Early Identification

By Larry Pope

Some government officials want to eliminate crime by hiring school administrators in zip codes with the highest rate of incarcerations (murder factories) to identify future criminals. The identified kids will begin to disappear, and the FBI agents working the cases will be able to cover up the methods used to rid these future threats to society. They plan to test this operation in a city with a population of around a hundred thousand people.Sam Good, a devout Christian and FBI agent, is repeatedly tormented and attacked. When he discovers the attackers are his fellow agents at the bureau, he transfers, and then resigns, so he can return undercover to figure out the reason for the attacks. He and a couple of companions discover the scandal to identify future criminals, and he realizes that he was forced out of the unit because of his Christian view of the world. As Sam and his companions try to gather enough evidence for a case against the FBI agents, a race emerges. Will Sam and his cohorts be able to gather the evidence and get a conviction before they are discovered and killed?Early Identification is an action-packed thriller that depicts the struggles of society to deal with crime, corruption, and racism using secular methods. It illuminates the reality that a systemic failure to teach citizens the scientific reasons for trusting in God (In God We Trust) has led to a dysfunctional society where two opposing worldviews are at war for control of educational and governmental policies. In a tale full of biblical values, sacrifice and redemption are required to overcome scandal and corruption.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098067366

Book preview

1

It’s Tuesday morning. RJ Good is usually at the coffee shop with his wife but decided to stay home today so he wouldn’t miss any calls. He hears the electric garage door open. Someone is after the guns, he yells to his wife. He hurries to the bedroom to get his pistol. On the way to the garage, he grabs his phone. He dials 9-1 and keeps his trembling finger on the 1 prepared to push it as he cracks open the door to the garage. It’s just what he suspected, only worse. There stands a man wearing a ski mask and rubber gloves. When the intruder heard the door crack open, he pulled out a gun and pointed it at the door.

Two days before, RJ and his son Sam, an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were having lunch after church. RJ told Sam he was selling most of his gun collection because he didn’t use them anymore and could use the money to travel. He wanted to see the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and the Badlands again since Sam had talked him into reading some books about the scientific evidence for Noah’s flood. RJ told Sam he would save the twenty-two caliber rifle with the octagon barrel that had belonged to his uncle Clifford, and the shotgun that belonged to his uncle Earnie because he wanted them to stay in the family. Do you want any of the other guns? RJ asked.

Sam replied, No, I have my nine-millimeter that I use for work, my twelve-gauge Benelli for hunting, and the Henry Golden Boy you gave me. Having extra guns around is just asking for someone to break in and try to steal them, or one of the kids to get in trouble with them. I’m glad you are selling them. You should let me auction them off using the Internet so you don’t have strangers come to your house.

RJ replied, I already ran an ad in the paper that lasts for two weeks. If I don’t get them sold, I’ll let you do that.

RJ has spent his life hunting, shooting targets, and watching cowboy and war movies where people get shot. He’s always fantasized about being in this situation; only now it isn’t a fantasy or a video game; it is real. The conflict between good and evil begins in his conscience. I could shoot him and call it self-defense. No, don’t do that, you’re a Christian. I need to press one, get Mary, and run to the basement.

You’re a coward if you do that, and he’ll steal all of your guns.

You idiot, you didn’t put the one with the octagon barrel away, and it is right beside him.

You have to get him out of here so he doesn’t steal Sam’s gun. He presses one and tells the dispatcher that there is a robber in his house, and he needs assistance. The robber walks slowly backward and then leaves the garage. RJ steps from the house into the garage thinking the robber had made a run for it, and the guns were safe. The mysterious visitor steps back into the garage, points the gun at RJ, and shoots him right in the chest. RJ falls to the ground dead. Next, he runs over to RJ’s gun which is lying on the ground, and he shoots it toward the table with the guns displayed neatly across it. Then he drops it by RJ and hurries to the gun collection to grab as many guns as he can hold.

As the shooter leaves the garage, he makes a left turn and heads for the woods of Wallace Park. As he rounds the corner of the neighbor’s house, he hugs a bush that will exclude him from the view of the Good’s house once he is past it. As he makes it to the far side of the juniper bush, he sees a leg extend from the bush. The leg serves its purpose as he falls forward and must drop some guns to catch himself. No sooner than he hit the ground, there is 186 pounds of manhood on him with a knee in his spine and an elbow in the crevice at the base of his skull. The former wrestling coach proceeds to interlock the arms still extended from the fall into a double chicken wing. The coach has repositioned his knee to the groin. The shooter is unable to move his arms and knows what the knee will be used for if he dares to try and move anything else.

