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The need to be in the fight against evil no longer felt important. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what else was out there. What waited for me in retirement? All the plans I had with Bobbie no longer existed. Fulfilling them alone seemed hollow.
Overhead, a sugary song played. I could make it out, but I tried not to focus on it. I didn’t want to know what it was. “Look at me, Dallas,” she said softly. “Is that why you seem off?” Off. That was one word for it. Shortly after my wife’s death, I began waking to snippets of music. At first, I wondered if Bobbie was trying to communicate from beyond the grave. Once I decided she wasn’t, the music changed. The songs attacked my consciousness during the day. I felt on the verge of a breakdown. My work suffered, and the department ordered I see a therapist. He identified the music as auditory hallucinations. They went away not long after that. I knew I wasn’t crazy, but the diagnosis didn’t make me feel better. She squeezed my hand. “You can tell me.” “No, the music isn’t back.” “Then what’s wrong?” I stared at her hand in mine. She had nice fingers. What a stupid observation, I thought. She squeezed my hand again. Her voice was gentle.
Truthfully? I can't imagine a love so deep that, upon death of the beloved, all life must stop. And, yet, Colin Conway has presented such a relationship. One that was so invasive to the individual left living, that, reality seemed to slip away...when she was gone...
Perhaps it was because he was a detective in major crimes? That doesn't seem the answer since he'd been dealing with this type of case during his entire career. Yet, when his wife died, he removed all sources of sound from their home, especially music...
Comprehension of such a fate is not possible for me. Yet, even as the story moves on to get into individual case work, if some distant notes of music came to his ears, he would be distracted...
My wife was somewhere in the quiet of my home. When I stopped looking for Bobbie in the music of my subconscious, I realized she was always with me in the stillness of our home. A weight draped itself over my shoulders, and I lowered my head.
The phone in my pocket buzzed once. I pulled it out to find a text message from Marlene—I’m sorry for being weird last night.
I looked at Bobbie’s grave and immediately felt a surge of guilt. “It’s from a friend.” Shame was an emotion I’d never felt with Bobbie. I’d never done anything inappropriate while we were married, so it was stupid to feel something like that now. I slipped the phone back into my pocket. “I don’t know why I started thinking about it.” My head bobbled. “Retirement, I mean. The job’s the only thing I’ve looked forward to since you’ve gone away.” Two foreign cars raced by the cemetery. I watched them go. When I faced Bobbie’s headstone again, I studied it for a moment. “The music made you being gone easier.” I waved my hand in frustration. “That didn’t come out right. I meant it distracted me. Gave me something to focus on besides your absence. You being gone isn’t easy.” The old man at the other marker walked away. He shuffled with his head down. Is that how I moved after talking with Bobbie? Probably.
What do you want? It was a strange question and sounded like Bobbie’s voice in my head. I knew it couldn’t be. She was dead, and I wasn’t crazy. No matter how much I wanted her back, that wouldn’t happen. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced the question was in my own voice. Regardless, I was bothered because of the question’s open-ended nature. Perhaps it was related to retirement. Or maybe it was linked to Marlene, but how would Bobbie know? I hadn’t told her anything. Either way, I didn’t feel like answering it even if I had asked it of myself. And what if she had asked the question? Then answering it would definitely mean I was crazy. I looked at my watch. “I have to go.” I squatted and touched the marker. “I love you.”
***
“How was your night?” Glenn asked. He hung his suit jacket over the back of his chair and then flopped into it. “Fine,” I said. I hadn’t told him about any of my meetings with Marlene. It wasn’t any of his business.
Interestingly, much of the investigation took place in a local bar, with music playing all of the time. Readers know what is happening, at least enough to understand the specific manner in which a murder had occurred. But even here, again, we find another man with a past that he could not forget. Yet was murdered through an entirely different set of circumstances. Is the writer trying to show a side of humanity that is, really, totally subject to the whims of fate? I found myself becoming disenchanted with that possibility, even as the case moves forward and, indeed, what occurs resulted in a death which made no sense in the real world. It was a fluke that it occurred. Or was it? Was his death meant to actually be retribution?
You see, when you consider Fate as your way of life, it removes what, I believe, God has given to all of us--Free Will. During the entire book, music became either an instrument of potential torture or a pre-determined choice that he must make in order to survive...
I expected my subconscious to attack me then with Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher.” Perhaps it would have been some of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar noodling or Alex Van Halen’s skipping drum intro. Hell, it might even have been David Lee Roth’s infamous “I’m not tardy” line, but my brain remained quiet. I felt oddly alone with the silence inside my head. Glenn continued. “You wouldn’t believe how hot this one is. She could have been a centerfold.” He ruefully shook his head. “So, what do you say?” “To centerfolds?” “To the teacher.” “No.”
Finally, folks, I was more involved in watching the cop pass up classic rock or jazz, etc., so that he wouldn't be drawn back into a life that could never exist again, that I didn't want to watch his self-fulling prophecy:
self-fulfilling prophecy is a belief about a future outcome that helps to bring about its own fulfillment. This happens because the unconscious expectations that we hold can influence our actions and ultimately cause the initial prediction to become true.
Besides that, living without music is impossible to even think about for me, so even if the cases were interesting, I found myself hoping that he keeps getting therapy...
Yes, the book is well written, has a sound basis for police procedure activities... Fate as a key factor in policing? I don't think so... Check it out and decide for yourself... This is a personal opinion review
“Pretty mean around here?” Leaphorn asked. “Pretty mean everywhere,” Bydonie said. “Nobody’s got any respect for anything anymore.”
Once again, a top writer has finished a book, leaving a, in my opinion, very important issue, hanging without closure... It involves a navajo rug...and I was left wondering, just like this cowboy, what happened to the rug?!
Otherwise, I enjoyed very much learning more about our brothers and sisters of the indigenous people who lived here on lands now called the United States. Tony Hillerman is one of the most known writers of fiction for the Navajo tribal police with Leaphorn and Chee as officers of the community... In this book, Leaphorn has officially retired, but as most of us do when retired, we keep on thinking about our work that took up most of our lives, hopefully, in a manner in which we felt fulfilled for at least the majority of time...
