Wayward Sons

by Wayne Stinnett

  “No,” I said. “We’re not cops. I used to be a cop, but not anymore.”

  “He’s a dry drunk now, know what I mean?” DJ said with a smile.

  “We want to ask Marc about a guy named Luc Baptiste. He’s some journalist, and somebody told us Marc talked with him a couple days ago. We just wondered if he knew where Luc had gone.”

  “Your friend is missing?” Andy took a drag off his cigarette and rubbed at the scar behind his right ear. “That’s a familiar-sounding story. If you two feel like sticking around an hour or two, Marc should be at today’s meeting. Bet you could talk to him afterward.”

  “The rest of our morning’s clear,” I said.

  “I just had something come up,” DJ said.

  I looked to my right, straight into DJ’s eyes. Now wasn’t a time for jokes—we were on the verge of picking up a new lead in Luc Baptiste’s murder, but to do that, Andy wanted to know we were trustworthy.

  We couldn’t screw this up by not throwing our guy Andy a bone.

  I had to say something to him. But I knew he’d take it the wrong way, and I didn’t want to make a scene. Regardless, DJ could probably benefit from a meeting or two to chill him out.

  “You can’t cancel?” Andy asked DJ. “It’s good for the soul, amigo.”

  DJ offered no further explanation.

  Andy cracked a smile and nodded. He’d dealt with guys like DJ before.

  “You know, DJ, I used to be like you.” Andy leaned away from us and dabbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. “I’d wake up every morning, running on two hours of sleep—if my anxiety lets me sleep at all. I’d put on my meanest face, and I’d roll out into the world, anyway. Come hell or high water, I was not going to let some touchy-feely sniffles get the better of me. Stuff it down and go forward, right? That’s how I got through basic, and NCO school, and God only knows how many bomb defusings and firefights.”

  Andy inhaled deeply. His forefinger traced the scar around his ear once more as he looked over Long Bay. Then he exhaled.

  “After all the surgeries were over, I came down here as soon as I figured out how to be independent again,” he continued. “I figured I could just go to a paradise like this—the furthest thing from where I grew up in Bismarck—and then I could use this new environment to reset myself. Leave my old habits and my old problems behind. I could figure myself out. Deal with it all on my own.” He shook his head and chuckled softly. “Man, I was wronger than wrong.

  “How many years did we spend getting the idea of relying on other people hammered into our heads?” He nodded at DJ, who remained still. “The Army taught us we were stronger together, and when I needed to take that lesson to heart the most, I didn’t.” He pointed through DJ, toward the VA’s front door. “The people coming to that meeting are my brothers and sisters. I can rely on them. I can trust them. They’ve helped me more than my actual brothers have. And if you’d have them—if you can be open and honest with them and give them a shoulder to lean on sometimes—I know they’d do the same for you.”

  DJ stared forward. He hadn’t moved a muscle, hadn’t even looked in Andy’s direction. Did any of that make it through?

  “I’m gonna head to my thing,” DJ said to no one in particular. “Call me when you’re done in there, Dep.”

  He stepped off the curb without a glance at me or Andy. I waited until DJ had slipped over the thigh-high wall between the parking lot and the strip of grass that led to the highway before I said anything to Andy.

  “Sorry about him,” I said.

  Andy smiled politely at me, taking a breath through his nose. “Nothing to be sorry about, man. He ain’t the first vet who’s snubbed that offer. It happens. I want every vet like DJ to see that it’s all right to ask for help. But I can’t baby him, either. If I start chasing after him, pleading with him to reconsider, telling him it’s for his own good, you think that’s gonna make him change his mind?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Definitely not,” Andy countered. “I learned the hard way that if you want somebody to listen to you, you can’t bully them into it. You gotta establish mutual respect. You gotta let them come to you. But that doesn’t happen unless both sides are ready.”

  “And DJ’s not ready,” I said.

  I followed Andy into the VA office and then into the big, empty room at the end of the hall opposite the pharmacy, where DJ and I’d kept Andy from climbing through the window.

