Veteran Avenue: The gripping thriller with great plot twists

by Mark Pepper

  ‘Yes. Not because I’m morbid. I just want everything to be as it was. If the body’s been removed, I imagine the cabin will have been cleared as well.’

  ‘Would they have left the truck?’

  ‘Well, no one’s bothered shifting all that junk down in Fortuna. That’s probably been there for a century.’

  She acknowledged with a nod. ‘Ready, then?’

  ‘Ladies first.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  The condition of Chuck’s skull testified to the manner of his suicide. The small, neat hole in the right temple; the jagged, fist-sized outshoot above his left ear. He had killed himself sitting at the table but had fallen out of his chair. The body had long since rotted down to bones, and the collapsed skeleton looked vaguely comical inside its jeans and check shirt.

  The atmosphere in the cabin was musty and gloomy, but through its one window the snow outside lent a subtle glow. John couldn’t remember whether the summer sun had provided any better light. He immediately zoomed in on the pistol still lying in Chuck’s skeletal fingers. Made of blacked stainless steel, it still looked almost new.

  ‘Smith and Wesson, Model Thirty-Nine,’ Virginia said.

  ‘You’d think. It’s actually a Mark Twenty-Two, Model O.’ He picked it off the floorboards and handed it to her. ‘Careful.’

  She read the markings on the slide. ‘Smartass.’

  ‘I know my guns. You see the hammer’s down? The Thirty-Nine would have self-loaded, cocking the hammer. The slide on this can be locked to keep the mechanism closed and silent. It’s also got a threaded barrel to take a suppressor, raised sights to account for that, and it fires specially-made subsonic rounds to eliminate the sonic crack. Developed for the Navy SEALs in Vietnam. Known as the Hush Puppy; for killing guard dogs – among other things.’

  Virginia put the gun on the table. ‘So why did Chuck have it?’

  ‘This guy,’ John said, pointing to a framed snapshot propped against a transistor radio on the table. A young soldier in tiger-stripe camouflage, standing on the skid of a helicopter.

  ‘This photo was on the wall when I left. Chuck must have wanted it to be the last thing he saw. I assume it’s his son, and it does look like he served in Vietnam. That’s a Huey he’s leaning against.’

  ‘So Chuck’s son was a Navy SEAL?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  John pored over the image. Ludicrously, after more than three decades, he still half-expected to feel kinda strange, as Chuck had hoped he would. But all he saw was a soldier from a previous generation. He set the picture down and wandered over to the camp bed. On it was the empty frame from which Chuck had extracted his granddaughter’s picture. Only one photograph remained on the wall: the black-and-white shot of Chuck on his wedding day. Alongside was the calendar, Beautiful Oregon - 1978, stuck at August, with Chuck’s strange countdown ending on the 14th.

  Virginia joined him. ‘What’s that all about?’

  ‘Don’t know. Have a look. He’d been up here for months, crossing off the days.’

  ‘Waiting for you,’ she said, taking the calendar off its nail. ‘The one.’

  ‘Waiting for something,’ John said skeptically.

  Virginia flipped back through the months, shaking her head, then suddenly stopped and peered beyond the calendar. John noticed her eye-line. At the pillow-end of the bed, beneath the blanket, was a lump. Slowly, she reached down and revealed the cause of it.

  ‘GI Joe!’ John said with a surprised laugh.

  ‘You know this little guy?’ she said, handing the Action Man to John.

  ‘Yeah, I left him for Chuck.’ He shook his head. ‘You know ... all the things I saw with the Legion, this is the strangest day I’ve ever known. It’s like I just stepped out of a time machine.’

  ‘I bet.’ Virginia replaced the calendar. So doing, her toe kicked something under the bed. She squatted down and pulled out an old suitcase, then lifted it onto the bed. They both stared at it for a moment. Rigid and brown, its leather surface dull and worn.

  ‘Are we wrong to look inside?’ John asked.

  ‘Why else did we drive all this way?’

  John released one latch, Virginia the other.

  Before her interview for Malibu Mischief, Hayley had been naturally apprehensive, understandably excited, but fundamentally pessimistic. She had got too used to failure, or at least to extremely limited success. Now, she would have willingly accepted a lifetime’s fear of what might go wrong in exchange for the fact of what had.

