No Show Ch. 02

Slater said "We really didn't mean it that way, Commander---"

"Then how did you mean it?" I barked, my gray eyes boring into each of them in turns.

Slater did try: "I understand you're a Tournament Director, Commander? So am I."

Mike G. Todd got in on it: "And how is that relevant to this interrogation?" he asked, and rather harshly. Slater looked shocked for a second, then he and Catherine Shannon looked at each other.

"Is there a problem here?" Catherine asked, her eyes narrowing as she tried to figure me out. I made that easy for her to do.

I said "Whether you meant it or not, I took your telling me I don't need a lawyer to be an attempt to deny me my Constitutional rights, as well as strip me of the protection of having legal counsel. Furthermore, I did not get a subpoena requiring me to be interviewed by you until late yesterday afternoon, and demanding I meet with you this morning. That is unreasonably short notice, and it causes me to question your motives, your real motives. So yes, there's a problem here."

"Wait..." said a shocked Catherine Shannon, and I sensed she was not acting. "You only got your subpoena yesterday afternoon?"

"That's right." said Mike G. Todd, holding up the document in his hand. "It was issued at 4:15 yesterday afternoon, and signed for here at Police Headquarters at 4:45pm. And you, Ms. Shannon, are on the Magistrate Court's records as having asked for it at 4:05pm."

"No, that's not right." said Catherine. "I asked for all the subpoenas Monday afternoon, and they were delivered Tuesday morning."

"Except my client's, obviously." said Mike G. Todd, his voice both accusing and goading.

"Listen, we'll look into this, and I'm sure you will, too." said David Slater. "But for now, we're here, you're here, and you have your attorney present. May we conduct our interview now?"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The direction of the Inquisition soon became apparent. Catherine Shannon asked "So you did get a call, and you sent it to voicemail?"

"Yes, on the direct order of the Sheriff." I replied.

"Did you see who the call was from?" asked David Slater.

"It said the Mayor." I replied.

"And you didn't think it was important enough to take?" asked Catherine Shannon.

"Not when the Sheriff told me to send it to voicemail." I replied. "And Commander Ross left the party to go down there, and she'd have called me if I'd been truly needed."

"That's not what's important, here." said David Slater. "You disregarded an urgent call from the Mayor?"

"I don't accept your 'premature evaluation' that it was urgent." I replied levelly. "And the Mayor is not my boss, nor anywhere in my chain-of-command."

"So you have no respect for the Mayor." said Slater.

"That is not what I said, nor implied." I fired back.

"From now on," said Mike G. Todd, "ask direct questions that are not leading in nature or making a premise, like that last one did."

Slater stared at Mike, then said "I'll ask these questions how I damn well please."

"Then we're done here." I said, pushing myself up to a standing position.

"We're done when I say we're done." Slater said, trying to stare right through me.

"No, Mr. Slater." I said. "There's this little thing called the Fifth Amendment. You obviously don't know what is, and you need to find out before you fuck up and totally screw up any case your boss the I.G. is building." I nodded to Mike G. Todd, who began getting up.

"Before you go," said Catherine Shannon, "can I ask you a couple more questions?"

"I dunno." I said, then looked right at Slater as I said "I'm getting tired of the disrespect I'm being shown."

"Please, Commander." Shannon said. "Let us finish, and we'll be out of your way."

"Make it fast." I said as Mike and I sat back down. It was a mistake on my part.

Catherine Shannon said "Did you tell anyone, anyone at all, to not call you that night? That you wanted to spend your birthday with your family?"

"Jokingly." I said. "Commander Muscone and I were joking about it. And I never said anything of the kind to anyone at any other time."

"But you did say that." David Slater said, as a statement. And an accusation.

"In. Jest." I said. "If something was serious enough to require my presence, they know to call me."

Catherine Shannon said "You said that in front of the Sheriff? And he subsequently told you to send the Mayor's urgent call to voicemail? Is that factually accurate?"

"It's your premise and evaluation that the Mayor's call was (air quotes) 'urgent', and like I said to your colleague here a moment ago, I don't accept that premise. And the Sheriff knew I was being humorous in my repartee with Commander Muscone."

David Slater just about exploded. "One more time, Commander: you don't consider the Mayor's call to be urgent? When he and the other Council Members were about to be taken hostage?"

