The tourists usually would at that point become speechless. Either they were in shock from the tasteless comment or possibly thought the officer was a dumbass and didn’t understand they were looking for directions to the physical location where Kennedy was killed, not the part of his body which was impaled by a fast-flying, lead projectile.
Jake would then usually pause to get the most out of the tourists’ reactions before saying “only kidding it was right down there,” and point to the large white “X” spray painted onto the roadway in the exact spot where Kennedy sat in his open limousine when he was sniped.
Field Training went well for McElroy, as he made every effort to absorb everything of value he possibly could from his trainers. He studied the Texas Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedures on his time off, as well as the department’s general orders and standard operating procedures. Mack continued to work out in the gym, weight training and running to keep his body as fit and strong as his mind.
Perhaps most importantly of all, through a great deal of hard work and repetition, Mack was able to learn how to initiate his own activity and to make quality proactive arrests while keeping his own and others’ safety as priority number one. He made mistakes during training, but he accepted them, learned from them, and vowed to never make the same mistake twice.
On days when Mack would make it through the first half of his shift without screwing something up too badly, Jake would reward him by buying the recruit’s dinner at Hathaway’s favorite restaurant, the Steak Pit. This dark, dirty, roach-infested eatery on Harry Hines was not fancy, the staff wasn’t overly friendly, and the food wasn’t good either. But the place was Jake’s.
It was where the patrol sergeant could go every single late night to escape from all of those people flagging him down to ask directions, the citizens who thought it was funny when they were around cops to point at their friend and say, “Hey officer, he’s the one you’re looking forhe’s got warrants out. Haa haaa.”
Mack didn’t get Jake’s attraction to this place. Mack hated the place. But being a good rookie who didn’t want to piss off his trainer, he went along for the ride.
One incident would forever remain with Officer McElroy. It was a Saturday morning around 2:15 a.m., when Mack and Jake were walking the beat in the Deep Ellum area of downtown. The officers got flagged down by a citizen who worriedly exclaimed, “There’s a fight going on down that alley!”
The officers began to head that way. They knew that they were getting close to the disturbance when they noticed that several people had just noticed them and were now running away down the opposite end of the alley. Mack was smart enough not to instinctively chase after the first person he saw running away. Rather, he scanned the area to ascertain who the real catalyst of this disturbance was. He then noticed as one male who was apparently high on drugs or intoxicated from alcohol, dressed in all black, failed to see the law officers nearby. He then suckerpunched an elderly man who had been camped out on a corner, begging for handouts.
Mack ran toward the assailant and leapt at him, launching his body forward and airborne. This was a diving tackle that would have made many NFL players proud. The assailant was knocked to the ground, with Mack landing on the guy’s back. A short struggle ensued, but Officer McElroy was able to use his physical strength and prowess to subdue the assault suspect.
Jake stood back a couple feet, watching the rookie act. But upon further observation, Jake noticed that the suspect in black appeared to be very nervous. He was much more nervous than your run-of-the-mill drunk who had just left the bar and decided to smack some homeless guy who looked at him the wrong way for not giving up some loose change.
Mack got off the suspect but failed to handcuff him right away or even maintain a strong hold on him. The opportunistic suspect sprang to his feet and began to scan the area around him, most likely preparing to react as most humans do when they respond to stress or as criminals do when they are about to be detained, apprehended, or arrested by law enforcement; responding typically with a fight- or-flight instinct kicking in.
Mack instructed the criminal to put his hands behind his back, and Jake noticed that the subject was hesitant to respond and looking down at the front of his pants. Hathaway observed that the intoxicated male had a bulge inside the front of his trousers, and he was starting to reach down in that direction with his right hand.
Jake drew his Glock .40 caliber and aimed it at the suspect, saying, “Don’t fuckin’ move, you piece of shit! Mack, handcuff him! Now check his waistband carefully.” Sure enough, the offender had a switchblade knife in his pants and was about to attack Mack with it. He knew he had an outstanding parole violation warrant issued by the Texas Department of Corrections and was not wanting to go back to prison.
Jake never put this incident in his training records or mentioned it again, but Mack would never forget. Jake knew that Mack had just gained more from this experience then he ever would from reading the same teachings in a book or hearing it in a lecture. This was a prime example of ’failing forward’, turning mistakes into invaluable life lessons.
From that day forward when Mack contacted anyone suspicious or otherwise, he always carefully maintained eye contact with the subject. He watched closely and paid particularly close attention to others’ hands to ensure they were not reaching for a weapon.
He also learned that you could learn much about what someone was thinking or planning by the way they acted through their body language. One could learn a lot by studying persons’ subconscious facial expressions, hand movements, gestures, postures, even eye pupil dilation.
However, this was not an exact science. For there was one instance when Mack noticed that a person whom he was interviewing was acting peculiar and began to reach toward his crotch area. Mack grabbed a firm hold on the male’s arm and said, “What are you reaching for down there?”
