She stood next to Matt’s desk while he booted up his laptop and she felt herself shaking. Pete Downing had been one of the last people to see Rory alive. Pete Downing’s voice might have been one of the last Rory heard on earth.
Above the desk, dozens of index cards were taped in even rows. On the top left, the card read Opening image. A blue Post-it note covered the wording on the next card, but she saw one that read Theme stated and one with the name of the coach of the LA Kings.
“What’s all of this?” she asked, pointing to a small binder filled with plastic sheets and small squares that looked like the games in Ethan’s Nintendo DS player.
“Those are drives holding all my interviews. I save them to my laptop but I keep the originals just in case.”
Matt dragged a rustic wooden bench from the window to the desk so they could sit side by side.
He hit Play. A face she hadn’t seen in four years. At the bottom, the words PFC Pete Downing, 2/75 Rangers. She braced herself to hear his voice, the voice that had tried valiantly to comfort her in the days following Rory’s death.
Off camera, Matt said, “Can you tell us, in general, the duties of a U.S. Ranger?”
“As a U.S. Ranger, we engage in combat search and rescue, airborne and air-assault operations, special reconnaissance, intelligence and counterintelligence, personnel recovery and hostage rescue, joint special operations, and counterterrorism.”
“What was your first impression of Rory Kincaid?”
Pete Downing smiled.
“I expected Rory to be a typical arrogant jock. Full of himself. But he wasn’t like that at all. He was confident but humble. He kept his head down. He came in as a private, which in civilian terms is basically a nobody. I don’t think he found it easy to take orders. Far more than it was for most of us, this was a challenge for him but he did the job he came there to do.”
“Did he display leadership qualities?”
“Rory had an inner drive and focus,” he said, looking thoughtful. “It gave us all more confidence about what we were doing.”
“Would you describe him as just one of the guys?”
“Yes and no,” Downing said. “There’s a locker-room atmosphere when you’re over there. Rory was kind of above all that.”
“Did that ever make guys resent him?”
“Just the opposite—we looked up to him. And let’s put it this way: I went in for selfish reasons. I wanted money for college. I wanted to feel like I was somebody. But Rory already had money. He already was somebody. He was there because he wanted to be there, in service of something bigger than himself.”
“Can you tell me what happened on December 28, 2012?”
Downing nodded. He sat back in his chair, adjusting his tie. He took a minute before saying, “It was an ordinary day. Routine patrol looking for IEDs. We delivered water to a neighborhood near Route Irish.”
“And Route Irish is?”
“A twelve-kilometer stretch of highway connecting the Green Zone to Baghdad International Airport. It also connects other areas. So, like I said, it was a routine mission. There were two vehicles working in tandem. I was teamed up with Corporal Kincaid for the day, but toward the end, one of our guys in the other group got sick. I was sent to join that group to make sure they had enough hands on deck.”
Lauren knew this part of the story. Pete had said that he hadn’t wanted to leave Rory, that being around Rory always made him feel safe. She wished he hadn’t told her. The irony was painful.
“After ten hours, we had instructions to head back. Corporal Kincaid’s vehicle was a few meters ahead of ours. The light wasn’t great—we rolled out a little later than we should have. We hadn’t been driving more than ten minutes when the IED went off. I don’t remember the moments directly after the explosion. But at some point we got out of our vehicle to help, ah…to see what happened up ahead. I saw right away…Corporal Kincaid on the ground. There was a lot of blood. It was clear that, uh, he had been killed.”
Lauren stood up. Matt paused the footage.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You wanted to hear—”
“I know, I know,” she said. “It’s fine. This is not news to me. Pete was with me a lot in the days following Rory’s death. I asked him a million questions. I kept thinking that if I heard every detail, it would somehow make sense. I guess I’m still waiting for it to make sense. It never will.”
“Lauren, there aren’t any answers from his time in the military. If you’re looking to make sense of it all, you have to go back.”
She looked at him. “Back to what?”
Matt closed the Pete Downing interview and pulled up a new file. Lauren sat down.
A skating rink filled Matt’s computer screen. In the foreground, a blue-eyed, thirty-something-year-old man.
Matt turned to her. “This is John Tramm, former assistant coach to the Flyers. Current coach of the Villanova men’s ice hockey team.”
Matt pressed Play.
“There was no hard-and-fast protocol for players who took a hit to the head. So they’d sit on the bench and the team trainer would evaluate them. And there is the expectation for the player to just shake it off. Nothing overt, of course. But hockey culture demands resilience. Guys feel pressure to prove their toughness, and, frankly, they know they can be replaced. Especially the rookies.”
Lauren closed her eyes, suddenly back in Rory’s first apartment in LA, his rookie season. “Are you sure you don’t have a concussion?”
“Jesus, Lauren. Now you’re a doctor?”
Matt, on audio, said something, snapping her attention back to the screen. “I understand there’s a class-action lawsuit by about a hundred retired players.”
The coach answered, “Yes. The lawsuit is in light of the new research about CTE. One of the first to be studied was one of our guys, Larry Zeidel. He was a Flyer. Nickname was Rock. A great guy—everyone loved him. Then he retires and suffers from debilitating headaches. Starts having a bad temper, gets violent, makes crazy financial decisions. Impulsive decisions. His entire life fell apart.”
Lauren nodded, tears sliding down her face.
Matt closed the file and clicked on the next interview.
“I want to show you my conversation with a neurologist.”
A doctor’s office, plaques on the wall, a neat desk. The neurologist had white hair and a very direct gaze. Again, off camera, Matt led the subject of the interview through questions. This time, there were visuals, slides of the brain, normal and diseased side by side. Lauren leaned forward, barely breathing.
The sound of Matt’s voice off camera: “And can you explain exactly what CTE does to the brain?”
“In CTE, a protein called tau builds up around the blood vessels of the brain, interrupting normal function and eventually killing nerve cells. The disease evolves in stages. In stage one, tau is present near the frontal lobe but there are no symptoms. In stage two, as the protein becomes more widespread, you start to see the patient exhibit rage, impulsivity. He most likely will suffer depression.”
Lauren stood up and started pacing.
Matt closed the file. “Does any of this sound familiar to you, Lauren?”
She didn’t bother answering. He knew it did.
“This isn’t the film I was looking for, Lauren. I’d love to hear that Rory was just a gifted athlete turned selfless hero. But he was damaged. He was making irrational decisions by the end, wasn’t he? As if his mind weren’t his own?”
She turned to him, breathing so hard and fast she couldn’t speak.
“I’m not trying to diminish his accomplishments,” said Matt. “His talent. His bravery. I’m not saying that he failed. I’m saying the system failed him.”
She nodded. “Maybe.”
“Not maybe. Definitely. And I need to get this film finished, for other guys like Rory out there. And other women like you.”
She didn’t say anything, just moved her head in a slow, hesitant nod. It was all he needed to start staging the room.