Defending College Heights
A NovelBy Stuart NachbariUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2009 Stuart Nachbar
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-595-49368-5Chapter One
My parents, Colin and Maureen, were part of America's Greatest Generation. I was born at the tail end of the baby boom, too late for Vietnam, too early for Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I thought I was one of the lucky ones. I had never known what it meant to serve in the military-there was no draft and no war to fight when I was in high school and college-until this morning.
This morning, like many others, I went running; that's been a ritual ever since my dad signed me up for boxing lessons. Rocky movies have inspired many a Philadelphia boy to take up the sweet science, and I still hear the theme song while I run. Boxing had helped me pay for college. It provided a tidy supplement to my Mayor's Scholarship to Penn.
My usual route took me past my sister's house in Drexel Hill, just outside of Philadelphia. I've always felt obligated to check up on her, even when things were going fine. Even though I'm five years younger, I've played the role of an older brother. She's had too much go wrong in her life. Her late husband was a good-for-nothing drunk, and her older son had become no better. However, her younger son, Kevin, had become an honest-to-goodness military hero.
Whenever I ran by Kathy's house, I noticed a bumper sticker on the rear of her car that read Half of My Heart Has Gone to Iraq. Her son Kevin had been home for three months, and the United States Army had promised that he would not be redeployed if he became a recruiting officer. But Kathy had not taken the sticker off her car. She was afraid that the army was lying to Kevin and would send him back on another deployment.
Today, an olive green car with white markings on the fender motored by, nearly splashing me as it ran through a puddle. The car moved too fast for me to read the markings, but I could guess, from the color, that it was a U.S. Army vehicle on official business.
It can't be on the way to see Kathy, I thought, as the water soaked my sweats. They were becoming too heavy for me to keep up my customary pace. Kevin's already home. I knew of two other military families in our neighborhood. One, the O'Neills, had a father serving overseas, and the other, the Hankinsons, had a son and a daughter in the National Guard, although I didn't know if they had been deployed.
The car signaled and turned right at the corner, in the direction of my sister's house. However, since I did not believe the driver was on the way to see Kathy, I gave it no more thought as it disappeared from view. I had almost finished my run and my world was safe and sound. Less than a minute later, I was home. I locked the door, showered, and then changed into fresh sweats. Then my cell phone rang. It was 10:00 a.m. No one ever calls me this early on a Saturday. Except Kathy.
"Jack, I need you now," Kathy cried. "Kevin's dead. There's an army captain in my living room. He'll stay until you get here, but please come now."
Oh, my God, I thought, that driver was on his way to see Kathy. I bolted out the door and headed straight for my car, forgetting, in my haste, to lock my front door. Driving frantically to reach my sister, I gave no thought to speed limits, nor to any pedestrians who might cross my path. There were always casual walkers and joggers this time of day.
As I approached Kathy's house, I saw the military car that had splattered my sweats. It was now parked alongside the curb in front of her house. I slammed on the brakes to avoid tapping its rear bumper. I felt a gentle thump, maybe rubber touched rubber, but I didn't bother to check for possible damage. I ran out of my car and banged on Kathy's front door so hard that I could have knocked it off the hinges.
There was no answer. "Kathy!" I shouted, "Where are you?"
She didn't answer the door. Instead, an army officer, a captain named Flanagan, opened the door and asked me who I was. When I told him, he shook my hand and expressed his sympathies, then led me into Kathy's living room.
She was seated on her living room couch, her face buried in the palms on her hands. "Why would anyone want to kill my boy?" she sobbed. "He came home three months ago. How can he be dead?" She was trembling.
I sat down beside my sister and took her into my arms. Her heart was beating so rapidly, I feared I might lose her. Since this was a weekend, she was dressed like I was, in sweats, though her short reddish brown hair was set as if she were headed for work. She had not applied her makeup before Flanagan arrived.
Unfortunately, Flanagan knew nothing about what had happened to Kevin, only that he had been killed on a college campus in New York.
"Did you find out who was in charge of the investigation?" I asked him. "Will the army keep you posted?" But he had no answers. As angry as I was, I could not vent my frustration on him. He was just there to do an unpleasant job.
And I did not dare try to keep Kathy from crying, especially since photographs of Kevin, some of him as a boy, a couple of him in uniform, nearly filled her living room walls. Captain Flanagan admired the photos and asked polite questions about Kevin, a man he had never had the good fortune to meet. He smiled and listened. There's no way a soldier can fake true admiration for another fine soldier.
"Captain, I want to see him," I said. "I need to be sure it's Kevin."
I rummaged through a kitchen drawer and found a piece of paper on which Flanagan wrote the address for the Orange County Morgue and a contact person's name and phone number.
