About Henry Fellows
Post 437:
On Killing and Innocence: The Chronicles of Henry Fellows
Chapter 1-3
Chapter 1: Identity
I’m sitting in a stolen car with expired tags in the parking lot of a police station. Downtown Fort Worth, Texas. There’s nothing special about this station. I’ve been to many, sitting in stolen cars or atop purloined motorbikes. Funny thing about police station parking lots—the cops that pass you by, going in and out to do whatever it is cops do, they never suspect there’s a criminal whiling away out there.
It’s the perfect hiding place.
I discovered this by happy accident. Happy accident—maybe that’s the story of my life.
Happy probably isn’t the word you would use; neither would I.
Either way. Here I sit.
My name—well, I’ll get to that, cause you’ve all heard of me, and I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Before you say anything, I know. A conventional human being wouldn’t need to think about giving out his name.
Conventions. Conventional wisdom says I shouldn’t be alive. For a spell, conventional wisdom said I was dead. Maybe conventions aren’t worth what they used to be.
“Hello,” I say to the officers walking by. They look bulky and authentic, nodding their heads at me with a polite seriousness. I myself am a fraud. The whole package. Even my hello. Just said hello, because… there’s some weird reason I’m sure, some little siding in my brain that believes it makes sense to draw attention to myself.
Maybe part of me considers it a game. Always good at games. I remember being the best at hearts, or Monopoly, or darts, even chess. And so it goes. A 38-year-old man still playing.
“Hello,” I say to another pair of officers. These fellas seem to be in a hurry. Must be a pressing matter. Something of import. Perhaps one of Tarrant County’s fine banking establishments has just been robbed. Perhaps someone’s child has been abducted. Perhaps somebody ran the wrong red light and his picture got flagged and now he’s got to go back to Mexico where he belongs.
Doubt it. Pretty sure I know what’s wrong.
The world is a twisted place. In my travels, I found that Mexico was particularly twisted. Particular like every person you meet is particular: they have certain tendencies, qualities, foibles, imperfections, quirks. The United States is extremely particular about its twistedness. That’s probably why I always came back. Love it here. Not that it’s better or worse than any other twisted place. Not judging. Not judging Mexico, either. If Mexico was all that bad, Americans wouldn’t flee there for their two weeks of sun, tequila and whatever other twists they might encounter.
Who am I to say? I’m a criminal, after all.
Turning on the car radio, I dial up the news. There’s a manhunt on. Yeah, they’re looking for me. It’s interesting to be the subject of a manhunt. Not the good kind of interesting. That’s why I’m here, but only in a way. We’ll revisit that momentarily. Right now I have to decide whether or not to walk into that building of brick and forms and little rooms and law. It won’t be pleasant, what with all the shouting and the handcuffs and the questions and the disbelief and the testosterone. Who knows? I turn up the radio.
The man can’t spit the over-annunciated words out fast enough. Some local somebody has informed on me; now the Long Arm is hip to my presence in the North Texas area. That’s why cops were running. Dudes were probably amped up to catch me. Notorious criminals get police amped up. It’s understandable. Having to walk by the same notorious pictures on the wall everyday has to get annoying. The photos themselves; it’s rare to find a flattering likeness, if ever. It must leave them with an insatiable desire to catch the guy so they can tear down the picture and replace it with somebody else just as notorious.
Round and round we go.
The man on the radio says that I’m “armed and dangerous.” To “be on the lookout.” He says it like he’s announcing the winner of concert tickets, like he’s introducing the next crappy pop song. Annoying. Anyway, apparently I have two numbers now. One if you want to talk to me, which nobody knows, another if you want to talk about seeing me. I turn the dial off. I’ve heard this all before. For a while now. It’s all so unfulfilling. I used to be a fairly normal guy—now I have two numbers and they talk about my misdeeds on the radio.
Here I sit. I feel like it’s time for confession, but I don’t think I’m going into the station, yet again. God knows the desire is there. I’m weak, enervating under the high Texas sun. The pavement is baking, radiating off heat. Everything real looks like a mirage. My hands are starting to quiver, but that’s nothing new.
“Hi there,” I say, waving to more running officers. It would be a shame to spoil all their fun. Maybe with all the hullaballoo, the guy from Mexico will get away and back to his loving family. It’s a small comfort, completely fabricated. The things you do when you’re alone for too long.
