Epilogue

The guard told Marjorie to take a seat in one of the first ten rows in the plane. The plane was a beat-up old 737 that belonged in a scrap yard and the once-gray seats were almost black with grime. She wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up with head lice before the flight was over.

The rear seats of the airplane were occupied by hard-core criminals, all men, being taken to maximum-security federal penitentiaries in Kansas, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas. They were manacled hand and foot and chained to the floor of the plane. In addition, there was a metal gate separating the rear seats from those in the front. If the plane crashed, they were screwed—but who cared?

The front rows of seats were reserved for folks like Marjorie bound for minimum-security prisons and they had on leg manacles that made it hard to walk and impossible to run, but they weren’t handcuffed. Marjorie had been told that if she acted up or mouthed off in any way, they’d handcuff her to her seat and gag her.

Marjorie’s destination would be the last stop the plane made: Federal Prison Camp, Bryan, a minimum-security facility for females in Bryan, Texas.

Marjorie had been sentenced to eighteen months in prison and would be eligible for parole in twelve. Her sentence would have been longer but she pled guilty, cooperated with state and federal prosecutors, and testified against three state legislators and two judges. The government was more interested in convicting the folks who’d taken the bribes than the person who did the bribing. The feds wanted her to testify that she’d bribed other people than the five named in fuckin’ Bill’s manifesto, but she lied and said there were no others.

The next eighteen months of her life were going to be bad, but probably no worse than the last eighteen had been. Dick filed for divorce six months after she was arrested and the divorce was finalized four months after that. Naturally, he got custody of the boys since she was a convicted felon. Because of the boys, he also got to keep the house and two-thirds of the money they had in savings. The money she was able to keep was gobbled up by her lawyer. The icing on the cake was she’d heard that Dick was now dating the most successful real estate agent in Bismarck, a woman built like a Sherman tank, but with money coming out of her ears.

Marjorie took a seat next to a skanky-looking white woman whose arms were covered with tattoos and had blond hair that was about a quarter of an inch long. As soon as she sat down, the woman said, “Have you been saved?”

“Saved?” Marjorie said.

“By Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Aw, geez. She was going to be seated next to this woman for the next twenty hours.

The first thing she was going to do when she got out of prison was piss on Bill Logan’s grave.

Harvey Milton, medical examiner for El Paso County, looked down at the body. The head looked like a chunk of charcoal.

“Well, he’s dead,” Harvey said to the young Colorado Springs cop who had been dispatched to the house after a neighbor called.

“No shit,” the cop said. “The neighbor said he liked to work in his garden and sit on that bench over there and meditate and—”

“It’s a beautiful garden,” Harvey said. “Looks like one I saw in Tokyo when the wife and I went there last summer.”

“Anyway, the neighbor saw it happen. He was up there, looking out that second-story window, the one there on the right, when wham! A great big lightning bolt. Hit the dead guy right on the top of his head. Scared the shit out of the neighbor.”

“What’s his name?” Harvey asked.

“Ian Perry, according to the neighbor.”

Harvey looked up at the sky. “There’s hardly a cloud in sight. It’s like he just pissed God off or something.”

“Karma,” the young cop said.