People say being in Washington, D. C., in August is like standing in the breath of an enormous dog–extremely hot and humid. Please allow me to share with you a story regarding one such day in our nation’s capital. The following is not a story you have ever read in the newspapers or heard on the radio or seen on television. It took place in those heady, shiny days of our country before the attacks of September 11th. You will not recognize the story, because it represented a failure of our government to look after its own on more than one level. As such, it was a source of shame and embarrassment to those involved and, thus, was buried. And please do not ask me how I know the story.
The following is not a story you have ever read in the newspapers or heard on the radio or seen on television.
* * *
The Coast Guard lieutenant remembered that axiom describing late summer in Washington, as he rode the escalator from the Metro subway system to the blast-furnace surface world. This August was worse than usual. As he approached the early morning glare and the stifling air, the man reminded himself he had asked to be transferred to Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington. He also recalled how the commander, who handled officer assignments, had laughed aloud until he’d realized the junior officer was serious about the request. No one wanted to be assigned to Headquarters. The young man had been determined to work his way into a legal billet. He’d gone to night law school, paying for it himself. In addition, he’d known such an assignment could never happen if he stayed in Coast Guard duties in the hinterlands. So he reminded himself this weather was “self-inflicted.”
When the officer reached the street level, each breath in the oppressive heat became a distinct displeasure. On the bright side, as they say, his plan had succeeded. Soon after arriving in Headquarters, he’d “browbeaten” the commander who assigned legal billets into giving him a position as a “law specialist.” The Coast Guard didn’t have that sexy “JAG Corps” label, made popular and seemingly exotic by movies and television. Even so, he considered it a great privilege to be designated a “law specialist” in the U. S. Coast Guard. So he endured.
The building where he had worked for the last seventeen months was just off the National Mall, separate from the Coast Guard Headquarters building over at Buzzard’s Point. The structure provided little relief from the outside atmospheric conditions. The outward coolness of modernistic glass and marble buildings can belie the oppressive conditions inside. Perhaps a foreboding of what the day had in store should have come over him at that point. But everyone else waiting for the elevator at seven-thirty that morning was suffering from the cruel heat, too. So no such thoughts entered his mind.
In his office, what passed for central air-conditioning barely belched enough air, most of it warm, to pass for a bad fan. In less than an hour, the lieutenant was perspiring profusely and what remained of his thinning hair was matted. The young fellow felt as if he’d been born in the uniform clinging to his body. Even opening the door leading to the hall from his small, windowless office didn’t relieve the sultry environment. He capitulated and closed the hallway door for the sake of privacy, leaving the other door to the main office reception area open. Thank God, he thought, this job didn’t require any serious physical work. As an attorney in the physical disability evaluation system, he provided legal counsel to servicemembers, or evaluees, as the Coast Guard referred to them, whose fitness for duty was being assessed. Strictly a desk job.
This day was fairly routine, awash with forms, phone calls, scheduling hearings, and decisions for evaluees. The lieutenant had lost track of time when he looked up through his door to the outer office and realized the lights there were off. The rest of the office staff had left for the day. Because he usually arrived a half an hour after everyone else, he stayed later. While finishing a letter, the officer heard the front office door being opened and closed. The cleaning people are later than usual, he thought. He continued trying to complete the correspondence so he could leave to catch his commuter train at Union Station.
While finishing a letter, the officer heard the front office door being opened and closed.
Suddenly, he realized he wasn’t alone. A motionless form stood in the shadows just outside his door. After the initial jolt, he relaxed, but only for a moment. He didn’t recognize the face, half hidden by the shadows. As the woman, wearing a denim blouse and dark-blue slacks, eased into the light of his office, the facts of her case returned to him.
The young enlisted girl, older than her years, had been one of his early disability cases. A childhood of abuse and confusion, and then one unpleasant experience in the service after another, including a broken marriage, had led to serious psychological problems. Very serious. Her unshakable, yet unfounded belief the service had ignored her and cast her aside when she most needed support compounded these emotional problems. Maybe it was no large matter to most people. However, to her, the issues were cause enough for much very bitter, pent-up anger. The lieutenant had come to learn this when he’d served as her legal counsel during the disability proceedings.
* * *
Despite her slight size and quiet nature, those weeks dealing with her had not been the most comfortable of his life. A seething anger always drifted just below the surface of her persona. The officer recalled thinking her volatile personality was like a brain aneurysm. Concealed, but just waiting for the wrong word, the misunderstood intention, the stress of which might likely bring about tragic results. Walking on eggshells had never been his strong suit, but he’d managed while working with her. And he remembered getting lost more than once in those steel-gray eyes–icy pools–that, more often than not, seemed those of a corpse.
