Fire Drill Part 3.0- Chief Carlyle
Part III- Authorities
Chief Carlyle
March 10th, 2031. 0715h. Morning here in the outskirts of Deertrack is certainly a great deal quieter than it is back where I live in the Twin Cities. I awoke almost twenty minutes ago not to the sound of my cell phone’s programmed alarm, or the shouting of neighbors heard through paper-thin walls, or the sound of angry motorists laying on their horns with the kind of white knuckle rage that belongs almost exclusively to those human beings whose only available outlet for aggression seems to come while they’re behind the wheel of a vehicle. No, what awoke me was the stillness of this place.
For readers who don’t live in a major metro, this might strike you as a whole lot of nonsense, or the kind of urban neurosis one only suffers when living in a busy city environment. Yet here, in Deertrack, Georgia, that stillness is not of the sort commonly associated with life in ‘the sticks’, as it were. Here, it feels more like the entirety of the town is holding its breath, hoping that the looming, unseen threat lurking nearby will creep past before it takes notice of it.
In a way, it is. The threat is the coming anniversary, and everything it represents. The people of Deertrack will already undoubtedly have tried, over ten years, to do whatever is in their power to put the incident behind them. In a few weeks, however, they’ll be establishing a memorial of a thus-far undisclosed sort, permanently setting in place a public display acknowledging the lives that were lost on April 17th, 2021.
These maudlin sorts of rituals and symbols can be found in several other places throughout the United States, from the Vietnam Memorial Wall to the Ground Zero monument in New York City. The cynical part of me wants to sometimes regard such things as childish nonsense, no better than smudging the inside of a purportedly haunted house with burning sage in order to banish or dispel malicious spirits.
**
0750h. One shower and two cups of coffee later, I’m feeling a great deal more human, and less prickly. Having seen those last couple of lines I’d written before, I believe the more charitable perspective that I endeavor to view the world with is due its fair share of time to reflect on the nature of memorials and rituals.
In a way, the upcoming memorial, whatever it may take the form of, is exactly what I alluded to before, a kind of cleansing exercise, a ward to be set against the malformed and malignant shadow given form by the brutality of the past. In cultures prior to what we think of as the ‘Post-Enlightenment’, specialized priests, shamen, or spiritual guides and advisors would be tasked with the sacred duty of cleansing homes, settlements, or entire territories of foul or wicked essences, to protect their citizenry and flock from external forces that intended them harm or ill will. These individuals were revered, respected, and sought council from by lay folk in their communities, because nobody else was believed to be capable of standing against these unseen specters that gnawed at the human psyche or spirit.
In the modern era, we have far fewer such persons in our society, and in lieu of dances or incantations of dead languages or mystical phrases or metaphorical offerings and sacrifices, we instead erect permanent or semi-permanent structures as reminders of what has been lost. The narrative attached to these markers is vastly different than what had accompanied those olden rituals, though the intention is precisely the same.
‘Protect us from the evil without, and the evil within’.
**
1122h. I sit now in Jerry’s, a quaint little diner situated perhaps three minutes’ walk away from the town square in the middle of Deertrack, and that’s if the walker is moving at the abysmal pace of the chronically lazy or lame. Jerry’s interior carries the same kind of theme that it has since it was first established back in 1974, when it was opened under the management of one Jerald Hoffer. Hoffer was a born-and-raised local from Deertrack himself, who joined the Army when he was just out of high school in order to serve in Korea. Remaining in the military after that conflict, he signed on to deploy overseas once again when the Vietnam War required able bodies to serve. But after a lone tour, Jerry was given an honorable medical discharge, having suffered several gunshot wounds and severe burns on his back and legs.
Upon his return to the States, Jerry spent time recovering in a military medical facility for a couple of years before finally being released to see to himself. Now, Jerry had been an extremely frugal young man, and had hardly spent a dime of the hard-earned money that was his government paycheck while enlisted. As a result, he’d been able to more than afford to make his way back to his hometown, and purchase the building that had once been a cozy little inn at the heart of town, converting the lower level into a diner, and the upper level into his own home.
