- Home
- Daniel Beamish
Truth, by Omission Page 19
Truth, by Omission Read online
Page 19
The authorities were far too busy trying to avert warfare in the streets to attend to the suicide of an orphaned schoolboy. Savard arranged a funeral mass for the next day in the chapel at the school, and we buried Gabe in the new parish cemetery on the outskirts of the city. Upon returning, I found Gabe’s bed still rumpled, just as he’d left it the night before. The sisters said they would tidy up his things, but I insisted on doing it myself.
I stewed for another two days, not wanting to disturb what little was left of Gabe’s tiny imprint on this screwed-up world. Everyone assumed that he had killed himself in response to the growing violence in our city and the stress of living in a semi–war zone. Still, his death was hard on all of us, the boys as well as the nuns. In spite of all the deaths I had seen, some I had even caused, this one was truly traumatic for me. It was the only one for which I felt instantaneous guilt. I had vowed to myself to look after Gabe, and I hadn’t.
Finally, I forced myself to get on with tidying up Gabe’s meager possessions. I pulled the entire drawer from the locker at the foot of his bed and, with reverence, I placed it beside me where I could examine the contents. I knew there wouldn’t be much to go through since he had come to the school with almost nothing. On one side of the drawer, his spare clothes were neatly folded, and on the other, two battered primers and a half-dozen dog-eared notebooks made a tidy stack. The small Bible he’d been issued when he arrived at Notre Dame de la Paix sat prominently on top. A sheet of lined paper, torn from one of the notebooks and folded in half, was tucked into it. As I lifted the Bible it naturally fell open to the page where the paper lay. I unfolded the single page, easily recognizing the clean script as Gabe’s. A short note, printed in red pencil, addressed to Father Savard. It read,
You have made your sins my sins. No more. I will go now to find Jesus and tell Him my side of the story first.
I read it several times, and then folded the paper along its crease, halving it twice more, repeating the words to myself each time, before shoving it into my pocket. I would hand deliver Gabe’s final note to the bastard priest myself.
The Bible lay open on my lap, and I saw where Gabe had underlined a section of text with the same red pencil. It was a passage from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 5, Verse 10:
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
I was unfamiliar with the passage, and I reread it several times. It was obvious that Gabe had been thinking of the bastard priest when he’d marked the scripture, but I couldn’t help contemplating the entries that God must have surely already inscribed beside my name in the eternal ledger. I wished Gabe a better hearing in his appearance before that judgment seat than I expected to receive myself.
The next day I went to the army headquarters and asked for Major Ntagura. “I’ve made some decisions,” I said. “Can you get in touch with Idi and ask him to come and see me at Notre Dame de la Paix tomorrow after dark?”
“Does Lieutenant Wigy’s little kitty finally want to roar like a lion?” He laughed.
I ignored his mocking. “I’ve made my decision. Ask him to come for me,” I said.
The next day, as the sun was setting, I knocked on Savard’s door. “May I come in?”
“Certainly, Azi.” He was surprised to see me at his doorstep since we had warily been keeping our distance for nearly two years. “What can I do for you?” He indicated a chair, but I remained standing in front of him.
“I’d like to make a confession.”
“Of course, Azi.”
He surely heard the trembling in my voice and must have seen me quaking. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a seat?”
“No, Father. I want to look you right in the eye.”
“What is it that’s troubling you, son?”
“Will your god forgive me for all my sins?”
“You’ve only to ask, my son. What is it you need forgiveness for?”
Steeling my nerve, I withdrew my knife from under my jacket and pushed my face up close to his. “For all the deaths I’ve caused.” And I stuck the full eight inches of the blade into his soft belly. He toppled forward, coughing and sputtering, and I let him slip from the blade of the knife and slump to the floor. His eyes remained focused on me while I tore open his shirt and then put the knife back in just under his skin and sliced open his belly from his belt to his sternum. With my bare hand I reached in, grabbed his innards, and pulled them out so that he could see them. Unbuckling his pants, I drew them down and prepared to sever his genitals and stuff them in his mouth while he was still alive, a small retribution for Little Gabe. But I couldn’t bring myself to even touch the filthy organs. Instead, I retrieved Gabe’s folded note from my pocket and stuffed it deep into his throat. I left the bastard there, gagging on Gabe’s last words to him and futilely trying to gather his spilled entrails.