Eleven days earlier… The boom of the lightning bolt caused Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, retired, to hesitate a moment before he climbed out of his pickup in the visitors’ parking lot. He took a serious look at the clouds building up in the western sky as he walked into the Navajo Tribal Police building. End of autumn, he was thinking. Monsoon season pretty much over. Handsome clouds of fog over the Lukachukai range this morning, but nothing promising a really good female rain. Just a noisy male thunderstorm. It would be hunting season soon, he thought, which normally would have meant a lot of work for him. This year he could just kick back, sit by the fire. He’d let younger cops try to keep track of the poachers and go hunting for the city folks who always seemed to be losing themselves in the mountains. Leaphorn sighed as he walked through the entrance. He should have been enjoying that sort of thinking, but he wasn’t. He felt…well…retired. Nobody in the police department hall. Good. He hurried into the reception office. Good again. Nobody there except the pretty young Hopi woman manning the desk, and she was ignoring him, chatting on the telephone. He took off his hat and waited. She said: “Just a moment,” into the telephone, glanced at him, said: “Yes, sir. Can I help you?” “I had a message from Captain Pinto. Pinto said I should come in and pick up my mail.” “Mail?” She looked puzzled. “And you are?” “I’m Joe Leaphorn.” “Leaphorn. Oh, yes,” she said. “The captain said you might be in.” She fumbled in a desk drawer, pulled out a manila envelope, looked at the address on it. Then at him. “Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn,” she said. “Is that you?” “That was me,” Leaphorn said. “Once.”
He thanked her, took the envelope back to his truck, and climbed in, feeling even more obsolete than he had as he’d driven by the police-parking-only spaces and stopped in visitors’ parking. The return address looked sort of promising. Why Worry Security, with a Flagstaff, Arizona, street address. The name penned under that was Mel Bork. Bork? Well, at least it wasn’t just more of the junk mail he’d been receiving. “Bork?” Leaphorn said it aloud, suddenly remembering. Smiling. Ah yes. A skinny young man named Bork had been his fellow semi-greenhorn westerner friend from way, way back when both of them were young country-boy cops sent back East to learn some law enforcement rules at the FBI Academy. And his first name, by golly, had been Melvin. Leaphorn opened his Swiss army knife, slit the envelope, slid out the contents. A page of slick paper from a magazine with a letter clipped to it. He took off the clip and put the letter aside. The page was from Luxury Living, and a color photograph dominated it. It showed a grand high-ceilinged room with a huge fireplace, a trophy-sized rack of elk antlers mounted above it, a tall wall of shelved books on one side, and a sliding-glass door on the other. The glass door offered a view into a walled garden and, above the wall, snow-capped mountains. Leaphorn recognized the mountains. The San Francisco Peaks, with Humphreys Peak lording over them. That told him this Luxury Living home was somewhere on the north edge of Flagstaff. The assorted furniture looked plush and expensive. But Leaphorn’s attention was drawn away from this by an arrow inked on the photograph. It pointed to a weaving that was hanging beside the fireplace, and under the shank of the arrow were the words:
Hey, Joe, Ain’t this that rug you kept telling me about? And if it is, what does that do to that arson case of ours? Remember? The one that the wise men ruled was just a careless smoker. And take a look at those antlers! Folks who know this guy tell me he’s a hunting fool. See attached letter. Leaphorn let the letter wait while he stared at the photograph. It did remind him of the rug he had described to Bork—a great rectangle of black, gray, red tones, blues, and yellows all partially encircled by the figure of Rainbow Man. It seemed to be just as his memory told him. He noticed a symbol for Maii’—the Coyote spirit—at his work of turning order into chaos and others representing the weapons that Monster Slayer and Born for Water had stolen from the sun to wage their campaign to make the Dineh safe from the evils that had followed them up from the underworld. But the photograph was printed much too small to show other details that had impressed Leaphorn when he’d seen the original in Totter’s trading post gallery before it burned. He remembered seeing faint suggestions of soldiers with rifles, for example, and tiny white dots scattered in clusters here and there, which someone at the gallery had told him the weaver had formed from parts of feathers. They represented big silver peso coins, the currencies in the mountain west in the mid-1860s. And thus they represented greed, the root of all evil in the Navajo value system. That, of course, was the theme of the famous old rug. And that theme made it a sort of bitter violation of the Navajo tradition. The Dineh taught its people to live in the peace and harmony of hozho, they must learn to forgive—a variation of the policy that belagaana Christians preached in their Lord’s Prayer but all too often didn’t seem to practice.
And the rug certainly didn’t practice forgetting old transgressions. It memorialized the worst cruelty ever imposed on the Navajo. The Long Walk—the captivity, misery, and the terrible death toll imposed on the Navajo by the white culture’s fierce hunger for gold and silver—and the final solution they tried to apply to get the Dineh out of the way. But could this picture torn from the magazine be of that same rug? It looked like it. But it didn’t seem likely. Leaphorn remembered standing there examining the rug framed on the gallery wall behind its dusty glass. Remembered someone there telling him of its antiquity and its historical value. If this was a pre-fire photo, then how had it gone from the wall of this lavish house at the edge of Flagstaff to Totter’s gallery. The other possibility was that it had been taken from the gallery before the fire. Furniture and other items in the room suggested the photo was recent. So did a distinctly modern painting on another wall. Leaphorn put the magazine page back on the car seat, and considered another old and unpleasant memory the photo provoked from the day after the fire.
