John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

Jonathan helped himself to a folding metal chair on the front side of the desk. “It certainly seemed to be on the agenda a while ago,” he said.

“Where’s the boy?”

“Someplace that’s none of your concern. Why don’t you take a seat?”

“He’s the one they were after,” Harvey said. “They left him for dead. Did you know that?”

“And you saved him. You did a good thing. And now I’m saving you.” He paused for effect. “Unless you want to leave.”

Harvey thought on that for the better part of a minute. “You know I can’t do that.”

“I do.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

Jonathan took his time answering. This was a negotiation of sorts, and as in all negotiations, the elements needed to be put in terms of the other party’s best interests. “I’d like to think you’d accept this hospitality for what it is.”

“You put me in the basement.”

“Only because it’s out of sight,” Jonathan explained. “Things are happening here that don’t yet make much sense to me. But I know this: If people are willing to kill a child, they’re willing to kill anyone.”

Harvey’s face turned wistful as his eyes focused on a point that didn’t exist in the real world. “I don’t like people,” he said. “Never had much use for them. Then this happens right in front of me, and I’m stuck holding the bag.” His eyes rolled up to bore through Jonathan. “Does that make any damn sense to you?”

Jonathan liked this guy. He couldn’t articulate why, but he liked him. “There’s a lot in this world that doesn’t make sense to me, Harvey.” He let a beat pass. “Like how a man like you-a Marine Corps medic-ends up molesting children.”

Harvey’s jaw set at Jonathan’s accusation, but his eyes just remained tired. “You’ve done your homework,” he said.

Jonathan nodded. “I have. And I have to tell you that knowing this makes me wish you’d died out there with the others.”

Harvey’s eyes went red. He said nothing.

“Is it true?” Jonathan pressed.

“It’s true that I’m a registered sex offender, yes.”

Jonathan scowled. “Is there a ‘but’?”

Harvey smiled without humor. “Not one that you’d be interested to hear.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because nobody’s interested in hearing it. I’m a kid toucher on the record, and that’s all that matters.”

“That’s a lot,” Jonathan said.

Harvey glared through Jonathan’s brain. “You tell me what your mood dictates,” Harvey said. “Do you want to draw conclusions, or do you want to hear the truth?”

“The truth always works for me.”

Harvey sat in the chair on the opposite side of the desk from Jonathan. He took his time assembling his thoughts, then launched into the story. “I had… difficulty in 2004 after the first battle for Fallujah. I don’t know if you know anything about military operations, but that was pretty intense. They called it ‘urban warfare’ and I guess it was, but to me ‘urban’ means city. Fallujah was like a thousand years old. I was with Company K, three-five, and we caught nothing but shit for days on end.”

Jonathan recognized “three-five” as Third Battalion of the Fifth Marine Regiment.

“Those Hadji fuckers were everyplace. We took a lot of casualties. I was up to my elbows in brains and intestines for days on end. I’d get one Marine packed up for transport and then another one would get hit. It was fucking awful.”

It was also the most intense urban combat that United States armed forces had ever encountered, Jonathan didn’t add, although he had studied it. He’d been separated from the Army for more than a few years by the time Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched, but he’d stayed in touch with many of his buddies who were still on active duty. The American press denied people at home the story of the stunning victory, choosing instead to concentrate on U.S. casualties and collateral damage, but the strategy and tactics developed during that weeklong battle would be studied in military textbooks for generations to come.

Harvey continued, “Anyway, if you’ve never been there, it’s hard to describe how something just breaks inside of you. I just wasn’t the Marine I thought I was. One day I was a damn good medic-and I mean damn good, even thinking of a way to use G.I. benefits to get to medical school-and then I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

He stripped the cap off his water bottle and took a long pull. “They called it PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. That’s a great name when you’re using it on someone else. When it’s you, it just feels like ‘crazy.’ They sent me to Bethesda for a while, but then they drummed me out. I was fine with that, but what was I going to do for a living? I didn’t want nothin’ to do with the blood-and-guts business anymore, so I thought I’d try to help kids. You know, the future of the world?”

His bitter sarcasm triggered a humorless chuckle. “I took a job at a community health club in Braddock County, up near Brookfield.”

Jonathan recognized it as a neighboring county in Northern Virginia.

“I taught swimming, did some lifeguarding. Even taught first-aid courses. It was exactly the kind of gig I needed. Kids are basically, nice, right? They live in a world where the only violence is the stuff you see on TV. They’re refreshing to be around.”

Jonathan jumped ahead. “So, refreshing, in fact that you-”

A white-hot glare cut him in half. “You gonna listen, or are you gonna talk?” Harvey spat. “See, this is why it’s not worth explaining the facts to people. You see the label, and then everything just falls into place for you.”

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan said. And he meant it.

Harvey’s eyes held him for a while longer, testing. “All right. Well, the fact is that kids are shit, too. I had one, Amanda Goldsbury, a loudmouth punk maybe thirteen years old whose parents dropped her off every day in the summer at seven in the morning, and then picked her up at eight at night. Our job was to babysit her ass for the six-buck-a-day admission charge. She wasn’t the only one like that, but she was the one who was easiest to hate. She thought she was queen shit. She terrorized the other children, and she had no compunction about telling an adult to go fuck himself. You know the type?”

Jonathan smiled and chose not to say that he established a whole school for kids like that. They didn’t stay that way for long after arriving at Resurrection House, but most students arrived either as bullies or as victims of them.

“So one day, this girl gets in my face, and I told her what I thought of her antics. I mean I really told her. Embarrassed the shit out her in front of her buddies and victims.” He inhaled deeply through his nose, closed his eyes, and shook his head. “Next day, five cops show up at the center and arrest me for second-degree sexual assault on a minor. She went home that night after I pissed her off, and she told her parents that I had fondled her in the locker room.

“The prosecutor, a first-degree prick named J. Daniel Petrelli, decided to make an example out of me. He got the press involved, somebody leaked my history of ‘mental instability’”-he used finger quotes-“and I was cooked. Everybody knows kids wouldn’t lie about such a thing, even though they lie through their asses about every other damn thing, and suddenly I’m looking at serious prison time. I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve heard that child molesters are beaten to shit in prison by the other inmates. I wanted none of that.

“So I took the plea agreement that my public defender told me was a sweet deal. I pleaded guilty in return for no jail time, but I agreed to seek psychiatric counseling and to stay away from children forever. I also landed on the registered sex offender list.”