Christmas
Anna now knows it all, everything of my childhood in Africa, right up until the time I committed my last murder. I am feeling tremendously unburdened after having just confessed to her. She finally knows the real me, for good and for bad, it is all out there, all the things I have never told anyone before. Anna listened for hours, often looking sad but never condescending. She wiped my tears, and she hugged me when I began to shake uncontrollably, rocking me like a baby until I was able to continue again. We’re now sitting quietly. Anna is lost in the things I have just told her. She’s biting her lip and slowly shaking her head side to side. “I had no idea, Alfred. No idea. I’m so sorry.” It’s her turn to cry and mine to comfort. With her leaning against me, I gently stroke the back of her head. But as more silence passes between us, I sober up to the present situation, and my thoughts turn to my current predicament.
I know the extradition warrant that is coming concerns the time I spent in either Zaire or Rwanda with Idi and his band of thugs. Steve said that Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has an extradition treaty with the United States and that Rwanda doesn’t. So that makes it most likely that it was something from those very early days with Idi, rather than Rwanda. However, I also know that the United Nations held war crimes trials several years ago for the conflict and genocide that took place in Rwanda during the years I was there. But I haven’t seen it in the news recently, so I assumed that those trials were over. Perhaps they’re not. Maybe this is an extradition by the United Nations for war crimes. That priest, Savard, was my most probable guess, but how could they know about that? How could they know I was the one who’d dispatched him to the judgment of his god?
My guessing is interrupted when Steve arrives around two thirty. There is a perfunctory knock on the door and the senior partner at Anna’s firm, our good family friend, and my lawyer as of the past twenty-four hours, comes back into the counsel room where Anna and I have spent most of the day.
“Okay, sit down.” He’s brisk and all business. “We’ve got the warrant with the indictment. We’ll have to talk about this because we’re up in front of a judge in one hour. Alfred, what the hell happened in Belgium?”
I have no idea what he is talking about. “Belgium? Nothing. I have never been to Belgium.”
“Something happened in Belgium. This extradition warrant is from Belgium.” He reads directly from it. “‘Azikiwe Olyontombo, alias Alfred Olyontombo, currently known to reside in the United States of America, formerly of the Republic of France, formerly of Tanzania, formerly of Rwanda, having caused the premeditated deaths by his hands of Geert Grennerat, Marjon van den Bosche, Kaatje Simmons, Brechtie van Huejten, all citizens of the Kingdom of Belgium.’”
“May I see that?”
He hands the warrant across the table, and Anna leans in to read with me. I shake my head, perplexed. “I don’t know these people. I have no idea who they are. And I’ve never been to Belgium.”
“Are you sure, Alfred?” Steve asks.
“I’m positive.”
“This is good.” There’s excitement in Anna’s voice. “This means that somehow there is a mistake. This is all some kind of mistake. Mistaken identity perhaps. Or someone else with the same name.”
“With the name Azikiwe Olyontombo, who also, coincidentally, changed his name to Alfred Olyontombo? Maybe a mistake, but not mistaken identity,” Steve says.
“Can we challenge this with the judge this afternoon?” Anna asks.
“Anna, it’s an extradition warrant.” Steve looks directly at her. “There are almost no challenges available to an extradition warrant. You know that. But before they extradite they do have to present the bare bones of the charges and the case. They’ll have to show us that at some point.”
“We have to try something now,” Anna says.
“We’re really, really limited with this. Let’s see what the US Attorney’s Office has to say. In the meantime, our first priority is to get Alfred out of custody. The marshals will be here soon for transport to the courthouse.”