Jerry doesn’t run Jerry’s anymore; his youngest son, Bart, mans the grill and the coffeepot for the local clientele that are his source of income and pride. When I came in and seated myself, Bart didn’t seem to recognize me, which might be for the best. The décor in Jerry’s is all vintage military, the walls plastered in wallpaper designed to look like columns of old newspaper pages from the Korean, Vietnam, and first Persian Gulf War. The tables are almost all recovered from old officers’ and NCO clubs from various bases in the states of the American Southeast. The flags of the various branches of the military hang in a row above the counter area, where solo diners can sit and have a cuppa or a small breakfast order and share local happenings with one another.
It is, it would seem, an enduring theme for the folk of Deertrack. If you’re wondering what I mean by that, allow me a brief moment to quote some statistics, compliments of the Georgia Department of Education. According to their numbers, from the period starting in 1950 all the way to 2005, approximately 23% of all graduating male students from the four high schools that have served the township have gone on to enlist in one of the branches of the armed forces. Of that body of personnel, roughly half served as ‘lifers’, career military men who remained in active or reserve status until a minimum of twenty years total were served. Over that same period, approximately 5% of all graduating female students from those same schools also enlisted. That may not seem like many compared to their male counterparts, but consider this question: what other town or city in this country can boast the same kind of numbers?
The entire reason I’m sitting here and enjoying my after-meal chocolate shake, other than the fact that I am an absolute glutton for sweets and I just knew that Jerry’s shake recipe hasn’t changed since I was a child growing up here, is that as I was heading toward the Deertrack Police Station, I received a call from Chief Felix Carlyle, asking if we could push back our sit-down to interview by an hour. I told him this was no problem whatsoever, that it would give me a chance to do a little walking around downtown and to grab a bite at Jerry’s.
When I pulled up just a few yards past the entrance of the diner to the nearest available parking spot, I found myself staring at the town square. Most of the area appeared largely unchanged, at first; a simple grassy expanse, roughly the size of a high school gymnasium, stood smack in the middle of a sweep of businesses in the little downtown area of this quiet, cozy burb. There are a few trees to give it a bit of natural ambiance, a concrete-based gazebo which serves as a kind of unofficial central town meet-up spot, and rows of benches surrounding said gazebo. There are a couple of picnic tables here and there dotted around the square, but they don’t appear to be in the best of shape, even from the distance of my rental car.
But there was one thing out of place, and if I angle my head just right, I can see it right now. There’s a tent of some sort, a bright orange construction tarp, standing about ten yards to the side of the gazebo, and towering half as tall as the gorgeously refinished white-and-blue gazebo itself.
It took a moment for me to realize that the gazebo hadn’t been white-and-blue when I was growing up. Back then, it had been a solid, dull dark red color. Those are the colors of Delta Heights High School, I realize.
And then, I wonder when the gazebo got its fresh coat of paint and repairs.
**
[Interview format from Tabitha Crowell exchange will soon return for my conversation with Chief Carlyle]
When entering the Deertrack Police Department station, anyone over the height of 6’3” will invariably have to duck their heads, as the front double glass doors are curiously short in stature. The entire building isn’t much larger than the average American convenience store, though it is not quite so garishly lit, thank God. Unlike stations in metropolitan centers, there’s no imposing wooden partition dividing the front waiting area from the desks of the officers who serve this township. Instead, there is a broad oak desk, belonging to a duty officer in the black button uniform shirt and vest of the department. When I arrived, this individual was a broad, doughy-faced woman of indeterminate middle age with arms straining against the fabric of her uniform. This is not to imply the woman was obese; rather, it is to imply that she looks like she could probably lift her desk over her own head from a dead start, and with no need for assistance.
She smiled at me when I cleared my throat, and the transformation that came over her expression was one that I had once known, but become unaccustomed to, living in the Midwest. In Minnesota, I’ve come to notice, people usually wear their state of mind on their faces, and aren’t apt to alter their expression unless absolutely necessary or if they’re taken by surprise. Here, in the south, though, people seem to possess a more mercurial relationship with external expressiveness. The mere arrival of someone who has nothing to do with whatever’s occupying their current attention resets their presenting mood to one of indulgent attentiveness, as if they were always happy to engage the newcomer.
