by John Hart
She was a nice girl; she just regretted doing it with Don.
Reluctantly she sat, but on the chair beside the couch. Don pursed his lips into a pout, then scooted closer, leaned in. Maybe it was his eyes that didn’t seem quite right. They were really dilated. And the way he smiled made her heart beat really fast.
“Why aren’t you drinking your wine? It’s your favorite.” He tilted the glass she clenched, pushed it toward her mouth and she gulped as fast as she could to keep from choking while rivulets went down her chin and he instructed, “Come on now, drink up. A little more, yes, that’s good. Here, let’s have another glass.”
“But I don’t want another glass,” she gurgled, eyeing the door and swiping the wetness from her chin.
“If I say you do, then you do. And I say”—He exchanged her glass for his and said flatly— “You do.”
She tried to push the glass away and him along with it, but she only succeeded in knocking the glass to the bamboo floor and freeing up both his hands as he surged from the couch, grabbed her by the shoulders, then pushed her down, pressing her knees deep into the glass she had shattered.
Nikki tried to scream but he gripped her jaw, pressed a hard, mean kiss against her lips until she tasted blood, and when he pulled back, she still couldn’t make a sound with the hand he now had at her throat. He began to lift her by it, giving her no choice but to stand or be strangled as he whispered, “You’re mine. You know that, Nikki, just like you know that you can never see him again. I won’t stand for it. If you understand nod your head.”
She tried but it was hard with him tightening his grip into her windpipe.
“That’s right, Nikki, but sweetie you humiliated me, and there is a little punishment to be paid. And you love your little punishments, don’t you?”
She tried desperately to shake her head ‘no’ but he only laughed.
“Now, now, you know that you love your little punishments. This time though it’s going to be more fun because you owe me for being bad. Then once you’ve paid up and we’ve had our fun, I will forgive you and everything will be back to where it should be. The good doctor might even still marry you so you don’t have to go back to the pathetic little village you came from.”
Adrenaline shot through her and Nikki shoved him away with all her might. She could feel the blood pumping past the glass shards in the knees she would get on in church once she was safe. She just had to run a few feet more, get her hand on the handle and—
She was reaching for the knob when her head snapped back and her body along with it, propelled in reverse by the hand yanking her by the hair, then the cruel other hand that spun her around and slapped her hard across the face.
“You fucking bitch,” he seethed, “Get on your knees and beg.”
“No!”
“I said get on your knees.” He slapped her again. “Now do it.”
“You’re crazy! I’d rather marry my third cousin than you. Now get out before I tell Rick you put your hands on me. Get out.”
And as Elvis sang “Is your heart filled with pain?” Nikki’s head cracked back, she lost her balance, and split her skull on the corner edge of hers and Margie’s coffee table.
Peck was breathing hard as he surveyed the damage. The 45 skip, skip, skipped on the phonograph needle and Elvis kept repeating, “lonesome tonight. . .lonesome tonight. . . lonesome tonight. . .” while blood flowed from Nikki’s head, her neck at an impossible angle.
He knew the outcome already but still he frantically checked for a pulse. “Come on Nikki, come on, don’t you dare die on me,” he pleaded.
Her pulse fluttered. Stopped. Her pupils were fixed. The record continued to scratch. . . Lonesome tonight. . .He looked around. The place was a mess. . . Lonesome tonight . . .Her blood was all over him. . .Lonesome tonight. He had to think. . .
Think.
He washed his hands, his face. Quickly cleaned himself up from the top of his head to the bottom of his boots. Left the glass she had shattered, shards still sticking out of her knees. And Nikki, who actually would have made a good doctor’s wife with the right clothes and some lessons in elocution, he left her exactly as she was as he considered his options.
This was not how he meant this lesson to go. The game had gotten completely out of hand. He had come here high and drunk and furious after learning Nikki had visited the missionary hospital to see the big stupid hulk the idiot doctors had brought in yesterday.
They had humiliated him, all three of those little pricks. Just thinking about it had made him want to hurt something, so Uncle Sam had fixed him up with one of his “nieces” who didn’t even fight him when he took his frustrations out on her.
