’s family.
The young couple left Charleston in a huff and sailed off to New Providence in the Bahamas, where Anne soon became fond of a local establishment called the Pirate’s Lair, which was exactly what the name implied. Jim was a weak, pitiful example of manhood and courage, and he began to rat on various sailors he didn’t like, accusing them of being pirates, even if they weren’t, while his dissatisfied, psychopathic wife spent increasingly long hours at the Lair.
Many of the rough seamen who became her drinking buddies were ex-pirates and bored. One day, Anne, who the ex-pirates thought was a man, was slugging down rum and complaining about the nasty, mean-spirited sister-in-law of Jamaican governor Lawes, who had told Anne she wasn’t worth knowing. What isn’t clear from the records is whether the woman made this rude comment when Anne was disguised as a man or dressed normally. But it is well documented that Anne’s response was to knock out two of her teeth, which was much more serious in the eighteenth century than now, since there were no dentists or prosthodontists to speak of and a gap-toothed smile was irreversible.
“I should have knocked out all her teeth,” Anne boasted to the ex-pirates as they drank in the Lair. “Then tied her to a tree and gave her neither bread nor water and let a myriad of fiery stinging ants swarm over her nekkid body.”
“Yay, ye should have.” Pirate Captain Calico Jack nodded in agreement. “Would ye have her all nekkid, including her privities?”
“All nekkid,” Anne replied. “ ’Tis better not to cover her privities, making the stings of the ants more fiercely painful.”
“Yay, ’tis better.”
Anne and Calico got very friendly with each other and she finally made certain he knew she was a woman by unbuttoning her man’s shirt one day. He offered to buy her from her spineless husband, Jim, who instantly snitched on both of them to South Carolina Governor Rogers. Anne was ordered to show up for a flogging and then return to her rightful husband, so she and Calico decided they would slip into the harbor, both of them dressed like men, and steal a sloop and begin their lives together as a pirate couple.
Over the next few months, Anne and Calico Jack raided many ships and shore installations. Her gender remained a secret to all but him, until they captured a Dutch merchant ship and recruited a number of its sailors from the crew, including a strikingly handsome, blue-eyed, blond young man. Anne took a liking to him and unbuttoned her shirt to reveal her true identity. The man then unbuttoned his shirt and showed that he was Mary Read. It is not known if both women were disappointed to discover that neither of them was a man, but they became a pirate duo, skilled with rapiers and pistols, and fought bravely whenever their boarding crew stormed onto unsuspecting merchant ships.
Anne and Mary loved being pirates and became well-respected, bloodthirsty buccaneers who swung their blades and boarded ships with more daring than any man. They became pregnant at the same time, and in 1720 suffered a stunning defeat when a pirate turned pirate-hunter raided them while the crew was drunk and hiding below deck, leaving only Mary and Anne to fight furiously in thick cannon fire.
“If there’s a man among ye, ye will come out and fight like the men ye are thought to be!” Anne shouted as she furiously swung her cutlass and fired her pistols.
The men below did not answer back, and all were captured and hanged except for the two pregnant pirates, who went to jail. Mary died of a fever inside her tiny damp cell and Anne is believed to have been granted a pardon. She disappeared from the seas and historical records.
My theory of what became of Anne Bonny is based on reviewing written accounts of her life, and then reaching a conclusion that is within the realm of possibility. We can be certain that Anne would not have been welcome back in the West Indies, nor was she likely to return to her husband or to the life of an active pirate. I suspect she had her child and decided on a compromise of breaking the law while avoiding the traditional life of a woman, and doing so in a place that was a safe harbor and agreeable to her need for adventure. She would have known that Blackbeard and other pirates frequented Tangier Island and regularly traded with the Islanders, and that if she continued dressing like a man, she could be a waterman and at least get out in a bateau and teach her child the ways of weather, the bay, and fishing.
This child, I suspect, was a son, and I believe it is from this cutthroat lineage that one certain governmental official descended. And if the governor is reading this essay, I ask him to think back on all of the times a certain disloyal, despicable individual has given him a sweet that is soon followed by an explosive gastric attack.
It is just a shame that this scoundrel, who for now will remain nameless, offered no warnings when he applied for a high-level state position and was subjected to the usual background checks. But background checks are largely ineffective these days. They do not reveal motivation, which in this person’s case, like that of his ancestor Anne Bonny, is to have control, adventure, and access to military and police power, and to know the rules well enough to break them whenever he pleases.
Be careful out there!
Eighteen
Paramedics did not try to resuscitate Caesar Fender, who remained unidentified as he smoldered and smoked near his smashed tackle box. The body was charred in a very odd pattern. Only the chest had burned, and there was no evidence of a fire in the local vicinity that might account for his appalling death.
“It’s like his heart caught on fire,” Detective Slipper said. “Or maybe his lungs. Could smoking do that?”
“You mean, if you was smoking and somehow your lungs caught on fire?” said Treata Bibb, who had been driving an ambulance for fifteen years and had never seen anything like this. “No,” Bibb then answered her own question upon reflection. “Not hardly. I don’t think smoking’s got a thing to do with what killed this unlucky guy.” She squatted to get a closer look. “It’s like he’s got a crater burned in him all the way through, from front to back. Look, you can see the pavement through this big hole. See here?” She touched charred flesh with a gloved finger. “Even the bones in the middle of his chest burned up. But the rest of him is fine.” She was amazed and disturbed, wondering who had done this and how and why.
Cars were pulling off the road, and people lined the street as if waiting for a parade. Police were having a difficult time controlling the gathering crowd of sightseers and reporters as word spread that a fisherman had exploded into a ball of fire just off Canal Street, very near where Trish Thrash’s mutilated body had been found on Belle Island.
“What’s going on?” a housewife named Barbie Fogg asked through the open window of her minivan.
“You’ll have to read about it in the paper.” An officer motioned with his flashlight for her to move on.
“I don’t get the paper.”
She shield
ed her eyes from his waving flashlight and wondered why on earth all these big helicopters were flying around with searchlights probing the city and neighboring counties. “There must be some violent serial killer that broke out of jail or something,” she decided with horror as a chill tickled up to the roots of her frosted hair. “Maybe the same one who murdered that poor woman the other day! And now I won’t know enough to protect myself and my family because I don’t get the paper and you won’t tell me the smallest detail. And you wonder why people don’t like police.”
She sped off, and another car stopped, this one occupied by an old woman whose night vision wasn’t what it used to be.
“Excuse me, I’m trying to find the Downtown Expressway,” the old woman, whose name was Lamonia, said to the officer with the flashlight. “I’m late for choir practice. What’s all that racket up there?”
Lamonia peered up at Black Hawk helicopters she couldn’t see. But there was nothing wrong with her hearing.
“Sounds like a war going on,” she declared.
“Just a little situation, but we’re handling it, ma’am,” the officer said. “The Downtown Expressway’s over there.” He pointed the flashlight. “Turn left on Eighth and it will run you right into it.”
“I’ve run into it before,” Lamonia said with a pained, humiliated catch in her voice. “Last year, I hit the guardrail. To tell you the truth, officer, I probably shouldn’t be driving at night. I can’t see at night. But if I keep missing choir practice, they’ll kick me out, and it’s really all I have left in my life. You know, my husband passed on two years ago, and then my cat died when I accidentally backed the car over him.”
“Maybe you’d better pull over.”
Lamonia stared blindly to her left and right and thought she detected a speck of light that reminded her of those eye tests that required her to center her face in a machine and push a clicker every time she saw a little light in her peripheral vision. Last week, she had hit the clicker randomly and often in hopes she could fool the eye doctor again.