  Amanda was in tears at her bedside. The doctor had just left after imparting some information, while the LAPD had earlier taken some away; the same patrolman who had picked Hayley off the street and driven her to the UCLA Medical Center. On hearing the name Roth, he had instantly known who her husband was. They weren’t in the same division but the grapevine was in working order and it was common knowledge that Internal Affairs was grilling Larry Roth, and was not overly impressed with his explanation of events.

  Hayley had decided not to press charges or to even identify the guilty party. She wanted no further contact with her husband. She didn’t want to see his face ever again, not even in court. Under sedation, she honestly didn’t care if she lived or died.

  ‘You’ll be as good as new,’ Amanda assured, trying not to sob and undermine herself. ‘You heard the doctor. They’ll operate this evening and re-set your arm –’

  ‘My face,’ Hayley whispered.

  ‘It’s … it looks worse than it is. It’s mostly superficial. A few cuts. They’ll heal. And your lips will be kissable again in no time, and I know a great dentist, does all the big stars. He’ll give you back your smile, Hayley, and I’ll pay for it myself. Believe me, sweetheart, I looked ten times worse than you when I had my facelift, and that was voluntary.’

  The corners of Hayley’s mouth lifted minutely. ‘But I’ve lost Malibu Mischief, haven’t I?’

  Amanda appeared to be on the verge of a buoyant lie, but checked it, and nodded. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. I talked to them. They can’t wait for you. They can’t reschedule to that extent. It screws up weeks of planned storylines.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘But they will remember you. They really like you. Something else suitable comes along, it’s as good as yours. And you’re a great actress. I remember the first time I saw you at the Freud Playhouse on campus. You were mesmeric. Talent will out, sweetheart, it will.’

  Hayley graced her agent’s optimism with a dopey, gappy grin.

  ‘That’s no lie, Hayley. And I’ll do my part. Put you up for everything.’

  Smiling faintly, Hayley closed her eyes. ‘Thank you. I want to sleep now.’

  ‘Can I call anyone?’ Amanda asked.

  More than anything in the world, even a deferred part in Malibu Mischief, Hayley wanted her mom by her side.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No one.’

  After Hayley left the apartment, Larry didn’t move from his living room for over an hour. He didn’t move at all. He stood in the same spot, stunned, the .45 he had grabbed from her still in his hand, dangling limply by his side. He felt no compulsion to turn it on himself; his confusion was too disabling. Life had fallen apart on him and so damned quick. His new reality had to sink in before he could make any decisions and that process of acceptance would hurt. He would have to numb the pain for a few days, the only way he knew how.

  After more than sixty minutes of inactivity, animating himself was a strange sensation. He felt drugged, his movement slurred. He needed to lose the .45 – at least for the time being. He was about to indulge in a bender to end them all. Where he might wander, whom he might meet along the way, he didn’t know, and when it was over he probably wouldn’t remember. But he was about to mix copious booze with intense regret, and that was volatile enough. Stir in some obnoxious asshole in a bar, and Larry reckoned his loaded .45 would not stay loaded for long.

  So he hid his weapon down the side of the sofa, slid his back down the wal
l beside the spirits trolley, and grabbed the nearest bottle to start him off.

  There were clothes in the suitcase. Shirts, jeans, socks, underwear, winter woollens. Virginia placed them on the bed, item by item, while John looked on with growing disappointment. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but certainly more than this. At the base was another calendar.

  ‘Beautiful Oregon, nineteen seventy-seven,’ John read. ‘Quelle surprise.’

  He took it out and began turning over the months. At April he stopped. The twenty-fifth was circled. Next to it, DR had been scrawled and scribbled out, replaced by the word VISION. It didn’t elicit any comment from either of them, but John’s brain was working overtime. He turned over April and May, then stopped again at June. From the fifth onwards the days were crossed off – the countdown had begun, and went right through to December thirty-first, at which point he and Virginia simultaneously looked to the wall, at Beautiful Oregon - 1978.

  ‘Unreal,’ Virginia said. ‘He was waiting up here for over a year.’

  ‘What do you make of this?’ John said, returning to the month of April.