The angry face of Grandma Peshlakai glowering at him through the window of his patrol car while he tried to explain why he had to leave—had to drive over to meet Captain Desbah, who had called him from Totter’s place. “It’s a federal case,” he’d told her. “They had a fire over at Totter’s Trading Post Saturday. Burned up a man, and now the FBI thinks the dead man is a murderer they’ve been after for years. Very dangerous man. The federals are all excited.” “He’s dead?” Leaphorn agreed. “He can’t run then,” Grandma said, scowling at him. “This man I want you to catch is running away with my buckets of pinyon sap.” Leaphorn had tried to explain. But Grandma Peshlakai was one of the important old women in her Kin Litsonii (Yellow House) clan. She felt her family was being slighted. Leaphorn had been young then, and he’d agreed that the problem of live Navajos should be just as important as learning the name of a dead belagaana. Remembering it now, much older, he still agreed with her. Her case involved the theft of two economy-sized lard buckets filled with pinyon sap. They had been stolen from the weaving shed beside her hogan. She’d explained that the loss was much more significant than it might sound to a young policeman who had never endured the weary days of onerous labor collecting that sap. “And now it’s gone, so how do we waterproof our baskets? How do we make them so they hold water and have that pretty color so tourists will buy them? And now, it is too late for sap to drip. We can’t get more. Not until next summer.” Grandma had bitten back her anger and listened, with traditional Navajo courtesy, while he tried to explain that this dead fellow was probably one of the top people on the FBI’s most wanted list. A very bad and dangerous man. When he’d finished, rather lamely as he remembered, Grandma nodded. “But he’s dead. Can’t hurt nobody now. Our thief is alive. He has our sap. Two full buckets. Elandra there”—she nodded to her granddaughter, who was standing behind her, smiling at Leaphorn—“Elandra saw him driving away. Big blue car. Drove that direction—back toward the highway. You policemen get paid to catch thieves. You could find him, I think, and get our sap back. But if you mess around with the dead man, maybe his chindi will get after you. And if he was as bad as you say, it would be very, very bad chindi.” Leaphorn sighed. Grandma was right, of course. And the sort of mass murderer that was high on the FBI’s Most Wanted list would, based on Leaphorn’s memory of his maternal grandfather’s hogan stories, be a formidable chindi. Since that version of ghost represented all of the unharmonious and evil characteristics that couldn’t follow the dead person into his last great adventure, they were the sort any traditional Navajo would prefer to avoid. But, chindi or not, duty had called. He drove away, leaving Grandma staring resentfully after him. Remembering, too, the last theory she had offered. When he’d asked Grandma Peshlakai if she had any idea who would want to steal her pinyon sap, she stood silent a long moment, hesitating, looking around, making sure Elandra was out of hearing range. “They say that sometimes witches need it for something. That sometimes a skinwalker might want it,” Grandma had said. That was a version of the witchcraft legend he had never heard before. Leaphorn remembered telling Grandma Peshlakai that he doubted if this very worst tribal version of witchcraft evil would be driving a car. She had frowned at him a moment, shook her head, and said: “Why you think that?” It was a question he couldn’t think of any answer for. And now, all these years later, he still couldn’t.
He sighed, picked up the letter: Dear Joe, If I remember you correctly, by now you’ve stared at that picture and examined the rug and you’re trying to figure out when the photo was taken. Well, old Jason Delos didn’t buy that mansion of his on that mountain slope outside of Flagstaff until just a few years ago. As I remember your story, that famous old “cursed” rug you told me about was reduced to ashes in that trading-post fire long before that. Yet there it is, good as new, posing for the camera. You remember we agreed there was more going on in that crime, and that maybe it really was a crime, and not just a careless drunk accident and a lot of witchcraft talk. Anyway, I thought you’d be interested in seeing this. I’m going to look into it myself. See if I can find out where old man Delos got the rug, etc. If you’re interested, give me a call and I’ll let you know if I learn anything. And if you ever get as far south and west as Flagstaff, I’ll buy you lunch, and we can tell each other how we survived that FBI Academy stuff. Meanwhile, stay well, Mel
~~~~
Seeing the rug, as presented on the cover, is a cultural phenomenon, that is most significant for the representation of man as well as because it was the women of the Tribe who created these masterpieces. There was no doubt in Leaphorn's mind that the picture he had received by an old friend did indeed very much appear to be the same one-of-a-kind rug that he had once closely studied in a gallery he had visited. He knew he wanted to know more, but did not imagine that it would be quicker than planned because the friend who had first contacted him about the rug...was...now...dead!
After talking with Mrs. Bork and hearing her fear as she shared a threatening call:
“Mr. Bork, I have some very serious advice for you. You need to get back to minding your own business. Stop trying to dig up old bones. Let those old bones rest in peace. You keep poking at ’em and they’ll jump out and bite you.” Silence. Then a chuckle. “You’ll be just a set of new bones.” The tape clicked off.
Whether he was now retired or not, Leaphorn knew only one thing--he was on the case! And he would be heading for Flagstaff to learn more about the rug, the present owner, and if Mel had actually visited there, and what had happened...
An interesting character was introduced at the location of the rug. Tommy was an orphan brought from overseas and had been taught how to cook, take care of his boss's needs, and more. On the other hand, his boss had little time to deal with Leaphorn's questions, especially when Mel's name was brought up. While acknowledging that Mel had visited, he made it quite clear that Mel had spent little time with the owner of the rug...
But Leaphorn used his connections and sought an autopsy, which confirmed that Mel had been dead before his car went over the mountain... He had been murdered. And Leaphorn was fairly sure just how it had been done...
Because the same thing could have also killed him!
Even if that were true, the old stories of shape shifters kept coming into his mind and he wondered if his mind was still able to put together the entire set of events that seemed to be happening...
Leaphorn had no comment on that. He held his wristwatch close enough to read its hands, looked out at the brightening sky, and found himself confronting the same need for self-analysis he’d felt a few days ago when he was home alone, analyzing what he had run into since he’d begun this chase of Mel Bork and the tale-teller rug. Wondering if he had slipped prematurely into senile dementia. Why was he here and what did he expect to accomplish? He couldn’t quite imagine that. But on the other hand, he couldn’t imagine turning back either. So they may as well get on with it...
In the early chapters of the book, there had been a story about a grandmother who had contacted Leaphorn to help her catch a thief of a very important substane used in their basket weaving. During that conversation, Leaphorn had been called to a fire location where a man had been killed and he told her he'd have to leave. She pointed out that the man was already dead, while he was alive and the thief who had robbed her was also alive, so he should work on her request for assistance before going to look at a dead man. Leaphorn had silently agreed, and also agreed with her even as the book closed... So, in his own way, he made sure that he had sufficient money to pay her for what she would have made if he had first caught her thief.... So in all ways, other than the retrieval of the stolen rug, if that is what had happened, I loved how Hillerman closed out each detail for the characters in the book...
