Wrongful Death: A Novel Read online

  During certain months king salmon, and the smaller silvers, swam along Three Tree’s shore, bringing out a parade of boats and anglers who fished from shore each dawn and sunset. Jake had caught the fishing bug after watching a neighbor boat a 34-pound king. Outfitted at the local Fred Meyer, he rushed to the water’s edge each day before and after school, sometimes at the expense of his homework. Sloane was learning that being a parent was a lot like being a lawyer. Finding out what the child really wanted was the first step to negotiating a compromise. They agreed that Jake could fish, but only after completing his homework, and only if he maintained his grades. His study habits had actually improved.

  As Sloane neared, Jake caught sight of him. “David. Hi.”

  “How’re they biting, Hemingway?”

  Jake shook his head. “Not too good tonight.”

  Now 11, the boy had lost much of his baby fat and was tall and lean like his mother. His sandy-blond hair and lean facial features bore a strong resemblance to his biological father, a man who continued to have little involvement in his son’s life since the divorce when Jake was four. Frank Carter wasn’t a bad guy. Sloane had met him a handful of times. He seemed decent, just too young to be a father. He didn’t want the responsibility of a child. It was easier just to show up for the special events, like birthdays and holidays. Sloane hoped someday Jake might take to calling him “Dad,” but he wasn’t pushing it.

  Despite the chill wind, Jake wore baggy shorts, a hooded sweatshirt, a worn San Francisco 49ers baseball cap, and the clownish rubber boots Tina mandated after he ruined multiple pairs of shoes in the salt water.

  “Well, it’s likely getting to be too late now. Your mother wants you to do some reading before bed.”

  Jake snapped back the catch on the reel, prepared to cast. The green buzz-bomb lure twisted at the end of the line. “One more cast?”

  Sloane looked at the light shining in the kitchen window and turned his back slightly. “I don’t think I saw you take your line out of the water.”

  Jake drew back the pole and snapped it forward.

  SLOANE LIFTED HIS head from the papers spread across his desk and looked out the windows of his home office. The lights in the houses on Vashon Island, four miles across the Sound, sparkled back at him, and the faint sound of cellos and violins resonated from the portable CD player, a Christmas gift from Jake and Tina.

  Beverly Ford had done considerable research. At the start of the war, the military had issued body armor only to what it thought would be dismounted soldiers fighting on the front line. Command had to ditch that plan when it became clear there was no front line. That meant it suddenly needed 80,000 more vests, a need that could not be met overnight. Eight months after the start of the war, nearly one-quarter of the troops still did not have the new ceramic armor and were being forced to take their chances with inferior vests, or to rotate what new armor they did have. At a congressional inquiry, General John Abizaid, then the commander of the forces in Iraq, admitted he did not have a good explanation for the shortage of vests, given that the invasion had been contemplated for more than a year.

  The improved vests, called Interceptors, included removable ceramic plates fifteen times stronger than steel and capable of stopping bullets fired by the Kalashnikov rifles favored by the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  Sloane picked up the SF-95 form Beverly Ford had sent to the regional claims office. Stapled to it was a standard letter advising that her claim had been received and would be considered in due course. Not content to wait for the military’s response, Ford made a Freedom of Information Act request seeking documents related to the investigation of her husband’s death. Subsequent replies had more or less denied her request, citing national defense concerns. But Beverly Ford had been persistent, and, perhaps in an effort to appease her, the claims office eventually provided her the witness statements.

  Sloane picked up the first of the four, a statement by a Sergeant Phillip Ferguson, and read.

  HIGHWAY 10

  OUTSIDE FALLUJAH, IRAQ

  JAMES FORD LEANED forward, eyes straining to see through the dirt-and-grime-smeared windshield. The seven-ton trucks in front of him continued to kick up dust as the convoy rumbled along single-file, each vehicle maintaining a fifty-meter buffer with the vehicle in front. Proper spacing was a necessity in Iraq, where every paper bag, dead dog, and pile of garbage could be an insurgent’s improvised explosive device, or IED. In Iraq the question wasn’t if your convoy was going to get hit, but when.

