by D. F. Bailey
For the first time, he considered that the watches might be the bounty that Deacon Brodie had offered. His payoff to two hajjis to ambush Rousseau and Cottrell. Could it be? Now, fifteen years after Joey Kinsella had started his diary, Finch felt infected by the same disease that afflicted the crew who’d flown on Brodie's Chinook chopper. He shuddered, tried to shake the paranoia ghosting his mind.
But now he was convinced. Just as J.R. had told him — he was in this whether he knew it or not.
※ — NINE — ※
FINCH HEARD A ping on his computer, pulled himself from his chair and sauntered over to his desk. He felt the lead weight of exhaustion drag through his arms and legs. Eve had already gone to bed and he could hear her light wheezing through the open doorway. She’d promised to read Kinsella’s diary in the morning. Then after they’d both listened to Tony Turino’s audio recording, she and Finch planned to sit together and sort out where things stood.
Despite his weariness, Finch knew he had to listen to the audio file as soon as he saw it appear in his email inbox. He clicked on the message from J.R. His note contained three words: Here it is. He clicked on the audio icon and entered the password at the prompt: JR2finch. When the recording began, he heard J.R.’s voice provide an introduction. He paused the audio stream, carried the laptop back to his chair and set it on his thighs. Then he eased the chair leg extension into a near-horizontal position, closed his eyes and listened to the audio file as it played over the next forty minutes.
※
J.R: this is a notarized interview with Mr. Anthony Turino recorded on October 25, 2019, at Theta Public Notaries, 320 Fell Street, San Francisco. I’m recording this interview in the presence of Francis Whitaker, of Theta Public Notaries, who certifies the authenticity of this interview.
Whittaker: And I, Francis Whittaker, confirm that I am present for the entire interview of Antonio Turino conducted by Jeremiah Rickets on the above identified date and location.
J.R: Mr. Turino, do you confirm that you have requested this interview and that you are providing your testimony voluntarily?
Turino: I do.
J.R: State your full name, your place of birth and birth date.
Turino: Antonio Lorenzo Turino. Born in San Diego on June 23, 1981.
J.R: Do you affirm that everything you are about to say is the truth?
Turino: I do.
J.R: Please state why you are making this testimony and in what capacity.
Turino: In what capacity? (hesitates, coughs) I was a private in the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, during the Iraq war from the day we invaded Saddam Hussein’s Iraq regime in 2003 through August 2007 when I was honorably discharged. During my service I eyewitnessed a mass murder of fifteen captured Iraqi soldiers by Captain Deacon Brodie. (pause) I also have info about a series of murders that happened during my service. The murders continued this year with the killing of Frank Chernovski in Detroit on, uh, September 7, and Joey Kinsella just three days ago on October 22nd in Bakersfield.
J.R: All right. Now, in your own words take us through this from the beginning.
Turino: Okay, from the beginning. (pause) So there are two parts to this thing. The first part, the mass murder, happened in Iraq one night when we evacuated fifteen Iraqi Army captives on a Chinook chopper. That’s when Captain Brodie threw fifteen prisoners out of the chopper to their deaths. In mid-air. From maybe 500 meters up.
J.R: Can you give us a specific date and place?
Turino: Yes, sir. I won’t forget it. The night of February 6, 2004. We were flying from Mosul back to the chopper base near Baghdad International Airport. BIA as everyone called it.
J.R: Did you personally witness Captain Brodie throw the prisoners out of the helicopter?
Turino: Yes, sir.
J.R: All fifteen of them?
Turino: Yes, I did.
J.R: Did anyone else witness this act beside yourself?
Turino: Yeah, sure. There were seven of us all told guarding the POWs. Like I said earlier. There’s two parts to this. What I seen with my own eyes that night on the chopper. And the chain of murders that comes after.
J.R: All right. Let’s talk about the second set of allegations.
Turino: So a week later, the chopper pilot, Dutch, is found shot through his guts, outside some hajji bar in the city.
※
Finch paused the recording to consider Tony Turino’s testimony. From what he could make out, everything conformed to Joey Kinsella’s diary entries. Both identified the pervasive silence that the witnesses maintained during the weeks after the mass execution.
But now Finch detected a contradiction. Joey’s diary stated that Dutch had been shot in the back of the head. Tony claimed he’d taken the hit in the belly. Since neither of them witnessed Dutch’s execution, the discrepancy could be accounted for by second-hand rumors. Much of the info gathered from the front lines was inflated guess-work and outright lies. Nothing unusual about that.
Nonetheless, the variance troubled Finch. He made a mental note and continued to listen to the recording.
※
J.R: Back it up a second. What’s Dutch’s full name? And what city?
Turino: Baghdad. And Dutch’s last name was VanHeussen. Not sure how you spell it. Like the painter, he always said. I never knew his actual first name. Everyone just called him Dutch.
Whittaker: You state this was near a ‘hajji bar’. As far as I know, alcohol is forbidden by Islam. Are you sure this was a bar? In the American sense of the word?
