Chapter 2

I'm not quite sure of all of the details of exactly what happened to this very day. I had to work a bit late to handle an evening delivery, and when I got to my apartment Suzie (the cute dispatcher) was there and greeted me at the door with a drink and only wearing a smile.

That alone should have warned me of two things. Suzie had never done anything remotely 'domestic' before, and if I had looked harder, I probably would have seen that she was already well fucked and I had interrupted her fun. I then made a bigger mistake, I drank the offered drink and was woozy and disoriented even before I ever made it to the bedroom. One of Dragos bully boys helped me collapse into a chair while I watched my brother and three friends repeatedly have sex with a very willing and complacent Suzie for the next hour.

"I can't be spending all of my time looking after you." Dragos said to me, later as he was zipping up his pants. "You're really not very interesting anymore, and it's just too time consuming now to be constantly having to chase you down all over the country. Fortunately there are nice tax-payer funded places that are perfect for keeping you miserable, and out of my way for the rest of your life. If you should happen to drop the soap in the shower, just smile and think of the kindness of your big brother for yet another wonderful opportunity to get screwed."

I saw Suzie being given some money as she was escorted out by Dragos and one of his goons. Two others remained behind and I was given an injection and remembered nothing more until the next day when two uniformed police officers were trying to slap me awake, and I knew then that I was in one serious pickle.

On the face of it, the entire setup was such a complete and obvious 'frame-up' that all the case needed was a big bag marked 'swag' and a fake confession with me offering up a "it's a fair cop, guv'nor."

Dragos had spent his bribe money well; there were dubious calls from non-existent neighbors complaining about sounds of fighting and me 'threatening to kill her', despite the statements of the nice little old lady next door, who was an insomniac and stated she never heard me utter a single sound all night.

The bed was drenched in blood (her blood type) and a bloody knife with my fingerprints on it was found under the bed. More blood was found in the back of my small delivery truck at work. Ergo, I had killed her in a drug fueled rage and stashed her body somewhere out in the desert. The fact that my trucks odometer had not changed since I had completed my delivery at 7 p.m., when I turned in the keys to dispatch, was considered somehow irrelevant.

As a frame, it was so sloppy that I became increasing angry with the Police and the ADA's in charge of my case for falling for it. Seeing that no one cared about my defense, or had been paid to ignore it, I eventually just shut up and refused to cooperate entirely. My young overworked legal aid attorney had a caseload of at least thirty-five other pending cases and she spent at least half of her time with me trying to get me to accept a plea deal (it was obvious by her attitude she believed I had done it). She never even bothered to obtain any copies of the DA's sloppy lab tests that probably would have gotten my case dismissed right on the spot.

Even my Judge seemed to think that the DA's case against me was beyond circumstantially weak, until the wind changed three days into my trial, when he began to openly wish that he could just hang me. (I found out years later his 'change of heart' coincided with a $50,000 campaign donation made by my brother).

In a state of utter disbelief, I found myself sentenced to serve a total of eighty-seven years for the crime of 1st Degree Murder, and a few other minor offenses. When I joking apologized that I doubted I would be able to serve the entire sentence, the Judge just looked down on me and said, "Well son, then you'll just have to do the best you can." And he laughed.

The next 3-1/2 years were spent in a ultra-modern 'SuperMax' facility where I never saw the sun at all and twenty-three hours of my day were in solitary with one hour of solo 'exercise' in a little concrete dog-run. Frankly, it reminded me a lot of being back in Junior High, so I'd just sit on my one stair step and read one of my books. Exercise? Why on earth did I want to be healthy?

I stayed quiet, except for 'Yes/No" with "Sir and Ma'am " for the guards. I got the impression that I was expected to be trouble for them, but after a long while I think even the most bull-headed of the lot figured out that I just wanted to do my time in peace, and if I was left alone I'd sure as hell leave everyone else alone.

About three years after I arrived there, I was brought in for my annual psych visit. I hadn't liked the guy I had spoken to my first two years and he had seemed to resent the fact that I was so 'passive' here. I had claimed I was innocent, hadn't I? Why wasn't I complaining, protesting, or doing 'something or anything' to draw attention to myself?

"What was the point?" I would always say. "If I could find an attorney that cared and was willing to agree that the grass was green or the sky was blue, my brother would pay for ten other experts to claim the exact opposite. If I wasn't happy here, then at least I wasn't completely miserable - I had been treated worse, I assured him.

My new shrink was a married gal just about my age who was a sloppy dresser and wore no makeup (probably on purpose so as not to be 'attractive' to a lot of very scary and mostly crazy men, many of whom hadn't seen a good looking woman in a very long time.

