John Lee Johnson: Both Barrels Blazing

The brownstone mansion sat ten miles from Philadelphia. It was perched on a knoll surrounded by cold, leafless trees. The snow falling in the frigid night was thick and wet. The orange window light emanating from the second-story window broke the blackness like a beacon.
A brooding man was humped over a teakwood desk. His hair was auburn brown. His eyes were deep blue and intense. His mustache was neat and trimmed, edged around his tight lips. He was a tall and large man. His physical carriage was military. He was former Brigadier General Frank McGrew. Behind him a roaring fire in a fireplace sent warmth and light throughout the baronial study. He leaned back from his work, laid aside his pen, and studied the names he had written. He sighed audibly, and his mouth tightened. The fact that he was a former brigadier general rankled him greatly. And how he had become former. His eyes moved over the desktop into the shadows of his study. His eyes were narrowed and deeply thoughtful.
Behind him on the wall hung a portrait of his late father. The painted but austere face looked vacantly over the study. His stern features were flickering in the orange-black shadows of the fire.
On the other side of the fireplace hung a portrait of Ira McGrew, the younger brother of Brigadier General Frank McGrew. It was a youthful face filled with promise, but unfilled promise. He had been killed in 1864 at Fort Pillow in West Tennessee.
Frank McGrew’s mind went back to Nashville, Tennessee, where he had stood before a board of investigation. His crimes were read before the assembled hosts of Union officers and lawyers and national newspaper reporters. He had been charged with extortion (charging citizens of certain western Tennessee counties a surcharge for protection). He had been charged with murder of both civilians and Union military personnel. He had been formally charged with brutality of Confederate prisoners. All these painful charges were true. He had just sat there listening with callous indifference.
A long line of witnesses testified, and stacks of irrefutable evidence were presented. His guilt was obvious. Levi Brown (not present), the leading officer in charge of military crimes and malfeasance, had an ironclad case against him. It seemed that there was no way he would be found innocent of the charges.
McGrew had sat there with a smirk of disdain on his face. His contempt was hardly masked. His lips had curled nastily when he’d heard the damning testimony from men in his hire that he had considered trustworthy.
The five officers behind the long desk covered in red, white, and blue bunting seemed uneasy. The stentorian words of the adjutant from the provost marshal’s office seemed to punctuate each crime and offense with a crisp condemnation. He could remember gasps followed by deathly silence.