I always liked that about growing up around these parts.
After asking how she might help me, Officer Nhylen got up and escorted me through the little walkways of the desks toward the lone office which had shutters and its own solid oak door, the glass bearing the title and name of their ranking officer- Chief Felix Carlyle. I could see him through the door’s central glass, an athletically built African-American man of early middle age, his uniform crisp and unsullied, head bent down toward his desk as he looks at a sheaf of papers before him. Officer Nhylen knocks lightly on the glass, and Chief Carlyle’s head whips up, his clear, ready eyes locking on her like the striking bite of an adder. This is a man who is never caught unprepared, which I must say, is reassuring when talking about the law enforcement officer in charge of the area.
Chief Carlyle waved us in, rising from his seat as Officer Nhylen pushed the door open. The Officer didn’t step inside, but I felt her hand firmly pressing against the small of my back to ensure that I went inside. For just a moment, I felt like I was being offered up as a sacrifice to some angry, ancient god. Felix Carlyle moves with the wiriness and power that puts one in mind of a prowling jungle cat, visible even in the brief motions of rising from his seat and coming around his desk to offer me his hand.
The grip he offers, however, is firm, but reserved, as if he doesn’t want to maintain contact in the event he should need that hand back in order to draw his sidearm.
**
MH: You don’t mind, do you? [waggling digital voice recorder device]
Chief Felix Carlyle (henceforth CC): Naw, that’s fine, Mister Hayes. Do you want some coffee or tea?
MH: Coffee’s always welcome. [The Chief makes a quick move to the door of his office and makes a silent hand gesture to one of the other officers seated in the bullpen, then slips back to his seat, leaving the door slightly open.] Do you want to wait until the door can be shut?
CC: Probably for the best. [There is only a minute’s pause before two cups bearing the shield of the Deertrack Police Department are brought in. Carlyle pushes back from his desk to open a minifridge set in the wall behind him, producing a small container of creamer. From a desk drawer, several sugar packets and a couple of spoons.] So, I understand you’re from here. [The office door shuts behind me]
MH: Born and raised, over on Trail Street.
CC: Near the old Texaco station?
MH: Yeah, my folks’ house was the one right next to the lot. I saw on my way over here that the station itself is gone now. When did that happen?
CC: Just over a year ago, actually. One of the Krogers’ trees got blown over in that storm we got hit with a little while back, crashed right through the old building. Damn near demolished the whole thing. It was a lucky fall, though, because if the winds had been blowing the other way, it would’ve gone through their house.
MH: That would’ve been terrible. I haven’t gone to introduce myself to them yet. Good family?
CC: Great folks, yeah. Dan Kroger runs a kind of outdoorsman’s shop on the north end of town, ‘Grand Adventures’ he calls it, and Lisa’s a kindergarten teacher at Oakview. They got a couple of kids, Tanner and Jessica.
MH: A family again, that’s good. I was worried when I sold the house that the space wouldn’t be put to good use. [I turned on my OneNote tablet at this point, and cleared my throat, trying to determine which question I wanted to ask first. I decided to finally get rolling after a minute.] How long have you been an Officer here in Deertrack?
CC: I’ve been serving Deertrack since 2018. I was assigned to this department after graduating from the police academy up in Atlanta, part of a diversity program the state had in place at the time. When I got here, there were no other African-American officers serving Deertrack. And as you may have figured out by now, I’m now the only one.
MH: Does that trouble you at all, the imbalance in representation among your body of patrolmen?
CC: [with a laugh] No, it don’t bother me. It’s not like there’ve never been other black officers through here, they just don’t stick around for very long. This town is pretty peaceful, by and by, and we can’t keep a lot of our people here for more than a couple of years at a time. Positions come open in other towns, or up north in the metro, and people skedaddle. Nhylen and I are the only two still here from back when I started.
MH: Has she ever expressed interest in going elsewhere?