Mack noticed a large bulge in the man’s pants and did a pat-down in that area to feel what seemed like a cantaloupe in the front of the guy’s pants. It turned out the dude had a huge tumor in one of his testicles, and the man and his gestures were completely harmless. But as Jake would always tell his rooks, “It’s better to be safe than to be sorry.”
Chapter Three - Beckoning of the Berserkers
Dallas County Jail, Downtown Dallas (Present Day) Soon after being charged with the murders, and not financially stable enough to afford some high-dollar attorney, Jake hired the cheapest attorney he could find. Jake did not think he had anything to worry about anyways, so he wasn’t concerned that his new representative, Duy Tran, was fresh out of the Southern Methodist University Law School, with no real trial experience to speak of.
Before the trial had started, Tran met with his new client in a Lew Sterrett visitation room and warned the accused Hathaway that this case would not be an easy one to defend. For, although he believed Jake’s story, there were several obstacles in the case which they would have to navigate around.
For one thing, the bodies of Rich and Holly had mysteriously vanished before any testing or further evidence collection could be achieved. Another troubling issue Tran had discovered involved the prosecution’s key eyewitness, Mrs. Gladys Torrence. She was the victims’ next-door neighbor who witnessed the slayings. Surely, she would be able to set the jury straight about the incident and establish Jake’s innocence.
However, even during discovery and pre-trial motions, she often seemed to be testifying as if reading from a prepared script and was testifying with statements that were contradictory and misleading. Something was very wrong with that woman’s reliability, which could work in one of two ways. Either (A) the jury could totally dismiss anything she says out of their lack of confidence in her, or (B) they could be gullible and fall for the load of crap that she was shoveling onto their shoes.
“Well, you better figure it out. I’m depending on you, and so is my family,” Jake told Duy as he chugged down a gulp of warm water from a styrofoam cup. Jake wondered how
a small-town kid like himself could find himself in a predicament such as this. It was going to take much more than his personal strength to survive this ordeal. Jake considered himself fortunate to still have his faith after all these tribulations. He had been raised by parents with a strong Catholic influence. For now, he would be relying upon much higher powers than himself or his attorney to intercede in this volatile situation.
Jake was baptized as a baby. As a child, his life was consistent with that of any other Catholic raised kid. He attended mass each Sunday, learning and memorizing all the assigned pertinent prayers. He learned lists of religious concepts, and at the age of fifteen he had his Confirmation. This wasthe ceremony in which a young adult begs for God’s mercy, they say their penance (reciting the prayers that they have memorized) and profess their personal commitment to the faith.
Being Catholic also meant Jake found himself at the church giving Confessions every Wednesday and Sunday. He would also ‘say the rosary’ - touching each bead on a rosary necklace and saying a corresponding prayer for each one. Jake had a working knowledge of all of the saints as well.
For example, one of the many Catholic saints was Saint Michael, the archangel patron saint of police officers and soldiers. Jake felt it appropriate to have the image of Saint Michael tattooed to his left peck on his chest when he finished his service with the Marine Corps and learned he had been hired by the Dallas Police Department.
Jake often wore a white gold chain with a silver crucifix as well, reminding him constantly of his commitment to and relationship with God.
Earle Cabell Federal Building and U.S. District Court, Downtown Dallas (Present Day) Prosecutor Ferron continued: “Now, let’s talk evidence, starting with the direct evidence we have in this case. What is direct evidence? Direct evidence is one of two things. You have an eyewitness who saw a person commit the offense and can identify this person. We have that. Or, you have someone say, ‘Yeah, I committed those murders.’ It's called a confession. And we have that too.
“So, what else could we possibly need? Nothing. That’s all we need. But we have more … physical evidence; it's DNA and fingerprints, the weapons used to inflict the injuries and cause the deaths. It's any other type of physical evidence. And we’ve got all of that, too. And finally, there is circumstantial evidence, which is everything else. We have plenty of that as well.”
“When you hear from the defense, I anticipate they will attempt to sway you by saying that the defendant was committing the act of self-defense and was in imminent fear of death or serious bodily injury and acted to stop such action against him. This is the defense’s attempt to create doubt in your minds.
“They do this to try and confuse you, make you question what you know is true. “But the TRUTH is that Jake’s actions were willful and delibera te - and that in his premeditated state, he killed more than one person. He was the one and only principal party responsible - inflicting fatal injuries to poor Rich and Holly Hathaway Jake’s own brother and sister-inlaw, ending their lives.”
Jake, incensed at the accusations leveled at him, leaned over to speak to his eager but slightly overwhelmed, young representative.
“Duy, how can they do this to me? These are all lies!”
He began to feel light-headed, his blood pressure like a heartbeat pulsating loudly inside his head. Jake felt as if his brain was swelling within his skull. The sensation was maddening. He had felt this way before - and found that retreating to a safe place in his mind could sometimes pacify him. He closed his eyes and replayedin his mind’s eye several cheerful memories from when he and his brother were young.
He recalled the snowball fights they had out in the front yard during some of those long, cold winter snow days when school was canceled. Then there was the tree fort they built in the woods together, and the dark, scary nights they endured when they slept overnight out there during the summer breaks. And of course, there was the unforgettable experience of sitting side by side with their dad on top of the left field wall, better known as the Green Monster, at a Red Sox game at Fenway Park.
