The Righteous Men (2006) (7 page)

Will tutted silently: of course he wasn’t going to work on it today.
It was an on-the-day news story, about weather for Christ’s sake: there
was no more perishable commodity in journalism than a weather story.

‘You checked the National section inside? Each page?’

‘I did, Will. I’m sorry. Does this mean they didn’t use
it?’

That was exactly what it meant: his story had been spiked.

He braced himself for a call to the desk. If anyone but Jennifer, the news
clerk, answered, he would hang up. He dialled.

‘National/ Jennifer.

‘Hi, Jennifer, it’s Will Monroe here, out in Seattle.’

‘Oh hi. Wanna speak to Susan?’

‘No! No. No need. You know that piece I filed yesterday, from the
floods? Do you know what happened to it?’

Jennifer’s voice suddenly dipped.

‘Kind of. I heard them talking about it. They said it was very nice
and all, but that you hadn’t talked about it with them first. If you had,
they’d have told you they didn’t need a story yesterday.’

‘But I did speak …’ Of course. He had only talked with Jennifer,
told her his co-ordinates and his plans. He had assumed they wanted him to
file. Had Harden not told him to pack his galoshes?

Now he realized: he was in Seattle just in case. He was keeping Bates’s
seat warm. All that soaking effort yesterday had been in vain. He felt embarrassed,
like an over-eager intern. It was a stupid mistake.

‘Hold on, Susan wants a word.’

Three time zones away, Will readied himself for a roasting.

‘Hi, Will. Listen, I think the rule ought to be no filing unless we’ve
talked about it first. OK? Maybe just find something that interests you, poke
around a bit and see what it’s worth.

As for spot-news, keep your phone on and we’ll call you if we need
anything.’

Will ate a glum breakfast. He had screwed up and screwed up badly. By now
Jennifer would have spread the word among the tiny circle of
Times
staffers in their twenties: they would be having a good laugh at his expense.
The golden boy with a big-shot daddy had come down to earth.

There was only one solution. He would have to reel in a proper story.
Somehow, from this far-off patch of snow, timber and potatoes, he would have to
eke out a tale that would prove to New York that they had not made a mistake.
He knew exactly where he would go.

T
he flight across Washington
State had been brief, if bumpy, and the drive from Spokane gorgeous. The
mountains were almost painfully beautiful, each cap dusted with a snow that looked
like the purest powdered sugar. The trees were as straight as pencils, lines of
them, so densely packed, the light almost seemed to strobe.

He was driving east, soon crossing the state line into Idaho — or at
least the long, slender upper part of the state where the United States appears
to be giving the finger to its northern neighbour, Canada. He drove past Coeur
d’Alene, which sounded like a Swiss skiing village but which was most
famous as the home of a racist movement known as the Aryan Nations. Will had
seen the pictures in the cuttings: the men dressed in quasi-Nazi uniforms, the ‘whites
only’ sign at the entrance. It would make a fascinating stop, but Will
did not leave the road. He had somewhere to go.

His destination lay across the Idaho finger, in the western part of Montana.
The roads were small, but Will did not get frustrated. He loved driving in
America, the land of the endless road. He loved the billboards, promoting
furniture stores thirty-five miles away; he loved the Dairy Queen rest-stops; the
bumper stickers, advising him of the politics, religion and sexual preferences
of his fellow drivers. Besides, he was planning his attack.

He had spoken already to Bob Hill, who was expecting him. Dutifully, Hill
had conformed to the media caricature of a backwoods gun-nut. He asked to have
Will’s full name and social security number: ‘That way I can check
you out. Make sure y’are who y’say y’are.’ Will tried
to imagine what Hill’s research would turn up on him. Brit? That would be
OK.

Americans usually liked Brits. Even if they hated limp-wristed, faggot
Europeans, Brits were OK: they were kind of honorary Americans. Father a
federal judge? That could be problematic; federal officials were despised. But
judges were not always lumped in with the rest of the hated bureaucrats who
represented ‘the government’. Some were even seen as the protectors
of liberty, fending off the encroaching hand of the politicians. If Hill
looked, though, he would find plenty in Judge Monroe’s record that was
bound to offend. Will hoped his host was not going to dig too deep.