  Arriving in the room before anybody else, I helped by setting up metal folding chairs, while Andy instructed me where and how many to put out. Shortly after I put down the first chair, other men and women began to filter in and help arrange the room for the coming meeting. To my eyes, they ran the spectrum of everyday people: some dressed in collared shirts with slacks and neat haircuts, others in T-shirts, tank tops, shorts, jeans, flip-flops, sneakers, and prescription shoes.

  These vets just weren’t the thick-necked, high-and-tight, twenty-somethings they may have been when they’d served. Just as they’d been remade in basic, they were now in the process of being remade again by civilian life. Some were clearly struggling to adjust to their new identities.

  After the chairs were set up, I took a seat and waited on my own. Andy brought a handful of the other vets over, introducing them. Each of them gave me a first name—Mike, Jose, Daryl, Melissa—a service branch, and the particular unit they were with or job they performed.

  Andy introduced me as PJ Jerry.

  I was amazed at how unbothered they were in telling their stories. They were often tales rooted in abject boredom, suddenly punctuated with unbelievable violence caused by roadside bombs and surplus Soviet munitions leading to a new scar or permanent disability.

  Listening reminded me of the sound a Humvee made when it rolled, and its roof collapsed like a milk carton, or how, five yards away, an IED was hot enough to singe the hair from the back of your neck, or how you had to cradle a man suffering from burns like you’d cradle a newborn, because grabbing him by the wrists and dragging him to safety would make the skin peel off his arms.

  Going to the meeting, visiting with fellow veterans months or years after their life-changing injuries, was an experience I didn’t expect to have when I hurried out of bed this morning.

  And here I was, sound of body, the worst kind of voyeur. Lower than a Peeping Tom. I felt like I’d snuck into a widow’s closet to watch her cradle a yellowed photo of her long-dead husband while she cried herself to sleep.

  Regardless, I kept my seat when the meeting started. If I got up and left, they’d be insulted, and I needed this lead in the Baptiste case.

  Andy rolled past my right, toward the front of the semicircle of chairs, the windows overlooking Long Bay at his back. The easy chatter in the room died down.

  “Morning, everybody,” Andy said. “We have an FNG with us today.”

  Several of the guys laughed at the acronym for a fucking new guy, a moniker given to any new person in a military unit. I grinned, taking it in stride.

  Then, Andy gave the floor to me, motioning me to the front. I hesitated. I didn’t deserve to talk. These people had given much in their service—their bodies and minds, and I had come out whole. I wasn’t supposed to be here.

  “Aww! The new guy’s shy!” They all laughed, and Andy motioned me to stand up. So, I did.

  “My name’s Jerry,” I said. “I’m from Newport Beach, California and I used to be a cop.”

  A couple of the guys jokingly booed me. I laughed it off.

  “I’m an Air Force vet,” I continued. “I enlisted in 2006, after a couple years of being bored to tears in a college classroom. While I was in college, at a career fair, I met a lieutenant at a recruitment table. He seemed like an all-right guy, so when he asked me to listen to him give a presentation after lunch, I did. Me and a dozen other people sat in a big lecture hall and listened to him tell us about the different jobs we could do in the Air Force. Either after graduation, or in case there was—you know
—anyone thinking about dropping out. I guess I didn’t have any concept of different jobs in the service. I figured, Air Force—you’re gonna fly a jet or bomb somebody.”

  They all laughed. I figured a lot of them related to how green I’d been then.

  “But when that lieutenant talked to us about Pararescue School, about how it constantly challenged enlistees to do some of the most dangerous work the military had to offer—and to do it anywhere on the planet—I was in.”

  The hair on my arms stood up as I remembered that guy—a man named Simpson—and the way his service blues commanded the full attention of a room of college kids.

  “I wanted to be the guy who was dropped in behind enemy lines,” I continued, “to find somebody who was hurt, and bring them out alive. I wanted the hardest challenge I could find, and I wanted to do some good. After I got out of the pararescue pipeline, I served three tours in Afghanistan doing just that.”

