XXI. An October Monday, 2004

We had lived in our little middle class neighborhood since around 2000 and had always been those neighbors who like to know their neighbors and so we do. We stand in our front yards visiting with people we know and somewhat strangers expect for the fact that they walk by our house daily. Our neighborhood is very walk-able and safe.

Directly across the street lived the Hendricks. He’s retired Air force and she a retired school teacher. They had the house built n 1979. Mr. Hendricks refused to wave at or even acknowledge me. Our house had been a rental for sometime before we bought it so he had probably become accustomed to not bothering with getting to know the neighbors. I didn’t care and continued to wave when ever I saw him. Mrs. Hendricks always waved.

Next door to them, to the right, lived Wayne and Letie. Wayne had lived there since he had the house built. Wayne was divorced and just a good ole country boy on the edge of retirement. Letie showed up one weekend, a waitress at a bar Wayne frequented and became part of our neighborhood. We had always gotten along with Wayne and Letie was a delight and nice addition to our group. She would have two of her grandchildren there often and they seemed like a good fit in their retirement years.

On a quiet October Monday afternoon the weather had cooled a bit so we decided to take our dogs for a short walk. Elderly and small this amounts to a couple of blocks up the street, across and then back down the other side. This would always take us in front of Wayne’s house where he was usually sitting with Letie in his open garage having a cold beer. There would be a short exchange of common pleasantry’s. Today the garage was open but Wayne and Letie were not there. No big deal. We crossed the street and went about our routine. I fed the dogs as Lane began preparing dinner.

I had just taken my shoes off when I heard a loud bang right in front of our house and then the repeat. I yelled out to Lane “that was not a car backfire. that was a gunshot”. As I ran out of the house, grabbing a phone and dialing 911 I heard the second shot. I was on the phone with a 911 operator as I cautiously walked across the street barefooted. I was explaining what I had heard…I remember how quiet it was in that moment, not a sound. Lane was about 20 feet behind me when we saw the air conditioning unit fly out of the bedroom window at teh back of the house and the two grandchildren, 9 and 11 crawling out the window. By this time I could see a body laying in the driveway on the other side of Wayne’s truck as did Lane. He instinctively shielded the children and hustled them back across the street to our house. We had no idea what was happening…was this a home invasion…was there an active shooter in the house

I continued up the sidewalk toward the open garage narrating for the operator what I was seeing. As I came around the edge of his truck I saw him lying there between the vehicles. I’ll never forget this. The image is permanently engraved in my minds eye, like a photo or short film. I saw the gun in his hand. his twisted body and then my focus locked on Wayne’s face…his eyes were open…those blue eyes. As my gaze slowly shifted upward and just above his brow…there was nothing but a gray cavern outlined by a jagged line. I then looked beyond him into the garage where Letie lay, her head in an ever increasing pool of blood. The operator asked me to stay on the line until the emergency services arrived. I could hear numerous sirens in the distance getting closer.

The ambulance was the first to arrive. one of the paramedics threw up. A couple of neighbors approached and I warned them off as they wouldn’t want to see this as I explained what had happened. Later in the evening as we were processing this, I would realize that I was in a protective mode, circling them. It may sound odd, but being this close to death is an intimate experience for me. I wasn’t horrified, I was heart broken and confused. I didn’t want people to see them like this..in such a vulnerable state.

Meanwhile back at our house Lane was protecting and comforting the children in our open garage. They did not yet know what had happened. They had heard the shots and ran from them. He had gotten a phone number from the older boy and called his mother, Letie’s daughter. Within a matter of minutes there were firetrucks and dozens of state and local law enforcement vehicles swarming our block. I informed the first officer I encounter that I am the 911 caller and we have the children across the street. It is chaotic and he asks if we can keep them safe and sequestered. The crime scene tape went up at both ends of our block. I made my way across the street to our house.

As I am standing there, trying to take it all in, I look over to our next door neighbors house. There in the middle of the yard stands Diane. She was an acceptation. She wanted nothing to with any neighbor. Her backyard fence blew over a year earlier and she called the police when we, being good neighbors, came over and righted it. She looked like she was shaking. I walked over and asked if she was OK. “No”She had walked to her mailbox and as she opens it she hears the first shot. right behind her. She turns just as Wayne steps out of the garage, Yells “damn it, Letie”, puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. I gently helped her back to our house and we got her settled on our front porch. The authorities were starting to talk to the witnesses.

