Murder of an Uncommon Man: Prologue
BACK COVER
An unexpected call from my father's second wife forced me to confront his life and death. A farmer found him shot in a field with a shotgun and I needed to explain why. From my home in Vancouver, half a continent away, I sifted through musty boxes and my own memories to piece together what happened to him over his last twelve years of estrangement. Poring over scribbled notes and emails, police reports, and my father’s well-worn Bible, I uncovered a life that ended in one of two ways. As I put the last pieces of the puzzle into place, a call from another family confirmed my suspicions: the killer had taken her next victim and a second family was helpless to stop her. My memoir, with the names and places changed, chronicles my father's life and death, from his youth in 1950s Iowa to unravelling the mystery of his death ten years afterwards.
COPYRIGHT PAGE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by A.M. Kirsch
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
NIV Men's Devotional Bible, New International Version. Copyright ©1993 by The Zondervan Corporation.
Map drawing based on reference images from Google Maps (Map data © 2019 Google Canada) and Canada Political Divisions map from Natural Resources Canada (© 2006 Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, Natural Resources Canada).
Cover photo from author’s collection.
DEDICATION
To Sarah and Dad—There would be no story without you. Sarah, you supported me over the kilometres and decades we travelled together. Your smiles resurrected me from the darkest places and encouraged me to find myself despite the pain it caused you. Dad, you were both the most simple and complex person I ever knew, and I knew you best only after you were gone. You left us too soon after seven decades.
MAP
PROLOGUE
For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away (Matthew 24:38-39).
When I was twelve, and our family camping at Clearwater Lake in Western Manitoba, we gathered around the picnic table one crisp evening to light the gas lantern. We could hear the mosquitoes swirling around our heads but it was too dim to see them, and there were still dishes to wash and cards to play before bed. The smell of kerosene filled the air as Dad pumped the lantern thirty times and twisted the valve to start it flowing through the tubes and mantles. We heard a pop as he pushed the struck match through the hole in the glass and the orange flames began to pulse to the rhythmic hiss of the gas. Instead of shrinking and brightening to white, the flames rose, turned red and escaped the vents atop the lantern. We stepped backward as the conflagration expanded, threatening to ignite the picnic table below and the tarp above. Fear held my imagination and I saw us engulfed in flames as the kerosene canister exploded.
Frozen in place, I looked to my family in the new light between us and first noticed Dad. In daylight he stood six feet tall with thick black hair, lively blue eyes, and a constant smile on his face, but tonight in the orange glow he was cowering and shrunken. His biblical knowledge and military training failed him for this surprise attack and he was paralyzed by fear. Mom stood to his right with the flames reflecting in her dark brown eyes, her arms clutching her chest. Her expression revealed an admiration for the flame and its drama. She would watch everything burn. My brother Paul, three years younger and about a foot shorter than me, stood at attention with his arms stiff at his sides, his blue eyes wider than I had ever seen them.