And the rug? My guess is that, in some magical way, the rug would be returned to the Navajo tribe from which it had been stolen...
It reminded her that she was closing in on Bad Luck, a tiny town not far from Austin, a town she’d sworn she’d never set foot in again. The sunroof was open, harsh rays beating down on the top of her head, strands of her red-blond hair yanked from the knot she’d twisted to the base of her skull. She didn’t care. She’d kicked off her high heels at the airport and was driving barefoot, her eyebrows slammed together in concentration, the notes of some old Madonna song barely piercing her consciousness. She took a corner a little too fast, and the tires on the Caddy screeched, but she didn’t slow down. After ten years of being away, ten years ostracized, ten years of living life her way in Seattle, she couldn’t wait to pull up to the century-old home where she’d been raised. Not that she’d stay long. Just do her business and get the hell out.
“We need to talk.” “What the hell are you doin’ here, darlin’?” Disappointment clouded his blue eyes, and a part of her wanted to run to him and throw her arms around his neck and say oh, Daddy, I’ve missed you. But she didn’t. Instead she swallowed back the urge to break down altogether and stiffened her spine. She was no longer a frightened little girl. “Alone, Judge. We need to talk alone.” She stared pointedly at his latest gofers. The men, dismissed by a nod from their boss, kicked out their chairs, and with muffled words and hasty assurances from Judge Cole that they’d get together later, walked stiffly around the back of the house and through a gate. In the ensuing stillness, when the sound of bees humming and a woodpecker drumming were all that could be heard, Shelby didn’t waste any time. She reached into her briefcase, pulled out the manila envelope, ripped it open and spilled its contents onto the glass-topped table where the ice in three half-consumed drinks was still melting. The black-and-white photo of a girl of nine or ten stared up at them, and the Judge sucked in his breath as he slowly sat down again. Shelby noticed that his wedding band had cut a groove in the ring finger of his left hand, a ring that hadn’t been removed in over thirty years, and on his right, he sported a flashy diamond that most Hollywood brides would envy. Shelby leaned over the table so that the tip of her nose was nearly touching her father’s. With one finger she pointed to the black-and-white picture. “This is my daughter,” she said, her insides quaking, her voice unsteady. “Your granddaughter.” She looked for any sign of recognition in the old man’s face. There was none. “She looks just like me. Just like Mom.” The Judge glanced at the photo. “There’s a resemblance.” “No resemblance, Judge. This girl is a dead ringer. And here”—she edged a piece of paper from beneath the photograph—“this is a copy of her birth certificate. And this ... the death notice of her as a baby. Read it—Elizabeth Jasmine Cole. She was supposed to have died, Judge—of complications, heart problems—right after birth. You . . . you told me she hadn’t made it. That those ashes I spread in the hills ... oh, God, whose were they?” she asked, her voice cracking, the immense pain rising up again. Shaking her head, not wanting to hear any more lies, she said, “Don’t . . . oh, God.” Shelby’s throat was clogged and she thought she might throw up. “You lied to me, Dad. Why?” “I didn’t—” “Don’t! Just don’t, okay!” She held both her palms outward, in his face, and stepped back. Bile roiled in her stomach. Beneath her skin, her muscles were quivering in rage. “Someone, and I don’t know who, sent me all this. I got it yesterday, and so I came back here to clear it up. Where’s my daughter, Dad?” she demanded through teeth that were clenched so hard her jaw ached. “What the hell did you do with her?” “Now, darlin’—” “Stop it! Right now! Don’t call me darlin’, or sweetie, or kiddo, or missy or any of those cute little names, okay? I’m all grown up now, in case you hadn’t noticed, and you can’t smooth-talk your way out of this, Judge. I’m not a little girl. I know better than to believe a word that passes through your lying lips, and I only came back here to find my child, Judge—my daughter.” She thumped her chest with her thumb. “Yours and who else’s?” he asked, his smile having disappeared and the old, hard edge she remembered coming back to his voice. “That—that doesn’t matter.” “Doesn’t it?” The Judge scattered the papers across the table and frowned, his eyes narrowing behind wire-rimmed reading glasses. “Odd, don’t you think? You get proof that you’ve got a kid during the same week that Ross McCallum is going to be released from prison.” “What?” Her knees nearly buckled. McCallum couldn’t be given his freedom. Not yet. Not ever. Fear congealed her blood. She was suddenly hot and cold all at once. “Oh, so you didn’t know?” The Judge settled back in his chair and played with the ivory handle of his cane. He looked up at her over the tops of his glasses. “Uh-huh. Ross is gonna be a free man. Oh . . . and Nevada Smith, he’s still around.” Her stupid heart skipped a beat, but she managed to keep her face bland, her expression cool. Nevada was out of her life. Had been for a long, long time. Nothing would change that. Ever. “Yep,” the Judge went on, fingertips caressing the smooth knob, “inherited a rocky scrap of land that he’s tryin’ to ranch. No one knows how he’ll handle Ross’s freedom, but the word is that there is certainly gonna be hell to pay.” He bit his lower lip and scowled thoughtfully, as he’d often done while hearing long-winded summations when he was on the bench. “And now someone sends you bait—a little chum in the water to lure you back to a town you’ve sworn you’d never return to. Someone’s playin’ you for a fool, Shelby,” he said, slowly nodding his head, as if in agreement with himself, “and it ain’t me.” For once she believed him.
Lisa Jackson was one of those favorite authors during my early years of reading purely for pleasure. So, when I grabbed Unspoken, I was disappointed. There was little, if any, suspense that you could identify. The villain was clearly identifiable, since he was already a part of the main character's life. Indeed, he had already attacked her during high school!
But, for me, the most devastating was that Jackson totally ignored the WHY of having been lied to that her baby had died at birth... When you call a novel suspenseful, you'd better ensure that you clear up what caused the suspense! Duh...
