Shadow Men by Jonathon King

forgetting and letting her hold it as the line of men took their places on the small stage. My father was the third man on the right, his own uniform brushed and creased, the buttons polished and shoes buffed to a gloss by my mother late into the preceding night. I remember being fascinated by the lights from the television crews gleaming off the brass buttons and bars and yellow gold stripes on some of the men’s sleeves. They were all wearing their hats, what my father called his lid, even though we were inside and my mother would have called it impolite. I remember the man at the microphone beginning to speak and my father looking out to find us, and under the brim of his lid he winked at me. The man at the microphone told the story that I had already heard so many times, though he did not include the harsh laughter and cussing that my uncle and my fathers other policemen friends used in the backyard when they were drinking beer. The man used my father’s full name and when he was finally called to the podium, he dipped his head and the man draped a gold, shining medal around my father’s neck and everyone clapped and I looked at my mother’s face to see her reaction and saw a single tear that she caught halfway down her cheek with a gloved finger, and I did not know as a child whether she was too proud or too sad.
    For years afterward I would secretly seek out that piece of gold with the red-striped ribbon. I would wait until the house was empty and go into my parents’ bedroom and open the bottom drawer of the bureau and find the dark blue case pushed hard against the back corner, buried under the old Arnold Palmer sweaters that I never saw my father wear. I would take out the case and lay it in my lap and open it and stare at the thick carved gold that seemed to grow richer in color over time. Then I would again unfold the newspaper clipping that showed the uniformed men in a line and I would read the story.
     Philadelphia police yesterday awarded the medal of valor to one of their own in a ceremony to honor the officer credited with killing the celebrated Mifflin Square Molester in a shootout last spring.
     Anthony M. Freeman, 28, a six-year veteran of the department and the son of another decorated officer, was wounded in the gun battle with Roland Previo after Previo was confronted with evidence that he was the man who had brutally raped and killed four young girls in his own South Philadelphia neighborhood three years ago.
     Freeman, assigned to the detective unit just days before the discovery of the first victim in the killings, had “tirelessly pursued the case with the dogged determination of a true veteran,” read Det. Commander Tom Schmidt.
     Although the case had run dry of leads and legal evidence, Freeman’s superiors said the young detective developed his own information over two years. While confronting Previo with newly discovered stained clothing that tied the ex-convict to two of the slayings, “Freeman, acting without regard to his own safety, attempted to make an arrest and was twice wounded by his suspect before returning fire and mortally wounding his assailant,” Schmidt read during the ceremony.
     When asked later for his reaction, Freeman said he did not consider his actions to be heroic and that his determination to find the killer had been a simple pursuit of the truth.
     “I just wanted the truth to come out. There were a lot of rumors and lies and legal bull—being passed around over the years. But the families of those little girls deserved the truth,” Freeman said.
     Freeman’s father, Argus, was also a decorated officer for the department. He had been awarded a medal of distinction for his work as a street sergeant during the years of racial unrest in the late 1960s.
    I would refold the clipping, pat it against the golden medal and return the box to its place tucked deep in the drawer, and wonder again why my