Return from the Shadows-Ivan Dunn the Final Chapter

by Frank A. Perdue

  ”Keep talking. I’ll just sleep through it, although you could say something important.”

  “Boy, you’re really testy.”

  “I’m kidding. You said something important last week, but I can’t remember what

  It was.”

  “Now you’re really in trouble,“ and I reached for her

  “Don’t tickle me fool,” she said as she reached down to pull my hand away from her waist.

  “You win. I was just lieing here trying to piece this whole thing together, what happened to our neighbor. I wish I could let it go and get some sleep.”

  “It took me a while to fall asleep, what was it two hours ago?” There she went again. “No I mean it. We need to talk about what happened in Japan.”

  “What happened?” I didn’t know to what she was referring.

  “That man you went after.”

  “You saw him?”

  “Yes. He was standing across from our hotel, and it looked as if he was watching us.”

  “Had you ever seen him before?”

  “I don’t think so. Actually he reminded me of you a little, except for all the hair around his face, of course.”

  “Yeah, sounds like we’re talking about the same guy. He was at the wedding too, standing off away from the others.”

  “And you think the two things are tied together somehow?” She inquired.

  “I don’t know. I’m just clutching at anything that might make sense of all this.” I glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand on my wife’s side of the bed. It was almost one. “We need to try to get some sleep. Maybe it will all come together tomorrow,” but I doubted it.

  “There’s something else. I don’t know if it’s related, but I never mentioned it before.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I had a phone call just before we went to Tokyo.”

  “Who was it?” I asked, a little impatiently.

  “I’m getting to it.” She had picked up on my tone. “He said he was a buddy of Thomas’s from Korea. He wanted to know if my son had gotten married yet. I told him the wedding was coming up in a couple of days. He asked where, and I told him.”

  “I didn’t see anyone there who could have been a buddy.”

  “Do you think he could have been the stranger we saw outside the church, and later in town?”

  “That’s a distinct possibility.”

  “I’m glad we solved that mystery. Rachel yawned, rolled over and went back to sleep. I tossed and turned for another hour before a dreamless sleep claimed me. I wasn’t so sure we had the right guy. Had I known what would come to light in the next few days, I wouldn’t have slept at all.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  1946

  The flight to Tokyo via Pan Am wasn’t too bad, though it seemed to take forever. He couldn’t wait to arrive at the place he now thought of as home. It took Jeb until the next day to connect with a commuter flight to Hiroshima. He took a taxi to the farm. He had no idea if Yasmin would be there. They had not written in all the time he was gone. He hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up, for fear Anne Priestley would turn him in. She, on the other hand, had no address with which to reach him.

  He had heard nothing. For all intents and purposes he was a civilian, though he officially was still a member of the Naval Reserve. He was just inactive. Should they decide to prosecute he could be called back to active duty with just a little paperwork. He would then be at the mercy of the Navy. A court martial would definitely be in order. He wondered what the penalty would be for impersonating an officer in time of war, or anytime for that matter.

  Enough time had passed that he was certain the Priestley woman had decided against reporting him. What he didn’t consider was the fact she would not be able to claim her husband’s life insurance if he was still alive. Eventually that would be the deciding factor to cause her to blow the whistle on what really happened to James Priestley.

  Meanwhile, when the taxi arrived at the Shigehara farm, no one came out to meet it. Jeb paid the driver, actually he overpaid, not knowing what the fare, since he couldn’t understand much Japanese. The driver was silent, taking the money with a courteous smile.

  He carried his two bags to the porch and knocked on the door of the large old farmhouse. No one answered. He sat down on the porch steps and waited. He didn’t know what else to do.

  It had been dark for an hour when a pickup truck finally pulled into the yard, and parked near the porch. Yasmin jumped from the vehicle, forgetting to turn off the engine. She ran to where the man she knew as James was now standing, his arms spread wide.

  “Oh James, I can’t believe you’re really here.” At the same time he noticed the truck slowly moving toward the porch and the two people standing at the foot of the stairs.

  He quickly ran to the driver’s side door and, jumping into the cab, he turned the key and pushed on the brake at the same time. Yasmin stood there in the headlights, with a sheepish look on her face.

  “Oh my goodness! I’m sorry. I was distracted”

  He grinned in response, “You’re too lovely to be in trouble.” She was a vision in the light, wearing her nurse’s white uniform in contrast to her dark eyes and hair, which was in a bun and tucked under her white cap. He grasped her slim waist and pulled her up to him, kissing her full on the lips while molding his body to hers.

  “I never stopped hoping you would return. I love you so much.” She barely got it out before he kissed her again. This time the kiss lasted much longer, and seemed to answer her statement in kind.

  Just in case, he added “I love you too my beautiful Yasmin.” Sometimes the corniest words have more meaning. Besides he liked to say her name out loud.

