Murder3gun: Inspired by Actual Events

By Charles E. Feldmann

A gang member executes a high-ranking Marine Corps officer in broad daylight, and Captain John Henry, a young Marine Corps lawyer, is assigned the murder trial of a lifetime. Henry knows he will be a hero for prosecuting a real life monster that has brutally murdered one of his own. But tragedy awaits him. The military investigation turns up more questions than answers, and the high stakes court-martial begins to unravel. Nothing is what it seems. Now the military justice system turns on him and Captain Henry the prosecutor becomes the prosecuted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499078770

Charles E. Feldmann

Charles Feldmann wrote his first romance novel by accident, thinking his story was a “modern-day international man of mystery” kind of book. It actually turned out to be the tale of a great love affair. After the shock and trauma to his tough-guy ego wore off, the sequel to that romance novel, Pharaoh’s Daughter, was born. Charles has previously written The Ark of War, Murder3Gun, and The Sons of Sheriff Henry, along with numerous professional works, most recently Navigating the Military Justice System: What Service Members Need to Know. He attended law school in Colorado, served in the United States Marine Corps, worked with a DEA drug task force, and now litigates courts-martial all over the world as part of his own law firm. Very recently, he found atonement in helping veterans navigate their way through the end of cannabis prohibition. When not working on the sequel to The Ark of War, you will find him traveling to exotic ports of call, enjoying cigars and ancient scotch with friends and colleagues at his favorite cigar bar in Denver, consuming too much ancient wine, and indulging in his own personal love affair. Those close to him know him as more tumultuous than delicious, and he tries his best to live Benjamin Franklin’s sage advice—to either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

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Copyright © 2014 by Charles E. Feldmann.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014917414

ISBN:      Hardcover           978-1-4990-7875-6

                Softcover            978-1-4990-7876-3

                eBook                 978-1-4990-7877-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/14/2014

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CONTENTS

DEDICATION

SECOND EDITION

TO

THE SONS OF SHERIFF HENRY

1

MARCH 5, 1996

2

3

4

5

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10

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22

DEDICATION

To those who believe the world still needs

warriors and to those who answer the call.

Some people live an entire lifetime and wonder if they have made a difference to the world, but the Marines don’t have that problem. Ronald Reagan

SECOND EDITION

TO

THE SONS OF SHERIFF HENRY

1

MARCH 5, 1996

Payback time! Respect is everything, or so the baldheaded United States Marine told himself as he chugged down the last swallow of lukewarm liquid courage from the Budweiser can in his hand.

The Marine Corps sergeant’s car came to a stop in the same parking lot where he had parked for the past eighteen months. He reached underneath his seat and grabbed the heavy dull blue .45-caliber Colt semiautomatic handgun. With the weapon in one hand and a fresh can of beer in the other, the clean-shaven and hairless man contemplated his mission. Although he still wore the green-and-brown camouflage uniform of a United States Marine, his heart had forsaken all the Marine Corps’ values many months ago. Semper Fidelis, he thought to himself with a smirk, what a complete load of crap. Always faithful to who? The Corps had turned their back on him for the last time. Two dull gray teardrop tattoos, each the size of an actual teardrop, were branded underneath his left eye, proudly proclaiming his allegiance to the streets of Los Angeles and his people who roamed them. They were his real family; he tried to convince himself as he swallowed another gulp of the yellow liquid in the aluminum can.

He finished off the remainder of his beer and casually tossed the can into the backseat of his brown four-door Chevy Nova, where federal agents would find it and several others in the coming hours. He stuffed the handgun into the waistband of his tight trousers and pulled his camouflage uniform top over the weapon to hide it from view. His waistband was tight from all the weight that he had gained over the past few months, and he tried to suck in his pudgy stomach to make room for the chunk of metal now lodged next to his perspiring flesh, as he began his two-minute walk to the second floor of the Marine helicopter squadron directly in front of him. The command deck, as it was known to the several hundred Marines of Marine Attack Squadron-19, was the administrative nerve center for a squadron whose primary duty was to provide air support with the dozens of two-man Cobra attack helicopters to the Marine infantry units anywhere in the world.

