Wrongful Death (4 page)

Ford swerved to avoid a large pothole, but the Humvee’s left-front tire caught the depression, causing the vehicle to rock violently.

“Jesus. Can you miss one?” Dwayne Thomas groaned from the backseat over the strain of the diesel engine.

Ford didn’t like hearing the Lord’s name used in vain. “Jesus isn’t
driving, DT. If he was, I’m sure he’d miss every one. You want to take a shot at it?”

“You’re supposed to be the damn driver.”

“At ease,” Captain Robert Kessler said from the passenger seat.

The potholes were mostly nuisances, but the burned black craters, likely from exploded Soviet-era surplus mines buried beneath the road, served as a vivid reminder of the danger troops faced each time they left Camp Kalsu, their forward operating base near Fallujah.

The convoy, which the soldiers referred to as the “traveling road show,” had nearly completed the hundred-mile round trip to the large PX near Baghdad International Airport to restock supplies like water, toilet paper, and cigarettes. Ford’s Humvee was last, providing rear security, and the men were hot, tired, and uncomfortable.

Ford wiped a trickle of sweat from the side of his face. Normally they left Camp Kalsu either at night or very early in the morning, but today they had left mid-afternoon, with the June sun still a bright white orb that caused him to squint, even wearing sunglasses, and baked the top of his head beneath his Kevlar helmet. Still, they didn’t even consider rolling down the windows. During their training in the Mojave Desert troops had driven through mock Iraqi cities with M16 and M4 rifles sticking out the windows in what they called “the porcupine.” The tactic was meant to intimidate, but as the insurgents became more sophisticated and better shooters, it also turned into a good way to get killed. An order came down the chain of command to keep the windows closed, no matter how hot or piss-poor the air-conditioning.

Ford envied Phillip Ferguson, who stood in the center hatch, head out the roof, manning his M249. At least Fergie got a breeze and wasn’t suffocating on the smell of sweat-soaked cammies. The pungent odor reminded Ford of the smell of unwashed gym clothes and sneakers in his sons’ bedroom.

“Everyone hydrating?” Kessler asked.

Ford held up a half-empty bottle of water.

“Doesn’t help to hold it, Ford.”

“I just drank a full one, Captain.”

“Drink another.”

Ford unscrewed the cap and chugged the rest of the bottle. He had actually grown to dislike the taste of water. Seemed like all he did was drink water, sweat, and drink more water. About the only good thing that had come from it was he had shed thirty pounds from his six-foot-five frame. He wasn’t svelte, but 220 pounds was better than 250.

He stretched his neck, popping vertebrae, which caused Michael Cassidy to lean forward from his seat directly behind him. “Dude. Don’t fucking do that! It creeps me out.”

Ford grimaced. “Sorry, Butch, back’s killing me.”

Cassidy wasn’t much older than the high school kids Ford taught in Seattle. They had nicknamed him Butch, as in the movie
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
but Cassidy wasn’t anything like the calm, polished bandito Paul Newman had portrayed. He was a bundle of exposed nerve endings and tics from a liberal use of caffeine pills he washed down with cans of adrenaline like Red Bull or Ripped Fuel. Cassidy, too, had lost weight, but he hadn’t had a lot to lose, and it had left him looking like a strung-out dope addict, gaunt through the face with sunken eyes and dark circles. His uniform hung from his shoulders and bunched at his waist.

Being off base midday made all of them tense, and when Ford got tense he thought about his family. He pulled an envelope from his ammo vest and slid out the photograph Beverly had given him the morning he’d left their home in Seattle. In the photo he stood behind his wife with his arms around her waist, nuzzling her neck and breathing in her beauty. It had been a split second of intimacy before the kids jumped into the fray, clinging to his arms and legs like ornaments on a Christmas tree. His mother-in-law had snapped the photo.

“That your family?” Cassidy asked, head still between the seats.

“No,” Thomas said, “he’s carrying a photo of someone else’s family.”

“Shut up, DT,” Cassidy replied.

Kessler, who was also married and had kids, pointed to Ford’s baby girl sitting atop his shoulders and beaming down at the camera. “Who’s she?”