Since there was little to actually concentrate on in this supposed riveting novel, I did get involved more closely with the family dynamics. Unfortunately, this was another book where a main character comes right out of today's headlines... Shelby's father was a Judge--a man who thrived on power and who felt he had a right to do what he wanted to do--sound familiar? When Shelby got pregnant in high school, the Judge made it clear that she had brought shame to the family structure and he would handle everything... Shelby was naive enough to accept that the baby had died and that she would not need to bear the pain of seeing her child.
But she had been relocated during the pregnancy and the boy who she felt was her baby's father was left out of everything that occurred. It was a shock, then, when Shelby went to him and told him she'd had a child and she believed he was the father.
Somebody wanted her to know, and had sent a picture of the child, who looked exactly like Shelby. That mystery was also not a problem to figure out the whodunit...
“That’s what I was told by everyone, but now... now I think I was lied to, and that she’s alive, but I don’t know where. She was probably adopted through the black market.”
Nevada was still single, but had little to do with activities in the town, so Shelby caught him with news he didn't know how to deal with, at least at first. But it wasn't long that he was willing to try to find his daughter. Around about that time, it seemed that there were more people knowing what was going on than there should have been, with little explanation for those involved and their actions. I began feeling like Jackson was under a deadline and continuity and rewrites were ignored to finish the book... even if that was not the case... To complete what I felt should have been explained and merged into the overall story would have taken about 20 pages--not too much to ask from a well-known author, is it?
Ol’ Judge Cole
Was a nasty old soul
And a nasty old soul was he
He called for his noose
And he called for his gun
And he called for his henchmen three.
The poem made her cringe inwardly, but she refused to let it get to her.
Right now all she could think about was finding Elizabeth.
And what about Nevada? her mind taunted,
but she wouldn’t fall victim to those old feelings again.
Nevada was a man whom she had to deal with—the father of her child. Nothing more. Until she located her daughter, nothing else mattered.
Shelby's actions are understandable as she is learning just how much and how long she was deceived. My impression of Nevada was that he handled the situation much better and was willing to, for the most part, accept how deeply Shelby had hurt him by just leaving. This relationship was the only salvation for a bright spot in the novel... You will have to decide about this one...
Author, playwright and award-winning screenwriter shares current interests and more than 50 years of writing.
Hegseth's ideological war on truth and military education damages the nation.
I grew up in the Army. My father, Colonel Harold F. Hamit MD, FACS, was drafted in World War Two. He was a medical student at NYU and ordered to stay and complete his degree. He was very smart, published some scientific papers before the Army drafted him, and knew how to do research. He got a taste of combat as the Regimental Surgeon for the 12th Philippine Scouts at the end of the war, and afterwards was part of the Occupation Forces in Japan.
This was after I was born. Mother had to give up her own nursing career. This was part of the morals of the time.
Having no money to buy a medical practice, Dad stayed in the Army and began a series of surgical residencies at various Army hospitals. We moved from post to post every two to three years, a traumatic event for my mother, my sister, and me, every time, because we had to always start over in a new place. The needs of the service came first. Dad served in Korea as Commanding Officer of the 1st M.A.S.H. Yeah, the one they made the funny movie and television series about, based on a book written by one of his fellow doctors.
It wasn’t funny for him. He came back a changed man. Looking at my own PTSD symptoms, I believe he was also a sufferer but could not admit it. In the 1950s any suggestion of mental illness would have been career ending. So would have been any political activity. Army officers served the nation, but they didn’t vote and expressed no political opinions. Dad became impatient, quick to anger, demanding, and a bully. His free time was consumed by a series of research papers. He drew and lettered his own charts and graphs, a painstaking process. During his surgical residency in Denver, the Army tasked him to get a Masters degree in biochemistry from the University of Colorado, Boulder. We then transferred to Washington DC, where he was assigned to the Army Surgeon General’s office to administer research contracts. He had quite a few, and traveled a lot to projects at various universities and corporations that made medical gear and developed new medicines and therapies.
Two of these projects stand out. They had major impacts upon not just American but global society. The first was a method for treating heart attacks at the moment they happened. Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, or CPR — quickly adapted worldwide, saving millions of lives. The second was for “bone glue”, originally intended as a quick fix for fractures, and then discovered to stick anything back together with amazing speed and strength, including soft tissue. Thus was born Superglue! A very useful product. And created with a few thousand dollars of government money.
Dad’s part was to approve the payments. Nothing more. But it was the combination of surgical residency and his Masters in Biochemistry that gave him the knowledge to supervise that research.
Let me depart from my family history, and explore some examples from military history. Army involvement in scientific and technological research goes back to the days of Thomas Edison. Officers with advanced degrees are commonplace, and becoming a General now requires a Doctorate or multiple Masters or both. We have the most educated, intellectual military in the World. It is part of our soft power. This is part of what our very insecure and jealous Secretary of Defense seeks to undermine.
In 1942, a Lt. Col. named Jimmie Doolittle planned a daring raid on Japan with B-24 bombers flying from an aircraft carrier. It was a daring demonstration, but one based in science and engineering. Doolittle had a PhD in aeronautical engineering from M.I.T. He was a famous aviator in the 1930s and helped design the new generation of bombers. He knew it could be done. He’d done the math. But it was his military education, discipline, and leadership that got it done, and propelled him up to General’s stars on his shoulders.
Few officers are selected to study at civilian universities. The Defense Department has its own schools in abundance, many of which offer advanced degrees in topics seldom taught elsewhere. Strategy, Logistics, and Intelligence are some of them, although a few civilian institutions now also offer such degrees to satisfy an increasing demand. A high-tech military needs high-tech leaders, both military and civilian.
After the Vietnam War, General William E. DePuy determined that we lost that war because many of our officers simply didn’t have the smarts that went with advanced education to win it. Yes, we won every battle, but still lost the war. Why? Because we underestimated the enemy, because we did not know him. We had a distorted primitive view of his culture, resolve, and political will. We didn’t understand the situation. and that started with Westmoreland himself, trapped in his own nostalgia for the big battles of World War Two.
DePuy was part of the “never again, no more Vietnams” faction in the Defense Department that thought the next war would begin with a Soviet Invasion of Western Europe though the Fulda Gap. I served in Frankfurt then, and that was the thinking. The Soviets had better tanks and more of them.
