by Geri Krotow
Let Miles run it if that means getting the information we need.
Ro stepped onto the small throw rug in the entryway. The entrance to the home was modest, a modesty inconsistent with the interior. Rich colors on each wall and large, stately pieces of what appeared to be antique furniture complemented the vaulted ceilings and elaborate crown molding.
Certainly not what she’d expect from a first class petty officer’s paycheck.
“Didn’t you know I’m a surgical nurse at the base hospital?”
Anita had caught her gawking. So much for behaving surreptitiously.
“No, he never mentioned it.” She didn’t refer to her earlier conversation with Miles on the motorcycle.
“Did he mention I’m a kickboxing instructor?”
This was Ro’s only warning before she registered Anita’s closed fist in front of her eyes.
* * *
MILES TURNED AROUND from his brief perusal of the house just in time to see Anita’s fist connect with Ro’s left eye socket.
“Hey!” He immobilized Anita in two movements he hadn’t needed since the war. Since he’d lost his leg.
Anita struggled against Miles. She was strong for a woman but nothing he couldn’t handle, even with a prosthesis.
“That bitch has been sleeping with my husband!” Anita all but spit as she tried to lunge at Ro’s still form again.
“Anita, what’s going on here?” A man Miles judged to be in his fifties came into view from where the kitchen must be. He could neutralize him, too, if necessary.
“Just taking care of unfinished business, Dad.”
Miles grew increasingly concerned as Ro lay motionless on the floor.
He frowned at Anita’s father. “Can you please restrain your daughter for me? My colleague needs my help.”
The man scratched his chin as he looked at his daughter, then at Miles and Ro’s sprawled body.
Ro’s hand rose to her head and relief washed over Miles. She was coming around.
“I’m not sure my daughter needs restraining.”
Miles knew how to manage his anger. He was an expert at it, in fact. But he wasn’t convinced he wanted to manage his anger, not when an old man fired off verbal potshots and an Amazonian widow had just taken out Roanna with a single punch and behaved as if it was all in a day’s work. No matter how sad a day it had been.
He felt Anita’s shoulders relax.
“I’m okay. Let me go.”
He didn’t tell her that he didn’t give a shit if she was okay, he just released her, but not before he gave her shoulders a knowing squeeze. “Try to hit her again and you’ll be on the ground next to her.” He’d have a quick ticket to a court martial, too, but hoped none of it would come to pass.
He bent down to Ro, who had maneuvered herself into a seated position. Blood poured from her cheek, between her fingers.
“Let me see it, Ro.”
She studied him with her good eye and he maintained a neutral expression as she lowered her hand. Her eye appeared okay but the gash under it, just on the edge of her cheekbone, was going to need stitches.
“It looks worse than it is. Here, press on it with this.” He shrugged out of his pullover and cotton T-shirt. He folded his T-shirt into a wallet-size lump and placed it over her gash. He guided her hand to where she’d been hit and held it there for a moment.
“Keep it here, okay?”
“Okay.” She should have looked defeated or shocked. Instead, he saw anger like molten lava in the depths of her good eye.
“You’re not going to try anything, are you?” He didn’t see Ro as an instigator, but he wouldn’t blame her for wanting to kick some ass. All they needed was to add battery to their list of complications. They’d already triggered a scene, negating his wish that this would be a low-key way in which to find out any loose ends about Petty Officer Perez.
“No, don’t worry. I’m okay.”
“Good girl,” he whispered for her ears only. He put his pullover back on over his bare chest.
He stood up. Ro needed to sit for a few more minutes.
“Do you have any ice, Mrs. Perez?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
AN HOUR LATER, Ro saw Miles look at his watch. They all sat at the kitchen table. Anita Perez was next to her father, who kept squeezing her hand. Her children were upstairs with her mother, getting their baths and being read to.
Since Anita was a nurse, she’d taken a look at Ro’s gash but only after they’d both calmed down and Ro wasn’t afraid Anita would use the proximity to hurt her again. Anita validated Miles’s take that Ro was going to need a stitch or two to close the wound and give it a chance to heal without scarring.
Ro didn’t give a squirrel’s butt about a scar.
She knew that she was seeing things through a haze of pain and anger, but she had to hand it to Miles. He’d kept his cool through all of it and was still managing to get information out of Anita and her father. Ro had no doubt that Anita wouldn’t even have opened the front door if she’d come alone. Miles had saved the day.
“As I told you, I know LCDR Brandywine very well, and she’s never been involved with anyone on our staff, much less a subordinate.” Ro gave Miles points for backing her so staunchly. How did he know she hadn’t screwed every guy on the hangar deck?
“Why were you so sure she was the one your husband had the affair with? Are you sure he had an affair?”
“He told me that she was the only woman on the wing staff. That she was single, and that he was leaving us for her.”
“Anita, there are other women on the wing staff. But there are only a few at the top—and he may have been referring to a senior enlisted woman on the staff. When did he tell you about the affair?”
“Last week. He’d moved out a few months ago. He was barely scraping by on his own. In case you can’t tell, I’m the major breadwinner. It worked for us for a long time—until José didn’t make rate on the last exam and I got a big raise the same week.”