“That would be my Althea,” Ford said.

“She has quite the smile.”

“She’s my angel. We were supposed to be done after the third. She was a surprise. I believe God sent her to me special.”

“I got a little girl too,” Kessler said. “They’re special until they turn thirteen. Then the aliens snatch their brains and you can’t do anything right. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Thomas muttered something from the backseat.

“How’s that, DT?” Ford asked. Being another black man, Ford had thought he and Thomas might develop a friendship, but Thomas seemed perpetually angry, with a chip on his shoulder he never shook.

DT raised his voice. “I said, you just torturing yourselves, carrying around pictures and shit. Why you worrying about that stuff? This shit is hard enough to do without all that other crap.”

“You married? Got kids?” Ford asked.

“Nope.”

“Then you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be away from them, worrying about them.”

Thomas leaned forward, defiant. “Don’t want to know. What does it get you? Nothing.” He sat back. “Me? I’m just here doing a job. Didn’t join the Guard to go fight Muhammad in the desert, but here I am. So be it. I just stick to routine. Wake up, put on the same clothes, eat in the same place looking at your same sorry-ass faces, mount up for patrol, sleep, wake up and do it all over again. Only thing I’m going to die from over here is boredom, and that’s just fine by me.”

“Where’s home?” Ford asked.

“Tacoma.”

“The Aroma of Tacoma,” Cassidy chirped. “Smells like shit driving through there.”

Thomas scowled. “You smell like shit.”

“At ease,” the captain said again, trying to keep the peace.

“They cleaned that shit up long time ago,” DT said. “The pulp mills caused it.”

“What do you do there?” Ford asked.

“I used to work at a health club, but I got an application in with the city, and being in the Guard is going to put me top of the list. I get on with the city and I’ll be set for life. Get me benefits and a pension.”

“Bet you didn’t think that deal would include an all-expense-paid trip to Iraq, though, did you?” Kessler said.

Cassidy laughed.

DT sat back, disgruntled.

“I like it here,” Cassidy offered.

“That’s because you’re a dumb shit,” Thomas muttered.

“I do. I like wearing the same clothes and eating in the same place. You don’t even have to think about it. Einstein did that, you know, wore the same clothes so he didn’t have to use his brain.”

“You and Einstein have that in common all right,” DT said, causing Ford to chuckle.

Cassidy said, “I look at this like a hunting trip.”

DT scoffed. “That why you keep that dumb-ass Rambo knife strapped to your ankle?”

“You a hunter, Butch?” Ford wasn’t buying Cassidy’s bravado. He had a lot of experience with kids like Cassidy. They were usually loners from abusive homes. When they did get some attention, it usually wasn’t for anything positive, but they relished it anyway because at least it acknowledged their existence. Columbine and other school shootings had proved that.

“Hell, yeah,” Cassidy said. “Me and my dad hunted all over eastern Washington. Bird mostly.”

DT mocked him. “Bird? That don’t make you no hunter.”

“And deer.”

“Bambi? You shooting Bambi!”

“Not just deer neither,” Cassidy persisted. “Boar.”

“Boar?” Kessler gave Ford a look. Wild boar did not live in eastern Washington.

“You know,” Cassidy said, “those big pigs with the tusks and hair all over them. Mean sons of bitches.”

“You sure that wasn’t your girlfriend?” DT said, bringing laughter.

“Laugh all you want. But I shot one with a compound bow once and chased it for miles. Slit its throat and gutted it right there and brought the meat home.” Cassidy looked out the window. “The way I figure it, killing Hajji ain’t going to be no different. I’m looking forward to getting me some.”

“One big difference,” Kessler said, turning to stare out the windshield. “Bird and deer don’t shoot back. Hajji does.”

WHEN HE HAD
finished reading the statement, Sloane sat back, thinking. Something here, something. He thought of a sermon he’d recently heard by the pastor of the church he attended with Tina and Jake. Then, rising quickly, he made copies on the Xerox machine in his office and placed the duplicates side by side on his desk to reconsider them more closely. As he read, he picked up a yellow highlighter.