  Ford swerved to avoid a large pothole, but the Humvee’s left-front tire caught the depression, causing the vehicle to rock violently.

  “Jesus. Can you miss one?” Dwayne Thomas groaned from the backseat over the strain of the diesel engine.

  Ford didn’t like hearing the Lord’s name used in vain. “Jesus isn’t driving, DT. If he was, I’m sure he’d miss every one. You want to take a shot at it?”

  “You’re supposed to be the damn driver.”

  “At ease,” Captain Robert Kessler said from the passenger seat.

  The potholes were mostly nuisances, but the burned black craters, likely from exploded Soviet-era surplus mines buried beneath the road, served as a vivid reminder of the danger troops faced each time they left Camp Kalsu, their forward operating base near Fallujah.

  The convoy, which the soldiers referred to as the “traveling road show,” had nearly completed the hundred-mile round trip to the large PX near Baghdad International Airport to restock supplies like water, toilet paper, and cigarettes. Ford’s Humvee was last, providing rear security, and the men were hot, tired, and uncomfortable.

  Ford wiped a trickle of sweat from the side of his face. Normally they left Camp Kalsu either at night or very early in the morning, but today they had left mid-afternoon, with the June sun still a bright white orb that caused him to squint, even wearing sunglasses, and baked the top of his head beneath his Kevlar helmet. Still, they didn’t even consider rolling down the windows. During their training in the Mojave Desert troops had driven through mock Iraqi cities with M16 and M4 rifles sticking out the windows in what they called “the porcupine.” The tactic was meant to intimidate, but as the insurgents became more sophisticated and better shooters, it also turned into a good way to get killed. An order came down the chain of command to keep the windows closed, no matter how hot or piss-poor the air-conditioning.

  Ford envied Phillip Ferguson, who stood in the center hatch, head out the roof, manning his M249. At least Fergie got a breeze and wasn’t suffocating on the smell of sweat-soaked cammies. The pungent odor reminded Ford of the smell of unwashed gym clothes and sneakers in his sons’ bedroom.

  “Everyone hydrating?” Kessler asked.

  Ford held up a half-empty bottle of water.

  “Doesn’t help to hold it, Ford.”

  “I just drank a full one, Captain.”

  “Drink another.”

  Ford unscrewed the cap and chugged the rest of the bottle. He had actually grown to dislike the taste of water. Seemed like all he did was drink water, sweat, and drink more water. About the only good thing that had come from it was he had shed thirty pounds from his six-foot-five frame. He wasn’t svelte, but 220 pounds was better than 250.

  He stretched his neck, popping vertebrae, which caused Michael Cassidy to lean forward from his seat directly behind him. “Dude. Don’t fucking do that! It creeps me out.”

  Ford grimaced. “Sorry, Butch, back’s killing me.”

  Cassidy wasn’t much older than the high school kids Ford taught in Seattle. They had nicknamed him Butch, as in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but Cassidy wasn’t anything like the calm, polished bandito Paul Newman had portrayed. He was a bundle of exposed nerve endings and tics from a liberal use of caffeine pills he washed down with cans of adrenaline like Red Bull or Ripped Fuel. Cassidy, too, had lost weight, but he hadn’t had a lot to lose, and it had left him looking like a strung-out dope addict, gaunt through th
e face with sunken eyes and dark circles. His uniform hung from his shoulders and bunched at his waist.

  Being off base midday made all of them tense, and when Ford got tense he thought about his family. He pulled an envelope from his ammo vest and slid out the photograph Beverly had given him the morning he’d left their home in Seattle. In the photo he stood behind his wife with his arms around her waist, nuzzling her neck and breathing in her beauty. It had been a split second of intimacy before the kids jumped into the fray, clinging to his arms and legs like ornaments on a Christmas tree. His mother-in-law had snapped the photo.

  “That your family?” Cassidy asked, head still between the seats.

  “No,” Thomas said, “he’s carrying a photo of someone else’s family.”

