State of Lies

by Siri Mitchell

  The new job.

  “That was last August? When they transferred you?”

  He nodded.

  So at least that cleared up one question. But it left so many more. “What did they want you to do in the new job?”

  “Update the list of all the military-related museums in the country and put together a spreadsheet of their addresses, contact information, and boards of directors.”

  Busywork? Ouch. “And why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  He sent me a sardonic look. “Why do you think?”

  “You worked it for half a year. That was important. I would have wanted to know. I embarrassed myself just last week calling Brad about something.”

  “About what?” His gaze sharpened.

  “Keys. Your security badge.”

  “Why?”

  “I realized you’d lied about the sink the day you died. You weren’t trying to fix it that afternoon. That thing you took with you. It wasn’t a part from the faucet. What was it?”

  “It was a thumb drive.”

  “Well, it never came back from the medical examiner’s. And that led me to wonder what else was missing, or not, from what you’d left behind. So I went through everything. I found a key I couldn’t identify, but I didn’t find a security badge. And I knew you’d had one.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “To Brad? I don’t know.” I searched back through my memories, sifting through the emotions I’d been experiencing. “I just told him I was sorting through some things and found a key I thought might belong to the office. And that I realized I’d never returned your badge.”

  “But you just said you didn’t find my badge.”

  “I lied, okay? Crucify me.”

  “Just—” He stretched out a hand, tucked some hair behind my ear. “You asked if you should return it?”

  I nodded.

  “So he must think you have it.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, I should be fine then.”

  A chill crept up my spine. “What is going on, Sean?”

  “You found my notes, right? In the front yard. In the book?”

  “Yes, and—”

  “I knew someone was following me and it felt like I needed to hide it somewhere. I knew if crocuses came up in the fall, you’d want me to dig them up. I could access it then if I had to. And if anything happened to me before, I wanted you to know why.”

  “That’s just it. I have no idea what any of it—”

  “It’s in a safe place? It needs to be in a safe place.”

  “It is. I put it—”

  He gripped my hands. “Don’t tell me!” He took a deep breath. “Sorry.” He drew me close, enfolding me in his arms. He planted a kiss on my forehead. “Sorry. But as long as it’s safe, it’s better if I don’t know where it is. It would be even better if you didn’t know where it is. Safer. Maybe we should just burn it.”

  Suddenly not even his embrace felt safe.

  He let me go.

  I stood beside him, back against the shed, slipping my hands into my sleeves to keep them warm.

  Alice sighed and sat down in front of us.

  “So I changed jobs, but I couldn’t let it go. That’s when I started that list of names. I was looking for anyone connected with your father. Anyone who could help me figure it out. Back in October, I got in touch with the FBI.”

  “And?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “And they wanted my help in passing them all the information I’d found.”

  “But you said the army took it all.”

  “They took my files, but I knew what I’d read. At first, the FBI wanted me to find out who was wanting me to cease and desist, at what level that decision had been made.”

  “So you were working the new job, and also working for the FBI?”

  “With. I was working with the FBI.”

  With. Knowledge dawned with startling clarity. “You were an FBI source?”

  He frowned.

  “Sorry. Asset. You were an asset.”

  “They were my asset. I was trying to get their help. That’s what I was doing that night.”

  That night. “The night you died.”

  “You’d just told me that afternoon that your father was going to be nominated as the new secretary of defense. I thought the FBI should know since whatever had happened out there had involved his company. So I went out and met my contact. The FBI took care of the car accident. They even swung a deal at the coroner’s for a fake death certificate and autopsy report.”

  That’s what Dr. Correy meant.

  “They needed the DoD, the army, to think I was dead; someone over there was getting nervous.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. The Department of Defense tried to kill you?”

  “No. The FBI just wanted to make it look as if I had been killed.”

  “They did a good job of it. My father identified your body.”

  “What?”

  “He identified your body. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go. Sam wouldn’t let me out of his sight. So I asked my father to do it for me.”

  Sean’s eyes narrowed. “But there was no body. The agency told the medical examiner to write out a death certificate and fill out the transfer paperwork for the crematorium. It was supposed to seem like my body had already been sent. When you came to identify me, he was supposed to give you my effects and a phone number in case you wanted to lodge a complaint. It would have been a number at the FBI. But your father said he’d identified my body?”

  We stared at each other for a long moment.

  I was trying to sort it all out. “Maybe he just got caught in the plan. The FBI thought I’d show up, but he went in my place. Maybe he thought I’d be even more upset if I knew there’d been some mistake with your body.”

  “What did he tell you when he came back?”

  “From the medical examiner’s? He said they had to know what to do with you. That there was no point in having a viewing, considering the effects of the accident, so he asked them to cremate you.” There was something distinctly odd about discussing someone’s cremation when they were standing right in front of you.