As he walked up the flight of stairs, his mind raced back to the day, not so long ago, when he was singled out in front of everyone and disrespected. Never again would he be humiliated like he had been that day, and he was about to make sure that the one who took great pleasure in that public humiliation paid the price for his disrespect.

He reached the second floor and walked down the long pale white narrow hallway, which was spotless. Like every Marine hallway in the squadron. Pictures from every continent of the globe showing the proud combat history of the squadron adorned the long straight passageway. Very soon, though, this hallway would be adulterated in the red blood of a man. As he reached the end of the hallway, he turned to his right and into the open doorway labeled Commanding Officer. The simple wooden sign posted over the center of the doorway would take him straight to the target of his pent-up hate. He had been in combat before, a war hero of the first Desert Storm; but that life was behind him now, foreign in every way. He was tired of being a slave for the white man and the white man’s system. Today it was payback time, time to set things straight.

He walked past several Marines, paying no attention to them, and walked unannounced straight into the colonel’s office, his first act of defiance that day, since no enlisted Marine ever entered a colonel’s office without first asking and then receiving permission to enter. There was a short, and obviously pregnant, young female Marine standing in front of the small brown-and-gray desk in the cramped office. She was waiting for a signature on some piece of paper, and the target, who was the object of his hate and rage, stood directly behind the desk.

Lieutenant Colonel McCormick was six feet tall and looked like the all-American poster boy. He was muscular, but not like some freak muscle builder. His short-cropped gray flattop was almost as striking as his ice blue eyes that commanded instant respect. Both the lieutenant colonel and the ‘WM’ slang for Woman Marine, turned and looked at the large bald brown man as he calmly reached into his waistband, pulling out his deadly piece of metal. The time had come. It was too late to turn back now, and he was about to take his respect back. Respect is everything.

My god, he’s got a gun! McCormick screamed out as he saw in shock and disbelief the gun come from the shaved Marine’s waistband.

The bald Marine squared off against the retreating lieutenant colonel and held his gun sideways like a gangster in a Hollywood movie. Remember me, motherfucker?

He pulled the gun’s trigger, and the explosion from the .45-caliber subsonic hollow-point round echoed throughout the entire building like a civil war cannon. McCormick frantically tried to get away, backing into a small changing room directly behind his desk, as the shooter calmly began to chase his prey. Respect is everything.

[United States Marine Corps Base, Camp Pendleton, Building #22123, Legal Service Support Section Echo]

I sat at my desk when the telephone rang. Don’t pick up the phone. Let it ring, a small quiet voice inside me said as I looked up from my file at the ringing phone.

Very rarely does a simple phone call change your life. Sometimes the telephone call is mundane and insignificant, but not this call. Can a life-changing series of events—destiny?—begin with the simple ring of a telephone?

With a phone call, I began the greatest adventure of my military and prosecutorial career—an adventure that would brand me a ‘hero’ of the Marine Corps and one of the finest prosecutors in government. Tragically, in the end, the prosecutor would become the prosecuted. Would it have been better if I had been off base that day or on another line when the call came? It didn’t matter. I picked up the phone.

Legal Team Echo, Captain Henry speaking.

This is Colonel Miller, came the voice over the phone.

Yes, sir, was my quick and automated military response.

I just got a report of ‘shots fired’ over at MAS-19. I want someone from legal to get over to that air base right now, he ordered. Tell your boss to get someone on this yesterday.

I’m on it, was the only thing I said as I hung up the phone.

Destiny has a strange way of finding someone, and for some strange reason that day, Legal Team Echo was completely empty of all its prosecutors. There was only a young corporal manning the phones. Typically, the place was filled with at least a dozen attorneys and various support personnel roaming the building; but when I walked out of my office to go speak to my commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Peters, no one was around including him. Destiny had found me.