Anita referred to the exam required by enlisted sailors to make each pay grade. The biggest leap was from petty officer to chief, and it wasn’t unusual for that to take a few tries. Not making chief could have been a contributing factor to Perez’s death, if it was indeed suicide, Ro thought, but unlikely.
“Bessie, our youngest, had just been born, and José was feeling the weight of needing to be the big provider.” Anita clenched her fists in front of her on the table. “It never bothered me. I didn’t care how much he made. He was doing what he always wanted to do—serve his country. I was doing what I wanted to do—helping heal people.” She hugged her shoulders and her father placed a hand on her back.
“I told him I was thinking of taking a better-paying job in Seattle—that we could move there if he wanted to get out, or stay in and take orders to Bremerton or Everett. He flipped. He couldn’t deal with the fact that it was my job driving our family life and where we’d live. He’s from a very traditional family and it didn’t sit right with him.”
“Are you in debt for any reason?”
“No, we’re not, I’m not. But he bought himself a fancy car and started bringing the kids really expensive gifts. Nothing he could afford on a petty officer’s salary, which is all he had after he moved out. I cut him off from any bit of my salary. I was protecting the kids and myself—I had to. Judging by his spending sprees he had to be living off his credit cards, maybe even payday loans. I was afraid he’d blow through our life savings if given the chance. I had to take precautions for me and my kids.”
“I’m sorry to be asking you these questions now, Mrs. Perez. Roanna and I are very sorry about your predicament.”
She cast a sheepish glance at Ro.
“I apologize—I reacted out of pure anger. I think it’s been building up i
n me for a long time.” She stared down at her hands. “This isn’t the first time he strayed, you know. It’s never been an easy road with him.”
“I’m sorry.” Miles was the comforter, the investigator, the medic.
Ro sat with frozen fingers holding a bag of frozen corn to her eyeball. They’d traded Miles’s blood-soaked T-shirt for a clean kitchen towel wrapped around a plastic bag full of ice cubes. After the ice melted they’d switched to frozen vegetables.
She couldn’t complain, not at the moment. But when she got out of there, she was going to allow herself to spew a decent string of obscenities. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so physically uncomfortable.
“I’m fine.” Ro tried to smile but wasn’t sure if it came out that way. Her muscles felt as though they were straining to create even the simplest facial expression.
Ro had heard of CACOs taking punches from bereaved family members. Emotions ran untethered during such tragic circumstances. The death of a service member more often than not involved a young person. A death that was unexpected and brutal in its suddenness.
She berated herself for not being more prepared for Anita’s fist. There’d been warning signs from the minute Anita had opened the door. The way her eyes had narrowed, the way she’d looked at Ro like a lioness looks at a jackal—it had been pretty obvious she’d seen Ro as an adversary.
Anita seemed to buy into Miles’s explanation that Ro was not Petty Officer Perez’s lover. If Ro could have mustered a glare at Miles she would have. Smooth as honey on peanut butter, he calmed Anita and her father down. He had them both captivated.
As I sit here with my eye swollen shut.
This was the refrain of Ro’s life. She worked her ass off trying to show she was half as good as any man in the same uniform, only to have her efforts stalled whenever a decent officer came into the picture. Her intel colleagues told her it had nothing to do with male versus female issues. It was an ops versus intel dynamic. It was the way it went for their navy branch—all support, none of the glory.
Ro didn’t want glory. She wanted answers and respect. Unfortunately, Miles had never given her anything less than respect, so she couldn’t take her resentment out on him. But she so badly wanted to that she could envision punching Miles the way Anita had punched her.
Was it because he was doing what she’d wanted to do for the investigation—developing a rapport with Anita Perez? Or because she was still annoyed by how attracted she was to him?
Miles definitely fit the bill of a “decent” officer. Unlike most of his single peers, he didn’t seem to have a need to brag about his sex life at work. Ro had never seen anything but pure professionalism from him. Even when he’d tried to get her to go out with him, he hadn’t pushed it and never took it out on her in the hangar. Miles was the consummate officer and a gentleman.
She respected him, too.
“Ro, didn’t you want to say something about Petty Officer Perez?” Miles’s eyes flickered over her face. She knew he didn’t miss one ugly bit of it, either. His powers of observation spoke for themselves since he’d worked EOD, but it only took a few minutes in his presence to realize this was a man who lived fully in the moment, ready for whatever came his way. Essential for working with explosives, unnerving when that attention was focused on her.
“Yes, Mrs. Perez—”
“Anita.”
“Yes, of course, Anita.” She moved her bag of corn to the other hand so that she could look at Anita with her good eye.
“I had a couple of conversations with Petty Officer Perez in the past few weeks about his career options. Did he ever mention to you that he wanted to switch from aviation maintenance to intelligence specialist?”
Anita’s hands shook but she steadied them by folding them in front of her on the farm table.
“He mentioned that he wanted to go back to school and finish up his master’s degree. He already earned his bachelor’s. I thought he wanted a commission. He’d always wanted to be an officer.” Anita sighed. “What I haven’t told the police, because it’s irrelevant and private, is that José came to me last week and told me he was sorry for all he’d done. That his affair had been stupid and a one-time deal. He missed the kids so much. He wanted to reconcile.”