“What if they keep him in custody?” Anna asks. “We know bail is unlikely.”
“Bail is almost impossible. It’s just not applicable in foreign extraditions. The best we can hope for is electronic monitoring, and that’s only if the attorney is feeling generous.”
“What if we don’t get that?”
“That’s why the Marshals Service is coming. They’ll take Alfred out of Denver PD’s hands and put him in federal custody for holding until transfer is arranged with Belgium.”
I hear this exchange between Anna and Steve, but it barely registers. I am trying to think of Belgium. I had absolutely no connection with Belgium. Nothing. These four people who were murdered, if they were Belgian, were most likely white. Not necessarily for certain, but likely. I think back through those I had killed and conclude that the only white man I ever killed was Savard. That I am sure of.
None of it fits, but none of it matters. Whatever is happening, whether a mistake, or right or wrong, this is my comeuppance, my rightful due for having taken the lives of others, innocent others. Unlike Anna, I am not looking for an angle to escape. On the contrary, I am feeling a strange sense of relief at having been found out. The opportunity to confess my sins and accept whatever penance a court wants to impose on me lessens the load I have been bearing all my life. It really doesn’t matter to me if it is Belgium or the United States or the Congo or Tanzania; I don’t care.
The marshals show up, two of them, looking much like the Denver police with different insignias. It’s humiliating to be put in handcuffs again, especially in front of my wife, but I revert to thinking of the crimes I have committed and decide it is a small, well-deserved punishment. They transport me in the back of a van, securing me to a seat by waist and shoulder straps, and then shackling my ankles to the posts of the bench. They handle me roughly, like they would any other common criminal. When the police came to arrest me at my office they showed some modicum of esteem; they knew I was a well-respected doctor in the local community and the husband of a well-respected lawyer. But these officers know nothing of me. To them I am just another black man who committed another crime. And that actually makes me feel good, to be treated with some roughness, because I am more despicable than any of the other prisoners they’ve ever dealt with.
I’m delivered through the prisoners’ dock and escorted to the fourth floor of the US District Court on 19th Street where I join Anna, Steve, and a third person, whom they introduce as Laura Abroud, the Assistant US Attorney. We’re in a small room, not the grand courtroom that I expected. Within moments we’re joined by Judge Coleen Cain, who officiously takes a seat on one side of a large desk while the rest of us stand.
“What have we got here, Ms. Abroud?” the judge asks.
“Your Honor, this is Alfred Olyontombo. Dr. Olyontombo,” Laura Abroud says. “We have a federal warrant from the State Department in response to a request to extradite from the country of Belgium.”
“On what charges?”
“Four counts of murder.”
“What do you need from me?” the judge asks.
Steve interrupts. “Your Honor, we’d like a writ of habeas corpus.”
“On what grounds?”
“We believe that there has been a mistake in arresting my client. Dr. Olyontombo has never even been to Belgium,” Steve replies.
“He’s never been there, or he says he’s never been there?” Judge Cain asks. “Mr. May, you know full well that there is no challenge to this federal warrant. Our international treaties only mean anything if both parties respect them. If the crime in Belgium is a crime in the United States, we have to honor the request. And I think that murder is still a crime here. This court has no authority to litigate a case before the courts in Belgium. I presume the documentation is here, Ms. Abroud?”
“Not all of it. Not yet. The arrest is provisional, and we expect to have the detailed indictments within a few days.”
“Then, Your Honor, we’d request house arrest,” Steve says. “Dr. Olyontombo is a well-respected member of our community—a doctor—and would like to be home with his family over Christmas. He poses no flight risk.”
Laura Abroud speaks up. “Your Honor, the government doesn’t consider Dr. Olyontombo as a flight risk and would have no objections to house arrest.”
“Very well,” says the judge. “House arrest with electronic monitor and surrender of all passports, confined to residence only, no internet use, transportation only by the marshals. Anything else?”
