Molon Labe! (29 page)

Just another commuter.

The man revels in the rich coffee aroma, taking a first sip. He glances again at himself in the mirror. Although his face is calm, his eyes glow with accomplishment. He never felt more alive, and allows himself a chuckle. Turning over his shoulder he asks, "You all right back there, Judge?"

Gray had, for all practical purposes, sent an innocent and harmless woman to her death. Today comes the bill.

The man recalls the horrible account of Katherine Jessup's needless death as he takes the Beltway to I-66 West. He'd never met Katherine Jessup. Didn't know anyone who had, either. But when he read her story and saw her picture he thought
That could have been my daughter. Jenny had those same wistful eyes before she died of breast cancer in college her sophomore year
.

Actually, the nausea that Jenny suffered from Adriamycin — better known as "Red Death" to its miserable patients — was more responsible for her demise than the cancer itself. The man had to watch his beautiful daughter waste away to a Dachau-wisp before death mercifully took her. The tragedy spun his wife into a chronic depression. She soon after ODed on barbiturates.

He only learned of medical marijuana later through the Katherine Jessup story, but this was months after Jenny's funeral on that sullen, drizzly Tuesday morning.
Medical marijuana should not only be legal, but it should have been on 60 Minutes years ago! I might still have my wife and daughter!

Not surprisingly, the man focused on the medical rights issue. Every FDA incursion against vitamin sellers, every DEA raid of holistic health practitioners, every natural herb shop stormed by submachinegun wielding US Postal Inspectors in federal black ratcheted the man's anger one more notch. Peaceable Americans were being hounded out of business and into prison over some useful flower, stem, tree bark, or root. He stewed for years over Judge Gray, who seemed the epitome of every senseless and monstrous invasion of medical privacy.

Gray had returned to private law practice shortly after being hounded off the federal bench for his draconian rulings, which he blamed on mandatory sentencing guidelines. The old Nuremberg defense of "just following orders" excused no perpetrator of evil. Not then, and not now.

When Harold Krassny publicized the reasons for his actions, something clicked within the man.
About time! The federal government long ago declared war on us, and we're only now just waking up to it.

After Krassny's example, the rudiments of a plan soon hatched in the man's mind. It wouldn't bring Jenny or the Jessups back, but it was The Next Best Thing.

Alexandria, Virginia
Law Offices of Schwartz, Williams, and Gray

8:24AM

Senior partner Ira Schwartz buzzes his secretary. "Apparently Jon's running a little late. Have him drop by my office when he gets in. We need to discuss
McFarland
."

"Yes, sir."

northern Virginia

8:24AM

The man exits the highway onto a small county road and drives southwest about twenty miles. He then turns onto an overgrown dirt road which winds its way into the George Washington National Forest. After several miles he stops just past a pair of trees flanking the road. He dons a new pair of rubber surgical gloves, gets out, and retrieves a small bag hidden behind an old rotten log. In it are a heavy chain, combination padlock, and sign. He strings the chain between the trees across the road and padlocks it. The sign reads
Closed for public use. By order of US Forest Service.
It is an authentic sign, "borrowed" from a gate miles away.

He studies the road in front of him. It is a rarely used forest road hardly more than a trail, its ruts nearly overgrown with lush grass. By the dirt he can tell that nobody but himself had driven on it since yesterday. The man drives two more miles down the road, turns around, and parks. It is 8:55AM. The sun strains through the leaden winter sky, and all is quiet.

He gets out and surveys the area with a hand-held milspec thermal device capable of detecting human presence within 600 yards. He is quite alone. He walks about fifty yards through the trees, and removes a large, weighted-down tarp. The pit he dug yesterday is undisturbed, as is the covered shovel and several 5-gallon plastic cans.

He returns to the car, opens the trunk, and dons new gloves. Gray is half awake, groggily straining at his cableties. The man lifts Gray out, still hooded, and carries him near the pit.

