The Wilson Report

Ch. 2: The Wilson Report

It had been only about four months since the UN’s Academic Panel on Solar Radiation Management (APSRM) had deployed Earth Science Inc’s experimental geoengineering platform, the Particle Injection System for Climate Engineering in the Stratosphere (PISCES), at Dubai’s Future Innovation Summit. With the launch of the experimental dirigible, APSRM scientists hoped to usher in a new world of atmospheric research. If PISCES was successful, there was the possibility that the small, localized experiment might be blown up in size and cool the planet. That, in turn, might provide the residents of Earth with 20 more years to stave off the more destructive impacts of climate change and replace the fossil fuel economy with which global society had become inextricably linked.

However, when PISCES was launched on June 2, 2024 , the experiment defied the group’s simulations. In fact, it was more of a full-scale launch, then a tiny test. The sulfur particles injected into the earth’s atmosphere deflected 20 times the amount of sunlight planned. Roughly 100 cubic kilometers of debris ensnared the Earth at the equator in just weeks and then moved toward the poles, disrupting global weather systems for a yet to be understood amount of time.

The effects varied around the planet. The impact was beneficial to the immediate surrounding populations in the Middle East, dropping temperatures a full 6°F. For the North Pole, however, temperatures actually increased, speeding up the melting process and opening up natural gas and oil exploration in the region. In contrast, large portions of Western Europe and New England were thrust into a deep cooling period.

It was thus that during the fall semester of that year, Andover was trapped in almost ceaseless gloom and precipitation. It was not only dismal, but often scarlet in color, as a persistent fog of sulfate shrouded the village, reddening and dimming the sunlight. The base of the Admissions building had attracted a particularly dense body of mist, suggesting that, to be admitted to Moorehaven was to be admitted to a mysterious and powerful order.

Since joining The Haven Maven as a reporter, the gothic P.D. Scott Library had become the rain shelter of choice for Harvey. Though the facility was way more extensive than his local library back home, it wasn’t primarily the site’s inexhaustible resources that brought him there on such a regular basis. Instead, it was the fact that he didn’t have to feel uncomfortable being alone there.

The gray stone exterior projected an ominous foreboding, particularly when immersed in a reddish haze; however, the inside was recently renovated, replete with white walls and modern lighting that made most of the building actually feel quite warm. From the second floor of the library’s central hall, Harvey could lean over the marble railing and peer down to see students studying at broad mahogany tables encircled by stacks of books.

Harvey continued walking past the rows of books, opened a door to the periodicals section and continued walking until he got to a hard, black, aluminum door. Aside from several small dents in the metal, there were no identifying markers for what lay inside, unless you looked above the molding where a small brown sign bore white engraved letters that read “Special Collections”. It was in the musty, windowless room on the other side where Harvey could locate the Wilson Committee Report. He opened the door to a crack of thunder outside of the building.

Five days after Josh Kilpatrick had been shot in Southie, Moorehaven Academy set up a committee to investigate the murder. Boston P.D. had had its suspect, a disaffected communist student, also from Moorehaven, named James Leonard Twill. However, one member of the student assembly suspected foul play in the case and demanded that the school perform its own investigation. Two days later, before the student assembly had made any moves, Kilpatrick’s Vice President and successor, Bill Stout, announced that Moorehaven had already formed a committee and chosen seven members, made up of school staff and important members of the local community.

Harvey began looking into the backgrounds of each committee member, finding that they all had connections to the school’s Crisis Management Team (CMT) or to Bill Stout.

There was an economics professor that also oversaw the student assembly and who The Haven Maven once described as “the CMT’s best friend on the student assembly,” given how close she was to both the governing structure and the security division.

Then there was Jane Hostess, an advisor for the school pride committee who worked as an officer for the CMT. As head of the Great School Association, Laurie Spellman, who was said to be close to the CMT, was there to represent the interests of all of the boarding schools in the GSA.

Terry Stout, the father of Bill Stout and a congressman serving Moorehaven’s very own 6th congressional district, was also on the Committee.