  The two lovers settled into a routine closely resembling married life. She went to work each weekday after kissing him dutifully on the lips, and he, not yet having a job, did all the chores and maintenance at the farm. He planted new crops. The old ones had died for lack of care. He painted the house inside and out. Nearly every night they fell asleep in each other’s arms after making love, sometimes more than once. They never tired of each other.

  They talked about life very little, satisfied with each other’s bodies. That had to end eventually. It happened one rainy Saturday morning. They were sitting on the porch listening to the rain hit the metal roof, and looking out wistfully over the land, glistening with the spray.

  She started it. “We never have talked of it, but my father died from your country’s bomb. I never found him.”

  “I’m so sorry Yasmin. I never knew him, but I know he meant much to you.”

  “Yes. I thought I hated you for such a long time, not just for not coming back to me, but also because of him. All that ended when I saw you on the porch.”

  “I think eventually you will see that the bomb was necessary, though now I’m sure you think that’s a callous thing for me to say. Were my country to invade, which would have been inevitable, many more from both sides would have died.” He waited for her reaction.

  “I’m sure you are right, but it is hard to let go of the hurt and the anguish.”

  “I’m sure it is. Can I still hold you and love you?”

  She reached for him. “I can’t stop the way I feel for you. We could have guns, and be on different sides, and I would kiss you, not hurt you.” And she added, “I hope you feel the same.”

  “Be assured, I do.” And he held her close, kissing her cheek and then her lips tenderly.

  He wanted to tell her who he really was at that point, but he didn’t have the courage. Even though the other could not change the deep love she felt, knowing he had lied to her might. He couldn’t chance it. Deep down though, he knew it would come up some day, and he dreaded it.

  Anne Priestley grappled with the decision of whether to turn in the man who had impersonated her husband. She didn’t remember his name, if in fact he ever told her. God help her she liked the man. She could understand his decision to assume her husban
d’s identity in the face of sure death at the hands of the enemy. But it was her husband! She couldn’t just let it go.

  Then there was the question of the insurance. She would receive a single payment should she have her husband declared dead, and she really did need the money. There wouldn’t be any monthly subsistence, for they had no children, a fact which she regretted deeply. It wasn’t for the money, but for the simple reason she would have a part of him still were there a child. She had almost depleted her savings coming to the islands. She had no job. Finding one might take some time now that the war was over and the men would be coming home, displacing the women’s work force.

  As she saw it she had no choice. She contacted the Naval District office and initiated the investigation into whether her husband was indeed dead.

  Officers from Naval Intelligence tried to track the man who had impersonated Lieutenant-Commander James Priestley. They went to BOQ where the man had been billeted at first, and found nothing. It had of course been cleaned out. They dusted for fingerprints, hoping that would tell them who he really was. It took three weeks for the answer to come back from Naval Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

  They were searching for Jeb Lee, Seaman.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  It was in April of the year 1952 when a trucker named Alan Harrington pulled into his depot in Tokyo, Japan, to load up for his next deliveries. He would have a one day layover before heading out again.

  The company provided a room for their employees to sleep and to store personal gear. Harrington didn’t want to spend an entire night cooped up in the small ten by twelve space without a bathroom, so whenever he was in town he would visit a cocktail bar down the street. He could walk to the bar, which was just around the corner from his room, so he didn’t have to worry about how much alcohol he consumed on these visits.

  The Korean War was still dragging on, and the bar was a popular watering hole for soldiers, sailors, and marines on rest and recreation assignments as a break from the fighting. There were always twenty or thirty men in uniform there. The place had a small dance floor and there were accommodating women in attendance most of the time.

  On this night, when Harrington was sitting at the bar rather than a booth or table, an army sergeant took the stool next to him. He recognized the soldier as an M.P. from other times he’d been there. This time there was no identifying armband on the sergeant’s uniform, so he must have been off duty.

  They struck up a conversation. It was three or four rounds of beer before they learned each other’s first name. The soldier had a patch on his left breast that identified him as Embree, Sergeant. Harrington learned his first name was Thomas. That was a coincidence, because one of the civilian trucker’s first girlfriends had been named Embree, Rachel Embree. That was when he lived in Richmond, Virginia, and was going by the name of Phillip Atchison the third.

  Embree was a big man, around six feet, and Harrington could see why he’d been picked for Military Police. He looked like he could take care of himself. There was also something vaguely familiar about the man. They both had blonde wavy hair, but that wasn’t it. Harrington himself had grown a short beard, and had a pencil thin mustache, while Embree was clean-shaven, and looked hardly old enough to be a soldier, yet he projected a strong image, like that of a football player.

  On that night they sat and talked for maybe two hours. Harrington learned the soldier had woman troubles, having fallen for a Korean girl. The alcohol was loosening his tongue too. He told Embree about being in a Japanese prison camp near Hiroshima during the previous war, and of meeting a beautiful nurse he wanted to marry, but couldn’t because he already had a wife stateside. The two men even shared addresses, thinking maybe they might meet again to have a drink under better circumstances. They were both getting very drunk.

