DIRTBAG CHAPTER 31

    Early morning, London time, Bristol Prison: for Blair Thomas the future looked bleak, until hope returned to him, when he met with his private Barrister, a crafty old buzzard, with narrow slits for eyes and a shifty glance to the side.
    “The Home Secretary’s office has informed me that the City of Palo Alto’s petition to expedite you back to the states has been granted,” said the barrister to his client, “so we have one or two choices: You can go back to the states and face capital murder 1 charges, or we could petition for Habeas Corpus at the Division court of Judicial Review.  We could argue that you would be subject to inhuman and degrading treatment, and as such, eligible for exemption under Article 3 of the Extradition Treaty signed in 1870.”
    “Meaning, I would stay here, in England.”
    “You would be tried for your crimes here, and if you were found innocent, you would be set free to live here.”
    Blair liked the sound of that and wanted to move forward with the petition for exemption.

    Once Dan started talking, everyone listened in a state of shock.  His words made John, the ADA and Cecil numb, as they entered the surreal world of the killer.  The convict lay in bed, too weak to move, still recovering from his injuries.  His lawyer, Terry was sitting to his right, while the other two men were to his left.
    “I met Blair earlier that afternoon and again at Nigel’s house that evening.  We knew the secret handshake: both of us belonged to the same lodge.  He told me Mary belonged to the Order of the Amaranth.  She was a member of the Masons of California, and they took an oath, they swore to uphold, to keep the secrets of the order and never tell an outsider anything, upon pain of death.  What these secrets were, was not revealed to me, however, the brotherhood made a decision: she was to die.”
    “Mary Donovan?”  Cecil asked.
    Dan nodded yes.
    “Blair laid out the plan.  I was hoping Nigel would understand.  He was anything but understanding.
    “The front door was unlocked.  They were in the living room.  Nigel was with Mary in a state of undress on the couch.  Mary was smoking a cigarette, she put out and covered herself up.  It was obvious what they were doing before we arrived.  As Blair and I came closer to them, Nigel was confused.  ‘What do you want?’  He asked, putting on his pants.
    “ ‘Now Nigel, this has nothing to do with you.  We just need you to step aside… and let us do our job…’  We moved in closer and he confronted us, yelling, ‘Get out, get the fuck out of my house,’ but Blair was saying, ‘Calm down Nigel.  Now listen to me.  You will be okay, if you do as I say.’
    “Mary huddled on the couch, gripped in fear.
    “I told Nigel this was necessary for ‘the good of the order.’
    “ ‘What the fuck does that mean?  What are you talking about?’
    “I indicated the girl with my eyes and suddenly Nigel understood; I said, ‘It has been decreed.’  He knew what that meant and he should have stepped aside, let us do our job, but he balked and pushed me back, with his hands on my chest, screaming, ‘I don’t care!  Get out!’
    “We were loosing control of the situation quickly.  Blair and I had to subdue Nigel.  He struggled against us, but we pinned him down, face down on the floor, our knees and hands on his arms and legs.  Blair had a vile of some drug and he prepared a shot.
    “ ‘No,’ I said, ‘Nigel, calm down, or he’s going to give you some drug.’  However, my words were wasted on him.
    “Mary was grabbing her things and heading out of the house by this point, then Blair administered the shot and told me to go after Mary, now that Nigel was zonked out on the floor.  I caught up with her as she opened the front door and I brought her down on the front porch, then dragged her back inside, kicking and screaming, closed the door and threw my arms around her waist, carrying her back to the couch, as she grabbed at me for anything she could get a hold of, tore my shirt and dug her fingernails into the hair on my chest, gauging me.
    “I held her down on the couch, with my arms and legs on her so she couldn’t move and Blair looked through her purse, then put a knife against her face, so she could see the point of the blade against her cheek and he held her cell phone, up to her ear.  He told Mary, when Dorothy answers, ‘tell her to come over here.”  Her teary eyes looked at him in horror.  ‘Do it,’ he shouted, ‘or I’ll ruin your pretty looks’ and he cut into her flesh, drawing blood.  ‘Tell her to come around back.’  She was crying, but she said the words, Blair coached her to say, ‘Tell her: you’ll tell her why you’re so upset when she gets here.’  He whispered.
    “ ‘I’ll… tell you then.’  She wailed, and the Englishman ended the call.
    I was trying to think: what was Blair doing?  Why was he having Mary make that call?  Things were happening so fast.  The Englishman took Nigel’s tie and rapped it around Mary’s neck, choking the life out of her, while I kept her from struggling free.  I watched her die, saw the terrified look of shock and horror… she couldn’t believe it was the end and I took no pleasure from it, however Blair… I’m not so sure.
    “I didn’t know what to think.  I mean, I knew why he wanted to kill Mary, but why make that phone call?  Obviously he wanted Dorothy to come over for a reason and I figured it wasn’t for her health, so why this second victim?  He told me to carry Mary’s body down to the basement and I confronted him about it.  He dodged my questions and told me to ‘shut up, and do as I was told.’

