Gideon's Corpse

50

The sun had set, the crescent moon was down, and a very dark midnight approached. Gideon drove Blaine’s Jeep off the Paiute Creek forest service road and into a thicket of gambel oaks. He backed it slowly into a clump of bushes, branches scratching against the paint, until the vehicle was well hidden from the road.

He got out. He had borrowed some of Blaine’s clothes—a bit loose and a bit short, but serviceable—and was dressed entirely in black, his face darkened with charcoal, a wicked Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver with a four-inch barrel—in his opinion, the scariest-looking pistol made—in one hand and an old-fashioned strop razor in his pocket. He wasn’t going to kill anyone—at least, he wasn’t planning to—but appearance would be everything.

First he had some work to do. He removed a shovel and a pick from the back of the Jeep and selected a soft, loamy portion of the forest floor as a place to dig. He broke up the ground with the pick, then shoveled out the loose dirt, keeping the edges of the hole crisp and sharp with the blade. It was soft ground and in less than an hour he had created a shallow grave, a stark rectangle, about seven feet long, two feet wide, and three feet deep.

He packed the shovel back in the Jeep, rinsed his hands from a canteen, then took a sap, some zip ties, and a few other items from the seat and stuffed them all into his pockets. Leaving the grave site, he made his way through the dark ponderosa forest. The Paiute Creek Ranch lay at roughly eight thousand feet of altitude and, despite being summer, the night air was cool to the point of chilliness. He paused frequently to listen to the night sounds of the forest: the distant yipping of a pack of coyotes, the low bassoon of a great horned owl.

In half a mile he came to the chain-link fence surrounding the ranch settlement. Through the trees he could see the yellow glow of windows. Stopping at the fence, he listened intently, but no sound came from the compound. It was as he hoped: they were apparently on “ranch time,” to bed at sunset, up before dawn.

A careful inspection indicated that there were no sophisticated alarms or sensors along the fence. Taking out a pair of fencing pliers, Gideon began to snip the chain links, creating a large flap that he pulled back and wired open. He crawled through and made his way carefully through the darkness to the rear of the main ranch house. All was quiet. A few dim yellow lights glowed in the lower windows, but—because the outfit was run on solar power and batteries—there were no bright spotlights or area lights.

He was convinced there would be some sort of night patrol: these people were paranoid and they would have posted guards. Moving with enormous care through the darkness, he drew up to the building and peered in the window. There, in a rocking chair, sat the cowboy with the squared-off beard, quietly alert, reading a book. An M16 was propped up against the sofa next to him.

Gideon was convinced Willis occupied rooms on the top floor. It was clearly the most comfortable accommodation at the ranch. One room had been his office, and he recalled seeing through an open door to a sumptuous bedroom with whorehouse-velvet walls and a canopy bed. That would be Willis’s bedroom.

So he had to do something about the man downstairs.

He watched the man for a while. The man didn’t look sleepy, he wasn’t drinking, and—what unnerved Gideon most of all—he was reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. This man was no dumb hick cowboy. The outfit was all show. This was a sophisticated and intelligent person who would not be easily fooled.

Gideon had anticipated running into some problem or other, and he realized he’d done so already. At all costs, he had to prevent the man from raising an alarm. He couldn’t just go in and bash the man over the head. That would make too much noise and had a high probability of ending in a ruckus or fight. Besides, Ulysses had an assault rifle. He began to formulate a plan. It was high-risk, but he couldn’t think of a better way.

Plucking a piece of paper from his pocket, Gideon scrawled a short note. He took a deep breath, then tapped on the window. The man looked up, saw Gideon’s black face peering in, and rose abruptly from his chair, grabbing the rifle.

Quickly, Gideon put his finger to his lips and gestured for the man to come outside. But instead the man started for the stairs. Gideon rapped again, this time louder, and shook his head, again putting his finger over his mouth. Then he held up the note he had written.

The man hesitated. He could not identify Gideon through the blackface and, Gideon hoped, would assume that Gideon might be a ranch insider. Who else would knock on the window like that?

Gideon gestured again, nodding and waving the man outside.

Shouldering the gun, the man headed for the door.

Gideon backed away from the house, into the edge of the trees, as the man came around the corner, looking this way and that. Gideon flashed his light, and the man approached.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“Shhhh,” Gideon whispered. “You wake Willis, we’re in big trouble. This is important—real important.”

The man frowned in suspicion. “What’s this all about?” he asked, unshouldering the rifle. “Who are you and why the hell have you blacked your face?”

Gideon backed up a little, then shut off the light and moved rapidly and silently in a lateral direction.

The man stopped at the edge of the trees. “Lane, is that you?” He was looking around, still pointing the gun at where Gideon was no longer standing. “What do you want? Come out.”

Gideon darted out and whacked the man across the side of the head with the cosh. With a moan, he sagged heavily to the ground. Fortunately, the rifle did not fire.

Seizing the man under the arms, Gideon dragged him deeper into the forest, tied him to a tree, blindfolded and gagged him, and then—with a certain hesitation—whacked him a second time.