"Which was handled by my TCPD Officers, and did not require my presence." I replied. "And that's assuming I knew what was going on minute-by-minute, which was not the case nor did it need to be."

I stood up again. "It's pretty clear what you are trying to do here, and I will no longer participate in your dishonest attempts to make something of this that it wasn't. If the I.G.'s Office wants to talk to me again, I.G. Goodwin will have to call me himself. You guys stay here, and I'll have an Officer escort you out. Come on, Mike, let's go..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As the Duty Desk Officer escorted the Inquisitors out, Mike G. Todd and I went to the Chief's Conference Room, where the Police Chief, Sheriff, and my three Angels had been watching. We'd also recorded the whole thing.

After sitting down, Mike said "My first question is if they're lying or telling the truth about your subpoena being requested Monday but not delivered until late yesterday."

"Easy button deduction. She was lying." I replied. I looked across the table at my Angels and said "Y'all want a shot at the title?"

"Ohhh." Tanya said with great perkiness. "We all got our subpoenas on Tuesday, and I know I got my call to arrange my interview later that morning. If Catherine Shannon really did ask for a subpoena for you, someone should've called you on Tuesday, too. But no one did, did they?"

"Outstanding. Spot-on." I said. "No, I didn't get a call on Tuesday, which means Shannon and Slater knew I had not been issued a subpoena that morning."

"Why the de-cep-shunnn?" the Chief drawled.

"If I may." Teresa said. We all nodded, and she said "It looked to me like they were trying to ingratiate themselves with you. At first, anyway. Slater brought that up about you being a Tournament Director and so was he... that's classic trying to create a connection. So maybe Catherine Shannon said that she asked for your subpoena on Monday to mitigate your obvious anger about it, and maybe even to be the (air quotes) 'sympathetic figure' in all that."

"That's Iron Crowbar thinking, there." I said. "Sure you don't want one?"

"Don't need one." Teresa replied as she and Cindy fist-bumped.

I said "Tanya, did they try to tell you that you couldn't have a lawyer?"

Tanya said "I was interviewed Thursday morning, and I had my Captain Union's Rep there. They did say it wasn't necessary to have him there, and I said I had the right to have him there, so they said no more."

Tanya said "And so that you don't have to ask, I'll go ahead and tell you that all they asked me about was you. They knew about our back-and-forth over you asking to not be called on your birthday, and they asked about it over and over. They asked if you'd told anyone else to not call you, and I said not to my knowledge, and they asked who could verify that. I told them that one can't prove a negative, but that I'd know if you'd seriously made that request, and you didn't."

"They're really zeroing in on that." growled Sheriff Griswold. "And on you ignoring Allgood's phone call. You busted them down hard on their attempts to define the narrative by calling it 'urgent', which is what Allgood was saying it was. But it's clear that was a key issue for them."

"So Mayor Allgood was lying." Cindy said. "He said you weren't the one he was mad at, Don, but clearly that's not the case. My only question is if he was after you all along, or switched gears later on when he realized that chatter about us knowing about the protest in advance was going to hurt the entire Public Safety Department."

I said "We'll know for sure when the actual Board of Inquest is convened. They played sleight-of-hand with me, so they may be planning on doing the same with y'all, and will ambush us at the Inquest hearing over the 'what did you know and when did you know it?' routine..."

Part 13 - Duty To A Comrade

4:30am, Saturday, November 6th. Teresa and I boarded the Ichimoku Industries executive jet that had just landed at County Airport. The two pilots and one flight attendant greeted us with bows, saying how honored they were to be flying the Iron Crowbar and the Iron Wolf. Teresa and I returned the bows, and I replied that we were honored to have them as our crew.

We took off and flew west. After being served coffee and a noodle dish for breakfast, I asked Teresa "This is a very nice plane, but why aren't we using the BOW Enterprises plane? It's not still grounded, is it?"

"No, the NTSB released it back to us." Teresa said. "They never could find out what went wrong on that flight, and why it diverted to our Town & County rather than Louisiana." (Author's note: 'Who Watches The Watchers', Ch. 01-02.)

Teresa: "So they're making the poor pilot completely re-qualify for his license, from scratch. As to that plane, it's in use right now. It's in my childhood hometown. Todd says the Midwest & Pacific Railroad is almost ready to open, and his silver mining operation is already started up. And they're getting other companies to come in, including a huge data storage center. You wouldn't believe the infrastructure they had to put in for that."