  “One after another?” Andy asked me in disbelief.

  “I’m lucky, and dumb,” I said, grinning. “But not crazy.” That got another laugh from the group. “The first time I deployed was early in ’09. Then toward the end of 2010, and again in 2012.”

  Andy whistled. “And you came out without a damned scratch.”

  A lump swelled in my throat. I swallowed it back. Then, my eyes met with those of a man I hadn’t been introduced to. He sat in the chair nearest the door to the hallway. There was something familiar and terrifying about the way he looked.

  He was average height, with a stocky build and dark hair going gray around his temples. He had only one arm, and an intensity to his eyes that pierced into the core of me.

  I looked away.

  “That’s my story.” I plopped back into my chair.

  “Well, all right,” Andy said. “The man knows when his story ends. Always happy to meet somebody from Pararescue.”

  A couple guys near me made grumbles of agreement.

  The guy to my left clapped me on the knee. “A PJ saved my brother’s life.”

  I nodded, but I barely heard him. My attention had drifted over to the one-armed man with the piercing eyes, then back to Andy.

  The rest of the meeting went about the way I assumed a support group for veterans would. Guys shared their stories about struggling with everyday things most people took for granted—tying shoes with one hand, bottling up anger around loved ones, navigating a grocery store while fighting the temptation to sock some obnoxious kid in the nose. Then Andy made announcements about new VA services and a fishing trip the following weekend, sponsored by Hildon Pharmaceuticals.

  The meeting ended with a prayer led by Mike, one of the guys Andy’d introduced me to. We said amen, and everyone dispersed.

  I got up from my chair and approached Andy, who was finishing up some business with the guy who had to stop himself from punching the second grader in a grocery store. Behind me, I could almost feel the one-armed vet lurking around; he had on a pair of hard-soled boots that made a very distinct sound against the floor. I made sure I didn’t look in his direction.

  Done talking, Andy met me with a smile. “How’d it feel, man?”

  “Getting up in front of people and talking was never for me, but I’m happy to come back—if you’d like me to be part of the group.”

  He cocked his eyebrow at me. “The hell are you talking about, Jerry? Of course, we want you back. Why wouldn’t we?”

  I stepped closer and lowered my voice. “My story is next to nothing compared to some of these other guys. I’m still walking around like going to Afghanistan was a long camping trip with colorful locals.”

  “Aw, hell.” Andy waved me off. “More than half of them said the same damned thing after their first day. There’s always some poor bastard that got it worse, right?” He grinned and slapped the armrest of his wheelchair.

  “You keep coming, you’ll settle in. You’ll see how all these people respect somebody who’s been there, whether you’ve got lead stuck in your guts or not. Since you were never hit, they might give you some guff about being lucky, but they only kid the guys they want to stick around.”

  It was nice of him to say that, but when I turned around and scouted the room again, I saw a place I didn’t belong. By now, the men and women who’d come to the meeting had broken off into smaller groups, talking and joking in low voices and drinking coffee, some already halfway to the door, others grabbing a cup for the road.

  “So, which one is Marc?”

  “I knew I forgot something!” Andy smacked his forehead. “Hey Marc!” He called toward the coffee station.

  The one-armed man with the piercing eyes turned around. When his eyes met mine, that same feeling of wariness jostled in my belly. “Need something?” Marc sounded punchy. Nothing too obvious, but his words were half a step slower than most people’s.

  “This is Jerry,” Andy said. “Jerry, this is Marc Herrera.”

  I held out a hand to Marc. He took it with a thin, clammy grip, and barely shook.

  “My dad was a PJ in Vietnam,” Marc said. “I had a lot of respect for the Air Force, growing up.”

  “But not enough to be an airman,” Andy chimed in with a laugh.

  “Flying terrifies me.” Marc cracked a tired smile. “So, I enlisted in the Marines—but that didn’t do me any good when I realized I’d be flying as part of my deployment.”

  We all laughed. Now that I’d talked to him, I wondered why Marc gave me the heebie-jeebies. He seemed like a good guy, only worn down.