    Arguing before two magistrates, in red robes and horsehair wigs, sitting on the high bench, two stern men, looking down on the prosecuting barrister, a woman, her robe bands running free, her winged collar neatly tucked inside a suit jacket, talking to them about Blair’s case.
    “My Lords, the state of California has given us assurances the fugitive will not be executed if convicted.”
    “These assurances are worthless.  My client’s fate hangs in the balance; we need something more than simple assurances; if he is sent back to California, he could be facing his own demise any day, never knowing if it is going to be his last.  I say to you this already constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
    “The defense barrister is over stating his case, my lord-”
    “I beg to differ from my learned friend.  The death penalty in California was reinstated in 1977 and in 1993 they found a new way to kill criminals by lethal injection and a convicted murderer has already been put to death in that state by this method this very year, so I don’t think it’s overstating the case at all.  If anything, I haven’t fully stated my case.”
    “The truth is, the defense has no case.  The prosecutor has personally assured me he would not seek the death penalty.  Blair Thomas will not have to face execution and therefore his punishment will not be unduly harsh.”
    “Can the prosecuting barrister assure me it will not rain tomorrow?  There is a 50% chance of rain.  Would my learned friend like to take those odds and leave his umbrella at home?  Because they are the very odds he is giving my client.  Once the Americans have him on their soil, they can do with him what they will.”
    “My dear lord-”
    “Enough!”  A magistrate said.  He turned to speak privately with his fellow magistrate, then turned back to glance at the Defense Barrister and face the prosecution.  “You’ll have our answer in the morning.”  His voice boomed and he banged the gable.
    Blair was full of hopeful promise.

