Chapter 7 - The Investigator
The Fifth District investigation took six weeks.
Nakamura ran it. He was thorough and he was patient and he was not in a hurry, and every single person he interviewed came away feeling that they had been listened to and that they had not, quite, been let off the hook.
He interviewed the five crewmen from the rescue boat. He interviewed Lieutenant Commander Chen three times. He interviewed the tower watch supervisor, the dispatcher, the harbor master, the state fish and wildlife officer who had received Marcus Dawson's complaints, and the state prosecutor who had declined to file charges. He interviewed Eli Dawson and Maria Dawson. He interviewed two of the poachers. He interviewed Victor Gage, who lied. He interviewed Commander Rusk, who lied more.
He read the launch record and the watch log and the tower log and the buoy tag and the chart. He listened to the radio recording sixty-one times. He drove to Trenton and spent two days with the state police. He drove to Washington and spent one day with the Coast Guard's Office of Investigations.
And then he wrote a report.
The report was 84 pages long.
It said, in careful language, that the launch order issued to the rescue swimmer on the night of October 14 had been altered at the direction of Commander Colin Rusk. It said that Commander Rusk had directed Lieutenant Commander Amy Chen to send the rescue swimmer to sector 4, contrary to the actual distress call, and that he had then altered the tower log at 03:15 the following morning to conceal the change. It said that Commander Rusk had done so because the vessels involved in the incident were engaged in illegal fishing in sector 2 under the protection of his brother-in-law, Victor Gage. It said that Marcus Dawson had been fired upon by those vessels and had died as a result. It said that the rescue swimmer, Seaman Leah Brooks, had acted correctly and courageously in redirecting her boat to sector 2 against a direct order and in recovering the boy and the body.
It recommended that Commander Rusk be relieved of duty, charged with negligent homicide, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and falsification of official records. It recommended that Victor Gage be charged with murder, conspiracy, and smuggling. It recommended that Lieutenant Commander Chen be granted testimonial immunity in exchange for her cooperation. It recommended that Seaman Brooks be restored to duty and awarded the Coast Guard Achievement Medal.
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The report was forwarded to the Fifth District commander on a Tuesday. The Fifth District commander signed off on it on a Thursday. Commander Rusk was relieved of duty on a Friday.
He was charged on the following Monday. He was arrested on the following Wednesday. He was placed in pretrial confinement at the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, on the following Friday, where he remained until his court-martial began the following spring.
