The Kremlin Conspiracy

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Frantic to see if Marcus was okay, Elena insisted she be allowed into the house. The chief refused. Multiple gunshots had just been fired, and it was not clear by whom. Nor was it clear what might happen next. There was an active shooter in the house. The crime scene needed to be secured, and there was no way he was going to allow anyone into that house, no matter what her relation to the people inside.

  Mrs. Matthews came up behind Elena. She gently put her arm around the trembling young woman and coaxed her back into her house. She locked the door again, then put a sweater and a thick blanket around Elena. She made a pot of tea and brought a small tray of things to eat, but Elena had no appetite. Rather, she parked herself in the living room, staring out a bay window, riveted on the drama unfolding before her.

  Soon SWAT team members in full battle gear entered the front and the back doors of Marcus’s mother’s house, guns drawn. Elena tensed, terrified at what might happen next. Minutes later more uniformed officers entered the front door, followed by men in plain clothes. Detectives, Elena thought. Some time later, a team of paramedics entered with a stretcher.

  Mrs. Matthews turned on the television and flipped back and forth between the local channels whose news crews were broadcasting live from the scene. One station reported that two hostages had been held inside the house until a police sharpshooter had taken out the alleged perpetrator. A different station cited a source in the police department and claimed someone in the home had committed suicide. A national cable news station said one person had been shot and killed. Another claimed two people had been shot and one was dead while the second was severely wounded. Elena wasn’t sure what to believe, but it was surreal to see photos of Marcus’s family on the news.

  One of the networks eventually showed a photo of Roger DuHaime. Elena knew Marcus’s stepfather was an alcoholic. Marcus had begged his mother not to marry him. She’d done it anyway, and it had been a disaster. The man had abused her emotionally and physically, leading to not one but two restraining orders. Both had been lifted. Marcus had pleaded with his mother to leave him, pleaded with his sisters to get her out of the state. The man was dangerous. He needed help. He certainly needed to be kept away from their family. But no one had listened, and now here they were.

  Elena had never met Marcus’s real father, but she’d heard all about him. Captain Lars Ryker had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile on January 16, 1991, while flying an F-16C Fighting Falcon on a combat mission in southern Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. Marcus had been just eleven years old.

  Night fell. The streetlamps came on. The police aimed floodlights at the house. Down the street, Elena could see the lights from all the TV cameras. Suddenly the front door opened and a stretcher emerged—one, not two—and on it was a body covered in a bloody sheet. Elena gasped. As the stretcher was loaded into the back of a waiting ambulance, Elena’s hands began to shake. Her lips began to quiver. She was trying not to jump to any conclusions, but she’d had enough of all the speculations. She had to know the truth, however brutal.

  She jumped up from the couch and headed for the door. Mrs. Matthews tried to stop her, but Elena kept running. She crossed the freshly cut grass toward Marcus’s house just as the front door opened again.

  Elena stopped dead in her tracks. Two officers were coming out the door and down the driveway.

  Marcus was with them, his hands cuffed behind his back.

  The steel doors slammed shut.

  It was now 2:46 in the morning. Marcus Johannes Ryker had been read his legal rights by local sheriff’s deputies. He’d been strip-searched. Interrogated. Booked. Photographed. Fingerprinted. And given an orange jumpsuit to wear. Now he found himself incarcerated in the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center.

  Some fifteen hundred inmates were housed in this complex. Some were waiting to be charged with a crime. Most were awaiting their court dates or their sentence and transfer to state or federal prisons for the long haul. Marcus wondered what his cellmate was in for. The guy was over six and a half feet tall and must have weighed more than 250 pounds. Marcus took him for Samoan in origin, though he couldn’t be sure. The man said nothing as Marcus entered the cell. He just lay motionless on the bottom bunk as Marcus climbed up to the top bunk.

  Marcus wasn’t too worried. He was not a small man himself, despite his relative youth. At six foot one, he clocked in at 175 pounds and had been a star left guard on his high school football team all four years. He was in excellent physical shape and had never lost a fight. He hoped there wouldn’t be any trouble tonight, but he was prepared to hold his own if it came to that.

  The cell block was as quiet as it was dark. Most of the inmates were asleep. Marcus lay on his back and stared at the ceiling just a few inches from his face. Soon enough he could hear the man on the lower bunk snoring.

  He looked around. The space was simple enough. The concrete-block walls were painted a light green. The metal-frame bunk bed was bolted to the floor and the left wall. The mattress was thin. The pillow was small. The blanket was scratchy and too small to cover his entire body. Next to the bunk there was a metal toilet bowl. Beside it was a small stainless steel sink. The cell smelled like body odor and disinfectant. He could hear lots of men snoring. He could also hear guards making their rounds on a precise rotation, their boots clomping along the freshly mopped halls, keys jangling at their sides.

  “The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.” The line was Solzhenitsyn’s, from one of Marcus’s favorite novels, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was a story of a hapless soul, falsely accused and locked away in a Soviet gulag during the Second World War. Not once since he first read it as a freshman in high school had Marcus ever actually imagined being in prison. And never had the line rung so true as it did right now. Marcus’s stomach was grumbling so loudly he wondered if it could be heard up and down the corridor. He’d hardly eaten anything since breakfast.