What else? Parents divorced: that might rile the militia men. Mind you, this
wasn’t Alabama; the survivalists were not the same as the Christian
right. There was some overlap, but they were not identical.

The daydream ended the moment he saw the signs.

‘Welcome to Noxon, Population: 230’. He looked down at the
scribbled note perched on his lap: Hill’s directions. He had to turn left
at the gas station, down a road that would become a path. The SUV began rocking
from side to side, over the ruts of mud, earning, or so Will liked to think, the
extra charge he, and therefore the
Times
, had had to pay for it.

Soon he reached a gate. No sign. He was about to call Hill, as arranged, but
he was halfway through dialling the number when a man became visible in his
windshield. Early sixties, jeans, cowboy boots, old jacket; unsmiling. Will got
out.

‘Bob Hill? Will Monroe.’

‘So you found us OK?’

Will went into a hymn of praise for Hill’s directions, seeking to
break the ice with some shameless flattery. His host grunted his approval as he
trudged up a hard mud bank, heading in the direction of what seemed to be a
thick patch of forest.

As they got closer, Will began to make out a glow of light: a cabin, rather
brilliantly camouflaged.

Hill looked to his waist, where a thick jailer’s ring of keys was weighing
down one of his belt loops. He let them in.

‘There’s a chair there. Make yourself comfortable. I’ve
got something to show you.’

Will used the few seconds he had to look around: a metal shield on the wall,
bearing a vaguely military insignia. He squinted: MoM. Militia of Montana.
There were a few framed photographs, including one of his host holding the head
of a dead stag. On the metal shelves, a box of leaflets. Will peered inside: ‘The
New World Order: Operation Takeover.’

‘Help yourself, take a copy.’ Will whisked around to find Bob
Hill right behind him. Ex-marine, Vietnam; of course he would know how to creep
up on a mere civilian like Will.

‘Wrote it myself. With the help of the late Mr Baxter.’

‘So he was … deeply involved?’

‘Like I told you on the phone, a fine patriot. Ready to do whatever it
took to secure the liberty of this nation — even if his nation was too
duped, its brains too addled by the propaganda of the Hollywood elite, to
realize its liberty was under threat.’

‘Whatever it took?’

‘By whatever means necessary, Mr Monroe. You know who said that, don’t
you? Or was that before your time?’

‘It was before my time, but I do know. That was the slogan of the
Black, Panthers.’

‘Very good. And if that was good enough for them in their struggle
against “white power” then it’s good enough for us in our
struggle to keep America free.’

‘You mean violence? Force?’

‘Mr Monroe, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You can ask me all
the questions you like, I got plenty of time. But first, I have something to
show you. See if this interests the great East Coast intellectuals of The
New
York Times
.’

By now Hill was seated, behind a battered old metal desk, one that would not
have looked out of place in the office section of an auto-repair shop. He
handed Will, who was still standing, two sheets of paper, stapled together.

It took a few seconds for Will to work out what he was looking at. The notes
on the autopsy performed on the body of Pat Baxter.

‘Missoula faxed it over this morning.’ Missoula, the nearest big
town.

‘What does it say?’

‘Oh, don’t let me spoil it for you. I think you should read it
for yourself.’

Will felt a twinge of panic: this was the first autopsy report he had ever
seen. It was almost impossible to decipher. Each heading was written in
baffling medicalese; the handwriting beneath was just as inscrutable. Will
found himself squinting through it.

Finally, a sentence he understood. ‘Severe internal haemorrhaging consistent
with a gunshot wound; contusions of the skin and viscera. General remarks:
needle mark on right thigh, suggestive of recent anaesthesia.’

‘He was shot,’ Will began, uncertain. ‘And he seems to have
been anaesthetized before he was shot. Which does seem very odd, I grant you.’

‘Ah, but there’s an explanation. Read on, Mr Monroe.’

Will’s eyes scoured the document, looking for clues. Scribbled handwriting,
sent through a fax, did not make it easy.

‘Second page,’ Hill offered. ‘General remarks.’

‘Damage to internal organs: liver, heart and kidney (single) severe.
Other viscera, fragmented.’

