The conclusive evidence in the death of J. Oscar Rett -- and his killer -- are at last found!  You can get caught up on [part 1](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-at-last-the-field-of-blood-part-1), [part 2](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-2), [part 3](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-3), [part 4](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-4), [part 5](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-5), [part 6](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-6), [part 7](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-7), [part 8](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-8), [part 9](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-9), [part 10](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-10), [part 11](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-11), [part 12](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-12), [part 13](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-13), [part 14](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-14), [part 15](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-15), and [part 16](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-16) to catch up on all the twists and turns!

![the field of blood, little version.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXvwM4uuAQqEq1wXRcjLNFfB8LZnC1HbEuTXNWA8z2beP/the%20field%20of%20blood,%20little%20version.jpg)

Strange how it was to think of it all … to put in the work to really get to know a man, his strengths, his weaknesses, his quirks … J.O. liked to play on words, to find double meanings.  He had kept Mrs. Drake laughing until she had realized there was a darker meaning to the constant play … a double-minded man, said the Scripture, was unstable in all his ways.  Her mother had added: “If you spend too much time taking heed to such a man, he will have you not sure of the meanings of things either.”

Now, to Mrs. Drake, it was the double, darker meanings that came to mind – that whole kitchen, perhaps $1,000 worth of food ordered by a man who presumably made less than $50,000, in a place in which rent alone was worth almost that much a year … the computer brutally broken and file cabinet rifled by criminals looking to hide their involvement with him, presumably just a mild-mannered and efficient and beloved community servant in communities they were destroying, bit by bit … the closet with its two sets of clothes, and two sets of accessories for living in two different worlds.  He had always dressed nicely, but he certainly wanted to impress one group of people more than another, and she had not been in the group that he wanted to impress the most … that group was hinted at by  bleaching cream for the skin that was on Mr. Rett's nightstand … Mrs. Drake became weak for a few moments when she saw all of that.  

The search through Mr. Rett's personal papers was on, but Mrs. Drake, while she witnessed it, was not engaging in it.  She knew something of what she was looking for, and while Mr. Varick, Captain Hamilton, and Captain Lee were methodically searching, she was drawn back to the desk, to the site of J.O.'s Rolodex, and all the cards in it that connected him with all the people who had been exposed with Topia, and where the book that had his key in it for the file cabinet still sat, marked “Backups.”  The men had been through the book, but still, Mrs. Drake focused on it.

Mrs. Varick had stayed beside Mrs. Drake, and had felt the changes in Mrs. Drake's feelings and her strength as they had wandered less methodically than the men through the apartment.

“Hettie, maybe you need some air,” Mrs. Varick murmured.

“I need to leave here and never return,” Mrs. Drake said, “but not without what we came for.”

So, it was Mrs. Varick who stopped with Mrs. Drake as she began staring at the book marked “Backups.”  Their stillness attracted Captain Lee's notice, and he alerted the rest.

The men had looked through the book, but left it on the desk; Mrs. Drake picked it up, murmuring aloud, “back … up ...”

She turned the book over and looked, and there, the back cover appeared a little fatter than the front cover.  She flipped it; there, the cloth outer portion of the cover had been slit, and a piece of folded paper pushed into the slit.

Mrs. Drake's hands and entire body began to shake.  Captain Lee, who was intensely drawn to her, stayed still with a great exercise of will, and allowed Mr. Varick her cousin to get there first and wrap his arms and strength around her.  Captain Hamilton gently tapped Captain Lee on his shoulder to re-affirm his own cousin that he had done the right thing, and Captain Lee nodded slightly as the Varicks helped Mrs. Drake into the desk chair and just took several moments holding and calming her.

After a minute or so, Mrs. Drake recovered, picked up the book again, and drew out the piece of paper.  With trembling hands she unfolded it … but then fell over onto the desk, her strength suddenly exhausted as she held the note out to Mr. Varick, who read it, and then, after Mrs. Drake had recovered again in Mrs. Varick's embrace, read it aloud.

“Dear Hettie” – and Captains Hamilton and Lee realized why Mrs. Drake was having trouble – “I knew that only you would know me well enough to understand where I would put this when it was time for my explanation to be known.  

“Your 16-year-old son showed me up, in that he was willing to die on the steps of Tinyville City Hall in order to secure those things that are important to you and yours – as I was trying to talk him out of doing that, I realized that I had not done all that I could do.  I too know exactly what it will take to stop the men who want that field – but City Hall's steps were not the place, and Dell has his whole life ahead of him.  I don't. I have lived my best years already, given that I have just been diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cancer.  So, while I retain my strength, I have chosen to use it in a manner that will keep our enemies from that field forever – since we cannot now water the tree of liberty with the blood of capitalism's tyrants, the blood of a martyr will do just as well.  

“I have a bit more money than you think, Hettie – I have laid up enough for you so that you won't have to think about anything but grieving me and caring for Dell for a few years.  Please try to understand – I know we didn't make it as a couple, but I still love you, and I'm choosing to die saving your cause rather than just dying a slow, painful death.  When you go to that field when it is preserved the way James [Varick] and the crew want it, remember me.  Love, J.O.”