Placing my camouflage cover on my head, I ran out to my bright red convertible and immediately headed toward the airfield, which was less than a quarter mile from my office. As soon as I hit the main street, I found myself trapped in a horrific traffic jam, typical of the Southern California monster traffic jams on the nearby San Diego freeways. Cars along the base’s main highway were standing still—bumper to bumper—something big had definitely happened to make the base come to a stand still.

A dark green Humvee appeared out of nowhere driving on the shoulder of the road skirting the stalled traffic. Several military policemen were inside the large diesel vehicle with red and blue lights flashing on top. I pulled my car out of the going-nowhere traffic, and on to the grassy shoulder. I quickly jumped out and waved down the Humvee full of MPs as it grinded to a halt right in front of me.

I want you to get me to MAS-19 now, I shouted as I climbed into one of the empty backseats.

Sorry, sir, there has been a shooting over there and no one is allowed inside. I heard over the radio that the tactical team is still looking for the shooter, the lance corporal with a gold badge on the front of his camouflage uniform stated.

I understand. I’m from the prosecutor’s office, and I have orders to be in the middle of that crime scene. And I didn’t give you a request, Lance Corporal. I gave you an order.

The young nineteen-year-old military policeman looked back over his shoulder at the shiny silver captain’s bars that were attached to my collar and then up to my eyes, as if questioning whether I was serious or not. I could almost see his brain remembering boot camp and his brutal indoctrination, whereby superior officers’ orders are never questioned, just followed.

Roger that, was all the lance corporal said as he stepped on the gas pedal and the Humvee took off down the shoulder of the road avoiding the stalled traffic.

When we arrived at the two-story building five minutes later, I immediately saw a Flight for Life Long Ranger helicopter landing several hundred yards away on the airstrip next to several motionless Marine helicopters. The bright blue nonmilitary aircraft easily distinguished itself from all the combat camouflaged-parked aircraft surrounding it. There was chaos everywhere. Marines were running around and shouting at one another, and I scanned the chaotic crowd trying to figure out my first move.

Manny, I yelled when I saw Naval Criminal Investigative Agent Manny Forks walk through a small crowd of people.

He turned around and began to quickly walk over to me. I immediately saw uncertainty and the effects of the hysterical crowd on my friend’s face. Manny Forks was a large black man in his late forties. He wore his hair short and tight against his head, and he stood at eye level to most people. He was not a typical all-business full-of-himself U.S. federal agent. Manny Forks was always in a jovial mood. I liked Manny from the first time we met because he simply was the best at getting a criminal to confess his crimes. And not because he intimidated or forced someone into speaking what their conscience wanted to say. Rather, after you talked with Manny you just wanted to tell him what you did wrong and why.

What is the situation? I asked. I heard there was a shooting?

Agent Forks looked at the crowd of Marines like a nervous mother looking for her lost infant child. We have one colonel shot in the chest, and they are airlifting him out as we speak. I doubt if he will make it, and there is another colonel inside up on the second deck who is dead. The tactical team is going through the building right now looking for a possible second shooter.

People screamed and ran all over the place, and if this had not been a military base with United States Marines being the ones running all over, I would have called this a riot. I heard the whine of the emergency helicopter’s turbine engine that had landed a few hundred yards away beginning to gain power, and all of a sudden, a man lying on a stretcher emerged from the crowd. Men and women dressed in camouflage uniforms and blue-and-gray coveralls, surrounded the stretcher and were pushing the man and his stretcher to the waiting helicopter. I quickly learned that this was not just any man lying on the EMT cart with what Marines called a sucking chest wound. This man was the squadron’s commanding officer.

Marines were holding blood-soaked rags and bandages over the hole in the man’s chest as he passed directly by Manny and me. The gurgling sound of blood and oxygen, mixing and snorting from the punctured lung through the hole in the man’s chest, was quite distinct even over the roar of the noisy crowd.

