It had been an emotional couple of weeks.
When she broke the news that she was returning to Cape San Blas for another interview with me, RVs started appearing from all corners of the country. Gangs of gray-bearded bikers clad in black leather and straddling shiny chrome stormed onto the island with eardrum-bursting pipes. Veterans from all corners of the country filled every motel, hotel, and RV park for miles. Media trucks filled the parking lot. Police 24/7. Security. Directing traffic. We brought in tents from everywhere. Manuel’s carnival was lit up like a runway and filled with color and sound and laughter.
Given the reach of Suzy’s voice, the place was packed. Standing room only. She and I sat on barstools. She’d lost a lot of weight. Looked healthier. Lights shining down, six cameras, several monitors, and one prompter, and Rosco sitting next to me, licking my hand. He’d been happy to see me, although not so happy that he quit sleeping with Gabby.
Allie sat at a table in the front row, Gabby on one side and Diego on the other. Gabby had grown. Looked more like her mom. More beautiful. Diego was more muscled. Chin sharper. Both more tanned. In my absence they’d filled three Mason jars with sharks’ teeth. Catalina stood at the kitchen door, smiling at me. I think I’d gained five pounds since being back, and she was to blame for most of it. Although the doughnut shop had helped. Becca and Tim had flown in, bringing wine for everyone.
When the light flashed green, Suzy turned to speak to me, but the emotion was too great. She started crying, shoulders shaking. I just held her. Me, holding the child of the man who came to get me when no one else would. She, holding the man her father went to save. Each holding the missing piece of the other. My arms have seldom felt so full. A photographer captured the moment, and it became the cover of several magazines and about a hundred websites.
What normally would have sent us to commercial brought the audience to their feet. The producer just let it go. For five minutes or more, Suzy shook with emotion. Shedding a lifetime of tears. When she finally composed herself, I gave her my handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and face and then spoke to the cameras. “Well . . . we’ll be right back.” It was a good moment. It broke the tension. The audience laughed.
When we returned from commercial, Suzy smiled. “Let’s try this again.”
“I don’t know. I kind of liked the last segment.” The audience liked that too.
She glanced at the papers in her hand. “A few weeks ago, you found me in the hospital and told me a story. Many have heard it. The larger networks have reported on it, including an hour-long documentary that aired two days ago. In case anyone watching this has been living under a rock the last few weeks, you mind telling it again?”
So I did. I walked back into the memory and told of my friendship with Suzy’s dad. Of our life in-country. Of two cups of coffee. Of promises made. Then I told how he flew into a country he was ordered to stay out of, landed in a hot area, and picked me up, and how we flew a blissful thirty minutes until rockets blew off the back half of his helicopter. I told how we’d made a run for it. I talked of those three days, of the bullet that took his life and the book that stopped it from taking mine. I talked about the next eight days and how I would have given anything to hear his voice one more time. Of how I buried him beneath a tree with no marker. And, finally, of how I’d kept it a secret because I didn’t feel worthy of the gift he’d given me.
When I finished, Suzy sat shaking her head. The people were quiet at first, and then the guy who had busted the beer bottle across my face stood and clapped. I felt uneasy. Allie picked up on it, appeared alongside me, and wrapped an arm around me. Without that support I think I’d have fallen over. When they finished clapping I cleared my throat. “If that was for me, it was too much. If it was for Suzy’s father, it wasn’t enough.”
The next several minutes hurt my ears and soothed the painful places in me.
Suzy glanced at her papers. “You told me in the hospital that there was more to your story.”
“That’s right.”
“But you also said you’d never tell me the rest of it.”
“It’s not mine to tell.”
“You still holding true to that?”
I nodded.
“Before we sign off . . . Few people know this, but you have a rather famous brother who was also a war hero. Many times decorated. Senator Bobby Brooks. Heroism must run in the family.” The people applauded. “Over the years, has he been a comfort to you as you two have talked about what you experienced?”
I glanced at my feet. Then back at her. “We’ve never talked about the war.”
“Never?”
“Not once.”
She was incredulous. “Why?”
“Some things are just too painful.”
THE SHOW CLOSED, AND I walked through the kitchen and out the back door to get some air and sip some soda water. The hair involuntarily stood up on the back of my neck. I turned and saw Catalina off to one side. Frozen in a defensive posture and holding a large kitchen knife. The knife was shaking and terror riddled her face.
A few feet away, a man I did not know was holding a knife to Gabby’s throat.
Juan Pedro’s lieutenants had found us. Next to Gabby, Javier lay on the ground. Unconscious. Rosco lay next to him, completely still. A puddle of dark blood beneath him.
The man was speaking in hushed Spanish to Catalina. I couldn’t understand his words, but his tone of voice told me that if either of us made a move he was going to finish Gabby. I also gathered that he was telling her to get into the turbocharged Dodge at the foot of the steps. I told her not to move, but he pressed harder against Gabby’s neck and Catalina obeyed. She dropped the knife, walked around him and down the steps. She stood next to the car, where two more men waited inside. While Gabby cried and blood started trickling down her neck, the man holding her kept his eyes on me and backed down the steps. Slowly. Smiling. A cigarette dangling from his lips. At the base of the steps he stopped and was turning toward the car when I heard a piercing scream.