I want nothing more than to walk into that drab cop shop and drink their stale coffee, watching a public defender squirm under the weight of counseling me. The guy would probably be terrified. I want nothing more than my one phone call. Likely I’d use it to call my other number, or maybe call the radio station to tell the guy that the search was over.
I’m a criminal. Think I already let that out of the bag. Fifteen months ago I escaped from the highest level maximum security prison in America, and ever since it’s been nothing but work.
My name is Henry Fellows. It used to be a moderately well-known name. Certain circles anyway. Business circles. Former heir to the Fellows Security Corporation. Now it’s the name of the FBI’s number one Most Wanted.
There goes the mystery.
Chapter 2: Motive
They don’t know I’m Henry Fellows because I don’t have Henry Fellows’ face anymore. A doctor in the Caribbean made sure of that. A doctor in Europe made sure the work done in the Caribbean wasn’t so aesthetically upsetting. Not that I blame the first doctor. He wasn’t exactly starting with a pristine palette. At that point my face was winded, cracked, bruised and bloody. Escaping from prison can take a toll. I’m sure you weep for me.
After all, I did bad things.
I’m wanted for murder, corporate malfeasance, bank fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, any other fraud I can’t think of right now. God knows what else. Well, escaping from prison, for one. Guess that’s technically a crime, but it’s not like when you’re caught they send you to a courtroom. Just back behind the walls. They don’t want to do any of that, I’m sure. A bullet is the only sane conclusion to my story, says the average lawman. The average lawman wants to put me down, the menacing goblin that I am, the threat to who knows what and who knows where. Not that it really matters. You go out one way or another. A felon on the run with a plan for the future is the definition of hubris.
This is the fifth time I’ve sat outside a police station, deciding. Been all over the world. Walked up the steps to Scotland Yard, fumbled over words with desk sergeants in San Francisco and New York and Sydney. The truth just won’t come out. They won’t believe it. I’m not the guy they’re looking for. Yeah, I could make a fuss, blow out into some histrionics and they’d pull me in, slap some stainless steel on my wrists, but then what? A DNA test, if I’m lucky. More likely, they’ll ship the wish-he-was Henry off to some place with white coats and large black men.
I know about those places. Prison’s not so terrible next to those places. Had a tussle with depression years back, said some things to a friend on a phone, next thing I knew, there they were: white coats and large black men. I’ll admit, there are times when insanity breeches the ramparts of my mind. Not important. Not when white coats and large black men are in the offing. Guessing the coats are white so they can tell when the crazies have urinated on themselves or bludgeoned their bodies or whatever. The black men are there because they are strong, imposing, and know how to put a crazy down. Not that I’m a racist. There were some white guys too. They just don’t stand out in a sea of white coats. I was grateful for the big black guys. When they weren’t pulling some super-strong, meth-fried lunatic to the ground, they would talk to me. I just sat there. It was too scary to do anything else, not to mention dirty. I’ll never forget what one of them said to me. His name was Chris. The dude had arms that could strangle a water buffalo and a voice as calm as the afterward of a lobotomy.
“Why here? Why now?” he asked me. I was sitting as rigid as the furniture, watching the crazies, minding everyone’s business.
“Don’t know,” I said, not really wanting to get into it. “Just counting the minutes until I can get out of this place.” It was a lie. I remember counting the seconds.
“Yeah, you need to get your mess in order. You one of these?” He turned and pointed to poor souls manifesting poor behavior: schizophrenics throwing food, bipolar beasts banging their heads into the walls. As they do.
“No, sir,” I said. “I’m not one of these.” It was maybe one of a handful of times when I unequivocally knew what I was and what I wasn’t. If you’re feeling a little sad, lost in the cosmos, whatever, go and take a field trip to the place with white coats and large black men. It’ll sort you right out.
Just an observation.
Back to the present. I’m pulling out of the station now. Can’t turn myself in just yet. Oh yeah, guess I should have mentioned, I didn’t do it. But that’s what they all say, right? Still, I didn’t. Not what they put me in for. No way. Chris was right that day, and afterward for a long stretch I really did get my mess together. Then came the event. The day of reckoning. Look, I don’t want to be dramatic either, but when you find out that your famous parents were hacked up and that you were the one that did it, dramatic seems appropriate. My motive was apparently jealousy. My prints were apparently at the scene of the crime. Apparently I had a history of belligerence with the victims. Not to mention being institutionalized for a brief spell. A cap full of feathers.