Turino: All right. Point taken. I wasn’t there so I can’t say exactly where this all happened. No matter. Because the fact I heard is that you, Sergeant Rickets, was the MP leading the investigation into Dutch’s death, right?
J.R: That’s right. But I’m not going to comment on that in this interview.
Turino: (laughs) SNAFU, right? (laughs again) Okay, so forget the business about the hajji bar and Dutch’s first name. We both know he was killed. That’s on the record somewhere. Right?
J.R: Why don’t you continue.
Turino: (pause) Jesus. Give me a break, okay?
Whittaker: You want some time to reconsider your statement?
Turino: No. (pause) So then came Sinclair’s turn. Maybe two weeks later, I’m not sure of the timeline, because in his case, Sinclair simply disappears. Vanishes. No one, not his family, not his girlfriend, none of his buddies, none of them ever hear from him again. And losing him was seriously bad. He was the only man in our unit who spoke Arabic. You were there. You know how valuable that is.
J.R: You believe he was murdered? Why?
Turino: Because Sinclair was the second step in the sequence. First, Dutch. Granted, he was the chopper pilot and wasn’t an eye-witness to the massacre like the seven of us in the cargo bay. But Brodie had to take out Dutch because he knew that Brodie planned to kill the prisoners. Meanwhile the rest of us saw everything. So like I said, next came Sinclair. It’s a one-two punch. Then a month later two more guys in the chopper are killed. Steps three and four. Rousseau and Cottrell.
※
Finch paused the feed again. Something was off, but he didn’t know what. Was it the sound of Turino’s voice or the facts of his testimony?
He drew a large question mark on his notepad and let the recording play on.
※
Turino: Okay, so look. After Sinclair, back in oh-four, the serial murders seemed to come to a halt. Until now. Until the murders of Chernovski and Joey Kinsella over the past three months. Now Jahnke and me are the last men on that chopper still alive.
J.R: So after fifteen years, you believe there’s a connection to the soldiers’ deaths in 2004 in Iraq to the fatalities of two more members of the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade in August and October?
Turino: Brodie was deployed back to DC the week after Cottrell and Rousseau got ambushed. Suddenly, the killings came to a halt. A month later, he resigned his commission. Who knows what the fuck that was about. You
can bet someone in the brass circle knew something. Anyhow, Brodie then went off to make his fortune. Wall Street, Hollywood. Now politics. Everyone knows his story. Big, loud-mouth wonder-boy. But what happens when the president starts tweeting that Brodie would make a great secretary of state? Now suddenly the killing starts again. First, Chernovski is mugged in a bar in Detroit. A week later Joey Kinsella came to me with his diary. Then he dies in a freak motorcycle accident outside Bakersfield a few miles from his house. Look, the guy was into competitive bike racing. A champ. No way he dies in a freak accident. Brodie took him out, plain as your face. When Kinsella died, that’s when I realized the chain of murders linked up again.
J.R: From 2004 to last month?
Turino: Read the diary. You’ll see how Joey Kinsella ties all the pieces together.
Whittaker: For the record, let me interject to say that I have secured a diary purportedly written by Mr. Kinsella which was given to me by Mr. Turino two days ago. Furthermore, I have a sworn statement from Mr. Kinsella’s widow that confirms that the diary was written by her husband in his handwriting. I’ve made two certified copies, one which I gave to Mrs. Kinsella and one to Mr. Rickets. The original document is secured in Theta Public Notaries’ head office.
J.R: Okay, so in your own words, tell us how these series of murders were committed by Captain Brodie.
Turino: For one thing, they’re all linked to those of us who were on that chopper in oh-four. Of the seven of us, the only survivors are Michael Jahnke and me. Even if you allow that Sinclair might be alive somewhere — which nobody who ever knew him believes — that’s just three out of seven survivors. Ask any genius who knows numbers. Statistics. That’s just not right.
J.R: Some of those were battlefield fatalities.
Turino: Not the two men killed in the last three months! (exasperated) Fuckin’ Chernovski killed in Detroit. Then Kinsella two months later? And what exactly triggered those fuckin’ murders? I’ll tell you what. Captain Deacon Brodie is nominated by the president to be secretary of state. Keeping his rep clean is the motive. He’s the fuckin’ perp.
J.R: All right. I hear you. Before we wrap up, have you heard from the other survivor, Michael Jahnke?
Turino: Jahnke? That’s another surprise, I guess. I didn’t hear a word from him since his tour wrapped up in oh-seven. He was always a bit of a loner. Anyhow, three days after Chernovski’s murder in Detroit, Jahnke calls me from Reno. Just checkin’ in, he says.
J.R: So, he heard about Chernovski’s death?
Turino: No. Seemed surprised by it all.
J.R: After all these years … why’d he call?
Turino: Said he might be coming out to the Bay Area and asked if it would it be okay to check in. I said sure, but that was it. Then he went off the radar again.
