Editor’s Note: The excerpt below is from the book, “I Promise To Come Home.”
Another explosion rocked the darkness—not fireworks but instead bombs hurled by desperate fugitives. Smoke hovered between houses as gunfire echoed through Watertown’s narrow streets. I heard more than felt the sharp crack of rounds striking brick and metal nearby. The acrid smell of gunpowder hung heavy, burning my nostrils and searing my lungs with each breath. The smoke, briefly illuminated by the flash, was suspended like a spectral veil before darkness reclaimed the night.
In that moment, as my world compressed into heartbeats and reflexes, I wasn’t Lieutenant Richard Chase of the Massachusetts State Police. I was simply a man who had made the same promise for thirty-two years—“I promise to come home.”
I had whispered those words to Karen through midnight shifts and blizzards, during routine traffic stops that suddenly weren’t routine, and now again in the frenzied manhunt that had paralyzed Boston. Those five words carried the weight of everything that mattered. It was those words that drove me forward to stop the madness and return home as promised.
Growing up in Boston’s tough streets, I learned early about right and wrong and good versus evil. That sense of justice followed me from those city blocks to the highways and byways of Massachusetts. I became a trooper to provide stability for my family, a pension, health care, a future. What began as practical necessity transformed into determined purpose.
We are more than uniforms and badges. Behind the bulletproof vest and shiny shield beats a heart vulnerable to the same fears everyone knows. The difference isn’t fearlessness; it’s charging forward despite the fear. Executing each movement with laser focus when seconds count. Treating everyone with the same respect regardless of who they are or what they look like.
That night in Watertown, I thought I would die. What gripped my heart with cold dread was the thought of breaking my promise to Karen. I wasn’t afraid of dying so much as I was afraid of making her the widow who’d been lied to. The prospect of my own mortality paled against the weight of that broken promise. Because when you love someone enough, disappointing them becomes worse than oblivion.
So I moved forward into the heart of battle, not to save myself but to honor the words I’d spoken over decades of uncertain returns. But some wounds don’t heal when the gunfire stops. The PTSD followed me home and possessed me like a vengeful ghost, transforming quiet nights into battlefields and peaceful moments into ambushes. This is the untold sacrifice of standing between civilization and anarchy, the price paid long after the headlines fade and the cameras switch off.
This is my story. It’s not just of one night in Watertown that transformed a city, but of thirty-two years walking the thin blue line. Of moments when compassion mattered more than authority. Of an unbreakable brotherhood forged in crisis. And of promises kept, through gunfire, darkness, and terror—no matter the cost.
Through it all, I kept my promise — to serve, to protect, and to come home.
Richard Chase is a retired Massachusetts State Police Lieutenant with 32 years of service. He is the author of I Promise to Come Home, a memoir chronicling his career, the Watertown shootout, and the personal toll of life in law enforcement. He resides in Bedford, New Hampshire. You can purchase his book here.