In 1973, DePuy created the Training and Doctrine Command or TRADOC. It became the largest university in the world, incorporating courses from many civilian institutions. This only makes sense. Why create a MBA degree when Harvard has the best one in the World? Forget about “woke” or political considerations. You want your logistics officers, all of whom interact with the civilian sector, to walk the same walk and talk the same talk. It saves time and money, and provides new careers for retiring officers and NCOs. It puts everyone on the same page.
A comfortable retirement is the goal of almost every American military officer intent on a career. Those multiple assignments are building blocks to acquire knowledge and expertise. They test people and gradually weed out the ones less able or less willing. Career decisions are family affairs. I’ve known officers to leave mid-career when their spouse said, “enough, it’s me or your career.” The usual tour is two or three years, before you move on to a new assignment and make room for someone else. The maximum is five years. My father had that as Chief of Surgery at Brooke Army General Hospital in San Antonio near the end of his 26-year career. He was a Colonel by then. Before that, he worked on a research project at Baylor University Medical School with famous surgeons Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley. He was their equal then, and teaching other doctors the delicate art of surgery.
This carefully planned system of education and practical knowledge acquired over 20 or more years is what Hegseth messed with when he blocked four promotions from Colonel to Brigadier General. Two are Black and two are women. Hegseth’s overreach is based on his well-known bigotry. It is “command interference”. Way below his pay grade. There is an informal rule in our military. You don’t break another man’s (or woman’s) rice bowl. Not without certain cause, based upon violations of trust or the regulations.
Stopping a career because of prejudice disrupts military planning. It makes the organization less intelligent, and reinforces bigotry that the US military has been trying to eliminate since 1948. Sentimental appeals of “heritage” based upon the Lost Cause mythology of Neo-Confederates, and the desire to keep women “barefoot and pregnant” at a time when human capital is at a premium, is another part of the Christian Nationalist agenda being advanced at every level of society. Hegseth glories in this identity.
He fired the top Army chaplain not just because he is Black and a Baptist, but because he resisted Hegseth’s interference in matters of Faith. Like politics, religion is supposed to be free of command interference. The firing of the leader of the Training Command is another effort to impose ideology on the force. Hegseth’s culture war extends to military dependents’ high school libraries. He has done the same for those at other military schools. He has been sued for violating the civil rights of children. An ignominious first. The goal is to suppress thought and discourse at a time when our soldier scholars are rethinking tactics, strategy and the military of the future. Hegseth seems to have no idea about this. He postures and he preaches, but he does not lead.
Hegseth’s public religious services and prayers are obscene, and seek to override decades of military culture and law. He is already a probable war criminal, and his excuse that he is just following policy set out by President Trump simply puts our Criminal-in-Chief in the dock with him.
Hegseth wants to turn back the clock to a hundred years ago when Jim Crow laws and terrorism ruled many communities. Suppression of Civil Rights deprived the nation of many talented workers in both our military and civilian workforce.
Hegseth’s military career ended because his bigotry labeled him an insider threat and cancelled his security clearance. It denied him higher rank. In his own words, the Army “spit him out”. Trump’s selection of him as Secretary of Defense was a bad joke, except no one is laughing. Hegseth is advocating war crimes and creating a quiet mutiny among the flag rank officers he despises.
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Tens of Billions of Dollars has been spent for a war that was not approved by anyone that is responsible for such military actions...
“Any idea why so many employees at the Inn left or were fired before it even opened for business?” I asked. There has to be a clue in there somewhere.
“Monica didn’t get fired.”
“No, just murdered.”
“If she finds the killer,” I corrected. It was obvious Harry’s ego took a hit when Ruby removed him from the investigation. “But there’s credible evidence that puts you in the murdered victim’s room, and you admitted you were at the scene of the crime.” Carrie leaned back in her chair and jabbed her finger at Harry... Harry lowered his voice like he was ready to share a deep dark secret. “Ruby was checking into Monica’s background. I’m not sure who knew about this.” “Why?” I whispered. Nothing like being pulled into a cloak and dagger situation. Harry pulled his chair out and sat back down and leaned into our circle. We all pulled our chairs closer and waited. He glanced at Minnie. “Because of all the break-ins. She wanted to know if anyone working at Nana’s Inn could be connected to the thefts.” “What did Ruby find out?” I asked, becoming breathless from the tension. He leaned back and sighed. “There wasn’t much to find. It was like Monica arrived in Rock Bluff from outer space. If there’s a big story here, it could put Ruby in the spotlight, or,” he paused, “someone got to Ruby to shut down that part of the investigation.” “A cover-up?” Minnie asked. Her eyes wide with excitement. “Harry, don’t forget that Monica was holding one of my necklaces when Ellie discovered her body,” Minnie said. “How does that fit in?” Harry shrugged, showing frustration with this piece of the puzzle. “I don’t know. Until they find all the stolen items, we just don’t know.” “Maybe that’s why Monica’s room was ransacked,” Carrie suggested. “The murderer was looking for the rest of the stuff.” “That’s possible,” Harry agreed. “If Monica was involved in the thefts, I’m wondering if she got double-crossed. And now she’s dead. I know it sounds crazy. I know you probably think I’m crazy but…” “Wait,” I interrupted. “Minnie, you suspected Monica had a secret. Maybe she was hiding at the Inn with the loot and someone found her and took care of her before she could disappear with everything.” The air almost crackled with the back and forth of ideas. Minnie was the next to add a piece to the puzzle. “That does make sense now when I think about how secretive she was. But who?” Minnie asked the million dollar question. “This is one giant circle,” I said. My head was spinning with all the talk, all the possibilities, and all heading nowhere. “Remind me why we’re even talking about this? I’m not a detective.”
