Far West Chapter Five

VULTURES

Rachel Cox held her yellow legal pad of notes and the wireless microphone between her thighs as she instructed her cameraman, Ernie.  “Try to get a shot of the Tower without the police lights in it.  I want something that looks exclusive.  Something that gets some attention.”

            “The cops won’t be too open to letting us leave this area.  What do you suggest we do?  If you want to get shot or go to jail, feel free Rachel.” 

            “You get paid for getting the shot.  Not for bitching about my safety.  Don’t pussy out on me, Ernie.”

            Ernie did not appreciate her attitude, which was the prevailing attitude of many female reporters towards their male camera operators, whom they belittled with the viciousness of countless centuries of pent-up rage.  It was understandable, but for Ernie, it was unnecessary. 

            “If you get shot between the eyes, you’d never know it.”

            “I suppose not.  Well we’re the only ones here.  Might as well cash in on the opportunity before our rival channels or the big boys get here down from Boston,” she paused and returned with an aside.  “Unless some white girl fell down a well or got herself kidnapped again.”

            “This is the Vale.  What the fuck do they care even if it were a white-napping.”

            “They don’t but I’m from this city.  I care.”

            “And that’s who matters?”

            “To me it still does—so shut it, Ernie.  Maybe CNN will show-up if they think this Shooter’s a member of an Al-Qaeda terrorist cell.  I really hope that they do, but I doubt they could find here on a map with or without Google maps.” 

            “Just like Oklahoma City.  Disgruntled American soldiers could never attack their own country.  Never ever.  If a journalist ever read into history or had a memory that lasts longer than a fish these things would not come as a catastrophe.”  Ernie was becoming overly disgusted with their conversation as it sank deeper into cynicism and derision of their profession.

            “Why are you a cameraman, if you’re so well read and smart, huh?”

            “Because I get to lug around a hundred pounds of camera equipment for appreciative assignment reporters, why else?”  Ernie coughed clearing his throat as he began to guffaw loudly at his own remark.

            “Enough of this tripe, you are beginning to sound like my ex.”

             Rachel crept along the black paint lacquered cast iron piked fence that enclosed the grounds of the mothballed public library.  Ernie followed behind her through the pickets and crudely placed cement jersey barriers into the exposed field of fire in tandem. 

It had grown dark long before the police turned on the intensity rich halogen bulbs of their searchlights.  The police were preoccupied with the Shooter and as a result no one had seen the WQNP employees running across the street. 

            The two crossed Taconic Street (where it veered away from the Green to run parallel to the river and the old Castle cemetery) to the mothballed brick commuter rail station.  They ran close to the ground hidden from view of the Police and the festering presence of gawkers and rubberneckers.  They came to an abrupt stop at the old service entrance to the Patriot newspaper, which led into a large open space and the stairwell that led directly up to the pulpit of the tower. 

            “Are we rolling, Ernie?”

            “Yeah, you want to go now?  This shit weighs a fucking ton.”

            “The police can’t see us from here can they?”

            “If I turn on the camera light, it’ll be blinded out by their searchlights.  We can go whenever you’d like.”

            “This is a good as anywhere else.”

            Rachel said while pulling out her cellular phone from the rear pocket of her unused blue jeans.  Ernie set up for her next report back to the New Haven studio.  The process took less than three seconds and it could not have been any slower for Rachel’s exponentially growing impatience with modern technology and its signature gray metal communication towers that blighted the landscape, as was evident along the southern approaches of the state highway into the Vale.   

            Peter Schneider was eager to air her testimony based on the kind of journalism that won Pulitzer Prizes and started wars.  Live to the viewers of Connecticut, Rachel spoke and they listened attentively as if she were a prophetess.  Ambitions of moving up the journalist ladder like her rival, Alison, flickered across Rachel’s eyes.  She became lost in her own reverie and was unable to brace for the sudden jarring interruption of her status report. 

            One by one, the Shooter shot out the searchlights, reloading his bolt action rifle for each volley.  She fell to the ground and lay beside Ernie, who remained filming the scene, whispering into the microphone.  In a matter of minutes, the Shooter had knocked out the ten lights at a distance of three hundred yards, two hundred and fifty something feet in the air from a forty-five degree angle. 

            The initial feelings of being impressed by the Shooter’s accuracy and rate of fire were replaced by anger and more desperate remarks.  The Police had faithfully followed the hostage negotiation and breach playbook to the letter.  The senior officers, such as Major Templeman and Commander Jaskilka, could not wait for the arrival of their hero and had decided that it was better to act now rather than later.    

            This prompted the Police to call in the Fire Brigade’s helicopter waiting on the rooftop landing pad of the Catholic hospital towards the massive shopping mall alongside the red rock mountains heading easterly towards the Connecticut Valley.  Before takeoff, Police sharpshooters filed in to the Sikorsky transport chopper with their array of shotguns and high-powered rifles.  They were clothed in the gray uniforms of the Fire Brigade in a poorly devised subterfuge designed to surprise the Shooter. 

The helicopter with its doors left wide-open rose from the rooftop pad of Saint George Hospital.  Its flight path flanked the isolated Tower to the northwest, careful to make a few circles for reconnaissance before their final approach began.  The pilot flew closer in with each pass, encouraged by the lack of a response from the Shooter.  The helicopter was near enough for those aboard to notice the finely detailed moulding of the Tower, the illuminated flourishments of unexpected colours, the salusian tiles, intricately carved stone gargoyles, and purple slates lodged into the mortar of the brickwork.  It was a monumental feat of art and engineering that was worthy of its royal namesake and the Vale of that past forgotten century when she reigned over all under the sun.

