by Scott Blade
The woman put her hand on top of the folder and said, “Mr. Widow, my name is Chelsea Keagan—Ensign Keagan. I’m here—”
"Ensign?" Widow asked. He looked up from his coffee, lowered it away from his face, and hovered it over the metal table.
“Yes. I’m a junior officer. That’s my rank.”
“Rank? You’re not a detective?”
She said, “No. I’m with the CGIS. I’m an investigator.”
“CGIS? Coast Guard?”
“Coast Guard Investigative Services.”
Widow asked, “Why are you talking to me? Where’s a detective?”
“This isn’t about what you were arrested for.”
Widow set the coffee down on the table and folded his arms across his chest. He asked, “What is this about? I’ve never been in the Coast Guard.”
“I know. I pulled your Navy file,” she said and opened the file in front of her.
Widow saw an old photo of himself. It was upside down to him and black and white, like the whole file was faxed over, or she printed it herself. But it was him. He was twenty-five years old. It was his graduation picture from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, a long time ago. He was in his dress whites. Technically, he was a midshipman right then in that photo. It was taken the day before he actually received his diploma. A sea of memories came washing over him, and a smile cracked across his face, remembering some of them.
She had his file. No question about it.
Keagan said, “Well, I pulled what I could get my hands on anyway. I know you were NCIS and Navy SEALs. But the time lapses are all blacked out. Most of your file is redacted, which tells me you used to be somebody important.”
“I’m surprised you’re able to get any of my file.”
“It wasn’t easy. I had to ask a favor from someone high up the chain, and I really don’t hate to owe anyone anything. But he said it was an interesting file.”
“And you agreed to those terms?” Widow asked.
She said, “I did. Should I not have?”
“I’d ask for my money back. The file is mostly redacted. What do you think?”
“I think I got something good here, but I may never know what.”
Widow stayed quiet.
Keagan looked down at the open file and flipped pages like she was skimming it. She said, “I can follow some of the thread here. Some of it I can piece together. It’s not rocket science. Most of it, I can only speculate.”
“Oh yeah? What do you speculate?”
“I can assume the blacked out parts are black ops, right?”
Widow stayed quiet.
“That’s what I’m guessing,” Keagan said, and she flipped the pages until she got to the page before the last. She stared at it and looked up at Widow. They were both seated across from each other, but she had to look up to see into his eyes.
She said, “Something that bothers me that I can’t figure out is that you’re a commander in the Navy SEALs. I can see that. There’s no record of your departure. No dismal records. No discharge procedures followed. Nothing. But there’s also no arrest warrant for you either. So you didn’t go AWOL. It’s like you simply disappeared. How is that possible?”
Widow thought back to the death of his mother, her last moments of life, her last words to him.
I raised you to do the right thing, she had said. He always tried to do the right thing. He tried to live his life by it.
Keagan stared at him like he was somewhere else in his head off in a daydream.
She repeated, “How is that possible?”
Widow stared back her. They made eye contact. He shrugged.
She took that as a nonresponse, and she moved on. She looked back down at the file and flipped over to the last pages. These pages were different than all the rest. They were three pages stapled together, like they came from a different source. There was another picture on the top of one of the first pages. It was black and white. It was Widow older and different than the first photo. His head was shaved down to stubble. The hair on his face was also stubble, like he hadn’t shaved his face in a week. He looked pissed off in the photo. There were two photos of him. The first was straight on, and the second was a profile shot. They were mug shots. He didn’t even remember them. He couldn’t recall where they were taken, the year, or the circumstances.
Keagan stared down at the mug shots for a long second and then back up at Widow like she was comparing the mug shot to his face right then—the real thing versus the past. She looked back down at the page. Her blue eyes followed the words below the mug shot. Widow looked at them too. There were dates and locations and brief descriptions.
She said, “Wow. You’ve been arrested a lot since you left the Navy.”
Widow looked down at the paper. The last pages were a record of all the times he'd been arrested since he left.
Keagan put her index finger on the page and passed it over each section, counting to herself, but her lips moved as she went along. At the last post, she looked up at him and asked, “You’ve been arrested six times?”
Widow said, “Technically, eight times if you count the times I was in handcuffs after I left the Navy but never booked.”
“Eight times?”
Widow stayed quiet.
Keagan asked, “You’ve been arrested eight times, booked and processed six times?”
“Since I left the Navy. Not in my entire life. I’ve been arrested more than you’ve got written down there in my whole life.”
Keagan stared at him. She asked, “How is it that you’ve been arrested eight times, booked six, and not one conviction? All of these arrests either never had any charges filed, or they were dropped, or there was never a trial? How is that possible?”
Widow shrugged and said, “I’m misunderstood.”
“I have a theory.”
Widow watched her, looked into her eyes. It was easy to get lost in them, like clinging to dear life on a raft right in the middle of the bluest ocean. He could see how, one day, she would be able to get information from any man with a brain. But today, she seemed to be underprepared. In his opinion, so far, she had the right stuff. She had the eyes. She had the file. She’d done the legwork, but she was nervous. He saw that. It was like it was her first time. But why was she here? Alone? And with him?