No one would care what he did to a Vietnamese girl. A lot of people would care about the death of a Red Cross Dolly. MPs and CIDs would be crawling all over this place like ants at a picnic as soon as the alarm was raised.
Peck checked his watch. It wouldn’t be easy to dispose of the body properly and get everything spic and span before Margie finished the night shift, but he could possibly manage it. Then again, that would only be a temporary fix since a one minute investigation would confirm Nikki hadn’t gone back to her hillbilly relatives or simply disappeared overnight. No. Foul play would be presumed and he would be a top suspect.
He still had a buzz going from the amphetamines and liquor he had consumed, but it was wearing off. His heart wasn’t racing as fast as it should be, that’s what the uppers and carefully constructed games were for, but for once he was glad his triggers worked differently than others, enabling him to stay calm now that he had a dead Dolly on his hands and very little time to figure out a plan when he was already in trouble with the CID.
Colonel Johnson: If I get one more call from you, or about you, I will personally see that the rest of your tour here makes a firebase look like cooking up brownies in an Easy-Bake Oven.
Kellogg: Just remember, if I hear one more thing about you from Doctors Kelly, Moskowitz, or Mikel that doesn’t make me want to invite you to my daughter’s wedding, you are goner than gone to wherever Colonel Johnson wishes to send you and that includes Hell.
Mikel must have done or said something to get him in trouble, then Kelly and Moskowitz backed their ringleader up. They were the reason he was in trouble with the CID. They were the ones who brought the goon to the mission and that’s what had really set him off, so in a big way it was their fault he had come over to teach Nikki a lesson, and that made it their fault that she was dead. Now the question was, how could he implicate them to get off the hook himself? If he could do that, then he would be spinning shit into gold.
Peck put together a hasty plan. It wasn’t perfect but neither was the military system. He left Nikki exactly as she was and slipped into the remaining twilight, humming to himself, Are you Lonesome Tonight?
*
It wasn’t even 9 a.m. and Gregg felt like a broken record. He felt broken all over.
“We do not know where Major Mikel is,” he repeated, sitting next to Izzy on the couch in the villa’s living room. “I told you that. We are not his keepers and he does not tell us where he is going or when he is coming back, okay? Man, for the tenth time already.”
“Keep it cool, Doctor,” said the MP, standing next to the chair where the local CID agent sat across from them. The MP had his hand on his pistol.
Gregg took a deep breath. He wondered if the MP shot him in the head what in god’s name would come slithering out now. He could see that these guys were stressed over the situation too, but Nikki hadn’t been their friend. As for the friend who found her…
Peck had come in early and offered to relieve Margie on the unit; he had been the one to pick up Margie’s call shortly thereafter. She was so hysterical not even Colonel Kohn could calm her down on the phone, as Peck raced over to see what had happened. Margie had to be sedated. The MP and CID had stopped Izzy from going to see her.
And all this before mor
ning rounds.
The murder of a Red Cross Dolly was going to scream headlines in the States, let alone that it looked like a psycho officer went crazy and did it. These guys wanted to make an arrest right now and probably did not care who it was as long as it took some heat off of them. The local CID guy was expecting the top brass from Saigon within the hour and he was pushing hard to make progress before they arrived.
“I say again we would like to have a lawyer here for us,” Izzy asserted. “This is serious and we are taking it seriously. Gregg, if need be, I’ll call my dad.”
The CID officer named Jamison reminded Gregg of a crocodile the way he smiled. “That all sounds good in the movies, Doc, but as the song goes ‘You Are In The Army Now.’ This means you will get a lawyer, an army lawyer, when we give you one so shut it about the lawyer and tell me again where you were last night, and where is Major Mikel? The boot tracks at the scene clearly match the boot tracks on your stairs. And how interesting that your own boots have the same red dirt from up in the Highlands where you say you returned from with Major Mikel. And besides the dirt there is the matter of the blood, a lot of blood, staining both of your boots.”
“I told you it was elephant blood.” Gregg repeated again.
