by Gavin Reese
Alex hoped they had McDougal gone before Colleen and her father arrived at the residence. She’d already told them she planned to take Michael to stay with her parents for a few days as he recovered, but she had adamantly denied the need for her own Order of Protection against Jonathan. As soon as Wall began discussing the benefits of an OP, she’d refused to consider that they needed protection from her husband, denied any further help from the detectives, and told them she had nothing more to say to them.
Twenty-Seven
Mrs. McDougal’s residence. Dry Creek, Arizona.
After the detectives had dropped him off in an unmarked SUV as promised, Jonathan McDougal had explained only enough to assuage his mother before he disappeared to the spare bedroom she normally used as an office. He’d required only one call to Colleen’s cellphone to clearly understand she had no desire to speak with him; she’d at least been kind enough to text him later that day to let Jonathan know she and Michael were at her parents’ house and their son was doing okay. I wish she’d respond to my other texts, but least I know Michael’s recovering, he thought, it’s one way to let me know both of us only blame me for hurting our son.
To distract himself from the responsibility of injuring Michael and the absence of communication with Colleen, Jonathan spent the rest of the day occupying himself with all manner of Internet distractions. His mother had popped into the bedroom only once to bring him dinner and express displeasure that she’d had to learn of Michael’s ER visit from Colleen. Thankfully, she’d been too angry to speak with him, either, and Jonathan could continue with his solitary self-loathing. By 2:30am, he’d concluded that there existed no relevant job openings in the area, and none of the news reports concerned his previous command. He moved the mouse to start shutting down the computer when the Breaking News banner appeared on the open foxnews.com website: “At least 10 soldiers killed in extended ambush outside a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan.” Jonathan clicked through to the brief, initial article and read that preliminary reports stated insurgent forces had ambushed one of his former platoons and killed or wounded at least twenty soldiers during a 14-hour engagement, and that no Quick Reaction Force had been in the area to provide reinforcements. WHAT THE FUCK??!!!!
Jonathan’s stomach and jaw felt as though they dropped through the floor; his sympathetic nervous system began initiating his flight-or-fight response, despite a lack of immediate personal danger. Absent available, substantive information, the Fox reporter claimed the estimated 22 casualties, many of whom were listed with critical injuries, now included 12 Killed-In-Action. The entire company had been returning from an extended patrol when the enemy ambushed their rear platoon several miles outside the FOB. Where was their air support?! What about a Q-R-F?! Where was the rest of the company for a counterassault?!! How could the ambush have lasted so long and been so deadly that close to the FOB?! How had the C-Os fucked this up so badly?!
Unable to find any further information on any news site or webpage, he began firing off e-mails to his former colleagues still in Afghanistan to get straight information about the engagement. All of his fears about leaving his soldiers returned, about any insufficiencies he failed to recognize in their training, his evaluations of the capabilities and leadership of his subordinate officers and their NCOs questioned. Did I fail the C-Os and my men? Is this shit on my shoulders?
Jonathan fought back frustrated tears as he purposefully strode across his mother’s house. He walked into the garage, and drunkenly beat up a heavy bag that had hung there since his college days. He furiously pounded the leather bag until his lungs ached for oxygen and his bare, chaffed knuckles bled. His legs slowly gave out and he sank onto the garage floor, reeking of whiskey, tobacco, sweat, and days of unshowered stink. Alone among his father’s tools, old moving boxes, Christmas tree lights, and a new bicycle his mother bought for Michael, Jonathan finally broke. He sobbed. Tears streamed down his face until he tasted their salt and watched them cascade, unabated, onto the cold, gray concrete floor. His anger, embarrassment, and self-loathing over failing Michael; his nervousness, anxiety, and depression that seemed to stem from his nightmares of being back in combat; the frustration over his finances and loss of the SecureCorp job; the fear and blame he now felt for his dead and wounded soldiers; and, lastly, his catastrophically failed efforts to successfully and securely compartmentalize his emotions. Stored separately, they allowed Jonathan the illusion of retained control, but, in concert, they converged and overwhelmed his very soul. Devoid of composure, discipline, and dominion, Jonathan sat among his falling tears, more alone and vulnerable than he’d ever been.