Obviously, she would be (or should be) nervous of me as the last woman I supposedly was in a room with had been carved up. Fortunately for her, she also had a pair of guards behind me willing and very able to make me piss blood from my kidneys for the next month, if I even looked at her sideways. She spent ten minutes rereading my file, looked at me again, and tossed her file folder in frustration ontop the table that divided us.

"I don't think I've ever read this much contradictory bullshit in one file since my grad school days." She said, looking at me. "In your own words, tell me why you are here today?"

"There are any number of things I could say to start with, namely that the great, glorious and sovereign State of Arizona fell for the most obvious frame up job, composed of weak and ridiculously circumstantial evidence I've every heard of, and that my brother, the son of a former US Congressman, has the will, the money and the political power to make sure my ass will never leave these lovely hallowed halls until I've assumed room temperature, and my body starts to stink. Well, I could also mention that he also has a magic ring that mind controls everyone around him, but that would just make you check the "batshiate nuts" box in my records."

"Did I kill the woman I was convicted of murdering?" I added. "No, and as a college graduate with honors from my school, I should hope that in the extremely unlikely event that I would ever have been forced to commit a murder, that I would have done it in by far the stupidest method I've ever heard of? Do I like it here as an inmate, trapped for life? No, not really, but what good would complaining do? Do I blame my parents? Not particularly for my being here today - I blame them for many other things, but not this. Did I miss anything? Or is there any other topic you'd like to discuss with me before the nice gentlemen behind me take me back to my quiet little cell, but not before thumping me a good few times for being impertinent to you?"

She was speechless, and two minutes later I was back in my cell and counted myself lucky that I only pissed blood for a few days instead of the expected week. A few weeks later I learned from a guard that I was being 'reclassified' and would probably soon be transferred to a lesser security prison.

This actually took a few months to arrange, and I supposed I owed it all to the new psych shrink who actually could be bothered to do her job herself, instead of just following what everyone had written or said before her.

The next 4-1/2 years were in a lesser security facility, not quite technically 'low security' but not really 'medium' either. I had a cell mate, but I guess I could have had a much worse one, and I even had a job now (actually two) learning diesel truck repair by day, and working an actual real journalism job, handling the prison staff newsletter for this unit and three other nearby sister facilities. I wasn't quite a trustee (they didn't have any), but I was allowed to live virtually non-stop otherwise in the prison library. Like most prison libraries, it sucked, but it suited my tastes pretty decently. What it lacked in modern works, it more than made up for in the classics, Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, Kipling, etc. By the time I was done with them they were nearly worn out.

I half expected to have some 7 foot giant with gravel for a voice grab me by my throat to introduce me to his friend "Mr Johnson" and his foot-long cock, and make me his bitch, but instead I was surprised to find that my new roommate Pablo was rather short in stature, and had other physical shortcomings that fortunately were of no concern to me either. He was an excitable chap who was pretty much liked by everyone and was often used as an emissary between the various prison factions.

Being half-Hispanic, and one quarter each white and black, he could belong to none of the gangs, but he was largely tolerated by each. Outside, he had been an 'Introducer'; he knew people in low places that could handle all of your problems, both simple and complex, and would take his percentage in return for an introduction. He knew murderers, pimps, drug dealers, forgers, safe crackers, thieves, smugglers and their mules, and even forgers. I was particularly interested to learn that his cousin Leon, in Del Rio, Texas, excelled in providing high quality forged identification papers, so I filed the name carefully away for future reference. If I ever got out, my own name would be poison, and I'd a completely new identity to hide with.

For the next three years or so, before Pablo was paroled, I was able to make myself useful enough to him (usually just standing guard while he did some other business), that he even offered me the some of the time of his own personal paid attorney, who was most definitely not another over-worked kid from some legal aid or public defenders office. I gave him all of the 'facts' of my case for him to investigate, but I warned him under no circumstance to ever contact my brother, other family members or let them know of his work. It took him some time, but even under gentle and quiet but probing analysis the case against me began to soon fall totally apart.

DNA testing was now out of the research laboratories and approved as solid reliable science, and available to all. The copious blood evidence that had framed me didn't even all belong to a single blood donor, and none of it was even Suzie's blood type, let alone a match to her DNA. A cursory search revealed that Suzie, naturally was alive and well and still living openly under her own name in Seattle.

Other more penetrating searches revealed that key witnesses against me had suddenly made large and unusual bank deposits before and after their testimony, and even a former police officer was now willing to testify that he and his partner had received bribes to fabricate or cloud the evidence, assumed that he could receive immunity ... and keep his police pension.

I could have made a fortune, suing everyone that had put me into jail, except that the publicity would have attracted my brother's attention. All I really wanted now to get out of jail, and hide myself immediately with a new identity, and make something out of the rest of my life.

