U.S Army captain and recruiting commander Kevin Callahan is stabbed to death, his body is found in a guardhouse at Hudson Technical University, a small private engineering school located in College Heights, a decayed community in New York's Hudson River Valley. The message left on Callahan's shirt reads, "No more lies." The news media and pro-military and anti-war activists believe the murder was committed in opposition to unethical army recruiting. Angered by the biased media coverage and bothered by the army's deference to the civilian investigators in the Orange County sheriff's office, Callahan's uncle, Philadelphia area urban planner Jack Donnelly, wants to conduct his own investigation. He is not afraid to step on toes in College Heights, a community where town-gown relations have reached their worst. Fearing Donnelly's investigation will further embarrass the university, but, desperately needing his help to save her school, Hudson Tech president Martina Tiernan asks him to become her special assistant for campus planning. While Jack believes that Tiernan is trying to buy his silence, he reluctantly comes aboard. He learns that the murder is the lynchpin to a larger scheme that could close Hudson Tech's doors for good.
Defending College Heights
A NovelBy Stuart NachbariUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2009 Stuart Nachbar
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-595-49368-5Chapter One
My parents, Colin and Maureen, were part of America's Greatest Generation. I was born at the tail end of the baby boom, too late for Vietnam, too early for Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I thought I was one of the lucky ones. I had never known what it meant to serve in the military-there was no draft and no war to fight when I was in high school and college-until this morning.
This morning, like many others, I went running; that's been a ritual ever since my dad signed me up for boxing lessons. Rocky movies have inspired many a Philadelphia boy to take up the sweet science, and I still hear the theme song while I run. Boxing had helped me pay for college. It provided a tidy supplement to my Mayor's Scholarship to Penn.
My usual route took me past my sister's house in Drexel Hill, just outside of Philadelphia. I've always felt obligated to check up on her, even when things were going fine. Even though I'm five years younger, I've played the role of an older brother. She's had too much go wrong in her life. Her late husband was a good-for-nothing drunk, and her older son had become no better. However, her younger son, Kevin, had become an honest-to-goodness military hero.
Whenever I ran by Kathy's house, I noticed a bumper sticker on the rear of her car that read Half of My Heart Has Gone to Iraq. Her son Kevin had been home for three months, and the United States Army had promised that he would not be redeployed if he became a recruiting officer. But Kathy had not taken the sticker off her car. She was afraid that the army was lying to Kevin and would send him back on another deployment.
Today, an olive green car with white markings on the fender motored by, nearly splashing me as it ran through a puddle. The car moved too fast for me to read the markings, but I could guess, from the color, that it was a U.S. Army vehicle on official business.
It can't be on the way to see Kathy, I thought, as the water soaked my sweats. They were becoming too heavy for me to keep up my customary pace. Kevin's already home. I knew of two other military families in our neighborhood. One, the O'Neills, had a father serving overseas, and the other, the Hankinsons, had a son and a daughter in the National Guard, although I didn't know if they had been deployed.
The car signaled and turned right at the corner, in the direction of my sister's house. However, since I did not believe the driver was on the way to see Kathy, I gave it no more thought as it disappeared from view. I had almost finished my run and my world was safe and sound. Less than a minute later, I was home. I locked the door, showered, and then changed into fresh sweats. Then my cell phone rang. It was 10:00 a.m. No one ever calls me this early on a Saturday. Except Kathy.
"Jack, I need you now," Kathy cried. "Kevin's dead. There's an army captain in my living room. He'll stay until you get here, but please come now."
Oh, my God, I thought, that driver was on his way to see Kathy. I bolted out the door and headed straight for my car, forgetting, in my haste, to lock my front door. Driving frantically to reach my sister, I gave no thought to speed limits, nor to any pedestrians who might cross my path. There were always casual walkers and joggers this time of day.
As I approached Kathy's house, I saw the military car that had splattered my sweats. It was now parked alongside the curb in front of her house. I slammed on the brakes to avoid tapping its rear bumper. I felt a gentle thump, maybe rubber touched rubber, but I didn't bother to check for possible damage. I ran out of my car and banged on Kathy's front door so hard that I could have knocked it off the hinges.
There was no answer. "Kathy!" I shouted, "Where are you?"
She didn't answer the door. Instead, an army officer, a captain named Flanagan, opened the door and asked me who I was. When I told him, he shook my hand and expressed his sympathies, then led me into Kathy's living room.
She was seated on her living room couch, her face buried in the palms on her hands. "Why would anyone want to kill my boy?" she sobbed. "He came home three months ago. How can he be dead?" She was trembling.
I sat down beside my sister and took her into my arms. Her heart was beating so rapidly, I feared I might lose her. Since this was a weekend, she was dressed like I was, in sweats, though her short reddish brown hair was set as if she were headed for work. She had not applied her makeup before Flanagan arrived.
Unfortunately, Flanagan knew nothing about what had happened to Kevin, only that he had been killed on a college campus in New York.
"Did you find out who was in charge of the investigation?" I asked him. "Will the army keep you posted?" But he had no answers. As angry as I was, I could not vent my frustration on him. He was just there to do an unpleasant job.
And I did not dare try to keep Kathy from crying, especially since photographs of Kevin, some of him as a boy, a couple of him in uniform, nearly filled her living room walls. Captain Flanagan admired the photos and asked polite questions about Kevin, a man he had never had the good fortune to meet. He smiled and listened. There's no way a soldier can fake true admiration for another fine soldier.
"Captain, I want to see him," I said. "I need to be sure it's Kevin."
I rummaged through a kitchen drawer and found a piece of paper on which Flanagan wrote the address for the Orange County Morgue and a contact person's name and phone number.
"That's all I know," he said. "I wish I could tell you more. I ache for both of you. But I have to tell you that Captain Callahan's death will be in the news. He was killed while off duty on civilian property."
This put me into panic mode. "In the news?" I asked. "What do you mean, in the news? They couldn't wait for you to talk to us?"
"The army asked the sheriff to hold off the announcement until tomorrow," he replied in an understanding tone, "but she felt obligated for public safety reasons. She'll start an investigation today. But I also have to warn you that some reporters will jump at the story because Captain Callahan was a recruiter."
I wanted to grab him by the lapels of his uniform jacket and beat more information out of him, but I knew that the disclosure had not been his decision. He looked at me as if to explain that his hands, like Kathy's and mine, were tied. There was nothing anyone could do to stop the presses. Flanagan handed me his card and offered to return at a more convenient time. He said that he would be the army's liaison with Kathy to arrange Kevin's funeral.
Half an hour passed, and then the phone rang. Kathy was still in shock, so I picked it up. "Jack, are you watching TV?" It was my ex-wife, Carrie. I could hear a TV and computer keys clicking in the background. "Turn it on quick," she said. "ABC News. Some reporters are talking about Kevin."
"Kathy and I know. The casualty officer was just here. But how do you know?"
"The story's live on ABC. Some school in upstate New York released an announcement about his death. Isn't that where he was stationed?"
I clicked the remote to Channel 6 just in time to hear the reporter, a pencil-thin, stylishly-dressed black woman named Shana Montgomery, reporting live from the campus of Hudson Technical University in College...