‘What leaps out at you, Mr Monroe? I mean what word there friggin’
jumps out and grabs you by the throat?’

Will wanted to say ‘viscera’, simply because the word was so
undeniably powerful. But he knew that was not the answer Hill was looking for.

‘Single.’

‘My my, you Oxford boys are as bright as they say you are.’ Hill
had not been kidding about his research. ‘That’s right. Single.
What do you think’s going on here, Mr Monroe?

What strange set of facts do we have here which Montana’s finest have
so far chosen to overlook? Well, I’ll tell you.’

Will was relieved; the guessing game was making him sweat.

‘My friend, Pat Baxter, was anaesthetized before he was killed. And
his body is found minus one kidney. Put two and two together and what do we
get?’

Will muttered almost to himself, ‘Whoever did this removed his kidney.’

‘Not only that, but that’s why they killed him. They wanted it
to look like a robbery, a “break-in gone badly wrong” they’re
saying on the TV. But that’s all a smokescreen. The only thing they
wanted to steal was Pat Baxter’s kidney.’

‘Why on earth would they want to do that?’

‘Oh, Mr Monroe. Don’t make me do all the work here. Open your
eyes! This is a federal government that has been doing experimentation with
bio-chips!’ He could see that Will was not following. ‘Bar codes,
implanted under the skin! So that they can monitor our movements. There’s
good evidence they’re doing this with new-born babies now, right there in
the maternity ward. An electronic tagging system, enabling the government to
follow us from cradle to grave — quite literally.’

‘But why would they want Pat Baxter’s kidney?’

‘The federal government moves in mysterious ways, Mr Monroe, its
wonders to perform. Maybe they wanted to plant something inside Pat’s
body and the plan went wrong. Maybe the anaesthetic wore off and he began
resisting. Or perhaps they put something inside his body years ago. And now
they needed to get it back. Who knows? Maybe the feds just wanted to examine
the DNA of a dissident, see if they could discover the gene that makes a real
freedom-loving American and work to eradicate it.’

‘It does seem a little far-fetched.’

‘I grant you that. But we’re talking about a military-industrial
complex that has spent millions of dollars on mind-control techniques. You
know, they had a secret Pentagon project to see if men could kill goats, simply
by staring at ‘em? I am not making this up. So it may be far-fetched. But
I have come to learn that far-fetched and untrue are two very different things.’

Eventually Will steered Hill towards saner shores, seeking the biographical
details of Baxter’s life that he knew he would need. He got some,
including a back story about the dead man’s father: turned out Baxter Sr
was a Second World War veteran who had lost both his hands. Unable to work, he
had grown desperate; he could barely feed his family on his GI pension. Hill
reckoned Baxter was a son who grew up resenting a government that could send a
young man to kill and die for his country and then abandon him when he came home.
When history repeated itself with Baxter’s own generation in Vietnam, the
bitterness was complete.

That would do nicely, serving as the easy-to-digest, psychological key
needed for all good stories, in newspapers no less than at the movies. The
piece was beginning to take shape.

He asked Hill to take him to Baxter’s cabin. They used Will’s car,
its engine revving as it climbed further up the rutted path.

Soon, Will could see colour — the yellow tape of a police cordon.

‘This is as far as we can go. It’s a crime scene.’ Will
reached into his pocket. As if reading his mind, Hill added, ‘Even your fancy
New York press card won’t get you in here. It’s sealed.’

Will got out anyway, just to get a feel. It looked to him like a shed: a
bare log cabin, the kind a well-off family might use to store firewood. The
dimensions made it hard to believe a man had made this his home.

Will asked Hill to describe the interior as best he could.

‘That’s easy/ his guide said. ‘Almost nothing in there.’
A narrow, metal-frame bed; a chair; a stove; a shortwave radio.

‘Sounds like a cell.’

‘Think military accommodation; that’ll get you closer to it.

Pat Baxter lived like a soldier.’

‘Spartan, you mean?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Will asked who else he should talk to; any friends, any family. ‘The
Militia of Montana was his only family,’ Hill shot back, a little too
fast Will thought. ‘And even we hardly knew him. First time I ever saw
that cabin was when the police had me round there. Wanted me to identify which
clothes were his and which might have been left behind by the killers.’