Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
The idea for the story came on the same day as the last post of “Hanged for Shoplifting.” However, I had already begun Singapore III, without fully realizing how big a project that opus would be. It pushed Lowland to a far back burner. I did manage to write the first draft of Episode 1 by May 17th. With slight edits, it was exactly what I posted to start the story in December.
Here is the original:
A Lowland Adventure
Alexander Maxwell was only halfway through his first full day in Scotland when he began wondering if the whole idea of this vacation was a stupendous screwup. To understand, the reader must be taken back several years.
When the time came to celebrate his 45th birthday, Alex Maxwell was very happy with his life. Though his marriage was childless (his wife’s insistence to save the planet from the “infection of humans” as she described it), he was happy in it. Dorothy was younger, 37, very attractive, charming, good in bed and preferred a job that allowed her time to take care of most of the household chores (“I have to”, she’d say. “If it was up to you, we’d live in a pigsty.”). Alex had never dreamed of straying from fidelity.
Alex was an only child and his parents had passed away a few years earlier. He had several good friends at work and was active in a bowling league and golfing with buddies in the summers. He loved his job and had received frequent recognition for his talent and accomplishments.
Two days after his birthday, on a Friday, he found the house empty and a letter on the dining room table when he came home from work. It was from Dorothy. She said she had never loved Alex much and a year ago had lost all affection for him. She was in love with a woman she’d met at the nail shop. They had packed up and left town. Dorothy asked Alex to arrange the divorce so she could marry “Silvia” in Oregon, where they were going.
Alex sat on the floor of the dining room and read the letter over and over. It is almost an understatement to say he hadn’t seen this coming. An hour later, he heaved himself to his feet and went to the butler’s pantry to pour himself a Scotch, neat. That was the first of a number that he soon lost count of. He awoke the next morning, lying on the living room floor, with the worst hangover of his life.
He got up, took a long hot shower, shaved and dressed, had several cups of black coffee and three fried eggs with a generous sprinkling of turmeric, and went to his Saturday bowling league. That night and many others for the next month, he cried himself to sleep. But he never again allowed the events to affect his daytime life.
It was during this time, as he met with a lawyer to arrange the divorce, that Alexander began to think of a trip to Scotland. His father was of Scottish descent, though Alex only had a vague conception of the details. He himself was named for his grandfather. His father explained that it was traditional in their family. Other than the mention that the family came from somewhere in the “Stewartry,” which meant nothing to Alex, he remembered no more.
But now, with no close family at all, and entering mid-life with much of his life torn to pieces, Alex Maxwell was thinking about where he came from. For the moment, these were just ideal thoughts that he would return to sometimes when daydreaming. However, they would not rest.
Alex was a criminological motivational researcher, commonly called a profiler. Out of college with a plain vanilla degree in psychology, he had been attracted to law enforcement. However, a minor marijuana conviction when he was nineteen, disqualified him from a police job. He had been fortunate to get a job as an assistant to a private investigator. The PI, was old and grumpy, but he knew crime inside and out and took a liking to the eager lad who wanted to “catch the bad guys.”
Encouraged by his boss, Alex had begun reading every book on the criminal mind he could find. Add to that the vast experience of his boss from 40 years in the business meant that Alex soon acquired a deep understanding of criminals. He savored the opportunity to get inside the minds of these people and to be able to predict what they were like and what they would do.
For most, criminal profiling is a science, a study of texts and charts, and probabilities. For Alex, it tapped into something deep in the way his own brain worked. Although he studied and learned all the statistics and charts, they were only a minor part of his work. He would gather everything to know about the criminal and his actions and then go off to a quiet place to think. Usually, he would come back with an eerily accurate description of the guilty party. Once his minor conviction was ten years in the past and his remarkable abilities were observed by the police in several cases, opportunity with the real police opened up. Once it did, his success rate and his advancement were remarkable. Three years ago he had accepted the position as chief profiler for the Wisconsin Department of Justice. He worked at its headquarters, in Madison, the state capital. His office was the Risser Justice Center in downtown Madison.
