Criminal Or Not

By Lawrence Roy

Fiction laced with humor and suspense. A man is harassed by law agencies to show guilt of crime and anger the suspected Charles Moore.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662401855

Book preview

Chapter 1

Blue River

It was April 24, 2008. Charles Moore had been fishing on the Blue River, approximately three miles south of Argo, Michigan, where Charles lived. Charles had started to smell a chemical odor between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. The smell was carried by a southwest wind, which left a foul taste in his mouth—so described as a slight tree-bark smell and heavier gas mixture. Charles’s lips had started to burn momentarily.

All the while he treaded the bank path along the Blue River, his fear had escalated rampantly until he heard the rumble of a high-flying plane, north and south of his location, on a DNR tract of land. At least the local authorities were aware of the chemical situation. But near panic, Charles had to escape the breathing of those fumes and leave the Blue River.

He had taken two steps and realized he had to reel in his fishing line and embed his hook in the handle of his fishing rod. His truck had been parked two blocks east of the river on Hover Road.

It was the month of April, a spring setting indeed; the foliage had not begun to bloom. The sun glimmered through the cracks of the trees and bushes. Charles had been dressed for the occasion: red wool hat, multicolored flannel shirt, hip boots, and creel strapped over his left shoulder.

A husky man, Charles was, stood six feet tall and weighed two hundred pounds, and was forty years old. In shape, he better be. The hike ahead of Charles consisted of a journey among thick balsams, earth-laden debris, bushes, fallen dead trees, stumps and rocks, and lastly, dips and wet spots with some standing swamp water.

To Charles’s surprise, the chemical fumes had become stronger as he walked in an easterly direction. Charles then realized that the chemical odor had penetrated his nostrils from the east roadway in addition to the initial easterly flow from the west. The wind had blown and swirled in two directions. Charles had noticed a whirling sound in the sky.

With a limited air supply and overwhelmed by strong chemical fumes, Charles needed to keep his bearings straight and calm himself. He had continued east, trying to keep his footing, but stumbled at times into tree branches that scratched his hands to the point of bleeding. Occasionally he tripped on debris.

Charles had noticed the bleeding of his hands, but minor; he always had Band-Aids of different sizes tucked inside his wallet. He felt a burning sensation in his lungs, his head felt woozy, his muscles in the shoulder area tightened, and his balance and coordination faltered.

He had known the area well but lost his bearings and veered north to a fence with galvanized wire. He turned and walked in an easterly direction until he staggered onto Hover Road. The wind had blown in Charles’s face, chemical free, and Charles was delighted. Finally, he could walk straight and climbed into his blue truck. Nearly exhausted, Charles had rested for a spell and drove to Argo, Michigan. Safe, he thought, in a population of five thousand people.

Before the work week was over, Charles had talked to the DNR and some forestry personnel about the incident. Their planes were not flying the Blue River on April 24, 2008.

The local police and Barsted County Sheriff’s Office had reported that a vacant farm property with a storage barn, with chemicals, had burned to the ground. The same report was written in the Greenet newspaper but reported the chemicals trapped in the burning flames were still unknown. Professionals involved with chemicals—types, strengths, and health risk to humans—were on the scene.

Let the experts investigate chemicals and fumes, Charles thought and sat in his one-bedroom bungalow nestled near the edge of Argo.

The home portrayed the ranch-style design but lacked the typical gable roof. Four flat sides sloped upward into a blunt peak, roofed in black. The sidewalls were painted blue down to a cement slab. The bungalow lacked a basement; there was two feet of vented crawl space below the flooring.

The inside of the bungalow consisted of a small kitchen and bathroom, medium-sized ten-by-twelve-foot bedroom, six-foot hallway, and twenty-square-foot living room. Five feet of attic space had stairway entry from the lower level.

His deck protruded twelve feet from the back of his home, abreast a gravel driveway, which extended sixty feet to the alley.

Charles liked his spacious yard: 50 feet wide and 150 feet long, cornered in by York Street and Birch Avenue, mailbox 1112.

He also had a shed and a raised garden-bed area surrounded by a wooden fence his carpenter friend, Dean Willard, had recently built for him. Balsam pine trees had dotted the sides of his backyard and kept nosing-by neighbors at a minimum. The houses in the area weren’t fancy, some older ranches, mostly two-story homes with an occasional Victorian in view, and a few trailers—as Charles called them—filled the rest of the landscape.

Three purple lilac shrubs grew in the front yard along the boundary line to the north while grass had filled the front yard. How could Charles possibly keep the grass trimmed and the weeds yanked from his garden beds and make a living during the summer months?