You would think that finding one's alleged murder victim alive and well would be immediate grounds for an instant appeal and a hasty pardon, but the process of getting me free seemed to take forever. Even Suzie admitting under oath that an old boyfriend had put her up to this 'joke', didn't seem to get my prison doors opened any faster. I soon began to fear that Dragos would learn of my slowly impending release and arrange some sort of a new roadblock.

None too soon, and without any apologies from the great State of Arizona, and a small but suitable check to cover my earnings while an involuntary employee of the State, I hopped the first Greyhound bus heading towards Del Rio.

Even with the instructions I had, it still took me a couple of days to find Cousin Leon, but he was indeed just the man I needed. He acknowledged that my case would be handled at no charge, as a favor to Pablo, and forty-eight hours later, 'Charles Scott Kipling' made his non-literary debut, complete with a real Commercial Texas Drivers License, and a 'genuine reproduction copy' of my new Birth Certificate, from a central Texas Courthouse that had suffered a convenient fire a few years after my alleged birth, with a friendly county clerk always eager to help out his old friend Leon, for a slight fee. There was even a pre-paid credit card that had a $500 balance.

I had a new identify that could stand up to nearly any possible challenge, and I set off to find myself a new home.

Desperate for news, I risked calling Wendy's parents from a payphone right before I left Del Rio. My conversation with her father had been very brief and he did all of the talking.

"Wendy is doing alright and she is safe for the moment ... but you are not. This phone is probably tapped and he has well-paid and experienced people that are already looking for you everywhere and won't ever stop. Please, do not call us again."

Click, end of conversation. Her father just sounded sad and there was no anger or animosity in his voice. Probably they rued the day that I had met her daughter, and had then allowed Dragos to steal her away from me, but I didn't hear any hint of this in his voice. He just sounded tired and perhaps sad. I couldn't blame him, as I was more than a bit mentally tired of this as well.

I'd had years alone, or mostly so, in prison to think about what I had done ... and more importantly, what I hadn't done. Alright, so I didn't figure out the 'Magic Ring' trick until it was too later for either of us, but still, before I left Wendy alone at my brother's mercy, I still should have done something! Instead, I'd reverted back to being the scared and hurt boy of my childhood and had run away from the problem once again.

If given another chance to fix this old wrong, I swore as I boarded the Greyhound for El Paso later that evening. I didn't want to take the first bus heading out of town after my phone call as I suspected that Dracos' private investigators would especially check out the destinations of the first couple of buses. I got off at the first stop, Fort Stockton, and then waited a bit to take the random 4^th bus that left next.

I pulled this random selection of destinations act three more times until I ended up in Oklahoma City. Once there, I risked staying for a day or two while attempting to lay down a nice false trail. I applied for several jobs and even checked into national chain hotel using my real name. I had a nice casual conversation with the desk clerk and a waitress at the diner next door when I checked out, giving her enough of a tip for her to remember my face. I told them both that I had received a good job offer for a caretakers job up in the Rockies, near Denver, Colorado.

I hoped this area was large and remote enough to keep my hunters busy for a good long while, or at least long enough for me to settle down some root with my new identify.

My next bus trip brought me back into Texas to San Antonio, but I didn't stay for very long as I had a hankering to see the Gulf Coast. Heading next down to Corpus Christi, I tried to see if I could find a journalism job there, but without my degree (in my old name), it was about impossible. I was advised to seek out the local remote County newspapers to start my career there. Fine, that seemed as good of an idea as any. Fine. I preferred to be able to write, but if necessary I could take a diesel repair job nearly anywhere as well.

I bought some camping supplies and started hiking up the beach highway north. My plan was to go to Refugio and then Victoria, but I somehow made a wrong turn, because two days later I ended up in an odd sort of town not quite on the beach called Lovett. My first clue that I was not quite in Kansas anymore, figuratively speaking, was when a pair of young lovely ladies (and quite topless) pulled over to offer me ride in their jeep into town. With the view as it was bouncing over these horrible country roads, how could I refuse?

They dropped me off in the town square close to sundown, but it actually wasn't a real town square, like I'd seen everywhere else in Texas so far. The town centre was actually a pentagon, with a small central park with a black stone spire stuck right smack in the center. It made for extremely confusing directions, as nothing in the town was on a true north- south/east-west street grid. I was given directions for a local bed and breakfast (there didn't seem to be any real hotels at least in this part of town), but after three tries to find it I gave up. It wasn't really in my limited budget anyway.

The local grocery stayed opened fairly late, so I got a sandwich for my dinner and a screw-top bottle of wine to wash it down it (nasty stuff!) and settled in on a park bench to wait for morning to see if I could find some work anywhere. Like most small towns everywhere, the old part of town shuts down right at dark and I didn't seen anyone for hours.

