"I'm just glad you finally went to the shelter, Mom." What he really wanted to ask her was how she managed to keep attracting the same kind of man; the kind who used women like a punching bag. He still secretly hated his own father for the things he'd done to her. But even after he finally left, she'd been beaten by four out of the five men with whom she'd lived. He knew his mother, Caroline Knight, had no money and a serious drug problem, but she was still his mother and he'd always love her even when there was precious little he could do for her.
During his early life, things had seemed relatively normal around home with 'relatively' being the key word. He was too young to know that his mother wore long sleeves even during the summer in Florida to cover up the bruises left by his father. He had no reason to doubt her explanations for why she had the occasional black eye or her arm was in a sling. But around the time he turned ten, he began suspecting something was wrong. He didn't know what it was, but he could sense the pieces didn't fit. By the time he was 12, his friends started making comments and it became clearer even though he still didn't know for sure.
His father, Glenn, was a respected man in their Jacksonville community and no one would have believed him capable, let alone guilty of, beating his wife the way he often did. That was because he was very, very good at never leaving visible marks that couldn't be covered up with clothing or makeup. Those rare times when he did, his wife knew how to sell the latest 'accident' she'd recently had with sincerely-told stories about how she'd 'tripped' or 'fell down the stairs' or 'I'm such a klutz!'
That was around the same time she'd turned to cocaine for an escape; for some temporary relief from reality. His parents had money and plenty of it, and the one thing Caroline was good at was accounting. In fact, she even had a degree in it which was part of the reason his parents had met. She was 22 and just out of Florida State University when she began working in the financial section of the law firm where his father worked as a young, up-and-coming attorney.
They were both very attractive people and she'd been taken by his good looks, charm, and sophistication and agreed to a date the first time he'd asked. They dated for several months and she'd happily said 'yes' to his proposal. Their picture was atop the local newspapers' fashion pages and their fall wedding was a very big deal in the city of Orange Park, the same town where Senator John McCain once lived, and that bordered Jacksonville on its southwest side.
For the first year of their marriage, all was reasonably well although signs of his temper were beginning to show. He'd been a collegiate boxer and a damned good one. Had it not been for a serious car accident in which he suffered a broken arm his senior year in college, he may well have qualified for the US Olympic team or even turned pro. The injury had ended his career and left in its wake a very angry, very strong, very intelligent man who mostly managed to keep that anger neatly bottled up. Most of the time, anyway.
Neither Caroline nor anyone else knew he'd beaten a man nearly to death during the very time they were engaged. The rage inside him had been building and he needed a release valve. He found it in the case of a young sailor from the Mayport Navy Base who'd had a little too much to drink one night and picked on the wrong guy at the bar where both of them had been shooting pool.
Landon didn't beat his ass at the bar. Rather, he'd followed the guy and his buddies and found out where they lived. He didn't go after him later that night, either. He just waited. Three nights later, he confronted the young Navy man after he left his house for a run. Glenn waited near the start of a jogging path he ran on each morning that wound through a wooded area and watched him go by. He sat there biding his time and near the end of his run, stepped out in front of him, stopped him, and said, "Remember me?"
The sailor had tried to talk Glenn down but by this time he was a boiling cauldron of rage. Before throwing the first punch he warned the man that if he ever came after him, he would kill him with his bare hands. The kid tried to run, but Landon grabbed him, through him to the ground and began pummeling him. He left him on the ground with a serious concussion, a broken nose, several broken ribs, and a lot of internal bleeding. He'd been too afraid to try and identify his attacker after he recovered and Landon went on to continue practicing law and start beating his wife as the easiest, most readily accessible target for his anger.
When he was just 15, Landon vowed he would become a police officer and one day either arrest his father or... Like his mother, he was too afraid and too intimidated to tell anyone, and his mother's regular pleas not to ever mention 'Dad's temper' kept him from doing so. She had what he later thought of as a kind of variation of the Stockholm Syndrome where a captor begins identifying with his or her captors. In her case, she made excuse after excuse for her violent husband telling her son 'he really is a good man' or 'it's our fault for upsetting him.'
