Marilyn fed Charlie some cereal she had in her bag; the kid went through Cheerios like I could go through salted cashews! It still wasn’t enough, and he was getting fussy by the time we were finished. It would take a couple of days to process the car (read that as 30 minutes to process it, 15 minutes to figure it out that nothing was there, and 2 days of hurry up and wait while this happened. They would call us when we could pick it up. I wrote off the rest of the day and drove us all home. Marilyn could drive my Town Car for a few days and I would drive the 380.
Let’s face it; the rest of the day was shot for us. We settled Charlie down by stuffing food into him. He was a bottomless pit. I was going to need to start a second corporation just to keep him fed. Then I made us a very late lunch, and we sat down in the living room to talk while our son napped. Neither of us could make any sense of this. Could it have been an ex-girlfriend? Everybody seemed happy the day of the reunion, and I hadn’t seen any of them for ten years. Hell, I hadn’t been involved with any of them since I was 16! That was a ridiculous amount of time to hold a grudge this serious.
Two days later we drove to Towson and picked up the car. Detective Carstans said the forensic report was inconclusive. The valve stems had definitely been cut, but they couldn’t tell by what. What was interesting was that there was a palm print, the same print, on the car body panels at each tire location. We looked blankly at him, and he demonstrated by kneeling down and placing his left hand on the body panel while he mimed cutting the stem. Same print, same location, each tire. If we ever caught the guy doing something else, we could use his prints to tie him to this, too. Or her. Nobody knew if it was a guy or a girl.
Marilyn wanted to know if they could use computers to find who it was, by comparing fingerprints or something. I shook my head. That sort of thing would take massive computing power and databases of prints, and wouldn’t be seen for another twenty years or more.
I was slower to forget about this incident, and I tried to stay more vigilant. Still, whoever it was, they weren’t targeting me. They were targeting Marilyn! Two weeks later Marilyn’s Toyota was vandalized again, this time while she was at the grocery store. A couple of witnesses reported that somebody had driven up to her car, while she was inside shopping with Charlie, and hopped out. Whoever it was, and the eyewitnesses couldn’t agree on anything other than that he or she was driving a green car, had taken a tire iron to Marilyn’s car, busting a headlight, driver’s side mirror, and a couple of windows and the windshield. Then he or she jumped back in the car and took off.
This was getting very serious! Whatever was going on was obviously directed at Marilyn, and the level of violence was escalating. The Toyota was put back through the wringer by the cops, and they found a few more prints, some of which matched the prints found earlier. Whoever was doing this, they weren’t being all that careful. Now we had two detectives questioning us, and they took down the name of every girl I had ever dated, if I could remember them, and quizzed Marilyn about everybody at the reunion she had talked to.
They also started asking me about my family, and that really set me back on my heels! The only person in my family who would do this was Hamilton, but I just couldn’t believe it. I went through my family history with them, but didn’t have much to say. I hadn’t seen any of them since the wedding, except for the disastrous college graduation of Suzie’s and that was a month before the stalking started. I gave out the information I could, but it wasn’t much, and I never heard any more from the cops about my family.
Marilyn was very nervous when we left the police station that day. I drove over to the office and we told what was going on to John, who immediately called a security company. I didn’t like it, but I liked Marilyn being threatened even less. Marilyn was going to get a bodyguard, at least during the day when I wasn’t around. The security guards were from a company John had used in the past, and the company was owned by a former Secret Service agent. We also had a guard posted at the office.
Marilyn wasn’t amused by any of this. Neither were some of my friends from high school, who suddenly found themselves being questioned by the cops about a guy they knew ten years before. Hell, I wasn’t amused!
After a couple of days at home with Marilyn, she decided to go shopping, so I called the security company and got somebody to come out. Once they left, I did something I didn’t think I would ever do again. I went into my den and unlocked the bottom drawer of my desk. Inside was a small case with my.45 Colt from the Army, along with my web belt holster. I didn’t know what was going on, but I just didn’t like it. I took it out to the kitchen and scrounged up some cleaning supplies, and knocked the dust off it. I didn’t like the results, so I put it in a towel, and went out to my car, where I put it in the back of the 380, and then I drove into Parkton. I knew of a gun shop in the town and needed a cleaning kit and some ammo.
While I was there, I asked the guy behind the counter about a concealed carry permit. Maryland is a relatively liberal and Democratic state, which means they don’t just let you wander around carrying a loaded piece! In general, they would prefer that you didn’t, but they couldn’t get around that pesky Second Amendment and ban handguns completely. It sounded like all I needed to do was prove I was an upstanding citizen and have documented proof I was in danger, generally a police report of some form. By now I had this crap in spades! I added a shoulder holster for the Colt.
I took everything back home, and cleaned the gun properly. Then I left Dum-Dum in the laundry room, while I took the gun and a box of ammo up into the woods on my property. I paced off a reasonable distance, and then pulled the gun from my pocket. I stared at it for a moment. I hadn’t fired it since Nicaragua, and when I got it back in Fayetteville, I had simply put it in a drawer. Now, cleaned and loaded, it was as deadly again as it had been when I had used it to kill the four narcos. Ancient history. I flicked off the safety and put seven rounds downrange, aiming at an oak tree.
Three hit. I reloaded and got another four in the X-ring, so to speak. I worked my way through the box of ammo until I was back to my old self, where I felt confident with the gun again. I would need to go to a shooting range to get better, but at least I wasn’t going to shoot myself in the foot. I went back into the house, released Dum-Dum from jail, put her on her tie-out, and then cleaned the gun again.
I let Dum-Dum back in and played with her for a few minutes, and then put her back in jail. Marilyn, Charlie, and the bodyguard came back at that point, and I had the guard stick around. Marilyn was curious, but I explained I needed to go out for a while. I tossed the Colt and the holster into a plastic bag, scrounged up some paperwork, and carried it all out to the Mercedes. I drove down to Towson and went to the police department.
Lew Carstans handed me the form to fill out to get a concealed carry permit, and then he talked to me about carrying a gun. It was a depressing conversation. “Carl, I sympathize with you, I really do, but forget it. You’ll never get a permit.”
“Why not? I can show all the ID, get the references, show my military separation papers, and you know there’s a threat. What’s the big deal?”
He shrugged. “Listen, it’s not up to me. The State Police and the State Attorney General simply aren’t in favor of the Second Amendment. Go ahead and fill out the paperwork. In ninety days it will be turned down. Absent a documented threat to your life, like bullet holes in your car, and not your wife’s, or a job requirement like being a security guard, they simply won’t issue a permit.”