In the midst of his crisis, Jonathan experienced a moment of clarity. He realized he didn’t have a viable action plan, and his stresses had surpassed merely being unmanageable. Having had conversations about stress, PTSD, and ‘getting help’ with all of the officers and NCOs who had left his previous command, Jonathan reluctantly acknowledged the need to follow his own advice. He couldn’t continue shouldering the burden of all of his problems alone, and he feared the stressors in his life would worsen long before they improved.
Time escaped Jonathan and he realized he didn’t know how long he’d been on the garage floor. His emotional flood stymied, not unlike water subsiding after a dam break. Eventually, a manageable river existed where once raging waters had been. Jonathan controlled his breathing, felt his heart rate slow, and wiped tears on his dirty shirtsleeves. He realized he needed help before things got even further out of his control. Rising back onto his feet, Jonathan staggered into the kitchen and began to pour another three fingers of whiskey. As the liquor covered the bottom of the glass, he recognized the futility of slowing his consumption and drank straight from the bottle. Several gulps later, he sat it down on the countertop, wiped away a few new tears, and a business card stuck behind a Sponge Bob Square Pants magnet on the refrigerator door caught his eye. What the hell’s a V-A business card doing on mom’s fridge? He pulled the card down, saw it had belonged to Dr. John Martin, a Veteran’s Administration psychologist, and recognized his mother’s handwriting scrawled across its front edges: Colleen dropped this off. We love you, Jon. Please call.
Jonathan paused and stared as the card, and his emotions flooded back; his frustration, his guilt, his anger, and his regret. They were right. He had to get help.
I better call and leave a message now, he thought, it’s gonna take those assholes at least a month to get me to the front of the line. Hell, I’ll be damned lucky to talk to someone before things do get worse.
Twenty-Eight
City of Buckeye Public Library, Coyote Branch. Buckeye, Arizona.
Currently logged into an anonymous website under a new user name, ArmyOfNone, Duke sat before a computer terminal in a public library only a few miles from the McDougal residence and reviewed the postings he had made across a number of anti-government sites and chat forums. Having positioned himself in a corner cubicle that faced the rest of the room, no one could have walked behind him without giving Duke ample warning of their approach. He chose this particular library for two reasons: among the closest to the Jonathan McDougal’s home, and, maybe more importantly, the library had security cameras over the entrance, cash register, and computer cubicles. Dry Creek Public Library apparently either had insufficient funding or interest to have placed such assets in their own facilities. Scary times when Big Brother is even surveilling public libraries, Duke thought, but, hell, words, knowledge, and independent thought are their greatest enemies, and that’s why they’ve been tracking public library reading lists for decades. All the more reason this is necessary.
Duke wore a faded pair of knock-off fatigue pants that closely copied the modern, US Army digital ACU pattern, although slightly more yellow than the original color palette, and a generic, grey ARMY hooded sweatshirt he bought from the Gas ‘N Go convenience store in Tonopah. With the hood covering much of his face, he hoped the image he presented would resemble Billy�
��s brother closely enough so as to cast doubt about the man’s innocence. If it comes to that, he reminded himself, there are bigger fish we hope to fry in his place. With any luck, the feds’ll be far too busy chasing phantom foreign terrorists to even consider Captain McDougal and Billy as suspects.
In reviewing the postings, Duke had decided on a three stage process. First, he ensured he had posted on all the most publicly known and relevant anti-government sites. Second, he reviewed each post to ensure they used common themes, language, and wording:
“…somebody needs to step up, a true patriot willing to fight and schooled in asymmetrical warfare, and force the corrupt government to stop its endless abuse of power…”
“…I can’t believe I gave up almost two decades of my life for this corrupt, self-serving government…”
“…it’s only a matter of time until someone THESE PEOPLE TRAINED has the courage to STEP UP and KICK THEIR TEETH IN!! I pray that day comes soon, I don’t know how long I can continue to live under the oppression of the federal gov!!!!”