More than once, he’d caught her looking through him as one does a pane of glass in a window to the scene beyond. Oh yes, she’d been a difficult 3000 series case, the 3000 referring to the section of the disability code relating to the series of psychological diagnoses. Some ugly stuff in that volume. And, psychologically, she’d been a classic case of ugly issues. The Coast Guard had since retired her with a disability pension and, so far as he knew, she’d remained under continuous psychiatric care. What she needed most was protection from the things in her head.
Some ugly stuff in that volume. And, psychologically, she’d been a classic case of ugly issues.
* * *
So, here she stood at his office door in the early evening with probably not another soul in the building, much less on his floor. He found himself grasping at the hope the custodial folks were still around. But, notwithstanding the optimism of that idea, he couldn’t shake his uneasy feeling concerning the present situation. Calm down, the lawyer told himself in a respite of relief. After all, you’d been her counsel … on her side, and the disability board had been generous in its findings. The mental roller coaster he’d been riding in those few seconds came to a shattering stop when he focused on her eyes.
After swallowing hard, he struggled to recall her name. “Ms. Lamar?” Brittany Lamar. Yes, that was it. No response. Just a vacant glare. The roller coaster started a downward run again. His sweat (he’d graduated from perspiration) now seemed completely unrelated to the temperature of the office. “Brittany?” He was trying again, allowing an informal address he normally never used with a client.
The officer sensed something deep inside her stir. She blinked, stepped into his office, sat in the chair across the desk from him, and stammered, “Hello, again, lieutenant.”
After an awkward moment of silence, he asked whether there was anything he could do for her. No response. Then, before he asked again, she mumbled something indistinctly.
“Excuse me?”
She looked disoriented. “I said I’ve come to collect what the service owes me.”
That roller coaster ride slowed slightly as a short-lived measure of relief came over him. Evidently, she was confused, but so was he. What was she doing in Washington? As well as he recalled, after her discharge, she was to return to her parent’s farm somewhere in the Midwest, near a little town called Belvedere, if he remembered correctly. A very good Veterans Administration hospital, where she might get continued psychiatric care, was in a larger city near their home.
“No, Ms. Lamar, you don’t understand. You see, the–” He never finished the sentence. The sudden blaring of a siren from the fire station across the street made her start. She bolted from her seat and ran to a window in the outer office. From his desk, he watched her and saw her eyes in a frantic search for the source of the alarm. For a moment, the lieutenant’s mind shouted a warning he should get the hell out of there through the door into the hallway. But logic laughed off the idea of any danger. Certainly, he told himself, this is only a confused and lonely woman. Nothing more. He felt foolish for his anxiety.
From his desk, he watched her and saw her eyes in a frantic search for the source of the alarm.
When she returned to his office, something about the forsaken look in her eyes made him immediately regret the decision to remain. She had a ghostlike serenity. Unearthly, yet menacing. That roller coaster sped up.
“You were sayin’ I don’t understand. Well, it’s you who doesn’t understand, lieutenant. You and the others.” As she spoke, she pulled a pistol from a purse he hadn’t noticed before that moment. Now, despite being in the military, the young man did not have a vast familiarity with handguns, but the one she held looked deadly enough. The weapon was larger than a derringer, yet smaller than a howitzer. But only slightly smaller. And she knew how to handle firearms, all kinds of them. She’d learned that much growing up on a farm. Despite his mind’s furious pace, he remembered reading it in her service record during the disability proceedings.
For the first time that day, he felt the sweat rolling down the hollow in the small of his back. The officer tried to swallow without success.
“What’re you doing, Ms. Lamar?” The words nearly died in his throat.
“Like I said, I’m collectin’ what I’m owed. Where are the others?”
“What others?”
“The ones who are usually here, messing with people’s lives.”
His mental roller coaster sped up even more. The lieutenant decided it would be best not to argue with her, if possible. “Gone for the day. They’re gone for the day. You can’t expect–collect what?” He tried not to sound panicky, but knew he’d failed.
“I’m owed something for the grief and pain the service has caused me. Use a person and then throw ‘em away. It’s just not right! So now I’m gonna collect something … some satisfaction, maybe, if nothin’ else! I … you–you!” Her rage continued to grow until she was nearly incoherent. Just as quickly, she was calm again. “I’ll start with you and then get the others later.” Despite his fear, he watched those eyes and realized they never changed whether she was angry or serene. They remained the same cold and vacuous steel-gray. She continued calmly. “What’s the diagnostic code for a bullet in the brain?”