    Dan’s audience listened in rapt attention, as he described the events of that night a terrible crime was committed.
    “In the basement, I dumped Mary’s corpse on the dirt floor and Blair used a knife he got from Nigel’s kitchen drawer, to carve into Mary’s dead flesh: crude looking cross bones, the swastika and gravestones other stuff.”  Dan said this with obvious distaste.
    “Why mutilate the corpse?”  Cecil asked.
    The con looked coldly at the ADA, then the detective.  “To spread fear in the minds of people, who would tell our secrets.”  He had an air of warning, mixed with fear for his own fate, however he wanted the Masons to pay for what they did to him, to Nigel.
    “At the time, I thought it had to be done, for the good of the brotherhood.  I believed in what we were doing and I still believe in the ideal, however, the execution…”  He took a deep breath and fluttered his eyes, loosing consciousness momentarily, until Cecil shook his shoulder.  Startled, he awoke to remember the nightmare of Blair cutting into Mary’s flesh with a knife.
    “Dripping with blood, Blair was grinning, proud of what he done, feeling no remorse.  It made me sick he could be that cold, that we were brothers.  He put the knife down on the workbench, where a shovel and a pick axe were leaning.  He threw on an old pair of work gloves and took up the shovel and started digging with it, but the ground was rock hard and he soon gave up.  Then he tried the pick axe, with little success, only managing to chip away at the granite like dirt floor.  I couldn’t figure out what Blair was up to: I thought the dead body was meant to be found and if he was trying to bury the corpse?  Why in the basement, where the ground was impossible to penetrate with the tools available?  It didn’t make any sense.
    “Then Nigel began to stir upstairs.  I thought we would be out of there by time he was up, but Blair spent a lot of time carving up the corpse.  I told him, I’d seen enough, I was leaving.
    “He said, ‘No, you have to stay,’ practically pleading with me.
    “ ‘Then tell me what’s going on,’ I said.
    “He told me…”  It took him a moment to remember her name, “Dorothy knew.  She had to die too.”
    “ ‘Was she a Mason?’  I asked.”
    “ ‘I don’t know, damn it,  They would only tell me she had to go as well.’ ”
    “ ‘She must be a Mason.’   I demanded, otherwise she was not subject to death.”
    “ ‘Of course she is,’ Blair assured me.  I nodded my consent.  I stood along side my brothers, because that’s where I belonged, but right there, I had my doubts.
    “That’s when Nigel appeared at the bottom of the stairs.  I don’t know how long he was there, or what he heard, but he was sure angry as hell.  Seeing Mary’s carved up flesh and the dead body of a girl he was just intimate with, seeing all the blood and horror, Nigel was no doubt overcome with hatred and disgust, pointing a finger at Blair, as if he knew who was truly responsible.
    “You’re a murderer!  You killed Mary!”  He screamed.
    “Blair had the shovel over his head, ready to bring it down on a brother, and he looked threatening, taking a few check swings at his adversary’s head.  He purposely stood in front of the pick axe, so Nigel couldn’t get to it.  I found the knife on the workbench and picked it up.
    “Wiping the tears away, Nigel was yelling and pointing, telling Blair, he was going to kill him, a face full of anger and pain, thinking, widely speculating, I could see it in his eyes.  Blair saw it too and even though he had the advantage, with me on his side, there was in Nigel a man who was more like a raging bull on a rampage, diving on top of Blair, hitting his midsection, knocking him backwards, as the shovel toppled harmlessly to the ground, Nigel was punching him hard.
    “I threw down the knife and jumped Nigel, pushing him over onto his side and then his back, where I held his arms down, as he struggled against me.  Nigel was full of powerful rage and difficult to handle.  Blair sat up and fetched the shovel, getting Nigel’s hands on the digging tool, while I held him down…
    “Then I figured out what Blair was doing: using Nigel’s tie to strangle the girl and getting his finger prints on the shovel: he was framing him for the murder.  Nigel knew it too and there was little he could do about it.  On the other hand, I was torn.  I practically grew up in the order.  All the men in my family were Masons.  But then, there in that basement for the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a Mason anymore and I thought about going up against Blair and the order.”

    In England, Blair and his barrister listened to the magistrate hand down judgement.
    “After going over the evidence and finding the Santa Clara County Assistant District Attorney’s assurances to be paper thin, lacking any real substance, and given the state of California’s inhumane treatment of prisoners, the death penalty by lethal injection or any other means in our opinion is extremely disagreeable.  However, we must rule in favor of the prosecution and uphold the order to extradite.”
    “My Lord!”  The Defense Barrister was appalled, but Blair thought he was putting on a show.
    The magistrate banged the cable.
    So that was it for Blair; he was going back to California, or was he?  When he met alone with his barrister again, the crafty old buzzard still had one card to play.  “We could petition the European Court of Human Rights on the same grounds: inhuman and degrading treatment.”
    “What our chances of winning?”  Blair asked, feeling somewhat hopeful.
    His barrister had to be honest.  “Almost none,” he admitted.  “The last time someone petitioned the ECHR in 1989 the defendant was unsuccessful in obtaining a favorable judgement, even in a case where the death penalty was a possibility.”
    “So am I to understand, I didn’t have a case from the beginning and-”
    “The divisional court-”
    “You knew all along and you were just stringing me along for the fee.”
    “Really, Mr. Thomas, I did-”
    “What?  What did you do?  Try and drain away every last penny of mine?”
    “This is an outrage!  I did my level best to defend you.”

