An Unintended Consequence

By Randy Keel

Sam Riley, a retired attorney, is living the good life. Traveling to exotic places and spoiling their granddaughter, Essy, he and his wife Janice are enjoying the fruits of their labor. They live in Dyersburg, a small town in rural West Tennessee.

Their family is blindsided by a horrific accident. Sam’s wife and daughter are killed instantly upon impact. His three-year-old granddaughter dies on the operating table. Sam learns that the person responsible is in the United States illegally. His family was killed by a person that isn’t supposed to be here in the first place. The government has failed to protect them. He blames Congress for the devastation of his family and the grief he is forced to endure.

Sam’s life is shattered. The tragedy has warped his respect for the law and overruled his conscience. He decides that the only way immigration law will be enforced is to make Congress feel his pain. Sam was about to learn that once you leave the straight and narrow, things happen that affect you to your core. Once he starts down the dark path he has chosen, he will never be the same again, but he doesn’t care.

Sam is on a mission. From Tennessee to Washington DC, from becoming a serial killer to a senator, he has committed his life to justice for his family and the American people. He fully intends to hold our congressmen accountable for their actions. His goal is to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into our country or die trying.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664175068

Randy Keel

Randy Keel is a retired insurance agent. He and his wife, Donna, live in Friendship, Tennessee. They have been married forty years and have three adult children, George, Katie, and Shannon. This is his first novel.

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Copyright © 2021 by Randy Keel.

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.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/19/2021

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CONTENTS

Prologue

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

To my daughter, Kate, for her collaboration and encouragement.

PROLOGUE

It seems like so much of it is pure crap. Weed will make you a drug addict, and booze will make you a drunk. Free radicals are killing us off like flies. Conservatives are neo-Nazis, and liberals are in love with socialism. This crap oozes out of the TV, newspapers, and social media like lava oozing down the hills of Hawaii. The poor and destitute are kept that way by well-meaning politicians who support programs that have been failing for years, but the people have grown dependent on them like an old dog waiting for his daily bowl. We cannot get sick because the deductible on our health insurance is so high. Everything we say is subject to illegal tapping by a government that is supposed to enforce the law and keep this from happening. Impotent politicians can’t agree from which empty pocket to take their latest excesses. Network talking heads go on and on with their own agendas, not caring about the people they are licensed to serve. One network labels rioters as anarchists while the other calls them resisting patriots. Law enforcement will arrest them or let them go according to which political party the mayor and chief of police belong. Cities and even entire states are safe havens for people that are here illegally. It seems that there is no remedy. The same people keep getting elected even when they legislate the exact opposite of how they ran their campaigns. Its obvious big money is the culprit, but no one seems to care.

Well, I care. I care deeply about our republic and the rule of law that is supposed to defend it. I’ve decided to try and make people think about what they are doing to this country. I’m old and some will say it’s an old man’s revenge. They will be partially right. But who knows? Our teachers may have been right when they said, One man can make a difference if he really tries.

CHAPTER 1

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I decided to begin in my home state. Tennessee isn’t lacking in progressive politicians who claim to be conservative. I chose to start with a lying conservative who lives completely across the state. I know he is a liar because he campaigned against Obama Care, and after he was elected, he voted to keep it. Senator Greer has been in politics his entire life. It just recently came out that he has taken a lot of money from lobbyists who represent the medical establishment. Everyone assumes that he reneged on his promise to repeal Obama Care because of the money. The fact that he is for keeping the status quo on immigration just tipped the scales in his favor.

I took a room in Crossville three days ago, and I commute to and from Knoxville to cover my tracks. I watch his office from the parking garage across the street. He parks his car at the front of his office in a space marked Senator. When he’s not there, the space is empty. It’s perfect for me.

