The Bystander, page 17
“Wait, what?” she said. “He told us he didn’t know him.”
“Then I think he lied to you. I have guys at the gun show who think they knew one another. He nearly admitted it to me yesterday, and this morning, I learned that Swanson was in Newberry’s building on the morning of the shooting. Friday.”
“He didn’t say any of those things to us. Pete, I’m gonna need you to go over this with Detective Howard Steele, who’s been running point for us on this.”
“I’m happy to. Do you guys want to come to WJAX after work and we can run through it with the news team? Rod Kirby will fawn all over you and Detective Steele.”
“We will be there,” she said.
I had plenty of time to run a quick errand and stopped by Olivia’s desk.
“Can I borrow a portable hard drive?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “But lose my pictures and you’re a dead man.”
“How much can it hold?”
“It’s ten terabytes, so a lot. Why?”
“I’ll be super careful, I promise.”
She reached into her bag and pulled out a plastic-encased hard drive, not much bigger than a mobile phone. It was electric pink.
“If you need to download a lot of data, be sure to use the USB C port. Otherwise, it will take a hundred years to fill this thing up.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.” I gingerly placed it in my briefcase and headed to the Kennesaw Bank building.
*
I walked into the building and flashed my press credential to the young guy at the security desk. I told him that I was with the local TV station and wanted to talk to the head of security about a story I was doing on cyberhacking.
I was greeted by another young guy who didn’t look like a security guy at all. He was about five-foot-ten, wearing stylish glasses, jeans, Converse sneakers, and a polo-style shirt with the building’s name and logo on it. He had brown hair down to his shoulders, a goatee, and a full sleeve of tattoos on his right arm.
He gave off an intimidating nerd vibe. But he was all smiles.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
“I’m looking for the person who oversees security for this building,” I said.
“That’s me.” He extended his hand. “Gus Intriago…and you are?”
“I’m Pete Lemaster with WJAX. Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“How about my office?”
He led me through a labyrinth of steel doors and hallways, swiping his key card three times along the way until we were somewhere in the bowels of the forty-two-story tower. We sat in a small, windowless office with a stack of old personal computers and laptops piled in a corner. Gus had a triple-screen computer setup that either monitored everything in the building or was ready to launch an air strike. I noticed a photo of Gus and a pretty brunette in front of the famous Bull Gator statue at the University of Florida.
“I like that picture,” I said and gave him a slight Gator chomp, like a secret handshake or a mobster’s wink. “Did you go to the game?”
“Yeah, tough one. We are getting out-recruited, and until that gets turned around, there are going to be a lot of sad games here in Jacksonville for us,” he said.
“That’s spot-on. Kills me to agree with you, but the best plays don’t consistently beat better talent.” He nodded. I paused for a beat to see if he had a followup point about football. Most guys can go all day, myself included. But he looked at me with an expression that told me he was a busy guy.
“Listen, I’m interested in doing a story about cybersecurity for businesses here in Jacksonville at some point in the future, but I’m really here to talk about the shooting at the Waterfront. The shooter, Kyle Newberry, worked in this building.”
“Yeah, the cops were here over the weekend. They searched his cubicle upstairs but didn’t find anything.”
“I’m not surprised. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would have left much at his workplace. I’m actually more interested in the armed bystander who shot him, Walter Swanson. He was supposed to have been working here last Friday. Did you know that?”
“Oh yeah, I know Walter.” He paused, clearly thinking for a moment. “Walter’s a bit of a dick if I’m being honest.”
“Oh, really?” Gus, my Gator compadre. I’ve hit the jackpot. “Did the cops ask about him?”
“No, I actually didn’t talk to the cops. One of my guys let them in here on Sunday, and they never talked to me. But yeah, I have dealt with Walter a few times. He thinks he’s hot snot. I agree that what he did was really brave and heroic, but you can be a hero and a pain in the ass, too, don’t you think?”
“Well, I have met him, and I got the same impression.”
“Yeah, he works for a big private security company, and he thinks he knows way more than I do. Honestly, I don’t think he likes that I’m younger than he is and probably have a better job. I also don’t give two craps about all his gun stuff. I work for a security company. I have a gun too. I just don’t talk about it all the time. I go to the range a few times a year. I qualify for what I need to qualify for and hope that I will never have to fire the damn thing.”
Me and Gus: Simpatico.
“Okay, here’s the straight story. I have this theory that Swanson and Newberry knew each other, and I’m trying to see if they may have talked to each other on Friday when Swanson was here.”
“You think they knew each other? That’s pretty crazy.”
“I’m thinking it’s a bit thin myself.”
“My fiancée has a true-crime podcast. She’s been all over this thing. Wait till I tell her about this.”
“Well, there’s nothing to tell unless I can prove it. You have a bunch of video cameras in this building, right?”
“More than a hundred.”
“Can I see the footage?”
“Well, even if I was allowed to share it with you, it would take hours to go through it all.”
“Listen, I’m not going to put this on the air. I mainly want to see if they were ever together on Friday. If I want to put it on the air, I will go through all the official channels to get it.” I paused for a second. “If you let me see the footage, I will go on your girlfriend’s podcast and maybe even get a local cop to come with me. What do you say?”
