Chapter Two

'No tape recorders.'

The diner was empty. Iker Hernandez was in the corner of the room, by a large bay window, lit by red neon from outside. The establishment was unusually dim; Walker had no experience of the place with the exception of driving past a couple of times. All the same, it appeared odd: Hernandez was the only customer, there was no All-American-aproned girl to take their order. Even the shrill trumpet music in the background seemed displaced somehow. He drew closer to the red-cushioned cubicle where the shadowy figure resided.

'No tape recorders,' he repeated by way of introduction.

'Mr Hernandez, glad to meet you at this ungodly hour'. He held out a welcome hand to the man opposite as Walker sat on his side of the cubicle. Hernandez' hands, held underneath the table, moved slightly and then stopped, as though remembering something. He wore an unkempt beige puffer jacket. His Latino face looked gaunt and hollowed out, a shade of the healthy face Walker had seen in the news articles. This was Hernandez, all right, the ghost of his former self, but it was him for sure. He knew, only then, that he was not being duped.

'You British people like tea, right? I got you tea,' and he nodded at the mug in front of Walker. 'I'm sorry I'm making your journalism a stretch without a tape recorder... I can't be traced back. I don't want them finding me.'

'That's fine, I'm glad you're here all the same.' He swirled his tea for a bit.

'It was risky for me coming here tonight. Not only do the FBI not want me coming to the sweet old town of Midwesterley due to me passing out the truths of that day, but I'm practically an outcast here.' He smiled wryly. 'The molesting charges they came up with, faked. If the town saw me here I would not put it past them to get the pitchforks and rotten tomatoes out'. He laughed hollowly. It was not a pleasant sound.

'What made you decide  to see me tonight?'

'Ah, now we're getting to the nitty gritty of things, here. I keep in contact with all the Midwesterley key figures, all the people who were there on that day and knew the truth. I try and keep in contact, you see, but the higher forces that be don't want us witnesses spreading heresies, perpetuating the truth, keeping in contact. Nu-uh. Mr Jenkin's, the school's biology teacher back then, smuggled me a letter into my prison-cell. It was sent in code you see, took me a couple years to work out. But I never give up. It said this name: BEN WALKER, accompanied by his name, so I knew it were from him. Well, I didn't know the fuck that name was, this was round 2008, but eventually it clicked- the library.'

Ben Walker sighed and a took a sip of the lukewarm tea. 'You found my book in the prison library?'

'Ha, that autobiography was a hoot,' he said sardonically. 'You grovelled so bad for your high-flying career at the Times. But, man, you were bad: the way you lied-'

'I know what I've done!' Walker shouted. 'A disgraced investigative journalism who did some pretty shitty things in his time, yeah, that's the one, that's me.' He took a breath. Perhaps it was the moral judgement being passed by this bum sitting across from him that caused the sudden outburst. He pounded his finger on the table. 'I'm sorry. It's just, this book, this book about the school is going to be my redemption. Get my career back on track. I know the truth, I know what the government is hiding-'

'You don't need to talk to me about knowing truth from false! Look, as soon as I got the clue I needed to talk to you.  See, the network of people at Midwesterley that day who saw everything, that understood what really happened, we call ourselves the Candour's- wait, you must have come across that term in your journalism-'

'Yes',

'The firefighters, police, teachers, the kids-grown-up',

'I've interviewed many of them',

'Ah, but you haven't interviewed an interviewee worth his salt actually in Midwesterley, have you? Because you know the FBI, by hook or by crook, have separated the Candour's up, put them in different states, different countries even, to keep them from rebelling',

'I, too, have also come to that conclusion',

'Then, evidently, you don't believe in the Government-asserted lies, you don't believe Lee Mason had anything to do with it.' He paused, dramatically. 'You don't believe there was even a gun involved at the Midwesterley Grammar 'shootings', do you?' 

'No, I don't. I do believe it was a bloody good cover-up, though'.

They stopped talking for a moment. A sense of recognition, of kinsmanship, dwelled.  

Hernandez spoke up, and this time seemed less focused, perhaps more contemplative. 'You know, I've been looking for someone like you for a while. A voice. I spent years in that prison cell waiting for somebody to blow the whistle. But I've got to ask you, why did you pick this case? Why move out to Midwesterley? It's a dangerous place you know,' he said implicitly.

Suddenly, the pair in the diner heard the roaring on engines. Sundown diner was placed on an cross-section of roads that in the daytime would be busy, but surely not this busy at 3AM? A huge collective roar of motor engines sounded all at once and- was that a helicopter engine? The blinding overhead light that slanted through the blinds seemed to answer Walker's questioning.

'You have to leave,' stated a voice. Her head peered through a crack in the kitchen door, silhouetted by pale yellow light. The chopping sound of the helicopter reverberated the entire diner, shook them. The engine roars grew louder still. 'There were men here earlier... you have to leave now.' Iker Hernandez searched under the table, for what, Walker didn't know, and then Hernandez showed it to him. a tiny black mark in the palm of his hand. They had been bugged. They, whoever 'they' were, had heard everything.

Walker now saw them. Legions of black sedans, stretching as far back as the streetlights on all four sides of the intersection. A sleek-looking Mercedes led the inner-most cavalcade of vehicles. Walker stood up and drew back from the helicopter-light. He clasped his hand to his forehead. Hernandez was the twelfth Midwesterley Candour he had spoken to, and yet he had already started the book. Even if he was written from the records, he might needn't have required his input. But that wasn't true. Iker had promised new information, something that was worth risking life and limb for. 'What did you need to tell me?' Walker said in a quiet voice, just audible above the chopping and the engine and now the speakerphone telling them to 'Stop where you are' in a tinny voice. 'What did you need to tell me?'

