Visions of Evil: The Whitehouse Conspiracy

By Charles L. Harris

Visions of Evil, The Whitehouse Conspiracy, is captivating! Once again
Harris writing style has captured the shady side of Washington, but this
time, he centers on the misuse of power by elected gatekeepers in the
Whitehouse who were selected originally to be our protectors.
Ron McKinley, Special Operations Offi cer (Far East), Retired
Harris has another page turner. His writing puts you in the middle of
the action and keeps you there while taking you on a journey through
rural South Texas where he grew up. It leaves you anxiously waiting for
the sequel.
K. J. Kane, Editor, Desert Winds

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462845613

Charles L. Harris

Charles L. Harris, hails from south Texas, his career as a construction manager has taken him around the world and back. Using his travels as backdrops for his literary characters and stories, he was able to bring culture and history to life in his last Novel, Proof of Atlantis, Records from the Past; but in his latest novel, Visions of Evil, The Whitehouse Conspiracy, he goes back to his single digit years where he live on what had been an old slave Plantation in South Texas. Harris has three children (two sons, a daughter), six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He lives on a lake house in South Central Texas where writes, spoils grandchildren and raises miniature breeds of donkeys.

Book preview

Visions of Evil

The Whitehouse Conspiracy

Charles L. Harris

Copyright © 2011 by Charles L. Harris.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011911366

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4628-4560-6

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4628-4559-0

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4628-4561-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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100946

Contents

Rocking Chair Stories

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Epilogue

Dedications

This book is dedicated to three close friends that have passed since the publication of my last novel;

Ruth Theodos; was a woman driven to find and mentor anyone with the heart and desire to learn to write. The number of people she inspired to put written words on blank paper is an unknown but it has to have been in the hundreds. I was fortunate enough to me one of these lucky ones she spend years mentoring, encouraging and yes even demanding that I move forward and not give up. She told me something I have never forgotten and I have found to be true; the greatest gratification you will receive from writing is the journey it will take you on, the interesting people you will meet and the places you will travel, both physically or within your own mind.

Gerri Jobe; I first met Gerri over twenty-five years ago when she was the personal manager for a company we both worked for. Gerri was never judgmental of others; she was a nurturer by nature and sought out those who needed help in finding stable footing in life. She was always there to give a kind word or an unexpected jester of support. Gerri was always there for me when I needed to be propped up or a genital nudge to not give up on my writings but keep moving forward.

George Crowder; George was a special friend; I used George as the template for the Rusty Character in my novel, Proof of Atlantis. George was my friend when times were good and he was there when times were no so great and friends were hard to find. I would be hard for me to say how much coffee George and I have drank the many years we have known one another but the most memorial cups we shared was when stood on the foothills of the Himalayas in the damp, early morning watching the village below us come to life. We were bring electric to isolated villages of Nepal and in doing so we were witnessing a people whose lives that have changed little in a thousand years being altered forever; and we were not sure it was a good thing.

It is difficult to know how one’s life would have been different without certain people leaving foot prints beside yours at some point in time. But I know if I had never met the three people mentioned above I would not be the person I am today and I am a better person because they passed my way.

Rocking Chair Stories

The secrete of having Rocking Chair Stories to tell in your senior years is; talk to strangers, listen to those older than yourself and learn from their wisdom; interact with cultures different from your own and be open to religions you know little about; travel paths where no one you know have ever left footprints; this is where rocking chair stories untold, lay hidden and await your discovery and telling.

Charles L. Harris

FOREWORD

Get your clothes off and let’s go swimming, the six-year-old blonde-headed girl shouted to the black boy, about her age, standing in the shade of a huge live oak tree some thirty feet away. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, it was obvious he was uncomfortable with the idea of going swimming with a white girl.

I can’t swim, he lied. My Pa has been going to teach me, but he ain’t never taught me yet.

I don’t know how to swim either, she admitted, beginning to take off her clothes. But we can wade along the edge where it’s shallow.

You really going to take off your clothes? he asked, unsure as to how he was supposed to act if she did.

