"Okay...take off, then." The dispatcher at the sheriff's office broke the connection.

In six minutes, two pumper trucks pulled up to the FBI checkpoint, but the feds ordered the fire trucks to stay put. It would be 12:40 before they were allowed anywhere near the burning building.

The FBI's delaying tactics worked perfectly. By the time the trucks arrived, the hellish inferno and the deadly hydrogen cyanide had done their job. Pathologists who later examined the charred corpses would find hydrogen cyanide in the burned bodies. Since hydrogen cyanide cannot be absorbed into a person's body after death, the pathologists would correctly conclude that many of the people trapped in the building, both children and adults, were already dying from inhaling poison gas by the time the flames finally consumed them.

The firemen, standing at a distance, felt the blast of heat on their faces and stared helplessly at the monstrous blaze. One of them summed up the situation with a single sentence: "Even God Himself couldn't put that bitch out."

Part Three.

HARVEST.

March 17,1994.

"Jesus, what happened to you?" Cindy Caswell said as her roommate came into the apartment, sobbing almost hysterically. One of the buttons on the girl's tuxedo shirt was torn off.

"It...it was awful," she got out, then burst into renewed spasms as she fell into her lover's arms. "Th-three of them. They...they tried..."

"Hey, now," Cindy said gently, instinctively using a phrase her mother had used to comfort her when she was little. "Hey..." She rubbed April's back and held her as sobs wracked the girl's body. Fucking St. Patrick's Day Cindy thought disgustedly. Green beer and stupid music, and every drunken Irish asshole thinks the rules don't apply today.

"Let me get a shower going, and we'll get you all clean and fresh and wrapped in a warm blanket. Then you can tell me about it, if you want." April Lassiter nodded as Cindy led her towards the bathroom.

Hope Henry's home Cindy found herself thinking. We may want to talk to him.

"Can't do it," Henry Bowman said for the third or fourth time. "It's a felony. If you were a juvenile, I'd say go for it, but you're not. A felony conviction will fuck up your Whole life, and that's no exaggeration." "So would-"

"I know what you're going to say," Henry interrupted, "and I agree with you. But carrying a gun or a knife or a sap for protection is like wearing a seatbelt: you have to do it every single day. If you do it every single day where it's illegal, you are going to get caught, period. Then, if you're lucky, the cop who arrested you will let you off if you blow him and his partner. How does that sound? Not much better than three drunks slowed down by fifty bucks worth of green beer, does it?" April closed her eyes and shuddered.

"Look," Henry said, "I'm not trying to be a jerk. I'm trying to make you see the whole picture. Bar parking lots are dangerous places. Particularly the ones in so-called 'nice' neighborhoods.

"Place like Cindy works, behind a chemical plant and under so many high-voltage lines it hurts to touch your car when the ground's wet? Where the girls have to pretend every shitbum that walks in gives her a wide-on? Management knows there's a risk there. That's why there's a guy weighs two-eighty with a bunch of scar tissue on his knuckles standing in the parking lot, another one at the door, and a cop who's screwing one of the dancers cruising by in a squad car every five minutes. Place is probably the safest bar in a threestate area.

"But where you work, with the cappuccino machine and the forty different kinds of beer and all the college kids in the shirts and pants that look sloppy but cost a hundred bucks each, that's a different story. Guy could punch out every waitress in the place, take all his clothes off, jump up on the bar, and smoke a cigar with his butt, nobody would do a thing. Ninety-pound busboy would stand there with his mouth open, black dishwasher with the do-rag would be saying 'be cool, bro', and the owner would be staring at the cash register to make sure the bartender with the coke habit wasn't dipping into the till. And that's inside the building. You expect security in the parking lot? Maybe after we pay off the national debt, but not before." April was seething.

"So you're saying just lie back and enjoy it?"

"Not at all," Henry said gently. "I can set you up with a couple things that the cops can't nail you for. Pepper spray, stuff like that. Nothing like a decent gun, but better than nothing." The girl nodded.

"When the hell is this stupid state going to change the law?" April asked.

"I don't know. Third time's the charm."

"The way those bastards in the Capitol treat us, it makes me want to sandpaper a few more maple dowels," Cindy said softly. Henry's heart lurched in his chest, and April gave her lover a questioning look. "Vampires," Cindy explained to the younger girl. "You know-blood suckers? Wooden stake through the heart?"

"Oh sure," the younger girl said, now understanding. Henry Bowman stood up.

"I have to get going. I'll get back with Cindy as soon as I can, probably by tomorrow afternoon. Then we can talk some more, okay?"

