CHAPTER ONE

Horse Country

“…whatever political organization men may have achieved has its origin in crime.”

—Hannah Arendt,On Revolution

Saturday, October 31, 2015 Halloween, Richmond, Kentucky

The fall always hesitates to leave Kentucky. Then winter surprises, comes with a bludgeon. Halloween fell on a Saturday that winter rejected, a crisp but pleasant fall day. The trick or treaters could make their rounds, gather their candies. Not that they would notice the weather unless it poured or snowed.

At 9:30 Bryce Corson and his girlfriend DeeDee Perez could be found in their apartment not far from the campus of Eastern Kentucky University where, as at best mediocre students, they went through the motions of attending some classes, not bothering to buy books (along with many students who did show up for lectures), and getting by in easy courses with lax instructors. This distinguished them little from many other seekers of knowledge, or at least certification, who matriculated at that distinguished institution. And in enclaves of higher learning across the land.

The apartment contained a minimum of furniture with mostly bare walls, devoid of the posters and banners that plaster most student quarters. The couple had put little effort into putting their personal stamp on it. They assumed feng shui was a menu item. But Bryce and DeeDee could not be faulted for lacking enterprise.

As entrepreneurs in street crime they did a tidy little business in providing uppers, downers, marijuana, and occasionally opioids to students and the inevitable peripheral population of dropouts and hangers on around most urban campuses, though describing Richmond’s population of barely 36,000 as urban is a stretch, even adding on some 17,000 students.

Bryce at 23 had finally reached his junior year as an economics major. He was a lanky 6’1” with long page-boy hair down to his shoulders, a smooth, angular face punctuated with a crisp goatee and bland blue-grey eyes his most distinctive feature. DeeDee, offspring of a Hispanic father and Irish American mother, carried slightly too much weight and with ample curves generously could be likened to an overweight Jennifer Lopez, a look she did her best to cultivate. Should anyone on meeting her begin a sentence with “You know, you kinda’ look like” DeeDee’s heart would jump. Her dream fulfilled.

Bryce barely focused on the television tuned to a scare-flick he had seen before while DeeDee fussed with a costume she would wear at a party later that night. Make