Iker hadn't moved at all. He still had the hidden-mike held out in his hands, fragmented light spilling through the blinds, onto his face. He furrowed his eyebrows, searching for a means to condense what he had to say. The bay window smashed loudly and his thoughtful features suddenly emptied. His face fell forward onto the table, blood pooling around his slumped body. 'Mr Hernandez! Mr Hernandez!' Walker yelled, uncaring, reaching out to him. 

But the only voice that replied to him, with the exception of the waitresses uninhibited screams, was the monotone of the loudspeaker: 'PUT YOUR HANDS UP!'

Chapter One

There were a few odd goings-on in the town of Midwesterley on the 12th July, 2004, and I don't just mean the school shooting. I wonder, and I suspect its the case, that those twelve gunshots at Midwesterley Grammar, bang,bang,bang, were the cataclysm not only for those unfortunate deaths but for the prevarication of the collective mind: the forgetting of the immediate past, the unsurety of the immediate future. Bang,bang,bang, and the townsfolk forgot everything that was appeared not to be in direct relation to those gunshots. For you see, reader, for the past ten years I have investigated those odd-goings on, those mind-wiped events that paled into obscurity once the shots were underway, I have looked beyond the police dossier's, I've interviewed Lee Mason, the so-called perpetrator and I know, I know. I know this: everything you think you know, everything you think you've been told, everything is a lie-

The phone went. 'Shit!' He looked up from the down-trodden type-writer, temporarily broken from reverie, and set back down again to write. Couldn't a phone-call wait for the truth? The man, middle-aged yet matured by a ruffled look, let it ring, in the knowledge that because it wasn't the secret phone, the phone he had set up for witnesses and victims for the book, that the ringing was from his work mobile, which by denomination wasn't going to be important. Resting his fingers on the keytop, the man awaited the next flurry of words: I can already envision those naysayer's who claim this book as conspiratorial rubbish. Perhaps the police, and particularly the Republican government, will be of this view. I have not portrayed these authorities in the best of lights. The phone went off again- he ignored, irritable yet anxious to get words to paper. But conspiracy is thought founded on no foundation, merely prospective. However, when I visited Midwesterley for the first time, Autumn '04, and on subsequent, intermittent trips over the next ten years to investigate the Grammar school shootings, I found those pillars of fact. I found- inevitably? surprisingly? I am not sure- the pedestal unto which my theorizing could become interminable, immortal truth. This is what this book is- truth.

The phone rang for a third time. Whoever it was was desperate. It rang a fourth, fifth, sixth time, echoing around the attic in which he had begun the book. He instinctively pulled the opening page out of the typewriter, and locked it up in the safe, with all the diagrams, statements, charts and leaked documents he had stored up. Ringringring. Unsure why, for a few minutes ago the man was happy to ignore it, the persistence of the person on the other line suddenly suggested to him that this call was significant. 

The man picked up.

Unknown number.

'Hello, Ben Walker speak-'

'You're the journalist, aren't you?' He had a gruff voice, muffled somewhat, as though he were speaking right into the receiver. It had an unnerving effect on Walker, that lone voice in his bare attic room. 'The one fired from the Times? Are you still there?'

He paused, tentatively. 'I'm here, I'm here. That's me. Say, how did you get my number?' By way of contrast, Walker was well-spoken and English accented.

'That doesn't matter right now. I have to speak to you- immediately. You're still doing that book on the Midwesterley shootings, right?' Yes, Walker replied. 'Right, well, we need to talk. Sundown diner-'

'But it's nearly 2AM-'

'I know the time, Walker sir. But I cannot stress the importance of our meeting tonight. They're onto me, and when I've told you what I know about the shootings, they'll be onto you too.' The voice on the other line had always been direct, but there was now a certain finality to his tone. His voice then quavered,and Walker couldn't hear his next part. The close sniffling paused, Walker's cue to question, but he wasn't quit sure where to begin.

The silence was filled with a pungent sense of mutual fear.

'What's your name? Who's 'they'?' 

'I was the first police officer on the scene. They wiped my name from the records, I was never there, never came close to the school.'

Walker was mute.

'You can Google my name if you want. Iker Hernandez, spelt I-K-E-R. They got rid of me before I could talk, it's corrupt, man, it's crazy. This Sundown joint's open 24/7 but I can't stay here for long, they'll come looking sure enough'. The line cut.

Walker didn't wait; he climbed down the rungs of the ladder leading to the attic, jogged downstairs and leant over his Apple Mac. 'Iker Hernandez' he slowly breathed as he tapped in the letters. Sure enough, a handful of articles came up, all from September 2004, hust a couple of months after the shootings. Police officer expelled after indecently assaulting women on the job, the Indiana Tribune reported. POLICE OFFICER PERVERT, shouted one of the tabloids. Ben Walker wasn't sure how much he could trust this apparent molester, but, if he did, then it looked as though he had been purged, expelled, stripped of status so that no one would take his word. Hernandez knew something that 'they' didn't want getting out, but what?

Walker picked up a tape recorder, and got into his disheveled Jeep outside. It was deathly quiet on the suburban street, a peace reserved by nighttime destroyed by the roaring motor.  He wildly reversed, headlights penetrating the windows of empty cars, and he kicked into forward gear, speeding down the road. A few seconds later, an expensive-looking Mercedes purred into life. It, too, raced forward in the direction of Sundown in pursuit of the man ahead.

Ben Walker was being followed.