Boston

Ch. 8: Boston

Harvey had so far tracked Twill’s move across the country, across the planet and around campus. She gathered that Twill likely couldn’t have been the only shooter and, moreover, may not have been a shooter at all. He may have been what he claimed: a patsy.

Now, she wanted to determine how he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, so Harvey decided a trip to Boston was in order. Anyway, she had to bring her phone to the repair place, so it was a good excuse to check out the scene of the incident.

Harvey zipped up her green hoodie and pulled on her knitted cap to make the trek to Boston. She hit up the #32 bus north to the Haverhill line. To get to the scene of the incident meant taking the T downtown before getting on the #7 bus and getting off at Powerhouse Street.

Jumping off of the last stop on her route, Harvey landed in a puddle in the densely populated and heavily gentrified neighborhood of South Boston. She flicked open her blue umbrella to protect herself from the pink precipitation. Lightly flooded streets soaked her thin shoes. PISCES also hadn’t eliminate sea level rise and the accompanying “sunny day flooding,” or rainy day flooding in this case. The sounds of car horns, gas engines and shoppers carrying large, branded paper shopping bags filled the dense air.

Harvey traced Twill’s reported footsteps in the city the winter before the assassination. Twill had found a paid internship with a book publisher located at the South Boston Power Plant, recently converted into a mixed-use business space. She moseyed down to the large, industrial building and visually located the office of the publisher on the sixth floor, supposedly overlooking the route that Kilpatrick would ultimately take.

That winter, Twill rented a small room at an apartment a few blocks away. Harvey pulled out the small notepad on which she’d written the address and, after orienting herself at the nearest intersection, headed in the direction of the room. Twill was said to have walked to work daily.

Harvey mentally perused an unsuspecting brick apartment building and imagined Twill’s room on the third floor. Local authorities said that, while living there, Twill had made numerous calls to the Venezuelan Embassy in Boston to “see if he had any messages.”

She then strolled down another three blocks west to find the Venezuelan Embassy. According to a CMT report provided to the Wilson Committee, Twill had even visited the embassy in New Orleans on his way back from Venezuela to speak with a member of “Venezuelan intelligence.” The CMT logged video evidence, which included the grainy surveillance footage Kinzly and Harvey had watched the night before.

The CMT also supplied a statement from a woman who worked at the embassy. The statement was obtained in a manner that was… problematic. The day after the assassination, she was arrested by Boston P.D. at the request of the CMT. The message from the CMT to the police said, “With full regard for municipal interests, request you ensure that her arrest is kept absolutely secret, that no information from her is published or leaked that all such info is sent to us…”

The message was ultimately leaked to a small Andover zine, The Barnacle, which published an interview with the embassy employee. She explained that she was not released from jail until she identified Twill as the visitor to the Venezuelan Embassy. Even after her release, she was arrested and imprisoned once more—details that were kept out of the Wilson Committee Report. Also included in the interview was the fact that the kid who would visit the embassy regularly to cause a commotion about supposed messages from Venezuelan intelligence was only 5’3 in height, the embassy employee said.

The Wilson Committee did not interrogate the Consul for the embassy, even though he was reported to have had three “confrontations” with Twill. The Boston Globe did speak to the Consul, however. When shown a photo of Twill, he stated that the kid he had argued with was blonde, unlike Twill. He also said that the boy shot by Jimmy Diamond on TV just two months later did not look like the person he had had confrontations with.

Next to the Venezuelan embassy was the Chinese embassy, where Twill was also said to have regularly visited and called. The Wilson Committee requested audio recordings of the calls, which the CMT said were unavailable because Boston P.D. surveillance equipment had accidentally damaged them before they could be turned over to the Committee. But not before there were some witnesses to the recordings’ contents.

The audio files were maintained just long enough for the Office of Discipline employees present during the five-hour police interrogation of Twill to hear them. In a report filed the day after the assassination and also leaked to the Barnacle, the Office of Discipline officials wrote that they were “of the opinion that the above-referred-to individual [on the Chinese Embassy audio files] was not James Leonard Twill.” The files subsequently became corrupted and unplayable.

Standing outside of the embassies, Harvey thought to herself that the Twill that lived in Boston may have been a physical imposter, just as the one who had applied for work at Moorehaven before the authentic Twill arrived from Venezuela.

Some of the scenes described in the Committee report were so ridiculous as to be out of a manga. In one instance, a witness obtaining a visa at the consulate was said to have observed Twill arrive at the Venezuelan embassy with a woman, presumably his mother Marna, wearing a brilliant red scarf bundled on her head. He was said to have approached the secretary and asked, “How is the weather in Venezuela?”

The secretary was said to have replied, “It is very mild. Just as it is here today.”

Twill then followed up with a more suspicious question that Harvey found peppered throughout the various cartoonish antics that occurred the winter before the assassination: “What do you have to do to take firearms or a gun into Venezuela?”

The secretary replied to that very striking question with “Why do you want to take a gun to Venezuela?”

The witness claimed to have volunteered a friendly answer to aid in Twill’s request, “The hunting’s wonderful down there!”

The boy then gave the witness a “belligerent look” and showed “no appreciation.” The witness described the boy as “ill-at-ease,” unlike the other, more relaxed tourists that were at the office looking for visas.

When she was questioned by the CMT the week after Kilpatrick’s murder, the officials showed her a photo of Twill and asked if he looked like the person she’d seen at the consulate, which she denied. The officials continued to question her on that point, insisting that it was possible that Twill and the boy at the consulate asking about guns were the same.