  “You should rejoice that you’re in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul.” Another line from the novel. Marcus chewed on the words as he pondered all that had happened in the span of just a few short hours. One thing was clear—he’d had no choice but to shoot. His stepfather had been coming at him with an ax. He didn’t think he would have any regrets about his actions.

  But then he pictured his mother’s face when she’d come out of the bathroom and found her second husband lying in a pool of his own blood. Marcus had expected to see relief in her eyes—gratitude, even. He had, after all, saved her life. Instead, she’d collapsed to the floor in unspeakable grief.

  A second image that haunted him was that of Elena’s face, the moment their eyes had met, just before he’d been transported away from the scene in the backseat of one of the squad cars. He’d expected to see sympathy in those beautiful brown eyes. He’d seen something else instead. What was it? Fear? He couldn’t say for sure, but it wasn’t good.

  With these unsettling thoughts in his mind, he finally drifted off to sleep.

  “Ryker, you have a visitor.”

  It was morning. Marcus felt peaceful and refreshed. He was eager to see Elena. The lock clicked open. Two guards accompanied him down the hall to a semiprivate holding room. There, he was ordered to sit on a chair in a small booth, next to a bulletproof window, and wait. After a few minutes, his visitor appeared. It was not Elena. It was her father.

  Marcus had told Elena to call her father the night before because he knew he’d need a lawyer, even if Mr. Garcia had zero experience in criminal law. Still, seeing him now reminded him this wasn’t just about getting out of jail and clearing his name with the authorities. It was also about clearing his name with the Garcia family. He’d done nothing wrong, and he needed them to know that.

  Wearing a freshly pressed, dark-blue pin-striped suit and a crisp white dress shirt, Mr. Garcia—as stern-faced and dour as Marcus had ever seen him—sat down on the other side of the glass. He set a yellow le
gal pad on the counter, pulled a Montblanc pen from his breast pocket, and picked up the telephone receiver mounted on the wall.

  Marcus took a deep breath and picked up the receiver on his side as well.

  “First things first,” Mr. Garcia said, “these conversations are monitored. Remember that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Next, I just came from seeing your mother,” Mr. Garcia continued.

  “Good—how is she?” Marcus asked.

  “Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but she was hospitalized last night. I’m afraid she had a heart attack. It was a minor one. The doctors say she’s going to be all right. But they want to keep her for observation.”

  Marcus just sat there, stunned.

  “She wanted me to tell you she loves you. She doesn’t blame you. She knows you were just trying to protect her, and there really wasn’t any other option. She wished she’d said it to you last night in person, but she wanted you to know right away.”

  Marcus took in the news. At first he did not speak. He simply nodded to acknowledge he’d heard the man and appreciated the report. He was grateful for his mother’s understanding. But he was worried both for her physical and mental state. He needed to be with her, to take care of her, to protect her.

  “Please tell her thank you,” he said finally. “I can’t wait to see her.”

  Mr. Garcia nodded and continued. “I also spoke to the DA.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not good news.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He wants to charge you.”

  “With what?”

  “Manslaughter.”

  “But it was textbook self-defense,” Marcus said.

  “The DA says otherwise. He’s going to push for the maximum sentence.”

  “Twelve years?”

  Mr. Garcia looked surprised that Marcus would know such a fact. “I’m afraid so—and a fine.”

  “How much?”

  “Could be a lot. Again, he’s saying he’ll ask for the maximum.”

  Marcus was stunned. “That’s three quarters of a million dollars.”

  Once more Elena’s father seemed surprised, but he nodded. “That’s what he said.”

  “That’s crazy,” Marcus said. “He’s bluffing.”

  “That’s not the impression I got.”

  “But Colorado has a ‘Make My Day’ law.”

  “The DA says it doesn’t apply.”

  “Of course it does,” Marcus shot back. “The statute is clear. ‘Any occupant of a dwelling is justified in using any degree of physical force, including deadly physical force, against another person when that other person has made an unlawful entry into the dwelling, and when the occupant has a reasonable belief that such other person has committed a crime in the dwelling . . . or intends to commit a crime . . . and when the occupant reasonably believes that such other person might use any physical force, no matter how slight, against any occupant.’”

  “How do you know all that?” Mr. Garcia asked.

  “I’m studying criminal justice.”

  “But how do you know it by heart?”

  Marcus shrugged. “I just do.”

  “Well, the DA says your stepfather didn’t make an unlawful entry. It’s his home.”

  “But it’s in my mother’s name.”

  “That doesn’t matter—they were married.”

  “What about the restraining orders?”

  “Both lifted.”

  “But they show a pattern of aggression.”

  “I’m not sure that would be admissible.”

  “But he was clearly there to commit a crime,” Marcus insisted, his voice steady and firm. “He’d already beaten my mother. He’d broken her nose, and he said he was going to kill her.”

  “Even so, the DA says the statute doesn’t apply.”

  “What about CRS 18-1-704?”

  “Which one is that?”

