This story is a work of fiction. Any similarities to any real person or entity are entirely coincidental and unintended.
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The Attorney General's Special Crimes Office had been created by statute about twelve years ago. The then incumbent AG got his allies in the General Assembly to create the SCO in order to burnish the AG's crime-fighting credentials for a run for Governor. That AG did not make it to the Governor's mansion, but government agencies are a lot easier to create than to get rid of. I was grateful. It gave me a job.
After I got my degrees, I decided that I wanted to do something meaningful and interesting. In a piece of extraordinary good luck, I was accepted by the FBI. I enjoyed being an investigator. There is something very rewarding to me about collecting a number of individually minor details and weaving them into a mosaic that catches and convicts a bad guy. Others have analogized the process to assembling a picture puzzle when you have to hunt for the pieces. That analogy gets fairly close.
What I did not like about the Bureau was that it seemed to have decided that my entire career would be served in Texas. No offense to Texans, but I'm not a huge fan of your state. When I heard about the AGSCO opening in my home state, I applied. I wasn't from the state capital, but, at least, there I spoke with a proper accent.
I was again fortunate to be among the first eight agents hired. We've subsequently added four more, including my partner for the last three years, Andrea Bauer. Like me, Andy left college wanting something meaningful and challenging. Her solution was the US Marine Corps. I don't know to this day exactly what Andy did in the Marines. My impression is that she went as far as a woman could in combat arms and was in some pretty nasty situations. Something happened, though, and Andy left the Marines after six years. She joined the Cleveland PD and quickly made detective. I'm sure that Andy's promotion was fast-tracked because she was a woman and a veteran. I have no problem with that. Andy is a good cop.
Andy is also a good partner. In our years working together, we had never had an argument. Andy would, and often did, tell me that she disagreed with me. But, she gave her reasons and was never personal or insulting. She was smart, hard-working, reliable, and easy to deal with. Nothing seemed to faze her.
Physically, Andy was ok, but no head turner. For the three years I'd worked with her, I thought of her face as pleasantly plain. The clothes she wore gave you no idea about her body. However, we ran together a couple of times a week. I had seen Andy in a tee shirt and shorts. You could fault her shape for being somewhat masculine in that she had broad shoulders that v'd to narrower hips and waist. However, there was nothing masculine and her full, firm breasts, her tight ass, or her firm and nicely shaped legs.
As far as I knew, Andy wasn't seeing anyone. Neither was I. I had tried dating since I took the AGSCO job. I found that a lot of women wouldn't go out with me just because I was a law enforcement officer and a few wanted to go out with me only because I was a law enforcement officer. Call me arrogant, but I thought that there was more to me than what I did for a living. I hadn't found anyone very interested in the complete person.
After you have done this job for several years, you start thinking that you've seen everything. However, the case that came to Andy and me just after Memorial Day that year had some unique aspects apparent from the initial report. By law, AGSCO had authority to investigate any crime in the state as directed by the AG. In practice, most of what we did was assist local agencies which had something beyond their capabilities. This meant that, while we were based in the state capital, we worked mostly in the small towns and rural areas that made up the geographic majority of the state.
This particular case came from the sheriff of a county about an hour and a half drive southeast of the capital. The county had no really big towns and was thinly populated. It was an area of gentle, rolling hills and large fields. Economically, farming was king. While there was crime, mainly due to opiate sales and use, even that was nowhere near as bad as in many other parts of our state.
The initial report we received identified the crime scene as the grounds of "Sunland Naturist Club." The Sheriff's Office thoughtfully explained that Sunland was a nudist club. I was a little surprised to learn that we had nudist clubs in the state. I knew that there were some in Texas, but I had assumed that they were confined to places where it stayed warm year-round.
The case had started about a month earlier with Sunland receiving anonymous letters saying that it had to close its "den of sin" and "return the land to the people." Sunland reported the letters to the Sheriff. Unfortunately, the letters had no fingerprints or other traces that might identify the sender. The paper and envelopes could be bought at any Target or Walmart in the country. The ink was very common. There wasn't much which the Sheriff could do.
The situation had escalated a couple of weekends ago when the folks staying overnight at Sunland were awoken very early on Sunday morning by a stench. The source of the stench was a pig carcass which had been doused with gasoline and set ablaze in the center of their camp. The Sheriff determined that the pig had been stolen from a farm about 15 miles away, killed somewhere else, and, apparently, carried by hand onto the Sunland grounds. Surprisingly, the perpetrator had managed to do all of that without anyone noticing him or her. A detailed search found some tire tracks on the shoulder of a county road east of Sunland that might have been the perpetrator's vehicle and some partial footprints that might have been made by Army footwear. No one staying at Sunland that weekend had any military shoes or boots. The pig burning had been followed by two more anonymous letters.
The situation had escalated again over the holiday weekend when an explosion went off at Sunland early Sunday morning. No one was hurt and there was no serious damage. However, the Sheriff had identified the explosive as a projectile from a hand-held rocket launcher. While these weapons had been around roughly twenty years, they were supposed to be only in the hands of the military.
