Late that afternoon, Cole sat at his desk at the Milwaukee FBI field office waiting for additional reports to come in. Two years earlier, the Bureau moved from downtown Milwaukee to its current location on Lake Drive in the nearby suburb, St. Francis. The Feds had taken out a twenty-year lease on the four-story, modern, eighty-two thousand square foot building, which previously had been home to an investment group.
He looked out his windows, facing east onto Lake Michigan. The office building was perched within one hundred yards of the shoreline. A former Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Milwaukee Division dedicated the headquarters in memory of Special Agent W. Carter Baum, who was slain in 1934 by “Baby Face” Nelson at a lodge up in Northern Wisconsin. The Director of the FBI had been on hand for the opening and called it “an awesome location, with amazing views.” He predicted the surrounding water, as well as running and biking trails, would provide great opportunities for agents and staff to “heal.” Cole hoped so.
Earlier the MPD had found a Marlin 30/30 lever action rifle on the roof of the building he had pointed out from the murder site. That model of gun was one of the most popular deer rifles in Wisconsin. It was relatively light and considered a good brush-busting gun, serviceable for shots up to two hundred yards or better with a scope. It had the stopping power to put down a two hundred and fifty-pound deer or a man with relative ease.
The 30/30 used to kill the doctor had a scope that magnified objects up to four times their natural size. The shooter hadn’t bothered to file off the rifle’s serial number, and that struck Cole as odd. They’d traced the rifle to a local dealer who’d sold it a week ago at the Waukesha Coliseum gun show, not more than thirty minutes west of Cole’s office. Now they were running the lead, tracking down the current owner of the gun.
The MPD officers who found the gun also found a lot of blood up on the roof. The CSI team collected it and estimated they got a good half pint or more. It usually didn’t take long to get blood types back from the lab, especially on a case as big as this one. But Cole hadn’t heard anything yet. That was concerning. He ran his hands through his hair and wondered what the blood would tell them. Had the shooter turned the gun on himself but lived? They’d interviewed people near the scene after the shooting and some claimed to have heard the shot. Nobody reported hearing a second shot. Crime scene photos showed what looked like a thick stream of blood, a serious wound maybe. But then there was no other blood leading away from where the kill shot was made…no blood spray or drips across the rooftop or down the stairs.
“What the hell?” he said aloud.
Cole picked up another photo from the scene. It had been enlarged and showed a small metal cross. A smudge of frozen blood clung to the side of the cross where Jesus’ right hand was nailed.
He took a deep breath and leaned forward, slumping his shoulders and resting his forearms on his desk. He laid his head down on his forearms and closed his eyes.
Cole was a down-to-earth guy, blessed with common sense. He appeared average at first glance, but wasn’t really in any way but looks. Even there his eyes, the soft hue of faded blue denim, had a light to them that women were drawn to. How else had he managed to attract his wife, scratch that, his ex-wife? Janet Stone was the drop-dead, perfect blonde who used to grace the top-rated, ten o’clock television news show on Milwaukee’s ABC affiliate. Now she read the news for Fox at the national network level. Cole hadn’t heard from her in four years. Not that he’d seen her much when they were married. She was always chasing the big news story and he was chasing the bad guys. Some of his cases were big, but most were routine. Milwaukee wasn’t the thrill a minute ride that New York, LA, or DC seemed to be. A few years back, after he solved a number of tough cases, including one that helped put the Midwest’s biggest drug dealers in federal prison, he could have had his pick of plum jobs anywhere in the country. But he turned down those opportunities to stay close to where he grew up and what he knew best. He’d been born and raised on the other side of the state in the small town of Prairie du Chien. An only child, he’d lost both parents when he was twenty-two. He hadn’t been back to Prairie since the day he helped bury them, even though the city was little more than a three-hour drive away.
Cole knew he had a good life, but it wasn’t the one he pictured for himself as a younger man. When he graduated from Marquette with first a bachelor’s in English and Philosophy and then a master’s degree in Business, he figured he’d have a wife and four kids by the time he was thirty-five. He was almost forty-five now and while he’d had a wife and lost her, he had no children. And it wasn’t for lack of trying. Janet’s obstetrician thought her slender frame contributed to that. But when the young couple became serious about having kids, they learned that Janet had a genetic anomaly that prevented pregnancy. Cole wanted to be a dad and brought up adoption on several occasions. In the end, the inability to conceive drove a silent wedge between them. Added to the stress and hours of their demanding jobs, they drifted apart and lost each other. After they split up, Cole tried to make up for that emptiness by marrying himself to his job.
Looking back, it was a fluke he ended up working for the Bureau. He’d gone to Marquette because the Division 1 school offered him a wrestling scholarship. A three-time state champ in high school, the scholarship paid for his tuition, fees, and books, and additional grant monies covered his room and board.