I had my dinner, and spread out my sleeping bag on the grass near the spire. I figured sooner or later the Sheriff or some local Constable would be along to roust me up and guide me to where I wanted to get to anyway - a proper but cheap bed. I had means of support so I wasn't worried about a vagrancy charge, but I did not sleep well. I kept adjusting my position and I soon had my back leaning against the stone pillar in a vain effort to find some comfortable position. I got a little sleep, but I also had the worst dreams of my life - no understatement, and woke up at midnight screaming, to find that someone was already trying to shake me awake.

He gave his name as Father Alex and said he was the minister of the local church, and said I obviously needed a much better place to spend the night, to which I wholeheartedly agreed. Already I had forgotten my bad dream, but I remembered it was worse than any I had suffered while in prison. I was soon led to a much nicer accommodation in a small guest room in one of the annex buildings of the church and my dreams for the remainder of the night were distinctly improved. It was a shock the next morning to find that my host, in fact, runs his church in the middle of possibly one of the largest nudist colonies in the country.

When I stepped foot into The Church that early Sunday morning I realized I was quite badly overdressed. In fact, I was the only person in the entire church wearing even a stitch of clothing. Out of politeness for the gentleman who had rescued me from a bad night in the park, I was more than willing to be polite and strip myself and find a back corner seat out of the way and listen to what my host had to offer for my spiritual welfare. I was used to seeming rooms full of naked people in prison, but this was quite different.

It wasn't really even sexual, it just came over as folks wearing their 'inside clothes on the outside' was how someone later described it to me, and quite accurately. There was little mention about God, and much more emphasis on truth and honesty. Alex was a superb speaker and his talks were filled with humor and displayed an obvious care for the folks he ministered to. I would have traded in a heartbeat the thousands of stupid prison sermons I'd heard over the years for just five minutes of Alex's gentle words.

Immediately after service, Father Alex made a beeline to me and steered me around the fellowship hall to 'meet a few people' - more like hundreds of them. Within minutes I had two jobs, a day job maintaining and driving a tired old truck to handle some local and regional deliveries, and a night job assisting the elderly solo-proprietor and Editor of the Lovett Starry-Beacon (with a circulation of 'dozens').

Another senior citizen member offered a room for lease at a rate that seemed more than reasonable and before I knew it I was all set and established in town.

The Church 'Fellowship Hour' actually seemed to continue long past noon and much of the afternoon was spent with a large church luncheon and picnic on their vast grounds. Children played in a large well-equipped park, teenagers swam in the local pool or played a dozen other sporting games and the adults chatted, socialized and enjoyed the sun - all without a stitch of clothing. The more I learned about the town, the stranger indeed it seemed to become.

The rather enormous Nudist Colony that ran a bit to the east of the town center and then down onwards to the coast was the bread and butter industry of much of the township and county of the same name. There was some minor tourism for the beach, but ranching and farming were the only other traditional industries, and both were rather depressed economically. There was a bit of a harbor in a bay to the southwest, but it wasn't an especially good one, surrounded nearly on all sides with shallow mudflats and hardly any deep water for landing boats. Also the very bad local county road made getting anywhere outside of the old town in poor weather problematic at best. Much of the land to the west and especially southwest near the bay tended to be worthless salt marsh, but there was an old WW-2 era airfield to the northeast that had a minor charter service business and a fledgling aviation corporation that had just moved down here from New England. There was also some talk of a local computer software company that was starting to prosper a little bit, but the overall tone was of a small rural economy with very few opportunities for growth.

I settled into my new jobs easily and the next Friday late afternoon, with a paycheck in my hand, I was greeted by the good Father Al, as he preferred to be called. He jokingly asked that, "Since I was now a man of means, would I enjoy sharing a glass of wine and a beach walk with him to discuss my week in town and perhaps share a bit of past history?" All three ideas sounded good to me.

We took his jeep down to the beach area, and I splurged for a pair of tall icy-cold Pinot Grigio wine glasses served from a beachside saloon called Phil's Cantina and we enjoyed a bit of a walk. We were the only ones clothed at all on the beach, but I wasn't in the mood to strip down and my tippling priest and confessor followed my example.

I had resolved that I would mention nothing of prison, let alone my framing and under no circumstances discuss my brother Dragos whatsoever. This firm resolution held fast for least 1/4 mile, and by the time forty-five minutes later when we had reached the end of the beach inside the bay, near the Marsh-King's fishing pier, I had pretty much confessed everything there was to be confessed.

We walked back to Phil's, which was apparently a very well regarded local beachside watering hole that was a favorite place for young couples enjoying their weekends, sipping a frozen margarita or two and splashing about nude on the nearby well-lighted beach to either watch or be watched. I splurged for another round of drinks, the famous frozen hard lemonades this time, and I continued to confess until my 'insides were now my outsides' as a local expression went.