Andy and I took a state car and drove down to the county seat. The Sheriff's investigation was led by Lt. Ken Weishorn, who seemed to be a very competent officer. Weeishorn took us through what the Sheriff had, which, as Weishorn acknowledged, wasn't really much. One thing which they had not had when they sent their report to us was yet another anonymous letter to Sunland. This letter had a more aggressive tone. It said that Sunland "must" shut down immediately and stop "the defilement of young women." None of us had a clue what that referred to, but the tone of this latest letter was troubling.
Andy and I drove out to Sunland. To the extent that I had thought about it at all, I suppose that my mental image of a nudist camp was a collection of pup tents. When we found the discretely marked entrance to Sunland on SR 612, that image was shattered. A well maintained blacktop driveway took us nearly a mile off of the highway to a blacktop parking area surrounded by very permanent, nice-looking buildings. Beyond some of the buildings, we could see a large pool and tennis courts.
We had called ahead and were met by Carol Timmons, the club president, and Barb Stamper, the vice president. My stereotype of a nudist in a camp was someone 65 or older who was obese or nearly so. Ms. Timmons and Ms. Stamper were considerably younger. I put Timmons at about 28. I learned later that Stamper was 33. The women were clothed for our meeting. They were both attractive and looked very fit. I suspected that seeing either one of them nude would be very pleasant.
The two women explained that Sunland had been operating in the same location for about 30 years. Over the last few years, its membership had grown and become much younger. However, there were no disputes with any of the club's neighbors. Likewise, there were no disgruntled members or ex-members. No one at the club had an angry ex or a stalker. We could not identify anyone with any motive to harass the club. Andy and I left knowing very little more than when we had arrived.
We went over the latest letter with them. "I don't know what he means by 'young women,'" Carol Timmons said. "No one under 18 is allowed in."
"I don't know what he means by 'defilement,'" Barb Stamper added. "Yeah, we're all running around naked and that can get you thinking about sex." Stamper gave an attractive giggle. "I'm not going to tell you that it doesn't go on here. Almost all of us are couples after all. But, everything that goes on is in the privacy of someone's cabin. Sexual activity out where non-consenting people will see it is a guaranteed expulsion from the club."
In the late afternoon of the next day, I received an e-mail at the office from Carol Timmons. Sunland had received another letter that morning. Timmons hadn't scanned the letter because she didn't want to touch it, but quoted the entire letter in her e-mail. The letter had described the car which Andy and I took to Sunland as well as what each of us had worn. The letter ended with the threat that, "Plain clothes police cannot help you. Your doom approaches unless you repent now." This was very concerning.
Andy and I met with our boss, Assistant AG Joe Bishop. Before coming to the AG's office, Bishop had been chief felony prosecutor in the state's largest county. He understood criminals and investigations, and had pretty good judgment.
Bishop summarized the situation. "We have nothing to identify the perpetrator. His level of violence is escalating and his letters suggest that he's coming unglued. I don't think that we have any choice but to keep people down there."
Andy responded, "We know that he has the club under surveillance, although I'll be damned if I know from where. If we obviously put officers down there, he'll see them and is likely to just stay away until we have to pull them out. We need people in there who will look like guests to him and can catch him in the act."
Bishop said, "His last letter described exactly what you two were wearing. Plain clothes officers will stand out like a sore thumb. Anyone we put in would have to go nude."
"I know," Andy replied.
"Who is going to do that?" Bishop asked.
Andy looked at me for a minute. "We will," she said.
Bishop looked at me. My contribution was to say, "This guy is going to hurt someone or kill them. We need to do what it takes to get this guy in custody and make him harmless."
That simply, it was decided that Andy and I would go to Sunland, strip naked, and wait for our bad guy to try his next attack. Since he seemed to launch his attacks on weekends, we decided that Andy and I would go to Sunland on Friday evening and stay through Sunday. We called Carol Timmons, who was thrilled, and were promised a cabin.
Andy and I spent the rest of the week getting our other files in position to leave them aside for a couple of days, and talking about what we needed to do on the Sunland case. One issue was equipment. Our goal was to catch the perpetrator in the act. We had to assume that he would have weapons and be willing to use them. That meant we needed to be armed. Long guns were out of the question. If our bad guy was watching Sunland as closely as it seemed, he would notice those and we'd be blown. Finally, we decided to take a long barrel revolver of mine that had good range, accuracy, and stopping power for a handgun, and Andy's automatic, which could be reloaded much faster. Those guns, extra ammo, some other gear, and very few clothes would fit in a couple of gym bags. Hopefully, our perpetrator wouldn't notice that the bags were unusually heavy. One topic which we did not discuss at all was going naked in front of each other.
I picked Andy up at her condo on Friday afternoon in my personal Subaru. Our thinking was that the perpetrator wouldn't take a Japanese SUV for a police vehicle. I think that Andy was a bit nervous riding to Sunland. I sure was.
We were met at Sunland by Carol Timmons, Barb Stamper, and their husbands. All four of them were nude. They were physically attractive people. Carol Timmons told us, "We understand that this is a sacrifice for you to go nude here. We really appreciate you doing this for us. We hope that, having a chance to sample our lifestyle, you will come to appreciate it as we do."