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

T
he following morning, Sloane pushed open the door to his office and stepped into the entry. He leased a suite in the One Union Square Building in downtown Seattle, sharing a receptionist and two conference rooms with other businesses on the floor.

“Are we sleeping in now?” Sloane’s secretary stood like a sentry at her cubicle. With her arms crossed and a bun of graying brown hair on the top of her head, Carolyn had the look of a school principal on hallway duty. She gave him the same arched-eyebrow, disapproving look that put the fear of God in grade school kids.

Sloane had stayed up late reading the witness statements and had awakened to an empty house. He lay in bed thinking about what he had read while listening to the waves rolling on the beach, likely from one of the huge cargo ships that passed between Three Tree Point and Vashon Island on the way to the Duwamish. Then he remembered that he hadn’t exercised since the start of the Gonzalez trial and got up and ran six miles.

“I thought I’d take an extra hour this morning.”

“I know
you
slept in,” Carolyn countered. “I asked if
we
were sleeping in. I would have liked an extra hour myself. At my age every minute of beauty sleep helps.”

Sloane wondered what Carolyn might look like without the pancake makeup and dark eye shadow she wore without fail. A strand of colored glass beads hung from her neck to accentuate her multicolored dress.

Sloane had a knack for hiring assistants who put him in his place. In San Francisco, Tina had not been bashful about keeping him humble, even when he was racking up fifteen jury verdicts in a row.

“Someone has to be here to open the office and answer the phones,” he said, thumbing through a large stack of mail. “We’re running a highly successful legal practice here.”

“Are we?” Her eyebrow again arched. “That would be news to me.”

And therein was the source of her annoyance. Sloane had forgotten to call and tell her the Gonzalez verdict. For legal offices, trials were like marathons; failing to tell the staff the verdict was like having them train you without telling them your time.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I got tied up after court and ended up working most of the night.” She gave him her best blank stare, not about to make it easy. “The jury came back twelve zip; I couldn’t have done it without you. Theresa Gonzalez asked that I send along her personal thanks.”

That seemed to soften her a bit. At least she uncrossed her arms. “I know. She called this morning wondering when she’d get a check.”

Sloane bit his tongue and walked to his office, still checking the mail.

Carolyn followed him. “Why were you working last night? Most lawyers I’ve worked for take vacations after trials.”

“Cabo on Saturday,” he said. “I had some reading to do.” He
opened an envelope with a multimillion-dollar check made payable to his trust account on behalf of Adelina Ramirez. It had cost the insurance company for the construction company a lot of money to call Sloane’s bluff.

Carolyn plucked the check from his hand. “I’ll deposit this before you decide to donate it to some worthy cause that doesn’t have my name attached to it, and get a check cut to Ms. Ramirez.” She started from the room but stopped at the door. “Congratulations. Twelve nothing? I’d have bet my virginity you were going to lose that case. You really are as good as advertised—that’s unusual for a man.”

“Wow. That was darn near a compliment.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t let your head explode.”

“Do I have anything scheduled for today?”

“Not unless you forgot to tell me…again. You were supposed to be in trial through the end of the week. As far as I know, your calendar is wide open. I vote we take the rest of the week off. All in favor?” She raised her hand.

“Sorry.”

“I’ll cancel my tee-time at the club.”

“Before you do, call Charles Jenkins. Ask him to meet me at the Coco Cabana for lunch. Tell him I’m buying.”

“Lunch with Big Foot? That doesn’t sound like work to me.”

“And see if you can find a lawyer who knows something about military law.”

“Military law? Why would you need to know that?” She made it sound distasteful.

“Because I may very well be suing the government.”

“Lord help you,” she said. “I hope you haven’t been skimming on your taxes.”

THE PIKE PLACE MARKET
bustled with the lunch crowd. People in the Northwest knew to get outside when good weather materialized, and the day had dawned cold and clear, though ominous dark clouds gathered to the north. Sloane took a seat at a wrought iron table on the deck of the Coco Cabana and sipped an Arnold Palmer, lemonade and iced tea, while looking down on the open-air market where fish vendors barked out orders and crowds gathered to watch them toss huge salmon.