Commanding Officer Colonel Frank Goodwin was the leader for every Marine standing in the parking lot. He gave the orders to go into combat, and every Marine in his squadron would follow his orders without hesitation, even to their own deaths.

Commanding officers are something special to Marines, similar to some sort of a mix between a leathery-skinned World War II war-hero grandfather and a favorite Saturday morning cartoon superhero. This particular superhero of Marine Attack Squadron-19 came rolling out in front of the crowd heading for the nearby helicopter. As the CO emerged, the crowd went instantly from hysterics to absolute silence as their slain leader was whisked by.

No more than a brief moment passed when the second act to this drama unfolded in front of me. I stood helplessly watching it unfold.

I’ll rip your heart out, you motherfucker! Came a scream from across the parking lot.

You want some of this? Come on! Was the enraged challenge back from a large bare-chested, baldheaded brown man.

The shirtless man’s hands, cuffed behind his back, strained against the grips of the several military policemen dressed in their battle tactical gear. I could sense that the crowd surrounding me was readying itself for battle, to attack the shirtless man. They realized before I did that the bare-chested man was the one responsible for the bloody hole in their dying commanding officer’s chest.

I stared at the man’s multiple tattoos that covered his chest, arms, and neck. I had never seen a Marine with so many markings on his body. I didn’t notice that Special Agent Forks had left my side. He immediately took charge, grabbed the defiant man, and stuffed him into his white Chrysler four-door sedan, marked with bold letters that read NCIS—U.S. Government.

Get him out of here before they tear him apart, Forks yelled to another special agent who then jumped behind the wheel of the car.

Another scream came from the crowd, describing some foul assault that was about to take place on the criminal suspect as he was being thrown into the backseat of the car. Then someone spit on the bare-chested man, and tensions reached the breaking point.

Move it! Screamed agent Forks, slamming the car door shut as the driver began making his way slowly through the crowd of Marines.

Had another few seconds gone by, there was no doubt the crowd would have ended the life of the man they considered to be a traitor of all traitors.

[Front Gate—Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton]

The base was shut down, and local news stations had camped out in front of the gates filming the military police forbidding anyone entrance to or exit from Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base.

We are live at the front gate to Camp Pendleton here in Oceanside, stated the 9-News reporter.

The information gathered so far is that two Marine officers have been shot and that gang members are responsible for the shooting. The military police behind me closed the base in an attempt to capture and apprehend any fleeing individuals responsible for the midday attack on two high-ranking military officers. We have no word yet on the conditions of the wounded officers, only that one has been life-flighted to a nearby hospital and the other is rumored to be dead, she continued.

Military policemen shouted orders at people to stay back from the gate in the background of the television camera.

Gangs, the military, and the shootings of two Marine Corps officers—the mental pictures created by these opposing icons would play in the press for weeks and months to come. How could gang members stage an assault on high-ranking military officials while on a United States Marine Corps base? Someone called the Marine shooter a gang banger, and the press never let it go.

[Second story of Marine Attack Squadron-19 (MAS-19)]

Walking through the blood of a man is a surreal experience. I have seen the blood of deer and elk and many other North American big game animals since a young age. However, walking through the hallway that led to the command deck was unlike any animal’s blood trail I had ever seen. The normally superclean white hallway looked liked someone had taken a bucket of blood, or rather several buckets of blood, and simply dumped them down the hallway. Blood was everywhere: on the floor, on the walls. Everywhere.

Follow me, Manny said, standing in the doorway of where the blood seemed to start.

I turned the corner and walked into the office labeled Executive Officer, and my heart sank. Lying on the floor in the back corner of the office next to a desk was the body of a dead man, with several individuals hovering over the top of him taking photographs of the body. I peered over the shoulder of one of the crime scene photographers and saw the pale white stiff man lying on his back with his eyes wide open and one armed stretched above his head. There was blood all over the carpet and all over the top of the desk next to the dead man.

I am trying to find his wife right now, but I can’t get an outside line. None of them are working! stated Warrant Officer Rodriquez who was frantically dialing, hanging up, and redialing the telephone.