That roller coaster was now in free fall. Sheer terror rose in the officer’s being. But calm reasoning had to be the best approach. He tried to steady himself. “Look, I’ve tried to help you all along. Do you remember how many hours we worked putting your case together for the medical board? Why do you want to hurt me? Or the others? You need help. I’ll do everything I can to get it for you. Please just put the gun down. You can’t gain anything by this. You can’t get away with it.”
She gave him a lopsided half-smile, but her eyes never changed. She stopped smiling and became stone hard. “Don’t even waste your breath.” As her stare hardened, she continued, “If I had a mind, you might be able to reason with it.”
“If I had a mind, you might be able to reason with it.”
His sweat was cold now. Suddenly, the room was chilly. Someone or something had pushed her over the edge she’d been dancing along for some time. And he knew the time had come for him to die.
“Get up,” she said, motioning with the barrel. “I want the others to find you when they come back. Then they’ll know I’m here. And I’ll be back for them, too.”
“Please listen ….” He went silent as the rest of his words failed him. He was terrified beyond anything he might have imagined, and he’d make no apologies for it.
The lieutenant moved on wobbly legs around his desk and into the outer office. She followed closely and turned on the lights.
“Stop!” she screamed unexpectedly. His heart almost did. He’d made no abrupt moves, no effort to get away, so he wondered why the hysteria on her part? 3000 category folks require no motive, he reasoned.
“Sit here,” she said, indicating a chair with her weapon. She was calm again. Somewhere in his soul, he made a vow never to get near a roller coaster again if he lived through this. He eased into the chair slowly, never taking his eyes off the gun.
“Try to understand this is nothin’ personal,” she explained.
His throat and mouth were dry as he pleaded. “Look, I’ve always sort of thought of my death as a ‘personal’ thing, you know?”
“But you’re part of them, and the doctor said they’re killing me.” As she finished the statement, she calmly raised the gun, extending it at arm’s length, and pointed it at his forehead.
As he looked up, the young officer thought those eyes, those damned unearthly, gray eyes would be the last thing he’d ever see. A scream welled up in his throat. But before he could utter a sound, the main office door opened abruptly, and the room was filled with muted hip-hop music. A custodial worker appeared with a trash bag in his hands, earbuds embedded in the sides of his head. Without so much as a second’s hesitation, Brittany turned, keeping her arm outstretched at shoulder level, sighted down it, and fired in one swift motion. The bullet struck the worker with devastating results. The wall behind the unsuspecting cleaner became a splatter, and then a smear as his shattered body fell against it and slid to the floor. It happened in a nanosecond.
Without so much as a second’s hesitation, Brittany turned, keeping her arm outstretched at shoulder level, sighted down it, and fired in one swift motion.
In that instant, the lieutenant used a leg sweep to knock Brittany’s legs from under her. She spun and fired as she fell. A searing pain followed the impact of the bullet tearing through his left shoulder. He almost passed out. A footrace between fear and anger began in his brain. He dropped to the floor, hitting hard enough to empty his lungs. Somehow, he managed to scramble on top of the sprawled woman, while grabbing desperately for the gun. Another blast near his head left him momentarily deaf. Even though he couldn’t hear her ravings, he knew them from her eyes, which never left his as they struggled for possession of the firearm. It seemed as though her howls, the mournful screeches of a thousand lost, forgotten, maniacal souls, were emanating from her eyes.
Their struggle seemed interminable. The perspiration drenching his hands made his efforts to control the weapon more difficult. Sweat also obscured his vision. Suddenly, he realized the gun was between their heads, pointed in his direction. Despite his adversary’s unexpectedly astonishing strength spurred on by madness, the lieutenant turned the barrel slowly in her direction. As if she realized what was happening and was determined to steal the moment, Brittany stopped screaming, smiled slightly, and pulled the trigger. The force of the discharge into her neck nearly severed her head from her body. She went limp. But one thing never changed, even in death–her eyes. They were no more vacant in death than they’d been in life.
He didn’t know how long they lie there, eye to eye in the fleeting light. Those damned eyes! He was too exhausted to move. Eventually, building security found them, someone having reported the shots being fired. They called for an ambulance, and the EMTs patched the young man up “like new.” At least physically.
Everything’s fine, except … except now he can’t concentrate during the day or sleep at night. He keeps seeing those eyes of hers–those frosty pools in which you could drown. They’re everywhere he goes. Sometimes he cries when they press too close, when they come in the night. Their pain and anguish are his now. Their emptiness, too. But no one understands. The Coast Guard relieved the young officer of his duties and told him to rest. But he knew what they were saying. He’s a 3000 series evaluee, he’s deranged somehow. And, if you see him wandering the streets of Washington, he will tell you her eyes are there. He can see them. She is with him now. Everywhere. Always. ©