“Using journalistic advantage to promote someone’s execution doesn’t make me feel very good, even if the subject is a sorry sack of shit.”
“You wanted to cap him yourself?”
“I could shoot Surrette and take a nap after I did it.”
“Don’t give power away to a man like that. Don’t ever let him taint you with his poison.”
“I didn’t want you going after him, Dave. You’re shot to hell. You just won’t admit it.”
I rubbed my face. “You remember your Baby Orca T-shirt?”
“Don’t change the subject,” she said.
“I still have it in my footlocker, along with your Donald Duck cap and your Baby Squanto books and your tennis shoes with ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ embossed on the toes.”
She waited for me to go on.
“That’s all I was going to say,” I said. “I get your cap and T-shirt and your books and your tennis shoes out of the footlocker and I look at them and then I put them away. I’ll probably do that every three or four days for the rest of my life. That’s the way it is, little guy.”
I went back inside and made lunch for both of us.
IT’S CALLED AN M-1 thumb. If you get one, it’s usually during the cleaning of the sweetheart of all World War II infantry weapons, a lovely creation by John Garand that the Imperial Japanese and the Third Reich had not planned to deal with. Had it not been for the M-1, the ground war in Europe and the Pacific theater may have worked out differently. It was a marvelous yet simple piece of engineering, its peep-sight accuracy and rapid-fire punch and knockdown power without peer. It took only seconds after the bolt locked open for the boogie-woogie boys from Company B to thumb another eight-round clip into the magazine.
With Albert’s permission, I unlocked one of his gun cabinets and removed his M-1 and a bandolier heavy with .30-06 clips and went up to the shooting range with them. I pulled back the bolt and wiped down the barrel and stock and peep sights and magazine and receiver. I eased my thumb down on the trip mechanism that released the bolt, the heel of my hand anchored on the operating-rod handle, and rolled my thumb and hand free before the bolt slammed home. The M-1 weighed over ten pounds and felt heavy in my hands, but in a reassuring way; its aim was not affected by wind or inclement weather or tall grass or underbrush scraping against the stock and barrel. Every inch of the M-1 was
devoted to practicality and efficiency, even the tubular insertions in the butt where you could carry a cleaning rod and barrel swabs and a bore brush. It didn’t jam; it was easy to tear down. You couldn’t have a better friend in snow or tropical rain.
For the ultimate improvised gun-range target, Albert had placed a World War II salvaged tank turret on a mound of dirt against the hillside. It was tall and cylindrical and dark brown with rust and had a viewing slit in the top. It resembled the helmet worn by Crusader knights. I knelt on one knee, perhaps forty yards from the target, opened the bolt on the M-1, and pushed a clip loaded with armor-piercing rounds into the magazine. I sent the bolt home, wrapped my left forearm in the sling, aimed through the peep sight, and began firing. I saw rust powder in the air and the scoured streaks on the sides of the turret where the rounds didn’t impact dead-on, then the holes in the center where the rounds punched through the steel and out the other side.
After I fired the eighth round, the bolt locked open and the clip ejected with the ping that anyone who has fired an M-1 associates with it. I removed the plugs from my ears and gazed at the tank turret and tried to imagine what the same rounds would have done to the head of a human being, in this instance the head of Asa Surrette.
Why such a dark speculation?
Just before removing Albert’s rifle from his gun cabinet, I had once again accessed the photographs of Surrette that could be found on the Internet. I discovered two posts I hadn’t seen. One contained photographs, probably taken by a news photographer at Surrette’s crime scenes in Wichita. These are of a kind you do not want to see, not now, not ever. The second post included a photo of a typed letter Surrette sent the Wichita Police Department, one xeroxed on a copy machine in the WSU library. In the letter, he described in detail every moment of his victims’ torment, the degree of pain they suffered, and their pleas for mercy. He said the latter brought him a rush he had never thought possible.
I had known sociopaths and sadists in the army and in Vietnam. I had known them in law enforcement and in prisons and in lockdown units where they awaited execution. But Surrette’s letter was the cruelest use of language I had ever read. My advice is that no person of goodwill should ever read this man’s words, thereby giving a second life to his deeds.
Albert had let me appropriate his M-1, and I not only planned to hang on to it, I planned to use it. Maybe these were foolish and vain thoughts, but sometimes our own self-assurances are our only means of dealing with problems that are far greater than their social remedies. Sometimes, at least in your head, you have to link arms with Doc Holliday and the Earp boys and stroll on down to the O.K. Corral and chat up the Clantons in a way they understand.
I took the M-1 and the bandolier of clips to our room and put them in the closet, then picked up the telephone and made a call I didn’t want to make, primarily because I knew it would be a total waste of time.
I was rerouted a couple of times, but finally, I was connected to a special agent at the FBI named James Martini. “I’ve heard of you,” he said.
“You have?” I said.
“Apparently, you and your friend Purcel have quite a history with us down in Louisiana.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“How can we be of help?” he replied.
“I think Asa Surrette, the killer from Kansas, is alive and well. I also think he kidnapped the waitress Rhonda Fayhee from her home by Lookout Pass.”
“You got that scoped out pretty good?”
“No, not at all. I have no investigative power or legal authority in the state of Montana. That’s why I called you. I think Rhonda Fayhee is alive.”
“How is it you know that?”