Without Warning (19 page)

“Actually, he’d probably tell you that the shooter did him a favor,” I said, and told Hank about the cancer.

Hank brought in the forensics people, and they did their work in the house before the coroner’s people came in to remove the body. I felt like I should call someone that cared about Sandman and tell them what happened, but I didn’t know who to call, or if there was anyone that cared.

I went outside to try to estimate where the bullet had come from, so the area could be carefully searched for evidence. Metal detectors were brought in, but no shell casings were found. Apparently the shooter decided not to leave any behind, which probably meant that the gun did not come straight from our evidence room. I supposed that could be viewed as good news.

After about an hour and a half, I told Hank to notify the local authorities, since we had as much information as we were going to get. I wanted to get out of there before I was stuck talking to them, so I said to Hank, “Let’s go back to the office. I’ll dictate a statement about this.”

“Okay. You want to ride with me, and I’ll have one of the guys bring your car in?”

“Good idea. What else has been going on this morning, besides people who know me getting shot?”

“Well, now that you asked…,” Hank said, “the shit seems to have hit the fan.”

Hank said that Matt’s story that morning in the
Journal
had created a firestorm. Or at least Wilton’s version of a firestorm. He had called in to the station and learned that the switchboard was being inundated with calls from people who had read the article and wanted to know what the hell was going on. Among those people was the mayor.

Part of the story was about Katie’s disappearance and the lack of progress that was being made. In writing it, Matt seemed to be tying it to the capsule murder case, though neither he nor I had any real evidence of that link. I certainly believed he was right, but that was beside the point.

But it was the other part of the story that was generating the intense reaction, as I knew it would. Matt broke the story of the Granderson murder, which by itself would not have been major news in Wilton. In fact, he wasn’t technically breaking the story at all, it certainly would have been reported locally.

The reason the story was resonating so much was that Matt was tying me to Granderson, relating the story of the child abuse allegation, and how my overzealous attempt to nail him had actually killed part of the case.

And then, if that wasn’t enough, he delivered the killer punch. Somehow he knew that the gun that had killed Frank Granderson was missing from our evidence room.

I read the stories as soon as I got back, and I was struck by two aspects of them. First of all, they were very well-written, concise and not overly dramatic, presenting a strong point of view without appearing to directly present one at all. If Matt’s goal was to nail me while appearing to keep his hands clean, he had pretty much accomplished that.

My second, more troubling reaction, was that if I was reading all of these stories as a private citizen, and not as a key player, I would be up in arms myself. If you go by the “if there’s smoke, there’s fire” maxim, then all of Wilton had to be up in flames. Because I sounded like the key suspect, so much so that I felt like going out and arresting myself.

This was not going to be something that I could just deflect away.

If I didn’t know that already, Mayor Harrick made it clear with his phone call. “The governor wants me to go to the council and demand that they suspend you,” he said. “I’m not sure how long I can hold him off.”

It was instantly clear to me that the governor had said no such thing, since resistance to higher authority was not something Harrick had ever even experimented with. But he was setting me up for what might come, and in the process looking good, in case I somehow survived.

I thanked him for the support that both he and I knew he wasn’t offering and got off the phone. I was really worried, not that I would be accused or arrested for the murders, but that I would be unable to help solve them. If I were suspended, I’d be effectively out of the picture. Katie would be out there, and I wouldn’t be able to search for her.

I started to come up with the beginning of a plan, but I was interrupted by a visit from Jimmy Osborne, the photographer who was there when the capsule was dug up. He had also been the photographer working the event when the capsule was first buried.

He was carrying a large envelope. “Chief, I’m sorry to bother you.”

“What’s up, Jimmy?”

“Well, you had asked me to try and find other pictures from that capsule ceremony. I couldn’t find any, and then remembered I had put a lot of stuff in the attic a few years ago. You know, everything was cluttered, and…”

I interrupted the monologue. “You found more pictures, Jimmy?”

He nodded. “I did. Not that many, but some. I brought them for you.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Well, there might be.” He opened the envelope, and took out one of the photos. It was a shot of the ceremony, just like many others that I had seen.

“What’s different about this one?” I asked.

“Well, I compared it to the other ones. This must have been taken near the end of the ceremony, because there are less people around. And there’s one guy, in the background, that I don’t see in any of the others. It’s almost like he’s half-hiding behind that tree.”

He pointed to the person he was talking about, but the image was fairly small and hard to make out. “You know him?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t think so. But here … I magnified his image.”

He took out another photo, which blew up the area where the guy was standing very significantly.

There was something odd about the face, something I couldn’t place, but I attributed it to the passage of time, and the vagaries of memory. Then all of a sudden I knew who it was who was standing there, those four years ago.

“Jimmy, is there any chance this photo was doctored?”

He looked a little insulted, but that was the least of my worries. “Doctored?”

“Could this person have been placed into the photograph?” It looked natural to me, but with technology being what it is, I wanted to be sure.

“I don’t know, Chief. I mean, I’m not really an expert on that. But somebody would have had to sneak into my attic, and then return it there. And I didn’t even know I had it, so I don’t see how someone else could have known.”

I nodded. “Okay. I just needed to ask.”

He continued. “It was pretty dusty up there; I think I would have known if someone was up there recently.”

I told Jimmy that he didn’t need to worry about it. I wanted him to leave so I could think about the man in the picture, and the implications of his being there.

His name was Richie Drazen, and his was a face I was unlikely to forget. That was because I was responsible for his death.

Eight years ago … four years before that picture was taken.