  He sighed and ran a hand up the back of his head. “Anyway, the plan was that I’d be able to move around more freely if I wasn’t being watched. But—”

  “By the Department of Defense? They were the ones watching you?”

  “Yes.”

  What kind of world did we live in?

  “But then something must have happened because the FBI reprioritized; things with me were put on a back burner. I wasn’t interested in that, so I disappeared.”

  Disappeared? “What does that even mean?”

  “It means that I made sure even the FBI didn’t think I was alive anymore.”

  “Why? How?”

  He sent me a sidelong glance. “I had ways.”

  Ways. The hairs at the back of my neck stood on end.

  “But now they’re looking for me again. Both the DoD and the FBI.”

  There was something about what he was saying that didn’t make sense. “If the DoD didn’t want to hear what you discovered and the FBI didn’t care to follow through on what you found out . . .” I forced myself to think it through, one piece at a time. Realization came with an overwhelming sense of dread. I had to force out my words. “You can’t be alive, can you? Because you think that someone thinks you know something. And whoever it is—maybe even the FBI—doesn’t want that something known and would kill you for it all over again.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Only, you don’t know. You don’t know what they think you do. But if they find out you’re alive, then—”

  “Then they could threaten you, you and Sam, in order to make me reveal myself. So I took you both out of the equation. I made sure there was no reason to threaten you.”

  I took you both out of the equation. He’d done the same with Kelly. He’d disappeared from her life when he thought his presence en
dangered her. Without hesitation, without warning. “That’s why you had to die.”

  “A second time. And that time, I had to stay dead.”

  I had it. I understood it. All the pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place. But I still couldn’t make any sense of the picture. “So then why are you back? Why now?”

  “Because I think they suspect I’m alive. It’s what I was afraid of. Maybe I should have stayed away—I tried to stay away—but I just can’t stand by and watch anymore. And you needed to know what’s going on. They’re using you as leverage. This could escalate.”

  35

  Standing there by the shed, we talked it through. “You’ve been at this for eight months. More than eight months. The only thing you know is the Republican Guard shouldn’t have been where it was?”

  “I also know somebody thinks I know more than I do. I can infer that person, those people, want the information—whatever it is—to stay hidden.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Beyond that? Whoever it is must be in a position of power. If they were able to demand reports on my progress and access my computer, take documents from the archives, they had to be doing it from a level above my pay grade.”

  “You’re thinking officer or civilian?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “And it has to do with my father’s old company?”

  “It almost has to, doesn’t it? That’s what I was working on.”

  “I asked my father about Paul Conway last night. He was one of the names in your book.”

  “He was a sergeant.”

  “Right. But he died. Hit-and-run at the beginning of last week. My father didn’t show any signs of knowing that, though.”

  “This might not have anything to do with your father. Not directly. I’ve been trying to find out more about the commanders further up the chain. Maybe someone had information about that Republican Guard position. Maybe your father should have been given that information. Maybe that’s what this is all about.”

  “Does that make sense, though? Everything turned out all right in the end for everyone. Maybe we should just ask him. Maybe it would help us figure it out.”

  “By you asking him questions all of a sudden? If they tried to shut me up, what would they do to him? And what would you tell him when he asks why you think there’s a problem? That your dead husband was just wondering? We need to keep me out of this and you as far away from it as possible.”

  He was right.

  “With your father’s nomination, people are probably poking around his career anyway, trying to see what they can find.”

  “Everybody likes my father.”

  “But not everyone likes the president. Think how many people would like to embarrass him.”

  “You think it’s the president who had you reassigned?”

  He shook his head. “There’s no way to know.”

  “What could have gone hidden for this many years when a whole company of men was involved?”

  “We don’t know it was the whole company. It could have been just one man. And he could have been someone at the battalion or brigade level.”

  “We need to figure out what this is. And then we need to make it known.”

  “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. But I’ve been working on this for months and I can tell you everything about the war but that.”

  “Let me help.”

  “I can’t. I refuse to put you in more danger than you already are. I never should have left that message on your voice mail. I shouldn’t be here now.”

  “But you did. And you are. And now I know. We’re in this together. Tell me how to help. How did it all start? If we back up, then maybe—”

  “It started with the project. But you don’t have access to the archives.”

  He was right. “But you said you did interviews. Let me talk to the people you talked to.”

  “They weren’t helpful. If they had been, then I would have figured it out long before now.”

  “It’s worth a try. You never know. What if I ask a question you didn’t? Or they think of something they forgot to tell you?”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’ll give you a name. It’s the first person I interviewed. I don’t have a phone number, but you can find it. Lee Ornofo. He lives near Philadelphia. Ask him about that first night of the Gulf War.” He leveled a look at me. “Be careful. Whoever is behind this, we have to assume they’re watching and listening.”

