I cleared my throat, and the private’s eyes flashed to me, full of sardonic humor, before he continued.
“So he left the bar about ... oh, I guess eleven or thereabouts. Petrowski and I went up to the bar after he took off, and we started talking to a couple of girls.” Reardon flushed, the pink staining his neck. “Petrowski ... he, uh, went outside with one of them. I don’t know what they were doing.”
I tried not to smirk. I had a fairly good idea of what Private Petrowski and his townie hook-up had been busy doing outside. It probably wasn’t a Bible study.
“The other girl, the one who was still in there with me, she was kind of drunk by then. She kept trying to talk me into going outside, too, or even going home with her, but I could tell she didn’t really know what she was saying. She’d had a lot to drink.” His mouth worked. “It wouldn’t have been right to take advantage of her.”
“And you’re nothing if you’re not a gentleman, huh, Reardon?” I couldn’t hide the sarcasm in my voice.
This time, his eyes flashed with anger that took me aback. “Yes, sir, I am. I may be a fuck up here, and I might get into trouble a lot, but I respect women. I was raised by a single mother, and she’d beat me within an inch of my life if she ever heard of me showing anything less than courtesy and kindness to a girl. To any woman.” His words rang with both conviction and sincerity, and I noted absently that even Lieutenant Lake appeared to be surprised.
I steepled my fingers in front of my face. “I apologize, Reardon. I shouldn’t have made that assumption. So, you were there in the bar with this girl, and you were fending off her advances. And your buddy was outside getting laid. What happened next?”
He shifted in his chair. “The girl, she just plastered herself up against me. And like I said, I wasn’t going to go outside with her or anything, but at the same time, I figured, there wasn’t any harm in a little, um ...”
“Flirtation?” I suggested.
“Uh, yeah, I guess. We might have been, like, kissing a little, but nothing else. And then this guy comes up to us. He grabs the girl by the arm and rips her away from me, and she falls down on the floor.” Fury infused his words. “He threw her down so hard, she knocked into someone else, another girl, and that one fell on top of the first one. I was afraid one of them, or even both, was really hurt.”
I was beginning to see where this was going. “Is that when you started to fight?”
Reardon shook his head. “No, sir. I honestly was too surprised at that point to do much more than try to help the girl. I pulled her up, and I was trying to see if she was all right, and the guy comes at us again. He starts screaming at the girl, calling her names—” He broke off. “It was clear pretty fast that they used to be together. He was saying that she was a cheating, uh, bitch, and she was yelling right back that she didn’t belong to him because there was no way she’d stick with a guy who smacked her around.”
I closed my eyes, sighing. “Okay.”
“I’ll be honest, sir, at that point, I was pissed. This guy was getting in my face, and I knew I should just get out of there, but then he, uh ...” Reardon swallowed. “He backhanded the girl. Like, hard. She would’ve hit the floor again if I hadn’t been there behind her.”
“Shit.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Fucking asshole.”
“Yeah, that was my thought exactly, sir. And maybe I should’ve told the bartender to call the cops, or maybe I should’ve just dragged the girl out of there—I thought of both of those things after—but I didn’t. I reacted. I hauled off and hit the guy, and then ... well, it all got pretty fucked up after that.”
The room fell silent. This situation wasn’t exactly the way I’d assumed it was. Reardon was a screw-up, sure; he’d admitted to that. But if even most of what he was telling me was true, there wasn’t much I could do to fault him. That was the man in me speaking, though. The company commander still had to dole out consequences.
“So you threw the first punch.” I tilted my head in question, and Reardon nodded.
“Yes, sir. I did hit him first, but I was sure he was about to go after the girl again.”
“Right, but it wasn’t self-defense. You were acting to protect another civilian.”
He nodded again. “Yes, sir.”
I glanced at Lake. “Do you know who called the police?”
“Yes, sir. The bartender did. By the time they responded, though, the, uh, victim was already unconscious.”
“Jesus Christ, Reardon. I get that you were standing up for this girl. I get that you were trying to do the right thing. But did you have to take it so far? This man, the one you hit, he’s still out of it. He might have a brain injury, the type that has serious repercussions. You gave the motherfucker a fucking concussion.” I picked up a pen to make a few notes on the paper in front of me and then tossed it down in disgust.
“Sir, I didn’t hit him that hard, and I only hit him twice, both times to the jaw. He went down the second time, landed on a table, and one of the men at that table shoved him away. That’s when he knocked his head into the bar and passed out.”
This was better, but only slightly. I addressed the lieutenant again. “Were there any witnesses to this? Is there anyone who will corroborate his story?”
Lake looked even more weary than he had before. “According to the police report, no, sir. All the people at the bar either claimed that they hadn’t seen anything or that Reardon provoked the victim.”
“What about the girl? Did anyone get her statement? Seems like she might be our best bet here, seeing that she didn’t have any reason to want to defend the victim.”
“There wasn’t any mention of her in the report, sir, and I didn’t ask about her at the station, because I hadn’t talked to Reardon at that point. I can go back and find out, though.”
“Do that,” I directed, and then paused. “On second thought, no. Send Sergeant Tulley. He might have more luck than you would.” Tulley, the platoon sergeant, wasn’t exactly a local boy, but he was from Richmond, about an hour north of us. He had a better chance than Lake did of getting information from the Petersburg PD.