“…they’re gonna have to learn the HARD WAY that the American PEOPLE won’t be kicked around any longer by CORRUPTION and OPPRESSION!”
Lastly, he looked again, with a different focus, to ensure he had specifically avoided any wording related to being part of a white supremacist group or a sympathizer. No sense in accidentally drawing the wrong attention to the right folks, he chuckled, and it’d be pretty natural for me to express my true beliefs while doing this.
As he logged off the terminal, Duke clandestinely checked his surroundings to ensure no one watched him, or paid too much attention to the area around him. Satisfied no one gave a damn about the hooded-and-fatigued man who had visited the computer cubicles three times that week, he strode purposefully toward the main entrance and a cheap bicycle he had locked outside. A little ironic to blame the guy with PTSD for such a horrific thing, he told himself. It’ll be pretty easy, though, to leave behind just enough nuggets to keep the McDougal boys in custody for quite some time. I just hope the Jackboots bite off on the jihad angle first. That’ll serve my purposes much better than fryin’ these two J-V second-stringers.
Twenty-Nine
Veterans Administration Hospital. Phoenix, Arizona.
Dr. John Martin sat in his office, diligently taking notes and listening to the eighteenth patient of the day. Thankfully, a little more than half had just come in for prescription refills. They were all the same, they were all different. Each suffered and sacrificed for their fellow soldiers, for their country, and their stories often shared tragic commonalities, each interspersed with unique, personal horrors. All of them had seen too much, done too much, felt too much, bled too much, and, often, felt they bled too little when those around them perished. Survivor’s guilt struck more patients here than did herpes in a whorehouse.
They all deserved the best he had to offer them. Now a psychiatrist, Martin served in combat in Vietnam, and cared deeply for the American military and its veterans. Civilians could treat vets and guide them through their problems, but they could not really relate to their experiences. No one else understood what they had gone through. They couldn’t sit and cry with them, they couldn’t give them tough love when it became necessary. They simply weren’t as effective.
The patient’s half-hour session ended several minutes ago, but she wasn’t really in a stopping place and he never kept any of his patients to a very strict schedule. Most of them generally understood, waited patiently outside his door, and, upon their own entry to his office, demonstrated sincere gratitude for his full, undivided attention. The Air Force staff sergeant finished discussing the ongoing problems with her husband while she adjusted back into life as a mother, wife, and just another driver on a civilian freeway; a significant shift from combat flight operations in Afghanistan. She finished her thoughts, composed herself, roughly wiped tears from her cheeks, thanked him, and scheduled another session the following week.
Martin followed her out to his waiting room and, for the first time today, found it empty. He returned to his office, checked his appointment book, and found he had the last ninety minutes of the day open. Rather than take time for himself or return his girlfriend’s three missed calls from that morning, he walked into the main behavioral health lobby to look for anyone waiting for a walk-in appointment. Ever-diligent to provide the best service to our nation’s veterans, Martin had doubled his efforts since the Phoenix Veteran’s Aministration office came under intense national scrutiny for its scheduling practices.
A single white male sat alone in the cheap plastic chairs, hunched over with elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of his nose, staring at the floor across the room. He looked disheveled, alone, dazed, lost. The psychiatrist checked the sign-in log.
“Jonathan McDougal?” The man sat for a few seconds before he responded. He looked up in apparent, delayed recognition of his name, stood, and approached the aging psychiatrist.
He offered the younger vet a warm right hand and a sincere, welcoming smile. “I’m John Martin. Come on back, man. How can I help you, today?”
Thirty
Colleen’s parents’ residence. North Phoenix, Arizona.