  “Shut up, DT,” Cassidy replied.

  Kessler, who was also married and had kids, pointed to Ford’s baby girl sitting atop his shoulders and beaming down at the camera. “Who’s she?”

  “That would be my Althea,” Ford said.

  “She has quite the smile.”

  “She’s my angel. We were supposed to be done after the third. She was a surprise. I believe God sent her to me special.”

  “I got a little girl too,” Kessler said. “They’re special until they turn thirteen. Then the aliens snatch their brains and you can’t do anything right. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  Thomas muttered something from the backseat.

  “How’s that, DT?” Ford asked. Being another black man, Ford had thought he and Thomas might develop a friendship, but Thomas seemed perpetually angry, with a chip on his shoulder he never shook.

  DT raised his voice. “I said, you just torturing yourselves, carrying around pictures and shit. Why you worrying about that stuff? This shit is hard enough to do without all that other crap.”

  “You married? Got kids?” Ford asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Then you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be away from them, worrying about them.”

  Thomas leaned forward, defiant. “Don’t want to know. What does it get you? Nothing.” He sat back. “Me? I’m just here doing a job. Didn’t join the Guard to go fight Muhammad in the desert, but here I am. So be it. I just stick to routine. Wake up, put on the same clothes, eat in the same place looking at your same sorry-ass faces, mount up for patrol, sleep, wake up and do it all over again. Only thing I’m going to die from over here is boredom, and that’s just fine by me.”

  “Where’s home?” Ford asked.

  “Tacoma.”

  “The Aroma of Tacoma,” Cassidy chirped. “Smells like shit driving through there.”

  Thomas scowled. “You smell like shit.”

  “At ease,” the captain said again, trying to keep the peace.

  “They cleaned that shit up long time ago,” DT said. “The pulp mills caused it.”

  “What do you do there?” Ford asked.

  “I used to work at a health club, but I got an application in with the city, and being in the Guard is going to put me top of the list. I get on with the city and I’ll be set for life. Get me benefits and a pension.”

  “Bet you didn’t think that deal would include an all-expense-paid trip to Iraq, though, did you?” Kessler said.

  Cassidy laughed.

  DT sat back, disgruntled.

  “I like it here,” Cassidy offered.

  “That’s because you’re a dumb shit,” Thomas muttered.

  “I do. I like wearing the same clothes and eating in the same place. You don’t even have to think about it. Einstein did that, you know, wore the same clothes so he didn’t have to use his brain.”

  “You and Einstein have that in common all right,” DT said, causing Ford to chuckle.

  Cassidy said, “I look at this like a hunting trip.”

  DT scoffed. “That why you keep that dumb-ass Rambo knife strapped to your ankle?”

  “You a hunter, Butch?” Ford wasn’t buying Cassidy’s bravado. He had a lot of experience with kids like Cassidy. They were usually loners from abusive homes. When they did get some attention, it usually wasn’t for anything positive, but they relished it anyway because at least it acknowledged their existence. Columbine and other school shootings had proved that.

  “Hell, yeah,” Cassidy said. “Me and my dad hunted all over eastern Washington. Bird mostly.”

  DT mocked him. “Bird? That don’t make you no hunter.”

  “And deer.”

  “Bambi? You shooting Bambi!”

  “Not just deer neither,” Cassidy persisted. “Boar.”

  “Boar?” Kessler gave Ford a look. Wild boar did not live in eastern Washington.

  “You know,” Cassidy said, “those big pigs with the tusks and hair all over them. Mean sons of bitches.”

  “You sure that wasn’t your girlfriend?” DT said, bringing laughter.

  “Laugh all you want. But I shot one with a compound bow once and chased it for miles. Slit its throat and gutted it right there and brought the meat home.” Cassidy looked out the window. “The way I figure it, killing Hajji ain’t going to be no different. I’m looking forward to getting me some.”

  “One big difference,” Kessler said, turning to stare out the windshield. “Bird and deer don’t shoot back. Hajji does.”