It took me six months to recuperate from my combat injuries. Of course, based on the pain I feel in various areas of my body when it rains, you could argue that I’ve never fully recuperated. But basically, after six months, I was as good as I was going to get.

I spent most of that time at Kandahar Military Hospital. I never questioned the decision to keep me there; I just assumed that they would send me back into the action when I was healthy enough.

I found out later that one of the reasons they kept me in Afghanistan was the lawsuit being waged by the wife and son of Randall Dempsey, the newspaper guy who was with the unit that was attacked that day. The Taliban had paraded him as a captive, and then killed him.

If I was in Afghanistan, then I wouldn’t be available to testify in the suit, and somehow the Navy thought that was a desirable result. The Dempsey family had brought the suit in federal court in their home state of Vermont, which would have been a somewhat more desirable locale for me to hang out in than Afghanistan was. The truth is that I never saw Dempsey on that fateful day and didn’t know anything about what happened to him, so I couldn’t have been of value to either side. But in any event, it was not my call to make.

Once the family won a large settlement, and I was back to full service, the bureaucracy of the Marine Corps took over, and the decision was made to send me back to the States. I’d be able to stay in the Marines, but it would be in an administrative position. Actually, that was better for my prospects for advancement up the ranks, since I would be moved out of the military police into an area considered more promotable.

But my trip back was not going to be something as simple as catching a flight and landing at JFK. Instead they assigned me to a Marine unit on a Navy destroyer. We used to say that the Navy was in charge of giving us rides to battle zones, and to some degree that was true. There were almost always Marines on large Navy ships, and the rivalry between the two services was a healthy and robust one, even though the Marine Corps is technically a part of the Navy.

I was one of only three Marine MPs on board, and except for breaking up an occasional fight, it was easy duty, with not much to do. It was like being on a cruise ship, minus the shows, and the buffets, and the casinos, and the bingo.

We docked for forty-eight hours in Singapore, and many of the sailors went ashore. I chose not to; my leg was bothering me, and I wanted to use the time to rest.

About eighteen hours after we left, we received an urgent message from the authorities in Singapore. There had been a double murder outside a bar the previous night, and they had evidence that the killer was one Richie Drazen, a US Navy ensign stationed on our ship. The Singapore witnesses said the killer had received a slash on the cheek, and the fact that Richie did indeed have that fresh, deep wound was a significant sign that he was, in fact, the perpetrator.

While I wasn’t privy to it, I’m sure that the message precipitated a flurry of diplomatic discussions and maneuvering. The Singapore government was asking that we return to port, so they could take Drazen into custody, but Washington was not going for that. It was determined that he would return to the States with the ship, and then the appropriate extradition decision could be made when more facts were known.

It was the proper legal decision. Once Drazen was on the ship and out at sea, it was as if he were on US soil. Therefore, extradition procedures had to be followed; there was no other way.

So Drazen was put on limited duty. There was little reason to maintain tight security on him, since he was not officially charged with anything, and where was he going to go? We were well out into the Pacific.

My colleagues and I were apprised of the situation. I didn’t know Drazen personally, but I became familiar with him, and part of my responsibility was to keep general tabs on his whereabouts.

It gradually became obvious that he was starting to feel tremendous pressure. In retrospect, I believe that he was guilty of the murders in Singapore and could see no positive outcome in where things were going. The US had an extradition treaty with Singapore, and if they had compelling evidence against Drazen only hours after the murders, it was likely that they’d have enough to convince the US authorities to send him back.

It was probably thirty-six hours later that he snapped and started a fight in the mess hall. By the time I got to him, he was pounding someone’s head into the ground, and I wrestled him off, then got on top of him while pinning his arm behind him. He thrashed around for a moment, but finally submitted and calmed down.

I had been having lunch and didn’t have cuffs with me, so I took him by the arm and led him out. He was talking with me, not resisting, and he understood that I was taking him to the brig.

Suddenly he broke away, ran to the end of the deck we were on, and grabbed a metal pole that was lying there, part of some construction work that was underway on deck. He started coming at me, backing me up toward the railing in the process.

I tried to reason with him, but there was no doing it. He kept coming, and I kept backing up. As far as I could tell then, or afterwards, there was no one else around. His face was crazed and contorted, and it caused fresh bleeding from the wound on his right cheek.

Finally, I took out my weapon and pointed it at him, warning him not to take another step. It seemed only to incite him further, and he lunged toward me, swinging the pole.

So I shot him in the leg.

I thought it would put him down so that he could be taken into custody, without my having to kill him. But the leg wound only seemed to drive him crazier, and I will never forget the look on his face as he tried to process the pain and his predicament.

Except this time he didn’t rush toward me. Instead, he rushed directly away from me to the railing and jumped.

Into the Pacific.

The Navy was, to put it simply, a pain in the ass in the aftermath of the incident. There was some concern that I had acted with too much force, that it could have been handled without shooting him. The fact was that by shooting him in the leg, I was showing substantial restraint. I had a right, even a mandate, to shoot to kill in that situation.

Since no one witnessed the incident, there was only my word for the fact that he took very threatening action against me.

I was never in any serious jeopardy over what happened, and while a panel was brought together to look into it, no charges were filed, nor was I censured in any way. But I believed that it was always a mark against me, and might ultimately have worked against me for future promotions, had I stayed in the military as a lifelong career.

The incident got some coverage in stateside newspapers, mostly because of the issues between the US and Singapore governments. I did one media interview in which I described what happened in some detail, but then never spoke about it publicly again.

I never really followed up on how it was handled with the Singapore government; I assume that they were satisfied with the circumstances of Drazen’s death.