The Mormon Candidate - a Novel (3 page)

Chapter 2

First
on
the scene was a Ford
sedan
with dark windows and a few antennas—an unmarked
police cruiser
that
was as easy to
spot
as
if it
had a bar
of
rolling
lights
on the roof
.
It arrived from the opposite direction, where the road wasn’t blocked.
The
driver, a
s
tate
t
rooper in
uniform
, stepped to the edge of the overlook and
glanced over the side
.
Ben did the same
.
Down below, o
ne
of the
men
looked up from the body and
shook his head
.

The trooper
returned to his car
and used the radio to report
.
Ben trailed
him and caught the last few
words: “…lost control. Not surprising. We had reports of drinking at the launch site.”

“Excuse me,” Ben said, “I was
there. D
idn’t see any drinking.”

T
he trooper
put away the radio. “Thank you, sir.”

Ben made a point of gazing at his nametag.
O. Porter
– Inspector
.
“I thought you’d want to know.
”

“I’ll put it in the report.”
The trooper got in
to
his Ford and
shut
the door.

By now the area was crowded with bikers who had left their stranded machines and walked up the hill to find out what had happened. A
few
congregated around
a heavyset
woman with bleached hair and pink
b
oots. “He was flying,” she said.
“
We were leading
the ride
,
but
he
passed us real fast, like a bat out of hell.”

Ben elbo
wed his way closer
.

“Must have lost it on the turn,”
someone said
.

“
The
re was a
nother bike
,” she said
,
“
a
little one
, right?
”

“Yup.”
Her partner
was
a
burly
man with a
bushy
beard and a beer
belly
that filled a tight red t-shirt with crosshairs over the words
Battle for the soul of America!
“
Some piece of shit
sport bike
,” he added. “
O
ne of th
em
Italian
lawnmowers.
”

Ben asked, “Ducati?
”

“That’s it
.” He spat on the ground
by his woman’s boots. “Her son
got one
of those
.
Always in the shop.
”

“He’s your son too,” she said.

Everyone laughed
.

Ben asked, “
What color
was it
?
”

“
White
.”
She
pointed downhill in the direction they had come from. “
C
ame
out
of nowhere
,
like a ghost. M
ust’ve
freaked out the
Harley
speeder, made him lose control
.”

“That’s bull,” another rider said. “
That idiot was an a
ccident waiting to happen,
the
way he was going.”

There was a round of approv
ing grunts
from the riders.

“Whatever.”
She
made a rolling motion with her hands toward
the
overlook
. “Poor bastard.”

Sirens
sounded in the distance.
A few minutes l
ater,
an ambulance arrived
,
followed by a fire engine and several police cruisers.
The
officers
sent everyone back to their bikes
and set up a perimeter with red flares
.

Ben
sent off a
news
update to
Ray
, reporting that the injured veteran was presumed dead, and attach
ed
photos of the emergency vehicles and the covered body
at the bottom of the precipice.

He
stepped aside
and stood by the GS
to
watch the ride g
e
t back underway.
The roar of engines
shook the air
. After a while, among the colum
n
of slow-moving bikes, he recognized the boy in the Captain America helmet, who wasn’t smiling anymore. Neither was his father, whose motorcycle seemed to have suffered
nasty
scrapes and a
broken signal light
.
He veered toward
Ben
and
stop
ped
.

T
he father reached to shake Ben’s hand. “Thanks
!”

Ben shook his hand. “What for?”

“F
or getting out of the way. I
expected you to
slam into
us
like the mother of rear-enders.”

“No sweat.”

His eyes scanned Ben’s motorcycle. “
A twelve-hundred
GS, right?”

“Yes.”

“
Sweet
.”

“
Thanks
.” Ben
looked at
the boy. “
Hey, pal.
How’re you holding
up
?”

“We
fell
,” he
said in a thin voice, struggling not to cry.

“Captain America
doesn’t get
scared easy,
true
?”

The boy nodded
and sniffled
.

Ben reached into the
pouch
mounted atop his gas tank,
fished
out a
replica of a
Marine
Humve
e
, and handed it to
him
. “Here, that’s for you.”

The boy
took it
and tried the wheels on an open hand. The inner springs made the wheels
spin back
, generating sounds of popping gunfire.
“
Cool
!
”

“
Appreciate it
,” the father said. “You a
Marine
?”

“My dad was,” Ben said.
“He sent it to me from Kuwait, back when
I was a kid
.”

The fathe
r’s eyes
wide
ned
. He reached to take the Humve
e
from his son. “
We can’t
accept
this
—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ben said.
“It’s no longer age appropriate for me.”

“Thank you,
mi
s
te
r,” the boy said.

“Ride safely
, buddy
.
”

They rejoined the moving line of motorcycles, and the boy raised his new toy in a farewell greeting. He was smiling again.

Ben watched Inspector
Porter
ma
k
e his way down
and start a search of the crash site
. At one point, he glanced up and saw Ben
snap a photo
.

A moment later, a uniformed off
ic
er approached, signaling him to move aside.

Ben walked off to the end of the ledge and over a pile of rocks that were held together with concrete to
prevent mudslides
.
From
there, he resumed his observation
, snapping an occasional photo
.

Porter
glanced upward
every once in a while
but failed to see Ben among the bushes far to the side.
He kept turning over rocks and pushing aside shrubs
around
the crashed stars-and-stripes Harley
as if searching for something
specific
.
Turning to
the victim,
he
remov
ed
the man’s wallet and watch
.
He went
through every pocket, ending with the
boots, which he
pulled off
and felt inside with his hand before slipping each one back onto the
dead
feet. He even turned the body over and ran his hands on the back, buttocks, and thighs the way an officer would search a det
ained criminal
.
His efforts were rewarded with an item
stashed
under
the victim
’s
belt behind his back
. It was a perfect place to hide
a gun
, but
Porter
pulled out
a square object th
at looked like a piece of
cardboard
, about the size of a DVD case, which he
examined closely before
put
ting it
in
the pocket of his jacket
just as
Ben
took
a photo.

When
Porter
was done, the
body was
strapped to a stretcher
. A group of firefighters and police officers used a fair amount of muscle work to bring the body up.
They set
it on the ground near the ambulance.

A
n EMT
pulled on latex gloves and
removed
the wool blanket
,
except for the face, which he left covered
.
Ben snapped a
few
photo
s discreetly and stepped closer.

There was little blood, but when the
EMT
lifted the
khaki
undershirt, the
victim
’
s chest had an
unnatural
color
, as if the skin had been painted
in livid
purple
on
the inside. He was lean,
with a muscular
chest
and a flat stomach
,
over six feet
, about
fort
y
years old
.
The black boots could have been army surplus, but it was hard to tell.

The
EMT
checked for
a
pulse in the small of the neck, listened with a stethoscope over the chest and ribs, glanced at his wrist watch, and scribbled on a writing board.
Ben
looked over his shoulder.
Patient’s Name:
Zachariah Hinckley
.

Pulling
the undershirt back over the victim’s chest
, the
EMT
tried to tuck it in as much as possible.

Ben leaned closer and peered at the undershirt. Above each nipple was an insignia, about the size of a pinky
. The one over the left breast was
V-shaped
and the one over the right breast was
a reversed L.
A third insignia marked the navel with a horizontal line that se
emed almost like a
silkwo
rm embedded in the garment.