The police are just pulling up, so he doesn’t have to hold him long before they get the handcuffs on him and call for back-up. The officer says, Where is RJ? He called 911.

The neighbor replies, I don’t know. I heard two gunshots as I was getting my newspaper so I ran over to see what was going on. I saw this man clearing off RJ’s gun table so I hid behind the juniper bush at the corner of my house. As I crouched there, I was feeling like a coward for not doing anything and scared to death he would see me and shoot me. I heard the pounding of feet heading my way and felt the bush vibrate. As he emerged from the bush, I tripped him and pinned him to the ground.

The two men hear sobs coming from RJ’s garage. The officer takes the suspect to his car and puts him in back, while the neighbor heads for the garage. When the officer enters the garage, RJ’s wife is weeping over the top of his lifeless body, and the neighbor is just standing speechless. The officer says, Mary, what happened?

She looks up, and with weeps between each sentence, she says, I don’t know, Mathew,—she sniffles—he said someone was stealing his guns. While I was trying to get dressed, I heard shots. More sniffles. When I got out here, I didn’t see anyone, and he was lying on the floor." Mathew was a lifelong friend of Mary and RJ’s son Sam, so he is fighting his own emotions at this point.

Your neighbor tackled the killer, and we have him handcuffed and in the car. I’m so sorry, Mary. Is there anywhere you can go? Mary looks at him with confusion as he just asked her to leave her home. Mathew catches the clues from her glance of confusion and continues, I have to get the murderer locked in my car and call for help with the investigation and booking the suspect. Then I need to tape off the area and start collecting evidence. I’ll have to call the coroner to come get RJ. It will be hours before our work is done here. This is not a good time for you to be here and an even worse time to be alone.

Mary replies, Sam just went back home, and he lives too far away to come stay, but maybe one of the ladies at the church will let me stay with them.

Mr. Grant, the shooter’s captor, and the Good’s good neighbor says, You’re welcome to stay with us unless you want to get away so you don’t have to keep thinking about what happened.

Mary replies, It doesn’t matter where I am. I won’t be able to stop thinking about it.

The neighbor responds, I’ll help you gather some clothes and walk you over. They slowly enter the house with Mr. Grant’s hand placed sympathetically on Mary’s shoulder.

Two more officers come onto the scene. One of them says to Mathew, I saw the suspect in the car. What do you need us to do?

Mathew replies, I haven’t done anything with the suspect other than handcuff him and put him in the car. I need one of you to arrest him for the murder or RJ Good, read him his rights and transport him to jail.

I need the other one to go inside and help Mrs. Good get some things rounded up to go stay at the neighbors. While you’re in there, try to get more details on what she heard. She was pretty shook up, and all she told me was RJ said someone was stealing his guns and then she heard shots. We will need more details like how much time between shots, which one was the loudest, and anything else you can get. I’ll have dispatch notify the coroner when I go get my gloves, yellow crime-scene tape, and evidence bag to start gathering evidence and taking notes. When Mrs. Good is prepared to stay at the neighbors, you can help me gather evidence and secure the house.

The officer in charge of the suspect has to move him to a different car, so he opens the door and asks him to get out. As the man steps out of the car, the officer says, You are under arrest for the murder of RJ Good. You have the right. The suspect spits in the officer’s face and tries to knock him down. The officer pins him to the ground and wipes the spit on his face on the suspect’s back. He angrily picks him up and threatens to taze him if he doesn’t get in the other car. On the way to the jail, the suspect asks the officer how many years he will get for killing RJ. The officer acts like he didn’t hear and says, What? as he presses record on his recorder. The suspect repeats it, and the officer responds that it will be up to the judge.

Despite Sam’s phone being a tool he uses frequently as part of his job with the FBI, there are times when he must ignore the sound and vibrations it produces to focus on the job at hand. The morning of RJ’s death, he was being briefed on the particulars of an ensuing drug raid and then participated in the raid. Sometimes a raid turns into a hostage situation or a negotiation between a trapped fugitive on the brink of suicide and a federal negotiator. Luckily, the raid went as quickly and effectively as possible. However, it was well after noon before Sam was able to see why his phone had been an almost constant vibration in his pocket. The raid had taken place a couple of hours from his office and home in Osage, Kansas, so getting to his mother’s today was going to be difficult.