Mr. Varick refolded the note, and silence reigned until Mrs. Drake's deep sobs filled the room.  Yet it was a mistake to think her weakness was all sadness, a fact revealed as Mrs. Varick, in an attempt to comfort her, said, “Well, J.O. was partially successful – they'll never get the field now.”

“But in the way he did it, it was the last and worst betrayal of all – the coward!  The self-centered, reprobate coward!  Did he say anything about how the field was lost to us?  Did he say anything about how he came home every day and tore up every legal argument of the society he was treasurer for and fed those shreds to Topia and the Tinyville City Council for two entire years?  Love?  He was smiling in all our faces almost that entire time – what in the whole universe did he know about love and sacrifice and martyrdom?  Being Judas and trying to be known as Jesus as the same time – running around offering his skills and solving problems for all these groups just to be praised while selling us all out!

“But then he got tired of the game – the cancer to all good work in Lofton County gets cancer!  It is not enough for him to just take his ill-gotten gains and go – no, he has to go dramatically.  So, what does that do to help the situation?  Topia and Tinyville would have paved it over – but now, whenever anybody thinks about it, they're not going to be thinking of Delford Drake Sr., the real hero of the field, of the ten people he saved and the 55 others he died with in the massacre.  It's going to be all about J. Oscar Rett!

“So bad was this betrayer that he couldn't leave it so that we would think it was a lynching and so the drama would be perfect – because we never would have believed he killed himself!  Never!  But he just had to get the credit for his last work – so he left that little $30 Sunday School clue for his Sunday School girl to find so she could go find his note and make sure it got printed right for the masses – so he could be held a hero, laying down his life for the community!  But he has indeed gone to his own place – if I know anything for certain after today, I know right where he belonged and thank God he is there and not here, doing further damage and wasting further time!  That hateful, no-good, dirty coward – why did I even waste my time, loving him, ever?”

Mrs. Drake broke down again, and Mrs. Varick embraced her.  There would be no swift recovery this time.  Mr. Varick handed Captain Hamilton the note to complete his evidence, and the two officers solemnly departed.  They waited in Captain Lee's car until they saw the Varicks come out almost an hour later, the exhausted Mrs. Drake between them, and then Captain Hamilton called both the management agent for the Caldwell Plaza Development and the county office in charge of crime scene clean-up in order to release Mr. Rett's former apartment for clean-up. 

“What a tragedy,” Captain Lee said to Captain Hamilton.  “We have not even begun to see the grief, the sorrow … 39 percent of the county is going to be devastated and their credulity pointed up by this.”

“Don't count on James Varick IV allowing that to happen,” Captain Hamilton said.  “I know you were focused on the state of Mrs. Drake … .”

Captain Lee blushed, but stood firm.

“Guilty as charged,” he said.  “Physically and emotionally I could not help a strong attraction to such a woman.  I simply do not understand how these men keep messing up after God puts a woman like that into their lives – if a man needed any reason to get his life all the way together, praising God all the way along, Hettie Drake would be it.  Had Magdalena Thornton not come into my life, I would be from this day doing whatever I needed to do to be man enough to have any possible chance at Hettie Drake.”

“But see, Harry, that's *you,*” Captain Hamilton said.  “That's us.  That's also Mr. Varick.  That wasn't Mr. Rett.  Everybody doesn't want to get their lives all the way together.  Some people want to have other people just go for the ride as it is.”

“I don't understand,” Captain Lee said, “but I sense that this is another occasion to thank God for what He has never allowed me to understand, and for what Ella Mae Varick and Agnes Hamilton and the future Magdalena Thornton Lee will never have to understand.”

“Yes indeed – there but for the grace of God go we and those who love us, after the wreck we would have made of our lives and theirs.  Yet as I said, don't count Mr. Varick out – I expect he will find a way to limit the damage to his community while also getting the whole truth out.”

“He would be quite the alchemist, to spin any gold out of the poor straw of this tragedy.”

“I rather think he will avoid that whole route, but there is enough straw and enough mud and enough heat to make good brick.”

Captain Lee smiled.  

“That is a kind way of thinking about this mess … but I see what you are saying now.  Your part, at least, is easy.”

Captain Hamilton neglected – intentionally – to get back to Tinyville in time for the news to get into the Tinyville Times that evening that indeed, Mr. Rett's death was a suicide.  He arrived at the police department at 4:00 to find Lieutenant O'Reilly holding down the fort quite well.  

Lieutenant O'Reilly could tell by the look on his commander's face what had happened.

“You found the note,” he said.

“Actually, no – Mrs. Drake came up and found it,” Captain Hamilton said, “to her dismay and sorrow, and mine.”

Captain Hamilton handed the lieutenant the note while he pulled out the case file to move it from the working file to the closed section.  Meanwhile, Lieutenant O'Reilly finished the case in Morton Data Master; the presence of a note completed the set just as the program was predicting.

Before he handed the note back, Lieutenant O'Reilly read it, and shook his head.

“Quite a journey we had to take to the truth,” he said.

“Yes, indeed, Lieutenant, although we are still not quite done with that.”

[Part 18 is up](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@deeanndmathews/for-nanowrimo-the-field-of-blood-part-18)