The man holding Gabby lost his grip and crumpled into a pile at the bottom of the steps. In the same second, Catalina launched toward Gabby, lifted her off the steps, and ran. The engine in the Dodge roared to life, and a hand extended out of the door to try and pull the downed man into the car.
I got there first and slammed the door shut, to the great discomfort of the owner of the hand. The blacked-out Dodge flung gravel through the parking lot as I raced toward the Corvette. The top was down, so I jumped in, cranked the engine, slammed the gear into first, and was about to let off the clutch when Diego appeared at my left shoulder, offering me Juan Pedro’s bloody knife.
A half mile later, I’d pegged the accelerator at 160 mph. Both the Dodge and I were soon approaching the turn at the Rocks. Neither of us could make the turn at this speed. But if he made it through, he’d be gone. There was no way I could catch him. I had one chance—when he slowed just before the turn. I sat on his rear bumper, pushing him, wanting him to carry as much speed as possible into the turn. I knew the road would be slippery from a thin layer of windswept sand spread across the road.
He approached the turn at 120 mph. The Dodge got squirrelly, but he corrected, and that’s when I figured out how good a driver he really was. He let off the accelerator, allowed the car to be absorbed by the soft sand on the side of the road, which stopped the spin he had begun, and let his momentum carry him through the sand and into the corner. If he didn’t touch the accelerator, he’d emerge out the other side and disappear as the supercharger pushed the car over two hundred.
Halfway through the turn, I knew it was now or never. I swerved into the left lane, which would bring me into a perpendicular course with the Dodge when it corrected. The Dodge rounded the turn, began to straighten, and I T-boned him at over a hundred miles per hour.
Allie heard the crash at the restaurant. But unlike Jake’s, there wasn’t enough gas to cause an explosion. Just the sound of twisting metal.
&
nbsp; The Dodge collided with the rocks and began flipping. As did the Corvette. I don’t know how many times we rolled, but my roll bar saved me. When we came to a stop, we were both lying upside down on the beach on the other side of the rocks. The waves were rolling in beneath us. When the first one swamped me, I knew if I didn’t get out I’d drown.
I unbuckled my harness, stumbled from the car, and stood weak-kneed on the beach, trying to shake out the dizziness and force my eyes to focus. There’s a problem with spending your whole life trying to get back to good. Sometimes on the way back, you bump into the bad. And bad doesn’t care. Bad is just bad. It likes it that way. And the bad is always hell-bent on you never getting back to good.
But in the last several years I had been trying. Making strides. Keeping to myself. A danger to no one. That ended on the beach when two strong, muscled figures crawled out of the Dodge and headed toward me. I didn’t want to hurt them and I didn’t want them to hurt me, but reason holds no place with people like that. They didn’t give me much choice. And thanks to the United States military, I’d always been good at fighting on a beach.
Twenty minutes later the police arrived. When they saw two bodies on the beach and Juan Pedro’s bloody knife in my hand, they arrested me.
40
The details would come out in court. Three illegal aliens, lieutenants of Juan Pedro, had attempted to kidnap Gabby and Catalina and return them to Mexico. When Diego and I prevented that, they fled. The prosecuting attorney neither admitted nor denied this. He focused on what happened the moment they drove out of the parking lot of the Blue Tornado. He was really good at his job and convinced the court and the jury that my castle doctrine defense ended at the boundary of the parking lot and what occurred thereafter, that is, my pursuit and the ensuing fight on the beach, constituted premeditated murder.
To an extent, he was right. Although I never verbalized that.
My attorney contended that I had a moral obligation to pursue. That my pursuit was a defense of those I loved no matter where it took place. Complicating matters was the fact that I’d just come off the airwaves where much of the radio-listening public had heard me talk about my military career. About how I was good at killing. The prosecution replayed carefully chosen snippets of Suzy’s program to establish my “frame of mind,” which gave rise to such a brutal outcome.
Contrary to my attorney’s wishes and multiple objections, everything I’d said and done in the hour prior to the “encounter”—which included much of the admitted history of my life—was used against me to establish my mindset in the moments leading up to “the killing.” The prosecuting attorney used pictures of the mangled bodies of Dummy #1 and Dummy #2 lying on the beach as evidence. I had not been merciful, and the pictures showed what he described as “excessive force.” Dummy #3, who’d never walk again, sat in the witness chair and talked about my brutality. About the loss of his dearly departed friends. And how when he saw the error of his ways and tried to make his escape and climb into the car, I’d prevented him, breaking several bones.
Though I did not like him and wanted to rip his head off his shoulders, the prosecuting attorney did an excellent job of showing how three hungry, homeless, penniless, hardworking, and possibly misguided and not very intelligent men from Mexico, trying to put food on the table for their families, had attempted, and he emphasized “attempted” every chance he got, to steal some food from a large kitchen at a restaurant on the island of Cape San Blas. Not wise in their attempt, they got caught, and in their fear they made one bad decision to hold a young girl at knifepoint while they backed into their car and got away. Javier and Rosco had simply been casualties of their retreat. Their singular crime had been threatening Gabby, and other than a scratch on her neck, they’d intentionally harmed no one.
