Ten floors. Thirty-two feet per second.
The body struck the sidewalk with a pulse-jumping thud.
Goodman backed away, trembling yet somehow feeling a sense of accomplishment. His shoes slip-slid in blood as his criminal mind, entering its adolescence, raced to catch up with the deed. Clean the blood first! No, no… do that after you toss Jamie. Then clean, bleach, and fumigate. Gloves… you’ll need gloves and a mask.
Goodman rummaged beneath the kitchen sink until he located a pair of women’s rubber gloves and a small stack of cloth filter masks last used when he painted the kitchen six years ago. Dousing the gloves in bleach, he headed for the guest room—
— ignoring the queasiness building in his gut and the fever rising in his bloodstream.
They had followed Riverside Drive for several miles, their silence heavy against the backdrop of wails and agonizing screams hurled into the night from the neighborhoods to the east.
The cacophony of human suffering unnerved Patrick. Shards of memory flashed across his mind’s eye, each image harnessed to a specific emotion that had defined the moment.
Purgatory at Fort Drum. Endless training. Burning hatred. Like sulfur.
Deployment. Transport plane. Kuwait’s desert heat. Annoyance as they were herded into tents like sheep.
First night. Air-raid sirens. Scuds. Fumbling with his gas mask. Two more alerts. No sleep, no food, just liquids. Body armor and mask and hundred-degree heat. Combat is a terminal sauna. Confusion as his body had shut down. Anxiety as the medics tore off his flak jacket to administer fluids.
Baghdad. The sound of air being torn as an AK-47 round zips close by. Welcome to the show, rookie. Bone-rattling 155mm shells. Ears ringing. Nostrils burning from white phosphorous and oil.
Blood flows from an injured comrade. He dies as Shep fumbles to wrap the gushing mortal chest wound in gauze. An Iraqi mother clutches her armless infant… a husband his butchered spouse… a child her lifeless mother. This is the war the politician can never allow his fellow countrymen to see, a reality that energizes demonstrations and forges peace.
For the rookie soldier, combat replaces hatred with doubt, patriotism with questions.
Home is a million miles away, combat an island of loneliness and fear and confusion — confusion over right versus wrong, good versus evil, morality redefining itself with every passing moment. Eventually the rules simplify — to get home you have to survive.
To survive, you have to kill.
The village is on the Euphrates River, the locals rural, most having never seen an American before. The man and his son are rushing toward Patrick, their intent as alien as the Farsi phrases they are shouting from their mouths. He motions for them to stop, but his mangled translations are ignored. The distance is closing, the threat of a hidden explosive imminent as he enters their kill zone.
His weapon spits out a round of hot lead. The father goes down.
The son, all of nine, kneels by his murdered parent in disbelief, reality slowly bleeding into cognizance… churning into rage. The Iraqi youth sprints toward the invader who has stolen his father and perhaps the rest of his family, all in the name of a cause he cannot possibly fathom.
Life is conceived in an instant and ends in an instant. The boy’s proximity defines him as a threat. The rules of survival are simple.
Patrick shoots the boy, reuniting him with his father.
Time passes in a vacuum. It is like that for animals. Shep has devolved into a subhuman grunt, a tool of the military establishment, intended to be used but not interviewed by the press, seen but never given a voice. Day becomes night, the dreams of a better life gradually fading into nightmares that force accountability of the soul. The mind is placed on life support, just as the military always intended. Creativity is vanquished, along with the memory of his wife’s face and the child he’ll never hold again in his arms — a relationship stunted in its infancy.
The geography changes. The first tour is over. Two weeks in detox, pretending to be Patrick Shepherd, and now he’s back in Boston—
— alone.
The town house is cold and empty. His wife and daughter are long gone. There is no note, but the soldier already knows the story: The misery he has sown he must now reap.
Reality comes crashing in, the pain ripping apart his heart. Somewhere the souls of a hundred thousand dead Iraqis are smiling as the real torture begins.
He self-medicates. His friends come by, but the Patrick Shepherd they once knew is dead. The Red Sox inquire, but the image of the nine-year-old boy intervenes. He sells the house and moves into a bad neighborhood, just to be left alone.
Uncle Sam finds him eight months later. He is missed in Hell.
Deployment number two begins…
“Patrick, open your eyes! Patrick, look at me… can you hear me?”
“Virgil?”
“You went into a stupor. You were hallucinating again, weren’t you?”
Hot tears poured from his eyes.
“Patrick?”
“I can’t… sorry. Let’s just… let’s keep moving.”
“Son, you can’t run away from your own head.”
“No! You don’t talk about this, you just… you deal. You just deal with it and move on.”
“Only you haven’t moved on. Your family’s moved on, but not you.”
Ignoring the old man, Shep continued walking south on Riverside Drive.
“Stop playing the victim, Patrick. Victims are like worms, they prefer to live out their lives under a rock. It’s easier in the darkness.”
“Maybe the darkness is what I deserve.”
“Spoken like a true victim.”
“Leave me alone, shrink.”
“If that’s what you wish, we can part ways here. Your soul mate was convinced you still had something positive to offer the world. I guess she was wrong.”
The words cut deep. “She really said that?”
“It’s the only reason I’m here.”
Shep turned to face the old man, his vision blurred by the tears. “I killed a child. He was as close to me as I am to you, and I shot him… right after I shot his father.” Shep wiped snot from his watering nostrils. “I’m not a victim, I’m a murderer. How do I cleanse that from my soul?”
“You begin by taking responsibility for your actions.”
“Are you deaf, old man? Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
“What I heard was a confession. Guilt and self-loathing will not help you, son. If you really want to change, if you want to bring the Light back into your life, then you have to take responsibility for your actions.”
“How? By going to confession for the rest of my days? By talking to a shrink?”
“No. You take responsibility, not by exiling yourself in pain but by transforming from being the effect to the cause, by making a positive difference in other people’s lives. Within you lies the force of giving, sharing, loving, caring, being generous. No matter what you’ve done, there is still good inside you. ”
“You don’t get it. Making a difference is why I enlisted. I sacrificed everything… my family, my career, fame and fortune, all to right a wrong… to protect my country!”