Charles Jenkins had called on his cell phone to let Sloane know he was going to be late due to traffic from freeway construction. The big man had lived like a hermit in a four-room caretaker’s shack on Camano Island for thirty years until, two years earlier, Joe Branick had also sent him a package. Inside had been a classified CIA file compiled largely by Jenkins, one that he had long thought had been destroyed. Jenkins had ultimately handed Sloane that same file when the two men met on a West Virginia bluff overlooking the darkened waters of Evitts Run, a tributary of the Shenandoah.

“Joe meant for you to have this,” Jenkins had said. “Hopefully it will answer some of your questions.”

“Can you tell me what happened?” Sloane had asked.

“You sure you’re ready to hear this now?”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to hear it, Mr. Jenkins. But I don’t have a choice. I have no idea who I am.”

Jenkins told Sloane of a village in the mountains of southern Mexico where a young boy, Sloane, was giving speeches so moving the people were referring to them as “sermons.” Southern revolutionaries were promoting the boy to be the one to lead them from poverty and oppression and restore a proud and independent Mexico. Unfortunately, the uprising coincided with the Middle Eastern oil embargoes, and the United States, in need of an alternative fuel source, could not allow the uprising to desta
bilize its relationship with the Mexican government. Jenkins had been the CIA field officer tasked to infiltrate the village and report on the boy.

“I filed a report after each visit,” he had told Sloane as they watched the moon shimmer off the water’s blackened surface. “I convinced them that the threat was real, that you were real.”

What had resulted was an assault on the village by a U.S. paramilitary force, and a massacre. Sloane had miraculously managed to survive, but not before witnessing horrible atrocities, including the rape and murder of his mother. When Joe Branick and Charles Jenkins entered the smoldering remains of the village the following morning, they found the boy hiding and decided to keep him hidden. They created a new identity, David Allen Sloane, a seven-year-old who had died in a car accident, forged adoption papers, and placed him in a foster home in Southern California. Then Jenkins, too, went into hiding, moving as far from Langley as he could, to the horse farm on Camano Island.

For nearly thirty years they had both lived in anonymity.

When the waitress returned, Charles Jenkins towered behind her. Jenkins was like the container ships that passed Sloane’s home. Big enough to block out the sun, he caused waves wherever he went. When he removed his wraparound sunglasses, revealing sparkling green eyes—uncommon for a man of African American descent—women swooned.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” the waitress asked, beaming.

Jenkins pointed to the glass in Sloane’s hand. “Bring me whatever he’s drinking. What are you drinking?”

“An Arnold Palmer,” Sloane said.

Jenkins gave it a disapproving frown. “As long as it doesn’t come with an umbrella,” he said, causing the waitress to giggle as she left. He sat rubbing his bare arms. “What do you have against sitting inside?”

“How long have you lived here and you don’t wear a jacket?” Sloane was comfortable in the black leather jacket Tina had bought him on their honeymoon to Florence.

“I do wear a jacket, when I’m outside. Lady Frankenstein said you wanted to have lunch. I eat
inside.
I left my jacket in the car.” He continued to rub his arms. “It’s freezing.”

“I thought you grew up in New Jersey?”

“Why do you think I left? I don’t do snow or ice unless it’s in a drink.”

One of the fish vendors called out an order from below and the crowd screamed and scattered from a flying fish. It was a tourist gimmick, the fish made of fabric.

“How’s Alex?” Sloane asked.

“Still using the ‘M’ word. Last night she tried to lure me into sex on a blanket in the garden.”

“I hope you fell for it.”

Jenkins smiled. “The things I do for love.”

Sloane sipped his drink. “Why don’t you get married? Guys would kill to have a woman like Alex swooning over them.”

“Trust me, the swooning part is over.”

“What, did she get glasses?”

“Ha-ha. You’re a regular Henny Youngman this morning, aren’t you?”

“Henny Youngman?” Sloane asked.

“You don’t know Henny Youngman?” Jenkins shook his head, disgusted. “‘A man goes to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist says, ‘You’re crazy.’ The man says, ‘I want a second opinion!’ So the doctor says, ‘Okay, you’re ugly too!’”

