Last Man Standing

11

Fred Watkins climbed out of his car after another long day for the U.S. attorney. It took him an hour and a half to drive into Washington each day from his northern Virginia suburb and about the same coming home. Ninety minutes to drive barely ten miles— he shook his head at the thought of it. His work wasn’t over either. Despite having risen at four A.M. and having labored ten hours already today, he had at least another three hours awaiting him in the small study he used as an office in his house. A little dinner and some brief quality time with his wife and teenage kids and he would burn the midnight oil. Watkins specialized in high-profile racketeering cases at the Department of Justice in Washington after a long stint as a humble commonwealth’s attorney in Richmond prosecuting whatever miscreants came his way. He enjoyed the work and felt he was doing a real service for his country. He was reasonably well compensated for doing so, and though the hours were sometimes long, his life had turned out all right, he believed. His oldest would be going off to college in the fall, and in another two years so would his youngest child. He and his wife had plans for traveling then, seeing parts of the world they had only viewed in travel magazines. Watkins also had visions of taking an early retirement and teaching as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Virginia, where he had received his degree. He and his wife were thinking of maybe even moving to Charlottesville someday permanently and escaping forever the traffic dungeon that northern Virginia had become.

He rubbed his neck and breathed in the fresh air of a nice, cool evening. A good plan overall; at least he and his wife had a plan. Some of his colleagues patently refused to think beyond tomorrow, much less years from now. But Watkins had always been a practical, commonsensical man. That’s how he had always approached his law practice and that’s how he dealt with life.

He closed the car door and headed up the sidewalk to his house. On the way he waved to a neighbor pulling out of her driveway. Another neighbor was grilling next door, and the smell of cooking meat filled his nostrils. He might just fire up the barbecue tonight too.

Like most people in the Washington area, Watkins had read about the ambush of the Hostage Rescue Team unit with great interest and sinking despair. He had worked with some of those folks on a case once and had nothing but good things to say about their bravery and professionalism. Those guys were the best, at least in his book, and they did a job that virtually no one else would be willing to do. Watkins had thought he had had it tough until he saw what those fellows went through. He felt especially sorry for their families and was even thinking about inquiring if a fund had been established to help them. If there wasn’t such a fund, Watkins was thinking about starting one. Just another item to add to the old to-do list, but that’s just how life worked, he guessed.

He never saw it until it rose from the bushes and charged right at him. Watkins yelled out and then ducked. The bird missed him by inches; it was the same damn blue jay. The thing seemed to lie in wait for him most nights, as though trying its best to scare him into a premature coronary. “Not this time,” said Watkins to the fleeing creature. “Not ever. I’ll get you before you get me.” He chuckled and walked up to the front porch. As he opened the front door, his cell phone rang. Now what? he thought. Few people had this number. His wife, but she wouldn’t be calling him because she had no doubt seen him pull in the driveway. It had to be the office. And if it was the office, that meant something had happened that would probably take up the remainder of his evening and perhaps even require him to turn around and drive back into town.

He pulled out his phone, saw that caller ID was unavailable and thought about not answering it. But that just wasn’t how Fred Watkins did things. It might be important, yet maybe it was just a wrong number. No, no barbecuing tonight, he thought as he punched the talk button, ready to confront whatever it was.

They found what remained of Fred Watkins in the neighbor’s bushes across the street where the blast that disintegrated his house had delivered him. The instant he’d hit the talk button a tiny spark from his phone ignited the gas that had filled his house, gas that Watkins had little chance of detecting when he opened the door because of the smells of grilling meat next door. Somehow his briefcase had survived, still clamped in a hand that was now virtually all bone. The precious papers were intact and ready for another attorney to take over from the deceased lawyer. The bodies of his wife and children were found in the wreckage. Autopsies would show that all of them had already died from asphyxiation. It took four hours to extinguish the fire, and two other homes were engulfed before the conflagration was put out. Thankfully no other people were seriously injured. Only the Watkins family had ceased to exist. The question of how he and his wife would spend their retirement years after a lifetime of hard work was laid to rest with them. They had no problem finding Watkins’s phone, because it had melted to his hand.

At about the time Fred Watkins’s life was ending, ninety miles south in Richmond, Judge Louis Leadbetter was climbing into the back of a government car under the watchful eye of a United States marshal. Leadbetter was a federal trial judge, a position he had held for two years after being elevated from being chief judge of the Richmond Circuit Court. Because of his relative youth—he was only forty-six—and his exceptional legal ability, many folks in powerful places had their eye on Leadbetter as eventually a candidate for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and perhaps even one day taking his seat on the Supreme Court of the United States. As a judge in the legal trenches Leadbetter had overseen many trials of varying complexity, emotion and potential volcanic eruption. Several men that he had sentenced to prison had threatened his life. Once he had almost fallen prey to a letter bomb sent by a white supremacist organization that hadn’t cared for Leadbetter’s steadfast belief that all persons, regardless of creed, color or ethnicity, were equal under the eyes of God and the law. These circumstances dictated that Leadbetter receive additional security, and there had been a recent development that had further increased concerns for his safety.