One incident from the winter included a wealthy brownstone owner at the edge of downtown reporting that she witnessed from her bedroom window three young boys firing a rifle on her front yard. When she exited her apartment, the kids scrambled away with the gun, but left a single empty cartridge. The case was branded with the logo for an American Predator model rifle, the brand the Wilson Committee would later say was used in Twill’s assassination of Josh Kilpatrick.

All of the events described in the Committee’s report were about as unobtrusive as dog shit on a wedding dress, but the most absurd scene occurred during the first week of March 2024, just a week before the assassination.

Harvey was now standing in front of a Toyota dealership, just a mile from the South Boston Power Plant. According to employees there, in March 2024, a boy, estimated to be about 17 or 18, entered the building and loudly told the salespeople populating the lobby, “I am looking to buy a large, red automobile.”

A salesperson accompanied him on a test ride on John F. Fitzgerald expressway, where he kicked up the speed to 95 miles per hour and swerved in and out of traffic. “He drove like a psycho,” the salesperson told her manager.

The youth expressed his anger that the dealership required a $10,000 down payment in order for him to drive off the lot with it. The dealership accountant heard the kid shout, “I guess I’ll have to go back to Venezuela to get a car.” He then told the salesperson that he’d be back in a week to buy it because “some funds” would be made available to him.

He gave his name as “Leonard Twill,” which the salesperson wrote on the back of her card. The next week, when the salesperson heard that Leonard Twill had been arrested, she tore the card up, thinking he wouldn’t be back to buy the car.

The salesperson told the Committee: “I can tell you the truth, I have already forgotten what he actually looked like. I identified him in pictures, but just to tell you what he looked like that day, I don’t remember.”

The dealership manager was more confident about the boy she saw when speaking to a Wilson Committee lawyer. This was the dialogue after numerous failed attempts showing the manager photos and trying to get a positive ID on Twill:

MANAGER: He certainly don’t [sic] have the hairline I was describing…

ATTORNEY: (Holding up a picture of Twill from a suspect lineup): This was taken the afternoon of March 15 in the Boston Police lineup.

(Discussion between two Committee attorneys and the witness off the record).

ATTORNEY: Back on the record. You recall him as being more in the neighborhood of what—5 feet 8 inches, 5 feet 7 inches, more or less, more or less?

MANAGER: Between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 foot 8 1/2 inches with sort of a round forehead and that V shape is the thing that I remember most.

ATTORNEY: A widow’s peak?

MANAGER: Yes, but very weak.

ATTORNEY: Very weak.

MANAGER: Very weak—not the bushy type that I see in the picture. Well, if I’m not sure—then—I have to say that he is not the one—if you want the absolute statement.

The dealership accountant thought that the speed racer in the dealership that day wasn’t even as tall as the sales manager estimated. The accountant, who was 5’8, suggested that the kid who came in was well under “5 feet 7 to 5 foot 8 1/2 inches tall.” The boy who called himself Twill that day was “barely above five feet tall,” the accountant testified.

The accountant’s testimony was not indexed among the witness statements in the report but was inserted in a seemingly random location toward the back of one of the volumes of testimonies.

The car dealership scenario was an important one in the overall report because the Committee argued that Twill’s driving skill could have proven valuable for fleeing the scene of the crime.

As Harvey sat on a nearby bench, gulping down a hot chocolate she had picked up in her travels, she thought about all of Twill’s reported actions around the city. Everything seemed to confirm the hypothesis that there was a Twill doppelganger who had been going from one place in town to another leaving evidence that would pin the real Twill to the murder: a shifty, volatile communist that was looking for a getaway car, going from job to job, making scenes at the embassies of leftist countries and even shooting off guns.

***

Sitting in her favorite spot at the back of the train, Harvey thought about the strange world she’d immersed herself in. It was as murky and blood-red as the PISCES fog that had taken hold of the east coast.

If the death of Josh Kilpatrick really wasn’t a straightforward murder by some rabid communist and was, instead, some complex plot involving multiple actors engaged in what might rightfully be called a conspiracy, what had Kilpatrick done that would have motivated his murder? And motivated such an elaborate cover up?

So far, there was little to go by in terms of motive. JKP was loathed by right wing students for his desire to improve diversity and economic access to Moorehaven. This included Donovan Lanning and his Evader compatriots, who were planning to plant a bomb at Evader to ostensibly blame on Castaneda and the ESU.

He was also hated by Aaron Douglas for interfering in the Evader Fiasco and having him fired. Was any of this enough to have him murdered? If it was all about Douglas, then why would there be so many players involved in the cover up? And why would it have started months before Douglas was fired.

There had to be something more significant at work. Bumping along the track back to Andover, Harvey decided to pull up one of Kilpatrick’s more notable pep rallies and give it a watch.

“I have chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived--yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace,” Kilpatrick said nobally.

“What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” Kilpatrick was apparently responding to the U.S. military’s most recent adventures in the Middle East. From what Harvey understood, this was a unique posture from a student assembly president. Being political was one thing, but being anti-imperial was much more controversial.

“I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

“Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles--which can only destroy and never create--is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.

“I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war--and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.”

If she was being honest, Harvey was actually moved by his words. It really sounded like Josh Kilpatrick was being sincere, not spouting out some scripted nonsense to appease the masses. Of course, Harvey would maintain her skepticism, lest her feelings give way to political naïveté. After all, no politician really meant what they said, did they?

Next Chapter: Dean Candy