No one responded to his statement, but I heard him mumble to himself, How am I going to tell his goddamned little boy?

Chief, I need you to use another phone, Agent Forks said as he took the telephone receiver from his hand and set it back down on the desk. This is a crime scene, and we need to preserve everything, OK?

Rodriquez said nothing but simply slumped out of the room. The tall dark Latino warrant officer who had risen through the ranks of the Marine Corps since joining when he was sixteen years old did, in fact, break the news of his dear friend’s death to the six-year old son, two-year old daughter, and now widow of the slain Marine officer. He would retire shortly thereafter from the Marine Corps never being able to erase the looks of the grief-stricken family from his memory. Marines were meant to die in combat on a battlefield, not at their desk.

Look at his hand, one of the agents holding a camera said, pointing to the left hand of the corpse. The office was very small, and too many people were inside it. Manny Forks stood from inspecting the lifeless hand as the flashes of several cameras began to go off in rapid succession as if a movie star was arriving at the Oscars.

I asked, What about his hand?

He’s clutching a small photograph of his family. He obviously did not die right away but was able to reach up on his desk and grab a photo of his wife and kids. Hell of a way to die, Manny said, turning and walking out of the office space, leaving me alone to contemplate the thought of a dying man clutching a crumpled and blood-soaked picture of his wife and kids. A dying man who knew he would die all alone and never see his family again.

[Headquarters, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Camp Pendleton]

The shooter, as he would be called throughout the upcoming trial, was led into a back room, an interrogation room at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service headquarters located on Camp Pendleton. Shooter was a big Marine: six feet two inches and two hundred pounds. With his shirt off, his chest flashed the badges of his numerous tattoos like an obnoxious billboard sign. Tattoos covered his upper body, his chest, arms, and back; tattoos of panthers, fighting roosters, numbers, and religious drawings.

I arrived at NCIS headquarters about an hour after the shooter had made his frantic escape from the crowd at the crime scene. I was informed that the shooter was being interviewed by agent Forks, so I used the much-needed break to make the first update of many to my superior officers.

Sir, this is Captain Henry, I said using an empty agent’s cubicle and phone.

Tell me what you got, said Lieutenant Colonel Peters, my commanding officer from Legal Team Echo.

I can give you the facts as best I know them. Colonel Goodwin has been life-flighted to Balboa Naval Hospital. He has a gunshot wound to the chest, and there is no word about his expected condition. Not good, I speculated. Lieutenant Colonel McCormick is dead, with several gunshots to his body. He was found dead in his office at MAS-19. Everyone at the scene believes there was just one shooter, a sergeant from the squadron. NCIS is interviewing him right now. There will be an autopsy in the morning on Lieutenant Colonel McCormick, which I am planning to attend.

I carried out this entire briefing delicately. Marine prosecutors are individually assigned to squadrons and battalions stationed at the base, and they are responsible for prosecuting any crimes that are committed by Marines from their assigned units. These same prosecutors also guard their units zealously. MAS-19 was not my squadron; therefore, technically, I was not the prosecutor who should be handling this case. I knew this, but high-profile homicide cases, especially ones involving dead Marine colonels, came few and far between in the Marine Corps, and I was not about to give this case up simply because of some technicality that said this was not my case to prosecute.

Good trial lawyers have big egos. They have to in order to take charge of a courtroom and command the jury, and I was no different. I believed that I was the best trial attorney on the base, and there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to prosecute this case. What I had going for me, as I tried to convince my boss to leave me on this case, was that I was the first at the crime scene. This was my case until someone took it away from me, and that was not going to happen without a fight. A hungry dog guarding his bone was how I acted as I spoke to my superior officer.

Finally Special Agent Forks walked out of the interrogation room with the most somber look I had ever seen on his face. It was late, around 11:00 p.m.

What’s he saying? I asked.