Sloane gave him a blank stare.

“I am old.” Jenkins looked out over the roof of the market at the sun shining on Elliott Bay. “Maybe I should get married.”

Though Jenkins had never confided in him, Sloane suspected
that he was uncomfortable with the disparity between his and Alex’s ages. Alex was just twenty-eight.

“It’s not as scary as you make it sound.”

“Alex wants kids.”

“So?”

“So, I’ll be fifty-four in May,” Jenkins said.

The waitress returned with Jenkins’s drink. Sloane ordered a salad and a bowl of black bean soup. Jenkins ordered the soup plus a chicken and rice entree. “I have to have something more than rabbit food,” he said, bringing more giggles from the waitress.

Sloane handed him an envelope. “We received the check on the Ramirez matter.”

“No appeal?”

It had been Alex’s idea that Jenkins work for Sloane, though Jenkins didn’t know it. She had pulled Sloane aside at a barbecue on the Camano farm when he and Tina moved to Seattle, and said she thought Jenkins was bored and looking for something to do after rebuilding their home. Sloane needed an investigator, but he had been reluctant to ask an ex-CIA field operative, thinking it would be an insult. Alex, who had also once worked as a field operative—the person Joe Branick chose to deliver the classified file to Jenkins—convinced Sloane otherwise, though he knew her true motivation was to get Jenkins out of the house. He was driving her crazy just sitting around. Jenkins had initially feigned disinterest, but he took the work and had since helped Sloane on several of his cases. Sloane had enjoyed his company.

“They always talk a good game. In the end they pay.”

“What happened with Gonzalez?”

“Jury came back yesterday. One point six,” Sloane said.

“No wonder you’re buying lunch.”

“Actually, I need your help on another matter.”

“That was fast.”

“A woman tracked me down after court yesterday. Her husband was a national guardsman killed in Iraq.”

Jenkins shook his head. “The similarities to Vietnam frighten the hell out of me.”

“Let’s hope we don’t have to lose fifty thousand before we get out.”

“Amen to that. How did your guy die?”

“A bullet to the side,” Sloane said.

“How does that translate into a lawsuit?”

“I’m not sure it does,” Sloane agreed. “I told her I’d look into it. She was willing to accept his death until the
New York Times
published that report about soldiers dying because their body armor was insufficient.”

Jenkins sat back and sipped his drink. “If she had anyone else as her lawyer, I’d say it’s a dead-bang loser. And I’m not sure even you can pull the rabbit out of this hat.”

Sloane pulled the witness statements from his briefcase and handed them across the table. “She got these through a FOIA request. Something caught my eye while reading them last night. Take a look.”

Jenkins removed his sunglasses and stretched out his arms.

“Alex isn’t the only one who needs glasses,” Sloane said.

“Don’t start.”

By the time Jenkins had finished reading the four statements, they were halfway through lunch. “Are these your highlights?” he asked.

“Have you read the Bible, Charlie?”

“I was raised Baptist. I didn’t have a choice. It was burned into my memory. I can recite chapter and verse.”

“So you’re familiar with the four Gospels.”

“Intimately.”

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Four men, all recording the same historical events, yet each Gospel is different. Why is that?”

“Different perspectives.”

Sloane put down his fork. “I once heard a priest reason that an argument for the accuracy of the Gospels is the fact that they are
different
, that if someone had wanted to perpetrate a fraud, they would have made them identical, or nearly so. I can also tell you from experience that people don’t inherently remember or see things the same way. Put two people on a street corner to witness a car accident and you’ll get two different versions.” Sloane tapped the witness statements. “These four men were involved in a harrowing ordeal, and yet they each remember it damn near identically: Caught in a sandstorm, they drive off course and are suddenly ambushed. The details are impressive.”

Jenkins flipped through a statement. “You think these were coordinated, someone
made sure
they said the same thing?”

Sloane shrugged. “I don’t know. The other options are the men got together to get the story straight, which also makes it interesting, or it’s a coincidence.”

“Which neither of us believe in.” Jenkins put down the statements. “Still, seems thin for a lawsuit, Counselor. You sure you’re only curious?”