He had worked at Argo High School for the past three years as a janitor. When school had ended near the seventh of June, Charles had driven cab for Check Cab Company, located in the city of Argo. Summer had been a busy period for Check Cab Company. Charles worked mainly nights and on the weekends. He had started his second year driving cab, servicing Argo and Greenet, Michigan.

What else could he do? He had no college degree. He had the least seniority among the school janitors and had to depend on a secondary income, and Check Cab Company was Charles’s best find; besides, Charles knew the city of Argo and its surroundings quite well.

There were two motels in the city. There was an airport on the southern outskirts of Argo, and a third of Argo’s population worked in the neighboring city of Greenet, Michigan. Greenet was located eighteen miles east, with a population of nearly twenty-two thousand. Charles had lived in Greenet most of his life. He graduated from Greenet High School and was familiar with parts of the city.

Charles was disappointed when his parents had left Greenet, Michigan, for another state five years past. He had a younger brother, Bob, who left with them, but his sister, Nora, had stayed in Greenet and became a registered nurse at Greenet Memorial Hospital. His carpenter friend, Dean Willard, an old school buddy, had lived in Greenet. His neighbor in Greenet used to be Wilbur Franks—friend of the family, fisherman, with retired chief-of-police status—who would call Charles and inquire about spring fishing season. Rainbow trout was old Wilbur’s favorite, and that meant fishing the Blue River. Hecker Lake was four miles west of Argo, quite the attraction; walleye, northern and bass, swam the lake. Hecker Lake was fifteen by eighteen miles long, but there were popular trout streams that had competed with the lake for anglers.

Further north Lake Michigan, one of the Great Lakes, an excellent fishing area, attracted the big-boat fishermen. But in Charles’s case, why drive any distance to fish when good fishing was near?

Charles drove cab. He had put on enough miles on the roadway during a night’s involvement with the public.

Charles was a big man—six feet, two hundred pounds, and never took much criticism or bad-mannered remarks from drunken individuals, or mostly sober complainers.

A week had passed since his chemical encounter. Charles thought best to stop at his sister’s home in Greenet, Michigan. He explained his encounter with chemicals to her.

You feel some drowsiness, and your balance and coordination has you weaving monstrously, yet a doctor is not in your scope or scheduled approach?

Nora spoke her piece. It did have merit. Although she was a nurse, she thought of the dying; Charles thought of the living. Give life another week’s chance. If he could avoid an exam—series of tests, scans, x-ray, and pill-pushing doctor—he could finish out the following month of school activity. Charles would rather push the broom and not have to say Ah in a hospital examination room.

Three days later Charles heard a knock on his door.

Hello, have you met with a doctor yet? asked Nora.

No, not unless my condition worsens, said Charles.

Your face has color. Are you eating healthy?

Sleep-deprived. I still have blood in my body. I’m surrounded by food. I walk around Argo High School. I hear cell phones that taint my brain. My ears ring at night, said Charles.

Minutes later another end of glorious argument with his sister, Nora, the nurse.

The Moor family had always quarreled among each other, but not in an earth-shattering way. Politeness was invoked among the male tenor and alto voice of the female, and language with appeal was presented.

Charles had paced the floor of his dwelling the following week. His symptoms hadn’t changed, but the sidewalk seemed to close in on him. He heard clicking and snapping sounds throughout his living room and front door of his home. Had the chemicals that Charles encountered on the Blue River affected his mind?

During the coming days, the progression of snapping sounds had continued, but now the hallway was involved. He was confused but continued his school duty as janitor in a mannerly fashion. Although he had drifted to one side occasionally, he still had the visualization of a straight course. He presumed eyes were upon him and avoided conversations.

One embarrassment at Argo High School was enough—the time he ambled out of the boys’ bathroom with a fern. He walked to the principal’s office and plunked it on the desk, thinking it was marijuana.

School had ended the seventh of June in 2008. Charles’s health had gotten better. The clicking sounds still existed, with an additional room—the kitchen—involved. A louder mixed-up sound occurred at the back side of his bungalow. Whenever Charles heard a truck, car, or van that drove the alleyway, it seemed as though they had driven next to his deck or rolled up his driveway. The snaps were activated at different intervals. Charles knew it was real, not his imagination.

Questions arose in Charles’s mind. Was he being tracked, monitored, programmed? Was he under some lopsided gimmick to push him out of his home?

Money was tight, vacant housing was rare, few properties were for sale, new houses were being built, tourism was on