All that was true. If you were the heir to a true mogul, the owner of one of the biggest companies in the world, you’d have a chip on your shoulder, too. Oh yeah, they were my parents, so I’d been to their mansion a time or two, touched whatever, the way you do when you don’t anticipate being accused of a gruesome double homicide. And the belligerence? Guilty! My father was a brilliant but aging man and had no want of his ungrateful son’s advice when it concerned the future of the company. By then I was basically running things anyway, taking Fellows Security to heights and depths he never could’ve dreamed. So we’d argue. Emails, eyewitness accounts a-many all confirmed what everyone suspected. No other suspects. Just Henry Fellows. They filmed the trial. The trial of the century, they called it, but they call every trial that until a better one comes along. Think there’s been five trials of the century since mine.
It wasn’t just my high profile or my parents’ fame that made the case so captivating to the masses. That might have been brushed aside after a few days, what with all the wars and the poverty and the famine in the world. What struck a chord was the nature of the crime. Did I say hacked? Think I did. That’s putting it lightly. You probably know most of the details, but I know every single one. The whole thing’s seared into my memory. Massive brain trauma couldn’t wipe that slate clean. Body parts all over the house. It turned into a macabre Easter egg hunt for police. For days they were pulling a kidney from this nook, teeth from this cranny. Disgusting. I was guilty for jealousy, guilty for having visited, guilty for being recalcitrant with my father, but not the rest. My service record should’ve helped. Didn’t matter. They had their man. Henry Fellows. They didn’t care about me heeding the words of Chris at the nuthouse. Only that I was at the nuthouse. My wife? Oh yeah, my precious prep-school sweetheart. We’d been having problems. Convenient. She’d been sleeping around due to my “distance,” not to mention building a trumped-up case for a divorce I had no knowledge was coming until the day of my arrest.
So much for a character witness.
Poor Henry Fellows. For a while, life was cloud nine: money, pictures in magazines, press conferences, all the accoutrements of excess and esteem. Then nothing. You don’t believe me, probably never will. That’s why I’m turning around, pulling out of this police station. I mean, have you asked the question yet? Who the hell is informing on a guy that can’t be found? Let’s see, best guess, the people who killed my folks and left me to rot in a dungeon. I’ll probably die first, they’re probably watching me at this moment, but I need to find out who really did it. Throwing myself to the wolves would be nice. Finally relax. But I can’t do it, not without… what do they call it—closure?
Eh. What a bunch of crap.
Chapter 3: BMW
I’ve been accused of everything, mostly by people that don’t have a clue. Can’t blame those people. As far as they know, I’m the worst person on the planet, a planet already chock full of assholes. Maybe it was my appearance. The media termed it “all-American,” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. Makes what I did that much creepier. The old face, that is. Old Henry Fellows. Have to say, not a bad looking guy, old Henry. That’s how I got the prettiest girl in school. My sweetheart. Somebody told me her name and I walked right up to her in history class and introduced myself like somebody she needed to know. Worked great. Emma married me before we finished college. It was that sure of a thing. Henry and Emma. Emma and Henry. Sounded good either way, perfect for towels and Christmas cards.
Sure things.
I remember asking Emma why she was taken by me. You know what she said? She said I was handsome. I’m not tooting the horn right here, just trying to make a point. The question came after many conversations, dates, events, socials, the whole thing. We’d talked about everything from family to gravity to Thomas Aquinas and she’d followed right along, giving as well as she got. You’d think after diving those depths she would’ve come up with something better than “You were handsome.” Struck me funny then. Still does. You don’t explore the reefs and the wonders of the deep and look over at your partner and blurt out, “You’re handsome.” Whatever. Metaphors aren’t my forte.
Hell.
Over it and over it I go. She was going to leave me, and before I could really find out why, it was too late. The mess had started. I was up the creek; she was back on shore with the paddle.
I suck at metaphors.
In truth, the sucking doesn’t stop there. I’m willing to own that. I love my kids fiercely, but I wasn’t around enough, given to caprice, etc. I’d make a more comprehensive list but I want to get through this before I die.