  ‘Well, we understand VISION, don’t we? From what you said, he thought God had spoken to him, told him to get his ass up this mountain.’

  ‘Yeah, and I don’t think Dee Arr means he had a doctor’s appointment that day. I think he was going to write dream, but decided it wasn’t the right word; he wanted something stronger, more … biblical.’

  Virginia nodded. ‘You know what I think? I think old Chuck here was nuts. Regular basket case. The guy has a dream and next thing you know he’s built himself a log cabin in the wilderness?’

  ‘And now you think I’m nuts,’ John said, dropping the calendar back in the case.

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘For doing what he asked. For carrying his granddaughter’s picture around with me all these years. For risking our lives coming up here in this weather.’

  ‘John, I’d defy anyone to forget an experience like you had. I’m just sorry there don’t seem to be any answers here.’

  Despite her reassurances, John felt intensely angry with himself. Through the window he could see the blizzard had not let up. Their predicament was potentially lethal. He spun away from her and kicked over an upturned crate. The alarm clock on it went flying. He immediately faced her again and apologized, but Virginia was staring at the floor behind him. John checked over his shoulder and saw a shoe box, previously hidden by Chuck’s makeshift bedside cabinet. He looked back at Virginia.

  ‘You know, if I look in there and find a pair of shoes, I’m going to be really pissed off.’

  ‘Hey, welcome back to the world, bro.’

  Hefting open his drugged eyelids, Dodge tried to focus on the person beside his bed. It looked like an ageing, emaciated Jesus, but Dodge knew he wasn’t dead and reckoned he was still sane enough to know the difference.

  ‘How you feeling?’

  ‘I’ve been better,’ Dodge whispered.

  ‘Yeah, but you been worse too, right?’

  Dodge pushed himself more upright in bed, grimacing at his injuries, and saw the hospital name on the bed linen: VA West Los Angeles Medical Center.

  ‘How long have I been here?’ he asked.

  ‘They brought you in two nights ago.’

  ‘Shit, what happened to yesterday?’

  ‘All your troubles seemed so far away,’ the Jesus-man crooned, and laughed. ‘I guess you were drugged up. So, I hear you been busting a few caps. Little stress release, huh?’

  Dodge managed a smile, then noticed that the Jesus-man was in a wheelchair.

  ‘Pleiku, seventy-one,’ said the Jesus-man, reading his expression. ‘Got downed flying a Cobra. Awesome bird, bro.’ He extended his arm. ‘Friends call me Hawg.’

  ‘Dodge.’ They shook.

  ‘So what’s your story?’ Hawg asked.

  ‘I just lost it for a while, no big deal.’

  Hawg didn’t reply straight away, and Dodge felt himself under scrutiny.

  ‘You’re keeping too much in,’ Hawg finally told him.

  ‘Yeah? You a shrink?’

  ‘Don’t need to be; I was there, man.’

  ‘Not where I was. Doing what I was doing.’

  ‘You telling me you were at My Lai in sixty-eight?’

  Dodge snarled. ‘Screw you. I never massacred no unarmed civilians. I’d have shot that asshole Calley.’

  ‘So if you weren’t a part of Charlie Company that day, believe me, Dodge, you got nothing to say would shock another vet. It’s all variations on a theme. We all got dehumanized over there. Then we took the big swoop back to the world and our own people made it worse, spitting on us, calling us babykiller, if they even acknowledged us. And we’ve been carrying the guilt ever since. But I’ve learned, bro – we don’t have to. We did nothing wrong. Our country called, we answered. Any other war we’d have been fucking heroes.’

  ‘So how come, if you learned so much, you’re in here talking to me? What d’you do?’

  ‘Nothing. Wheeled my ass through the door. Simple as. I know the signs. I know when my finger’s reaching for the self-destruct. This is just a little R ‘n’ R.’

  Dodge closed his eyes. R & R sounded good.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ Hawg said, ‘you better show willing for our revered head-doctor.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about Penal Code one eight seven one zero, possession of a destructive device.’

  ‘What are you, a lawyer?’

  ‘I sure am. And a fucking good one.’

  ‘You’re shitting me?’

  ‘What, I can’t be an attorney cos I got long hair and I’m sitting in this thing?’

