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.