Mid-West Campaign
Session Eighty-Two

Wednesday, 20 June 2001 [continued]

Jane leaves the team and returns to Wichita (see session 83). The remaining agents now head to Roger de Tour's house, and find him hosting a barbecue. Everyone stares as the three men in suits (including a "darkie") head up the drive. They question Roger de Tour about Peter Ellis Dean; Roger claims that as a nine year old, he remembers nothing of that time.

McPike informs the younger de Tour about the gruesome deaths of the Roches and Pickering, and hints that some sort of revenge killing is being enacted in the town. Roger de Tour is extremely frightened, and borders on panic during the interview. His continual denials are not believed: Stone and Oaxaca are convinced he is lying.

Agent Clint Stone leaves for Wichita (see session 83).

By the time the agents have finished putting the fear of God into Roger de Tour, it is too late to make their appointment with Louis la Ville. McPike telephones to reschedule. Once more his black manservant answers the phone. La Ville is still living in the past, coughing up chewing tobacco or phlegm regularly. Before inviting McPike over to visit his office the next day he checks that Jo is not "some kind of nigger." At the mention of Peter Ellis Dean's name la Ville quickly denies any knowledge of the man.

Clint Stone returns from Wichita in the early evening and goes straight to bed.

Later in the evening, Benedict is roughly awoken by members of the Ku Klux Klan who have broken into his motel room. "Get up coon!" they order, and hit him a few times and force him on his knees. They force him to watch as they break his stuff. Taking a jerry can they set a stream of petrol into the room. "This is a warning boy. We don't want your kind around here." They beat him and drag him outside, bound and gagged.

As the petrol explodes the other agents (who have been sleeping extremely soundly) burst out of their rooms to discover a burning cross on the lawn outside their motel. They shoot big holes into the unmarked red pickup truck that is fleeing the scene but fail to stop it. The sheriff and fire department arrive shortly after.

Thursday, 21 June 2001

In the morning, the agents drive to New Orleans. Benedict is interrogated by special agent Louise Laverne from Inspection Division. Ben is accused of provoking the situation and it is suggested he has a history of this. Laverne reminds Ben of his recent demotion. She says he should be a role model for the black community and needs to be "whiter than white" as it were. On the whole, the mid-west team are not swimming in good PR. She hints that Rocaan has a dodgy past, and then mentions the fiasco of the Birmingham Race Riots that Harlow started last Autumn.

On reflection, Ben thinks it is wiser to remain in New Orleans. He arranges to call Judge James McCollins and the Reverend Banks from the safety of the FBI building. He calls Banks to reschedule his talk with Banks's congregation that was set for this evening. He doesn't think it's a good idea in the current climate, but suggests Banks could bus all the pilgrims to New Orleans. Meanwhile, McPike and Stone return to Estelle to keep their appointment with Louis la Ville.

At the bank, the agents meet la Ville's secretary, who is a real southern belle. La Ville is a disturbingly corpulent man. He speaks as if he has had a severe stroke and is barely intelligible. McPike thinks that he would make a bad court witness. La Ville is saddened by the deaths of the Roches, and knows the Pickering family on the basis that he knows pretty much everyone in town: they all bank with him. Sam Pickering's father (also called Sam Pickering) retired about ten years ago and wanted to go to Florida, however he is stuck in a local nursing home.

Stone notices a hunting photo on la Ville's desk. It is a picture from the 1960s. In the picture are Gerald de Tour and his boy Roger, Christopher Roche, Louis la Ville, Sam Pickering senior and another man, that la Ville says was called Jean Monet.

la Ville says that the scandal of the day was that Monet's daughter Lila-Bette was involved with activist Peter Ellis Dean. Strange that Monet knew nothing about Dean on the telephone yesterday. la Ville says that Monet was killed in a freak accident some years ago. The chains from a low-loader broke dropping a steam roller on Monet's car.

One other interesting piece of information from la Ville, is that Christopher Roche had an elevator that he used to get between floors in his house. The agents saw no evidence of that when they searched the place three days ago. It is worth bearing in mind.

Meanwhile, Benedict calls Judge James "Jim" McCollins. McCollins is quite candid on the phone. Both he and Ben record the conversation, McCollins knows all about Benedict's habit of torturing white men. The judge used to be work for CARD (the CIA Archaeological Research Division). He was doing work that is perilously similar to the work that Ben currently does. He admits that he used to have addictions to gambling, alcohol and morphine and suspects that he only got his job as a federal court judge because of his history with the CIA.

McCollins struggles to remember much of the 1960s. He took the occasional black case, but tended to steer clear of them to stay out of trouble. He remembers Peter Ellis Dean. He says that Dean wasn't that involved in activism; he was a driver-cum-letter-dropper; putting up posters, not a rabble-rouser. He was occasionally shouted at because he had a friend who was black, and got into the occasional fist fight and would turn up to work with blood on his collar. Dean was a ladies man, although McCollins couldn't say who with. Dean had contacts in Estelle County in the 1960s, but he doesn't know who they were. Regarding, Christopher Rock, McCollins says that Rock was in Mississippi around every three weeks and his car was very noticeable.

