Chapter Thirty-eight
I CALLED REVEREND ROGERS and asked him to talk with Brian Bumbrey one last time. I wanted Bumbrey to know that we were tired of all the tap dancing, that this had been going on long enough. I had already spoken with an attorney who agreed to serve as a go-between. If Bumbrey seemed mildly receptive, I asked Rogers to discuss a deal in which Bumbrey got a sentence reduction in exchange for full details that could be checked out.
“I can’t do it,” Rogers said.
“Why not?”
“I’ve already tried to talk to him again. There’s a new policy at the prison. Ministers aren’t allowed to talk to prisoners without special clearance. There’s no way I could get clearance to talk to him.”
I said, “Well, ain’t that a surprise?”
* * *
Reverend Rogers called.
“I think I just did a bad thing,” he said.
The Presbyterian Church, USA had a reputation for taking on important social issues, and Rogers had persuaded them to officially request that the Justice Department reopen the Bowie case. In a different matter, as part of some national committee he was on, Rogers was supposed to meet with representatives of the Justice Department. A woman named Linda Davis, who was the head of the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, had called him about the upcoming meeting.
“I know that name,” I said. “That’s the person from the Justice Department who signed the letter to Sandra saying that the case was closed.”
“Are you sure?” Rogers asked.
“Yes.”
“Now I know I’ve done a bad thing,” Rogers said. “I mentioned the Bowie case, and the request from the Presbyterian Church to reopen it. She said the Bowie case had been thoroughly investigated, and the request from the Presbyterian Church would be denied. “I went off,” he said. “I mean, I really went off. I shouted at her for about five minutes. I shouted so long that, finally, when I calmed down, I felt that I had to apologize.”
“This Linda Davis, how did she come across to you?”
“Professional, a bit of a bureaucrat, but intelligent. She said she would be willing to look at any new information about the Bowie case, but that it had already been thoroughly investigated.”
“Then I have to disagree with you. I think you did a good thing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She said, in essence, that legitimate information could persuade her to reopen the case. What else would you want her to say?”
“I don’t know,” Rogers said. “I’m afraid I got pretty abusive.”
“So what? She’ll remember the Bowie case the next time it comes up.”
“There’s not much doubt about that,” Rogers said.
* * *
It was early morning, and I was beginning to wake. The voice was very soft and yet perfectly clear. You could legitimately call it a still, small voice.
I knew from the words that the message was for Sandra, but I was running late and I didn’t see how I could possibly stop by the daycare center before work. I worried that I had made it up, or that it had been part of a dream.
I developed a toothache that morning and called my dentist from the office, and he worked me in between other patients. He couldn’t find anything wrong.
The dentist’s office was near the daycare center where Sandra worked, and after the appointment I stopped by. Sandra was surprised to see me and had a puzzled look on her face when I asked if she could step outside for a moment. She told her assistant she would be right back, and we stepped outside toward the side of the building.
“Listen,” I said. “I could be making this up, but I heard a voice, and there’s something I need to tell you.”
I could see by her dead calm that I had set her up to believe there was some source other than me, so I repeated my caution. “I’m serious,” I said. “I mean, I heard the voice, but it could have been just a dream. The only reason I’m telling you is that I think it’s something you need to hear, even if it’s only me telling you.”
“I understand,” she said.
I told her it was long, and she would have to be patient and hear me out. Then I told her what I had heard:
“You know I love you like a sister, and I would never do anything to bring you harm or cause you pain, but you’ve been sad long enough.”
She gripped my forearm and her eyes had a glazed and teary look, and she said, “Thank you.”
“Wait,” I said. “I told you it was long. There’s more.”
“When you are sad, you deny God’s truth. You deny His joy and His will for your happiness. If you do it because you want Jon to know that you love him, he already knows that. If you do it to show that you care, caring is its own proof. You’ve been sad long enough.”
“That’s it,” I said.
“Does your tooth still hurt?” she asked.
Forgetting that I had not mentioned my toothache, I said, “Not really. I’ll take aspirin for a few days. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
She thanked me again and added, “Interesting timing.”