Osage Kansas, population 104,084, was established by early settlers attracted to the elevated tillable soil situated between the Osage and Pottawatomie Rivers. As grain elevators were built by the railroad tracks on the outskirts of the settlement, the settlement grew into a rail town. A salt dome was discovered where wells to a saline aquifer had been abandoned, and soon after, a salt mine was established resulting in a population increase. Years later, Middle Creek, a small creek flowing into the Osage River, was chosen as a site to build a reservoir for a coal-powered generating station. The building of the power plant, coupled with the coal mining of the area, caused yet another population increase to Osage. As homes were built in the river valleys surrounding the town, flooding became a problem. Both the Osage and Pottawatomie Rivers were dammed upstream of Osage to help control flooding to the area. A couple of generations of building homes around the lakes, and lake communities evolved. The lake communities were eventually annexed as part of Osage. Add an interstate highway and the once-small settlement has become a thriving metropolis a couple of hours from Kansas City.

The FBI chose the town as a central location to serve Wichita and Kansas City. As the cities and the bureau grew, Wichita and Kansas City needed to have their own FBI units. The Federal Bureau of Investigation never left Osage. The effectiveness of the few agents that remained, and the racial and economic troubles of the metropolis, sustained the need for its existence. As the original business district was slowly abandoned for the outskirts of the city, the buildings and homes left behind were sold at low prices. A little money was made on the sales, but mostly it was a way to escape the cost and process of demolishing the worn and outdated structures of the former business district. It provided an area of low-income residence, and the signs of poverty in the area followed. The socioeconomic status of the residents was divided by the railroad tracks and worked its way from the inner city toward the outskirts.

With a two-hour drive home, time to pack, and a two-hour drive to the nearest commercial airport in Kansas City, Sam had accepted the idea that he would have to wait until tomorrow to fly to his mother’s house. When he walked in the door of his house, his wife, Jillian, had already packed his bags, and the bureau had arranged a flight with a local pilot who had his own personal plane. Paul, Sam’s superior with the FBI, gave him a ride to a small farm outside of Osage. The pilot opened the door to a large barn with a grass runway leading from it. As the door opened, the sun began to illuminate a yellow single engine Cessna with a pair of blue stripes running horizontally from front to back. The stripes are interrupted at the tail of the plane with the numbers 2425. Sam recognizes this as the same plane that a crop duster gave him and Jillian a ride in for their anniversary a couple of years ago. The farmer getting ready to fly him home must have purchased the plane for the same purpose. Possibly a tax write-off for the plane, hangar, and runway being used for farm purposes. As the Cessna rolls out of the barn onto the runway, Sam is putting his buckles on. With his fate in the hands of a farmer become pilot, and a single engine plane that only seats three people, Sam can’t help but become nervous as the plane lifts off the grass runway.

In spite of Sam’s fears, the extensive efforts by those who care for him enable his arrival in the town of his childhood the following day. Sam wants to speak with Mathew first. He knows Mathew will be able to give him the most information without putting his mother through the emotion involved in the delivery of such a dramatic event. He and Mathew catch up on old times as Mathew gives him a ride to his boyhood home. Mathew tells him it is all right for his mother to come back to the house because they are finished collecting evidence and cleaning the scene. Sam gets his mother from the neighbor’s house. As she emerges from Mr. Grant’s house, mother and son engage in a prolonged hug filled with sobs and tears of emotion that coincide with such an occasion. After they gather themselves emotionally, they begin a slow walk toward the home where RJ and Mary Good provided for their only son, Sam. Mary deliberately avoided the entrance most frequently used by the family, the garage and entered through the front door. As they walk through the living room, Sam notices things that he had taken for granted and previously ignored. Pictures of his mother and father in younger, much happier times were on the mantle of the fireplace. The poem Footprints was displayed on the wall above the black piano that had been inherited from his grandmother. As he skimmed the poem that he had read many times before, he remembered his first prayer on the floor of his bedroom with his mother by his side. Memories of his father emerged as he looked at the poem. His father was a good Christian role model. He was lucky to even have his father in his life, and even luckier to have one that took him to church and taught him about God’s love. As he glanced down from the poem to the piano, memories emerged of a young Sam sitting reluctantly on the bench with his mother, who was hopeful that he would learn to play the inheritance. Young Sam would, however, rather be climbing a tree or wandering through the neighboring park exploring its woods and meandering river.