Picking up the M16, he returned to the house, snuck inside, and carefully propped it back against the sofa. He quickly wrote a second note, just in case anyone came by, and left it on the rocking chair:

That might not fool anyone for long, but it would at least delay things. It had always amazed Gideon how most people chose to obey as a default reaction, even if the command was illogical or stupid. It was a reaction he had relied on many times, to good effect.

He snuck up the stairs. Now he faced the second problem: what to do if Willis had a woman in his room? He didn’t believe for a moment the man was celibate.

He crept softly through Willis’s dark, empty office. The door to the bedroom was locked. Gideon knelt, took out his tools, and—with infinite care and excruciating slowness—unlocked the door.

The room had a night-light—cute—and Gideon saw, to his enormous relief, that Willis was alone.

He walked silently over to the bed, a piece of gaffing tape already unrolled and ready to go. He leaned over Willis, who was sleeping on his back—and then in one smooth motion laid a knee hard across his chest, pinning him, while simultaneously pressing the blade of the straight razor against the man’s neck.

“Cut your throat if you move or make a sound,” he whispered hoarsely into the man’s ear.

He had previously dulled the blade, but Willis didn’t know that. With the razor pressed to his neck, the struggle ended. Willis lay there, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the darkness. His eyes went even wider as he recognized Gideon through the blackface.

Keeping the razor to the throat, Gideon said: “Open your mouth. Wide.”

The man opened his mouth. Gideon placed the muzzle of the Colt Python into it, then removed the razor. “You’re going to do as I say, right? Blink yes.”

After a moment, Willis blinked.

“Stand up nice and slow. Keep the barrel between your teeth.”

He eased himself off Willis and the man stood up, exactly as told.

“Hands behind your back.”

Willis put his hands behind his back and Gideon cuffed them together with the zip ties. He removed the barrel from the man’s mouth, took the roll of gaffing tape, and sealed his mouth.

“Now you and I are going to take a walk. I’m going to keep the muzzle of this gun pressed against the back of your head and I will pull the trigger if anything happens. We will walk out of the door, down the stairs, and off the ranch. I repeat: if anyone disturbs us, I shoot you in the head. So it’s up to you to make sure no one disturbs us. Nod if you agree.”

Nod.

“Is there anyone else sleeping up here?”

Nod.

“Point to the room.”

With cuffed hands, Willis indicated the room next door, where Gideon had previously seen the woman lolling on the bed.

“Okay. She wakes up, you die. Now walk down the stairs and out the side door.”

Willis was perfectly obedient. He did everything exactly as instructed. Within a minute they were in the darkness of the trees. Gideon switched on an LED lamp and walked Willis out past the hole in the fence and through the half mile of woods to where he had dug the grave.

When they arrived, Willis saw the grave in the light of the lamp and immediately staggered with fear. Gideon had to physically hold the man up. He made a muffled moan through the tape.

Gideon reached around and ripped it from the man’s mouth. Willis gasped, staggered again. He was beyond frightened.

“Go lie down in the grave.”

“No. Oh my God. No—”

“In the grave.”

“Why? Why in the grave—?”

“Because I’m going to kill you and bury you. Get in there.”

Willis fell to his knees, blubbering, the tears streaming down his face. “No, please. Don’t do this. Don’t do it, don’t, don’t…” His voice choked up. He was coming apart before Gideon’s eyes.

Gideon shoved him back and he fell, slipping into the hole, scrambling quickly out again in terror. Gideon took a step forward with the gun.

“Open your mouth.”

“No. Please please please please please, no, no, no—”

“Then I’ll just shoot you and roll your body in.”

“But why, why? I’ll do anything, anything, just tell me what you want!” His voice dissolved into a choking wail, his frame racked with sobs, a dark stain spreading from his crotch. And then he puked, once, twice, heaving and choking.

“I’ll do anything…” he managed to squeak out, heavy drool hanging from his mouth.

It was time.

“Tell me about the nuke,” Gideon said.

A silence, accompanied by a blank stare.

“The nuke,” said Gideon. “Tell me your plans for the nuke. The nuke you plan to detonate in DC. Tell me about that and I’ll let you go.”

“Nuke?” Willis looked at him with utterly uncomprehending eyes. “What nuke?”

“Don’t play stupid. Tell me about it and you’re a free man. Otherwise…” And Gideon gestured toward the grave with the gun.

“What…what are you talking about? Please, I don’t understand…” Willis stared at the gun, wide-eyed, his pleas turning into incoherent babbling.

Gideon looked at him, an awful realization dawning: this man knew nothing. He might be the leader of a cult, an egocentric and paranoid man with delusions of grandeur, but he was patently innocent of nuclear terror. Gideon had made a terrible mistake.

“I’m sorry.” Gideon reached down, grasped Willis, and pulled him up. “I’m sorry. My God, I’m so sorry.”

He cut off the ties and holstered the gun. “Go.”

Willis stared blankly.

“You heard me, get out of here! Go!”

Still the man wouldn’t run. He just stared blankly, dazed, still paralyzed with fear. With a curse of self-disgust, Gideon turned, walked into the bushes, got in the Jeep, started it up, and drove away, skidding through the dirt, slewing around, and gunning the engine, wanting nothing more than to get away as quickly as possible.