There’s a few people reliable people out there, a few individuals that presently need to be engaged. What? You think I survived this long completely on my own? That would truly be a talent. As I make my way southward on I-35, I call Floyd. I can use his name because it’s not his name. Not about to throw anyone under the bus. Besides, nobody knows Floyd’s real name. I can tell you that he has snowy hair and that his robust forearms hint at the physique he once had. Can tell you he drinks only good scotch and how many times he’s been shot. A lot more, too. Just not the name his mama gave him.
“Yeah?” His voice is gravel but nevertheless a welcome sound. He doesn’t know this number; I’ve probably thrown away fifty phones since the last time we talked.
“Floyd. It’s me. You drunk or asleep?”
“Well, I was both. Now I’m just the one. What’s going on, Deer?” Floyd knows my name is Henry but he calls me Deer. There’s a story behind that. “You staying underground?” he asks. “Don’t tell me you’re doing that police station bit again? Crazy kid.”
“Not a kid, Floyd.”
“But you are crazy.” I feel around my right jean pocket for my pills but pull out the wrong bottle. Not those. Not right now. There’s a method to staving off madness. It’s all about timing.
“Kid?”
“Yeah,” I say, turning my attention back to the call and the road. Have to be cautious, stay between the lines. I can’t get clipped for some traffic violation, even with the fake face and the fake papers. Inconvenient. “Look. I’m back in my hometown. Just heard on the radio that someone spotted me.”
“It’s bogus.”
“Yeah, just hold on.”
“No it’s bogus.” I can picture him through the phone, hand over heavy eyes, still trying to teach me right from left.
“Just let me finish.”
“You have the floor,” he grumbles. “Thirty seconds to make sense or I’m hanging up.”
“The news report. It said where I was staying last night. Even knew the car I was driving.”
“Impossible.”
“And yet it happened all the same. Not making this up for kicks.”
“You ditched the car?”
“Like I do every morning.”
“Well,” he says, obviously more awake to the situation. “Change rides twice a day now. Until we know what’s going on.”
I check my mirrors and frame a shot in my head of the cars behind just in case. “Floyd?”
“Yeah, yeah. Thinking. So someone who knows your new face put out a tip, but didn’t bother until you were where?”
“Just like before.”
“You mean…?”
“Yeah. I mean I was sitting outside the frigging Fort Worth PD building ten minutes ago. They didn’t have a clue.”
“You’re a nutbar. These little experiments are gonna get you shot.”
“Chastise me later.”
A few more grumbles. “Okay. I’m up. Let me get back to you in twenty. Just keep moving. You know the drill.”
“I’ll call you. Changing phones.”
“That’s my boy. Got it.”
As he hangs up I put my knee under the steering wheel, freeing my hands to crack the now useless burner cell.
Mysteries. Never a good thing for a man in my situation. Somebody out there is on to me, has been for a while, and neither Floyd nor I have a clue who it might be. My head is hurting. Like a bell pealing in my brain. The pills. I reach for the other pocket and pull out the right ones.
If this were your morning, you’d probably need them too.
It doesn’t bother me that Floyd calls me crazy all the time. He’s a grizzled old man, seen it all, and I’m not talking front porch wisdom. World wisdom. Lived in a hundred places, touched the parts of life normal people wouldn’t go near with a ten-foot pole wisdom. He knew me before the pills, before the headaches and the shakes and all the rest. I think that’s why he still answers my calls. In his own way he feels responsible for my erratic tendencies. Maybe he is.
I look back at a police car cruising up toward me in the left lane. Can tell by his speed that he’s going to pass and I relax. As much as a guy like me can, anyway. I’m trained for this. That’s what they didn’t know when they locked me up. You didn’t know it either. Blame Floyd. He’s the one who recruited me. For what, you ask?
A lot’s happened since then, but if memory serves, I was in some sandbox in one of the world’s orifices, trying to take a nap. Had gone over to fight after school at the insistence of dear old dad. He had his mind on having a politician for a son. Nothing like a war record. Figure it was a win-win for him. Either I serve with distinction or die. No telling the outcome he would’ve preferred. To my surprise, I was a pretty good soldier, though I never made it past Lieutenant. Had a bit of a knack for pissing off the higher-ups. Anyway, there was some mission, blah blah blah, and here comes this guy from Agency X saying he needed a couple guys from my unit to sort it out. We were a squad of about ten, used to the rough and tumble, but he only needed three. I was in charge, so of course I volunteered.