He made it to the NCAA final at one hundred and seventy-four pounds his junior year with a record of twenty-nine and one, his only loss coming to a senior from Iowa. He avenged that loss in the final, scoring a takedown with three seconds left in the final period to win the match and the championship. It was the first-ever for a Marquette wrestler. The school dumped its wrestling program two weeks later to make room for women’s lacrosse.
Cole and his teammates went from shocked and devastated to outraged, but the administration didn’t listen to their protests. Successful alums who’d wrestled at Marquette years earlier came forward, offering to fund the sport, but the administration’s decision was final.
Head coaches from Penn State, Iowa, and other wrestling powers offered him a full ride for his senior year. But when Marquette told him he could keep his scholarship, he became a student instead of a student-athlete for the first time in his college career.
Not many young men would walk away from the chance to win a second national title, and the chance to maybe wrestle for their country in the Olympics down the road, but Cole was at peace with his decision. He’d been wrestling hard for ten years and had nothing left to prove, at least to himself. He began dating Janet his senior year.
After graduating, he took out student loans and began a part-time job at a Milwaukee bank, in order to pursue his Master’s in Business full time. Two years later he’d worked his way up from being a teller, to a senior teller, to a professional banker. They made him a branch manager when he received his MBA, and they had bigger plans for his future.
One day a year later, Cole was coming back to the branch, carrying lunch for his team. He pushed through the front doors and stopped. He could tell something was out of place. His two tellers were stiff and wide-eyed. A person in a hoodie was addressing them. Cole looked around and saw there were no other customers in the branch.
When he turned back to the tellers, one of them handed the man in the hoodie a bag. Cole assumed it was stuffed with cash. The man in the hoodie said something else to the tellers and then came toward Cole, who was still standing in the doorway with his large, brown bag of Cantonese takeout.
The guy approached Cole, glaring, and said, “The fuck you lookin’ at?”
Cole said nothing, just stood still. He hoped the surge of adrenaline flooding his body would be mistaken for fear. He and his staff had been trained to give up the money to the bad guys and let them walk out before hitting the panic button below the counter where they worked. He knew the drill. If a bank employee intervened and got hurt, the bank paid. If the employee intervened and a customer got hurt, the bank paid. Hell, if the employee intervened and the robber got hurt, the bank often paid.
But when the robber got to within two feet, Cole couldn’t help himself. He flipped the bag of food in the guy’s face and tackled him at the same time. He had the guy face down on the floor with his arms pinned behind his back and calmly told his team to call 911. He was suspended later that day and fired by the end of the week.
The FBI has played a key role in investigating bank robberies since the early 1930s when John Dillinger was making a name for himself. But they evolved to where they only play a lead role in cases where the criminals pose a large danger or threat to the public.
Cole didn’t know it when he took the robber down, but before he’d entered his bank that day the guy had already knocked off twelve banks from Indianapolis, up through Chicago, and into Wisconsin. In two of the holdups, he shot a teller in the face for being too slow; one was dead and the other fighting for her life. Cole found out when the police arrived at his branch, that the guy he’d subdued had two 9 mm handguns on him when he’d tackled him.
Two weeks after he was fired, Cole received a commendation for heroism from the FBI and the Milwaukee Police Department. The FBI agent who presented the commendation did a background check on Cole and encouraged him to consider a job with the Bureau. He was twenty-five when he applied. The Bureau accepts applicants between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-seven and only takes US citizens. They want their candidates to have at least a four-year degree and prefer three years of professional experience.
Cole had already passed a rigorous physical test, background check, and medical exam in Milwaukee before heading to Quantico, Virginia.
The physical test consisted of five elements, all of them timed; pushups, sit-ups, 300-meter and 1.5-mile runs, and pull-ups. Each category offered a maximum of 10 points, and candidates had to score at least one point in each and 20 total to pass. The average score was 35. In his class of 40 candidates, Cole was the lone candidate to score a perfect 50.
When he arrived at Quantico, he took a written test that covered logical reasoning and situational judgment and Cole was the first to finish. The day following that test he was called back in and told to retake the test, alone this time.
He wondered what was up, but they offered no explanation. He finished the test faster this time. He was never told why they wanted him to retake the test, or that his scores on the two exams were the two highest ever recorded at the Academy. The person who’d scored the next highest on the test was the agency’s current Director. Cole’s personnel file grew.
They put him through their 21-week training program and he continued to excel. He learned case exercises, firearms training, and operational skills. He’d grown up hunting whitetail deer, grouse, ducks, rabbits, and squirrels. He was comfortable with shotgun and rifle alike. He worked hard to become proficient with handguns.
When they drilled on operational skills like grappling, control holds and disarming techniques, Cole was at the head of the class. Even his instructors could learn from a world-class wrestler.
Lastly, he learned about interviewing, report writing, advanced interrogation techniques, law, and forensic science. He absorbed it all and soon found himself an agent of the FBI.
The Bureau tried to steer him to jobs in DC or New York, but there was an opening in the Milwaukee field office and he jumped at it. He’d been dating Janet Stone for almost four years and planned to go “home” and propose. He did just that and she said, “Yes.”