  * * *

  Lee Ornofo.

  It was one of the names in Sean’s book.

  Sundays were Samdays as far as Jim and June were concerned. After Sean died, they’d made a point to do something with Sam every Sunday. It let me have time to get things done.

  That Sunday I went to Central Library, signed up for computer time, and started googling. Considering that extraneous cable I’d discovered, I didn’t trust my home computer network.

  I couldn’t find an email for Lee Ornofo, but after tracing the name to a radiosport organization in Philadelphia, I was able to find contact information from their website. I went out to the car so I could have some privacy. People walked in and out of the library, stacks of books in hand. Two teenagers hit a ball around the tennis courts beside me. I phoned Mr. Ornofo, explaining that I was doing a report on Desert Sabre. “Are you the Mr. Ornofo who served in Captain Slater’s company?”

  “I am.”

  “May I ask you a few questions about your time in Iraq?”

  “Sure. Yeah. I served. I did.” He sighed. “That was back when they give you a parade when you came home from a war. Marching band. Convertibles. The whole shebang.” He coughed. “Different times now.”

  “I’m just trying to understand the war better, how exactly it went. That sort of thing. Would you mind helping me?”

  “You with that project? The one that other fellow was with?”

  “I’m working with the military history office. Just following up. You spoke with someone last year?”

  “That’s right. Happy to help. What do you need to know?”

  “Let’s just start with the basics, Mr. Ornofo. Name, rank, position. All of that.” I opened up the notebook I’d brought.

  “You can call me Lee.”

  No, I couldn’t. I hadn’t been raised that way.

  He gave me the information, then I asked him what particular job he’d done.

  “I was the company RTO. The radio telephone operator.”

  “What did that mean, practically speaking?”

  “Meant I was the captain’s shadow.” He cleared his throat. “Anywhere he went, I was there too. Stuck like glue.”

  I asked him to describe February 24, from the time he woke up until the time he went to bed that night.

  He laughed. “Well, I didn’t go to bed, that’s the first thing. So I didn’t wake up either. Desert Storm was a month and a half. Started in January. Desert Sabre was the actual ground campaign. The war itself. It was fought in five days. Probably didn’t sleep five hours for the duration.”

  “As RTO, you were used to receiving communications from headquarters?”

  “Sure. Message traffic. Orders. We communicated with the other companies too. And kept in contact with all our platoons. There were five of them in our company. And I kept in contact with the commo too.” He replied to my unspoken question. “That’s the communications sergeant. Wouldn’t have wanted to be him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Sand. And all that wind. Later on in the afternoon and evening—that’s when everything started to go south.”

  “How so?”

  “We didn’t have our ground-to-ground comms. At least not dependably.”

  “What did that mean for you?”

  “Didn’t really matter what it meant for me. It’s what it meant for the captain. We had a job to do, but we couldn’t do it if we couldn’t coordinate with our platoons. And the battalion couldn’t do its job if they couldn’t coordinate with us. See?
”

  “Makes sense.”

  “You tend to think the battalion commander gives an order and the companies like ours go out and get it done. But it’s not like that. ’Specially not out there.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The commo would know better than me. He got all the communications. Everything from the battalion on down. My job was just communicating for the captain. I sent out what he wanted to say, and when someone wanted to say something to him, I took the message or put the phone to his ear. The commo made sure all the message traffic, all the calls got through.”

  “And who was the commo?” I waited, pen poised above my tablet of paper.

  “Conway. Paul Conway.”

  36

  Paul Conway. My knuckles turned white as I wrote his name. “So the company stumbled onto a Republican Guard unit that night. How did that happen? Do you remember? You must have been there because you were with the captain the whole night, right?”

  “Mostly I was with him the whole hundred hours. Yeah. So things started off as planned, everyone all lined up. Nice and straight. Tidy, you know? Then someone runs into an enemy position. Slows ’em down till they can wrap it up. Pretty soon, some units who don’t encounter any resistance are out ahead; other units get hung up, they fall behind. Relatively speaking, you see?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then the comms start going in and out. We weren’t receiving messages. Or only receiving partial messages. Drove the commo crazy.”

  “What did you do?”

  “You just press on, do what you’re supposed to do until someone tells you otherwise because that’s what everyone’s expecting you to do.”

  “So you pressed on.”

  “Yeah. Captain was a little uneasy. Early on, the companies could see each other. Later on, you could see the dust-ups. Know what I’m saying? Explosions. Smoke, when there was contact with the enemy. After that, couldn’t see anything at all. And it was dark that night. Sand in the air. Cloud cover. Radio was on the fritz. Seemed like an order came through telling everyone to pull back, but it cut out. We couldn’t confirm receipt. Captain and I just looked at each other. Shrugged.”

  “Wait. You got an order but you didn’t do anything about it? Why?”