Of course I am. I can’t go back home with wet clothes. My nanny will know I come to the creek and be mad at me. You got to take your clothes off too, she ordered.

But . . .

No buts about it. You take your clothes off, you hear, she said with the authority he often heard white folks use when they were speaking to blacks; he knew he had to obey.

Within minutes, she had her clothes off and was in the shallow water of Taylor Creek, splashing and shouting to him to come in and join her.

He nervously fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, not knowing what else to do and knowing he best not get caught with her with his clothes off. If he was caught with her naked, his father would give him the kind of whipping that stayed a while.

She stood nude in knee deep water, her hands on her hips. I’m telling you to get your clothes off and get in here, she ordered.

I’s coming, I’s coming, he assured her as he slowly unbuttoned his shirt and slipped off his pants. He could feel her eyes on him, but he didn’t look at her as he hurried to the water’s edge, jumping in and quickly wading to where he was waist deep in Taylor Creek.

She giggled as she splashed water on him. He tried to avoid the spray, but she rushed toward him, both hands splashing as much water as she could. Seeing there was no escape, he turned and began splashing water on her.

Within minutes, Victoria and Izzy were giggling and splashing water on one another, paying little attention to the time or what was happening around them. They both froze when they heard a voice bellow from the nearby trees.

What do you two think y’all a doin? Izzy’s father shouted as he stepped from the brush to the edge of the creek.

They stopped, frozen in place as they stared up at the large figure of a black man standing on the creek bank, his face expressionless, his piercing angry eyes fixed to them.

Izzy’s father was in the water before they could react. With a big hand around each of the children’s arms, he pulled them onto the creek’s bank. Now get your clothes on, he said in that low husky voice Izzy’s father always used when Izzy was about to get the kind of spanking he would not soon forget. After they had hastily put on their clothes, his father marched them through the woods by the old brick tool shed to the back door of the main house.

Peaches, Victoria’s nanny, stood with tears running down her face as she watched them approach. Victoria’s father stood beside Peaches, but to Izzy’s surprise, his demeanor was not that of a man upset by his daughter’s behavior as he silently listened to the large black man tell of what their children had been doing.

Izzy listened as his father apologized for his son’s action as though it had been his fault. He wanted to say it wasn’t his idea, but he couldn’t bring himself to so. If he spoke out, he might get Miss Victoria in trouble, so he didn’t say or do anything but listen as his father told a story that was all wrong. Izzy knew he would be punished, and it would be a harsh punishment he would not soon forget, but he stood stone faced and silent.

When Izzy’s father finished telling Victoria’s father his version of the story, he took off his belt and proceeded to spank his son with all the strength he could muster. Victoria’s father tried to intervene on the boy’s behalf, knowing his daughter probably had more to do with what had happened than Izzy’s father insinuated, but the black father refused to listen.

Realizing he couldn’t do anything to prevent a father from punishing his own child, Victoria’s father took his sobbing daughter by the arm and led her into the house. She looked back as she was being led through the back door; the last thing she saw was the big wide belt repeatedly coming down on Izzy’s legs and backside as he stood there, taking the punishment that was rightfully hers without saying a word or uttering even a whimper.

It was at that moment that Victoria’s father realized his daughter was at an age where she would need a strong woman’s supervision, stronger than that a nanny could give her. With this in mind, he sent her to a Christian school for girls in Houston, and later to another in Boston.

Over the next sixty years, Victoria and Izzy saw one another occasionally from a distance, always in the presence of others, never alone.

After her father died, Victoria asked Izzy’s father to remain on as caretaker of the farm. By the time Izzy reached retirement age, his father had passed away, and Victoria asked him to take over his father’s duties, and he accepted.

For Izzy it was easy money, a new truck every couple of years, plenty of time for fishing and playing dominos with his friends.

As caretaker of her family’s farm, Izzy had been in contact with Victoria. Phone calls concerning the upkeep of the property mostly, and there were the occasional visits with her grandchildren, or snotty Boston friends, for a week or so at a time, but in all the years the incident on Taylor Creek was never mentioned.

