THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: BRINGING WORK HOME WITH YOU

Yes sir. I guess, uh…Marcus was about 4? When he uh…started talking about Duppy. Of course, at first I didn’t pay much attention. I was clocking 80 hours a week in the field and FBI Seattle was expanding, and well, so was my case load. I only saw him late at night, or very early in the morning, asleep, and Kit was great about it, as usual. She knew I was doing the job I signed up to do. That she had signed up to help me do. There wasn’t any problem there. Isn’t any problem, I mean. That is to say, I didn't hear much about it. 

The first time? I don’t know. 2018? He told me about Duppy. Yeah. Okay. Well, he said Duppy was a “man” that lived in his room, and that was about it, really. I mean, he was four. It didn’t exactly raise any alarm bells. 

At the time. I mean.

Kit would talk about it from time to time, but never in any way that made me nervous. Little kids make up things. They talk to invisible things. It’s…normal. That’s kids, man. 

Okay, well yeah. The first time Kit called me worried about anything was the shoes. This was…Christmas, or just after Christmas last year? So Marcus had just turned 5. The night before, Kit told me something odd enough to cut through the exhaustion I felt and I remember sitting up in the bed in the middle of the night trying to puzzle it out. 

Kit’s a stay-at-home-mom. It’s what she always wanted to be. She spends her day doing all this stuff to keep the house spinning. Endless busy work. Moving around the house a lot. Marcus had no school because of the holiday, but he was always a…quiet kid. So he’d putter around the house too, playing with his Legos on the stairs, in the laundry room, in his room. I’m saying this because in a 3,000 square foot house, a lot of time can pass without one seeing the other. 

Kit later told me that Marcus had stopped playing in his room altogether, and preferred downstairs, but again, I didn’t think too much of it. Anyway, this is what we thought happened then, with the shoes. Kit claimed that Marcus had gathered all the shoes in the house and moved them to the aluminum garbage can off the sliding patio door. Just dumped them all in. She was so shocked by it, she just unloaded all the shoes and put them back, and didn’t say a word to Marcus. Marcus, for his part, never mentioned anything about it.

Now, I had no reason to doubt my wife, but that was just odd. Marcus just didn’t do stuff like that.  

That Sunday I asked him about it, and you know, this where I started to feel nervous about it. “Duppy did it. The shadow. He doesn’t like shoes.” Now, he said this matter-of-factly, and I guess, looking back, I can see why. He’d been living with Duppy for a year then. He knew Duppy. And you have to believe me when I say, this is a real thing, sir. I didn’t believe it then, but it’s definitely something. A thing. That's happening.

Yeah. Okay. The incident on February 3? The…uh…unintentional firearm discharge? Okay. Well. Uh. I woke at approximately 2 AM because Kit was…uh…screaming. The next part — and I assure you sir, I was not asleep — is kind of… Something was pulling her out of the bed. Like…a shadow man. 5’ tall, no features, darker than the room. Yes, I could see limbs. I could even see fingers! It was strong, whatever it was. I rolled out of bed and Kit’s right leg was being pulled up and out of bed towards the ceiling. Somehow I opened the gun safe, and a I fired one round from the right side ground in the master bedroom on an upward angle — there was only the attic above us. 

After the explosion, it vanished instantly. By the time my eyes could see again, it was gone. Kit was on the bed struggling to turn on the lights. It seemed like the police were there instantly. All the screaming. It’s a good neighborhood. I filed the report and said it was unintentional discharge of my firearm. No one asked very many questions. What else was I going to do?

And how do you know Howard? I mean. Howard told me to call you about... That you…knew…something about this?  

Yes sir. Yes sir. I remember the sting. Shaheed Khan the uh…leader of the Caribbean gang the uh…Phantom Squad. The uh…Federal Way raid. Yes. I was there, sir, but what…

Yes. Yes I do remember it. The red box. The suspect had a red box on his desk. 

Yes, it did have symbols carved in…yes, that’s it. 

What do you mean did I touch the box? Yes. Of course I did. I was responsible for maintaining the chain of evidence. That's my signature there.

What does that have to do with it?