Colleen sat at her parents’ kitchen table, the Sunday newspaper spread out before her. The sound of her ringing cellphone created a welcomed distraction from her near-constant search of the local online and printed “help wanted” ads.
“Hello?” Colleen normally didn’t answer calls from “restricted” numbers, but she had recently changed hers and didn’t think her creditors had this one yet.
“Colleen? Ma’am, it’s Detective Landon with D-C-P-D, how are you?”
“Good, I guess, good enough, at least. How can I help you, Detective?” Caught off-guard, Colleen could not immediately conceal the surprise and concern in her voice. She leaned away from the table, crossed her arms over her chest, and pushed back against her mother’s kitchen chair.
“Detective Wall and I just wanted to follow up with you on Michael’s progress, and I’ve been trying to reach Jonathan to speak with him, but he hasn’t returned my messages. Do you have a good phone number for him at his mother’s house?”
“Yes, I have the house number there, but I don’t have any new or different cell numbers for him.” Colleen reflexively opened a nearby drawer beneath the kitchen phone to retrieve her mother’s handwritten phone records. “You’ll have to give me a second to find it.”
“How’s Michael recovering?”
“He’s good, seems to be 100%, he hasn’t even mentioned the hospital stay for about a week now. He does, however, talk incessantly about when his dad gets to come home.” Colleen paused, bit her lip for a few seconds, and summoned her courage again. “Detective, what do you need to discuss with Jonathan? I believe I was pretty clear that I don’t want to press charges against him. He did nothing wrong, and I won’t testify against him.”
“Yes, ma’am, I understand. I just have some follow-up questions for him to assist Child Protective Services. They just want to determine if the household conditions are improving enough for them to close their investigation.”
Bullshit, she thought, C-P-S has called for themselves every few days. “Well, you can count on me for anything you need to help get that done. It’s a crock that the state can so easily investigate parents for child abuse just from a simple emergency room visit, and it’s even worse that a judge can tell a father, tell both of us, really, that he can’t live with his own son.”
“Yes, ma’am, it is a shame, but, right now, the state is overly concerned about being sued for negligence because their previous policies and practices failed to protect some children from repeated, legitimate abuses. They’re kinda going overboard right now, but, that will probably change after they get sued a few times for overzealous investigations, then maybe they’ll get it right down the middle where it should be.”
“So, we just have to tolerate the State’s overreac
h until they learn two wrongs don’t make a right?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m sure that sounded more insensitive than I meant it.”
“Yeah, well, his mother’s home number is 623-555-3053. Pretty easy to remember, not sure why I couldn’t come up with it on my own.”
“Thank you, ma’am, please call me if you think there is anything I can do to help you or Michael.”
“Or Jonathan, right?” Colleen didn’t work very hard to hide her contempt for the young detective’s continued efforts.
“Of course, or for Jonathan, as well. Thanks for your time.”
“You’re welcome, Detective.” Colleen hung up the phone, immediately picked it back up, and dialed her mother-in-law’s number. The detective had foolishly shown his hand. They were called Dicks for a reason, she thought, and I don’t like that one.
“Hi, mom, it’s Colleen, is Jonathan there? It’s really important that I speak with him.” Colleen stood in the kitchen now, nervously pulling and twisting her ginger locks as she spoke.
“No, dear, he’s out, I think at the VA today. How are you and Michael? We need to get together soon.”
“Yeah, I know, we need to stop by so Michael can spend time with you. We’ll make some time this weekend, maybe?”
“That’d be great, sweetheart, I love and miss you two so much.”
“I love and miss you too, mom. Do you know how often Jonathan’s been able to get in over there?”
“Oh, it’s only been a few times a month, I think.”
Colleen stopped fidgeting immediately, shock apparent on her face. “When is his next visit to the VA psychiatrist?”
“I don’t see that he has anything marked on my calendar yet, which he usually does so we know the car is available for him to get there.”