  ‘No, I meant …’

  ‘Fuck you, Dodge.’

  Dodge didn’t respond; he felt drained. The last person he wanted to quarrel with was a fellow veteran. And he already felt he’d lost the argument. He did need to share his burden, Hawg was right. Hawg may have been crippled physically, but he seemed mentally in far better shape.

  ‘What did you mean about the doctor?’ Dodge asked quietly.

  ‘Doc Quealy? He’s the only one gonna keep the cops off your case. They listen to him. He says you’re making progress, talking some, they may butt out, least for a while. But you tell the bac si to didi-mao, then you, my friend, are in big trouble.’

  ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘One eight seven one zero’s what we call a wobbler. Could go either way. Misdemeanor or felony. Misdemeanor, you’re looking at up to a year in county plus maybe a fine of a thousand bucks. Felony, up to three years in the state pen and ten thou. You got a criminal record?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then, given you’re a vet and if you claim diminished capacity at the time, I doubt they’d lock you up just for the possession.’

  Dodge peered at him. ‘What d’you mean, just for the possession?’

  ‘Well, what I hear, you sent a missile onto the street. Now, personally, not speaking as an attorney, I think that’s pretty fucking cool, but that opens you up to Penal Code one eight seven one five instead. Possession of an explosive device recklessly or maliciously in a public place ordinarily passed by human beings.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Yeah. Shit is the word. That carries up to six years.’

  ‘Then I guess I’ll have to go AWOL.’

  Dodge threw back his sheet and began to ease himself off the bed, wincing at his wounds.

  ‘Ain’t worth the pain, Dodge. May as well stay on your rack. We’re in a lock-down and you got a VA cop on the main door. You ain’t just walking out of here.’

  Dodge thought about it for a moment, then settled back on his pillows.

  ‘But, hey –’ Hawg smiled and patted the wheels of his chair ‘– me neither.’

  Even with the lid still on, John knew it wasn’t shoes from the uneven distribution of weight inside. He took it to the table. Outside, heav
y flurries were spattering the glass.

  ‘I feel like a child on Christmas morning,’ he said.

  ‘Are you excited?’

  ‘No, I feel an anti-climax coming on.’ He lifted off the cardboard lid and surveyed the contents.

  ‘This is more like it,’ Virginia said, and picked out the first article, a well-worn floppy bush hat in tiger-stripe camouflage. She looked inside the brim for some ID but, apart from the DSA stamp, it was unmarked.

  ‘Continuing the theme of Special Forces,’ John commented. ‘Regular grunts wore steel-pot helmets, not boonie hats.’

  He took some dog-tags from the box and examined them, then handed them to Virginia.

  ‘Harold T Olsen,’ she read from the metal, then tapped the picture of the soldier. ‘This guy.’

  ‘Must be. So ... Chuck Olsen. Strange to finally know his surname.’

  He put the tags next to the hat and dipped in again.

  ‘Well, this goes with that,’ he said, and placed a black silencer next to the Hush Puppy.

  Suddenly struck by a revelation, he gasped and looked at Virginia.

  ‘What is it, John?’

  A smile crept onto his face, a smile of understanding thirty-five years too late.

  ‘Harold T Olsen,’ he said. ‘Harold. Harry. Now it makes sense. Chuck was annoyed because I was so clueless, and he said, “Jesus H Christ”, which I’d never heard before; not with the aitch. And I asked him if it was Harry, meaning did the middle aitch stand for Harry.’

  ‘Right. And he thought you were talking about his son.’

  ‘Just for a moment. I’ve never seen someone’s mood change so quickly.’

  Virginia took more military items from the shoebox, placing a double handful of medals on the table.

  ‘Quite a collection,’ she said. ‘Harry was a hero.’

  ‘But not a SEAL,’ John said, spreading the medals out. ‘These are Army. We’ve got an Army Achievement Medal, Silver Stars, Vietnam Service Medals, Bronze Stars, Army Distinguished Service Medal, Army Good Conduct Medals, two Purple Hearts, Presidential Unit Citation, Vietnam Gallantry Cross, and … wow … see this one here? Congressional Medal of Honor. Not many of these knocking about.’