CC: I think she would have, if her folks were still around. She’s from Virginia originally, and I think she was aiming to head back there about four years back, when I won the election to become Chief here. But when her mother passed, I think it took the wind out of her sails. She already had friends here, and a sense of the community around herself. I’m glad she’s stuck around.
[There is a moment’s quiet as I gird myself to broach the main subject I’ve come to speak with Chief Carlyle about]
MH: The anniversary. [There is a sigh so weary but expectant here from the Chief that it puts me in mind of the old adage, ‘Don’t Shoot the Messenger’.] It’s been ten years, soon.
CC: Yeah. Ten years. [Carlyle wipes at his mouth absently, folding his arms over his chest as he leans back with a creak in his chair.] But I can remember it, sure as I could tell you what I was watching on TV this morning before I came in for my shift today. I’m the only officer still serving here today who was there at Delta Heights the day it happened.
MH: What happened to the other officers?
CC: Most of them transferred, stayed in the field, you know? [Here, the Chief leans forward, elbows on the desk blotter, chin on his cupped hands, looking not at me, but directly ahead, as if out at the other officers seated out at their desks between patrol runs.] But a couple of them, that had been at Delta Heights when it all went down? [Here, his eyes angled over to me quickly, then darted away again]. Let’s just say that the polite way of putting has always been, ‘they accidentally discharged their weapons while cleaning them at home’.
MH: That must’ve been hard on you, having been there yourself.
CC: You have no idea. I’ve had guys serving with me and under my command since then, folks who’ve been overseas in the military, in warzones, and when I tell them what it was like, they get real quiet. I think it’s because, for them, they expected to see it, and it was so far from home. Delta Heights, though? That shit was right here, in MY town, where I live, every day. They can’t quite really imagine it, despite all the horrors they must’ve seen during their service.
[Fifteen minute pause while I excuse myself to step outside of the station’s rear entrance for a cigarette. The Chief himself doesn’t indulge, though I end up chatting a little with Officer Nhylen while she enjoys a vaping device. I sensed during our banter that she might well have been attempting a light bit of flirtation, and I indulge her briefly in it. It wouldn’t have felt right to come right out and tell her that she simply wasn’t my type]
MH: Thank you for indulging me in that break.
CC: We all got our habits, Mister Hayes. [As if to demonstrate this, the Chief slides open the top-right drawer of his desk and waggles a half-emptied bag of Jolly Ranchers for my view with a grin, which immediately takes a few years off of his otherwise too-serious expression] Care for one?
MH: Sure. You got a lemon one in there? [rummaging] Thank you kindly.
CC: Not a problem. I always loved these strawberry ones, myself, but I don’t have a favorite, per se.
[A moment’s quiet while I move to another of my less pleasant questions]
MH: It was remarked upon by several outlets, in the days after the incident at Delta Heights on April 17th, 2021, that the carnage unleashed on the student body and staff was horrific, but that some authorities within the police department, speaking on condition of anonymity at the time, said it could have been much worse. Can you elaborate on that in any way?
CC: At this point, yes, I can. You see, our switchboard is synced up with the fire department’s, and the EMS vans that deploy out of their firehouse. When they get a fire alarm signal, it kicks our dispatch a signal, and the feed automatically turns on our dispatcher’s mic. Normally, we’ll get a head’s up from the 911 dispatch office that catches calls for our district up in Atlanta, and they bounce it back here to one of our people.
MH: Sounds a little convoluted.
CC: It was, at the time. Normally, we wouldn’t have thought much of a fire alarm being pulled at Delta Heights at the time; they’d had a bunch of false alarms, some dumbass kids playing around, trying to ditch out of class or something we figured. Except this time, only a couple of minutes after the fire station got pinged, we got a relay from the 911 office that someone was calling from inside the school, saying they’d seen a couple of boys heading to the woods near the school earlier that morning with rifles, and the caller didn’t think this was a normal fire drill. We got the green light to load up and get everybody up to Delta Heights right then and there, everybody in the station and out on patrol, drop everything else and boot over to the high school.
MH: Was the call ever traced?
