Albatross (4 page)

As Andersen approached Dempsey, the first officer to respond to the crime scene, he was waved into a driveway, where there were a large number of vehicles. Andersen could tell Dempsey was anxious from the way Dempsey waited for him to exit the car. “So what are we talking about?” Andersen quietly asked, cognizant of the various onlookers held back by yellow “Do Not Cross” tape.

“A lot of action for our neck of the woods,” Dempsey replied just as quietly. He continued with his verbal report. “Three dead bodies total and two injuries. All white males in their late thirties to maybe early forties. One was bound to a chair and seems to have been executed. Shot in the back of the head at close range. He has no identification at all. The other two are heavy hitters from Boston. Drug traffickers, enforcers, the kind you would never expect here. Maybe South Boston, Dorchester, but not here. They were easy to make.”

“That is weird.”

“It gets weirder,” continued Dempsey. “The other two, both injured pretty bad but stable, the paramedics tell me, look like they just got out of Quantico—right down to black suits, shields, and guns.”

“Jesus—” Andersen knew he would have an hour at best before the FBI Boston’s regional office took over his crime scene. Once the bureau showed up, Andersen would give in on the jurisdiction and hand the scene over to them. If it had been his guys who had been injured, he would have wanted the same professional courtesy.

Everyone on his team would have to move faster if they were going to get anything of value to solve this crime.

Dempsey continued with his report, “Yeah. And one other thing, there is a sixth guy. He was unconscious on the floor of the basement while everyone else was upstairs in a firefight. It’s weird because he is well dressed, well groomed, and so out of place there that we thought he was a bank assessor for the house in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is either black or Latino, in his late forties, no weapons, no cell phone. His ID puts him as a resident of Lawrence, and he has an office there too.”

“What does he do?” Andersen found himself feeling quite perplexed. Three bodies in his town, two federal agents heading to the hospital in Wakefield because the local one was under threat, and he had no answers. Of course, there were already news crews on the scene.
Makes sense
, he thought.
It’s big news in a quiet town
. One ambulance was already gone with one of the federal officers; one pulled in pretty fast.
Everybody had to be short-staffed with evacuating the hospital
, Andersen thought.

“That’s the weird part,” Dempsey continued. “He is a counselor of some sort.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Yeah. Think it was an anger management group that got out of control?” Dempsey queried through thin lips, suppressing a smile.

At that moment, the paramedics were transporting the more seriously injured agent out of the house. It was a rather steep set of stairs but manageable. Andersen knew from his wife’s nursing training and experience that in times of emergencies, medical staff would triage the least injured who could be saved first and would later get to the more seriously injured who were doubtful to survive. With the hospital’s evacuation and the fire across the street, Andersen guessed that triage would be playing a major role in first-responders today.

In passing, the last paramedic pushing the stretcher down the walk said to Dempsey, “You guys did a great job getting a line in him. You might have saved this guy’s life. No bruising too.”

Dempsey looked confused and then turned to Andersen and gave him the I-have-no-idea-what-is-he-talking-about look. Dempsey shrugged.

Dempsey confirmed his look with saying, “I have no idea what he means—”

Andersen often wondered how Dempsey had gotten his position on the force—an uncle or something. Nepotism still had a role in getting civil servant positions. Andersen needed to shift his focus to the live witness at the scene for now.

“All right. Where is the guy now?” Andersen asked as he surveyed the main room. There were bodies in various positions on the floor with spent shells. The smell of discharged weapons still hung in the air, and the room was cold, even though it was filled with the crime scene team. It didn’t take extensive forensics training and experience to guess what had happened. The hostage had been shot in the back of the head, and now he was on his side, chair forward. The two bad guys were behind him, and presumably, one of the shooters had killed the guy in the chair while the FBI guys had killed them. Something else caught Andersen’s eye though, and the crime scene guys were already all over it. There appeared to be bullet holes in the wall at an angle that could have hit the bad guys as well. On the other side of the wall, there was a set of windows that had glass blown inward. There was already someone taking casts of footprints outside. Andersen knew there had been a seventh person there too.

