She and I had been married less than a month when I was deployed to Lebanon for the second time that year. Our wedding was rushed, in the middle of our scheduled rotation, because Eve was on her way. It was on that second deployment to Beirut when the bombing occurred.
I made it home that Christmas and for the birth of our first child. But part of me, even to this day, had been left behind in the rubble of the Marine barracks.
On what would have been our seventh Christmas together, Sandy left, taking our girls, Eve and Kim.
I was in a jungle in Panama.
“No,” I replied, snapping the memory from my mind. “I’m afraid I don’t have any decorations for it. But I think there’s still time to order one.”
Savannah turned and smiled. “Order one? Who in the world orders just one Christmas tree ornament three days before Christmas?” She cocked her head a moment, looking at me curiously. “Wait, forget I asked that. You. That’s who.” I grinned at her and she turned back to the tree. “But I doubt you could get it in time.”
“We’ll see about that,” I replied, pulling my phone out. “Gotta make a call.”
Out of habit, I stepped outside to the corner of the deck. It used to be the only place on the island where you might get one bar of signal strength. And that was only if you held your tongue in your cheek in exactly the right position. With the new cell tower on Big Pine, though, we could now get a signal anywhere on my island.
I pulled up the number and stabbed the Call button.
“Master Guns,” I said, when Tank answered. “You’re still coming down, right?”
I’d talked to him just a few months earlier. Tank called me every October 23rd without fail. He probably called all his NCOs that were there.
During that last call, he’d expressed a desire to visit the Keys and I’d told him to come down any time he liked. When Savannah overheard that he wasn’t planning anything for Christmas—she had been listening to my end of the conversation while we watched the sun go down—she insisted that we invite him to spend it with us on the island.
Tank had served in the Corps longer than just about anyone. He’d enlisted during Vietnam at the age of seventeen and was finally forced by an act of Congress to retire two years ago. He’d served fifty-one years.
“Lookin’ forward to it, Gunny,” he boomed back.
After five decades in the Corps, Tank didn’t usually speak or talk. He boomed and roared.
“You got no idea how much it made my day when you invited me. But didn’t we just confirm this a couple of days ago?”
“I know.” I felt foolish for asking what I was about to ask. “Do you remember the Christmas of ’83?”
He didn’t respond right away but when he did, his voice was much more subdued. “That’s one I can never forget, Jesse. Why?”
“You had Christmas tree ornaments made for a bunch of the company non-coms. I remember you got a lot more of them than we had NCOs.”
“I was a dumbass gunny then,” he said with a chuckle. “Ordered them off the wrong roster and still had to get a dozen more than I thought I needed. They only sold them in boxes of twenty.”
I remember how devastated he’d felt ordering Christmas ornaments for some of the guys who didn’t come back. The fact that he had to buy even more than that at least made my question a little easier.
I wouldn’t be asking for a dead man’s ornament.
“Do you still have them?”
“I do,” he said solemnly. “I hang a different one every year. But you probably mean the extras that didn’t have names on them, right?”
“Yes. I don’t suppose you hung onto those too, did you?”
“I did.” He paused a moment, then said, “Been wondering when you’d want a new one. They’ve got the date on ’em, but no name. I know a guy here in Jacksonville. If you want, I’ll have your name on it when I bring it.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking back through the door. “That’d be nice, Tank. Just put Jesse and Savannah on it—double November and ends with Alpha Hotel.”
“Got it. Will do,” he said. “Oh, and one thing.”
“What’s that, Tank?”
“It’s taken you a while to get another one, son. Don’t break it like you did the first.”
I chuckled and we ended the call.
Tank had gone with me when I went home that day to find my family gone and my house empty. A moving van does not escape scrutiny in base housing communities, so word spread quickly among the wives and other Marines in the neighborhood.
