C.O.T.V.H. (Book 1): Creation (10 page)

Again, John wiped the sweat from his brow on his sleeve, “Of course I've heard of JFK.  Who hasn't? I was only three years old the year he was shot."

"Well I figured as much.  A man of your education probably doesn't want to hear a story from a man that was actually there,” Henry grew silent again, knowing full well John wanted to know.  

"You were there the day JFK was shot?"

"Not exactly.  But I was there when they caught Oswald."

“
No shit?” John asked his interest clearly peaked.

“
I'll tell you what, John. How's about while we sit here waiting on the Public Defender to make his way through the twenty or so gang bangers they busted this morning, I tell you my little tale.”

John rolled his head around cracking his neck. “Do I have a choice?”

Henry chuckled, “You’ve always got a choice, John. I'm ready to listen anytime you're ready to start talking.”

“
Alright, as long as I'm stuck here . . . tell me the story about the brave Texas Ranger that single handedly brought down the man that killed JFK.”

“
Now I never said all that,” Henry chuckled. “Besides, if I’m going to tell this story I might as well start at the beginning.”

“
Might as well,” John, agreed sarcastically. "I wouldn't want to miss out on the miracle of your birth."

"Well, I don't think we need to go that far back." Henry chuckled again. "Did you ever have a dream, John? Something you knew you was destined for?"

John nodded. "Sure, who doesn't?"

"Well sir, for as long as I can remember my dream was to be a cop. You see, three months before I was born, my daddy was killed by a drifter. So, I never got to know him. But throughout my entire childhood I listened to my older brothers tell stories about what a great man he was.  I guess it just always bothered me that they never caught the guy that did it.  So, I suppose that was my main influence in wanting to become a cop.  The other was Dick Tracy." Henry said, with a laugh. “Did you ever listen to or watch Dick Tracy?”

“
A time or two,” John answered. “I saw the movie with Madonna a couple of years back. Never was that big in to it to tell you the truth.”

"Well we didn't have televisions like kids today have, but we did have a radio.  And every weeknight my brothers and I would gather round it and listen to the adventures of Dick Tracy.  My older brothers favored the villains of course.  They were much more interested in Big Boy and Flat Top than they were Tracy.  I on the other hand was a Tracy fan through and through.  I wanted to catch bad guys and solve crimes more than anything else.  I figured that if Dick Tracy had been in town the day my daddy was killed he wouldn't have been killed at all.  Ah the innocence of youth.

“
Well when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor my brothers all joined up. I was far too young, barely six when the war started, so it was just Ma and me for a while.  One by one men in uniform delivered letters saying my brothers had been killed in action. Jimmy was killed at Normandy, Sam at Iwo Jima, and Troy, well Troy was killed in some freak accident on the way home of all things!  He made it through the whole damn war and was killed by some yahoo dropping a jeep on him on a transport ship. Terrible luck I guess.

"In '52 Ma got sick and died, leaving me to fend for myself.  I was only seventeen at the time, but I decided right then and there I was going to do whatever it took to become a Detective.  To stop crimes before they were committed. And that's just what I did.”

“
Just like that?”

"Well of course it wasn’t easy. But I took the test and in ‘57 got my first job working for Dallas PD as a Patrolman.  Man I tell you, things were sure different in those days.  People were respectful; neighbors actually spoke to one another.  Just all around better times. That all seemed to change one November day in 1963.  For me especially."

"The day Kennedy was shot?" John said, leaning forward.

Henry took a few seconds to answer, trying to put it into just the right words, “Well . . . yes and no.  While the President being murdered was horrific and tragic, it wasn't the thing that changed me. You see another murder happened that day, one that's often overlooked in the whole Kennedy conspiracy plot.  J.D. Tippit.  You see John, Tippit, like me, was a Patrolman. He was brutally murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald not long after Kennedy was shot."

“
Yeah I remember seeing that in that JFK movie by Oliver Stone,” John nodded. “Some people said it wasn’t Oswald at all. It was some impostor dressed to look like him.”

Henry held up his hands, “Now I'm not going to get into if Oswald killed Kennedy or not, but I know for a fact he killed Tippit. You see I was first on the scene that day.  I didn't know Tippit; I had never even met the man before.  But when I pulled up on that scene and saw his bullet riddled body lying there on that street.  Well, John, I'll think about that scene every day until the day, I die.  It just rattled me like I'd never been rattled before.  I can tell you personally that I interviewed those witnesses and all of them gave us Oswald's description.  I have no doubt he murdered that man in cold blood."

Henry grew quiet for a few seconds before continuing. "Well, a couple of hours later we caught him in the Texas Theater. He put up a little bit of a fight and got roughed up a bit by a couple of the boys, but with a little effort, we got him under control. Two days later Jack Ruby put a snub nosed .38 in his stomach and pulled the trigger, ending his life and leaving unanswered questions that people would debate for decades to come."

John snorted. “Man that’s no joke. Shame one of you guys didn’t pop Ruby before he got to him.”  

"Well anyway, I made Detective in '64. Most the cases they tossed my direction were cold cases. Cases other detectives had long since given up on.  At first, the other men in the department gave me a hard time.  Started calling me Cold Case Anderson.  But I shut them up pretty quick by cracking cases that had been unsolved for years. I'd meet with victim’s families, old friends, ex co-workers, neighbors, anything to crack the case. In ‘67, my career took a drastic turn.  I'd gotten a job with the DPS and was loaned out to a small West Texas town to help solve a multiple homicide.  The Riker family.”

"The Riker family?"  John asked, his body going stiff.

"Thought that might get your attention. You see, John, I know you better than you think I do.  I interviewed your wife when she was only five or six years old.  She'd seen her entire family murdered by some preacher in a frock coat.  She said he'd also kidnapped her seventeen year old brother, Michael." 