  “Jerry’s been asking about you,” Andy said.

  “Oh, yeah?” Marc’s disposition changed instantly, like he’d found out I wasn’t just chatting with him, I was knocking on his door to sell him on a new religion.

  My cop sense told me I was going to lose this guy quickly, so I had to get to the point.

  “Did you know a man named Luc Baptiste?”

  Marc crossed his remaining arm over his chest and furrowed his brow.

  “Did you know him?” Marc asked. He nodded toward the Newport Beach PD badge on my shirt. “Are you a cop down here?”

  “I’m not a badge anymore,” I reminded him. “I’m strictly doing private work now. I’ve been asked to look into his death, and I heard the two of you met at a bar near Krum Bay shortly before Luc disappeared.” I didn’t know when Luc disappeared for sure. I didn’t even know the date he’d met with Marc, but sometimes you had to fish a little deep to see what came up for the bait.

  “You think I killed him?” Anger flashed through Marc’s eyes.

  It was then that I realized what unnerved me about him. Marc reminded me of my father shortly before he died.

  From a brain tumor.

  “How long have you had your cancer?” I asked. And I shouldn’t have.

  Andy almost held back his gasp. “Let’s come back to this later.”

  “Too long,” Marc snapped the answer at me. “And too many times. For all that it matters, I’ve got enough trouble. I don’t need to go around killing people.”

  “No, of course not,” I said. “Look, I’m coming at you wrong. Luc’s family wants to know what happened to him, and I’m trying to give them the best answer I can find. They don’t have the faintest clue about what he was working on, but I thought you might know. Luc wrote an article in The New York Times that upset some yahoo over in Culebra. He’s my guy right now, but I’m doing my best to follow up every lead. I just want to be able to tell Luc’s family something as soon as I can.”

  The fire behind Marc’s expression cooled. “What’s his family like?”

  “He’s got a sister—she’s married. The brother-in-law put my partner and me on this. He and his wife are more worried about Luc than they’re willing to admit. I can tell.”

  “A sister?” Marc’s eyes drifted upward, carrying the far-away look of a man struggling with himself. After a few seconds, he came back to the room in the VA. “Luc asked me about my cancer.”

  At least I wasn’t the only
one.

  “He asked me how long I’ve been dealing with my glioblastoma. How many times I’ve been diagnosed with cancer and all the medications I’ve taken in the last five-ish years, including the stuff I’m taking now.”

  I tried to think of who would want Luc Baptiste dead for putting together a human-interest story on a Marine with cancer. My mind flipped through the different angles: the best I could think was that Luc had tried to expose the VA by showing how ineffective they’d been against Marc’s brain tumor.

  Hardly anything was effective against glioblastoma. That wasn’t the VA’s fault. Most people didn’t last longer than a year and change with treatment. The curtain fell much, much quicker if it went untreated.

  Garner’s losing money because of Luc’s article in The Times seemed a much more compelling motive.

  “Did he ask anything else?”

  “He wanted to know how much I’m spending on meds and treatments. Enough to make me seriously consider stopping treatments.” He blinked and held his eyes shut for a moment.

  “Before you ask, I don’t know why he wanted to know all those things.” Marc opened his eyes and looked blankly at me. “Said he was working on something but wouldn’t tell me anything about it.”

  “Then why’d you take the interview?”

  “I needed money, man. He paid me.”

  Marc rubbed his eyes. My father’s face flashed through my mind. Haggard, with one eye drooping, a trembling hand brushing over a forehead that seemed to have aged twenty years in two months.

  “Did you talk to him about anyone?”

  “What?” Marc blinked at me. He seemed out of it, a step deeper into the fog than he’d been a moment ago. “What did you say?”

  “Marc, why don’t you sit down a minute?” Andy asked.

  He looked vacantly around himself, once, twice, and on the third time saw the chair directly behind him. He put his hand on it, wobbled for a moment, and then lowered himself down.

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “Did you drop any names during your conversation with Luc?” I asked. “Maybe give him someone else to talk to?”