"Who, who
are
you? Where
am
I?" Gray manages to sputter through his hood.

The man says, "We've never met, but I know who
you
are."

"Well, if you know who
I
am, then you must realize what colossal trouble you have gotten yourself into!" Gray snaps.

"It seems only
one
of us is in any trouble," the man says evenly. "I'm not the one bound up and blindfolded miles from home, now am I?"

Gray is only momentarily fazed by this. "You are in much more trouble, whoever you are. You should have kidnapped a wealthy man, not an influential one. Release me at once! I have important business to attend to, and my people in Washington already know that I'm missing. Furthermore, I can assure you that the FBI will — "

The man gives Gray a brutal slap across his left cheek. "You're a very important guy — noted for the record, Judge. Now shut up."

The full terror of his predicament falls on Gray.
Nobody knows I'm missing! Nobody is coming to help!
Gray knows that he is going to die — horribly — and begins to panic. "Y-you're g-g-going to
kill
me!"

"Calm down, calm down. You're only upsetting yourself," the man soothes. "And you're not making that headache any better. That was a nasty fall you took."

This confuses Gray. He doesn't remember falling, but even if he did fall he doesn't understand why he's been abducted. "You're, you're
not
going to
kill
me?"

The man chuckles. "If I were going to kill you, would you still be blindfolded? Listen, I'm going to give you something for your headache, and then we'll talk. I'm sure you've got a lot of questions."

The man lifts the cotton hood over Gray's mouth, opens a small plastic bottle of Evian drinking water and allows him a long swig before he swallows a gel capsule. Strangely, Gray seems to trust the man and his calm voice.

"Good. Your discomfort will be gone soon. You're not going to start shouting for help now, are you?"

Gray shakes his head. "No, but I demand some answers. Just who in the hell do you think you — "

Slap!
Spittle is flung several feet.

"Stimulus — response, Judge. Are you getting the idea here?"

Gray nods vigorously.

"That's better. Just to be on the safe side, I can't risk you shouting for help. I'll let you go later, but right now I need to tape your mouth. Besides, I'm tired of hearing your voice. Just cooperate and everything'll be fine, OK?"

Without waiting for a reply the man yanks off Gray's cotton hood and seals his mouth with duct-tape. With heavy scissors he cuts off Gray's shoes, socks, and all of his clothes except for his underwear.

Gray blinks rapidly from the sunlight and strains to make out his kidnapper's face. Seeing it, he knows, seals his death. He begins to tremble.

While Gray is wriggling in his boxer shorts, the man goes to the 4'x6' pit and removes a sheet of plywood from an interior earthen shelf, exposing an empty smaller hole below. It is lined with 10mil black landscaping plastic, forming a water-holding pit 3' deep and 3'x5' in dimension.

"Hey, did you know that Evian spelled backwards is 'naive'?" He then kicks the cabletied Gray into the pit, who lands in a bruised heap.

"I've two words for you, Judge:
Katherine . . . Jessup
!"

Gray frantically searches his terrified mind for the familiar name. A burble of queasiness interrupts his thoughts.

The man continues, "Well, J.D., I lied. I couldn't find any headache medicine. But I did bring some concentrated powdered ipecac."

Cephaelis ipecacuanha
is a creeping plant of tropical South America. Its dried rhizome and roots are used to prepare a very powerful emetic. An emetic, from the Greek
emetikos
, is something that induces vomiting. Taken raw it works immediately and cannot be resisted. The capsule has delayed reaction by a minute or so. Every drugstore sells it, and it requires no prescription. First aid kits have ipecac in case a victim has been poisoned.

Gray feels himself growing increasingly nauseous as the homemade capsule dissolves. Having dropped out of med school to become a lawyer, he knows full well what ipecac is. His fall only accentuates its effect. From the pit bottom he can see his captor standing at the edge, his arms crossed.