"I dunno, I can believe a lot." I replied.

"By the way," Teresa said, "that was a very nice party last night. Thanks for hosting us."

The Cabin had hosted the joint birthday celebrations of Doug Burke and Ross Troy the evening before, with all the Usual Suspects present. Ross was a very practical guy, and had noooo problem with getting gift cards. Carole organized it so that all the kids gave Ross gift cards to Target, so that he could buy something big or a lot of somethings small, and he could order online or go into the store.

But not everyone went in that direction. Maggie Ross gave her grandson exactly what he wanted: a Canadian National Team hockey jersey, which the Team wore at the Olympics, World Championships, and other big hockey events.

Ross was ecstatic. "Yeah! We're gonna beat the... heck out of the U.S. Team!" he enthusiastically predicted.

"Vee shall zee." replied Carole in an excellent imitation of her Dad and her cousin Cindy's 'German' accents. "Especially for the women's teams!"

Jim was not nearly so amused, but seeing his father's 'side eye' directed at him, he wisely chose silence as the better part of valor...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Our destination was Meadows Field Airport (BFL) near Bakersfield, California. It was a three hour flight, but with the time changes it was only an hour of elapsed time, so it was 5:40am when we landed. An Ichimoku Industries Escalade was waiting for us, and the driver and I went through a prearranged ritual for security:

"In the days of the Emperor Hiragawa..," he said.

"There lived a wise man named Enraku-ji." I replied.

"Who wrote the thirty-first sutra." the driver said. He then bowed and said "It is an honor to be able to serve the Iron Crowbar and the Iron Wolf." We bowed back, and got into the backseat of the Escalade.

We drove east, through the dark streets of Bakersfield, then up into the desert-like mountains. There was just enough light from the dawning day behind the mountains for us to see the terrain. Teresa said "It's beautiful, in its own way." I nodded vigorously in agreement, but was lost in my own thoughts.

We began climbing into the hills, and after a little while we came to the complex of buildings. We were readily admitted past the guarded gate and drove up to the front building. Going inside, we were guided by a nurse to one of the hospice rooms, and I opened the door and went inside, followed by Teresa.

Lying in the hospital bed was FBI Executive Assistant Director Owen Lange. I steeled myself to not show my shock at the change in his appearance. He was emaciated, his cheeks hollowed in, what little hairline he had now reduced to pretty much nothing. He was showing the signs of the cancer that was ravaging his body despite every valiant attempt by his doctors and himself to defeat it... a battle he was soon going to lose.

After a moment, he opened his eyes, and saw me standing beside the bed, towering over him. "Damn, I've done died and gone to straight to Hell." he said, making me chuckle. His voice was scratchy but surprisingly strong. His eyes glanced over and saw Teresa at the end of the bed, reading his chart on the clipboard hanging from the foot of the bed. "What the hell are you two doing here?"

I said "I'm here to tell you to get your ass out of that bed and get to work. We've got things to do, places to go, people to see."

Owen Lange chuckled at that, then coughed. "Yeah, I hear you." After a pause, he said "I heard about you busting up the Toyota Gangs, including those people in Apple Grove. Yet another amazing job."

"Team effort, sir." I said. "And your guys were a part of it, especially Muscone and his guys."

Owen Lange's eyes became introspective. "Jack Muscone..." He looked up at me and said "Do what you can to help him. He may be the FBI's last hope."

Though stunned, I just nodded. "I'll do what I can for him." I said. "Which may be to help him find employment outside the FBI."

"That's true." Lange said. "He's doing what he can, working with Senator Bill Nunn and Congressman Gowron to expose what Derrick B. Harland is doing to the FBI. It's only a matter of time before the Swamp Frogs go after Jack. And I... I may not be able to help. Jack is going to need your help, Don... just to survive." I nodded, knowing the words were true.

Owen Lange went on: "And I owe you an apology, Iron Crowbar. When you turned in your FBI Consultant badge, I was pissed off at you. But now... well, like usual, you were seeing further than everyone else. You did the right thing. There may be no saving anything that Derrick B. Harland has touched."

Lange's voice was tiring as he said: "And that goes double for Brendan Chapel. The only reason he has not tried to truly wipe you out is because of Laura. He's afraid of her, like they all are. If anything ever happens to her... well, keep your head on a swivel."

