12: Explanations
The morning came with the sun blazing in a deep blue sky, eager to reveal the night’s events. Foremost in these events consisted of a group of four men standing in three feet of snow on top of a mountain. The group has nothing in particular to say for they were too busy contemplating a caved in pile of rubble in front of them.
Guy sighed scratching his head, things always had to be complicated, he wasn’t sure if he could take anymore of this. He looked at the other three men and saw the same confused expression on their faces that he felt. At least his other agent and the helicopter pilot had seen them drop off Robert and John the night before, but this local policeman was sure to all the more confused, he wasn’t exactly keeping up with all the information they were trying to give him. The other pilot had stayed with the helicopter to keep an eye on it, lucky him. The policeman looked at Guy with the same confused, questioning face he had held all through the night into this morning. Guy turned away; this dim wit would have to wait. He scanned the area surrounding the caved in building. What had happened here? They had left two men here last night, with building intact, and gone on to find Gatchet. Gatchet they didn’t find only a missing snowmobile and hours old snowmobile tracks leading up into the mountains.
Suddenly Guy spotted a thin wisp of smoke curling up from a group of trees off to his right. He pointed it out to the others and set off towards it, the crunching of the snow behind him telling him the others were following. As they neared the forest Guy pulled out his gun and clicked the safety off. He ignored the others’ confused looks and finally following suit; he for one had had enough surprises and wasn’t going to be caught off guard. He led the group through the trees until they caught sight of a small clearing. They approached it slowly until they reached the edge. There they saw two men huddled by a small, but newly blazing fire. The men were slouched over with hoods over their faces. The two were facing the group of men, with their backs to a mound of snow that seemed roughly the shape of a snow mobile.
“Good morning gentlemen, if it is indeed good.”
All the guns turned on the hooded figure on the right, who had just spoken to them. Throwing his hood back Robert looked up at them with tired, but alert eyes.
“Come men, sit down I can see there is much to be explained.”
“First we ask you to relinquish any weapons you have and reveal your friend there. Is that you John?”
“Come Guy, you leave me here with a gun and another agent to search the area, only to return suspecting us of something? Fine, here is my gun, of little use it has been.”
Robert tossed the gun Guy had given him the night before at the pilot, who picked it up and looked it over.
“As for my friend here, he is sleeping still and in no condition for friendly conversation, but I think you will understand in due time, come sit, here are my hands and his, we have no weapons.”
“Robert, you are in no position to request anything of us! Now get your friend up and follow us.”
“Or else what sir, you will shoot us? Arrest us maybe? Go ahead, but we’re the ones that had to spend the night up here, in a blizzard I might add, and seeing as no one knows what has happened, if anything, I figured we might as well sit and go over our respective stories, I have nothing to hide, but I do have some things to tell.”
Guy stood there and mulled this over. He didn’t like this at all, but he noticed the others wanted to hear Robert’s request, which meant he was alone in wanting to leave, so he motioned them all to sit, but stayed standing himself.
“Come friends, I will start with this man’s introduction. I expect three of you may think he is agent John, but he isn’t I’m sad to say. For our officer’s sake I will only say that John and I were dropped off here last night to look into a suspected murder. The rest were called off to town as a report came in that Bartholomew Gatchet escaped his new home, new as he was moved there yesterday for family reasons. The only guess I can make for poor John is that he somehow got caught on the helicopter, as he was lifted off into the darkness with it, and I was left alone and confused, seeking shelter in the old museum building. This man is one I stumbled into later in the night, to my interest and yours, but not to my surprise. This man is Bart Gatchet, whom you were looking for.”
Robert pulled the hood back from the silent figure revealing an aged man who at the moment was asleep. He woke to the cold air reaching his face and looked around. He scanned his surroundings almost as if he didn’t see any of them, but he was looking for something, whatever it was. He began to mutter to himself and rock back and forth.
“Mr. Branding, before you pull that trigger you may want to have a look at this.”
Robert reached into a small pocket of his coat and pulled out a tape recorder, holding it up in one hand. The other three men turned quickly around to see Guy standing behind them with his gun trained on Robert, caught in a moment of awkwardness. He recovered quickly and aimed his gun instead at his other agent while pulling another gun from behind his back to aim at the policeman. A gunshot rang out and Guy fell backwards into the snow. The three men, too shocked to even pull out their own guns stared from the fallen body back to Robert, who was holding a Colt 1911 in one of his hands. He dropped the clip out and tossed the gun to the silent group of men.
“Sorry gentlemen, I was afraid that was going to happen sooner rather than later. There is the gun, I mean you know harm, but Guy Branding sure did and I will tell you why. He is behind all that has happened since I was first sent to Colorado Springs to the events of last night. He wanted me dead and out of the way, because I was stumbling onto something big. He left me here last night to have me killed by none other than Trent Frennur (no one else seemed to notice, but Robert felt Bart flinch next to him at the name). I know it sounds crazy, and to help you understand I need to go back a few months to a case I was on.