Soon a large crowd and the media are at both ends of our street. We are on the corner so they are yelling questions at us which we ignore. We are in our own bubble behind the caution tape. I see Mr Hendricks come out of his house and walk to the end of his porch. He sees me, we make eye contact and he yells, “what is going on out here”. It doesn’t even register that this the first time he has spoken to me since we moved in 4 years earlier. I yell back “Wayne killed Letie and then killed himself”. With a softened tone, he responded, “well why the hell did he do that” I shrugged and he turned and walked back into the house.

Letie’s children had arrived by this time, two large groups, one on each end of the block. They were yelling accusations back and forth about blame. “I warned you” “I knew this would happen” “I told you he would kill her”. The police would not let them have contact with the children at the crime scene. They were now in the custody of child welfare until this got sorted out. Social workers were talking with Diane and took her elsewhere as well. I gave my statement to the investigator in charge and then we found ourselves alone on our porch as the chaos ensued. I wondered why no one asked if we were OK. I guess they just assumed a couple of men must be “OK”…not really. This was a traumatic loss..friends, neighbors…human beings regardless of the circumstances.

We slipped back into our home, in shock and not sure what to do. We both wandered around the a bit, from room to room and then simultaneously came together in the middle of the den and just held each other. We had just lost two friends. We sat and started to unpack what had just happened over the last hour. I had been helping them build a deck on the front of their house a few months earlier when I witnessed Wayne have a verbal explosion at Letie over a minor mistake. I had jokingly told Lane “he’s going to kill her someday” not really meaning or dwelling on it. My feet felt like I had been walking on broken glass. Upon further examination it turned out they we full of skull fragments. We had to use tweezers to remove them. I would occasionally go out on the front porch to assess the situation. The crowds had dispersed but the investigation continued. The bodies lay where they had fallen. I could still see Wayne from our porch, now covered by a lite blue tarp as it had stared to lightly rain. They did not remove them until late in the evening.

Still in shock the next morning, we both went to work. An attempt to touch the familiar, normalcy…home was not normal or familiar at the moment. I walked to my truck and never once looked across the street. My work family was very supportive and had no problem with me leaving for home within a few hours of arriving there. I called to let Lane know I was on my way home, he was as well.

It was cooler than the day before. Cloudy and bit windy. I backed into our drive and just sat there looking across the street. It was surreal. The vehicles were gone, garage door closed but there was a large thick pool of blood where Wayne had laid. Leaves came rolling across the driveway, sticking to it. They were gone, never to return. I was mad at Wayne for the first time since this began the afternoon before. Lane arrived. We looked out front a few hours later and there were Letie’s children cleaning the blood out of the garage and driveway. This is how we found out that the cleaning of a crime scene is the responsibility of the next of kin. We walked over and offered out assistance. They all stopped and thanked us for being so kind to their mother, her grandchildren and all we had done the day before. We had never met them but their mother had evidently had nothing but good things to say about us. They politely declined our offer, which we understood, an intimate situation. They went back to hosing down the garage and driveway.

I was once again the surreal observer as the pink tinged water ran down the gutter carrying the fall leaves of amber, purple and gold away with what was left of our neighbors lives.

These types of events change people, for better or worse. Mr Hendricks waved and spoke to me every-time we saw each-other from that day on up until a few years later when he would pass peacefully. Wayne had been his neighbor since 1979. We never spoke about Wayne and Letie.

Diane become somewhat of a recluse, more so than she had been. The spring after the event, I just started mowing her yard for her. I would see her leave for church and mow it while she was away. A few months later she came home early and caught me. “Thank you, I had no idea who was doing this but I really appreciate it”. This is when we found out she was selling her house. It was understandable given what she had seen and would be reminded of each time she walked out her front door. The neighbor next door to her did so as well. We helped her get the house in shape to be put on the market.

We continue to be “those neighbors who talk to everyone”. Maybe more so now than we did before as we did not realize what was going on across the street, inside the home of friends, for sometime before the ending. There was evidently considerable domestic violence from both of them. We and our neighbors had each witnessed separate events that we had not shared with each other. I had been there when they got into it over the deck. The police had been there numerous times which we never knew about. Just a week before a neighbor witnessed Letie hitting Wayne over the head with a baseball bat leaving him unconscious in the driveway. He left and came back a week later, probably with an untreated concussion, and was trying to move her or himself out when the final encounter unfolded in the garage.

Turns out, we were OK after all. This had just strengthened our bond and determination to enjoy every moment we have, the good and the bad. We would never allow our relationship to devolve into that end. Our lives were not so much changed as they were reaffirmed.

Two Months later

I pulled into work around 6:30 am. As I drove around to the back of the building my headlights illuminated something unexpected in the driveway to the main entrance of our facility. A body…