He said, “I’m all ears.”
“I think you weren’t really enlisted in the Navy. Not when you quit. I think your enlistment was fake.”
Widow stayed quiet.
She said, “I dug as much as I could, and I couldn’t find what happened to you when you were an NCIS and then a SEAL? Why? I’m in the CGIS, and I know that we have some civilians and some enlisted. But the NCIS doesn’t work that way. It’s ninety-five percent civilian and five percent military. When I tried to find out why five percent were military, I came up cold. So here’s my theory. I think you were part of some kind of undercover operation. That’s why your file is redacted. It’s probably filled with classified operations—both SEAL and criminal investigations. Am I close?”
Widow said nothing.
Keagan said, “I think you were deep cover. I think a man who would live a life like that must have an obsession with justice. I don’t know why you live like a drifter, but I can see from these arrests what it looks like. I can see from a little digging that every time you’ve been arrested, you helped solve an unsolvable crime. It looks like you’ve been going around the country, playing caped crusader. Is that what it is?”
Widow thought, Captain America and now Batman. It was true though. He hadn’t put any thought to it, but he had been a silent avenger—uninterested in glory, unimpressed by accommodations, unmotivated by recognition.
Widow said, “I don’t like injustice. I don’t like to see good people destroyed by bad people.”
Keagan stared into Widow’s eyes. If someone else had been inside the room with them, staring at them from a side profile, they would see her Caribbean-blue eyes in a staring mat
ch with his ice-blue eyes.
Keagan asked, “It’s that simple?”
“It’s that simple.”
“I’ve got one last question for you.”
Widow stayed quiet.
Keagan said, “Matt Tyler?”
Widow stared at her blankly. He said, “The name’s familiar.”
“You don’t remember him?”
“I can’t place the name with the face, no.”
“What about Alaska Rower?”
Widow paused a long beat, not because he didn’t recognize the name but because he did. He closed his eyes and pictured Rower in his mind. He saw her bomber jacket. He saw her short brown hair. He saw life in her. He saw a lot of happiness and pride in her accomplishments. He opened his eyes and said, “Alaska Rower was an FBI special agent. She worked out of Minneapolis. No partner. She was a damn good agent. And she was my friend.”
Keagan asked, “She was your friend?”
“She was shot. Killed in the line of duty. In South Dakota. She’s dead.”
Right then, it dawned on Widow. Keagan didn’t have to remind him, but she did. She said, “Matt Tyler was an FBI Agent. Right here from Alaska. He’s dead too.”
“I know. I can match the name to the face. It was last year.”
“That’s right. Last year. North of Anchorage. He was also shot to death.”
“Shotgun blast to his abdomen. It wasn’t pretty.”
Keagan asked, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are two FBI agents dead? Two that you knew? Two that it looks like you were helping on different cases?”
Widow broke her gaze and looked away. He stared at the wall for a long second. He saw Rower’s face in his mind. He took a deep breath and looked back at her. He said, “Those are not my fault.”
Keagan paused a beat like she was mulling over the answer, evaluating and calculating and gauging something. It looked like a major decision, like she was about to go out on a limb. She studied Widow’s face like she was looking to see if he was telling her the truth. She mulled it over some more, whatever it was that was on her mind. Finally, she closed the file, looked at Widow, and said, “In that case, I need your help.”
20
The ice in Widow’s blue eyes seemed to melt away, and he appeared to be deep in thought and waiting for more information from Keagan. She watched him and paused after she told him she needed his help because of that look on his face, like he was struck by a distant memory.
Widow wasn’t struck by a distant memory so much as a face—Rower’s face. That was the first, and then came a flood of all the other good people he’d known that died because of his failures.
Keagan said, “Widow?”
The look on his face faded away, and he was suddenly present again. He said, “Yes?”
“I need your help. Did you hear me?”
“What for? I thought I was here to talk about a fight I was in yesterday? A gun went off. I thought the Kodiak Police were gonna try to pin it on me.”
Keagan said, “So about that. The case against you has been dropped.”
“Dropped?”
“Yeah. One of the other guys admitted that he brought the gun. He fired it. You had nothing to do with that.”
“What about the guy in the hospital?”
“I don’t know anything about his condition, but they all agreed that they attacked you. You acted in self-defense. Including the guy in the hospital, so he must be stable.”
Widow asked, “So, I can leave?”
“Yes. You’re free to go. But what about my question? Can you help me?”
Widow thought for a moment. He could get up and walk out now. But he knew he could never live with himself. If he could help a fellow service member and investigator with a problem, he had to do it.
He said, “What’s the problem? Why me?”
Keagan stood up and scooped up the file and put it under her arm. She walked over to the door and looked back over her shoulder at him. She said, “Follow me. I’ll show you.”
Widow got up from the metal chair and table and met her at the door. Keagan opened the door and looked at the huge guard. He eyeballed Widow being so close to her proximity and without restraints on.
Keagan looked at Widow, and asked, “You got any stuff here?”