"Yeah, that would be great. And I really want to thank you for coming over right away."

"I'll see you out," Cindy offered, and walked with Henry to the door. At the doorway she turned to face him. "'Smoke a cigar with his butt'?" she said in a low voice. Her whole face threatened to break into a smile.

"Hey, it just popped into my head," Henry said defensively.

"Thanks for coming over," she said as she squeezed his arm. "I owe you one." Henry nodded and turned toward the stairs.

He was still thinking about politicians and wooden dowels. Vampires did not figure in these thoughts.

May 12,1994 "We're not going to make it, folks," the State Rep's aide said. "Flanagan's running out the clock." Cindy Caswell winced when she heard the words, but she knew they were true. She glanced at her wristwatch. It was 4:15.

"That bastard," Cindy said in disgust, and others in the group nodded agreement. They were gathered outside the door to the Senate chamber. God but I hate it here she thought. It was the seventeenth full day Cindy had spent in the State Capitol building, and she had grown to loathe the place.

"Too late to get a law, but not too late to get a vote," one of the others in the group said. He looked up at the Rep's assistant. "We've got to have a Senate vote, people. Win, lose, or draw, these spineless bastards have got to be forced to go on record, one side or the other."

"We'll have that, no question," the aide assured him. "Some of these senators are afraid they're going to be boiled in oil by their constituents if they don't prove they're in favor of the rights of the citizen." "Too bad fear is the only thing that seems to work on these jerks," Cindy said.

"Fear may be the only thing that bothers these guys, but when they feel it, it works great. We do have these guys scared. Flanagan's so terrified of this thing landing on his desk that he's called in every chit he has out to get it voted down in the Senate. Senators are more scared of the voters than they are of him, though. What does that tell you, huh?" Cindy smiled a little, and the aide, seeing the change, pressed on. "Come on, let's go put the fear of God into a couple more of them before they let out for the year."

Cindy Caswell and seven others followed the aide down the hall of the Capitol building in Jefferson City, Missouri. They were in the Capitol on the last day of the 1994 legislative session because of a bill known as the Missouri Public Safety Law. Under existing Missouri law, it was a felony for a citizen to carry any sort of concealable weapon for protection, either on his person or readily available in a vehicle. The only exemptions were for police officers, judges, and officials authorized to execute process.

This law had been passed in 1874 during Reconstruction, and had obviously been designed to keep former slaves from being able to protect themselves. Prior to 1967, no white person had ever been arrested for violating this Missouri law. Al Goodman had explained this to Walter Bowman when Walter and his son Henry had come into Goodman's For Guns in May of 1963.

In the three most recent decades, however, all the other Jim Crow laws in Missouri had been stricken from the law books, and blacks had been elected and appointed to many positions of power in the state. Gradually, the prohibition on self-protection outside the home was applied to all Missouri residents, not just minorities. By 1992, Missouri led the nation in arresting people for carrying weapons for protection.

Just before the start of the 1992 session, two well-to-do citizens (who carried police credentials and were therefore exempt from the prohibition) had decided that they'd had enough of waiting for the NRA to do something about the problem. They had hired a lobbyist to help get this last bit of Jim Crow legislation off the Missouri books.

A number of grassroots human and civil rights organizations had immediately thrown their entire weight behind the effort. Missouri Citizens for Civil Liberties, the Second Amendment Coalition of Missouri, and the Western Missouri Shooters Alliance all went into high gear to get the Missouri prohibition on selfdefense repealed.

The next groups to throw in their support were business organizations. Under existing law, criminals had a government guarantee that merchants heading to the bank with the day's receipts had nothing except their fists with which to deter robbers. Every Missouri storeowner whose customers paid cash wanted that deplorable state of affairs changed immediately.

Not surprisingly, many women's groups followed suit. These groups had learned that men who commit rape upon strangers were statistically very likely to have spent time in prison and for that reason were likely to carry the AIDS virus. Missouri women knew that following the standard advice to 'give the attacker whatever he wants so he won't hurt you' could easily turn into a death sentence when rape was involved. Suddenly, thousands of women realized what Henry Bowman had told John Parker at Knob Creek: Giving violent criminals a government guarantee that potential victims are defenseless was very bad public policy. Parker had become involved in the issue and had spent much of his own money even though he, too, carried police credentials. Since he still had to work for a living, Parker could not be there for the last day of the session.

Because of the overwhelming support from these varied groups, the Missouri reform proposal had been constantly in the news in the Spring of 1992.

