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CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
If someone ever happens to come across this journal at the Point of the Mountain Correctional facility near Salt Lake they would never believe that it was written by the hand of a man who believes in God and His Son Jesus with every fiber of his being–and always has.
They came without lights and sirens, and were waiting for me when I left the house. One could only make out the red and blue bubble lights on top of the State Police cars because the snow was banked so high.
“Mr. Andrew Lattimore?” a uniformed State Trooper with a handlebar moustache and iron-brimmed Mountie hat asked as I reached the slick sidewalk.I sensed behind me the cluster of Cheryl, Biff, Will, and Max waiting at the top of the steps.
“Yes?” I asked, alarm picking at my vocal chords. Even so I noticed the air had turned cold enough to make steel brittle.
“You are under arrest for the death of Hank Shelton. The charge is Second Degree Homicide with no mitigating circumstances.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve done nothing.I want a lawyer before I’ll say another word.”
“All the good that’ll do you,” snorted what I took to be the Country Sheriff bundled in a cheap wool coat and wearing an old-fashioned police cap with shiny patent leather visor. I imagined I saw hints of old Sheriff Alldred’s face in the heavy-set man.I didn’t feel the steel handcuffs as they were snapped on my hands behind my back.
“I don’t understand,” I said again, and turned to look up at the group backlit by the porch light. I could not see their faces.
“It will all come to you in time,” Maxwell said in a voice cold as the steel-snapping air.
How many book’s and journals and movies have you heard, or seen used the Spanish phrase; “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” I know I have. Somehow there is nothing so perfectly expressed as an adage that holds truth through the ages. They had set me up for a number of reasons. To exonerate themselves, certainly. But there was more to it. I was a Godless Apostate. And the only punishment that fits that crime, in their belief, is Blood Atonement. If I shed my blood in the electric chair, firing squad, or by the hangman’s noose, they would have succeeded in saving my soul, and saving their own asses. It was perfect. Airtight. Ironclad.
I was taken to the County Lockup in Pleasanton forthwith, got on the phone to some two-bit local lawyer, and was allowed to call my ship to set the wheels rolling. I was so confused I was irrational. My mind was a maze of conjecture, fear, and hatred when I realized the perfect conspiracy had put me in jail for the rest of my life.
My trial was speedy, held in Alma where people still remembered the tragedy of Hank Shelton. Their sheer theatrical talent stunned me. Willy Smith’s tears. Biff’s lies. Maxwell’s cold orchestration. Cheryl’s hollow tears while she was on the witness stand. I was caught easy as a blind cod. They had cast their web of deceit and duplicity with a script so diabolical as to be professional. They had set me up so carefully they must have rehearsed and planned for years.
The State’s evidence, on the face of it, was conclusive– except it was a mesh of lies strong as wire. I didn’t have a chance. The District Attorney produced Clayton’s Last Will and Testament in which there was a carefully enunciated confession of the circumstances of Hank Shelton’s Death. It was Andrew Lattimore who had the shotgun with the buckshot in the breech. It was Andrew Lattimore who deliberately picked out Hank Shelton’s head across the open field. And just-for-the-hell-of-it, I blew Hank Shelton’s head apart like a pumpkin. And then Andrew Lattimore turned the shotgun on his friends and vowed he would kill each and every one of them, somehow, someway, if they ever revealed the truth. For fear of their lives they had kept their silence until Clayton drew them together around his deathbed, and everything fell into place.
Clayton’s Last Will & Testament was airtight. His detailed account of the murder of Hank Shelton was utterly believable– and utterly false. Dr. Maxwell Taylor signature witnessed the Will, as well as Biff, Willy, Clayton, and his wife Cheryl. The signature of the local District Attorney was prominent at the bottom of the document. It had an official wax seal. It was a document of my doom. It was unshakeable despite my attorney’s attempt to get at the truth.
They were all so perfectly rehearsed my trial was brief. It was my word against the word of three of the counties leading citizens as well as that of the aggrieved widow. Four against one. I could see the cold satisfaction in their eyes up there on the witness stand. They had hated me for years because I would not bow to the strictures of the only truth faith. The arrogant outcast, the distinguished Naval Captain and war hero had to be brought down. And they did it with such a perfect script I knew any defense was all but useless. Their finesse left me breathless. It was a perfect frame. I even admire it for its success, but most of all for the perfection with which they played their respective roles of fearful men trying to save themselves. And Cheryl had been on it from the beginning, assured of the payoff, and my punishment.
It is the habit of seamen to keep a running log, thus this record written in cheap notebooks with a #2 lead pencil. The minute my Twenty-to-Life sentence was pronounced a U. S. Naval Rep handed me my Dishonorable Discharge; a statement of my loss of pay, pension and benefits. Their triumph was complete.
It is still not clear to me, but I suspect Maxwell and Cheryl concocted the scheme. Cheryl for her financial security, Maxwell and Biff and Will so that the secret they held would die with me in a prison. My appeals were for nothing against the four witnesses and the unchallengeable weight that the law gives to the thoughts of a dying man who is presumed rational. And Clayton, though he struggled with all his strength, had wanted an end to his pain, and who better to end it than by the loving hand of friends? I was a violent, but welcome euthanasia.
I know I would have been grateful to be smothered had I been in Clayton’s condition. But they could have bided their time until he died a natural death. Then, when the Navy sent a press release of notice of my first command to the local weekly, I think they decided it was time to finish me. I had neglected to go to Personnel and tell them to stop sending those innocuous press releases they always do when one of the local boys graduates from boot camp, dies, or becomes an Admiral.
So I have languished these years, studying and writing and dying by inches. Last I heard, Max Taylor has been elevated to a Church position that could put him in line for an Apostleship. Biff took his family to Florida and caught the first wave of an economic surge and then moved safely offshore, just in case. And Willy, the boy who had pulled the trigger that killed Hank Shelton? He has sent me a life-time subscription to the Immigration Valley Messenger; a handsomely bound Book of Mormon; and the promise of a carton of cigarettes every week until the day I die.
I always like Willy the best, anyway.
“The Brethren” is copyrighted © 2001 by T. O. McCallister. All rights reserved. You may not republish or reproduce this work without the expressed written permission of the author by any means mechanical, electronic, graphic, including photocopying, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems. Permission can be granted by writing the author at alimed42@yahoo.com. He also welcomes your feedback to this story. All violators will be persecuted.
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