Harry stood up so fast his chair tipped over backwards. “But I am and I need your help. All four of you. I’m trying to stay out of jail, but I understand if you don’t want to get involved.” I straightened the chair and pushed Harry back down into it. “Sit down and get your spurs out of your behind. “I didn’t say we wouldn’t help, but why us?” He lowered his voice to a quiet desperate plea. “There aren’t many people in town I’d trust with my future more than the four of you. You’re honest, you know this town inside and out, and by getting to the bottom of this, you’ll help Minnie and the Red Apple Inn.” That wasn’t fair. He stuck a knife in my weak spot. “Someone dangerous is out there,” Harry said. “We have to be careful. We shouldn’t trust anyone.” “Do you think the murderer is someone we don’t even have on our list yet?” I dreaded the answer before it was spoken. “Anything is possible,” he answered. “I’ve learned that you always need to be prepared for what you least expect.” I’d learned that lesson the hard way, too. The principal at my school handing me my walking papers was my most recent example.
Minnie stood up and stretched. “I need to process all this information. Carrie, do you mind if I play your piano?” Both dogs looked at her expectantly. Everyone needed a change. “Of course not. We’d all enjoy some music.” While I contemplated the enormous task in front of us, my stomach clenched in a worrisome knot. Worry for myself, my sisters, and Minnie. Harry too, but if push came to shove, he could take care of himself. Beautiful music drifted into the kitchen. Then, the two dogs joined in. It was a cacophony of Mozart and howls; beautiful and hilarious at the same time. I took it as a sign—laugh when the going gets tough, and then get back to work. Chapter Thirteen While Minnie entertained us with her piano playing, three amateur sleuths along with one handsome detective, formed a plan in the kitchen.
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I highly advise if you choose to read this book, that you get a bag of doughnuts in advance, because lots of communication occurs in the book around the dining table...or with a bag of doughnuts! Actually after finishing the last book I had read, I was ready for a light and fun cozy! Doughnuts and dogs will keep you involved from the very first page, I promise!
This cozy is a little different than others in that, we have a small group conducting the amateur investigation... But let's set the stage to begin... I recommend you follow Ellie who has an interesting personality--she must have because she's just been fired as a teacher, while the children she taught loved her... What's up with that?! In any event, by the time she got to her sister's house where she is staying, her older sister already knows she's been fired and has a new job option for Ellie to consider! Yes, news does travel that fast in this small town!
Interestingly, the new job would be as a dog walker. Ellie was willing to at least check it out and when she learned, and saw, that she would get an apartment onsite, that quickly convinced her. She loved dogs, she enjoyed being outdoors and accepted the job. Actually, it turned out to include, also, being a companion to the owner of an Inn...
It didn't take long to gather her belongings and head for her new location. She was thrilled to finally have a place of her own... And, she could take her own dog with her...
Who, on the very first walk around the grounds of her new home, she saw him run toward rose bushes and, looking closer, it looked like legs were extended beyond the bushes... On her very first day, Ellie had discovered the body of the Inn's gardener!
And, without even getting to sleep one night in her home, she, as well as the owner of the Inn returned to the home of Ellie's sister, since the Inn was now the scene of a crime....
Actually, that soon turned out to be perfect because Ellie's older sister was a lawyer, Abby her other sister was the owner of the new donut shop that would soon be opening and was also an excellent cook and were both interested in helping Winnie the Inn owner who had to leave her home and close the Inn... It wasn't very long that Winnie had become excited and involved as they joined together to work to solve the murder!
And then there was Harry who was a detective with the local police, but his partner explained that, since he was also a relative of the Owner and had at one time been involved with the victim, that he should recuse himself... Harry was not pleased but decided not to fight it, especially since he joined the little group who was now diligently working to determine whodunit... Besides all of the delicious meals that he was being invited to share as they always had some type of refreshments as they discussed assignments and where they were headed in the investigation...
So while Carrie checked out the legal issues related to what had happened thus far and Abby was constantly cooking and baking to feed those doing the legwork, Ellie was the one who went out looking at the various locations of those who might have either been involved or might know something about Monica's life. And, of course, one of those issues was that there had already been a string of thefts happening... But the climax actually occurred, seemingly, quite by accident but Ellie was ready and watching as things began to be questionable...and...ultimately discovered!
Ahhhh, I think Abby has a new helper...
This new series is bound to delight anybody who enjoys having animal characters as part of a cozy mystery! Highly recommended!
There is a moment every trial lawyer understands instinctively. It is the moment when the weight of testimony becomes so cumulative, so internally consistent, and so costly to the witnesses themselves, that reasonable doubt collapses under its own impossibility. Eyewitness accounts are, in a court of law, the most powerful form of evidence available. The more witnesses, the stronger the case. When those witnesses cannot be shaken — when they hold to their testimony not for personal gain but at the cost of everything they possess, including their lives — the evidentiary threshold for truth has not merely been met. It has been exceeded.
This week, in the Christian world, we celebrate an event that demands precisely that kind of evidentiary scrutiny. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is not a whispered legend that accumulated in the dark corners of an obscure religious movement. It is, by any honest historical accounting, one of the most extensively documented events in the ancient world — and the only event in human history so transformative that it literally reset the calendar of Western civilization. We do not simply divide time by convenience. We divide it by this: Before Christ and Anno Domini — in the year of the Lord. No other figure, no other event, no other claim has achieved that singular distinction.
The Skeptic’s Honest Problem
It is fashionable in rationalist circles to dismiss the resurrection as a category error — the intrusion of the supernatural into a universe governed by observable, repeatable natural law. That dismissal deserves to be taken seriously, because the objection is not intellectually trivial. It is, in fact, the very objection that one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated scientists spent a lifetime answering — not from a pulpit, but from a laboratory.
Dr. Charles H. Townes, Nobel Laureate in Physics, co-inventor of the laser and the maser, and one of the seminal scientific minds of the modern era, argued with characteristic precision that the conflict between science and religion rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of what both disciplines actually do. In his landmark 1966 essay, “The Convergence of Science and Religion,” Townes wrote that both science and religion are, at their core, efforts to understand the nature of the universe and humanity’s place within it. Science, he insisted, is not the enemy of faith. It is, properly understood, faith’s most rigorous companion.