CHAPTER 1

Isaiah Brown, Izzy to his friends, sat in his rocking chair on his front porch, watching the black Lincoln move slowly along the dusty road, weaving to avoid the bumps as it made its way toward his house.

His thoughts went back to the history of the farm and how it had affected the lives of those that were born, had lived and died there.

Victoria’s family farm was once part of a large cotton plantation with more than five thousand acres and half a thousand slaves owned by Charles Wentworth—Victoria’ great-great grandfather. When the Civil War ended, and Lincoln had freed all of the slaves, Wentworth gave each adult male slave a mule and the title to twenty-five acres of land to farm. Victoria’s family had to sell off a few acres now and again to pay bills and taxes, but two hundred and fifty acres and the big house remained in the family.

Izzy still owned the twenty-five acres that had been given to his great-great grandfather. Even when there were hard times, and his ancestors could have used the money, they couldn’t bring themselves to sell his heritage like some of the other landholders had done.

No, he would never sell what his ancestors had earned through years of being slaves. Like his father, he was saving the land to pass on to the next generation. He wanted Shelby, his granddaughter and only blood kin, to have something that would give her roots when the world seemed to be growing insensitive and no longer valued a connection to one’s past.

The difference between the Wentworth place and other plantations of its time was the name. Wentworth’s young wife had disliked the thought of living on a slave plantation, but there had been little she could do about that. It was the way things were in the south in that time.

But, she could control what it was called. She had remembered the name of a farm from a children’s story she had read in her youth; she insisted her home be called Hummingbird Farm. The cash crops were still cotton, corn, and sugar cane, and the fields were still cared for by slaves.

However, she insisted it not be called a slave plantation; it never was in her lifetime or any of the generations that followed.

Many things had changed on Hummingbird Farm over the years, but the big house remained intact, as did the carriage house out back, and the old slave cemetery near the back of the property. Once or twice each year, relatives of a Hummingbird Farm slave would be laid to rest next to their ancestors. Izzy doubted all of the people who claimed to have been related to slaves of Wentworth farm and wished to be buried in the old cemetery were, in fact, telling the truth. But, it didn’t matter. Their ancestors had probably been slaves somewhere, and it wasn’t worth the effort to police the bloodline of dead folks.

Miss Victoria called to give her condolences the day she heard of his father’s death and to ask him to think about assuming his father’s position as overseer of the farm. At the time, he had just retired, but he agreed to think about it. A week later, she called again, and he accepted the caretaker’s position his father had held for forty years. Little went on at the farm these days; the job gave Izzy free time for the things he enjoyed.

On lazy sunny days he would go fishing in Taylor Creek, meet up with his drinking buddies, or go visit one of his lady friends. There weren’t as many ladies in his life as there once had been—Big Mary had seen to that. She had declared herself to be Izzy’s number one lady friend and dared anyone to dethrone her. At first he hadn’t been too interested in Big Mary, but she certainly had a persuasive personality and was a great cook. Hence, he allowed her to believe she was special in his life.

Izzy had enjoyed a checkered career; he had learned to be an undertaker while he was in the army and returned home to work in a black-owned funeral home. The home cared for mostly black families, although a few Spanish families used the business because it was cheaper than the local white funeral home.

He eventually bought the business from Mr. Lloyd Green, ran it for a number of years, and then sold it when he grew tired of dealing with dead folks. Later, he purchased a filling station, but quickly found that giving credit made him lots of friends, but didn’t make for a profitable business. In the late sixties, he took advantage of his popularity in the black community and was elected Justice of the Peace for two terms.

Izzy’s mind came back to the present when the flash from the sun reflecting off the windshield caught his eye.

It had been Philip, Victoria’s grandson, Izzy had found five days before, hanging from a banister of the stairway in the carriage house. There had been a suicide note found on the stairs; it was type written and left unsigned. The wording had been odd and several of the words had been spelled in the European style rather than American English. Carter Washington, a young policeman Izzy had known all of his life had been the first on the scene after he called 911. Carter had expressed doubts about the origin of the note he had found at the scene and thought foul play was a strong possibility. Carter felt there were just too many dots that didn’t connect for it to be suicide; however, he had not found enough evidence to support his gut feeling.