“She would love that. You realize there are hours of footage from dozens of cameras, right?”
“I do. Can you download it to an external drive?”
“Do you have a huge external drive in your bag?”
“I do.” I pulled out Olivia’s bright pink hard drive and handed it to him. “My colleague says to use the C port or something like that.”
“USB-C is one of the newer formats, yes. Theoretically, it can move data at ten gigs per second but not quite that fast in practical terms. But this is good.”
“Great.”
“So, give me a couple hours. I will need to get one of my guys to download the footage from the cloud and load it on the drive. Without any hiccups, it should be done by the end of the day.” And then, it was his turn to pause. “And none of this goes public without approval of the building, and you do my girlfriend’s podcast no matter what you find?”
“Yes.” I shook his hand. “Thank you, Gus. And one more question.” His eyebrows raised. “What do you drink?”
“Oh.” He paused. “Scotch?”
“Excellent. See you in a couple hours.”
As I headed back to the station, I realized I had a missed call from my mom, and I called her back.
“Did you speak with Denise?” she asked.
“Yeah, that ship has officially sailed.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine, Mom, I’m deep into the Waterfront shooting story right now, and it has gotten incredibly complicated. It’s very murky and a little weird.”
“Weird how?” she asked.
“Well, everything is happening so fast that I can’t seem to get a handle on it. This story is spinning and spinning. I just need it to pause long enough so I can really understand what’s happening. But I think I’m getting there.”
“Take your time so you don’t make any silly mistakes, Peter. You know, I could have sent some business deals to Denise if you had dated her long enough.”
“Sorry that didn’t work out for either of you,” I said.
She laughed. “What’s going on with Rebecca?”
I sighed. “That’s a story in progress, and I also don’t want to get into it. Goodbye, Mom.” I hung up.
*
On the way back to WJAX, I stopped at my favorite liquor store and went straight to the counter because what I wanted was going to be behind it. I told the clerk to pull down a 750ml bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, the best scotch that exists as far as I know.
I’m not a big scotch drinker, but Johnnie Walker is a can’t-miss with my friends who do, and Blue is at the top of their lists. When something is aged with such care that it ends up costing $250 a bottle, it will taste incredible even if it’s not your go-to drink. To me, an average scotch burns my throat a bit, has a kind of sour taste, and you’re not supposed to mix it with anything except ice, maybe a splash of water, or more scotch. As a beer-drinking, rum-and-Diet Coke sort of guy, it’s just not on my Christmas list.
I tapped my credit card at the checkout device and exited the store with a brown paper bag filled with liquid goodness.
I sat down at my desk and put the bag next to my computer screen.
“What’s in the bag?” Ted asked.
“Insurance.”
*
I greeted both Rebecca and Detective Howard Steele with a handshake as they entered our conference room. Olivia had her laptop at the ready to help me make my presentation and keep this little operation moving.
Rebecca was wearing her uniform with her hair in her now-familiar ponytail. Steele, a light-skinned Black detective in his mid-fifties, stood about five-foot-seven, and you could tell that he was in very good shape. He had a few wisps of gray in an otherwise enviable head of hair. He wore a charcoal-gray suit with a striped tie. He looked like a police detective straight out of a TV cop show.
Steele had an extremely friendly disposition. He gladly accepted our offer for coffee and then claimed to be an unabashed expert about all things coffee, donuts, barbecue, and soul food in Duval County. I chose not to ask him if he knew about Dixie Chicken—after all, we had work to do.
“I understand from Rebecca that you have found some new information about the shooting at the Waterfront,” Steele said. “As I think she told you, we have had our own challenges with the feds on this one. A lot of folks at the national and state level offering their opinions. But I’m curious to hear what you’ve got.”
“Well, I think the most important thing is to start with a phone call I received two days ago from an attorney in California named Barry Petroff,” I said. “Olivia will put his website up on the screen. Petroff does all manner of injury cases, but he also specializes in cases dealing with veterans and the VA.”
“Interesting,” Steele said.
“There’s a section on his website where he talks about veterans and suicide,” I said as Olivia clicked on that page on the site. “And then he sent us a bunch of press clippings and some legal filings that basically say that veteran suicide has grown to epidemic proportions in America. And while that’s interesting all by itself, a number of vets have actually committed suicide on the grounds of VA hospitals as a form of protest.”
Steele’s eyebrows raised, and he looked at Rebecca, who nodded.
“We reviewed a bunch of these articles and documents,” I said. “And I will spare you all the details of the deep dive and say that the long and short of this is that veterans are more likely than regular citizens to commit suicide. And the VA knows this, but it is such a bureaucratic mess, these guys get frustrated and can’t take it anymore. They have PTSD, other mental issues, pain issues, and they decide their only option is suicide. Petroff sent us a news release about a case he won a year or so ago regarding a young vet in Georgia who couldn’t get his meds, and he was so distraught that he shot himself in the chest, sitting in his car in the parking lot of a VA hospital.”