"That's all I know," he said. "I wish I could tell you more. I ache for both of you. But I have to tell you that Captain Callahan's death will be in the news. He was killed while off duty on civilian property."
This put me into panic mode. "In the news?" I asked. "What do you mean, in the news? They couldn't wait for you to talk to us?"
"The army asked the sheriff to hold off the announcement until tomorrow," he replied in an understanding tone, "but she felt obligated for public safety reasons. She'll start an investigation today. But I also have to warn you that some reporters will jump at the story because Captain Callahan was a recruiter."
I wanted to grab him by the lapels of his uniform jacket and beat more information out of him, but I knew that the disclosure had not been his decision. He looked at me as if to explain that his hands, like Kathy's and mine, were tied. There was nothing anyone could do to stop the presses. Flanagan handed me his card and offered to return at a more convenient time. He said that he would be the army's liaison with Kathy to arrange Kevin's funeral.
Half an hour passed, and then the phone rang. Kathy was still in shock, so I picked it up. "Jack, are you watching TV?" It was my ex-wife, Carrie. I could hear a TV and computer keys clicking in the background. "Turn it on quick," she said. "ABC News. Some reporters are talking about Kevin."
"Kathy and I know. The casualty officer was just here. But how do you know?"
"The story's live on ABC. Some school in upstate New York released an announcement about his death. Isn't that where he was stationed?"
I clicked the remote to Channel 6 just in time to hear the reporter, a pencil-thin, stylishly-dressed black woman named Shana Montgomery, reporting live from the campus of Hudson Technical University in College Heights, New York. The reporter walked past a campus gate and stopped in front of a guardhouse.
"U.S. Army captain, Philadelphia area native, and former Villanova University football star, Kevin Callahan was killed while jogging near this quiet college campus in the picturesque Hudson River Valley," she said to the camera. "Campus security guards at Hudson Technical University found Callahan's body inside this guardhouse when they arrived for work at 7:00 a.m."
Son of a bitch! They couldn't wait one stinking day to put this on TV? I wanted to chase after Flanagan's car and stop him from talking to the next next-of kin on his route, but I couldn't leave my sister's side. Besides, it looked like we'd learn more from the news than we had learned from the army.
Montgomery continued her report. "Recently named commander of the army recruiting stations for this region, Callahan had been on the job for three months. Sources close to the investigation report that the words No More Lies were written on Callahan's T-shirt, leading to speculation that anti-war activists were involved."
The possibility that the murderer might have been an anti-war activist shook me to the core. My anger surged from my chest to my fingertips, and I gripped the phone so tightly that I could have shattered it with just one more squeeze.
"Jack, are you still there?" Carrie had stayed on the line, even though she was at work, quite likely under another tight deadline at the Inquirer. Call waiting beeps had cut in while Carrie, Kathy, and I had been listening to the news. Family and friends were no doubt watching this, too, and trying to contact Kathy.
"Yeah," I replied, "but the casualty officer didn't know anything close to what that reporter just said. He told us the basics and warned us that the murder would hit the news. I just wish the reporters had waited a little while longer."
Kathy started crying again as the reporter described the campus scene. She couldn't bring herself to look at the picture of Kevin that appeared on the screen. I rushed over to the couch to put my arm around her, still holding the cell phone to my ear. "I don't know how much more of this Kathy can take," I said to Carrie. "Hell, I don't know how much more I can take." Kathy's tears were soaking into my sweatshirt.
The news coverage switched over to a professionally dressed, middle-aged woman, who was identified as Susanna Reilly, the university's vice president for external relations. "We offer our heartfelt condolences to Captain Callahan's family," Reilly said, then she went on to add how the campus had always been an open and safe community.
Yeah, right, then how did this happen? I grumbled. I wanted to throw the phone through my sister's TV, but my hands and arms were busy. "Carrie, can your bosses keep a lid on this?"
"They won't ignore the story," she said, "but I can hold them off until after the funeral."
"You have to. Kathy's not going to be a cause clbre for the peace crowd. Or any other crowd. How can a reporter expect her to find the right words about Kevin? She's devastated." Carrie and I had been divorced for fifteen years, but we had managed to remain good friends. I still dream about holding her, touching her hair, but inevitably the police scanner becomes part of the dream, and she has to jump up and run off to report on some crime scene. Her alertness has paid off in spades. She's the first reporter the cops call when they've got breaking news. Our marriage was the price she had paid for her success. But this time, I knew she'd put my family first. Carrie and my sister had become close and remained close even after our divorce.