While on that case I had a seizure of sorts which put me out of commission and forced the FBI to consider releasing me. During that time I came upon Trent Frennur’s case files (Bart flinched again). Growing up my parents had brought me to this museum on numerous occasions, so I had an interest in the figure already. I began to dig through the case and Guy found out. Though I was going through it to relieve my restlessness and cope with my breakdown I was having, Guy nonetheless felt I was intruding on something he was hiding. I didn’t know this at the time however and just thought he was mad that I had taken company property, which is a reasonable thing to be angry about. In a gesture I took as help to my plight, Guy managed to convince the FBI to keep me on and assign me to a less strenuous case, one that involved a wholesale theft problem in Colorado Springs that the local police were at their wits end to fix. So there I went to help figure out what was going on. I could get no further than the police. I tried every angle and every method possible to figure out how all this theft was going on without any traces left behind and I couldn’t. It drove me nearly to insanity, which I have found out is exactly what Guy wanted. He was afraid I would catch on to his plans, so he was going to discredit me completely to the point no one would believe anything I had to say, and it would have worked, except I was distracted by the escape of Bartholomew Gatchet, who resided in a mental hospital in the area.”
At the mention of his name Bart looked up and seemed to notice the men for the first time. He muttered a few things they couldn’t understand and then resumed his rocking. Robert stared at him for a moment then resumed.
“Gatchet was blamed for a murder of a local man which I found suspicious, though with no reason or proof to back it up. On some crazy whim I visited Mrs. Gatchet up here in the mountains and told her of my plan to move him, thinking at the time that he was being used and it would remove him as the fall guy. She thought I was crazy and refused, but changed her mind for personal reasons. So we had him moved the next day without notifying anyone. Coming from arranging all that I stumbled upon a thief in the ac
t of robbing a home; upon tackling him I found I had stumbled right into the problem I had been attempting to solve this whole time. I also found from this thief that the whole mess didn’t make sense and at that moment realized I had been sent on a rabbit trail. I convinced the chief of police to arrest me for master minding the theft thinking that would cause a sense of urgency in whoever was really leading the effort, and maybe force them into making a mistake. That is how I ended up on this mountain and how I realized Trent Frennur was still alive and coming for me.
I admit some confusion when Guy picked me up and then on the way to the airport redirected our helicopter here to check on a murder report. Once the helicopter and John had left and I had sought shelter I began to realize that Guy was behind the theft and I had forced him to make a move, he was going to kill me, why else was I left alone. I knew he himself didn’t have the time nor maybe the will to kill me, and I didn’t believe for one second that Bart here was a murderer, so that left me with only one man, one that Guy had caught me studying, Trent Frennur. As a child I always felt that the stories never seemed to add up, why a crazed guard named James Ferguson would free Frennur only for both of them to fall to their deaths, so I believed at that moment that he indeed still lived; which brought me to how exactly did he escape and how Guy tied into it all. Some else had to have freed Frennur, was it Guy perhaps. If that was so then poor James Ferguson was either a person Trent desired to kill, or he knew something, my guess is both.
Having come to this conclusion I decided to search for clues in the building to see if James had left anything to suggest he knew something was awry. I knew all clues must have been scraped from the place, but at that moment I felt I had been led to a purpose, that all my blundering was not from mere coincidence and luck. Indeed I felt I was led to all that has happened, for I found a storage place where the electrical wiring went through the floor under the desk and out from under the building. There I pried up a concrete brick and found articles left by James himself. I pulled out a letter and tape recorder which I have here,” he handed the article over for inspection, “along with that gun, a bottle of Gin, and a crude explosive. The letter explains all these articles except the gun. The gun I figured out myself because I remembered a moment with Guy Branding where he mentioned at one time owning an original Colt 1911, but had lost it long ago. Between the gun and the letter I realized that Guy was in fact the Jerry Dart mentioned there and after the closing of the place had had his named changed and history erased. It seems that Guy, or Jerry if you prefer, delved too far into Trent’s mind and found he enjoyed it. Maybe he enjoyed hearing about the murders, the gory details, but I also believe it all tied into the fact that Trent Frennur, for whatever reason, allowed Guy to have some form of power over him. Trent knew Guy could free him, get him out of that place and he was willing to do anything to do so, even abide by Guy’s rules.
You will find that James used the tape recorder to capture a conversation which reveals the details of how Guy would free Trent, allow him to take James whom they suspected of knowing something, then quietly wait until all history and anyone who knew of it has passed beyond knowledge. Guy knew he would get his named changed and knew only one man would have that job of assigning, so once that man passed away Guy had nothing to tie him to Frennur. In return for freeing him Trent was to help Guy by killing off whoever was in Guy’s way to make it to the top of the FBI. Guy had it all worked out.