  “‘Use of Physical Force in Defense of a Person,’” Marcus said, again reciting from memory. “‘A person is justified in using physical force upon another person in order to defend himself or a third person from what he reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of unlawful physical force by that other person, and he may use a degree of force which he reasonably believes to be necessary for that purpose.’”

  Mr. Garcia just looked at him.

  “Is there a problem, sir?” Marcus asked.

  “It’s just that . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, I’m not sure it’s helpful that you know these statutes by heart.”

  “Why not?” Marcus asked. “I’ve wanted to be a police officer since I was a kid. You have to memorize these things.”

  “I understand,” said Mr. Garcia. “I’m just saying it could look like . . .”

  “Like what? Mr. Garcia, do you really think I would have asked Elena to call you last night if I was preparing to carry out a premeditated murder?”

  When Mr. Garcia didn’t reply, Marcus added, “If ignorance of the law is no defense, how can knowledge of the law make you guilty?”

  “I’m just saying you need to be careful, Marcus. Don’t try to be your own lawyer. Let me handle everything.”

  “I will, but please remind the DA that even though my mother had no legal responsibility to retreat to her bedroom, that’s exactly what I told her to do,” Marcus said.

  “Got it.”

  “That’s the castle doctrine.”

  “I know,” said Mr. Garcia. “My partner brought it up when we met with the DA.”

  “And?”

  “And the DA said the police were already arriving on the scene, that they would have taken care of everything, that you didn’t need to fire the gun at all, and you certainly didn’t need to shoot twice.”

  “Has he listened to the 911 recording?”

  “What recording?”

  “The one I made from my mother’s bedroom.”

  “I don’t know. It’s been a busy night. Look—”

  But Marcus cut him off. “Why do you think I made the call, Mr. Garcia?” he asked. “I knew police had been called. I told Elena to call them, even before calling you. I knew they were on the way. But I also knew Roger had lost it. I was pretty sure what was about to happen, and I wanted every second recorded. I wanted the cops, the DA, you, and the rest of the world to hear everything Roger said—the screaming, the cursing, everything. And me warning him—twice.”

  Mr. Garcia stopped taking notes, set down his pen, and leaned back in his seat. “You’re not worried, are you?” he asked.

  “About what?” asked Marcus.

  “Going to prison.”

  “No, sir, I’m not,” Marcus replied. “The law on this is clear. The DA should drop the charges immediately. But even if he doesn’t, even if he puts me on trial, no jury would convict, not when they know the facts.”

  Of this, Marcus was certain. What did worry him—though he didn’t say it, certainly not to Elena’s father—was that his dream of becoming a police officer might have just been scuttled. Even when the case was dismissed or a jury found him not guilty, was it possible that the stigma of such a high-profile case could stain him forever? Maybe, maybe not, but not even these fears were foremost on his mind. What really bothered him was the prospect that Elena would never look at him the way she used to, if she was even willing to keep dating him at all.

  “Ryker, you have a visitor.”

  It was late afternoon. Marcus was playing basketball outside, drenched in sweat, not expecting any visitors. An Asian kid covered in tattoos drove hard toward the basket, began to make a layup, then thought better of it and flipped the ball to Marcus. Coverage was tight. These guys were good. It went without saying they were tough. Marcus faked right, then rolled left and went for the three-pointer.

  Swish.

  Now they were only down by six, but the guard shouted again.

  “Ryker, move it—let’s go!”
/>   That was it. The game was over, and so, it turned out, was his time behind bars. Ten minutes later, having toweled off, changed back into civilian clothes, and signed a bunch of forms in triplicate, Marcus found himself sitting in the plush leather seats and cool air-conditioning of Mr. Garcia’s gleaming new silver Lexus.

  “So . . . ,” Mr. Garcia said, sitting in the driver’s seat in a brown wool suit, brown leather shoes, and turquoise bow tie. “Turns out you were right. The DA called me this morning. He finally listened to the 911 tape. He read the statement your mother gave the police and reviewed all the forensic evidence. He also went back to the case files that led to both restraining orders, and based on all that, he dropped the charges.”

  “All of them?” Marcus asked.

  “All of them. And not only that—at six o’clock this evening he’s going to hold a press conference announcing that he’s clearing you of all wrongdoing and stating that given the circumstances, you acted honorably and within the law to defend your own life and that of your mother. He expects all the local stations to cover it live.”

  “Does Elena know?”

  “She was the first person I called.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “She burst into tears.”

  “And my mom?”

  “She was the second person I called.”

  “She’s still in the hospital?”

  “Yes, but the doctors say she’s making great progress. She should be released tomorrow. She’s so happy for you and can’t wait to see you face-to-face.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Marcus replied. “For everything.”

  “Happy to do it, young man.”

  So much was racing through Marcus’s head at that moment.

  “I’m really a free man?” he asked, trying to process it all.

  “You are,” Mr. Garcia replied. “But before I take you home, there are a few things we need to talk about.”

  “Actually, since my mom isn’t there, can we go straight to your house?” Marcus asked. He could hear the relief in his own voice. “I’m dying to see Elena.”