All kinds of crap. Fed up with the white man keeping him down. That’s why he went to see the colonel with his .45, Agent Forks said as he popped two quarters and a dime into the red-and-white Coke machine.

Manny identified the shooter as Addie Querido, Sergeant of Marines. A sergeant who was some kind of war hero in Operation Desert Storm but now was covered in what appeared to be gang tattoos. Addie had a wife and a five-year-old son, and he had been stationed at Camp Pendleton since returning from the Gulf War several years ago.

Sergeant Querido sat in the interrogation room, alone and shirtless, his body covered in black tattoo ink, with the most striking tattoos, being the two teardrop tattoos underneath his left eye. Anyone who saw this man immediately noticed the two bold tattoos on his face, which was exactly why he put them there. Gang experts from across the country would later testify in open court that teardrop tattoos meant one of two things: you had either killed someone or done time in prison. As Agent Forks described the facial tattoos, I wondered what Addie Querido’s teardrop tattoos represented.

I asked Agent Forks where the murder weapon was as he walked back into the interrogation room. He simply pointed over to a table in the corner of the large room where we were standing. I walked over to a table that had clear plastic quart-sized bags lying on it. The bold words Naval Criminal Investigative Service—EVIDENCE were immediately apparent as the label covered almost half of the plastic bag itself. I saw clothing from Addie Querido; little white cardboard boxes, which looked like jewelry boxes, containing bullet fragments; and glass vials that I knew contained blood samples from the crime scene.

At the end of the table lying in an open department store shoebox, my eye noticed the single most important piece of evidence in this case. I stared at the .45-caliber Colt semiautomatic handgun lying on the table, and without warning or explanation, an eerie feeling came over me. I should have recognized the sensation as the same feeling from earlier that morning when I answered the telephone call from my superior officer directing me to the crime scene, but I didn’t. The gun was enormous lying on the table. Cold and black, and very threatening, even to me. I had been around guns my whole life, but now I was looking at a gun that had ripped apart a man’s heart and orphaned two children.

This gun was very different from all the guns I had seen before. I was aware of that from the first moment I saw it. The dark mahogany wood handle was completely covered by a brown bandana. Someone had taken great care to wrap this brown cloth, neatly and tightly, around the entire handle to this gun; and the material of this striking piece of cloth was weathered and frayed around the edges, clearly not a new bandana. The two ends of the bandana were tied in a square knot right at the base of the gun’s handle, out of the way of any hand that wanted to hold the gun. The six-inch barrel of the .45 was truly awesome in a utilitarian sort of way. It was big and round, almost the size of a half dollar, and the slug of lead and copper that was expelled out of the end of this handgun had enough energy to penetrate right through a car’s metal door and continue on through the opposite door. I wanted to pick up the gun and feel what it felt like in my hands, but it was unprocessed evidence of a murder, and my hand would contaminate it. If I was successful in prosecuting this case in front of a jury, I knew this gun and the brown bandana attached to it would be the crux of my entire case.

Unbeknownst to me at the time was the fact that this gun was also going to alter my life. Looking at it in its shoebox coffin, I had no idea how much misfortune this unforgiving chunk of metal would cause to those around it.

[Officers Quarters, Marine Corps Base, Camp Del Mar]

Three o’clock in the morning arrived as I drove up to my quarters in military housing. I crawled into bed feeling the sheer excitement of being involved with a case of national magnitude. Then I realized that Samantha was not in bed sleeping. Odd. I should have checked the answering machine to find out if she left me a message telling me that she was working late. Three o’clock in the morning? She worked late a lot of nights, but three in the morning seemed a little excessive. I crawled back out of bed and wandered downstairs to the telephone. Blinking on the white machine next to the telephone was the number 1.

John, I’m staying down in San Diego tonight because I’m working on that Vegas ‘sin city’ meeting and I missed my train home. I’ll see you tomorrow, I heard my wife’s soft voice say over the answering machine’s speaker.