But Tank was one of only three people deployed with us who knew that Sandy had left me. Just before we took off from Panama, the battalion CO, back at Lejeune, had informed our company CO, who in turn told the sergeant major. I was on the list for gunny at the time, and the sergeant major and Tank didn’t tell me she was gone until we were wheels down at Cherry Point.
When I looked back into the house, Savannah had her back to me. She was wearing shorts and a lightweight, blue, sleeveless blouse. Stretching high on bare feet to reach the top of the tree, she extended one leg behind her for balance, like a ballet dancer. Her blouse rode up, showing a smooth, tanned, lower back—the muscles along her spine as tight as any ballerina’s.
I had a sudden realization—Tank hadn’t been talking about the glass ornament when he warned me not to break the new one. He was talking about my upcoming marriage.
“Who were you talking to?” Savannah asked as I came back in.
When I first met her, she’d been on the verge of kicking my ass up one side and down the other for scaring her sister, Charlotte. I’d warned her sister about sex slavers abducting a woman and her two teenage daughters just a few weeks before that. Charlotte had thought I was making it up. I remembered that Savannah had called me bud then, and it wasn’t meant in a nice way.
But by that time, it was already too late. Her long, tanned legs, blond hair kissed by the sun, and those big blue eyes had already worked their magic on me.
It seemed like yesterday. She was twenty-nine then, visiting the Keys with her sister after breaking up with her husband, still full of youth and raw energy. The last two decades had done little to diminish either of those traits. She was easily the most beautiful and passionate woman I’d ever known.
“That was Tank,” I replied. “Leave a spot in the middle for me, okay?”
“The middle of the tree?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Special delivery memorial Christmas tree ornament from Tank Tankersley.”
“I’m looking forward to finally meeting him,” she said. “You talk about him so. How long did you say he served?”
“Fifty-one years—from LBJ to the Donald.”
Her head tilted up as she counted on her fingers. “That’s ten presidents! Why so long?”
That was a good question. After Sandy left me, the Corps filled the gap as my family. I was promoted to gunnery sergeant six months later and threw everything I had into my job. Not long after, I was deployed as part of the Marine Security Detachment aboard the USS Independence, last of the conventionally powered supercarriers. All of the larger naval warships had a contingent of Marines aboard for security. The other Marines in the MSD had been together a while. I was the new guy, but I wasn’t going to be with them long. I had a lot to keep me occupied as the Independence was deployed to the Persian Gulf during the runup of Desert Shield. I would spend the next four months mostly on my own in the desert.
A couple of years later, I tried marriage again, a bartender named Kristina Butcher, who was four years older than me. That had been a huge mistake, which I quickly corrected. A month after divorcing Kristina, I’d found myself in the Mog. Somalia was a nightmare, but I remember thinking it a reprieve. I’d married one other time, but Alex had been murdered on our wedding night by arms smugglers.
Not the greatest track record, I know.
I guess the emptiness had been the same for Tank after he and his wife divorced. From the age of seventeen, th
e Corps had been his only family until he met Jolene. Their marriage didn’t last as long as my first one. I figured he had done what I had—adopted the Corps as his only family. But he’d just never moved on from there.
And the Corps was in no hurry to see him leave. Having the Medal of Honor around his neck meant Tank had a home forever. Or so he thought. Having an MOH recipient on active duty was good PR for recruiters. But even Chesty Puller couldn’t stop the march of time.
“I guess he just never had any reason to leave,” I said. “U.S. Code says you can’t serve beyond the end of the month of your sixty-eighth birthday. Otherwise, he’d probably still be in the Corps.”
“I’d think after that long, he’d have a hard time readjusting.”
I nodded. “Not really readjusting. He probably doesn’t remember much about his life before the Corps. I’m sure it was tougher than most.”
“There,” she said, stepping back. “It’s not my best. The trees we put up on Sea Biscuit were smaller, so I don’t have as many decorations as I’d like to have for such a big tree.”
She turned and hugged me. “Thanks for getting it for me.”