CC: Yeah, it came from one of the few landlines in the school itself, in the teachers’ lounge. But I’ve heard the recording from the archives; it was a kid’s voice on the line, a boy. But we never spent a lot of time trying to figure out who made that call. I regret that, sometimes, because whoever he was, he probably kept those two from taking their rampage out into the town proper.
MH: Do you really think it would have gone beyond the school?
CC: I know it would have. [Chief Carlyle at this juncture got up from his chair, swept around the desk in the snap of a finger, and drew the blinds over both windows looking into the office. Quickly, he returned to his side of his desk, using the touchscreen interface of his console computer to access something. He turned the Monitor toward me, and I saw what looked like the steering wheel and center console of a patrolcar cruiser’s interior. In the lower-right corner of the screen, there is a time stamp: it is clearly marked mere minutes after the incident’s conclusion.
CC [audio playing from body camera footage]: This is car 1-2, Officer Carlyle, returning to home station with suspect in custody, over. [static feedback, and I can just barely see over the dashboard, due to the low position of the camera worn on the front of Carlyle’s uniform at the time, as he attempts to weave through the congestion of squad cars, ambulances, and the town’s only two fire engines as they choke the area fronting the school almost to the point of madness.]
Dispatcher: Home station to car 1-2, we acknowledge. Does the suspect have a name, over?
CC [on video playback]: I found a student ID in his back pocket during the arrest, home station. Suspect is Aaron Sitanski, senior at Delta Heights, over. [There is, at this point on the playback, a curious background noise. The Chief uses his touchscreen controls to isolate the background noise at this point.]
Sitanski [on playback]: Really is a shame, such a shame, there were so many places to go, but they got there so quick, too quick, could have really added to the fun [muttering becomes incoherent at this juncture, and the Chief terminates the playback and swivels the screen back toward himself, away from me]
MH: How come I’ve never heard of this?
CC: Nobody has. You’re the first. God willing, it’s the last time I’ll hear anything like that again in my life. [Brief pause as I consult my OneNote again, opting instead for the question that has just come into my head]
MH: Sitanski surrendered to authorities, but Brandon Norris died in a shootout with your people. Did Sitanski take any shots at you?
CC: No, he didn’t. I was the third patrol car to swing up by the north field where the boys were, and Sitanski was already moving from a kneeling position to prone on his stomach when I got up out of my vehicle. He’d tossed his rifle pretty far out of reach when I took aim on Norris and opened fire.
MH: Norris wasn’t already down?
CC: No, he wasn’t. [Heavy sigh, shake of his head] I don’t know what kept that boy on his feet by the time I took a shot, because he’d already been hit five or six times, at least four of them center-mass. I only took two shots, one went off target, and the second hit him in the leg. But then one of our other people put one through his forehead, and that was ball game.
MH: Were you involved, in any capacity, in the follow-up investigation led by the FBI?
CC: Only tangentially. [The Chief, here, seems to relax a little, the memory of the carnage he’d arrived to find now pushed beyond.] I was asked to check into Norris’s home, try to find any kind of sign that he was planning this with Sitanski. Thing was, we didn’t find any kind of enemies list, or manifesto, or anything like that. Everybody assumed we were going to uncover a copy of ‘Mein Kampf’ or ‘Helter Skelter’, but there was nothing.
MH: Did any of it strike you as racially motivated?
CC: No, it didn’t. You look at all the kids, all the staff, who got killed or injured, and you realize that those two boys didn’t care about that shit. They just wanted a slaughter.
MH: And the explosives, how do you think that played into their plans?
CC: Obviously, they used the IEDs to maximize the damage they were going to do. But placing them in the fire drill gathering spots, that required reconnaissance, information collection, tactical planning. If those two could have held off, they could have put those skills to use in the military, like so many kids have gone on to do from this area. But that’s the thing about ‘what if’, Mister Hayes; it’s not ‘what was’.
[At this juncture, Chief Carlyle drew back in his chair in a way that all but shut the door on any further questions. I thanked him for the opportunity and headed out, checking my phone for any messages or voicemails I had missed during our conversation. An email was waiting for me, and will lead to the next section.]