Four years of marriage, and we were both still pretty happy, I thought to myself with a smile; but lately we had drifted apart, and we were arguing too much. Quality time together—that will fix it. We just needed a vacation or some time away from the busyness of our jobs, I flippantly thought as I crawled back into bed. Being naïve by its nature means you miss important moments when they pass by. This flawed character trait of mine would surface, very soon, in a dramatic fashion.

My mind quickly turned from my wife to my new murder case. It hit me, as I lay in bed dreading getting up in three hours to drive to the autopsy of Lieutenant Colonel McCormick, that somewhere, not too far away, Lieutenant Colonel McCormick’s wife and two children were trying to comfort each other and understand why Daddy would never ever come home again.

[Balboa Naval Hospital, San Diego]

Finding the morgue in a hospital is quite easy. It is located just where you would expect it to be: the cool dungy basement. I walked into the morgue at 7:00 a.m., and an NCIS agent named Walker met me. The coldness of the morgue was unexpected, but more surprising to me was the lack of any bad smell. I guess I thought dead bodies would have some kind of a bad smell.

Are you Captain Henry? the NCIS agent asked me.

That’s me, I answered.

Johnny Walker, the short pudgy cheap-suited federal agent, grabbed my hand introducing himself. Agent Johnny Walker., he said to the naval captain who never looked up as he continued to gather his shiny metal tools. Doc, I think we got everyone. Let’s get started.

I followed agent Walker over to the empty examining table. The room that the three of us stood in was nothing more than a concrete-walled basement containing a bunch of medical-looking machines and tables. There was nothing fancy about this place, and everything was clean and obviously organized in a certain way. The naval captain picked up a brown paper bag and dumped its contents onto the table in front of him. He was a tall Oriental man, which I thought was an unusual combination, and he paid absolutely no attention to the fact that I was standing right next to him. I never would have suspected that he was a superior naval officer to me, except that the shiny silver eagles attached to his white shirt protruded noticeably.

The first thing the medical examiner wanted to look at was the clothing the victim Lieutenant Colonel McCormick was wearing at the time of death. The primary duty, as I was about to learn, for a forensic medical examiner was to determine the cause of death and the manner of death, two very different and important determinations. I asked what the difference was, and Doc, the Navy Captain, quite politely stated without looking up, The cause of death would be something like the heart stopping, and the manner of death was what caused the heart to stop beating.

Doc and Walker began removing the clothing of Lieutenant Colonel McCormick from some evidence bags. I was somewhat surprised to look around the room and see the body of Lieutenant Colonel McCormick lying stiffly on a table just a few feet away. This dead man did not look like I expected a dead man in a morgue to look like, and it was not the same as seeing someone at a funeral who had just passed away. Instead, I was looking at a man that I had seen at the Officer’s Club a few times before, now lying dead on a cold sterile metal table. Some Clint Eastwood movie line went through my mind as I looked at the murdered Marine officer. It’s hard to kill a man. You take away everything he has and everything he’s ever going to have.

Lieutenant Colonel McCormick’s clothing, brought down from Camp Pendleton by the NCIS agent Walker, was spread out over a table lined with white paper. The first item of clothing examined was what Marines called a wooly pully. It was a heavy thick green wool sweater. On the right side of the sweater were two torn holes with dried dark blood all around them, and on the back of the sweater was a hole, in about the middle, with no blood at all around the hole.

It looks to me like we have two gunshots into this man, stated Naval Captain Wang as he lifted the sweater with his rubber-gloved hands. It looks like one bullet entered and came out here on the side, and then a second bullet entered the back but did not exit, he continued to explain.

The doctor turned to the NCIS agent and asked, Have you accounted for all the bullets at the crime scene?

Yes, sir. There were four shots that we have found the brass for at the crime scene, Agent Walker explained.

There were lead and metal jacket pieces all over the scene. We think one bullet hit a cement wall and fragmented everywhere, he said.

Well, let’s take a look at the body and see what we come up with, Doc said to all of us.

We turned away from the clothing and walked over to the table