She’d chosen the spot in front of the big double window that faces south; the direction someone would come, if someone were inclined to visit. I’d never had many visitors to my island, but over the last few months, we’d had quite a few friends stop by. I had to admit, the new drapes, pulled back with a sash, went equally well with the rough-hewn interior wall boards and the tree.
“We can hit the Kmart if you want,” I offered. “Pick up some more ornaments.”
“They’re probably all picked over,” she said, turning back to the tree and moving one ornament to a different spot on the same branch. “I bet they don’t have anything left but those tacky elf-on-a-shelf ornaments.”
“Oh, no,” I said, clutching at a strand of imaginary pearls around my neck. “Not those hideous things.”
She turned and put her hands on her hips, staring at me. “So, are you going to tell me what this memorial ornament is?”
My grin disappeared. “Tank was the company gunny when I was in Beirut in ’83. I was one of his squad leaders. That first Christmas after the bombing, he had some glass balls custom made for all the NCOs, commemorating the date of the attack.”
“I remember you telling me how hard he took that.”
“We all did,” I said. “I was lucky, I guess. My squad was on mounted patrol that morning, miles from the barracks.”
I turned toward the sound of a dozen feet coming up the back steps, eight of them with claws.
Finn came through the open door first, followed by Woden, then Jimmy and Florence. The dogs proceeded to their rug in the middle of the room and sat, looking at the tree.
I pointed at each dog in turn. “There will be no drinking of the tree water. No peeing on any tree inside the house. And no roughhousing around it. Do I make myself clear?”
They both looked at the tree, then at Savannah, and finally back at me before lying down with their big heads on their equally big paws.
“It looks beautiful, Mom,” Florence said.
Our daughter was home for two weeks from UF and was staying in Kim and Marty’s little house on the north side of the island. They weren’t there very often; both being sworn officers with Florida Fish and Wildlife. They worked out of Everglades City on the southwest coast.
Jimmy looked around the room. “You’ve sure done a lot for the old place, Savannah.”
“Hey,” I said, indignantly, “I did most of the work.”
“Thank you, Jimmy,” Savannah said, then turned and kissed me on the cheek. “And you worked very hard on it, Jesse.”
Florence helped herself to the coffee pot. “It’s bigger than we ever had on Sea Biscuit.”
“Go big or go home,” Jimmy said. “That’s what Jesse told me when we were picking it out.”
Savannah had subtly hinted at wanting a tree for a week and I’d pretended not to pick up on it. Then I’d surprised her with a nine-footer strapped to the Grady’s Bimini top.
“I remember when I was a kid, my dad said that a Christmas tree should be as tall as the room,” I offered in defense.
My phone chirped and vibrated in my pocket. When I looked at it, I didn’t recognize the number, but it was local.
“McDermitt,” I said, after stabbing the Accept button.
“Hi, Jesse,” a man’s voice said. “You might not remember me—we met at the Rusty Anchor a few years back. This is Manny Martinez.”
“I remember,” I said. “The Grassy Key Resort guy, right?”
“Yeah. Look, I know you’re probably busy with Christmas right around the corner, but I was wondering if I could meet with you? Maybe over lunch or something?”
“What’s this about?” I asked, heading to the table next to my recliner, where there was a notepad and pencil.
“Did you hear about the girl that went missing just before Thanksgiving?”
“Yes, I did. I haven’t heard much recently, though.”
“Her name’s Cobie Murphy,” Manny said.
I scrawled the name on the pad.
“Her mother works at the resort,” he continued. “Her name’s Donna and you’re right, there hasn’t been any movement on her case since about a week after she disappeared. A search was conducted by volunteers over the long weekend, but the only thing that was turned up was her car, abandoned at the Kmart where she worked. The cops are convinced she just took off, like so many do. Donna and I are convinced that’s not what happened. She thinks Cobie’s still alive, but even if she’s not, there’s just no closure.”
