The Last Sin

By David Geiman and Dave Geiman

Redd is still cleaning up the details of a kidnapping last autumn when his contact at the FBI asks him to investigate a series of staged accidents and killings that threaten to set off a feud between crime families.

A few days later, a long-time book club friend confides in Redd about an unfinished letter he found buried in a t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Whaler Books
• Release date: Jan 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798989218677

David Geiman

Author David Geiman is a business person, farmer-rancher, adjunct professor, small-time philanthropist, and sponsor of a leadership development and current affairs program at Western Colorado University.

Book preview

Part One

1

Judge Hester

The letter:

Madison Military Academy

1 Military Drive

Madison, Virginia

November 5, 1995

Dear Sir:

It is with regret and deep sorrow that I write this letter to you. I know that you had the best intentions in sending me to this academy, as it has been a family tradition for a number of generations, but I can’t take this state of affairs any longer.

It further pains me to disparage the character of someone close to the family and to both of us, but I can no longer hold my tongue.

You and this school have always taught me to be methodological in my approach, and to make decisions based on evidence. Indeed, the old-fashioned approach to classical education employed here has only reinforced my resolve to be fair and just. (My experience with debate has also provided me with valuable tools and insight.) I have always wanted you to be proud of me.

Judge Clayton Hester studied the page of the letter he held in his hand and turned it over to see if anything was written on the back. It was blank. And there were no other pages attached.

The letter was apparently written by his younger brother, Joseph, who had died almost exactly twenty-eight years ago by attaching weights to his legs and drowning himself in the school’s indoor pool during the night. At the time of his death there had been no suicide note, but there were rumors that he was gay and couldn’t face it, in spite of the liberalizing views of homosexuality at the time.

Where was the rest of the letter, and was this the suicide note that everyone had assumed never existed? The segment of the letter, for surely it was only a segment, did nothing to quiet Clayton’s mind. He felt confident that his brother was the author of the note because the salutation Dear Sir had been the style that the school imposed on the students for writing letters home.

Clayton found the partial letter amongst an assortment of papers at the bottom of Joseph’s old steamer trunk of the sort still being used at the academy in those days. The trunk and his clothes and papers had been returned after the funeral, and the trunk had been gone through at that time, but the papers had somehow been missed and the trunk stored out of sight. Perhaps his father had not wanted to look too closely. The family had been devastated, and his father had become bitter and closed off.

Clayton had never been as close to his father as Joseph had been, partly because he was the oldest and a bit headstrong, and his father seemed to expect more of him. Indeed, even if the academy had not been a part of the long-standing family tradition, Clayton most likely would have been sent there anyway to instill some discipline in his life. As it turned out, he took to military life and did well at the school, but it never improved his relationship with his father who had died a year ago after a massive stroke, brought on, Clayton thought, by anger and bitterness. His mother had died six months later of a heart attack. Both were only in their seventies.

Clayton actually had the look of a judge. He was just under six feet tall, with brown eyes and bushy eyebrows which he neglected to trim, and which caused the young woman at the hair salon continuing consternation to the point that she would ask to trim them before she set to scissor-cutting his slowly thinning black hair with its encroaching streaks of grey.

His face was just slightly too broad but not enough to be unpleasant, and his nose was close to being described as Italian, or at least southern European, in spite of his northern Germanic family heritage. He had a small mouth, moderately full lips, and a jaw beneath which a slight second chin was staking a claim.

He was twenty to thirty pounds heavier than either his doctor or his self-esteem would have liked, but his self-esteem was going to have to take back seat to his love of good wine and dessert with every dinner. He walked a bit for exercise, hunted in the fall with old school buddies, read historical fiction and some biographies, and hated courtroom drama novels and the gym. He still dressed like a preppie and could have modeled for L.L.Bean or Brooks Brothers in the slightly overweight, beginning-to-age-well section of their catalog.

As the only heir to his parents’ estate, he was charged with the daunting task of sorting through a family’s lifetime of possessions and memorabilia. The letter instantly brought back memories of the academy and of his father, so Clayton had to redirect his focus onto what the letter actually said. He was taken by the initial words regret and deep sorrow and by his brother not wanting to disparage the character of someone close to the family. Clayton realized he was probably jumping to a conclusion without looking at facts. His wife often accused him of letting preconceived notions draw his conclusions for him, but he was certain that wasn’t the case in his professional life.

He was an effective judge, severe in his penalties, believing that the discipline established in his life by the military school could be established in the lives of criminals by putting them in institutions as well. Empirical evidence would not bear him out but didn’t sway his views.

He had to admit that he had viewed his brother as weaker and a bit sensitive, if not effeminate, and while he didn’t care, wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Joseph might be gay. At first blush, he thought the letter was intended to be a confession, that it might implicate someone involved in a homosexual relationship, either to punish that person or to somehow assuage a bit of his own guilt over it. Or to blame that person for his suicide.

But if that was the case, where was the rest of the letter? And on rereading, Clayton began to see an entirely different intent. He looked thoroughly through the small batch of papers where the letter had been discovered and found nothing more. Even this segment of a letter would likely never have been found, had Hester not needed to move the trunk to make way for his trove of legal documents.

