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BOOK REVIEW Pastor Dale's new mystery thriller, THE ELEPHANT TRAP, is being well received. The second volume in "The Rachel Gillette Mystery Series" will be out before Christmas. Entitled EYE OF THE STORM, it picks up where the last one left off. The following is a brief excerpt from that upcoming novel. The Los Angeles City Jail was located in the Lincoln Heights area. Primitively begun with the city’s incorporation in 1850, it had initially been a bar-less adobe building where prisoners had been chained to iron protrusions attached to large logs, either inside the jail or in the surrounding yard. The facilities had grown from there, and ultimately all of the structures had been razzed in 1931 so that the new Central Police Station and Jail could be built. Almost entirely concrete, and constructed in an Art Deco style, it easily provided accommodations for over 600 prisoners. Rachel sat in the waiting area, absentmindedly folding her official pass into a myriad of shapes. It was hot for April, and a clanking fan was working overtime to swirl stale air through the cubicle. It was obviously not regular visiting hours. The other wooden chairs were vacant. A few old magazines littered a scarred center table, and some children’s blocks were stacked in the corner. Families had obviously wiled away the hours here, waiting for a few welcome moments with husband or father. A radio crackled in the guard’s station somewhere beyond her sight. Ma Perkins and Helen Trent had been given the day off. No Soap Opera could compare with the latest bulletins with more news about the President’s death. Only three people had been with the Commander in Chief when he had passed into history at the Warm Springs Foundation for Infantile Paralysis building. All doctors. The First Lady and their only daughter had been in Washington, and his four sons had been serving their country in the military all over the war-torn world. Death had come on a beautiful spring day in a little room overlooking a lovely Georgia valley. The portrait that he had been sitting for when the first blinding pain came would never be completed. The fiddlers who were to play for him at the barbecue later that evening had ceased their rehearsal and put away their bows. The patients in wheel chairs and braces who were practicing old favorites to sing for him at a minstrel show had been told that there would be no command performance. Rachel thought about how life so often surprised people of all rank and position. Simply having appointments, no matter how seemingly important, written on a calendar or White House schedule promised the completion of any task. In a world now filled with constant death, it still seemed often to come as a surprise. “Rachel Gillette.” The uniformed guard stepped into the room. “Right here,” she smiled. It seemed obvious that she was the only one present. “You can come on back.” He stepped aside, directing her into a narrow hallway. “Just have a chair at the long table. He’ll be joining you shortly.” The ‘long table’ was exactly that. Long, and green, with a broad yellow stripe painted down the middle. On either side were chairs, matched two by two, so that visitors and prisoners could face one another across the wooden expanse. A sign on the wall recounted the cardinal rules of visitation. No reaching over the line. No touching. No contact of any kind, and definitely no giving or receiving of any object, no matter how innocent or unassuming. A steel door clanked, and Reinhart Holzer walked slowly into the room. Always slight, he appeared to have lost even more weight. His yellowed white hair had been freshly clipped, giving him the odd appearance of a middle-aged teenager. He positioned himself across the table from Rachel and nervously adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. “Thank you for coming.” There was little expression or emotion in the greeting. “When I got word that you were here, I...” “It wasn’t asking too much. That is to say...asking you to come. You are, after all, the reason that I’m locked up in this place.” Rachel leaned back slightly, thrown off guard by the immediate verbal attack. She had suspected that he would somehow blame her for his predicament, but wasn’t prepared for his bluntness. “I’m sorry. I mean...I’m sorry that you’re here.” She fought for words, not wanting to apologize, and yet feeling a need to express honest concern. “You can’t really blame me for this.” “Oh, really?” His voice trembled slightly. She had always assumed that he had been a good actor in his younger days, but he wasn’t showing it now. He seemed unable to hide his anger. “Well, noone had bothered me before your little visit. All of your questions and talk about crazy stuff. ‘Them’ following you around taking notes about anyone you talked to.” He nodded toward the guard positioned a few feet away. “People like him. ‘Them’.” “I was working on a story. More than a story. I was fighting for my life. Trapped and grasping for straws.” She found herself being drawn into the conversation. Explaining things that really didn’t need explanation. “All your talk about fats. Fats and what I did in Germany. All of your talk about crazy things.” His pale face was now red. She could see his pulse pounding through the artery in his thin neck. “Your work with glycerin. Explosives. The Black Market. There were a thousand good reasons for a reporter to talk with you.” She refused to retreat. The guard took a step forward, drawn like a moth to flame by what appeared to be a heated confrontation. Holzer leaned back in his chair, taking several deep breaths. He looked at the guard, smiled, and waved him away. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “I just let my nerves show a little. ” He smiled. “Really. It’s all right.” The guard reassumed his position. They sat quietly for a long moment, each one waiting for the other to speak. Finally, he leaned forward, allowing the tip of his nose to stop immediately above the painted line that separated them. “They don’t even know what to do with me. I’ve broken no laws, but they don’t want to let me go. I’m in this country as a courtesy. What are they going to do? They can’t send me back to Germany, and they don’t want me here.” “I’m sorry.” She honestly was. “So am I. I got scared by all of the attention, and I ran. My mistake. But you made a mistake too. The same old tired mistake.” “What...?” “Conspiracy. It’s always a conspiracy with you Americans. The guards around here today are all talking about who killed Roosevelt. No one ever dies of natural causes in America. Noone important. It’s always done by committee. Always a conspiracy.” “These are scary days...” “Fine. Be frightened. But, just remember. It isn’t always a conspiracy. Sometimes there is no story. Only facts. You claim that you were looking for a story when you came to see me in Pasadena. But...there wasn’t one. Only facts. Facts that had nothing to do with what you were looking for. And look where you got me.” “Why are you telling me this? Is this why you wanted to see me? Just to lecture me?” “No lecture. I just wanted to tell you. I didn’t do anything wrong, but it isn’t helping me now. I just wanted to look into your eyes and tell you that you’ ve killed me. It’ll never be worth a story. But it’s a fact.” He stood and motioned for the guard. She wanted to say something. But, there was nothing to say. Nothing to apologize for, and yet a thousand things she would do differently if she were given another chance. She sat at the long table for a long while after Holzer had been returned to his cell. Ultimately, a portly woman joined her, and was soon weeping across from her incarcerated son. Rachel had no tears. She was all dried up, and so she just sat and stared numbly at the broad yellow stripe. |