Izzy had known Carter Washington all of his life, had watched him play football when he was in high school, and saw him go off to Wharton Junior College to study Law Enforcement. Izzy had buried both of Carter’s grandparents, and was friends with his father until his death in a hunting accident a few years ago. Carter came from a good solid church-going family that everyone respected, but sometimes even church folks were influenced by others who didn’t have the benefit of a solid upbringing.

The next day, Izzy had seen the young policeman in town and tried to speak to him about the circumstances of Philip’s death; Carter was aloof and non-responsive. All Izzy got out of him was that after further investigation, the evidence supported the theory that Philip had committed suicide. Izzy was puzzled by Carter’s apparent change of mind.

There had been one other thing that gave Izzy cause to doubt Victoria’s grandson had hanged himself, but he had chosen not to share that bit of information with the policeman. Now, he was glad he had kept it to himself.

Two weeks before his death, Philip had shown him an invention he was working on.

One evening while Izzy had been checking the grounds of the big house Philip invited him in for a beer. As Izzy remembered it, Philip was acting like a kid with a new toy who just had to show it to someone, but needed a person he could trust. Philip told Izzy he had invented something that would prove if a person was lying or not. Not like a lie detector, but something better. Philip’s invention could go back to a specific time and a specific place, revealing what had actually happened complete with pictures and sound.

When Izzy referred to it as a time machine, Philip had quickly corrected him, saying a time machine. Instead, his device was like a movie and could be shown on a regular television, like one you could buy at Wal-Mart. Once connected to the equipment, the past would play like a television show.

Izzy’s first thought was that Philip had been smoking too much of the grass he secretly grew in the hothouse behind the pruning shed, but Izzy kept those thoughts to himself.

To prove how it worked, Philip picked a date at random. Twenty years ago today on your front porch at six o’clock in the evening, Philip had said, waiting for him to agree to the time and place.

Izzy had no idea what was happening on his porch at that time, but he couldn’t think of anything else that others couldn’t see so he agreed. If it did as Philip said, that would be sufficient proof for him; all the while he was thinking this kid had gone a little left-handed, and he was going to have to call Miss Victoria and tell her that he had to have the local medics take away her grandson in a straightjacket.

Philip led Izzy through the house to a secret panel in the wall behind the china cupboard in the formal dining room. As Philip turned a small section of wooden molding, the cupboard swung away from the wall, exposing a narrow staircase that led down to a floor in a basement. Izzy was surprised to see the secret door; he had been in the house hundreds of times over the years and never knew the house even had a basement, much less one concealed behind a secret door.

From the basement, Izzy was led through another hidden panel to a second room on the same level. Philip explained that his great-grandfather was supposed to have hidden shipments of whiskey and rum in the house that were being smuggled in from Cuba during the days of prohibition. It had been a way of earning enough money to keep his ancestral home from being taken away during the lean times of the depression era.

The second room they entered was larger than the first and well lit. Along one wall were shelves filled with electronic equipment and components. There was an assortment of electronic gadgets in disarray along the opposite wall. In the center of the room, a cheap desk held a computer, monitor, and keyboard. At the end of the desk was a well-used wooden bookcase, and on each shelf was a series of electronic gadgets with wires connecting one gadget to another. One large circuit board connected the computer to a 30" television that sat against the wall. Philip showed Izzy a cable that he said ran to an antenna type device similar to what Izzy had on his roof for satellite television. Philip positioned a chair in front of the television and motioned for Izzy to take a seat. He then went to the computer and turned it on.

This idea was not mine but a theory of Albert Einstein’s, Philip confessed. Einstein believed it was possible that electronic images were created from an act and stored in an alternate time continuum. These electrical images can be recalled with an electronic receiver tuned to the right frequency but, during Einstein’s lifetime, the technology had not advanced to the point that his theory could be proven. To my knowledge no one had ever pursued the possibility that Einstein had been right.

Philip continued to speculate as