Townes understood that science itself operates on a foundation of unprovable postulates — assumptions about the uniformity of nature, the reliability of human cognition, the coherence of mathematical description — that cannot be verified without circular reasoning. Every scientist, he argued, begins with a leap of faith that the universe is intelligible and that the human mind is capable of apprehending its order. That is not a scientific conclusion. It is a metaphysical commitment. What Townes called “rational faith” was not credulity dressed in ecclesiastical robes. It was the disciplined willingness to follow evidence wherever it leads, even when it leads beyond the boundaries of current scientific consensus.
The resurrection, examined through the lens of rational faith, is not a retreat from reason. It is reason’s most demanding test.
The Testimony of Five Hundred
The Apostle Paul, writing to the church at Corinth no later than twenty-five years after the crucifixion — well within the living memory of the events themselves — sets down what scholars recognize as one of the earliest creedal formulations in Christian literature. In his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter fifteen, he states the case with the directness of a man presenting evidence in open court:
Christ died for our sins, was buried, was raised on the third day, and appeared — first to Peter, then to the Twelve, then to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom were still alive at the time of Paul’s writing, then to James, then to all the apostles, and finally to Paul himself.
This is not hagiographic mythology assembled centuries after the fact. This is a first-century document, written by a man who personally knew the primary witnesses, deliberately noting that the majority of five hundred eyewitnesses were still alive and available for interrogation. It is the rhetorical equivalent of saying: Do not take my word for it. Go ask them. In legal terms, this is not hearsay. This is an open invitation to cross-examination.
No other religious tradition in human history makes this kind of claim on this kind of evidentiary ground. The founders of the world’s other great religions rest in their tombs. Their followers venerate their teachings and honor their graves. Christianity alone insists that its founder’s tomb is empty — and has always been empty — and that more than five hundred people saw him alive after his death.
The Evidence That Cannot Be Dismissed: The Cost of the Testimony
Eyewitness testimony, however numerous, can theoretically be explained by mass delusion, coordinated deception, or social contagion. The skeptic has, historically, reached for each of these explanations. But there is a category of evidence that no psychological or sociological theory of group behavior can adequately address: the willingness of witnesses to die for what they claim to have seen.
People die for what they believe to be true. History is filled with such deaths. But people do not, as a general rule, die for what they know to be false. The distinction is critical.
The eleven disciples who survived the crucifixion and became the primary evangelists of the risen Christ did not retire to comfortable lives of philosophical reflection. They scattered across the known world — to Rome, to Persia, to India, to Ethiopia — and they proclaimed a single, unvarying message: We saw him. We touched him. He ate with us. He spoke with us. He was dead, and he is alive.
For this testimony, ten of the eleven died violent deaths. Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross in Greece. Peter was crucified upside down in Rome, at his own request, insisting he was unworthy to die in the same manner as his Lord. Thomas was run through with a spear in India. Matthew was killed by the sword in Ethiopia. James, the son of Alphaeus, was thrown from the Temple pinnacle and then beaten to death. Philip was tortured and crucified in Asia Minor. Bartholomew was flayed alive. James, the son of Zebedee, was beheaded by Herod Agrippa, the first of the twelve to be martyred. Thaddaeus was killed by arrows. Simon the Zealot was crucified.
The singular exception was the Apostle John, who, according to ancient tradition, survived an attempt to execute him by immersion in boiling oil at Rome’s Porta Latina gate — a survival that early Christians regarded as miraculous in its own right — and was subsequently exiled to the island of Patmos, where he composed the Book of Revelation, the Gospel bearing his name, and his three epistles. He was the only one of the Twelve to die of old age, and he did so in the same unshakable conviction as his martyred brothers.
Here is the evidentiary point that demands honest engagement: these men had every human incentive to recant. Recantation would have meant survival. It would have meant freedom. It would have meant the restoration of social standing, family relationships, and material security. Not one of them recanted. Not one, under torture, under threat, under the shadow of imminent death, said the simple words that would have saved them: We made it up.
Dr. Townes, who spent his career evaluating the quality of evidence in the service of scientific truth, would have recognized the force of this argument immediately. The falsification test — the willingness to abandon a hypothesis under sufficiently adverse conditions — is foundational to the scientific method. These men were subjected to the most extreme falsification test imaginable, and not one of them abandoned the hypothesis. In the framework of rational inquiry, that is nothing. That is, in fact, everything.
Rational Faith at the Intersection
Charles Townes often said that the universe itself, in its extraordinary fine-tuning, its mathematical elegance, and its hospitality to conscious life, points toward something more than the merely mechanical. He was not arguing for a God of the gaps — the lazy theological move that assigns divine agency to whatever science cannot yet explain. He was arguing for something far more demanding: that the same rigor of mind that leads a physicist to trust the equations, even when they describe phenomena no human has ever directly observed, should lead a thoughtful person to take seriously the convergence of evidence for events that transcend ordinary experience.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is, by that standard, not a demand that the rational mind surrender its integrity. It is an invitation to apply that integrity with full seriousness to a body of evidence that has never been adequately refuted.
The tomb was empty. The witnesses were numerous. Their testimony was consistent across decades and across continents. Their willingness to die for what they claimed to have seen is unparalleled in the history of religious testimony. And the event they described reset the calendar of human civilization.
Miracles, by definition, are rare. They are exceptional precisely because they stand outside the ordinary operations of natural law. But a universe as vast, as complex, and as improbably ordered as the one Dr. Townes spent his life studying is not, at its foundations, a universe in which the exceptional is impossible. It is a universe in which the exceptional, when it occurs, leaves evidence.
The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ has been on the table for two thousand years. The burden of proof, at this point in history, rests with those who wish to explain it away.
Michael A. Smith
Dr. Michael A. Smith is an independent historian, theologian, and author. He is a PhD candidate at Liberty University, completing a dissertation on Nobel Laureate Dr. Charles H. Townes, and hosts the Faith for These Times podcast. He has made eleven research trips to the Middle East, including fieldwork at Tel Mardikh and multiple visits to the Temple Institute in Jerusalem.
Dr. Mike, Once again, you've provided the exact words that we must hear, especially at this time when the Truth of God is so important to All of Your Children!
And to all of us around the world who are confused and afraid, with so many using violence instead of Love... Let us lift our voices and let God Know that We KNOW You Are Alive and With Us!
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