Rich, considered by most to be the smarter of the two brothers, grew up with the hopes of someday being a lawyer. He started his freshman year of college at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in the fall following his eighteenth birthday. Rich aspired of obtaining a degree in engineering.
During spring break in the following March, Rich and some of his college buddies loaded up a Chevy Astro van and headed south to Daytona Beach, Florida. They had the typical youthful intentions of drinking heavily and being in proximity of many tan, beautiful, scantily clad sorority girls.
But when Rich returned to New England, for some unexplained reason, he was very different.
Within a month he had dropped out of school, moved out of his parents’ house and started living in his brown Chevy Malibu.
Subsequently, he was found wandering around naked through the neighborhood - on more than one occasion. This led to his being arrested for public lewdness and public intoxication. Rich’s criminal history soon expanded to include an arrest for shoplifting, as well as for assaulting a peace officer, which is a felony in the State of Rhode Island.
As a result of this felony charge (and conviction), Rich spent six months in the ACI - Rhode Island’s Adult Corrections Institution; the state prison.
Shortly after his release, Rich was compelled to move away from the Northeast to get a fresh start. As a resolution, Rich’s roll of the dice, figuratively speaking, resulted in him moving to north Dallas to be closer to his older brother.
There Rich found for himself a small one-bedroom apartment and began working full-time at a local Whataburger restaurant, where he met associate burger slinger Holly-Ann Jones, a cute little long-haired redhead with permanent fake eyelashes and a strong east Texas accent.
Holly, who was the same age as Rich, had previously been married to her high school sweetheart, Kent Jones. Holly and Kent had a son together, named Austin Waylon Jones. Several months after Austin’s birth, Kent overdosed on methamphetamines and Holly was left alone to raise their son.
Rich and Holly soon became inseparable, hanging out together after work and eventually cohabitating for a while at their rental house in the “M Streets” area of upper Greenville Ave. They were soon married, just four months into their relationship.
Austin, who is now 11 years old, grew to be very fond of his new stepdad. And in that same year, Holly gave birth to her second child, presenting Rich with the gift of a handsome baby boy named Carson.
Suddenly, the prosecutor’s roaring voice echoed through the chambers as he continued. “Remember the testimony from defense witness Gerald Fitzpatrick? You may recall that Fitzpatrick was in the Marines with Jake Hathaway for five years. They trained together, performed topsecret missions together.”
“The defense team called Mr. Fitzpatrick to paint the defendant as a hero – like Captain America. And then the defense called some police officers that worked with the defendant to talk about his career as a police officer. Again, they would have you think Jake Hathaway is about the most daring, lawabiding, Super Cop that ever lived.”
“But then I cross -examined Mr. Fitzpatrick, asking the pertinent questions that the state did not want asked - and we heard the truth. Fitzpatrick hesitantly admitted to you that, while in the Marine Corps, he and Jake were trained to KILL. There you have it. Finally, someone is telling the truth about our defendant, the trained killer. Now, I will reveal to you MY character assessment of the defendant.”
“He was nothing more than a camouflaged hit man employed and paid by the United States military. And he continued that legacy as a patrol sergeant for the Dallas Police Department.”
Jake’s jaw dropped – or at least to him it felt that way. He expected to hear a thud as his cleft chin hit the table in front of him. The shock of Ferron’s words took his breath away. Jake had always taken pride in doing what he believed to be admirable and ethical. He didn’t cons
ider himself to be any kind of hero… just a Marine doing what Marines do every day. But since when does defending your country mean that you are a “hit man” – a murderer?
At the conclusion of his senior year in high school, Jake had signed a four-year commitment to the United States Marine Corps, having no desire to go to college or join the workforce. So in the month of June and at the age of 18, he began the first of twelve humid summer weeks of hell in boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in Parris Island, located within Port weeks of hell in boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in Parris Island, located within Port hour simulated combat exercise known as "the Crucible."
After completing boot camp, Jake was sent to Camp Geiger in North Carolina for more training in the School of Infantry. This course instills all basic infantry skills and some advanced infantry skills for those Marines who are going out to the fleet.
From there, Jake transferred to Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California. There he spent several more weeks learning amphibious assault techniques. Amphibious warfare is a type of offensive military operation that uses naval ships to project ground and air military power onto a hostile or potentially hostile shore. Throughout history these operations were conducted using smaller boats from the larger ships as the primary method of delivering troops to shore.
More recently, specialized watercraft such as fast patrol boats, rigid inflatable boats called zodiacs, and mini submersibles were designed for this purpose. The Marines are credited with being the earliest in the American military to adopt a varying range of maneuver-warfare principles which emphasize flexible execution.
Considering more recent warfare that has strayed from the Corps' traditional missions, it renewed an emphasis on amphibious capabilities. After Jake’s amphibious warfare training was completed, he was assigne d to the West Coast 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) based out of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego.
Wicked Awake Page 3