There had been a daring prison escape by a man who had sworn revenge on Leadbetter. The prison where the man had been held was very far away and the threats were from several years ago, yet the authorities were wisely taking no chances with the good judge. For his part Leadbetter simply wanted to live his life as he always had and the beefed-up security was not particularly appealing to him. However, having barely escaped death once, he was practical enough to realize that the concern was probably legitimate. And he didn’t want to die violently at the hands of some piece of filth who should be rotting away in prison; Judge Leadbetter wouldn’t want to give the man the satisfaction.

“Any news on Free?” he asked the U.S. marshal.

That the man who had escaped from prison was named Free had always rankled Leadbetter. Ernest B. Free. The middle initial and surname weren’t his real ones, of course. He had had his name legally changed when he had joined a paramilitary neo-conservative group whose members all had taken that name as symbolism of the perceived threats to their liberty. In fact, the group called themselves the Free Society, ironic since they were violent and intolerant of anyone who didn’t look like them or who disagreed with their hate-filled beliefs. They were the type of organization that America could certainly do without and yet they were also an example of the vastly unpopular types of groups that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution was constructed to afford protection to. But not when such groups killed. No, not when they killed. No bit of paper, no matter how cherished, could protect you from the consequences of that.

Free and other members of his group had broken into a school, shot two teachers to death and taken numerous children and teachers hostage. Local authorities had surrounded the school, and a SWAT team had been called up, but Free and his men were heavily armed with automatic weapons and body armor. Thus, federal lawmen specializing in hostage rescue had been called up from Quantico. At first things looked like they would end peacefully, but shooting had erupted from inside the school and eventually the Hostage Rescue Team had gone in. A horrific gun battle had ensued. Leadbetter could still vividly recall the heartbreaking sight of a young boy lying dead on the pavement, along with two teachers. A wounded Ernest B. Free had finally given up when his accomplices had been gunned down.

There had been some question as to whether Free would be tried in federal or state courts. While it was believed that the school was targeted because it was a cutting-edge magnet school for integration and enhancement of race relations, and Free’s racist views were well known, it still would have been hard to prove, Leadbetter recognized. To start with, the three people killed—the two teachers and the young boy—were white, and thus prosecuting Free under a federal hate crime statute looked relatively weak. And while technically Free could have been charged with assaults on federal officers, it seemed the best shot was to make things simple and try him in state court and seek the death penalty for the multiple murders. The result was not one any of them had intended.

“No, Judge,” replied the marshal, snapping Leadbetter out of his reminiscing. The marshal had been looking out for Leadbetter for a while now and they had quickly established a good rapport. “If you ask me, that man’s plan is to head to Mexico and then on to South America. Hook up with some Nazis, people of his own kind.”

“Well, I hope they get him and put him right back where he belongs,” said Leadbetter.

“Oh, they probably will. Feds are on it and they sure got the resources.”

“I wanted that bastard to get the death penalty. That’s what he deserved.” It was one of the few regrets that Leadbetter had as a circuit court judge. But Free’s defense counsel had, of course, raised the issue of insanity and even tiptoed along the fringe of alleging a claim of brainwashing by the “cult,” as he had described the organization Free belonged to. The attorney was just doing his job, and in the minds of the prosecution, it apparently had raised just enough doubt about the odds of a solid conviction that they had struck a deal with Free’s counsel before the jury had come back in. Instead of a potential death penalty, Free had gotten twenty to life with the possibility, however slight, that he might someday be paroled. Leadbetter hadn’t agreed with the deal, yet he really had no choice but to sign off on it. The media had taken an informal poll of the jury later. Free had the real last laugh then. All jury members would have voted for conviction and all would have recommended the death penalty. The press had had a field day with that one. Everyone had ended up with egg on his face. Free had been transferred, for a variety of reasons, to a maximum security prison in the Midwest. That was the place he had escaped from.

Leadbetter looked over at his briefcase. Folded neatly inside was a copy of his beloved New York Times. Leadbetter had been born and attended school in New York City before heading south and settling in Richmond. The transplanted Yankee loved his new home, but each evening when he got home, exactly one hour was spent reading the Times. It had been his habit for all his years on the bench and his copy was specially delivered to the courthouse before he left each day. It was one of the few acts of relaxation the man was able to enjoy anymore.

As the marshal drove out of the court’s garage, his phone rang and the answered it. “What’s that? Yes, sir, Judge. Yes, sir, I’ll tell him.” He put the phone down and said, “That was Judge Mackey. He said to tell you to look at the last inside page of the front section of the Times if you want to see something really amazing.”

“Did he say what it was?”

“No, sir, just that you were to look and then to call him right back.”

Leadbetter glanced at the paper, his curiosity running high. Mackey was a good friend and his intellectual interests ran similar to Leadbetter’s. If Mackey thought something fascinating, probably so would he. They were stopped at a light now. That was good because Leadbetter couldn’t read in a moving car without getting violently ill. He pulled the paper out, but it was too dark to see in the car. He reached over and turned on the reading light switch and opened the paper.

The annoyed marshal looked back and said, “Judge, I told you not to be turning that light on. It makes you a durn sitting duck—”

The tinkle of glass stopped the marshal cold, that and the sight of Judge Louis Leadbetter toppling facedown onto his precious New York Times, its pages now soiled with his blood.