Death Ray Butterfly

Chapter Twelve

Caught up in the siege were a couple of legendary thugs - Krispy Talbot and Jalapeno Perez. These two were better known for their incendiary work, but it seemed they'd graduated to a more subtle explosive level. The whole scene was straight out of a movie. First the feds dragged out the crackly loudspeakers, demanding immediate and unconditional surrender. The helicopter waited until the news cameras showed up, perhaps in a cost-cutting maneuver. They brought out the spotlights even though it was still broad daylight and everyone knew exactly where the fugitives were. Hell, they weren't even running away. Even though you expected to hear something like "you'll never get me alive, coppers", in fact the opposite occurred. Jones and the other two walked out the front door as calm as you please with their hands already over their heads.

They were quickly surrounded by butterflies, and I thought I could sense the disgust on Jones' face as he swatted the critters away. Talbot and Perez, both giants in stature compared to Jones, grinned sheepishly as if embarrassed at being so easily apprehended. The federal agents moved in, cuffed the men and led them toward the waiting black vans. As he passed by, Jones gave me a wink and a nod and whispered,

“Not yet, Inspector. Not quite yet.”

I knew what he meant, but I pretended I didn't when grilled by the authorities. I told them I thought he just meant it wasn't the end, that he'd be back, and indeed he was, in remarkably short order. I learned through connections it was Hobbs, Dennis Hobbs who posted their bond, and not a meager amount at that. I'd already guessed there was some connection there and now I was more certain than ever. But I adopted what they used to call a 'wait and see attitude'. After all, the War on Stuff wasn't really my beat. I was only a part of the show. I had other matters to attend to.

My immediate concern was a fellow by the name of Kram Fletcher. I had been tailing him for a few weeks, convinced he was the same person I formerly knew as Filcher Peron. Peron had slipped through my fingers many years before in as crazy a case as I'd ever come across. He'd been operating in the area of involuntary conversions, taking ordinary people who belonged to one church or another, and sliding them into a different one altogether. He was a slick operator who had no loyalty but would work for whichever evangelical was hot and willing to pay. In those days, ratings were king, and ratings were determined by numbers, kind of like the popularity of television shows or opening weekends for movies. Most of the churches around the state had signed up with the RTN, the agency responsible for rating and ranking religions.

What Peron was up to wasn't strictly illegal but it sure wasn't kosher either. He used chemical inducements along with straight up cash. It was also rumored he was able to transmit convertability through immediate semen injection. He called it a "transfer of energy" but it was clearly more than that. Not a few susceptible women found themselves inexplicably attending a temple not of their regular persuasion. Many were so astonished by their own actions that they resorted to desperate measures, even to the extent of praying and paying for candles to be lit, activities which hadn't been seen in ages. Peron had vanished along with a tidy sum of money for which he had allegedly not yet fulfilled his obligations.

Now there was Kram Fletcher. The moment I saw his picture on the screen I just knew he was Filcher Peron, and yet it was going to be damned hard to prove. Fletcher had a full and complete personal history, along with witnesses, many of whom had known him his entire life, all forty seven years of it, including his parents, his siblings, his friends, wife and children. Filcher Peron, on the other hand, had just as full a life (up to the point of his disappearance) with a completely different set of individual testimonies. It was only intuition on my part, and as it turned out I was completely mistaken, but it bothered me quite a bit for quite a while. I followed that Fletcher person, pestered his associates and family, grilled his employer and co-workers - this guy was a mechanical engineer, responsible for the safety of obsolete farm equipment - and generally made a terrible nuisance of myself. I'm not proud to admit it, but I am far from perfect. As my assistant, Kelley, likes to say, I'm often wrong but never in doubt.