The man's voice is calm, but brittle with anger. "You remember
her
don't you, Your Honor? An innocent woman just trying to deal with her cancer? You sent her to prison where she died! Her husband, Tom, became an alcoholic and soon after killed himself in a car crash. Didn't the Justice Department update you on
that
little detail?"

Gray is groaning loudly through the duct tape, trying to say something.

"Just like somebody in Florida CS-gassed that hideous, lantern-jawed woman 'for the children,' you're going to die in the same horrible way Katherine Jessup did. And I promise you that nobody will
ever
find your decomposed body, Judge."

Gray is now shaking with fear as his gut churns. He had not eaten anything since dinner and his stomach is void of all food. The human physiology has a wonderful cadence of circadian rhythms, and the empty stomach of Jonathan Douglas Gray had prepared itself for the regular 6:55AM intake of breakfast with a full complement of digestive acids. The more he struggles the sicker he becomes. His nausea then passes that Point Of No Return and Gray knows he can no longer fight it.

Alexandria, Virginia
Law Offices of Schwartz, Williams, and Gray

9:07AM

"Did you try his cell phone?"

"Yes, sir, right after I called his home. I only got his voice mail. No response from his pager, either."

Ira Schwartz frowns. "This isn't like him. He has court at 2:00PM. I'd better drive up to Montgomery County and see if something happened to him at home. Meanwhile, try and reach a neighbor to knock on his door."

northern Virginia

9:07AM

"You knew this day had to come, Judge," the man says evenly.

As Gray contemplates his death sentence a full pint of vomitus suddenly boils up, unstoppable as a train. His cheeks actually bulge out Dizzy Gillespie-like from the impact of the tidal wave — his nostrils spew twin jets of thin, yellow puke. He thrashes violently; his sinus cavity ablaze with 1.0pH juices ten times the strength of battery acid. Successive waves of nausea fill his lungs with with the corrosive fluid, putting Gray in a Panic beyond anything ever called the name, increasing exponentially with every second.

As Gray writhes in the damp, cold earth the man intones over and over, "Katherine Jessup. Katherine Jessup. Katherine Jessup."

The seconds tick off like millennia for Gray as his own body kills itself in a grotesque spectacle. He is a gurgling mass of agony. The woman's name reverberates within his mind.
Katherine Jessup? Katherine Jessup!
In his last coherent memory, Gray finally recalls the sunken face belonging to the emaciated frame of that druggie.
Pothead bitch! The law's the law!
Her image recedes to a phosphene-studded blackness as Gray ceases to struggle, his eyes wrenched wide open, unseeing.

There is no longer any movement from the pit. The man feels no remorse, and a strange calm falls on him.
Dogma creates karma, Judge Gray
. He only wishes that husband Tom Jessup, rather than a stranger, had settled the account, but life's double-entry bookkeeping is an imperfect process.

The man waits another minute and then begins uncapping the eight 5-gallon plastic jugs of NoClog drain cleaner. Bought with cash months ago from a janitorial supply house in South Carolina, no incriminating purchase records will ever surface. He carefully empties the 40 gallons over Gray's body, completely filling the plastic-lined pit. The highly caustic solution will make mulch of Gray in a matter of days. He will be a heavy slurry in two weeks. In a month all physical and DNA evidence, including teeth and bones, will be destroyed. Even if the pit were discovered, forensics would not be able to determine what, much less
who
, had been buried there.

He wipes the NoClog jug spouts with one of Gray's socks. Then he hangs the sock and the rest of Gray's clothes on a dead twig and lights them on fire. He drops the ashes in the pool of NoClog, along with Gray's shoes. He cuts up the empty jugs with the scissors and drops the pieces in the pool. Retrieving the second plastic sheet from the trunk, he cuts it into small squares and drops them in the pit, along with the leather sap, empty bottle of water, and scissors. Finally, he turns his gloves inside-out and burns them.

Everything that had come in direct or indirect contact with Judge Gray during the morning is now being dissolved by 40 gallons of NoClog. There is zero physical evidence that Gray was ever in the Lincoln trunk.