Chapter 1
Against the hills, houses lined up neatly like canning jars on a shelf and the silence of the night and the shadow of the land screwed their lids down tight. The inhabitants were still peacefully contemplating the soft dying of the day, almost perceptibly later than the one before it as it had been to the one previous and so on until the unbroken chain formed the garland of early spring, always worth remarking after the long Maine winter. It arrived like a blessing, bringing excitement and optimism and the nearby residents would insist they were fully sober and awake - it was too nice an evening to surrender to their beds so early - when they heard the gunfire.
It seemed to be coming from the business development down the road: two quick shots, a pause and then two more close upon each other. The neighbors cautiously parted their curtains or lifted the corner of a shade but saw nothing. The scene returned to its former silence and people sought but did not recover the peace of their innocent meditations on nature.
When the police arrived they found two bodies in the parking lot about 5 meters apart. One of the men was lying prone, shot once in the back and, given the quantity and location of the blood, probably in the chest, too.
“Well, he’s dead,” Detective McCamish said looking at what had been a white male in his mid twenties. He carried no identification but his head was turned slightly so McCamish could just make out his profile. Despite the condition of his face, it was scraped up pretty bad either from an altercation preceding the shooting or, more likely, from the fall itself, he thought he looked familiar. The EMTs checked for breathing and circulation. “He’s dead clear to your navel.It’s not worth disturbing the evidence.”
“Load and go this one,” Detective Colp said, referring to the second body. “The other one’s dead.”
“Dead as your hearing aid battery.”
“The next time his mother sees him he’ll be lying in silk,” Colp continued. He had not heard his partner.
The man still pumping blood onto the pavement had brown skin, growing paler, and was around the same age as the first man. His uniform and badge identified him as Taj Wilkerson, a security guard employed by the office park. The medics packaged him up, loaded him into the ambulance, and off he went to the hospital but few had any hope of seeing him alive again.
The detectives ran through various explanations in their heads. It was too early yet for discussion. Other people might have been involved and they searched the area. It was standard procedure for the security company to have at least two guards on duty at all times but there was no sign of the other guard. He might have killed the man after his partner had gone down and then fled in a panic. There also might have been other shooters who had gotten away, maybe even taken the other security guard hostage. If the wounded man survived long enough to regain consciousness he could fill in some important details, if he remembered. Trauma victims often didn’t. Until then, they would have to study the surveillance video and wait for the forensic evidence.
The office park was little more than a strip mall. The reasons for the private security were an all night pharmacy and a bank, both detached from the main gallery. If burglary had been the motive, the action should have occurred in or at the pharmacy. It had already been hit twice this year and it was only March. The other lease holders were an odd assortment. Interspersed with several vacancies were a jewelry store, animal rescue shelter, a Spanish Pentecostal church, a real estate office, a tax preparation service, and a solo practitioner law office.
In between the church and the real estate business was another office that looked vacant but there were no for lease signs or markings on its facade at all. It wasn’t the kind of business you advertised. Ugly blinds slanted almost to the floor and were closed, except for where they warped, as if hidden fingers were prying the slats open on the flashing red and blue lights, multiplied almost endlessly on every reflective surface. But the police knew the office was a leased and going concern from the numerous and increasing complaints they had about the occupants. It was the office of a racist organization called the American Patriot Militia, which most people now just referred to as the APM. The dead man had been found directly in front of it but there was nothing of value inside except for some computer equipment, hardly worth the effort of an armed burglary except maybe for a particularly desperate drug addict. But the dead man had been powerfully built, even athletic; not at all like an addict. Then McCamish remembered why he looked familiar.
“Austin Padgett, sacked for a loss; what a damn shame,” he said it as if his knowledge of the town and its citizens was a demonstration of skill he took some pride in. His partner took his meaning; they knew all the same people. “He could have had scholarships, been on his way to detective by now. Instead he got this. Center mass front, center mass back. One in the heart and one in the lungs.” He couldn’t help but admire a clean job.
“Through breath and blood, never had a chance. He won’t see 27. Makes no sense getting sucked into an organization like this. This is Maine.”
“I don’t know the other guy. He’s not from here,” McCamish continued, as if holding up an odd piece of evidence.
A few members of the APM, including Austin, were known to work late at night. The office was mainly used for updating their websites and the production of various media, things that required no set business hours. It was a well lit area and, given the proximity of the bodies, the two men would have been close enough to identify each other. Wilkerson had worked there for over a year and was familiar with the people and their comings and goings at odd hours.
There were two fish eye cameras that covered almost the whole development except some of the parking lot perimeter and an eight meter section of the building, including the APM door that was concealed by an awning. Building security and the insurance company recommended to property management removing the obstruction but the owners thought it not worth the expense and the tenants never expressed concern about it and, in the APM’s case, all the occupants were heavily armed. One of the cameras showed Austin Padgett’s arrival that night. He walked past the guard shack and exchanged a few words with Wilkerson but there was no sound so the detectives couldn’t know what was said but it didn’t look confrontational. It might even have been friendly. The other guard could plainly be seen inside the shack but he played no other role in their interaction. It was time for Wilkerson’s regular round of security checks and he and Austin walked together a short way, out of range of the first camera. The second camera picked them up going toward the door of the APM office where they disappeared under the awning. A few seconds later Austin, they could tell it was him by his clothes, stivered just shy of camera range. All they could see was one shoulder and the lower part of one leg and then he disappeared again. They couldn’t tell if he was wounded and they couldn’t tell if he was holding a gun. Austin and Wilkerson never appeared in the video again. Neither did anyone else. The imagery from the first camera showed the other security guard running out of the guard shack when the shooting started and then out of sight.
Taj Wilkerson no doubt knew what kind of organization occupied that office and about their racist views. The detectives started digging into the APM record.