Now going back to last night, where I hadn’t listened to the tape recording yet, only read the letter; I realized that my time was running out. I had gotten in Guy’s way and when I hadn’t gone crazy, he had no options but to kill me. Due to all I did in Colorado Springs the FBI was beginning a large and thorough investigation into everything, they were bound to turn over a few stones. Guy had one last chance to remove me from the picture and side track the investigation, and it seemed my moving Bart Gatchet up here played right into his plan, Gatchet would once again take the blame for murder. Knowing this I decided to throw Frennur off when he arrived, first by blowing up the building as James had intended to do, then to find Trent’s hideout, which I knew existed now under the whispering roots up here on the mountain. There I found what I believe to be James’ old badge, proving his death, and there I waited for Frennur to come.
Now Guy knew I had training, so he hoped in my confusion, whether I knew anything or not, that I wouldn’t notice the gun he gave me had blanks in it. I didn’t, but for reasons beyond my skill I chose James’ gun over the one Guy gave me, it seemed fitting. So when Trent came into that cave, ready for blood, I was ready, and Trent Frennur finally met the end believed of him. I did not want to risk anyone removing the body which was precious evidence, so I set the place on fire with the Gin and caved in the place on top of the body. After that I intended to make my way here, and on the way stumbled into this snow mobile, finding Gatchet strapped to a sled behind it, and that brought us to where you find us.
Through the night I have thought this over and realized that Guy was close to achieving his goal. I threw the first wrench in his plans when I took Frennur’s file, but I also provided him with the way out by having a breakdown. He could discredit me easily enough. He must have already had the wholesale theft organization in place to cover up any random murders by Trent who resided in the area. When I was in Colorado Springs the chief of police mentioned rumors of illegal citizens getting murdered, but the few times they tried look into it they came up with nothing, so they dropped it. Guy used the theft to keep them busy and keep them from thinking there were more than rumors to the murders. By sending me there Guy was sure he could outwit me in my condition. When I worsened he would take a little blame from the FBI, but no more than a minor setback compare to what I could have dug up.
Then came the second wrench, Trent Frennur murdered someone in the suburbs that caught public attention. The two thought quickly and managed to spring Gatchet from his ward and that distracted the police thinking he had done it all in a crazed moment. Then as you already know I threw the third wrench when I moved Gatchet and took the blame for the theft. Though I gave Guy and Trent their last chance to clean things up, I had caught on by then, and by God’s grace, and the smarts of James Ferguson to hide what he had found, I came through and we sit here in conclusion.”
The three men stared at him, still taking in the details and re-reading the letter and listening to the tape recorder. Even the policeman seemed to be catching on, though he still looked out of his league. Robert waited for questions he figured would come, but instead he got something more surprising; Bartholomew Gatchet said his first intelligible words in a long time.
“Poor James, I never knew what happened. He was a good boy, he held his wits around him and stayed strong when we all felt week, poor boy. He had a nice family.”
Robert saw tears drip from the mains chin into the snow and realized this man had heard and comprehended everything they had said. Maybe Gatchet had spent all these years still trying to solve something that had long passed him up and only now realized he was free of it all. They all sat there in silence thinking of Bart’s words and the sad demise of James Ferguson until the silence was finally broken by the sound of approaching helicopters.
“It appears our other pilot had the good sense to call in reinforcements after hearing the gun shots. I recommend we stay here and wait for them to come, no need to call more attention to ourselves. They all murmured agreement and listened as the aircraft flew over and settled in the field beyond the woods. It didn’t seem long before they heard feet crunching through snow all around them.
“Nobody move, we have you surrounded!”
Robert spoke; “come gentlemen, we will relinquish our weapons and give no resistance.” He held up his empty hands and everyone but Gatchet followed suit.
A group of men approached and removed all the weapons and searched the men, including the dead body of Guy. One of the men finally called out
to the woods where more men stood covering the area.
“Sir, we have secured the area and checked for weapons.”
Someone important looking stepped out into the clearing and looked over the scene quietly. Robert recognized him as one of the top FBI officials. The man finally came up to them and looked at the younger agent.
“Agent Matthew, please explain the state of Mr. Branding.”
“Sir, Mr. Branding pulled his guns on us and Mr. Robert Drake here shot him before he could kill any of us. I believe Robert should explain sir.”
The man looked at Matthew then Robert. His gaze shifted to Bartholomew Gatchet and then back to Robert again. “Very well, you three my go, but you will be required to give a statement and stick around the area to help out where needed. I will meet with each of you in turn after I am done here.”
Agent Matthew got up and motioned the pilot and policeman to follow. As he passed the man he handed over everything Robert had found and given to them. After they had left the FBI official took one of their seats and looked at Robert.