"I'm there already." I said. "Okay, we can fix everything when you get out of here. You get some rest."

"One more thing." Owen Lange said, willing himself to speak. "This Toyota Gang thing... it's big, bigger than you realize, bigger than Muscone or Dwight Stevens realize. There are corrupt people in Washington that are working with the Chinese... for the Chinese... and in your State, the 'Big Guy' Hoyt Stenson and his son Hunter Stenson are compromised."

Owen Lange: "They're going to try to take the cases out of your hands, and take the gangs out of your jurisdiction. Don't let them do it. Make sure you get the armed robbery convictions first."

"Thanks. And I'll do that." I said. Then I took his hand in mine in a 'thumb' handshake and said what had to be said: "And on the off-chance I don't see you again for a while... I just want to thank you for your service to our Nation. In the Navy, in NCIS, and in the FBI. It's been an honor to work with you."

He tried to squeeze my hand, but he simply had no strength as he said: "Right back at you. You've actually made the Army Military Police Corps look good." Lange replied, making me grin. Then he said: "Seriously, I appreciate your service, too. And the smartest thing you ever did was to bring the Iron Wolf along with you."

He looked over at her and said "You've done amazing work, Commander Croyle. And you're the bravest person I've ever met. Keep it up... and try to keep this guy out of trouble, will ya?"

"Yes sir." Teresa said, trying to keep her voice as cheerful and positive as she could. "And I'm grateful to you for your service, as well."

"Okay, we better go." I said. "You take care."

As we got to the door, Owen Lange called out, his voice weak but his eyes glinting: "One more thing, Iron Crowbar. When I get out of here, I want a crowbar battle rematch. And I'm taking you down next time."

I couldn't help but grin. "You got it." I said, giving him a thumbs-up, then walking out the door behind Teresa. Once in the hallway, I felt my face fall... both he and I knew that that rematch would never happen...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We stopped at the 24th Street Cafe in Bakersfield for a complete breakfast. The decor was 'old style' diner, very down-home and comfy, and the food was very tasty. People looked a little strangely at the tall redhead carrying a red crowbar, but no one asked any questions, seeing my badge on my belt, and Teresa's on hers.

I said "Owen Lange is from this area. He always loved the desert highlands, and he wanted to retire here. And... well, I guess he did. He came home." I did not add 'to die'. I did not need to.

Teresa said "I've learned how to read Hospital charts since beginning my Trust. He's not going to make it to Christmas. Maybe the end of November."

"I don't think he'll see Thanksgiving, if I don't miss my guess." I said. "We got here just in time."

Teresa said "That stuff he said about Jack Muscone. I knew Jack was a whistleblower, and working with Senator Nunn. Do you think Jack has a chance in hell of helping the Republicans save the FBI?"

I said "I don't know, but I doubt it. The Republicans will have to take total power in Congress -and- win the Presidency... with a candidate that is not an Establishment piece of shit like Mitt Romney, John Boehner, or Paul Ryan. And the American Mainstream Media is fully on the Enemy's side. I'm not giving myself airs when I say this, but my lawsuit against KXTC may be our true only hope."

I continued: "But even that may not matter. The Swamp Frogs were infecting the FBI and the other Agencies before Derrick B. Harland was installed as U.S. Attorney General. Brendan Chapel moved too far, too fast, and they had to get him out of the light and back into the shadows, but Lange was right... Chapel will be back, and we'll be the worse for it."

Teresa said "Well, hopefully not for a while, maybe a long time. So... what about Muscone?..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As we flew back home, I checked on the football games. The Wildcats were playing at Eastern State, and Theo Washington was already thinking about what to order when I had to pay off my lunch bet with him. And thanks to the horrible if not dirty officiating in the Bulldogs game, the Wildcats didn't have Davis Smith for the first half of the Eastern State game.

The University Bulldogs were at home against the Tigers, and they needed a win plus a Wildcats loss to keep hope alive for the Conference title game. The Wildcats were still in the hunt, as were Eastern State and the State U. Purple Hawks. If I didn't have skin in the game, I'd be enjoying the closest race in years.

After defeating Alabama, the Tennessee Volunteers were ranked No. 1 in the nation in the first CFP poll. They were taking that ranking and their top-rsnked offense into Athens, Georgia and Sanford Stadium, where the Nation's top-ranked defense awaited them.