To head the inquiry, the administration turned to the local judge for whom the report would be named, Jim Wilson. This would lend a sense of legitimacy to what was otherwise seen as a problematic investigation, given the fact that it would occur within the school itself and that the father of Bill Stout, a boy who stood to gain from Kilpatrick’s death, was on the Committee.

And, of course, there was Aaron Douglas, who had been the director of the CMT for nine years. Douglas started out his career as a lawyer on Wall Street before joining the military. The urban legend was that he worked at the notorious prison in Guantanamo before making his way into educational security.

Douglas wore thin, wire framed glasses and maintained a neatly trimmed, white moustache that matched his thinning white hair. These features, when paired with the pipe he often smoked, gave one the impression of a gentle, Jungian analyst. Despite his avuncular appearance, however, Douglas had a reputation for heartlessness in all things associated with Crisis Management and beyond.

Harvey placed the photo of the Wilson Committee back in the report and perused the group’s findings. The Committee concluded that a single student had fired a rifle from the South Boston Power Plant behind the president and killed him and that that student was James Leonard Twill.

He sat back, tilting the hard, wooden chair on its two rear legs, and tried to picture the scene:

March 15, 2024. The disastrous effects of PISCES had yet to alter the Boston air. That said, it was a historically warm day for the beginning of spring and the city was sporting shorts, t-shirts, skirts, and dresses for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

At the event, Kilpatrick led a float created by the National Convention of Young Democrats. The young man’s handsomeness was agreed upon with near unanimity—only the more discerning art and philosophy students turned a blind eye. His looks, personality and the prestige of his family bloodline led him to date homecoming queen Jane Bobier, daughter of a Wall Street hedge fund manager. Together, Kilpatrick and Bobier sat side-by-side in a sleek onyx convertible limo adorned with U.S. flags, signs representing current Democrats in local and national office, as well as some school regalia. In front of the couple sat convention chair Fabio Martinez and the treasurer for the Skimming School Young Democrats, Tran Pham.

They made a sweeping right turn from Dorchester Street onto East First Street, just south of Reserved Channel, and headed East. Soon, the South Boston Power Plant—the building from which the Wilson Committee determined Twill did all of the shooting—was far behind him. Up in front of him, somewhat to the right, was a playground, separated by a small grass incline from Independence Square Park to the South.

On the incline, there were bleachers and a fence, as well as some parade equipment, scaffolding and lighting that created a small stockade. There was a grove of small trees clustered at the east end of the park. Cleanly in view from the area was Dorchester Street. A number of witnesses noted strange activities occurring near the grassy incline.

Then, the bullets came flying, shattering Kilpatrick’s skull and injuring Martinez, who, upon being hit, shouted, "Oh, no, no, no. My God. They’re going to kill us all!"

As soon as Kilpatrick was hit, Bobier climbed out onto the back of the car and reached for something, though she didn’t recall doing so later. Pham thought it may have been a piece of skull. The driver sped off to Massachusetts General Hospital as Bobier returned to her seat. Martinez and Pham heard Bobier repeat over and over, "They have killed my boyfriend. I have his brains in my hand."

In a subsequent interview for the Haven Maven, several days after the incident, Bobier recalled, "All the ride to the hospital I kept bending over him saying, ‘Josh, Josh, can you hear me? I love you, Josh.’ I kept holding the top of his head down trying to keep the…” at which point, she trailed off, according to the reporter.

The Wilson Committee concluded that this mayhem had all been created by one boy and three bullets, one of which missed the motorcade entirely and two others that caused numerous injuries to Kilpatrick and Martinez.

He considered the report in front of him. One thing Harvey did feel secure in was his ability to follow a lead. This probably came from the fact that his mom was a reporter. Though most of the news Gloria Spizzle uncovered barely registered on the national level, it did impact affairs in their own town or county, sometimes even state politics.

He immediately began tapping thoughts into the Notepad app on his phone.