One of the things that was interesting was graffiti on what might have been the living room wall. Elegant shapes of script were clearly some form of Arabic writing. Already, there were staff members with a smart phones and digital cameras taking various angles of this too. The disturbing part was the English words that indicated today’s date, May 2.

“So what about my witness?” Andersen came back to the present.

“Paramedics checked him out. There was a cut and a bruise on the back of his head, but that was it. He’s on his way to the station now.”

“All right. Get more details on who these guys are, extend the perimeter to the next houses, and canvass the neighbors. Maybe someone saw something more. We have at best an hour before the Feds take over our crime scene. I’m going to talk to our number-one witness.”

Dempsey smiled. “Well, he ain’t talking much. He asked if anyone was alive upstairs, but that was it. He gave his name, occupation, where he lived, but that was it. Good news is he is not asking for a lawyer. One other thing: the guy is blind.”

“No. Are you shitting me?

“No shit. Paramedics checked him out when they do their light-in-the-eyes thing, and there was no response.”

“Great … we’ll be getting a call from the civil liberty and disabilities advocates and groups any minute now. The guy won’t need a lawyer. Is he a veteran too?”

It was evident to Andersen that Dempsey sometimes couldn’t tell if he was kidding or really asking. In moments like these, Dempsey would just remain quiet. But today was different. Dempsey had more to offer as he remembered a detail.

“Oh, yeah … he asked to call his assistant so she could bring in some medication or something,” Dempsey recalled.

Andersen always hated it when Dempsey would forget something like that.

“Did he make that call?” Andersen asked.

“One of the paramedics let him call on his phone. I think with all the craziness happening, the medics forgot he was in a crime scene,” Dempsey finally concluded.

Maybe the day isn’t so bad
, Andersen thought. He had a live witness, no lawyers, and he would be the first to interview the witness. It was time to get some answers.

“Call Jackson and Shelley and make sure they put him in interrogation room eight. Use the VIP entrance out back so reporters and the public don’t see our guy. No one in or out to talk to him. Give him water, but that’s it. If his assistant gets to the station, have him or her wait. Once this area is cleared up, get to wherever they took our live agents and get some statements. So what’s this guy’s name?” Andersen asked as an afterthought as he entered his car.

“Samuel T. Coleridge,” Dempsey answered.

Andersen stopped as he was about to get into his car and turned to Dempsey. “Are you kidding? Wasn’t he a poet?”

“No idea,” Dempsey responded.

Andersen wondered why he had even asked Dempsey that question.

“Things are pretty weird,” Andersen said more to himself than to Dempsey.

As he pulled out of the cluttered driveway, Andersen took in the view of all the official cars and the two cars of the victims inside. It took a moment, but then he noticed that neither car had government plates. He had to make a note to make sure that both plates were run.
Maybe the agents had been undercover or at least their ride had been
, Andersen thought.

Chapter 3

Andersen had been at
the station for at least an hour before he got ready to enter the interrogation room. He had prepped the command officer and day-shift supervisor to make sure they could field the reporters’ questions. He was also getting a steady flow of information about the victims. But why they were all in that one house at that time and what really had happened was still a mystery.

Andersen picked up a pad of paper, his favorite black pen, and his folder of reports and preliminary data. Rather than lingering in his office or going right to interview room eight, he took a moment to go to the bathroom. He stood in front of the mirror with the water running to get warm.
The hospital, condo fire, dead bodies, and federal agents shot up? This is something more,
Andersen thought. Andersen would often sit in his office to prep himself for an interrogation. But washing his hands and face seemed to relax him for this interview.
The guy’s name is of a dead poet, and he’s the only link to what is going on around here. I got to work this guy very carefully,
he was reasoning. Andersen lost track of what he was doing and had dried his hands very thoroughly with sandpaper-like paper towels. Andersen adjusted his collar and checked his fly before he collected his material. Checking his fly was second nature.
How can you take an interrogator seriously if his fly is open?
he thought. As he walked to the room, he thought he would call his wife. She was pretty sick and actually called in sick to work. She never did that. He was about to hit the speed dial but realized she would be sleeping, and he didn’t want to disturb her. He decided to let her sleep. He was just glad she was not at work.
Fortuitous
was the best word he could think of for her absence at work that day.