He went to the closet where the trunk had been stored, pulled out a few books and notebooks, and examined everything else that had been in the trunk. He found no more pages and no notes or rough draft. He had always assumed that his father had gone through the trunk and removed anything of interest. Had his father perhaps found the rest of the letter or a different one and destroyed it? He had never mentioned it, but then again, he wouldn’t have.

2

Mob Rivalry

At the same time that Clayton was reading the truncated letter from his long-dead brother, state police were attempting, with the help of a crane, to lift a Cadillac SUV from its recent resting place at the base of a cliff along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The rescue squad had already extricated three bodies from the vehicle. One of the bodies would turn out to be an organized crime figure who had a condo at the Evergreen Resort close by on Afton Mountain. The other two dead men were likely to be bodyguards. From the marks on the pavement, it appeared that the SUV had been forced off the road. Whatever vehicle had caused the SUV to plummet over the cliff was long gone and the most obvious answer to the cause of the event would be mob rivalry.

But high on a mountain ridge above the accident site, a lone backpacker was watching the recovery effort through a pair of binoculars. It was not the first time he had been there.

3

Michael Alberti

One year earlier, Michael Alberti had just called his sons Andrew, Stefan, and Bronze to meet him to drive to a hospital in Pittsburgh. Their brother Vinnie, twenty-seven, had just been airlifted to the burn unit there after an incendiary device had gone off under the driver’s seat of his SUV as he drove from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to deal with a car theft gone wrong. Vinnie was the most violent of the brothers, and he had been sent to deal with a moron who had botched a job and potentially implicated the family.

Not five minutes after Michael received the call about the fire in Vinnie’s car, an email had popped up. It read: This is just the beginning. You know what this is about.

4

Number Two

Michael didn’t know that his second son Stefan had received a late-night call to go to Roanoke to deal with another car deal gone bad. He did not know that the Cadillac SUV had plunged off of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Because he was asleep, he had not heard the computer ding at midnight with the notice of an incoming email. And he didn’t see, until the next morning, the message that read: Number two. I think this event will be more conclusive. You know what this is about.

5

Close Relationship

It was early November, and Reddford Herring was driving toward Staunton and Kathryn Ashby’s home southwest of town. He was returning from a final interview with the FBI on a case that had ended violently some weeks earlier. He had just given what he hoped was the last statement he would need to provide about an end-of-summer kidnapping and some unrelated murders. The case had ended lopsidedly, and Herring was not pleased with all of the outcomes, but it would have to rest for now.

He had recently stepped down from his fairly long career as the elected sheriff of Augusta County. Over the past year or so he had been involved in three high-profile cases that went beyond the normal activities of most rural sheriffs, and he found the required level of investigation to be more interesting and stimulating than his typical responsibilities. His second-in-command, Roddy Roudabush, with Herring’s help, had easily won the election to replace him. Roddy was a long-time local with strong ties to the community and an energetic wife who kept him busy gardening and fixing things when he was off duty. He had been known to spend extra time working on a case to escape weed pulling, but there was always a price to pay.

Herring had been in a close relationship with Kathryn for well over a year now. They had met when she was an unlikely suspect in the murder of her wealthy father and stepmother, the first of his most recent trio of cases. Their relationship and his use of just, but legally questionable, techniques in solving several of the cases led him to realize that he had an ethical and moral obligation to no longer serve as sheriff. He had, nevertheless, come to an agreement to work with the FBI and his old compatriot, Wendell Berry, on special assignments and possible cold cases when the FBI was short-staffed or he could provide local knowledge.

Herring had turned in his official vehicle and now drove a simple two-and-a-half-door pickup. Berry had supplied him with a secure cell phone for official business. He had a police radio installed and kept a Glock pistol with a standard fifteen-cartridge magazine locked in a gun case attached to the short rear floor in front of the jump seats. He had considered carrying a rifle or some sort of semi-automatic long gun, but couldn’t see the need for it in his new role.

He had come from Washington on I-66 and connected south of Winchester to I-81, dominated as usual by tractor trailers. He exited onto the bypass around Staunton just after I-81 was joined by I-64 from Richmond and the east, and took the second exit to drive to Kathryn’s house on Celebration Farm. She had inherited the part of the estate that she hadn’t already owned at the time of her father’s death but had not moved into the main house which stood on the hill above the cattle barns and pens. She had her own house on a small road near the main house that she had had renovated with an open-plan kitchen and a walled connecting yard that reminded Herring of places he had seen in Italy when he had traveled with his wife, Mary, before she died of cancer a few years ago. He and Mary had not traveled often, but occasional school-sponsored trips for teachers and students had given them a chance to see parts of Europe and beyond.