J.R: All right. Anything more to add before we close this interview?
Turino: That’s it. Combine what I have to say with Kinsella’s journal and you’ll see the whole picture. One last thing about Kinsella's diary. He goes on about me being paranoid. But ask yourself, with him and Chernovski both gone now, the facts point in the other direction. This isn’t paranoia. It’s serial murder. Somebody’s got to put this together, before anyone else goes down.
J.R: Thank you. Mr. Whittaker, anything from you?
Whittaker: Nothing more but to confirm that this concludes the certified recording of the interview with Antonio Turino by Jeremiah Rickets and me in the offices of Theta Public Notaries, on this day, at 3:46 p.m.
※
Finch opened his eyes, stared across the room and let his gaze settle on the window curtain as it fluttered in the current of air rolling up from the baseboard heater. Turino’s testimony had been recorded not long before he drove up to Mayne Island. He stood on the driveway smoking his cigarette — when was it? — two weeks after J.R. finished the interview at Theta Public Notaries. He made a note to check the dates and determine the exact number of days between the interview and their brief conversation at Finch’s cottage.
Besides the question of timing, Finch knew something else was wrong about Turino’s attestation. He’d have to listen to it again tomorrow, but the so-called “sequence” that Turino reported didn’t match up with what Kinsella had written.
For now he decided to make a note beneath the bullet list of murders he’d complied on his pad. He added two more items:
Inconsistent: Turino’s death sequence doesn’t match Kinsella’s. Turino says Sinclair disappeared before Cottrell and Rousseau died. Kinsella has it the other way round.
Kinsella claims Dutch shot in the head, Turino says in his guts.
Then he set the laptop on his desk, turned off the reading lamp and padded barefoot into the bedroom. When he climbed into bed and rolled his hand over Eve’s hip, he could sense that she was in a deep sleep. He watched her chest flutter as she breathed, and for a brief moment he envied her. Then he expelled a long breath and slipped away beside her.
※ — TEN — ※
EVE ROSE FROM the bed, had a shower, made her way down to the kitchen and prepared a breakfast of grapefruit, eggs, ham and coffee. As she ate, she read through Kinsella’s diary. Almost an hour later, Finch appeared at the kitchen table, the fingers of his right hand knitted into his hair. To Eve it looked as if a comb had stuck in a mop and he couldn’t free it on his own.
“You want some help?” Her voice a tease.
“No.” He pulled his hand free, took a teaspoon from the cutlery drawer and scooped a wedge of grapefruit from the half she’d left for him. “God, I slept well.”
She waved a hand at the diary. “Looks like something terrible happened over there.”
He nodded and ate another wedge. “Yeah. It did. I saw part of it, so I know it’s real. Last night J.R. sent me Turino’s interview. Taken together, it’s fairly credible. Almost a lock.”
“Almost?”
“Let me eat. Then we can listen to the audio together.”
Twenty minutes later, Finch carried his laptop from his writing loft down to the kitchen. Before he played the interview, he copied it to a USB stick and gave it to Eve. “You need to store this in The Post’s security vault, okay?”
She zipped the drive into a small compartment inside her purse. “I’ll do it next time I’m in the office. This afternoon, probably.”
Finch nodded and clicked the play icon on his laptop. Once again, the voices of J.R., Turino and Whittaker streamed through the speakers. Eve and Finch shuffled in their chairs and sipped their coffee as the horrors of the mass executions and serial murders weighed upon them. By the time the interview concluded they were both sitting with their elbows propped on the table top, their chins clamped in their hands, their eyes glazed over as they stared at the laptop screen.
Eve let out a sigh and stood up.
“God save us,” she whispered after the silence became too much to bear. “If this is accurate, the crimes will soon reach right into the White House.”
“Maybe.” Finch stood up and walked in a tight circle from the kitchen table to the stove and back again. “Right now I can barely imagine all the implications.”
“So don’t.” Eve held up a hand. “Remember when you told me to think like a cop? Back on Mayne Island?”
“Yeah.”
“So let’s examine the facts. Take a deep dive on the diary and interview. We have to ask ourselves: would a DA prosecute this case based on these two pieces of evidence? In other words, would they hold up in court?”
Finch nodded. “There are some problems.”
“Like what?”
“Both witnesses are dead. Which, I know, you can argue their deaths confirm the theory that they were murdered to prevent their testimony. On the other hand, they can’t explain away the contradictions in their statements.”
“What contradictions?”
“The sequence.” Finch opened his notepad. “Turino gives the death sequence in this order: Dutch, Sinclair, Cottrell and Rousseau. But Kinsella
said it went Dutch, Cottrell and Rousseau, and then Sinclair.”
Eve blinked and glanced away. “You’re right.”
“Also, Turino recorded his interview after he read Kinsella’s diary. Any defense attorney would argue that his interview was influenced — if not wholly constructed — from Kinsella’s diary.”
Eve shook her head. She could easily imagine how Turino’s testimony would be framed as rash speculation.