He was right. It happened a lot in the Keys, it seemed. Paradise to an adult is boring to a teenager and sometimes they ran off for the bright lights and action of cities like Miami or LA.
Marathon, like most of the small towns up and down the Keys, didn’t have its own police force. That was left to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, which was stretched thin. The county included much of southwest Florida, from Everglades City south and a good portion of the Glades itself, not to mention all of the Keys.
“And you want me to look into it?” I asked.
“I figured with your background in Homeland Security and owning a security business up island…”
“Hang on a sec,” I said, and turned to Jimmy. “Do we have any charters coming up?”
“No, man,” Jimmy replied. “Nothing till after the first of the year. But remember? You’re dropping me off at the Anchor tomorrow, so I can stay with Naomi for Christmas. And you’re supposed to pick your friend up at the airport early in the afternoon.”
I put the phone back to my ear. “How about lunch at the Rusty Anchor tomorrow, Manny? Say, about eleven hundred? I have to pick up an old friend at the airport at twelve-thirty.”
He agreed and we ended the call.
“What was that all about?” Savannah asked.
“That was Manny Martinez,” I said. “The owner of Grassy Key Resort. Remember that girl that disappeared a month ago?”
“I saw her a couple days before it happened,” Florence said. “I’d met her at a friend’s birthday party over the summer and ran into her again the week I was home for Thanksgiving. From what I’ve heard, the police seem to think she ran away. I didn’t get to know her all that well, we just talked a little, but she didn’t seem like the type to me.”
“They never do,” I said. “Until they actually do it. Anyway, her mother works for Manny and he asked me to look into it.”
“It was like five weeks ago,” Jimmy said, looking down and shaking his head. “I, and most of the guides, helped with the search. But you know what they say when someone’s been gone more than forty-eight hours, man.”
I did. The first day was search and rescue. The second day was searching beyond hope.
After that, it was a body recovery operation.
At 1045 the following morning, Jimmy and I idled up the canal in my old Grady-White c
enter console. Passing between my sailboat and Savannah’s trawler, I looked to the right. Island Hopper’s red wings and fuselage gleamed in the late morning sun at the top of the boat ramp. It’d been a couple of weeks since she’d stretched those wings. I made a mental note to take Tank up and show him around.
Coming back to the Rusty Anchor always felt a little bit like I was returning home. Sure, there had been a few physical changes—the canal was dredged, sea walls and docks rebuilt, and the bar was renovated after Hurricane Irma. But the feel of the place was the same as it was when Rusty had first brought me there, a week after we returned from Okinawa.
Rusty and I had met on a Greyhound bus on our way to boot camp. We’d been in the same platoon at Parris Island, then served together for most of three years after graduating. By then, he and I were closer than brothers.
We’d had two weeks leave after Oki, and we’d both stayed at Mam and Pap’s house in Fort Myers for a week, paddling and fishing the Ten Thousand Islands. Then we’d driven on down to the Keys in Rusty’s Camaro to spend another week with his parents in Marathon. We’d spent our days free diving and spearfishing. And spent a couple of nights down in Key West, hitting on tourist girls.
“You’re not gonna tie up under Salty Dog’s bowsprit?” Jimmy asked.
“Less distance for Tank to walk,” I said.
“He have trouble getting around, man?”
“Not sure,” I replied. “I haven’t seen him in a long time. But he’s likely to have some luggage.”
“How long’s he staying?” Jimmy asked, as we neared the turning basin at the end of the canal and he made ready to step over to Rusty’s big barge.
I brought the Grady alongside and reversed the engine, spinning the wheel to bring the stern closer. “Through New Year’s Day,” I said. “But I told him to get an open-ended ticket, in case we get rolling on tuna.”
As we bumped the barge’s fenders, Jimmy stepped over with the bow line in hand and I killed the engine. “If he’s up to it,” he said, “maybe he’d like to ride along for the tournament up in Palm Beach the week after that.”
Rising Moon: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 19) Page 2
