Chapter One

The Farm

Stormville is a small town in the northeastern part of New York. It’s notable as the county seat and for the Stormville State Penitentiary as well as the Stormville Airport, which is home to a highly regarded skydiving facility. In the outlying areas is a scattering of small dairy farms. It is on one of these farms this account begins. The farm is owned by the town’s judge, Hugo Abadon. The judge is a big man in his late forties. Like many judges, he is an elitist, commanding, arrogant, and has convinced himself that he not only stands above the law, but that he is the law. He is also vindictive and without a shred of conscience. However, he can appear to be jovial and charming. His friends have much the same qualities. Birds of a feather.

However, the judge is rather unique. He is powerful enough to control or at least intimidate most of the state’s politicians, other judges, district attorneys, police chiefs, police, and other functionaries. Part of his power derives from his enormous wealth and it is rumored to be at least one hundred and twenty million. Of course the money didn’t come from an inheritance or from his judgeship or from bribes and paybacks. It came, oddly enough, from China. More exactly from a well hidden and long lasting arrangement with the largest drug cartel in China.

After he’d graduated from law school, Hugo Abadon spent three interesting years in Shanghai. As the center of commerce it is also the port from which the world’s most lucrative drug trade makes its way around the world. During his stay there, the judge became friends and partners with a young man not much older than himself, a Mr. Jin. They became partners in a very successful drug distributing operation and in the United States, the drug trade flourished as did Judge Abadon. Although the townsfolk of Stormville knew he had wealth producing connections in China no one suspected what they were.

The occasion on this Sunday is a family picnic. The chief guests are the judge’s brother, Joseph, and his family: wife Mary, daughters Angel and Faith. Joining the happy gathering are the town banker, Edward Grimes, and the senior town doctor, Ralph Conway. The judge’s wife died two years ago so to prepare and serve the food and drink, the judge has hired his bodyguard/driver, Lucifer Pigeon—an ex-con, a huge scowling black man. He has no wife but does have a daughter, Shauna, the same age as Faith.

As they got out of the car before the rambling farmhouse, Angel and Faith exchanged apprehensi