* * *
Sandra was new to meditation. She sat cross-legged with her back against a pillow, facing the foot of the bed and thinking how she never had a chance to tell Jon good-bye. She said a short prayer for guidance and protection and asked to be surrounded by light. The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs distracted her. She listened for a moment, annoyed at the interruption, and opened her eyes.
Jon stood at the foot of the bed, smiling. “I can’t stay long,” he said. “I came to say good-bye, because I know that’s what you want. I also came to tell you something. You’ve been sad long enough.”
He looked so real, but calmer, older, more mature, even taller.
“You’re a very handsome man,” she said.
He came to the side of the bed, leaned over, and she felt his arms as he hugged her, his hand as he gave her back three solid pats, and his lips as he kissed her cheek. Then he was gone.
Sandra didn’t think she could possibly sleep, but she pulled the covers out, crawled under, and slept soundly. The next morning, she woke and had been getting ready for work for as much as fifteen minutes before it came into her mind that, at last, Jon had visited her. Then, feeling a new sense of peace, all she could think was that he looked good. He looked really good.
* * *
By the time the Bowie-Keysers settled, the amount of Mickey’s civil suit against the county had increased to six million dollars.
“It’s not about the money,” Sandra said. “It never was. What happened to Jon—and Mickey—shouldn’t happen to anyone.”
In their own ways, Mickey and Carlen got on with their lives. Mickey tried taking a prescription drug for depression, but it clouded his mind and he discontinued it after a couple of weeks.
Carlen was about to graduate from law school when she had a nervous breakdown. She sought counseling and came to realize that she had lived in denial of Jon’s death, passionately throwing herself into studies, work, and parenting. She reassembled her life and succeeded admirably as a computer programmer. Both she and Mickey have commemorative tattoos honoring Jon.
There came a time when Mickey and Carlen realized that Jon had appeared to each of them in the same dream, and he said the same thing.
“Let it go.”
* * *
I called Sandra from work one afternoon and said, “I think I know what happened.”
“I just got a chill,” she said. “What do you think happened?”
“I don’t want to tell you yet. I want you to ask if I have it right.”
“I’ll try,” she said.
She called back an hour or so later.
“Sometimes I use colors to help me,” she said, “like green for yes and red for no. I asked if you had it right and all I could see was green. Then a red streak like lightning went down the center of the green, and I saw the words, ‘Too dangerous.’ ”
I thought about that for a few moments. Then I told Sandra, “We have to drop it. It doesn’t matter if I’m right or even close to right. We could get ourselves or someone else hurt, and that wouldn’t accomplish anything that should be accomplished.”
“Do you mean you’re giving up?”
“Of course not,” I said. “This is an important story. It needs to be told. I’m going to write it down before I forget.”
* * *
On Christmas Eve, 1993, police were called to a trailer park just outside Columbia to deal with a domestic disturbance. A man named Melendez, who had a near-comatose blood alcohol level of .34, died at some point while being arrested and transported to the hospital. Melendez’s nephew said a police officer kicked his uncle in the back of the head as he lay facedown and handcuffed on the living room floor. There was an investigation, a grand jury decided that no police officers had done anything wrong, and the man’s family eventually sued the county for thirty-six million dollars.
Officer Riemer was one of the officers who responded to the call. A year later, just after Christmas 1994, Riemer’s resignation from the Howard County police department was announced in passing about two-thirds of the way through a newspaper article about the Melendez case. A police source said in the article that Riemer’s resignation had nothing to do with the Melendez case, or the Bowie case.
Sandra put two and two together and concluded that Riemer resigned from the police department the same day that Mickey graduated from college after the winter semester at the University of Maryland.
* * *
For months, on her eyelids, Sandra had seen a red barn surrounded by farm animals, and Confederate soldiers dressed in gray uniforms riding on horseback across spacious and rolling, grassy fields.
She had no idea what it meant.
Jim and Sandra finally found a new home in another state. They retired, and in July 1995 they rode away in Jim’s still-spotless silver and burgundy van, leaving New America behind. There are lots of golf courses near where they moved. Sandra said before they left that Jim had earned it.
Occasionally, I took the long drive, and Jim and I played golf. I couldn’t help noticing each time I approached their new home that I was passing red barns, surrounded by farm animals, near the spacious and rolling, grassy fields of a famous Civil War battlefield.