“What did you say?” Ro had to know.
“I told him to go to hell.”
Silence settled over the four of them.
“What was his reaction?” Miles continued.
Anita gave them a wan, sad smile.
“He was visibly upset, but told me he’d wait for me to come back—wait forever if need be. Said he was going after a commission when his current enlistment was up.”
“Which was soon?” Ro asked the question Petty Officer Perez had given her the answer to last week—his enlistment was up in three months. He needed to make a decision to “reup,” reenlist for a number of years, or get out and try for a commission.
“Just a few months away.” Anita confirmed Ro’s understanding. She unwittingly also confirmed that Perez had been communicating with her right up until his death.
Not necessarily the mark of someone isolating himself before a suicide.
“Did he say anything else that indicated he was upset enough to take his own life?”
“It wasn’t suicide, trust me.” She shook her head. “The sheriff said he couldn’t rule it out due to the epidemic of PTSD-related suicides in the navy, but he thought it looked like an accident—that José fell off the cliffs. Check his medical records—José was never diagnosed with PTSD.”
Ro turned to Miles. Did he realize this was in direct contrast to what the commodore had intimated? His gaze remained on Anita.
“I don’t appreciate you coming in here and upsetting my daughter, Warrant.” Anita’s father spoke up, his voice steely, his fists clenched.
“I apologize. We’re just trying to make sure all the angles are covered. The civilian law enforcement has to do its job, but to us this isn’t a job or an investigation—this is about seeing that our fellow sailor gets the justice due him as a last gesture from the U.S. Navy.”
“Isn’t that what the CACO is for?” Anita eyed Miles, then Ro, with a wary glance.
Ruh-ro, Scooby. Busted.
“Yes, of course. But the CACO is more for you and your children, to ensure that you get every benefit and financial consideration due you. To see that Petty Officer Perez is laid to rest as he wished, as you wish. You are still legally married, correct?”
Ro hoped she’d be able to keep Miles and herself out of hot water here. All they needed was to get accused of interfering with the CACO and they wouldn’t be allowed to come anywhere near Anita or her kids. Their effectiveness would be completely compromised.
“Look, José had no reason to kill himself. I don’t think I helped him feel better, if he was truly depressed, when I told him to go to hell. But when he left the house he was still very positive about trying to win me back. He’d had a wonderful day with the kids down at City Beach and then took them for ice cream. He wasn’t a man about to commit suicide.”
“I’m sure he wasn’t. Again, we’re so sorry for your loss, Anita.” Ro’s voice sounded smooth, despite the effort it took her to speak through a swollen face.
“Thank you.” Anita bowed her head.
“I think you’ve been here long enough. Anita and the kids need some peace and quiet,” her father said.
“Of course.”
“No, wait—I have to tell you one more thing.” Anita’s plea cut the tension in the room.
Miles rested his hand on Ro’s forearm to keep her from standing up.
Anita’s eyes were red-rimmed and tears trickled down her cheeks. Quite a difference from the stone-faced woman who’d clocked Ro with a right hook only thirty minutes ago.
“There�
��s no way he was responsible for his own death. First, he hikes around the island all the time and knows the paths like the back of his hand. He wouldn’t get that close to the edge, ever. Plus it sounds like he fell at night—they said something about him drinking and walking it off.”
Anita shook her head.
“No way,” she repeated. “He’s been sober for five years. This affair was his first emotional slip that I’m aware of since he sobered up. I don’t know what state he was in when he was walking, but he wasn’t drunk.”
Ro hoped she kept her gasp silent. This was a big admission from an estranged, wronged wife. She looked at Miles.
“Thanks, Anita. We’re doing our best to get to the truth,” Miles responded.
His gaze met Ro’s with equanimity. “Let’s go.”
Ro nodded.
“Thanks again, Anita, and—” she smiled at Anita’s father “—thank you for being here to support your daughter. Again, I’m so sorry for your loss.” She left the pack of corn and dish towel on the kitchen counter.
Ro didn’t wait for another verbal attack, which appeared to simmer behind the man’s expression. She’d had enough.
Miles waited for her to walk in front of him. As they neared the front door, the doorbell rang.
“Son of a bitch, when will people figure out that you don’t need this, Anita?” the father growled with pent-up rage. Ro knew it was from the rush of adrenaline that any trauma caused. She didn’t, however, want to stick around for it to abate.
Miles reached the door first and opened it.
“Oh! I thought the CACO team was gone.” Karen Sanders, the wife of the commodore, stood on the porch with a large picnic basket in her arms.
“They are. We’re just here to offer our condolences.” Miles answered for both of them. Ro was grateful. Karen Sanders had never taken a shine to her. They had nothing in common. For all the years and sweat Ro had poured into making herself a successful career officer, Karen had used the same energy to become the perfect naval spouse. It made Ro sick. Not that the job of a naval spouse wasn’t important and welcome. Ro knew and enjoyed spending time with a good number of her colleagues’ spouses, male and female alike.