The lobbyist had been utterly baffled at the idea of wealthy citizens spending tens of thousands of dollars out of their own pockets to change a law from which they had already secured exemption. Despite this, he had initially done a decent job of developing strategy and guiding the bill through Missouri's House of Representatives, where it passed by a monumental 3-to-l margin.

At that point, however, the lobbyist had been overwhelmed by the magnitude of the issue and the depth of police officials' animosity towards the effort. The lobbyist had other clients with strong ties to the police chiefs, and he had resigned near the end of the session.

Missouri law enforcement officials were unanimous in their opposition to the proposed Public Safety Law for three very embarrassing reasons: The first was that no police chief wanted to advocate any anti-crime measure if it undermined his ability to get a bigger budget and/or more authority. The second was that the monopoly on non-uniformed security jobs that off-duty police officers had under the existing law would disappear if the bill was passed. The final reason was that police chiefs in Missouri had spent long years creating the myth that the police controlled the citizenry, rather than the reverse. The last thing police chiefs in Missouri wanted was to have citizens realize that the main difference between private citizens and police officers was that police officers were authorized to arrest people for traffic violations and other misdemeanors, while private citizens could only make arrests for felonies.

The police officials could not make these reasons public, and instead embarked on a campaign of hysteria, claiming that every minor argument was likely to result in a homicide if the law was passed. The chiefs insisted that although doctors, nurses, pharmacists, brake mechanics, bus drivers, cooks, and the like were already entrusted with serious public safety and health responsibilities, these same people would suddenly become seething cauldrons of homicidal rage if allowed to defend themselves outside their homes. The civil rights groups countered that this had not occurred in the thirty-four states which issued permits to their citizens, nor had it happened in Vermont, where no permit for defending oneself was required at all. The chiefs stonewalled.

Many Missourians were offended by the notion that they were not as trustworthy as the residents of other states, but the fix was in. When the bill went to the Senate, the senators claimed they'd have to see the results in other states before they'd consider the proposal, and the Citizens' Self-Defense Act of 1992 never got out of committee.

In 1993, the civil rights groups were without a lobbyist, and through ignorance and other missteps, allowed their bill to get delayed by the senator who claimed to be championing their cause. Once again, the session ended before the Missouri Senate was forced to vote on the proposal. It was in that legislative session that Cindy Caswell first became involved in the issue.

In 1994, things heated up. One of the groups published some of their research entitled Self-Defense Laws and Violent Crime Rates in the United States. The document cross-referenced the FBI Uniform Crime Report with the concealed-weapons laws of every state in the union. It also showed the population densities and ethnic composition of each state, and compared the crime rates of states that were similar to each other in all ways except their self-defense laws.

The report came to an inescapable conclusion: States with non-discriminatory laws allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons for self-defense were much safer than those where the citizens were, by law, defenseless when outside their homes.

The Missouri civil rights group also took the trouble to contact the Attorney General in each of the 34 states which issued licenses. The organization asked for documentation as to how many concealed-weapon licensees had been convicted of a violent gun crime after being issued their license. No state AG had been able to provide a single example, and the civil rights group tactfully pointed out to the media that this record was far better than that of any major Missouri law enforcement body.

For Missourians, there were two especially eye-opening things in the report. The first was that the safest state in the union, Vermont, allowed every U.S. citizen (not just Vermont residents) to carry a handgun or other self-defense weapon for protection. The fact that Vermont shared a long border with the state of New York made Vermont's low crime level even more interesting.

The second thing that startled Missourians who read the report was the comparison of their state with Indiana. An unspoken assumption among many residents and legislators was that states with high densities of blacks and/or Hispanics could not risk letting their citizens carry guns, especially not without lengthy training requirements and convoluted licensing procedures. The Indiana data blew this theory away.

With the same proportion of blacks and Hispanics as Missouri but double the population density (and therefore double the blacks and Hispanics per square mile), Indiana had only two-thirds the homicides and assaults, and less than half the robberies of the Show-Me state. Furthermore, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, and Terre Haute did not have the gang problems of St. Louis and Kansas City.

The only significant difference that anyone could find to account for this disparity in crime rates was that Indiana had enacted a non-discriminatory Public Safety Law in 1973. Indiana's concealed-carry license cost only $25 for four years and required no special training. Just as with the right to vote, the Indiana authorities were required by law to issue the license to any applicant who satisfied the objective criteria. Arbitrary discrimination by the issuing body was illegal.

With these facts in hand, the pro-rights groups went back to their senators. In 1992 and 1993, the reformers had been new to the game, and had allowed all sorts of discriminatory elements into the bill in the mistaken belief that it would win support from their enemies.