Ted chimed in, “The family won a million-dollar verdict against the company that was providing hospital phone operators. Get this: The family of this young man knew he was suicidal, and they called the hospital, but the operator didn’t take action, and a few minutes later, the guy shot himself.”
“That’s awful,” Rebecca said.
“Mm-hmm.” Steele looked like he already knew some of this.
“So, what does that have to do with why we’re here today?” I asked rhetorically. “Well, Kyle Newberry’s situation turned out to be eerily similar to the Georgia case. He was injured while he was in the Navy; hurt his back really badly. He was honorably discharged. After he got out, he was constantly in pain, and he was regularly in dispute with the VA about his medications. We learned from his friends and coworkers at Southern Regal that Newberry had chronic back issues and was regularly in pain.”
“One of my cop buddies has a back injury. So painful,” Steele said.
“His closest friend from work said that the last time she saw him last Wednesday, he was complaining about the VA,” I said.
“We interviewed a bunch of his friends and the people at Southern Regal,” Steele interjected. “None of them talked about the VA. They were all shocked.”
“Well, his closest friend was out of town until the other day,” Ted said. “So, she probably wasn’t there when you did your interviews.”
“Fair enough.”
“So, here’s what I think happened,” I said. “I think Newberry had been dealing with incredible back pain for years, and he became fed up with the VA. The situation was impacting his ability to earn a living. It was impacting his ability to have relationships—a woman he dated said he couldn’t go to the movies because he couldn’t sit still for two hours. And it was impacting his quality of life. Nobody likes being in pain and having to be on meds.”
Everyone except Rod seemed to be following right along, so I soldiered on. “I think he learned about the Georgia case and reached out to Petroff in California. They started to talk about legal options, but it was too little, too late. A couple months ago, he was assigned a new VA doctor who cut his medicine back, and he started regularly running out of pills. We learned from the Georgia case that the VA hospitals shut down at four p.m. on Fridays. If you don’t get your prescription figured out by Friday afternoon, you probably have to wait until the next week to get your meds. In other words, you’re screwed. I think Newberry was in pain, he was frustrated, and he was upset with the VA, and he decided to put his plan into place.”
“What plan?” Steele asked.
“My theory?” I said. “Kyle Newberry decided to go to the Waterfront to commit suicide by cop. He put on a Navy sweatshirt, which would help to identify him as a veteran. He put on a motorcycle helmet to conceal his face and to look intimidating. He absolutely was, by the way. He might have also thought he would be less likely to be shot in the head if he was wearing the helmet. Maybe wanted to be able to have an open casket.”
“What are you talking about?” Rod jumped in.
“We didn’t share that with you, but the guy in Georgia and several others shot themselves in the chest.
Steele had a quizzical look on his face. Rod was simmering.
I kept at it. “Okay, so Newberry had an assault rifle because he wanted to be intimidating. I had a long conversation with some guys at the gun show, and they told me that he mainly sold knives from the booth he had there. But he did sell guns too. You guys confiscated his inventory.”
Steele threw me a look.
“Sorry, that came out wrong,” I said. “My theory is that the weapons taken from his apartment were not a personal arsenal. They were the guns and knives he was planning to sell at the gun show—his inventory.”
No reaction from Steele.
“Here’s another important part,” I continued. “Newberry was not a white supremacist or a terrorist or some type of zealot. No one has found any crazed social-media rantings.”
Rebecca chimed in, “He had no social media accounts to rant on.”
“Right,” I said. “No manifesto in his apartment either. You didn’t find anything radical on his computer. He wasn’t using his Xbox to talk to terrorists in the Middle East like in the Tom Clancy movie. He was troubled, for sure, and in pain, which is my theory and also that of his lawyer in California.”
“All believable,” Steele said.
“Okay, so Newberry goes to the Waterfront to scare people and provoke the cops into shooting him,” I said. “What solidified it for me was learning fairly recently about his weapon and his ammo.”
“The empty magazine.” Steele looked at Rebecca and then back at me.
“We talked,” she said.
“Here’s the recap,” I said. “Newberry goes to the Waterfront, looking scary and intimidating. He fires one shot in the air. Everyone scatters and drops. He figures the cops will close in. He will aim his empty gun at them, and then he will get shot dead. Then once the media find out the magazine was empty, all hell breaks loose, and the VA suicide story hits the front page. But there are a couple of problems.”
“Walter Swanson,” Steele said.
“Precisely,” I said.
“And the VA,” Rebecca added.
“As we have since learned, yes,” I said. “Now, for us to take this story to air, we need more than speculation. We are working on getting the lawyer on the record to confirm that Newberry was suicidal, but we haven’t heard from him in a few days. If we can get it on the record that Newberry’s gun was empty, that he brought only one round, that would be a big help.”
“Well, this is all very interesting, and I appreciate the work you’ve put in,” Steele said. “Obviously, I can’t confirm that he was suicidal like the lawyer can, but I can tell you that his magazine was empty. But you can only attribute it to a source at the JSO, not either of us personally.”
“That story helps all of us,” Rebecca said.
“The VA guys have been leaning on us for a week,” Steele continued. “And I’m sick and tired of it. The amount of jurisdictional BS they have been spewing is making me crazy.”