John coughed uncomfortably then fidgeted in his seat.

"Yep, the only survivors were poor little Julia and her old man, Richard Riker,” Henry spat the name out as if it left a bad taste in his mouth. "Now that man was a miserable human being, cold, arrogant, a real piece of work. For the longest time I thought he was the killer.”

“
I don't think I'd ever classify Riker as a human being,” John added. "More like a slimy little snake. You think it was bad having to talk to him? Try having him for a father in law.”  

“
I can imagine,” Henry nodded. “But his alibi checked out. Turns out, he was just a piece of trash that had been out all night drinking with his buddies. The son of a bitch made millions in the oilfield a few years after his family was killed.  Over the years, he turned it into billions!  Crazy world ain't it? But I don’t need to tell you that. Anyway, I met a strange character while I was investigating. A man by the name of Cort Bishop.”

John sat there quietly looking up at the ceiling, “Seems like Cort had an interest in the same case. However, I never could determine why. So anyway, the Riker's case remained unsolved. But it put me onto a couple of other strange cases. An elderly couple several miles away were murdered, their heads were cut clean off. The house was burned to the ground. Even stranger, a local cop sent to investigate the fire disappeared without a trace,” Henry snapped his fingers. "Just like that, without a trace. No squad car, no body. He was just . . . gone. To this day, I haven't a clue as to what happened to him.

"So anyway, over the next few years I started connecting the dots on dozens of other cases of disappearance with the same MO's as the Riker boy. Strange cases, where people that disappeared out of their houses without a wallet, money, or ID. No one just walks out of the house leaving their car in the garage and their wallet or purse on their nightstand.  

"Always in the same area I'd find arson cases with beheaded bodies burnt all the way down to bones. Sometimes, we’d find the heads burnt to a crisp, a few feet away from the house with teeth missing. Sometimes we wouldn't find them at all. Trophies would be my guess. But there were never enough bodies to match the number of disappearances. I knew in my gut they were connected.

"Another thing that struck me odd was that when I really started digging, the same names kept coming up. Names like Bishop, Turner, Williams Anderson, and Casino. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you, Mr.
Bishop
?”

John looked down at his hands cuffed tightly to the table. Henry stared at him watching his every move. "So I dug deeper and deeper, connecting cases going back decades.  I'd spend hours digging through file after tattered file of cases going back all the way to the 1920's. As crazy as it sounds some kind of weird mass conspiracy appeared.

"My superiors thought I was obsessed.  I was even reprimanded and forced to take time off.  But I knew I wasn't crazy."

“
You sure about that?” John asked looking him in the eye for the first time since he had mentioned the name Riker.

Henry ignored him. "My theory was this: a very old serial killer or group, or possibly even a family of killers were operating in the Southern U.S. and was damn good at taking people, torturing them for several days and then beheading them.  Last but not least, they torched the scene of the crime to cover the evidence.  I just knew there was something to this.  In the Dallas/Fort Worth area alone I'd found at least ten separate cases over a thirty year period.”

Henry stopped and watched his suspect for any signs of nervousness. John showed absolutely no emotion. The sweat hung heavy from his brow, but it didn’t seem to be a nervous sweat.
Something's wrong here. It’s hot but not that hot . . .
“Still with me John? Do you need anything? A drink of water?”

“
No. I’m fine.” John shrugged.

I bet you are you sick son of a bitch, your sweating bullets.
"Well one day I had a strange visit from an agency man.  I never knew which agency he came from, but I could tell that by the way my superiors catered to him that he was Government.  FBI, CIA, NSA, the initials didn't really matter, the message was clear.  The Agent man, with my commanding officer at his side, told me point blank to stop looking, stop digging, some things weren't meant to be solved. Stop or lose your job.

"By this time I was married with two kids and had little choice.  So I stopped. Three years after that I applied to one of the most respected law enforcement agencies in the world, the Texas Rangers. To my surprise, I was accepted in almost record time. I had the sinking feeling my application had been pushed through on purpose.  That someone was rewarding me for keeping my theories to myself."

“
You sure you’re not a tad bit crazy?” John asked. “Now there’s a big government conspiracy to get your career on track?”

"That's funny,” Henry chuckled. "You're a funny guy. Well believe it or not, the exact opposite turned out to be true.  Two days before I was to take up my position, I met with my new commanding officer, Captain James Barnes at his ranch outside of Alpine. Barnes told me straight to my face that he'd been pressured to take me on and wanted to know why.  I knew an honest man when I saw one so I took a chance and told him my theory."

“
And you still got the job?” John said, feigning amazement.  

“
Barnes leaned back in his big leather chair listening very closely to my every word.  At the end of my speech, he leaned forward and said three words I never expected to hear,
I believe you
. Boy, I nearly fell out of my chair!”

“
That would have been my reaction as well.” John snickered.

“‘
Henry,’ he said, ‘I've read your reports and your case files.  Seems to me,’ Barnes said, never taking his eyes off mine, ‘that someone very high up doesn't like where you're digging. This says to me that we should dig just a little bit deeper.’  I sat their speechless.”

“
Speechless? You? Man I bet that was a first.”

“
I honestly didn't know what to say.  For years I'd been told I was crazy, obsessed.  Now here sat this man telling me he believed me. Before I could say a word Barnes continued, he told me that there was less than two hundred Ranger positions in the whole state and that they currently only had two openings and a lot of good men had applied for them. But he was going out on a limb and hiring me! Can you believe it?”

“
I can honestly say that I can’t.”

“
Within weeks, using the resources of departments around the state, I found at least forty different cold cases that had the same characteristics. By then I knew I was on to something
very
big.  So, in my off time I kept digging. I followed the trail. And do you know where that trail led me?”