Herring was in the process of moving in with Kathryn. He had gone to New York with her several weeks earlier when she presented a genetics paper. At dinner on their final night there, he had finally had the courage after nearly two years to tell her that he loved her. Neither was interested in marriage, but they wanted to be close. Herring had not decided whether to sell his own house some miles away, or to possibly rent it to someone. Kathryn’s house had two bedrooms in addition to hers and they were turning one of them into a library and office for him. He had a moderate collection of books, some classics and quite a few history books plus historical novels. When his late wife was still alive, she had encouraged him to join a book club, and he had finally done so and enjoyed it. The other members were mostly lawyers and a judge and one high school principal. They met every six weeks or so and generally focused on the topics that were on Herring’s shelves. After Mary’s death, Herring had stopped going to the meetings but lately was reconsidering it. Kathryn had encouraged him to do so.

They had still not decided what to do about the large main house on the farm. It had had a short-lived existence as a bed and breakfast, and Kathryn did not want to go down that road again. She was considering setting it up as a guesthouse for short-term visiting professors or speakers at the University of Virginia where she taught genetics. It was only a bit over a thirty-minute drive to the campus. Or she could offer the same thing to Mary Baldwin University in Staunton, should they need it. There was no rush to decide right now. She raised high-end Angus breeding stock on the farm and had an event called a production sale coming up in early December, and several long-term customers had been invited to stay there for the duration of the sale.

It was close to six o’clock when Herring pulled into the driveway of Kathryn’s house. He wondered if he would ever think of it as their house. Probably not, at least not in any narrow, possessive sense. But it did feel more and more like home now, and Kathryn was a joy to be around. He was fifteen years older than her, but that was not enough to throw them into entirely different generations. They had enough music and popular cultural connections. Kathryn had a doctorate in genetics from the best genetics school on the planet, in Edinburg, Scotland. Herring had undergraduate degrees in history and sociology, and he had had comprehensive officer training in the army, which included extensive studies of the political drivers and circumstances of wars around the planet, with a focus on Europe and the NATO countries. Herring’s natural curiosity and his wife’s career as a schoolteacher had provided the stimulus to continue learning. He was not an intellectual, by any means, but he was intelligent and perceptive, and both he and Kathryn stayed well-informed and balanced, discussing politics and current events at dinnertime or on walks around the farm.

Herring had not encouraged fraternization outside of work for his deputies and had stuck to that pattern of behavior himself. His primary circle of friends had come from his wife’s activities as a teacher and from the book club. The book club group tended to meet only for the discussion of the books, and Herring had never attended a social event related to that group. After Mary died, he became somewhat of a loner, sometimes accepting kind invitations from Roddy and his wife to have dinner with their family. But he could not think of anyone he would call a particularly close friend except for Kathryn. She had generally been thought of in the community as cold and aloof, and some people thought she might be a lesbian. The truth was she was busy on the farm and had not taken time to engage with local people except for her ranch employees. She occasionally socialized with other professors or with her seminar students in appropriate settings. She had only been back from Scotland for ten years, which seems like a long time to avoid all local connection, but she was so involved with her teaching and her cattle that she had not bothered to reach out.

When Herring pulled into the drive, Kathryn’s farm pickup was parked by the gate. She was home, and he was anxious to see her after spending the night in DC.

Part Two

6

Old Case

The following morning Herring found himself in the unusual position of having no pressing assignment. He got up early with Kathryn and went with her to the barn to feed a group of heifers and to spread some straw for bedding. The cattle were being trained to be comfortable indoors after spending most of their lives in the pastures with their mothers or in open-sided sheds in bad weather. Kathryn wanted them to be comfortable when they came into the show ring for buyers to look over them. They were comfortable around humans already because of the low-stress procedures Kathryn used to raise and wean them. They would be washed and brushed on sale day, and Kathryn was always a bit sad to see a group leave. But she quickly got over it with all the chores that the core herd required just to be managed, fed, and moved from pasture to pasture for fresh grass.

After a light breakfast, Kathryn showered and left for Charlottesville while Herring went to his new home office and began arranging some of the books he had brought over from his house. He had just opened the first box when his secure phone rang. It could only be Berry. Herring had been expecting a call from him for days, ever since Berry had called while he and Kathryn were having dinner in New York. He thought maybe Berry had changed his mind. He’d said he had an old case for Herring to look at, and cold cases could be very frustrating and were mostly unrewarding.

Herring clicked on. Good morning, I expected to hear from you long ago.

Berry made a sort of growling sound. It’s been a shit-show here. How did your last debrief go? He was referring to Herring’s prior two days in DC.

Fine, I hope we’re done with it now until or unless something new comes up.

Yeah, strange deal. Listen, that thing I mentioned in New York.

Yes, replied Herring. I seem to recall you said a five-year-old case? What’s that got to do with me? Or more aptly, what’s it got to do with anything at this point?

Wiseass. It might be nothing. Or might have been nothing. But we have a new development.

That’s encouraging.

Just shut up and listen. When I said five years old, that was an estimate. We have had our eyes and ears on a crime family on the East Coast. Five or so years ago, it looked like they were shifting into drug markets that the Mexican cartels have dominated. And we wondered if that might set off some sort of war or blood bath with collateral damage. But nothing substantial changed.

I haven’t heard much about crime families for a while, or the Mafia. I thought most of that had died down or that you’d put them out of business, said Herring.

"I wish. They just got smarter and more sophisticated. They’re in lots of legitimate businesses as well. But simply put,