As Sam continues to scramble through the memories of his childhood home, his mother makes her way to the kitchen table. She grips a coffee cup full of cold coffee that had remained since her setting it down yesterday morning to go check on the horrific noise she heard in her garage. The cold cup seems to paralyze her as she grips it. She sits at the table in a daze of emotion. She has already cried too much to cry anymore and lacks the energy to do any more than sit and grip the cold cup as if it were fresh. Sam continues to peruse the house moving from room to room, each room supplies a fresh set of memories of the love his parents had showed him as he grew from a child to a young adult, ready to become independent of their support despite their continued efforts to fill him with it. He makes his way to the garage where the evidence of the tragedy remained. A few guns have been neatly placed at one end of a table, while the rest are scattered abroad. He knows his mother has never approved of his father’s gun collection, so he begins to put them back into the gun safe and put the folding table back in its home against the wall.

He returns to the kitchen table to join his mother where she almost immediate tells Sam that she wants to sell the house and move. The time spent remembering his childhood and the news of her desire to sell his childhood home brought tears to his eyes. The rooms filled with memory triggers would no longer be accessible to him. It felt like he was losing a childhood friend. Mary can see the sorrow in his face and explains to her son that she wants to have good memories of her husband. She tells him that she has avoided the garage to enter the house and she continued to avoid it when he was cleaning up the guns. She doesn’t feel like she can enter the garage without remembering RJ’s murder, and she doesn’t need a daily reminder of it for the rest of her life. Sam is hurt because that is the house he grew up in, and he looks forward to the safe, homely feeling that it gives him when he brings his wife and kids to visit, but he understands her need to be free from memory triggers that may cause depression. He tells her that he has taken a two-week leave of absence from the FBI so he can help her try to find another house after the funeral and arrange for a moving company to take care of moving all of her stuff.

2

Three months later in a well-kept but outdated courtroom, James Clark feels well prepared as he shuffles through a final organization of his materials. Mr. Clark is in the second year of his third term as the district attorney. A good-looking man for his age with oration skills that can rival Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. have repeatedly enabled him to not only win the people on election day, but also win the jury on trial day. He feels the jury selection is in his favor and that an easy case lay before him with the evidence that law enforcement has provided him for the case.

James Clark calls the neighbor to the stand as his first witness. Mr. Grant, can you explain for the jury the events of your morning leading up to the murder of RJ Good?

I got up and made a pot of coffee. I got the bagels out and then poured a cup of the freshly percolated coffee. I went out to get the newspaper, and everything seemed as usual. I remember a couple of morning joggers entering the park. I admired their determination to remain fit. The sky was specked with fluffy white cumulus clouds that stir the imagination to see recognizable shapes. I bent down and grabbed the paper as I continued to gaze at the dragon-shaped cloud when my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a gunshot. I was startled and in disbelief that our quiet, crime-free neighborhood would harbor the open fire of a gun. I began looking around to find where the noise came from. When I heard it again, I knew it came from RJ’s garage and would no longer have been able to mistake the noise for anything other than a gunshot. I positioned myself so I could see into the garage. I saw the defendant gathering up some of RJ’s guns. I was scared he would see me, so I cowardly ran and hid behind the bush at the corner of my house. When he left the garage, I could see him coming my way. I was scared to death because I knew he was going to run right past me, and there was no way I could stay hidden. I sat frozen behind the bush, my heart was trying to jump out of my chest while I was hoping for him to go somewhere else, but he kept coming. My only thoughts and intentions were to stay out of his sight and remain alive. As he approached the bush, something came over me. The rooster syndrome hit me, I guess, and I decided to attack him in full fury, no matter what happened to me.

Mr. Clark chimes in, Is that a real thing? The rooster syndrome? I’ve never heard of that before.

I just made it up, but it should be. A rooster will attack anything without the slightest fear of death.

Mr. Clark responds, I’ve heard they are mean. So you were behind the bush and now ready to attack. What happened next?

As he ran by, I tripped him, and as he fell to the ground, he released the guns causing them to scatter about in front of his fall. I jumped on his back and put him in a double chicken wing to hold his arms down.

Mr. Clark interrupts, "It’s been years since you coached wrestling. No offense intended, but the difference between your age and physique and the