    “ ‘Get him up!’  Blair shouted, ‘Get him up!  Stand him by the wall!’ ”
    Dan continued to recount what happened in Nigel’s basement that night a brutal murder was committed.  Now he told the ADA, “I didn’t know why Blair wanted me to hold Nigel against the wall and it didn’t matter.  I was no longer taking orders from him.  I wanted to work things out, be reasonable, after all, I was already implicated in the crime.  I had to find a way for all 3 of us to walk out of that basement, with our lives and I wasn’t going to be a part of any frame up and while I was arguing with Blair, Nigel was yelling at us and acting irrationally.  I had to hold him down on the ground, before he did something stupid.  I was trying to calm him down, while he told the Englishman he was going to kill him.  Blair shouted, ‘Make sure he doesn’t move.’
    “Sitting on the dirt floor, under a bare light bulb, Blair laid out before him a cloth sigil, or perhaps a talisman, I didn’t get a good look at it, but it was embroidered with something that looked like widdershins.”
    Cecil realized immediately what he was talking about: that torn piece of cloth he found in the basement of Nigel’s house, the one with those strange lines on it, that proved to be the runic symbol, Ginfaxi: meaning courage in combat.  Apparently, he was performing some magical act, but Dan didn’t know that.  He wanted to know about Nigel?
    “What about Nigel?”
    “ ‘Shut up,’ Blair said, ‘I’m trying to concentrate.  I’ll deal with him later.’
    “It was better to wait.  Dan would have better luck getting through to him later.
    “The Englishman was staring at the cloth talisman for a long time, then he stood and made a strange arm movement in the air and said… a sound really, I didn’t recognize, but it sounded like, ‘Hagalaz’ and then he made another hand gesture and said, ‘Sowilo,’ that’s the double ’S’.  I know that from the Nazis.  Then he took a small stone out of his jacket pocket and set it down near the talisman.  Then out of his other jacket pocket, he took another small stone and set it down, opposing the first stone.”
    Cecil remembered the stone he found in the basement, the Sowilo rune, shaped like a lightening bolt; the symbol was used by the Waffen-SS, the Nazi Secret Service to signify their organization.
    “While Blair concentrated on the stones, Nigel struggled free; I grabbed his pants leg, then got a hold of his belt and pinned him against the wall.  He wanted to see what Blair was doing and stopped fighting against me and we watched the Englishman go into a kind of trance, making some weird Nordic sound, closing his eyes, he suddenly opened them and said, “What I couldn’t have in life, I shall have in death,” and he picked up the bloody knife and scraped the hard dirt floor, gouging out a line, then some more lines.  I didn’t understand any of it.”
    Cecil remembered the bloody lines on the basement floor, that proved to be another runic talisman: a powerful binding tool for magicians.
    Dan confessed, “What Blair was doing that night was some kind of magic, unlike any Masonic ritual.  I thought he was out of his mind, but Nigel didn’t see it that way.  He understood the logic behind it and it made him even madder.
    “That was all Nigel could take.  He was pounding on me and his rage made him stronger, more dangerous.  I couldn’t hold on to him any longer and he broke free of me; he scuffed up the marks on the floor with his shoe and kicked the runes under the work bench, while he stomped on the talisman and tore it to pieces.
    “Blair just moved out of the way and looked at me like I should do something about him, but Nigel was screaming, ‘Mary’s mine, mine, not yours Blair, not yours to bind her spirit to you.  She doesn’t belong to you!  You hear me?  She belongs to me!’  He fell to his knees, whimpering over the loss of her.  I put my hand on his shoulder and he shrugged it off, stood up and pointed at me and Blair, screaming at us.
    “I said, ‘Stop this, we should work it out,’ but he wasn’t having any of that, saying he was going to kill us both and by the look in his eyes, he meant it too.  Life was meaningless to him now and all he cared about, all he wanted was revenge.  Our eyes were locked together and when he made a grab for the pick axe, I dived on top of him and Blair grabbed the garden tool, just as Nigel got a hold of it and they struggled for control over it, until Blair pulled it away from him and he fell to the floor.
    Even though Nigel was my friend, I was still a Mason, who believed in the mission; I decided Nigel needed to realign himself with the order.  While holding him down, I tried to talk some sense into him, get him to see reason, when we heard a female voice and heels on a gravel driveway, a woman calling out, ‘Mary, are you back here?’  It was Dorothy.
    “Nigel was about to yell, when I covered his mouth with my hand and muffled his screams, which turned into sobs.  Blair gave me the knife.  I didn’t want to use it on a brother, but if Nigel didn’t start cooperating, there was no telling what I might do.  ‘This had to be done,’ I told him, ‘Stop it, or I’ll use it on you,’ and I showed him the knife.  That shut him up.
    “Blair turned out the light and we hid in the basement shadows, leaning against the wall adjacent to the door, where Dorothy was peaking into the darkness.
    “ ‘Mary?’  She said.”



 Copyright 2016  William Leslie