It wasn’t bravery. Not even close.
It was insecurity. Most of the guys doing the fighting are insecure. Bravery, cowardice, selflessness, endurance, it all comes from pretty much the same place. An indictment? Hell no. You try getting shot at by people that mean it, then tell me how secure you feel. Maybe it’s happened, but in the cacophony of mag checks and radio cues preceding a true firefight I’ve never looked over and seen the face of a guy relaxing at the beach.
So anyhow, I volunteered for a suicide mission because I didn’t want to look bad.
There’s no way to know, but by then I’m fairly sure I was starting to go a little crazy. Tremulous hands. I’d get cold when it was 130 degrees for no reason. Symptoms? Nah. Rub some dirt on it.
Somehow or another, we pulled it off. Killed a couple guys, one of mine took a slug in the shoulder, but not too bad. Apparently the jerk from Agency whatever had come up with a pretty good plan for getting us in and out. That was Floyd. I was impressed, and to be honest, a little mystified to still be above ground. He never told me exactly what it was, but apparently I had done something to impress him as well. I was out of the sandbox and working for him and a few others 24 hours later. This is why my service record wasn’t part of the defense proceedings in the trial you people watched with such glee. Redacted. Expunged. Never happened. Life’s a real stitch. Seems like the good things go to some incinerator in subbasement who gives a shit. The bad feels like it all gets put on tape. In my case, this is not a metaphor.
I pull out another burner phone to call Floyd and figure out some sort of plan going forward. Do another check of the mirrors to see if any trailing cars match the picture I took earlier. There’s one—a black BMW. Something about it doesn’t sit right. Still about a hundred yards back, still one lane over. It could be a tail. Could be the people that sent in the tip. Like I said, I was trained for this, so I pull the wheel right for the next exit to see if they follow. No matter what you see in the movies, it’s not that easy to spot a tail. Movies. It’s always two guys talking about their wives or the electric bill, and all of a sudden one of them says, “we picked up a tail.” Rare. Unless you’re working against real morons. One, I’m on a highway. It could just be a guy going south to Austin or San Antonio set on cruise control. Two, any decent follow job requires multiple vehicles to pass you off as you go along. In this case it’s unlikely, however. Nobody knows where I’m going, including me. Having somebody stationed around this exit ready to pick up the follow would be prophetic.
Damn. I see the BMW swerving just in time to catch the exit. My headache is going away. It’s been a while since I’ve been this close to getting caught. I know what you’re thinking. This, coming from a fugitive whose favorite hobby is sitting outside police stations. I do the math. They aren’t cops. Cops don’t drive BMWs, and with a guy like me, they’d have a freaking helicopter overhead by now. Roadblocks, flares and all the rest of that nonsense.
The exit is outside the Fort Worth city limits and just south of the surrounding suburban areas. A large hill separates the highway from the frontage road now. I assess. They’re pretty close behind. I’d love to slam on the breaks and let them ram me but that might render both vehicles inoperable. That wouldn’t be good at all. It’s too hot to be walking along a feeder road for miles. I opt for the crazy choice. Off to the right there’s a fairly steep embankment, so I start to slow down, checking my jacket pockets for my fake papers, phone, pills, and pull my 9 mm from the glove compartment.
I hit the gas hard as the right front tire goes off the road and then slam the breaks, turning the wheel left. Fishtailing the back end, the car goes over, then the hard part. The car rolls two or three times before coming to violent stop, upside down at the bottom of the embankment. There’s glass everywhere, and I can smell fuel leaking. I wiggle everything. It all hurts but nothing is broken as far as I can tell.
My head is ringing and probably concussed, but thankfully the driver’s side window is broken. Lucky break. Crawling out I pick up a few new cuts from the glass but hardly notice because I hear the BMW stop at the place where the car went over. Just like I wanted. They can’t see me behind the car. I peek out from behind the inverted left rear tire and see two guys coming down the slope. There’s a thicket of woods behind me, pretty dense. Figure they’re thinking I’m either dead or unconscious in the car or fleeing through the trees.