What struck him most in reading through the five-volume report was just how haphazard the whole thing seemed.  Not only were the sections themselves totally unorganized, but the questioning of witnesses was almost superficial. Reading through them, he saw numerous promising leads that the Committee had chosen not to follow:

For instance, before the shots were fired, one witness found herself in a traffic jam in front of the greenway, alongside a pick-up truck parked atop the curb on the street. She claimed to have seen a young man with a rifle in a case jump out of the truck and jog toward the grassy incline. She reported the incident to Boston P.D. The police report was included in the Committee volumes, but she was never interviewed by the Wilson Committee.

In stark contrast to the Wilson Committee’s conclusions about the only bullets coming from the South Boston Power Plant building behind Kilpatrick, several witnesses said that they not only heard shots coming from the grassy incline in front of him, but actually saw smoke in the air from the cluster of trees in the greenway nearby. Some witnesses, including a local crossing guard, even saw men run toward the grass hill after the shooting.

Harvey looked at the testimony of a dock worker from a nearby dock, interviewed by Committee counsel, who provided some unique testimony about boats leaving the area. The dock worker told the attorney “Police sealed off the area, and I held off the boats until they could be examined, and there were some transients taken on at least one ship.” Instead of following up to ask about who these transients were, the Committee counsel changed the subject and cut off any further examination into the boat and its passengers.

A similar strategy was employed when a Boston P.D. officer, responsible for searching those departing boats, testified in front of the Committee.

BOSTON P.D. OFFICER: Inspector Finn assigned me to some ships that were leaving from the dock, to go down and search all boats that were leaving the dock.

COMMITTEE ATTORNEY: Then what did you do?

OFFICER: Well, we got a long ship that was in there, and we pulled some people off of there and took them to the station.

ATTORNEY: You mean some transients?

OFFICER: Tramps and hobos.

ATTORNEY: That were on the ship?

OFFICER: Yes, sir.

ATTORNEY: Then what did you do?

OFFICER: That was all my assignment, because they shook two long ships down that were leaving, to my knowledge, in all the area there. We had several officers working in that area.

ATTORNEY: Do you know whether or not anyone found any suspicious people of any kind or nature down there in the shipping yard?

OFFICER: Yes, sir. We made some arrests. I put some people in.

ATTORNEY: Any guns of any kind found?

OFFICER: Not to my knowledge.

ATTORNEY: Now I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier during the parade…

It was another bewildering exchange in which the lawyers for the Committee decided to veer off a topic potentially ripe for discovery to something else. In this case, the lawyer was informed that several unknown individuals used a departing boat to leave an area where a shooting had just occurred. The lawyer never followed up with the cop about the boats or the strangers. He also never asked him about the men who were arrested and taken to the station, a record of which was completely absent from Boston P.D. paperwork.

The Committee also didn’t pursue evidence related to testimony that claimed there were men near the grassy incline impersonating the coast guard. A traffic officer at the intersection of O and First Streets who was told by a woman that the shooting was coming “from the trees,” left the area where he had been stationed and went up to the grassy hill, where he came across someone claiming to be from the coast guard.

However, according to the Wilson Committee report, all of the coast guard officers were patrolling the waters at the time. The coast guard was on record that not a single one of its officers was at the scene of the assassination. This meant either that the coast guard was lying or mistaken or that the man that the traffic cop encountered was not really a coast guard officer.

Another cop’s testimony revealed that when he first arrived at the rear of the South Boston Power Plant “there were some coast guard officers there. I didn’t get them identified. They told me they were coast guard officers.” From the officer, therefore, it became apparent that there was not just one, but a number of people purporting to be coast guard officers in an area where supposedly there were none.

Despite these indications that several men may well have been falsely representing themselves as coast guard officers or that the coast guard had no idea where its agents actually were, the Wilson Committee had just dropped the matter.

Harvey’s research had led him into a swamp of meticulous details, most of which would not be relevant to any school newspaper article, but which suggested that the investigation into Kilpatrick’s death may have been rife with incompetence, at the very least.

