Start with Chapter 1
CHAPTER 30
After the ambulance took Reggie away, covered by a sheet on the gurney, Dean, Guthrie, Etheridge, the chief, and the lab guys had to wait hours for the fire to burn itself out. A band of volunteer firefighters held positions near the buses to contain the blaze from moving beyond the immediate vicinity.
The inferno served as a background as they and the state police and sheriff deputies searched the woods behind the buses for clues about the shooters. They found some Budweiser cans and shell casings forty yards away. Just looking at them, Dean knew they were from an M16.
A deputy found more shell casings—.30-30 rounds—beneath a tree some fifty yards away. More Budweiser cans. And a brown bag with a half-eaten turkey sandwich. On the bag, written with a black marker was the word, “Lunch.”
The chief pulled out a pair of jeans and a Syracuse sweatshirt from the trunk of his car. “Son, you need to get out of those clothes.” Dean glared at his father and shook his head. The clothes were placed in the trunk. Everything else was photographed and bagged.
“So?” asked Eric, his arms crossed and the muscle at the back of his left jaw tensing.
Dean described their walk into the woods, the finding of the buses, and then the ambush. That’s how he began characterizing it. The bad guys did not just stumble into the police and start taking shots. They had waited. Drank a few beers for courage, even eaten a sandwich.
“That begs the question.” Eric took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“How’d they know we were coming?” asked Guthrie.
Eric nodded.
“Not many people knew we were coming out here. Josh might have caught one of us tailing him, but I don’t think so. But it’s possible,” said Dean. And the idea of Josh sitting in the woods with a gun and taking shots at cops did not seem plausible. “But I don’t think it was Josh or Alex—or the guy I think was Alex. No. Those two are making this, but I don’t think they’re going to shoot at us.” He pulled out the Ziploc and tossed it to his dad.
Eric caught and opened it. “This looks like methamphetamine. Meth. They call it speed and crank, as well.”
Dean nodded. He had heard of it. Speed was common enough in Vietnam. He knew many guys who took it to stay awake during watches. But it had always been in pill form. Not this powder.
Eric continued, “Some other New York jurisdictions have been talking about it. Popular outside the cities ‘cause coke is so expensive. Cheap and easy to make. Very flammable. I guess it’s hit our area.”
“Used to be legal until, what, the mid-Sixties? Anyways, they’re making it here and they’re making it for someone.”
“Zorn.”
“Not sure about that. Could be McCord.” Dean shrugged. “Maybe that’s how McCord is making inroads. Zorn’s been bringing in coke and H. McCord sees an opportunity with this?”
“Do you know Josh came here?”
“I only know he came in this general area. No. I can’t say he was exactly here at the buses.”
Guthrie asked, “So you think the guys who’re buying this stuff from Josh ambushed us?”
“Do you see Josh shooting at us?” Etheridge stood with his legs wide and his arms crossed. “Do you?”
Guthrie shook his head. “No.”
Eric handed the Ziploc of meth to one of the lab guys. He turned back to the three of them. “Go home. Rest up. Let’s take this on tomorrow. I’ll see what we can do to get fingerprinting done faster on all that we’ve found.”
Etheridge scratched his chin. “Reggie?”
“I’ll do it. I’ll let his wife know.”
* * *
Dean took a long, hot shower, letting the water run down his back and keeping his eyes closed for a long time as the blood—Reggie’s blood—swirled into the drain. He stuffed the bloody clothes into a black trash bag, twisted the top, and knotted it. He stared at the bag before going out to the Nova, popping the trunk, and bringing white and brown evidence bags and tape inside. He left the white bag folded and placed it at the bottom of the brown bag. He took his clothes and put them in the brown bag. Anything that dried and fell off his blood-soaked clothes would be seen on the white bag. He folded the brown bag closed and placed red evidence tape across the seal. He signed and dated the tape. His father was right. He should have let them do this at the scene. But what good would the evidence do anyways? It was his blood. The killers had gotten no where close to him. If the case ever went to court, perhaps some use could be made of it then.
Disgusted, tired, and angry, he poured himself a whiskey and drank it in silence as the afternoon sun gave way to evening. He stared at the walls. Only when he had to urinate did he realize he had been sitting, zombie-like, for two hours.
The doorbell rang. He answered to find his dad on the porch, a pizza box in one hand and a half-case of Pabst in the other. His eyes were still a bit puffy, red.
“You need to eat,” he said and barged his way in, though Dean offered little resistance. “I even got you your favorite beer.”