That was it. No mention was ever made of Juan Pedro or his organization or the fact that they were hired killers. Through much backroom wrangling and judge’s quarters conversation between the attorneys, Catalina’s history with Juan Pedro was not allowed to be admitted as evidence. Neither was the fact that they’d stolen the Dodge in South Texas two days prior.
Midway through the trial, my attorney read the writing on the wall and, in an attempt to help me, encouraged me to change my plea to guilty. I told him to put me on the stand. That I would speak in my defense.
He advised against that.
The state’s attorney was salivating at the mouth when I took the stand. Given the cameras and the media frenzy, this was his ticket to the big time and he knew it. During his questioning, he asked, “Did you enjoy killing these men?”
“No, sir.”
“You don’t deny killing them?”
“Never have.”
“Did you enjoy chasing them down after they had tried to leave peacefully?”
For a brief second I thought about jumping out of the witness stand and ripping his esophagus out of his throat, but then I looked at Allie and thought better of it. “I was defending myself and those I love.”
“Be truthful, Mr. Brooks. You were angry and in a rage that they killed your dog.”
He had a point there.
“That dog’s name is Rosco, and he saved my life.”
He liked the fact that he’d ruffled my feathers. “So you thought you’d make them pay.”
“Sir, my intention was to stop them from threatening Catalina and Gabby. If they didn’t want to die, they should’ve stayed in the car on the beach.”
“And drowned?”
“It would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”
“Do their lives not matter?”
“No, they don’t.” I looked at him, then at the jury, then I pointed at Catalina and Gabby. “Their lives matter.”
THE TRIAL LASTED A week. When my attorney asked me if I needed anything, I said, “Yes, a stack of index cards.”
The by-the-book judge never showed his hand. Judge Werther was judicially blind and just, never letting either side get away with much, and I must say I could not bring myself to dislike him. Under different circumstances I think we’d have gotten along. He was just a guy like me. Following orders. Given the national nature of the case, he allowed the media in the courtroom. Every channel had a live camera feed. The streets outside were jammed with trucks and telescoping antennas.
When the jury recessed, my attorney said, “You need to prepare yourself for the worst.”
I poked him in the chest. “You need to make sure they understand that they killed my dog.”
I could read the writing on the wall. They returned several hours later having found me guilty of manslaughter. Allie and Catalina were inconsolable. Catalina stood and screamed at the judge and jury, forcing the bailiff to remove her. I was rather proud of her gumption. Sentencing was scheduled for a month later. Given my meritorious service record, the judge agreed to allow my attorney to bring character witnesses to the stand to speak on my behalf and petition the court for leniency. The possibilities for the length of my sentence ranged from several years to two consecutive life sentences.
They would not give me antacids in prison. As a result, my perceived discomfort grew steadily and the pain became constant. It would sometimes take my breath away. I said nothing, because if they gave me life, I didn’t want to have a heart that worked.
Allie came to see me every day. I spent most of my time trying to console her. Manuel, Javier, Peter, and Victor came to see me. They sat across from me. Quiet. Not knowing what to say. I asked how the carnival was going, and they nodded. I asked how their families were settling into life in the States, and they nodded. I asked how the process to citizenship was progressing, and they held up their driver’s licenses. They told me that Dummy #3, the man with the cut Achilles tendon, had been deported. “Sent home.”
The governor went on the air and declared how all people, regardless of nationality, deserved the same civil treatment. That Florida was not the Wild West and that we were and are a nation of laws. That people did not need
to feel afraid to live in our great state. He also did not want my case to get lost in the bowels of judicial wrangling. He let Judge Werther know he wanted justice served. And he let the people of the state of Florida know that he was monitoring the situation and would use the powers of his office to make sure we stayed on track. The people deserved a swift, public, and just outcome.
With a week to go, my brother came to see me. During the trial he’d kept his distance. His presence in the courtroom could have been misinterpreted and used by the other side. I knew that.
He sat down. Jeans and flip-flops. “How you doing?”
I tapped my heart with my pencil. “I miss Rosco.”
He nodded.
I asked, “You got any feel for what the judge might do?”
He shook his head. “He’s been on the bench a long time. Doesn’t owe anybody any favors. Not real swayed by politicians. He’s known for maximum sentences, and he hands them down with liberality.”
“Great.”
Bobby’s lip trembled when he asked, “Can I do anything for you?”
“Take care of my family.”
“Name it.”
“Remove any red tape. Get them through the process. Give them a life here. I’ve got money. Whatever you need.”
“And Allie?”
I paused. “Be a friend. She’s gonna need one. I’m giving her all I’ve got so she won’t need to work, but she’ll want to. To give her hands something to do. She’ll go crazy otherwise.”
He stood to leave. Despite orders from the warden not to make physical contact with me in any way, he hugged me. Through tears he said, “Joseph, I’m sorry.”