Katie’s Kitchen is a restaurant down the street from his office. I ate a vegetable plate there yesterday while my esteemed senator was having a hamburger. There were two staffers with him, and he is on a first-name basis with the waitresses. He does not seem to have any kind of protection following him around. If he has, they are excellent at their jobs. When he finished, he left a tip and even took time from his busy schedule to shake my hand on his way out. Good to see you, sir, he said. I just smiled. My age is going to help me stay off their radar. When I came out, his car was still at the office, so I went into the parking garage and got my old truck. I parked on the street, so I could follow him when he left.

Fall has just begun, and the cool breeze feels exhilarating. The mist across the mountains with the leaves turning shades of red and yellow are just beautiful this time of year. We vacationed many times in the Smokies. We would drive the scenic roads, and the kids would see deer and an occasional bear. Janice loved the mountains, and so did the kids. I wish she was here with me.

The senator just came out and got in his car. He spoke into his cell phone for a few minutes, then started his car and left. I am about two cars behind him and he seems to be headed home. I checked out his residence yesterday and I was impressed. His house is a two-story, modern, with a winding cobblestone driveway. Rotto Dm Drums line the drive on either side. His wife was working in one of the flowerbeds in front of the house. The lot size looked to be about an acre and is bordered in the front with a cedar fence separated by gorgeous stone posts. There are cameras on some of the posts, so I decided this was not a good place for my business with the senator. He just took the turnoff that leads to his home so I’m going to leave him for today. Congress is on recess, and he will be here for the next couple of weeks, so there is no hurry. I am not driving through his neighborhood again anyway because of the surveillance. I think I’ll go by Ruth Chris’s Steak House before I make the long drive back to Crossville. Janice and I ate there when we were on vacation. Everywhere I go, I see her face. I am glad I started here because of the memories. It helps me validate my current course of action.

It was after eleven when I returned to the hotel. Pretty late for a guy in his seventies. I was sated on steak and I slept better than I have for a while. I think it’s knowing what I am going to do and having a plan to follow that has made the awful insomnia go away. For months, after their deaths, I would lay in the bed sleeplessly wondering, why? We had led an enviable life. We got married right out of college and returned to Dyersburg, a small town close to where I grew up. I went to work at Avery & Avery, Attorneys at Law as a defense lawyer. I was fortunate to practice with Ray Avery, a friend who had been an attorney for twenty-five years. He was legendary in our state for trying cases that were heard before the State Supreme Court. He was a corporate attorney and had even had a case come before the US Supreme Court. They needed someone to work on individual cases that either walked through the door or came to us from our corporate clients, as most of them did. I was in hog heaven. I loved my job, and I loved my wife. I was married to a wonderful woman and doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. Life was good.

Janice received her accounting degree and went to work at a local firm while she studied for her CPA exam. She liked her job and became an indispensable member of their team in no time. Occasionally, she would complain about being inside all day long but that was because she had been raised on a farm in Missouri. She was an outside girl, and her two brothers had made a tomboy of her. There was nothing she wouldn’t try. Her mother and father were devout Christians and so were Janice and her brothers. That was one of the things that had appealed to me when we met in college. The first thing out of her mouth was, Are you a Christian boy? No, I said a little defensively. There was surprise in her eyes when I replied. She was a gorgeous girl with deep brown eyes, autumn-brown hair, and a perfect complexion. She was small-framed, around five feet and two inches tall. We were opposites in height as well as many other things. I think that may have been why we were so attracted to each other. I always wanted to know how she viewed things, and she was always interested in my opinion.

From the day we met, we were inseparable. She was a staunch Christian conservative who viewed everything through a religious prism. If it didn’t somehow fall between the covers of the Bible, her instinct was to be against it. On everything from abortion to homosexuality, she had a neat little religious box to put things. She would lovingly try to explain her belief system to me, and I would listen attentively because she was absolutely gorgeous no matter what she said. I loved the way she was extremely considerate of my feelings even though I completely disagreed with almost everything she believed. Usually, she would end our conversations with the assertion that to know the way she felt about things, I would need to have a personal relationship with Jesus. I never said so, but I always thought that it would be a neat trick to have a relationship with a two-thousand-year-old corpse.