As his father grabbed a couple of plates from the counter, Dean cracked open two beers. They ate half the pepperoni and mushroom pizza before Dean said, “Sorry, Dad.”
“About what?”
“Today. Getting Reggie killed.”
Eric held the slice of pizza halfway to his mouth. “That wasn’t your fault, son.”
“I should have known. Should have sensed an ambush.”
His dad set the pizza down. “This isn’t Vietnam or Okinawa. You don’t expect ambushes in the woods outside town. This is a tragedy, plain and simple. We’ll find the scumbags that did this to Reggie. They better hope I don’t find them. They better hope someone else arrests them.”
Dean scratched his jaw and bit into the pizza. “It was like the war.” He bounced his head back and forth. “Sort of.”
Eric opened two more beers and slid one to Dean. “I get that. And we’ll get them.”
They moved to the couch and turned on the television. NBC had footage of a helicopter flying near Three Mile Island’s nuclear plant in better days. The scene shifted to a timeline of the first reported problems to today. The broadcaster said that catastrophe was averted. In other energy news, the President had begun his deregulation of oil prices.
They drank more beers. The world seemed to be collapsing. Nuclear catastrophe. Communist totalitarianism. Meth labs in the woods. But all that mattered at that moment was Reggie. And it felt that way in Vietnam, too. Dean did not care about commies, about the domino theory, about geopolitics, about what chemicals people put into their bodies. He cared about his buddies, his soldiers. He cared if they lived or died and to hell with everything else. And Reggie had died on his watch.
“I will find out who killed Reggie.” Dean’s tone was laced with anger.
Eric nodded. “I know you will. The troopers wanted this one as well, but I told them it was tied up with the Nimitz investigation. But the DEA might be coming to town.”
“They can deal with the drug part.” Dean rubbed his temples. “Reggie and Nimitz may not be connected.”
“I know. But it keeps the investigation with us. Go after this Josh guy. You said he was the weak link. You got him going out there. You got him leaving with someone. You show up the next day.”
“That was my plan.”
“And you have my permission.”
Dean looked at his father, who sat staring at the television. “Permission to do what?”
The chief turned. “Whatever you need to to find Reggie’s killer.”
They let the news run into regular programming, drinking their beers. The conversation shifted into baseball. The Yankees had dropped their season-opening game to the Brewers. Eric was convinced the Yanks were doomed this season. Dean mentioned a trip to see an Expos game might be something they could do this summer, knowing the idea was stillborn.
As the evening wore on, Dean realized he had never seen his father drunk before. Now, six beers later, he was downing some of his son’s whiskey. Dean called his mom and said the chief would spend the night on the couch.
The alcohol washed away the hammered edges, brought out a sentimental side. Dean learned his mom and dad met in San Diego after he had disembarked from the USS Lejeune. She was one of the crowd greeting returning Marines. He spotted her from the fourth deck balcony and, he said, fell in love instantly. He needed that, he said, after what he saw in Okinawa, the grim fighting, the hard lessons of fate and luck, and the brutality of man.
He sank ever lower in the couch. Dean found a spare blanket and pillow and gave them to his dad. As he started to turn to go to bed himself, the chief grabbed his son’s wrist. “Did you—did you ever try to talk Nolan out of going?”
Dean crouched down, his father’s hand still wrapped around his wrist. He did not know what to think of the question. When Nolan joined, Dean was humping in the bush or blowing money in the town on Johnnie Walker or prostitutes. His letters home were at best short and to the point. Only later, in a letter Dean received just weeks before his brother was killed did he understand why Nolan joined. His brother had had no illusions about the war, about the U.S.’s ability to win, about it meaning anything. He joined knowing full well that his sacrifice would still mean the Viet Cong and North Vietnam would win. And Dean did not understand that decision. It seemed noble to him, and he recalled from some distant recess of his brain snippets of a Latin poem, something about how sweet it was to die for your country. He knew it was bullshit. He hated thinking that his brother’s nobleness was bullshit, but he knew he would rather have his life—as terrible as it sometimes was—than be killed by some kid in some far away jungle that no one wanted to be in anyways.
He looked at his father, the chief, who now drunk on the couch and tearing up, become a man. As vulnerable as the rest of them. “No. No, I never tried to talk him out of it.”
Eric nodded and closed his eyes. “I thought about telling you boys to not join. To not go.” His face seemed to relax as he moved closer to sleep. “But I was too scared.”
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