“Right, elephant blood.” Jamison looked at his notes and his crocodile grin got bigger. “Let’s see, you guys were out for a jaunty safari ride to go watch elephants play in the water and got your boots bloody. You know, I have to say this is quite the fucking story you have for an alibi on those boots and I would work a little harder on it if I were you because if this Mikel comes back and has any better story, then you guys are my prime suspects, you know what I mean? So again, where were you last night?”
It dawned on Gregg that J.D. could implicate them however he wanted and the army could throw away the key. The two drafted shrinks were easily dispensable to the military. J.D. was not. This could be a convenient way to shut them up indefinitely if J.D. or the army was worried about any classified information being leaked about the latest Chinese psyops disaster they wanted kept under wraps.
“Listen, the victim is our friend and we want her killer brought to justice even more than you do,” Gregg said carefully. “Our story about the elephants can be verified, even if Dr. Moskowitz and I are both a little fuzzy on everywhere we were and everything we did last night. Suffice it to say we had a couple of really bad days before hitting the town to try to forget them. But I can assure you that it did not involve brutally assaulting and murdering an innocent young woman whose welfare and safety has been very important to me.”
“He’s telling you the truth,” Izzy interjected before Jamison could wedge the broken record question in again. “Not only that, doesn’t this all strike you as a little too convenient? The individual who relieved Captain Kennedy of her duties early and answered the phone at the unit when she discovered the body has been suspected of perpetrating a previously abusive relationship upon the victim. As a result he certainly bears your scrutiny as a potential suspect.”
“But he’s the one who called us, Sherlock.”
“Precisely!” Izzy, several steps ahead of Jamison. “Major Peck is the one who shot the elephants. He has a suspected troubled history with the victim. He has a troubled history with a lot of people, in fact, including Doctor Kelly, myself, and Major Mikel. As a fellow officer, he has access to our quarters here—he even has a room, he just never uses it. I believe you have been too easily misled to interrogate the wrong parties.”
Sometimes, Gregg thought, Izzy could be too smart for his own good. Jamison looked like he was grinding nails with his teeth and wanted to crucify them both.
“For your information, I did interview Dr. Peck and he even volunteered to show me his own boots, which had no blood stains, unlike your own. He also—”
“I said HALT right there!” shouted a loud voice just outside the villa’s entry. “I am drawing my weapon—get your hands up and get out of the jeep and get down on your knees.”
The MP moved to the window, gestured Jamison over to have a look.
“Okay, here he is, and here comes Saigon,” Jamison announced. “How nice they all arrived at the same time. Sometimes shit does work out.”
The door burst open and in came two MPs holding J.D. between them while another MP with a drawn pistol cocked it at the back of J.D.’s head, and behind that MP stood the big boss of them all, Colonel Johnson.
“Good morning, sir,” Jamison greeted him with a sharp salute. “I’m ready to bring these two in for more questioning with the Major you have there. I think we’re dealing with some crazy sexual escapade that got out of control—”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” gasped the Colonel. “The retards I get stuck with. Sit down, Captain Jamison, and please shut up and take a deep breath through the asshole you must breathe through and tell me what this is all about. Good morning Doctors Kelly and Moskowitz. Mikel, what the hell is going on?”
“I’m not completely certain myself,” J.D. responded evenly. “But I’m sure the detective—Captain Jamison, I believe—will be happy to fill us in.”
“Very well, then. Jamison, proceed.”
“Sir, yes sir. The victim, Nikki Dalton was discovered by her room-mate, Captain Marjorie Kennedy, who then called her unit, and Major Donald Peck came to help her at the crime scene. He called us on her behalf and reported they had also found boot tracks leading out of the premises. His suspicions were raised since there also appeared to be the same sort of red dirt that could be attributed to some recent travel to the Highlands by his fellow officers here, who also knew the victim. Of course I notified Saigon then immediately went right over to the victim’s residence where the scene was undisturbed. The woman was dead, with her neck broken and a large wound to the head. As reported there were boot tracks through the blood and out the door. Although the trail was not visible from there to here, it does pick up on the stairs we now have taped off—” Jamison pointed significantly to his handiwork, “and the tracks lead to Major Mikel’s room where we did find the boots with blood and red Highlands dirt. The two doctors here have similar blood and dirt on their boots, which makes them also suspect.”