“Yes. They took some items from me last night.”
Keagan looked at the huge guard and asked, “Would you grab Mr. Widow’s belongings and meet us at the morgue?”
At the morgue? Widow thought.
The huge guard looked at her and then at Widow with disdain in his eyes, like he hated two things in this world: the first, inmates; the second, being ordered around. But he did as he was told.
Keagan didn’t wait for him to go about it. She walked on, leading Widow down hallways and past stations he recognized and some he didn’t. She led him through groups of cops and past civilian workers with security badges. He was uncuffed and unguarded the whole time. He felt police eyes lock on him like he could be a potential security threat.
Eventually, they took an elevator down to the ground floor, and Keagan led him down two more hallways and around one corner until the station started to look more like a hospital. The hall was white all over. The floor was white linoleum, mopped to a polished shine. Everything had a sterile look. They entered through a pair of double doors and came into another section and went through a door to the morgue.
The morgue was cold. The floor was concrete. There were two drains on either side of the room. There were eight thick, metal doors on one wall that opened to drawers for the corpses. There were two large metal tables in the room with bright lights overhead. On one of the tables was a corpse. On the other table was an apparatus, worn and torn by weather and ocean water.
There was a man standing in the middle of the room. He wore a lab coat and plain clothes underneath—button shirt, tie, black chinos, and black shoes. The man was in his late fifties with a gray beard and bald head. He wasn’t wearing glasses, but a pair of googles on his face, which made Widow think of goggled eye sockets and Liddy.
Keagan turned and looked at Widow. She said, “This is Dr. Bowen. He’s the coroner here.”
Widow nodded but stayed quiet.
Keagan shook the doctor’s hand and said, “Show him.”
Bowen went around the table with the dead body and stood over it like a blackjack dealer at a card table in Las Vegas. He stood over it like he was proud of his work.
Widow stepped up to the player side of the blackjack table and so did Keagan. She stood close to him. They both stayed back a couple of feet, and both for the same reason. The doctor wore goggles, which told them to stay back a safe splatter distance. What for, they had no idea.
Widow looked at the corpse. The body had already been autopsied and sewn back together. He saw the stitching.
Bowen snatched up a pair of surgical gloves from a box of throwaway ones and pulled them on. Afterward, he clapped his gloved hands together and asked, “Where to start?”
“Tells us what you know. From the start, like you haven’t told me yet,” Keagan said.
“Okay,” Bowen said. He laid his hands out over the body like he was presenting it to them. He said, “Here we have a dead white male, sixty-eight years old and only by a month. He’s name was Gary Kloss.”
Bowen looked up at Keagan and then at Widow. He said, “We know his name by his dental records. And it’s been confirmed with the FBI.”
FBI? Widow thought.
Bowen said, “The body washed up near shore three days ago. A fisherman discovered it floating. It had been in the water for four days, give or take.”
Keagan asked, “What state was it in? Did it decompose yet?”
Bowen said, “It’s at the beginning of decomposition. Decomposition in water depends on the water temperature. In cold ocean water, bacterial action, which causes a corpse to bloat and become gassy can be slowed.”
Keagan asked, “Shouldn’
t the skin be peeling off from being submerged in water?”
Bowen said, “A corpse’s skin will absorb water and peel away from the underlying tissues, but that takes about a week. That’s when the fun starts. The ocean’s creatures—you know, fish, crabs, and even sea lice—will come around and start nibbling at the corpse’s flesh.
Widow said, “The decomposition can also be slowed by adipocere.”
Both Bowen and Keagan looked at Widow. Bowen looked at Widow sideways, like he could’ve been startled either by Widow’s knowledge or the fact that he spoke.
Bowen said, “The ocean water is cold right now. It always is this far north. And cold water encourages the process of adipocere.”
Keagan asked, “What is acupuncture?”
Widow said, “Adipocere is like a grayish, waxy, soapy substance. It happens when you slap the beginning of decomposition and moisture together.”
Bowen said, “It’s formed from the fat in the human body. It’s actually meant to partially protect the corpse from decomposition.”
Keagan said, “Weird.”
Widow wasn’t sure if she was talking about the process of adipocere or that he knew what it was.
Bowen moved his hands down to the corpse’s knees. He said, “The victim had two broken legs, and they were broken before he died. His kneecaps were shattered by blunt force trauma. Very blunt and very traumatic and full of force. And see here?”
Bowen pointed at Kloss’s face, which was missing part of his eye. He said, “See how the face is bruised?”
Keagan said, “I see his eye was removed.”
Bowen said, “No. Not that. The eye wasn’t removed. It’s partially eaten. That’s postmortem. It happened when he was in the ocean. I’m talking about the bruises here and here. See the swelling around the eye cavity?”
Keagan nodded.
Bowen said, “He was beaten about the face.”
Widow asked, “He was tortured?”
Bowen said, “Yes. Badly. Someone beat him nearly to death and then stopped.”
Widow asked, “How did he die? Did he drown?”
“Yes. That’s the weird part,” Bowen said and looked at Keagan like he was seeking her permission to say more.