She started out feeling sorry for me. At first, she wanted to know everything about me. I told her that I had been brought up by an aunt and uncle who treated me like I was one of their own children. My mother died from ovarian cancer when I was five, and my father died in a car accident about six months later. My sisters and I were orphaned, and what happened to us was determined by our relatives on my mother’s side of the family.

My mother had four sisters and one brother. The brother had died in an accident while working on the railroad years earlier, so our fate was up to the sisters. It was decided that the girls, who were fifteen and twelve at the time, would stay together. Aunt Lily and Uncle Giles would take them into their home and provide for them. The girls were from a former marriage of my mother, and I was from her second husband. I am not sure, but I think this could have helped determine how our future was worked out by our aunts. My siblings were to live in a small community in the country. Uncle Giles owned a small farm and worked it each year. He also had a small community grocery next to his house. My aunt Lily was an elementary school teacher. My sisters would finish high school living with them.

I was to live with Lois and John Smith. They had a son, Butch, who was five years older than me. Aunt Lois, who I later called Mom, was a cook at the elementary school. It was about a mile from their house, and Aunt Lois would ride the bus to school along with Butch and me. We lived about twenty miles from my sisters, and I felt that I had lost everyone when my parents died. At first, they would bring Connie and Sally to see me quite often. But as the years went by and the girls began to mature, the visits became less and less.

In most ways, I had an ideal childhood. Our house was on Rooster Lane, which gives you an idea of just how country I am. There were several families that lived on the lane and children were everywhere. We would play out every day until our mothers would come out on the porch and call out our names to come inside. I will never forget Aunt Lois’s voice ringing out, Sammy, it’s time to come in. We would play hide-and-seek, kick the can, and other games children played. It was a different time when no one worried about their kids disappearing. Everyone knew each other and watched out for each other. We did not know about fast food. Mother would fix three meals a day, and there were always biscuits and bacon or something else under the tablecloth to tide us over until mealtime.

Uncle John sharecropped his sister’s farm. We had a barn with a pasture, and we always raised animals to eat. We usually had a cow, several pigs, and chickens were everywhere. This is the way I spent my youth—doing chores around the house, working in the field, and going to school. My aunt and uncle took me into their hearts and treated me like a son. I called them Mom and Dad and loved them dearly. My cousin Butch, their son, somewhere along the way became my brother. We love each other, and we have called each other brother throughout our lives.

The family that took me in and raised me was Southern Baptist. They attended church weekly and dutifully carried me along with them. I just could not make the leap from being orphaned to believing in a loving God that looked after us all. They were wonderful Christian people who loved me dearly and would roll over in their graves if they knew the plans I have made and fully intend to carry out.

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I didn’t sleep well last night. I had driven the long drive from Dyersburg to Crossville and had assumed I would pass out as soon as I lay down for the night. But every time I’d drift off, the terrible night of the accident would come into my mind’s eye, and I would tear up again like it was happening for the first time.

I was at home, watching the ball game, when the call came. It was Jerry, my son-in-law, and he said, Pop, the girls were in an accident.

My breathing became labored, and I could feel my blood pressure rising. You need to come to the Med in Memphis. They are in surgery, and I’m on my way down there. The hospital called me a few minutes ago.

What happened? My voice sounded panicked even to me.

All I know is they were in a car wreck, and they are at the Med. I’m in Millington now on my way down there, he said.

Drive carefully, Jerry, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.

Janice, Cathy, and Essy had gone to Memphis that day on a girl’s day out. They had taken Essy, my three-year-old granddaughter, to the children’s museum for some hands-on fun. They were going by one of the big malls on their way back to do some shopping and have dinner. Janice had left me some sandwich stuff and some fruit in the fridge for dinner. I wasn’t expecting them until later that night.