The marshals take me to a room near the prisoner docks and fit me with a bracelet around my ankle, testing the small electronic lock a few times, before driving me all the way home to Boulder, strapped and shackled in the back of their van. One of my elderly neighbors is unloading groceries from her car and stops to watch as the marshals remove me from their van, conspicuously marked with large lettering, us marshals service. I can see her staring as they escort me up the driveway, up our steps, right to the front door. I deserve the humiliation but I am wounded for Anna, she doesn’t deserve any of this. And there are so many others that I’ve let down. I’m sorry, deeply sorry for having brought this on them—especially Anna. And oddly, I feel that even in her death, I’ve let down our baby girl, Stephanie. Thank the gods she’s not here to see this. The marshals take me inside my house before removing the handcuffs, as if I would have broken free and run had they taken them off in the van and spared Anna the disgrace in front of our neighbors.
Anna and I haven’t spoken since the marshals left. She’s made tea, and we’re both sitting on stools at the island. I suppose we’re both thinking the same thing: What a dizzying twenty-four hours. Yesterday, around this time, I was concerned only about getting to see all of my patients before time ran out and the Christmas holiday started. I was looking forward to moving on, spending time with Anna’s family, chats with her father by his fireplace, Mom’s home cooking, too many cookies and chocolates, some good games of squash with her brother and the giggles and joy of his kids on Christmas morning. Of course, this would all have been bittersweet, as it was also our first Christmas without Stephanie, but I tried to focus on the good: three weeks of vacation right after New Year’s, our long-delayed honeymoon in Saint Martin, time for Anna and me to reconnect after the strain of Steph’s illness and death. But that was yesterday. Now I don’t know what I’m facing. We sip our tea quietly.
The silence is suddenly broken by the chime of the doorbell. Neither of us really wants to move but I get up and open the door.
“Excuse me. Dr. Olyontombo?” A young man is on the step with a small recorder.
“Yes.”
“Dr. Olyontombo, my name is Kelly Aubry. I work for the Sun Valley Herald, and I have a few questions. Some of your patients told us that you were arrested
at your office yesterday. And this afternoon we found an extradition warrant with your name on it. Do you have any comment?”
I’m not sure what to say, but Anna answers from behind me. “He has no comment. You’ll have to leave, please.” With that she steps around me and closes the door.
Anna sighs, returns to the kitchen, and sits back down on her stool.
Suddenly she looks like an old woman, not the vibrant thirty-seven-year-old that she was just a few months ago, before Stephanie got sick, before yesterday. Her face looks heavy, it’s puffy; her eyes have gone from blue to gray.
“I’m sorry, Anna.”
“We don’t have time for that, Alfred. We don’t have time to be sorry.”
As useless as it makes me feel, I’m glad she has taken charge again.
“What do we do now?” I ask. “What’s going to happen?”
“There are a couple of things for us to think about,” she says. “Steve says we have to prepare for the worst; that they could show up from Belgium any day to take you away.”
“How soon?”
“Who knows. Not likely over the Christmas break, but it’s within their rights to come any time after they produce a full indictment and get it signed off. If they want to, they could show up tomorrow with it—this afternoon even—but they still have to show some validation of the charges.”
Steve has advised Anna to have a bag packed in case things happen quickly. He’s going to try to get in touch with some of his contacts in New York in an effort to get referrals for attorneys in Belgium, but he’s not sure if he’ll be able to reach anyone with the Christmas holidays just starting.
I don’t know if I even want an attorney in Belgium—if I want to fight this—but I don’t want to upset Anna any more than she is already, so I don’t mention it, saving that battle for later.
“Alfred, I’m not sure what to do about Christmas. Obviously, we’re not going, but I don’t know what to tell Mom and Dad. I’d rather not say anything about any of this until we have to. It has to be some kind of mistake. I don’t want to upset them. Let’s just say we’re sick and can’t make it.”