            Ernie turned off the camera, unable to film in the blackness, and helped Rachel to her feet.  She wiped the dirt and grit from her pants and out of her face.  Rachel lit a cigarette with a wood match that she flicked ablaze with her thumb and let out a thick puff of smoke. 

            “We have to get up there, before the police get any angrier and just blow up the damned Tower.” 

            Rachel walked towards the loading dock and found the access door to the tower.  She ripped back open the door with a crowbar.  The door slammed hard against the dusty hallowed out interior.  The noise rattled loudly as it reverberated up the many darkened flights of stairs.  Ernie’s jaw dropped when he saw the vertical distance before him to climb up to the waiting Shooter, reigning over the city as the god of thunder of lightning from the Tower, the great throne of the Vale rising triumphantly from its heart. 

            “Well, Ernie, I won’t wait for you.  Let’s go.”  Rachel motioned forward with her arms as she raised her eyebrows a la John Belushi and led the way.

           

“James Taylor,” answered the Scotsman, who had correctly identified the artist of the song on the radio within seconds of hearing the first few bars. 

            The Highway was clear.  The convoy of police and federal agents drove slowly in tandem down the ten percent grade switchback to the tunnel down towards Old Cranbury.

            “Fuck James Taylor!  He ruined the national anthem at the last World Series.”  Pizarro stammered as just to spite his partner. 

            Detective Sergeant Audie Bezzeg reclined in the rear seats of the standard issue nondescript police car.  He stared out the window at the shadowy outlines of the rocky terrain as it passed him by.  He could name all of the earthen landmarks with their proper elevations in the range of five hundred to twenty-three hundred feet, among the highest in Connecticut and complete unknowns to those without such an idiot savant’s memory of geographical information.               

            The conversation of James Taylor died.  Swarbrick droned on about the nuisance of the FBI, aimed to propel his former boss into divorce.  Detective Swarbrick had often suggested that Audie should marry his eldest daughter, Kelly, who worked in Glasgow as a hospital administrator.  This proposal was summarily rejected every time it was asked. 

            Pizarro tried to ignore him but every few moments he had to tell him off or try to turn on the radio’s volume high above the CB still present in the unmarked police car.  Bezzeg heard nothing but the harsh jarring of the car rolling southbound faster than necessary.

            Bezzeg disregarded them both.  His mind was clear.  I have jail waiting.  No longer far away and nothing can change my fate.  Maggie’ll miss me, but she’ll trudge on as long as there’s a challenge to be met.  She triumphed over all her adversities.  She won the battles when they mattered. 

            The cops settled on Jackson Browne. 

            The detectives of the County Civil Services Internal Affairs Department, aka Vulture Squad, had been hand selected by former Lieutenant Bezzeg, before he was demoted and sacked for a myriad of petty crimes and his use of unnecessary violence in their less than subtle investigations.  Starting with his time in Britain as a postgraduate criminology student, he began to recruit a few classmates who were willing to abandon time in the Metropolitan Police of London and other constabularies for service in the Cranbury Vale.  Resettlement in the Vale drew little attention and few takers, but enough recruits to form a squad. 

            The strange dynamic of his chosen twelve was that only two current officers, Pizarro and Bezzeg, had been born in the Vale.  The detail, at first, had tremendous success working operations within the Public Works, Fire Brigade, Parks Rangers, Cranbury Water (Reservoirs), the courts, the Mayor’s Office and the Police and Sheriffs until the last general election when the people voted to eradicate the County polices. 

            It was a Tuesday so the radio played a second Jackson Browne song, the Pretender.  The following song was the Oasis song Wonderwall.  Swarbrick gasped loudly above the acoustic guitar streaming out of the speakers and immediately turned off the radio.  The cops drew a breath of relief in unison. 

“Ma sis thinks Supertramp is better.  Hey Beg, ‘member that Irish terrorist—mass killer we had a few years go?” 

Swarbrick turned around in his seat to address Audie.

            “Yeah, called himself, The Poet.  Shot his victims in the liver to watch them bleed to death.  Special Branch thought he was in the INLA.  It was a mess when it ended.  Just a run of the mill murderer like the rest of them.”  Audie replied somberly.

            Swarbrick had not recognized the subtle allusions that his friend had given to drop the subject and continued unabated.  “Even with the references to John Donne and the bad plays that no one outside of the West-End has ever seen or heard about?”

            Initially, Audie had pretended not to hear him, but he responded nonetheless to his waiting mentor.  “Especially because of the John Donne references.  Just because he had read 17th century poetry did not get him off with the judge or that jury.  It’s a goddamn shame that he committed those murders in Britain and got life, instead of being hanged or shot out of a cannon into a landfill full of used condoms and syringes the way we do it here.”

            The car left behind the cavernous shadows of the great Taconic forests as overhanging streetlights proliferated along the roadside.  Audie looked deep into the catacombs of his memory as the faded light rested on his face and promptly retrieved an atrociously bad poem he knew from the past: 

Violet liver blood, 
Clouds in the sun. 
Nowhere but here.
Death be Proud.  -The Poet