I never liked it when we went to Memphis. It had become extremely violent and someone was murdered almost daily. The sorry state of affairs in Memphis had been the motivating factor for Janice and me buying small handguns and taking the required course to carry a concealed weapon. I had always owned shotguns and rifles. Growing up, we hunted rabbits, squirrels, and raccoons to eat. It was fun to hunt them, but Daddy used to say, Never kill anything you’re not going to eat. We did not own a handgun when I was a child. I never even wanted one until people started being murdered just driving down the street in Memphis. It’s true that we live an hour and a half away, but we go there several times a year for business and recreation. I decided that if we were going to continue our trips there, we had to protect ourselves and our family. We never went down there without our handguns. I made sure that Janice had hers this morning before they left.

It took about two hours to get to the Med from my house. As I walked into the hospital, I was directed to the surgery waiting room by the girl at the information counter. Jerry was sitting in the corner, weeping uncontrollably. I remember thinking that I had never seen him cry. I went over and put my hand on his shoulder. He looked up at me and said, They’re gone, Pop. He dropped his head into his hands and continued to weep.

Who’s gone? I asked as panic started setting in.

All of them, he cried. Nan and Cathy died in the wreck. Essy was still alive when they got here. She was hurt internally, so they operated, but she died during surgery. I called Mom and Dad, and they are on the way here. What am I going to do? he said as he began crying so he couldn’t speak.

I sat down with waves of disbelief pouring over me. This just could not be happening. All three of them taken on the same day! I began to feel sick to my stomach. There was a bathroom directly across from us. I went into it and threw up in the commode. I sat down on it to wipe my face and gather my thoughts. It had only been a few hours ago, and everything was fine. The girls looked great and had been as happy as ever, laughing and teasing each other. Now, this. What do I need to do? I’d have to call my son and tell him soon if Jerry hasn’t already. It would be hard to tell him that his mother was gone. Jim had always been closer to his mother than he had been to me. Everyone said that it was a natural thing. Cathy had always seemed to favor me. She would always ask me what I thought about the things she was doing in her life. I’d never get to have those father-daughter talks again.

I washed my face and returned to the waiting room. There were two policemen talking to Jerry. I walked over and introduced myself as Janice’s husband. The officer said a drunk driver had hit our car from the side, doing around seventy miles an hour. The driver of that car was here at the Med in surgery. They needed someone to officially identify the girls. Jerry was beside himself, so I told them I would do it.

It seemed like we walked forever down the halls to the basement. The hallways seemed overly lit and stark as we made our way to the area where they put the people who had passed away. We went into a room where there were three rolling hospital beds parked side by side. Sheets covered what were obviously bodies underneath them. We went to the first one, and the officer raised the sheet.

It was Cathy, my beautiful daughter. She lay there lifeless. It just wasn’t right. A few hours ago, she had been full of life and happiness. She had a terrible place on the side of her head, and it looked almost flat. She had always been a beautiful girl with every hair in place and her makeup perfectly applied. She was especially pretty today as she hugged my neck and told me she loved me. Now, look at her. She had cuts all over her, and she looked broken inside. It was horrible.

She’s my daughter, I said as he laid the sheet back over her. I began to cry.

We went to the next bed. It was Janice. Her beautiful face was cut to shreds. There was barely a place she didn’t have a cut. Her body was contorted and deformed. I could not believe her life had ended like this. Later, I would learn that the car had hit them on her side, demolishing our SUV. I was thankful that she probably never knew what happened. Here was my beautiful wife of fifty years, gone in a single moment. I wondered how I could live without her.

It’s my wife, I said as they lowered the sheet.

We went to the last bed. There lay my sweet little granddaughter without a scratch anywhere. She had a huge bandage across her stomach, but other than that, she looked like she was taking a nap. She had always been a beautiful child, but when she was asleep, there was an angelic quality about her. She looked that way right now. She was only three, and she looked so small and alone in the huge hospital bed. I bent forward and kissed her cheek. It was cold. I asked if she could be placed with her mother as if her mother could somehow make her warm again. They said they would ask. As they pulled the