After I said good-bye to Carrie, Kathy got up to go to her bedroom. She had to return a number of calls. I picked up the remote and clicked through the news channels. Most had other stories, but CBS had a reporter on the scene in College Heights talking to a political commentator in the New York studio. While the CBS on-site reporter covered the story much as the ABC reporter had, the commentator was hitting on the military and political angles. He showed no interest in Kevin the man, but only in Kevin the United States Army recruiter.
Keith Rawlins, the silver-haired, silver-tongued commentator, was interviewing Claude Beliveau, president of New Yorkers for Peace. Beliveau had olive skin, black hair, and a small black mustache that looked like it had been snipped off a paintbrush. It was obvious that New Yorkers for Peace opposed the war in Iraq, but their leader sounded like he wanted to use Kevin's murder to advance his own agenda. Or maybe Rawlins was using his interview subject to advance his cause. I'd read one of Rawlins's books; he'd been reputed to be one of the more liberal reporters on Capital Hill. His reporting credentials were impressive, but I doubted that such a well-manicured journalist had ever participated in a murder investigation.
I saw Rawlins actually lick his lips. He was so eager to get the answers he wanted before he even asked Beliveau any questions. "Are activists so dissatisfied with President Bush's policies to be desperate enough to commit murder?" he asked, holding the microphone close to Beliveau's face. I was glad that Kathy had stepped away. I didn't want her listening to this. I could still hear her crying through the bedroom door. The phone had rung a couple of times, but I just let it ring. It was more important for me to learn as much as I could about what had happened to Kevin and where it had happened.
Beliveau answered questions as if he and Rawlins were a tag team. "Keith, as you already know, so many New Yorkers have lost their mothers and fathers, sons and daughters to this dreadful and senseless war. What would you do if you lost your child to this war?" It was obviously a rhetorical question. "I unequivocally state that our group would never condone an eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth approach," he added. "We prefer a peaceful, nonviolent approach to working with the armed forces."
"But, aren't you saddened by Captain Callahan's death?" Rawlins asked the peace activist, who was salivating at the chance to give his prepared answer.
"C'mon, you self-serving prick," I muttered. "What do you care about my nephew?" My fists were clenched. I braced myself for the peacenik's answer.
Beliveau rubbed his eyes. I wondered if he was acting to appear sincere on camera. "Of course, Captain Callahan served his country with honor," he said earnestly. "I'm deeply sorry for his friends and family. But I can only hope the army brass learned a lesson from this tragedy. Their recruiters should not harass our children. It was only a matter of time before this happened. We're just as concerned for the recruiters' safety as we are for the lives of our children." He sounded like a statesman. And I wanted to wrap my hands around that peacenik's neck. He was using Kevin's death to make a political statement. While I shared some of Beliveau's sentiments about the war, and I wanted to believe that he was a nonviolent man. But at that moment he sounded like an opportunist. I wanted to shout at the TV, but Kathy had gone to her room to try to get some rest. I knew the next few days were going to be very long for her.
Rawlins had swallowed Beliveau's bait. He quickly changed his line of questioning. "The United States Army harasses children?" he asked, probably knowing the answer in his head, though not knowing exactly how the words would come out.
"Yes. Military recruiters come to high schools and college campuses. They hang out in their booths and talk about military service like its all fun and games. 'Join the army and earn money for college or get on-the-job training'-hah! They conveniently forget to explain that on-the-job training comes on the battlefield." Rawlins kept the microphone up front and let Beliveau pontificate. "Our children are bribed or tricked into joining the army before they know what they're getting into," he continued. "And school administrators help them by acting like sheep." He was seeing the open mike as his chance to let it all out. "They provide the students' information to the army. Then it's up to the recruiters to gather the rank and file for battle."
The commentator nodded and played dumb. It's the easiest, and laziest, thing any reporter can do: let the newsmaker tell the whole story. "Those are serious accusations," Rawlins said.
"The army calls these bribes 'enlistment bonuses,'" Beliveau replied. "But the army isn't like professional sports, where you get a bonus just for showing up. You're signing away your personal freedom, and quite possibly your life."
Still upset by the news coverage, I turned off the TV and went into Kathy's bedroom. She had been trying to fall asleep after returning all of the condolence calls, but as I expected, she couldn't. I took her hand and held it close to my heart. My eyes focused on a photo of Kevin, Kathy, and me beaming proudly. It showed my nephew in cap and gown after his graduation from Villanova and before he entered Officer Candidate School. Back then, Kathy and I had not wanted Kevin to join the army. We saw no reason for him to become a soldier when he had high hopes of becoming an automotive engineer. I couldn't take my eyes off that picture, and I didn't want to stop the tears. Kathy tightened her grip on my hand. Kevin was her son, but I had helped raise him.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Defending College Heightsby Stuart Nachbar Copyright © 2009 by Stuart Nachbar . Excerpted by permission.
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