“Mr. Drake, I have to say you surprise me further. I was sad to see you go down on the Marson case and all the subsequent events that followed, but it doesn’t excuse the mess you left in Colorado Springs, nor your actions there. I had to come personally to oversee the cleanup and the ongoing investigation, but before I make any further accusations, I see I need to hear what you have to say, so please begin, I am all ears.”
Robert told him everything he had already said and more. He left no information out this time, including what actually happened on the Marson case, the dream he had, and the files on Frennur he had taken. He answered all the questions asked of him until the man seemed satisfied. Gatchet sat there and seemed to listen as well. When all was said the official nodded to him and stood.
“Very good Mr. Drake, I appreciate the full honesty you have just shown. I am going to verify everything you have said with the evidence and with the other men. I do believe you, but I have been told not to leave any stone unturned, so I am required to check everything. Some of our men here will escort Mr. Gatchet to a helicopter and take him to his home, the new one you have found him. I want you to show the others where this cave of yours is, we will need to dig up the body for evidence. After that we will see where we and what we will do next.”
The man turned and set off back through the woods. A few men came and took Bart gently away while a few others removed Guy’s dead body. Robert led the others to the cave and helped mark off where to dig.
By midday the place was buzzing; digging crews were working on the cave and others were inspecting the building and evidence that Robert had acquired. Robert was told that he was to report back to headquarters where he would be debriefed properly. He got into the police helicopter that had brought him as they were finally released and had to get back to Colorado Springs. They were to take him to the airport, but Robert made a plea for them to make one stop first. After he explained they agreed to his plea and took off and flew into the closest town, landing on a front lawn. The front door was pulled open by the time he got out of the helicopter. He walked up to the front door where a girl stood; she looked to be about his own age.
“Is Mrs. Ferguson home?”
“Yes, let me get her.”
“I don’t wish to be rude, but I prefer to come in, I have something important for her.”
She let him in, not sure what to think, but seeing the badge he held out to her. She led him into the kitchen where Robert found Mrs. Ferguson standing, waiting for something to happen; she had heard the helicopter land of course.
“Mrs. Ferguson, I’m sorry to intrude, my name is Robert Drake from the FBI and I have a letter for you. I’m afraid I can’t give you the details, but I have just come from the mountains where your husband used to work, I have found a letter from him for you among some other items he had left, of which are now in the property of the FBI. I should have given this over as well, but I don’t believe it to be theirs, you husband specifically asked me to give this to you in the other letter he had written, which is also evidence.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“I know, I’m sorry, all I can say is I ran into an old enemy of his, who is now gone for real this time. I wanted to make sure you got this letter, it is your right as his wife.”
He handed her the letter and turned to leave.
“Please, stay until I have read it.”
“If you wish it.”
She opened the letter and read, tears springing from her eyes. She finished it and hugged Robert, who hadn’t quite expected this.
“Thank you; I’ve wondered for so long how he passed, if he had passed. I never did believe he was crazy, though he was confused, but it’s hard hearing it all the same. May I ask how exactly he died?”
“Mrs. Ferguson, he was captured by Trent Frennur, of that I cannot say more, and do not wish to.”
“I understand.”
“Let’s be happy in that your husband died in his own mind and possessing every bit of love and faith he could contain. I’m afraid I must be going, this stop was not in my orders.”
Mrs. Ferguson nodded and went and sat down in the closest chair. Robert turned and walked out of the house. As he walked down the walkway, he felt a hand timidly grab his arm.
Robert turned and came face to face with Miss Ferguson.
“How can I help you Miss Ferguson?”
“Please, call me Abigail. Thank you, I haven’t seen my mom this full of joy in a long time. Weird isn’t it, being joyful at a time like this and with all that crying?”
“Abigail, you will find that the times that make you the most joyful don’t always fulfill the desires you have in life. The times you find yourself most joyful aren’t always full of happiness either. No, you are joyful when you realize your needs have been met, and when you see God’s will for your life is in your best interest. Then you change your desire to be for His will and not yours and you are content for once.”
“Are you content Mr. Drake?”
The question took him back a little. He thought for a moment: “Yes, I am content. I have memories I will live with the rest of my life, and my worries are not over yet, but I have found something that was long lost, and that is what makes me content no matter what happens from here on out.”
“What is that?”
“The faith the God has placed in me.”
Robert gazed at her for moment, she seemed to be pondering something; then asked him one more question: “Robert Drake, would you be willing to stop by for dinner sometime, if you are in the area that is. It would make my mom very happy I think.”
“Would it make Abigail happy?”
“Yes, it would,” she added blushing.
“Then I accept, as soon as I get a chance I will be out; until we meet again.”
She gave him a quick hug and ran back into the house. Robert shook his head and walked back to the helicopter and got in. The pilots were both grinning at they took off and headed to the airport.