  WHEN HE HAD finished reading the statement, Sloane sat back, thinking. Something here, something. He thought of a sermon he’d recently heard by the pastor of the church he attended with Tina and Jake. Then, rising quickly, he made copies on the Xerox machine in his office and placed the duplicates side by side on his desk to reconsider them more closely. As he read, he picked up a yellow highlighter.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  The following morning, Sloane pushed open the door to his office and stepped into the entry. He leased a suite in the One Union Square Building in downtown Seattle, sharing a receptionist and two conference rooms with other businesses on the floor.

  “Are we sleeping in now?” Sloane’s secretary stood like a sentry at her cubicle. With her arms crossed and a bun of graying brown hair on the top of her head, Carolyn had the look of a school principal on hallway duty. She gave him the same arched-eyebrow, disapproving look that put the fear of God in grade school kids.

  Sloane had stayed up late reading the witness statements and had awakened to an empty house. He lay in bed thinking about what he had read while listening to the waves rolling on the beach, likely from one of the huge cargo ships that passed between Three Tree Point and Vashon Island on the way to the Duwamish. Then he remembered that he hadn’t exercised since the start of the Gonzalez trial and got up and ran six miles.

  “I thought I’d take an extra hour this morning.”

  “I know you slept in,” Carolyn countered. “I asked if we were sleeping in. I would have liked an extra hour myself. At my age every minute of beauty sleep helps.”

  Sloane wondered what Carolyn might look like without the pancake makeup and dark eye shadow she wore without fail. A strand of colored glass beads hung from her neck to accentuate her multicolored dress.

  Sloane had a knack for hiring assistants who put him in his place. In San Francisco, Tina had not been bashful about keeping him humble, even when he was racking up fifteen jury verdicts in a row.

  “Someone has to be here to open the office and answer the phones,” he said, thumbing through a large stack of mail. “We’re running a highly successful legal practice here.”

  “Are we?” Her eyebrow again arched. “That would be news to me.”

  And therein was the source of her annoyance. Sloane had forgotten to call and tell her the Gonzalez verdict. For legal offices, trials were like marathons; failing to tell the staff the verdict was like having them train you without telling them your time.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I got tied up after court and ended up working most of the night.” She gave him her best blank stare, not about to make it easy. “The jury came back twelve zip; I couldn’t have done i
t without you. Theresa Gonzalez asked that I send along her personal thanks.”

  That seemed to soften her a bit. At least she uncrossed her arms. “I know. She called this morning wondering when she’d get a check.”

  Sloane bit his tongue and walked to his office, still checking the mail.

  Carolyn followed him. “Why were you working last night? Most lawyers I’ve worked for take vacations after trials.”

  “Cabo on Saturday,” he said. “I had some reading to do.” He opened an envelope with a multimillion-dollar check made payable to his trust account on behalf of Adelina Ramirez. It had cost the insurance company for the construction company a lot of money to call Sloane’s bluff.

  Carolyn plucked the check from his hand. “I’ll deposit this before you decide to donate it to some worthy cause that doesn’t have my name attached to it, and get a check cut to Ms. Ramirez.” She started from the room but stopped at the door. “Congratulations. Twelve nothing? I’d have bet my virginity you were going to lose that case. You really are as good as advertised—that’s unusual for a man.”

  “Wow. That was darn near a compliment.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t let your head explode.”

  “Do I have anything scheduled for today?”

  “Not unless you forgot to tell me…again. You were supposed to be in trial through the end of the week. As far as I know, your calendar is wide open. I vote we take the rest of the week off. All in favor?” She raised her hand.

  “Sorry.”

  “I’ll cancel my tee-time at the club.”

  “Before you do, call Charles Jenkins. Ask him to meet me at the Coco Cabana for lunch. Tell him I’m buying.”

  “Lunch with Big Foot? That doesn’t sound like work to me.”

  “And see if you can find a lawyer who knows something about military law.”

  “Military law? Why would you need to know that?” She made it sound distasteful.

  “Because I may very well be suing the government.”

  “Lord help you,” she said. “I hope you haven’t been skimming on your taxes.”