Truthfully, it’s anybody’s guess what they’re thinking. Probably trying to understand why I lost control so suddenly. Hopefully it looked real, but it’s not something to bet on. What I don’t have to guess or doubt over is that they are both armed. They look like guys from somewhere else. One older, one younger, both dressed wrong. It’s Texas—everybody wears jeans. These mopes are sporting black cargo pants and form-fitting jackets. Combat boots.
Then I hear it; the sound of a cocked pistol is unmistakable.
Don’t like what I’m about to do, but when you hear that snap you better do something. Still crouched behind the rear wheel, I reach out a foot and crunch down some glass still in the car. Thankfully the older one takes the bait. As he bends down to see my broken body there’s nothing. He’s a fish in a barrel, half in and half out of the car. Bad for him. I lean down and fire one round right above his eyes, returning to my wheel knowing it did the trick.
I can hear the younger one slam himself up against the opposite side of the overturned car. He doesn’t know if his partner was shot by someone inside or out—at least I hope not. Sweat is seeping through my shirt. I too have a jacket on, not because I want to—because I needed a lot of pockets for all the crap I carry when careening off of roads. “Hey,” I call out.
Nothing but labored breathing.
“Hey. Your buddy’s dead. Didn’t want that. Don’t want to kill you either. Give it up. Any chance you tell me who you are?”
More breathing.
“Come on. It’d be a big help.”
More nothing. His nervousness is starting to catch. I’m starting to realize the gravity of what’s happening and it does kind of suck. Perhaps it’s just my strange ways, but I always found that in the pitched heat of life or death there are small ponderous moments where everything slows down. I don’t mean respite. Moments when there’s a choice, to deny instinct and slump into cravenness, give up the fight. I’ve been running and fighting for so long. I let that weakness flow through me and then let it out, like spitting up bad medicine. It’s getting to him. It’s in his breathing. Can’t let it get to me.
“Throw down your gun, Fellows,” I hear. Okay, so the guy knows my name. Something I could assume, but hearing a stranger say it out loud is arresting all the same. I press the clip release on my 9mm and see I’m nearly full. Thirteen rounds. One in the chamber. Might as well use them. Dropping down I fire at an angle through the broken windows of the car. I don’t have a clear shot but the bullets are enough to make him move just enough from behind the front right wheel. He’s stuck his foot out. I take a breath and catch him through the heel. There’s screaming, but mostly now he’s just firing into the car as I roll back around the side and the front where he’s squirming. I hear the desperate sound of his empty chamber and get to my feet, walking slowly toward him.
“Enough, kid.” He’s sitting up, writhing in agony as I approach. My gun is aimed center mast.
“Throw it,” I say. His weapon’s empty but there’s nothing comforting about a guy waving a pistol around. Take your peace of mind where you can get it. “Who are you? How do you know I’m here?” The hope is that he’ll talk. Dude doesn’t have a lot of options, braying like a mule and reaching for his heel.
“Traitor” is the only reply offered. Strange. It’s spit more than spoken. Only about six feet away I get a better look at his face. Damn. Just a kid. Either he was too impetuous for the job or he wasn’t given the right intelligence concerning his target. My guess is both.
“Don’t want to talk, huh?” I ask. It’s hot and this kind of scene attracts attention; need to get moving.
“You and your family are dead,” he says, reaching once again for his heel. It’s not the wound he’s groping for; I can see that now. He’s got a backup on his lower leg and it’s in his hand. The chrome of a small revolver catches in the sun. I want to yell stop but act on instinct, firing two rounds into his chest.
No time. I remember the fuel leaking into the car and pull both bodies fully inside through the broken windows. Taking out their wallets and keys I light a match. It feels a bit Viking to burn the dead, but there was blood in the car, some of it mine. With modern forensics they’d probably find some remnants of me. I can’t have the official authorities closing in tighter, not yet. Ascending the hill toward the BMW, I hear the car going up in flames. The heat behind me is like a kick in the pants, telling me to hustle. Time to switch cars again and regroup. Driving down the feeder road I look for the nearest entrance back onto the freeway. My hands are shaking. More than usual. Two men dead. Two men I’d never seen or met. Don’t like what the last one said about my family. Not good.
I’m still a killer. The idea of turning myself in floods back into my brain. Still a killer.
Henry Fellows, wrongfully accused. And not an innocent bone in my body.