Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

Carter Lawrence’s credit card receipts gave Walter the confirmation he expected. Gasoline purchases tracked him from Atlanta to Raleigh and back again, more than once. Walter could even see where Carter stopped for lunch along the way. And, best of all, UPS records showed shipments from Carter Lawrence to a PO Box in Las Vegas, New Mexico-no doubt a private mail and package store just like the one in Fargo. The shipments were in Carter Lawrence’s name, paid for with his Visa card. The recipient was EM Inc.

After his ex-wife and two sons died, Carter hunkered down in Atlanta. Except for the trips to Raleigh, he went nowhere for more than two years. Some of his gasoline charges in Atlanta were separated by many weeks. He wasn’t even moving around in town. The only vendor that showed up on Carter’s records in any regular fashion was a Kroger supermarket. From the amount of the charges-never more than forty dollars-Carter was obviously eating alone. Then, only a month ago, charges appeared for gas and food in Birmingham, Alabama. “What was he doing there?” Walter wondered. This month there was another out-of-town charge. This time for a Hampton Inn in Clarksville, Tennessee-plus a restaurant bill of $130.46 at the Clarksville Holiday Inn. He wasn’t eating alone that night. Another gasoline charge showed up the following day in Springfield. Walter opened the travel atlas he kept handy on top of the refrigerator and turned to the map of Tennessee. Atlanta to Clarksville was about three hundred miles. He traced out a route, simple and direct, going north on I-75 and picking up I-24 just past Chattanooga, going west right into Clarksville. The round trip was too long to make on a single tank of gas, and the refueling stop fit the trip perfectly. Springfield was just down the road on the way to Nashville. It was clear to Walter that Carter Lawrence had driven from Atlanta to Clarksville, eaten dinner with someone, spent the night at a nearby Hampton Inn, and drove home the next day. Walter had seen his share of Holiday Inns, from Maine to Montana and too many places in between. There was no way anybody could spend $130.46 in any of their restaurants-not alone. Carter had more than one dinner guest-at least two, more probably three, Walter figured. There were no more surprises after Clarksville. Carter wasn’t hiding from anyone. He never thought to cover his tracks by paying cash. By now Walter expected to see the airline charge for Carter’s ticket to New York. Yes indeed, he was Kermit. No hotel for New York. Walter made a mental note to check the addresses for Carter’s brother and sisters. He was sure he’d find one of them living in New York City on the Upper West Side.

Walter’s plane didn’t land in New Mexico until late afternoon, and he had also lost two more hours by the clock. The trip had been grueling, but he felt momentum and didn’t want to break it, didn’t want to stop. Up at six, he had taken the ferry to St. Thomas and boarded a flight to Miami. From there he flew to Dallas, changed planes, and he was airborne again on his way to Albuquerque-his first time ever in New Mexico. Santa Fe was another couple of hours by car from Albuquerque. Walter had booked a room at Santa Fe’s most famous hotel, Inn of the Anastasia. At the suggestion of the reservations agent, he got one with a fireplace. “Isn’t Santa Fe in the desert?” Walter had asked her, mistakenly believing he was headed for a warm climate. “Yes it is,” she told him, “but it’s the high desert. It gets real cold here, Mr. Sherman. You’ll see. There’s snow on the ground right now. If you’re coming from the Virgin Islands you need to bring a coat.” She laughed a friendly laugh. Walter had a lopsided idea of what Santa Fe was all about, and he figured she labored under a similar misconception of the Virgin Islands, and most likely had never heard of St. John. “She probably thinks we’re all walking around in shorts and T-shirts, with floppy hats and sunglasses,” he thought. Then he realized if she did think that she wouldn’t be too far from right. “Take the fireplace. You won’t be sorry,” she said. After landing, he rented a car and drove first to Sure Shot Shooting Supplies and Accessories at 5400 Holly NE. It took him less than half an hour to purchase a Glock, with bullets and holster, for $576.42.

The interstate is straight as an arrow, uphill heading north. Walter found it barren and sad. Occasional Indian casinos, their satellite motels and restaurants, were clustered along the sides. He noticed with wry surprise that the sun was setting, suddenly, behind ragged mountains. The Caribbean sun takes forever to disappear out past Puerto Rico. Here it drops like a rolling stone; daylight one minute, dark the next. “Not my cup of tea,” Walter thought.

He didn’t like the landscape, either. It was mostly scruffy sand, much of it overrun by alarmingly hearty, ugly weeds. It wasn’t graceful desert like Arizona, Nevada, or even Aruba. Whatever it was, he’d not seen it before and would not miss it when he left. An hour later he stopped at a roadside restaurant, felt the chill stepping out of the car, and understood how cold it would be when he’d driven another few thousand feet up. The restaurant was not even much of a diner. Walter ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. It came on the thickest bread he’d ever seen.

He reached Santa Fe at eight, followed directions to the Plaza, and found his hotel. The whole town looked like a theme park. From what he’d heard, it wasn’t. The city restricted construction to adobe old-west designs, but people did live in the houses. The Inn sat smack on the well-lit Plaza, a wide space filled with people moving swiftly in the cold. It was, Walter reminded himself, the Christmas season, which probably explained the seven hundred dollars he paid for the room. A bellhop led the way and started the fire. Walter found a Diet Coke in the mini-bar, set it next to the telephone, and fell asleep with the light on.

In the morning, after an early breakfast, he drove north for about an hour and a half to Las Vegas, New Mexico. The journey to Las Vegas led to a shopping center mail and package store. Walter expected as much. He already knew the address and PO Box number. The packages had been sent to Evangelical Missions Inc. Carter left a trail a mile wide. When Walter first encountered that name, he wondered whether he would again, or whether Leonard would use it just once. Walter was relieved to discover that Leonard was not quite that wise. Why should he be? This was his maiden serial rampage.

Had he been the kind of guy to offer advice to others in his field-if indeed there were others in his field-Walter would have told them first and foremost: respect the obvious. The easiest thing to discover is always the most obvious. Start at the beginning. As he had done countless times in the last three decades, Walter once more began at the beginning.

Evangelical Missions Inc. in New Mexico was the same as EM Inc., which owned the empty lot in Raleigh. Corporate records in North Carolina showed that the company had been incorporated just before Leonard Martin left Atlanta for the Bahamas. Further checking turned up an SUV registered in North Carolina to the same EM Inc. It didn’t take Walter long to find a transfer to a New Mexico registration for the same vehicle. The plate location indicated a Las Vegas address, but Walter knew he wouldn’t find Leonard anywhere near there. Not anymore.

Leonard could not have shown his rifles at any conventional range. Weapons that unique would have been noticed. He had to have practiced someplace else, free from observation. That meant he almost certainly bought land for that purpose, probably when he purchased the lot in Raleigh. Working backward from Las Vegas, Walter saw Leonard planning it out in Georgia and selecting a suitable parcel from the raw, empty stretches of west Texas and out-of-the-way New Mexico. Walter did his own search for Evangelical Missions Inc. or EM Inc. Coming up empty, he reached out.