Jul 11 2021
The following week, Travis and Lucile received good news from one of the Multnomah County agencies that works with homeless people—they'd qualified for a two-bedroom rent-subsidized house in southeast Portland’s Buckman neighborhood. Jack's father had helped with the application and…
Jun 8 2021
We left Episode Four as Jack called his father and told him about what he and Travis were doing. Hoping his parents would appreciate what they’d accomplished, he invited them to the rat circus show. His father said they'd be…
May 9 2021
“It was Bigrat! Didn’t you hear him?” Travis said, as he approached the box where he kept the rat. When he reached it, he looked over the edge, then gasped, a look of shock distorting his face.
“Pa!” Travis screamed…
Apr 10 2021
When the big rat stopped nosing around for crumbs and rose up on his haunches, Travis said, “I heard you.”
"I didn't say anything," Lucile said from where she sat near the burn barrel. She got up and went to…
Mar 8 2021
Later that evening, after the stew his Lucille had made and shared with the other homeless campers, Travis set out eleven traps. The next morning, every trap held a rat, and the rat man bought them all. With part of…
Feb 7 2021
“Hey! Travis! That sack looks alive. Must’ve been a good catch,” a run-away-teenager named Jack yelled when a tall, hatless man in his mid-thirties appeared in the misty morning light from around a bridge abutment. Travis had longish red hair…
Jan 1 2021
Karla followed Madeline through the kitchen of the mass murder gang's Southeast Portland safehouse to the attached garage where Madeline had parked her car. After they got into her old Subaru, Madeline said, "Cover your eyes," and handed Karla a…
Dec 9 2020
It was the day before Christmas and Al Badowski and his wife Phyllis, and their two kids, thirteen-year-old Patty and her little brother Jason, were stuck in traffic on Route Nine a little south of Catskill, New York. They were…
Dec 8 2020
When Karla entered the FBI headquarters sixth-floor conference room she'd been in many times, Chief Hannah Marx, her field agent Darrel James, and Captain Tom Tabor of the Portland Police Bureau, stood and clapped their hands.
"Sorry to be late,"…
Nov 10 2020
Being unfamiliar with automobiles, Karla didn't notice when Slaggart pressed the door lock switch on his armrest before she opened the passenger door to get out of the car. It was the one he'd driven from Portland to the deserted…
Oct 6 2020
The woman and the two men who were funding the project to exterminate Portland's homeless population were together in a Heathman Hotel restaurant private room having breakfast and listening to Charles describe what Pastor Slaggart told him about Karla's proposal…
Sep 15 2020
The morning after Karla had met with Madeline and Pastor Slaggart at the church (which was when Madeline announced that Chester had solved the toxin production problem) a taxi dropped Karla at a house in Southeast Portland where Madeline's team…