***

When Harvey returned to his dorm that evening, he saw that his roommate had people over. The door was slightly ajar, leaking out the dim yellow of the string lights Daxx passed off as ambiance. Loud, thumping music trembled the ground as he walked in, completely unacknowledged by his roommate.

Eventually the two girls, a Latina with crimped hair and a white girl with blonde highlights, introduced themselves. Kellyn, the white girl, Harvey learned, was the girlfriend of a tall, goofy white guy also drinking in his room. He was, apparently, Daxx’s friend from middle school. A shorter kid with bloodshot eyes and curly brown hair beneath a backwards Dodgers cap, mostly stood around mumbling and laughing.

Sober, Harvey tried, haltingly, to make conversation. They weren’t dumb, but he got the impression that they had a habit of sticking to topics that weren’t all that abstract or substantial—though they did seem to spend a lot of time dissecting the relationships and behavior of their peers. If Harvey didn’t know better, he thought they might all be gossiping.

“Where are you from?” Kellyn asked.

“A suburb of Chicago,” Harvey replied. “You?”

“Mercer Island.”

“Oh. Where’s that?”

Kellyn laughed. “Just off the coast of Seattle.”

“Off the co—“ Harvey began to ask, when the Latina, Chemita, leaned in drunkenly and put her hand on Harvey’s shoulder.

“Is Daxx like the sloppiest kid you’ve ever met?”

“He’s pretty messy, I guess,” Harvey answered.

“Shut up, Chemita,” Kellyn said over Harvey.

“Oh, c’mon,” Chemita turned back to Harvey. “He spends the night at our dorm every day and makes the whole room smell like shit.”

“Chemita,” Kellyn said seriously, “shut the fuck up.”

“What, you don’t want Adam to hear?” Adam was the goofy one, her boyfriend. Chemita turned back to Harvey, laughing, “She’s cheating on Adam.”

“Bitch, you’re drunk!” Kellyn shouted, seemingly cavalier about the whole situation.

Adam and Daxx slovenly made their way over, arms wrapped over each other’s shoulders.

“What’s everyone talking about?” Daxx asked in a slow California drawl.

“Your stinky ass,” Chemita laughed.

“I’m stinky? Aren’t you the one dating some kid from BSU?” Daxx replied.

“Right!” Adam shouted confidently. “That’s like a four-year age gap. That’s some stinky shit!”

Harvey thought about how he hadn’t heard the word “stinky” used so frequently since he babysat toddlers last summer.

“Okay, we can all agree that all of you are stinky,” Kellyn redirected the conversation. “What I want to know is about that girl, Roula, from chemistry. I heard she’s a THOT. Am I using that right, Chemita?”

“Oh, she fucks alright.”

“The terrorist?” Adam said, laughing. Daxx started cracking up, too.

“That’s fucking racist, Adam,” Kellyn admonished. “You’re disgusting.”

“Yeah, dude,” Daxx straightened up. “Not cool.”

Eventually, Harvey gave up on socializing. The sex talk especially made him feel weird, sort of a combination of ashamed and disturbed. So, he went on his computer, browsing social media to see what his friends back home were up to. They were mostly doing the same stuff: eating junk food, watching movies, playing video games. Basically, life for them hadn’t changed that much at all.

Feeling a little homesick, Harvey climbed into bed and continued reading his book. Holden had paid a prostitute just to talk and then got beat up by her pimp. This was shaping up to be somewhat different from the boarding school coming-of-age tale he expected.

By the time Harvey’s self-imposed weekday bedtime rolled around, it didn’t look like the party was letting up. There were now about 10 kids in the room, drinking and smoking weed. If he didn’t say anything, there was a chance they’d be there all night.

Instead, Harvey tried to send a subtle hint by brushing his teeth, getting into pajamas and trying to go to sleep. Their guests continued partying for another half-hour or so and then took off to another party, leaving the lights on when they left. Harvey was a little disappointed he wasn’t invited, but he chalked it up to already being in bed so as not to feel too hurt.

Next Chapter: Fair Play for Evader