He needed answers, and Coleridge was the guy. Andersen had the dubious honor of being an urban legend in the world of interrogation. While it was true that his time questioning “combatants” at Guantanamo Bay was critical to expanding his skill set, Andersen always felt it was luck and legend that would typically break the accused perpetrator or witness. Though during the war, Andersen’s role in intelligence gathering was critical to finding top-tier assets, he often saw himself as “just a guy doing a job.” Still, he had regrets about his work back then. While there were indeed some bad guys back there, there were also some prisoners at Guantanamo that he genuinely thought played a minimal role, if any, as enemies to America. He tried to not let it bother him, but it did. Innocent people being locked up ate at him. That kind of knowledge was a burden. After a while, he had difficulty sleeping, stopped eating, and spent a great deal of time alone in his quarters. It took a couple of calls with his wife, Laura, and his childhood friend, Diane Welch, to help him figure out what he had to do. He had to leave Guantanamo. At first, his superiors weren’t going to let him go, but the medical doctors warned that continued weight loss and recurring fevers were not going to be good for him—or the army’s image if he died because of starvation. He was transferred to Germany in the role of critical incident specialist.
Laura and Diane saved my life
, Andersen often thought. Still, his time in Guantanamo was a key to his ethics around interrogation. It was about the truth. If they were innocent, they walked out. If they were guilty, he locked them.

If this guy Coleridge is innocent, he’ll walk,
Andersen thought to himself. Andersen put his hand on the doorknob, pushed, and entered the room.
Hopefully, he didn’t hear me sigh. Something’s not right with this whole thing
.

Interview room eight was twenty by twenty feet in size. The small room was lit by bright fluorescent lights and contained a heavy wood table and two old chairs. The glass mirror allowed viewers and cameras to watch from the other side while the person interrogated could see nothing but his or her own reflection. As Andersen entered the room, he was struck by Coleridge’s appearance. The man was well dressed in a dark suit. Maybe it was black or navy blue. Andersen always had a problem figuring out those dark colors. Fortunately, his wife always helped him out with that one. His wife could make everything match. She was sophistication while he was bluntness. She was well read. He liked to watch documentaries. She was also the holder of all his secrets. His siblings, best friend, and colleagues had no idea he loved classical poetry. She did. Laura was also a great sounding board for when he had difficult cases. Andersen was guessing this one might be one of them.
I hope she’s feeling better,
he thought.

The suit his witness had on looked like it had been made for a funeral, but at least it was not his own. His witness sported short black hair with lots of evidence of gray showing. Under the suit, the man wore a white collared shirt that had dirt or dust on it, and he was wearing dark sunglasses. Andersen could not see the matching tie. Maybe the witness had removed it. Coleridge sat quietly at the desk as if he were waiting for a cup of coffee. To say that Coleridge was “calm” would be an understatement. While his light brown, clean-shaven complexion seemed youthful, only a few creases betraying his age, Coleridge appeared to be a solidly built, athletic man.
Maybe a former football player
, Andersen thought. He did not seem to be your typical counselor. But then there were the scars that peppered the witness’s face, scars that were concentrated near the eyes and nose as well as a scattered pattern down his neck. Andersen was sure that if Coleridge’s suit and shirt was removed, there would have been more scarring, deeper ones as well. The scars were a lighter color of skin that had healed over, not a clear scar line you would have suspected on a face to conceal an injury. In short, the man had never gotten plastic surgery to cover those scars. And while Andersen had his own stereotypes of people with disabilities, the man in front of him seemed almost at home in the middle of the shit coming down around him.