  Before separating, Alan Harrington asked Thomas Embree to describe his mother, thinking she might be related to the woman he knew as Rachel. In reality, the civilian truck driver had a premonition she was the same girl he’d been in love with as a teenager. When he left the bar he was sure of it. It wouldn’t be until later that he would realize the man at the bar, who looked vaguely familiar, could bethe son he never even knew existed. He’d never had any contact with Rachel after that one fateful day.

  By 1952 Naval Intelligence had given up the search for Jeb Lee. They ran into dead end after dead end. For instance, in checking out the information the sailor supplied at enlistment there was no record of a birth certificate. He’d listed his place of birth as Richmond, Virginia, but that city’s hall of records showed no one by that name had ever been born or lived there. The picture on his ID card was of a grown man, and no one recognized it.

  They decided to take a different tack, and try to trace his whereabouts from the time he was presumably picked up by the enemy drifting in the Coral Sea. They found an ex-officer who had served aboard the destroyer that had plucked him from sure death of starvation and exposure. They learned he was transferred to a camp on Okinawa as Lieutenant-Commander James Priestley, and then later relocated to near Hiroshima.

  That camp was abandoned by the guards the day Japan surrendered, leaving the prisoners to fend for themselves until U. S. trucks arrived to transport them to planes that would take them to Hawaii.

  An investigator tracked down one of the former prisoners, and learned Priestley had escaped for a while and then mysteriously reappeared the day they were liberated. The ex-prisoner had no idea where Priestley had been. Another dead-end.

  Knowing it would be tedious, but also that it was necessary, they tracked down each of the fourteen survivors from the Sims. Only one gave any indication he knew a seaman named Jeb Lee, an Indian-American engineman who was listed as Charles Redbird. He was found in Nacogdoches, Texas. They had enlisted together in Reno, Nevada. When he learned the man he thought had been killed in battle was still alive, but might be in trouble, the big Indian refused to answer any more questions, saying only that Lee left a wife and child in Reno, Nevada.

  It was the best lead they’d had in a while, so they traveled to Nevada to interview the wife.

  Margaret Lee was shocked to learn her husband hadn’t died when his ship sank, but she knew nothing that would help the investigators find him. He hadn’t returned home, or written. It was obvious she was telling the truth. She did reveal that a man, she thought his name was Eric Duprez, or something different like that, had come looking for her husband late in 1950. She couldn’t remember why the man wanted to find her husband.The investigators searched for a man by the name of Eric Duprez, but that lead never panned out. Jeb Lee had probably changed his name after masquerading as James Priestley, but it looked as if the investigators would never know what had happened. The manhad simply disappeared. The case file was labeled inactive, and for all intents and purposes, forgotten.

  Tom Embree had a nagging feeling he had seen Alan Harrington before. Had he applied a thin mascara mustache, and combed his hair different, then looked in a mirror, it might have occurred to the young soldier there was a strong resemblance to himself. The reason was, of course, the older man was indeed his birth father. Tom couldn’t consider that option however, because he’d been told the man who had fathered him had died in the big war in 1942.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  When Detective Paulsen showed up at my door I didn’t know what to expect. I hadn’t heard anything from any of the various police agencies that might be interested in the murder case for about a week.

  As a gracious host I invited him in, seated him in a nice comfy chair, and asked if I could bring him something to drink. He politely refused any liquid but he reached out to the coffee table and picked up a couple of cookies Rachel had placed there. Chocolate chip.

  I sat down near my guest, cleared my throat, and jumped right in, “Anything new on the case?”

  “Actually that’s why I came to see you, as you might expect. Phoning just didn’t seem appropriate. There has been a development you should kno
w about.”

  “You have my undivided attention. What’s happened?”

  Now it was the detective’s turn to cough up and re-swallow phlegm. “A police squad car stopped a driver for a speeding violation, and when they checked his driver’s license they learned he was from out of state, Virginia to be exact.”

  “Was it Lambright?”

  “Yes, but there’s a hitch.”

  I moved forward slightly in my chair, “What hitch?”

  They didn’t realize right away the guy was wanted, and while one officer was calling it in for a routine check, and the other was writing the ticket, Lambright took off. By the time the second officer got back to his vehicle, the suspect had a head start.”

  “You’re trying to tell me they never found him?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Great. So he’s still out there.” It wasn’t really a question.

  “Yes.” The detective responded, a little contritely, “and this proves one thing.”

  I knew what was coming, but I asked, dutifully, “What’s that?”

  “You’re in danger, and your wife too. Otherwise why would he be here?”

  “You’re right about that. As far as I know he’s never been out west before, and there’d be no reason to put his freedom in jeopardy now unless, in his warped mind, revenge on us would somehow set him free.”

  “That’s basically what I was thinking, so I want to put a protection detail outside your home. I think we both know he’s already been here once.”

  I understood what he meant, referring to the close proximity of the murder. “I think that might be a good idea,” and I added, “for Rachel’s sake.”

  “Yes. Do you own a gun?”

  “I just bought a .38.”

  “Do you have a license?”