When he turned 19, he entered the police academy in Jacksonville which was the very same time his mother's growing drug habit had gotten so out of control she'd entered rehab. His father attended his graduation ceremony without her more as a photo op for himself than to share his son's accomplishments. That was fine with Landon who used the opportunity to take his father aside afterward and look him directly in the eye from just a few inches away. In a calm, quiet voice he coldly told him, "I'm not afraid of you anymore—dad, and here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna give Mom a divorce, let her keep the house, and half of your precious money. You're also moving out—this week—and you're never coming back. If you do—if you ever lay a hand on her again, I'll kill you myself. I may go to prison, but you'll go to the morgue." He poked his father in the chest so hard it knocked him off balance then added, "I swear to God I'll kill you."
He not only literally turned away from his father as he left, he also turned away from him in every other way and had never spoken to him since. Glenn Knight gave his wife the divorce and everything else his son demanded, but rehab never took. His mother was back on cocaine the day she was released and then on meth within a year after that.
Out of control, out of money, and unable to pay the property taxes on her very nice home, she lost it and ended up on the streets moving from place to place shacking up with anyone who'd take her in. Landon couldn't bear to imagine the things she'd almost certainly have done over the years to keep the flow of drugs coming in, but the one thing he was sure of was that she'd often been beaten by the very men she depended on for her next fix.
He and his fellow police officers kept an eye out for her and every now and then one of them would find her under a bridge, in an abandoned house, or in some cheap motel. Landon would go to see her, try to get her to at least eat something or let him help, but all to avail. By then all that mattered to her was getting or staying high.
Landon had completed a year of college before joining the force and during his first five years had continued to take as many on-line college classes (as well as those he had to take in residence) as he could spending virtually all of his off-duty time studying. His efforts paid off as by the end of that time he'd earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice. He no sooner had his degree in hand than he applied to become a U.S. Marshall having met all of their requirements for service.
He was selected on his first 'look' and found himself headed for training at the United States Marshals Service Basic Training Academy at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), in Glynco, Georgia. Glynco is located near Brunswick, Georgia, mid-way between Savannah and his home of Jacksonville, Florida.
He turned 26 shortly before graduating and received his first assignment working in what was called Asset Forfeiture. Deputy Marshals assigned those duties were involved in the seizing, managing and disposing of forfeited assets. After a major drug bust, much of the property owned by the drug kingpin and his henchmen was forfeited and became the property of the U.S. government. Men and women like Landon were responsible for going to get it, caring for it, then disposing of it in accordance with the law. It wasn't exactly a 'sexy' job but it was a great place to start.
What Landon really wanted to do was work in Witness Security which was typically but incorrectly called 'witness protection' and he began requesting it as soon as he had six months time with the Service. Because of the way his mother had been treated, he knew there were other people—other women—out there like her who, although they may not have been beaten, per se, had been used and abused by men worse than his father. Sure, many of those in the program were scum who were given new identities for agreeing to testify against bigger scum, but this was where his heart was and it was the job he wanted to do.
It took two years to get his transfer approved and he was thrilled when he began his new assignment not long after turning 28. He was transferred to the Miami Office and began working as an agent-in-training learning how to ensure the safety of each and every person assigned to the Marshal Service for protection.
From his first days at the Training Academy to his first day at the new assignment, he'd had it drilled into his head that no person ever assigned to the Witness Security program had ever been killed. "Don't let there be a first on your watch" still rang out in his head every time he took on a new assignment.
After six months of learning the ropes, of learning how to think about every possible situation that could arise, and learning all of the available resources at his disposal, he was certified to work as a member of a security detail. During that first year he saw everything from mafia bosses who were cold-blooded killers to drug dealers to those involved in exposing terror plots assigned to his details. Most of them had cut deals with the government but a few had had new identities offered to them in exchange for their testimony. These were the people who'd done nothing wrong. They simply had information the prosecution needed to put very bad people in prison for a very long time.