Johnson looked at J.D., raising a brow and waiting for his reaction.
J.D. just nodded.
“Wow. Sounds like a pretty open and shut case,” said Colonel Johnson. “Looks like we have an arrest right here, Jamison.”
“Are you kidding me?” Izzy exclaimed. “The boots are in the closet. The bloody tracks are going up the stairs. This is like a junior high drama class set up! None of you can possibly believe this.”
“Be quiet, Izzy,” muttered J.D. Then to Gregg, “Tell Rick I’m sorry. And get Kate off the reservation for a few days, would you? Please?”
“Okay, cuff him,” Johnson ordered, “And we’ll take him back to Saigon. Put him in my jeep until we get to the LZ. Looks like we have a lynch mob out there. Jamison? Your work here is done for now. Unless you are otherwise notified, leave Doctors Kelly and Moskowitz alone.”
Outside the villa stood a line of MPs and what looked like half the hospital staff that continued to gather as news had no doubt been generously and swiftly spread by Peck, standing in their midst.
As J.D. was escorted out, Peck raised his voice. “Look, there he is! I suspected him the first day he arrived here. She was a wonderful woman. I loved her. She was going to be my wife.”
Gregg flipped him off. He did not know what J.D. had up his sleeve, but he was certain of two things:
One, J.D. was capable of just about anything but he had not killed Nikki; and,
Two, if Peck had anything to do with her death, Rick Galt would see to it that he dearly paid.
“We should take Margie to the mission,” Izzy suggested. “She’s close to having a nervous breakdown if she isn’t having one already. Colonel Kohn will approve us getting her out of here, won’t he?”
“I’m sure he will.” Gregg glar
ed at Peck. “And while we’re there I’ll have to break the news to Rick. Now I wish I hadn’t even introduced them. I hope he won’t be the next one to go off the deep end.”
30
Izzy stood at the door of the private room the missionaries had given Rick, prudently placed at the building furthest away from where Professor Nguyen was still recovering. The beauty of the missionaries was that they turned no one away, but they knew that even if this was their sanctuary and red, yellow, black, or white, they were all precious in His sight, someone like Rick would see it differently.
Izzy didn’t want to be here right now. He had left Margie on the veranda where he had almost kissed her that magical day before Hertz was killed. Even with her face stitched up she was achingly beautiful to him and he wanted to kiss her like mad. But she was too vulnerable and he couldn’t desert Gregg, not while he was consoling Rick.
“She was so sweet. I asked her to be my girl just yesterday. Even before we had a real date, I knew she was the one for me.” Rick accepted the tissue Gregg offered, pinched it between his eyes. “Who would ever want to hurt Nikki?”
“I have my suspicions, Rick, but I can tell you it wasn’t J.D. You know we’re not exactly best buds, so if I would swear he didn’t do it, you know it’s the truth. I don’t know why he didn’t speak up for himself.”
“Whoever did this better pray they get locked up instead and quick.” Rick crumbled the tissue in a fist that looked as lethal as his vow. “Because if I get my hands on the motherfucker first, there won’t be anything left to put behind bars.”
“Yeah, that would be justice.” Gregg nodded sympathetically. “It wouldn’t bring Nikki back but it would sure make me feel a helluva lot better.”
Me too, Izzy silently agreed, and he had to wonder when two decent guys like him and Gregg had crossed the line from wanting to save humanity from itself, to this kind of disposable mentality where death was an acceptable means of eliminating the undesirables of the world. Now, he almost understood how Rick could repeatedly kill and take pride in what he felt was doing a good job. As for J.D., he just seemed indifferent to carnage and death. Even this morning he hadn’t flinched when he heard about Nikki, just utilized the situation as a means to be whisked away to who knew where to better plot who knew what. Things like that made Izzy wonder if J.D. really was a sociopath who didn’t have the capacity to care for Kate, or anyone else, the way Rick obviously cared for Nikki.