Meanwhile, McPike checks into the Pickering garage. When he arrives there is no one there and it is all locked up. Sam Pickering's home is also empty and no one answers the phone. The agents ask around for details of the nursing home where Sam Pickering senior can be found, and soon receive directions. The nursing home is a run-down affair and Sam senior is dead by the time the agents arrive.

The staff tell the agents that Sam died after returning from "one of his walks". He had not been himself for a little while before this and seemed "a bit under the weather".. He committed suicide by slitting his own wrists while in the bath.

McPike and Stone search Sam Pickering snr's room. The same hunting photo they saw in la Ville's office I lying on the table, atop a copy of the daily paper. Pickering snr seems to have taken the photo from a folio of cuttings of relating to his family and local events. McPike spots an underlying theme in the collection. Anything that happened in the town (be a fete, carnival or hunting trip) seemed to have Monet, Pickering, de Tour, la Ville and Roche involved in some capacity. They were the town patriarchs: the Estelle mafia. And they might still be active in that role.

A new theory immediately begins to form. Peter Ellis Dean is possessing the fathers and forcing them to kill their own children. After the murder the parents regain their senses and suffer the full horror of what they have done. Roche was a infirm old man and the shock killed him. Pickering took his own life. This leaves Louis la Ville and Gerald de Tour.

McPike quickly calls Shady Acres. The doctor says that de Tour never leaves the rest home. McPike asks to be informed immediately if he old man should ever leave - he assumes this is because the man has been possessed.

McPike then calls up the Sheriff's office to chase the autopsy. They explain they are busy: there are double murders, the death of Pickering and the vandalism yesterday to chase into. "Vandalism" is how they are investigating the near-lynching of Benedict!

Stone suggests performing a séance would be the best way to get some answers. If they could talk to Dean, they could discover a great deal. Stone says that he knows a fair amount about the occult and should be able to perform the ritual. McPike agrees. They drive back to New Orleans to pick up Ben. Being a good Catholic, Ben tries to talk Stone and McPike out of this mad plan. As a compromise they decide to search the Roche residence first, and then look into Roger de Tour, whom Ben suspects is in the greatest danger.

They cannot easily gain entry to the Roche place and do not want to break anything. The barn is empty, but this time the agents do find tyre tracks. They reason that the Roches must own a car, and wonder why this didn't occur to them before. Calling it in, they discover the Roches owned a blue pick-up. They don't put an APB on the vehicle as the deaths are still not their case.

Giving up any attempt to break into the Roche home, they leave to conduct a séance. Ben is not impressed. However, this could have been the right call as a police car drives past them on the track and checks out the Roche place. If they had tried to break in, they would have been caught.

At the site of the car's abandonment, Stone conducts a séance for Peter Ellis Dean. These are obviously skills he picked up since Kahoolawee as the original Elijah Stone didn't seem to have much interest in the occult. Stone's technique is flawless, and before anyone knows what is happening, the agent has got himself possessed by Peter Ellis Dean! Stone's eyes roll into the back of his head. Dean has arrived and he is a very angry man.

Peter Ellis Dean's spirit was trapped in his body and the body trapped in the trunk of that car for forty years. He did not escape his body as a free-roaming spirit with the chance to exact vengeance until the mid-west team disassembled his bones on 8 June 2001. So technically this is all their fault.

Dean reveals that he was murdered by Gerald de Tour, Louis la Ville, Sam Pickering snr and Christopher Roche. Roger de Tour watched the entire thing and didn't try to stop it. Despite his age, this makes Roger equally culpable in Dean's eyes. Jean Monet did not participate in the killing and is not on Dean's hit list. However, Dean still hated the man and is very amused to discover now Money died. After the four killed Dean, they bound his spirit some way - obviously these old codgers have (or had) access to magic of some sort.

Dean confirms that he is possessing the fathers and making them murder their children. Benedict appeals to Dean to stop what he is doing. The children didn't do anything to him. "The sins of the fathers will pass onto the children," Dean counters. The spirit is aggressive and not in the mood to forgive everyone.

Dean also says that he had a fiancée: a woman called Alisha Black. He has been trying to find her, but says that the agents' computers have nothing on her. How did he know? It seems he has the power to possess any of the FBI staffers who were present when his skeleton was disassembled (Jane, Todd, Stone, Burchill and Campbell-Robson), he used the body of Todd O'Connell to access the computers.

Benedict asks Dean to give the agents the chance to prove the guilt of de Tour, la Ville, Pickering and Roche. He says that if they can do this it would destroy the reputations of the families for generations: far longer than the forty years Dean was imprisoned in the car. This appeals to the vindictive spirit. He agrees to give the agents four days to find their proof. After that, all bets are off. His spirit then departs Stone, who slumps to the ground.

After Dean's spirit has left Stone, McPike telephones Todd O'Connell and explains the situation to him. He is told to find out what else he looked up. Bruce can do this for him if he gets possessed again.

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