299 Days: The 17th Irregulars

Chapter 191 Pierce Point Truth

Everyone was shocked. This was so final. Wes had killed another human being. Snuck up on him and killed him. This wasn’t self-defense.

No one talked much on the ride to the Grange. What little they said, they whispered to prevent Mark from hearing. Only the Team members would know about this. Grant wondered how Rich and Dan would react. Oh well. There was no way to undo this now, anyway.

Grant felt even closer to the Team than before, and that was saying something. They had gone all the way and there was no turning back. They had already killed together as a team before this when Pow shot that guy in the raid. They had hung those two child rapists, but this was different. It was planned. This wasn’t reacting to a crime. It was committing one.

“Thanks, Wes,” Grant finally said. He wanted everyone to know that he—the guy most troubled by this decision—was OK with Wes’s actions. . “It had to be done.”

“Had to,” Ryan said.

“Yep,” Pow said.

“He tried to turn us in,” Bobby said. Scotty nodded.

“Whadd’ya do with the body?” Grant whispered.

Wes shrugged. “Just left him there.” Wes paused. “Musta been a break in or something. Snelling had nice stuff. Someone probably wanted to steal it, and knew that he wasn’t armed.” Wes smiled at that last part. He had been counting on the fact that Snelling wasn’t armed.

As the Grange appeared, Grant started thinking about how they would explain this to the crowd. Everyone would suspect Grant. He would have to lie to everyone and deny any involvement. Then someone would find out. Grant would be a liar and his credibility would be destroyed, although he hardly cared about his image. He was more concerned about the diminishment of his ability to get things done at Pierce Point.

When they got to the Grange, Grant motioned for Rich and Dan to come over. Grant found Chip, too, and the four of them went out to the parking lot, where Grant broke the news. They all just nodded. It was anti-climactic.

The Team ate dinner together as usual and tried to talk about meaningless things just so people didn’t realize how quiet and serious they were.

The Team Chicks came over and had dinner with the guys, which lightened the mood considerably. Whispers of much sex later that night were exchanged. Wes was hugging Kellie so hard it looked like he might hurt her.

“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked him.

“Tough day,” Wes said. “That’s all. Things are fine.” Wes looked her up and down with a gleam in his eye and said, “What’cha wearin’ tonight, darlin’?”

She whispered something to him and he smiled.

The meeting that night had all the usual reports. Things were going well; the community was humming along; things were tough but people were pulling together out of necessity. Rich listened to the reports and marveled at how much better off they were than the sheeple in Frederickson.

Grant kept waiting for Snelling’s wife and Abbott to burst into the meeting and accuse him of the killing, but it didn’t happen. The meeting broke up early and everyone went home.

The ride home was a lot more upbeat than the ride there because the guys were talking about the Team Chicks.

Grant had this overwhelming urge to go to Snelling’s house. He realized this was stupid, but he wanted to go to the scene of the crime. He thought others might have a similar urge so he said to them, “Everyone just stay home tonight. We’ll deal with the reaction to this tomorrow.”

Scotty’s ham radio crackled. It was the Chief. He said that a small boat carrying two people had left Pierce Point. The boat left from area right around Snelling’s cabin, going at a high rate of speed and heading toward the inlet into the sound. The Chief tried to catch up with them but had no luck.

“There goes our problem,” Grant said. “Good luck filing a police report. Take a damned number.” He was relieved. Snelling’s wife, and hopefully Abbott, had gotten the message and left.

Grant slept well that night. He had already gone through the mental process of wondering if the police would arrest him, like he had when he shot the looters back in Olympia. From Rich’s description of the FCorps guy being too busy to care about a report of a POI at Pierce Point, there was no way the cops would even try to come here. What cops?

Grant realized how much better Pierce Point would be without those Loyalist whiners. They were the only people getting in the way of making it a completely Patriot community. There were some of Snelling’s friends still out there, but they probably wouldn’t say much now that their leader was…no longer around.

After a restful sleep, Grant woke and got ready for work. He was anxious to find out how the news of the “break in” and sudden departure of Snelling’s wife and Abbott would be received by the community.

The Team assembled in Mark’s truck and went to the Grange. No one said, “This never gets old” or “beats the shit out of selling insurance.” Not this morning.

The Team Chicks stayed behind. Gideon needed the night cabin to sleep in after his guard shift, so the girls who spent the night in the night cabin with their boyfriends went over to the yellow cabin with the other girls.

Wes was the first to speak on the ride to the Grange. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I’m glad I did it. Son of a bitch was trying to get us killed. I’d do it again. I probably will have to.”

This was a relief to everyone. If Wes was OK with what had transpired, then there was no reason they shouldn’t be. And that part about probably having to do it again was important for them to hear. They needed to be mentally prepared for more death and knew this was the first killing of probably many.

Grant said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about Snelling as some kind of tragedy. It isn’t a ‘tragedy.’ The only tragedy is that he was alive in the first place. People like him, those with power, who steal from everyone and then cry about being the victim. We’re doin’ what we have to do, gentlemen. Be proud that you’re steppin’ up. We don’t have to enjoy this. But we have to do it.”

Grant immediately thought of his Grandpa who didn’t want to go to war, but had to. It was Grant’s turn to do nasty things that needed to be done.

The guys nodded. Some smiled. They were stepping up and could be proud about that.

As they pulled into the Grange, they could tell that something was up. The place was abuzz.

“Did you hear? Todd Snelling is dead!” someone yelled.

“His wife and Abbott are gone!” someone else said.

“They were probably having an affair and Abbott shot him,” Rich said. “That happened all the time when I was on the force.” Good one, Rich. Good one.

“She left a note about the Team killing her husband,” another person said.

“Ha!” Dan said. He pointed to the Team and said, “If they wanted someone dead, you’d all know about it. It would be very clear and messy.”

Rich said, “Well, I’ll go out and look at the scene, but a wife and another man fleeing? Pretty sure I’ve seen this before. The wife and Abbott are probably in each other’s arms right now.” Perfect.

The crowd discussed the apparent murder of Snelling by Abbott — or maybe the wife — and their apparent affair.

Grant made arrangements for Snelling to be buried. He talked to Pastor Pete about adding Snelling to the weekly memorial service. Grant felt a little dirty misleading a pastor into thinking he cared about Snelling, but this was war. This was one of the many things he was doing that he didn’t want to.

The rest of the day, Grant worked as usual at the Grange. The Team went out and trained with the Crew at the Richardson House. Things were surprisingly normal. The routine was not disrupted.

At lunch, Lisa sat down next to Grant.

“Pretty shocking about Snelling,” she said.

“Yeah. What have you heard?” Grant asked, which was not a good thing to ask. He worried that he sounded a little defensive.

“I mean his wife killing him and running off with another man,” Lisa said. “Hey, that gives me an idea,” she said with a smile, before biting into her lunch. They ate together, as if discussing Snelling’s death was normal daily chitchat.

Later that day, Grant talked to Rich about renaming the newspaper. “Now that Snelling and his fax machine are no longer a problem, do we really need to change the name?”

“Yes,” Rich said. “I told Winters I was in charge and that it would happen. I want those FCards and that bus, and I don’t want to fight them if I can avoid it.”

“OK,” Grant said. “Changing the name might de-escalate the Patriot thing after Snelling’s murder…at the hands of his wife,” Grant said.

“What should we rename it?” Rich asked.

“How about the ‘Pierce Point Truth’?” Grant said. “Same content, different name. The ‘Truth’ is more universal than the ‘Patriot,’ anyway.”

“Sure,” Rich said. “Guess that makes the first and only edition of the ‘Patriot’ a collector’s item.”