In 1994, they were a lot wiser, and knew they could win even if every police chief in the state opposed them. The reformers refused to consider $500 fees, police chief discretion, or any other discriminatory measures that the chiefs wanted included in the bill. Their initial proposal, which had strong support, was to adopt Vermont's law: no license at all. Eventually (and reluctantly), they agreed to offer a bill similar to Indiana's law, for there were still pockets of strong racism in the state, and some legislators could not stomach the notion of letting black citizens defend themselves without some form of government regulation.

The theme of the 1994 Public Safety Law was 'I Trust You', and it was very successful. Missouri police chiefs and anti-self-defense politicians were forced to admit that no, they did not trust the people they served.

In the middle of this controversy was a growing awareness among Missourians of the corruption within their law enforcement community. In 1992, the Highway Patrol was found to have set up illegal wiretaps. This revelation utterly baffled most residents of the state, who saw no possible reason how wiretapping related to radar traps. In 1993, the St. Louis prosecuting attorney, who had spent most of his tenure fanatically prosecuting video stores that rented X-rated tapes, was arrested paying a prostitute in a motel room near the airport. He stayed in office for several months after the arrest, refusing to resign even after it was learned that he had paid for many such liaisons with public money and maintained a private phone line in his city office that he answered with an alias to schedule paid sex appointments.

In 1994, the dam broke. The newspapers documented that city cops were systematically extorting money from motorists. The public learned that juvenile history was ignored in the police officer application process, and that many police officers in St. Louis and Kansas City had extensive juvenile rap sheets, including gang affiliations and murder charges. All efforts to force the departments to open the juvenile records of their officers failed, but the public got the message.

Then word got around that one of the officials close to the St. Louis police chief was expunging adult criminal records from the system for applicants to the force. The message to the public was clear: Some city cops were still gang members, and the police chief is trying to avoid being indicted.

With the police chiefs utterly devoid of credibility, the only remaining stronghold of resistance to the Public Safety Law within the Missouri legislature was the Governor himself.

Ken Flanagan had been one of several weak Democratic candidates in the 1992 election who had suddenly found himself in the Governor's mansion through sheer Providence. There had been two very strong Republican candidates for the office, and one of them, the state's Attorney General, had outspent his opponent and won the primary. After the primary but before the election, revelations of insurance fraud had been published in the newspapers, and the Attorney General had been indicted. It cost him the election.

Flanagan, as Governor, had backed many socialist proposals that the public rejected, and he was determined not to suffer the additional embarrassment of vetoing the Public Safety Law and then having his veto overridden by the legislature. Flanagan had called in every favor possible to get the senators to vote against the bill, but those in favor were still in the majority.

The Governor's final tactic had been to get an unrelated section of the Senate bill changed slightly from the House version (which had once again passed overwhelmingly), so that when the bill was approved by the Senate it would have to go to conference committee. Then he had convinced the main sponsor of the bill, Senator Gene Brenner, to delay a vote on the bill until the last possible moment. The carrot Flanagan used on Brenner was a quarter-million dollars of money the Governor controlled, which he promised to direct to Brenner's upcoming fall campaign for State Auditor.

It was now 4:30 on the last day of the 1994 Missouri legislative session. Cindy Caswell and other supporters of the bill were calling senators out into the hallway for some last-minute checks on how they intended to vote.

"All discussion has been considered on Senate Bill 592," the Speaker of the Missouri Senate announced. "Senator Adams...?"

"Aye."

"Senator Arnold...?"

"Aye."

The Speaker continued down the list as Cindy Caswell and the others sat in the gallery and watched. "Where are Jackson, Leland, and Wuertz?" Cindy whispered. "They're 'yes' votes."

"In the men's room. They're hiding out. They won't come out 'til the vote's over. That was their promise to the Governor." Spineless scum Cindy thought as she shook her head in disgust. The Senate restrooms had several loudspeakers in them wired directly to the Senate chamber. The absent senators knew exactly what they were doing. "Don't worry," the aide whispered. "We've still got the votes without them. These guys are all up for re-election in six months. They'll be history then." The man stopped talking and concentrated on the count. "That's it," he whispered. "It passed."

Cindy Caswell looked at her wristwatch. 5:43. The session ended at 6:00 p.m.

"Seventeen minutes left," she sighed. "Not enough time for the bill to go to conference committee. Looks like the Governor won." One of the others in the group looked at her. He was a big man, with a beard. His name was Arthur Bedderson.