by Geri Krotow
“Probably not. So you think the commodore followed her to your place, had a look at your computer and then followed her here?” She shuddered to think of Sanders lurking on her property while she and Karen were inside, vulnerable.
Miles raised his brows in exasperation. “Ro, come on. You’re intel. He doesn’t know what the hell she’s going to say from one minute to the next—she’s obviously an alcoholic who is off her rocker about what her navy wife duties are. He’s been covering for her drinking binges for years from what our colleagues at the wing say. Now he’s trying to keep her under control while he’s busy putting out fires.”
“Fine. You win. I need some kind of protection. But I’m not keeping a loaded gun in my house. Do you?”
“No, but I have a dog, remember?”
“You’re babysitting Lucky. What will you do when she goes back to her owner?”
“Ro, this isn’t pertinent. I do think it’d be smart for you to consider getting a dog.”
She shook her head.
“Too hard. What would I do when I PCS?” She’d seen friends with pets go through hell when they received their permanent change of station orders to far-flung corners of the globe. They’d had to jump through numerous hoops to bring their pets with them.
“Ro, at some point you have to realize that your safety and your home life is worth whatever extra effort it takes. No, moving wouldn’t be as easy, but what’s so great about being able to pick up and leave a place as though you never lived there at all?”
“I don’t think this is pertinent, Warrant.” She used his own tactic against him. “Let’s keep our focus on what’s important.”
“So the commodore’s wife is gay.” Miles cracked his knuckles. “I didn’t see that one coming. It’s kind of obvious that they’ve been on the rocks for a while, with her drinking adding to the problem.”
Ro sighed. “It’s a tough life, holding a marriage together while raising a kid and moving all over the country for the navy.”
“True, but none of us are forced into this, Ro. We’re all volunteers.”
“We’re volunteers, Miles, but our families aren’t. No one knows how difficult being married to a sailor’s going to be until they’ve gone through a few tours.”
“To get back to what Karen Sanders told you—” he stretched and sat up straighter on the couch “—I don’t think Sanders knew about her and Perez, not until she told him. If it’s even true. Her story could be a figment of her drunken imagination.”
“I thought about that, too, but I do believe her. She had a quickie with Perez—why would she make something like that up?” Ro shuddered. “That guy couldn’t keep it in his pants, could he?”
“Maybe not, but he still didn’t deserve to die, Ro.”
“I’m not saying he did. I don’t see the commodore giving two shits what his wife does, frankly. I think it’s wishful thinking on her part that anyone would even suspect he’d killed Perez out of jealousy. She said herself that their marriage fizzled out a long time ago.”
“Other than too much information on the commodore’s marriage, we don’t have anything new, anything we could tell Ramsey, do we?”
“No, I don’t think so. How about you?”
“I agree. Nothing new to report.” He glanced down at his watch. “Let’s go around to all of your windows and doors, make sure they’re locked. Then I’m leaving.” She couldn’t interpret his expression.
“I can lock up by myself, Miles.” The sooner he left, the better. Her best resolutions turned to ashes when he was near.
“I’ll feel better if I do it.”
Miles took ten minutes to check her locks, and he tried the dead bolt on the front door from the outside. When he was confident her house was secure, he stood in the foyer. Taller, tougher and sexier than ever.
“Ro, come here.”
She looked at him but stayed a few steps away.
“I’m not going to do anything you don’t want, Ro.” Oh, but that was the problem. She wanted him to do everything he’d done Sunday night and more. Again and again.
She walked toward him and he grasped her hands and held them to his chest.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?”
“Ready? No way. How can you ever be ready for a colleague’s memorial service?” She paused. “Stop worrying about me, Miles. I’m a big girl.”
“I know you are, Ro.” He leaned in and softly kissed her lips. She ached for him to make the chaste kiss more but he didn’t.
“Good night, Ro. Turn the dead bolt as soon as I leave.”
She watched him turn and walk out her door.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I’M SORRY TO HAVE to call you both in here. I know you’re up to your asses in alligators with the case.” Commodore Sanders was dressed in a white formal shirt and black tie; his uniform jacket hung on the back of his office door, ready for the memorial service.
Ro and Miles stood by his desk in their service dress blues. There was no doubt what the commodore had called them into his office to discuss just hours before Petty Officer Perez was laid to rest.
“I deeply regret any distress my wife caused you last night, Ro. She’s unpredictable at best, and when she’s been drinking all bets are off.” He tried to cover his discomfort with a chuckle but it failed miserably.
“It’s not an issue, sir. I’ve already forgotten about it.”
“Even the part where she told you she was gay?”
Roanna didn’t respond.
Commodore Sanders put his face in his hands for a long moment, then dragged his palms over his cheeks and looked up at both of them.
“It’s one thing when a marriage ends. We see it all the time in here.” He motioned to his desk and the piles of papers in neat stacks around its periphery. “It’s part of everyday life and the navy isn’t immune to it.
“But she thinks we fell apart because she’s gay.” He shook his head. “It sure explains the arctic temperatures in our bedroom these past several years.”
Ro’s stomach tensed at Sanders’s terrible attempt to make light of his personal troubles. Of Karen’s obvious suffering. The fact that he was so worried about his damned self on the day his sailor was being buried only highlighted his narcissism.
“Sir, we need to get ready to head over to the base chapel.” Miles had been silent until now.
“Did you tell him—” Sanders motioned his head toward Miles “—what my wife said?”
Ro stiffened. Was this the commodore’s attempt to figure out just how close she and Miles were?
“Only the pertinent details, sir.” In truth, Ro believed that none of what Karen had told her last night pertained to the Perez case. Not even the alleged affair. What difference did it make if it happened? Perez had been close to getting a divorce and having affairs with all kinds of women if they were to believe what Lydia had told them.
“It’s okay if you said something to Miles, Ro. I put you two together on this, so I can’t expect you to keep information from each other.” He stared at Miles, and Ro wondered what Miles had done that got under the commodore’s skin.
Maybe you’re getting under his skin, too. You’re too close to the truth—that he’s a fraudulent bastard who’s had his command’s records forged.
Ro had had enough.
“Is that all, sir?”
“Yes, that’s all, Roanna.” Sanders nodded for them to depart.
* * *
CONTRARY TO THE somberness of the occasion, the sky was cerulean blue without a cloud in sight as Ro walked up the sidewalk to the base chapel. She’d come over from the wing spaces on her own, as had many of the staff. It wasn’t a time for socializing.
They waited to enter the church as hundreds of mourners funneled into the A-framed buildin
g. Ro noted the intense quiet not commonly associated with such a large group of sailors.
She’d been to far too many of these services over the past decade; they all had. It was the price of war, and every single person in uniform knew that.
Ro was only beginning to see the deeper costs. Going to the Perez home had opened her heart to the suffering the surviving family members endured. Anita Perez was unique in that her marriage was already ending, or had ended, from what she’d told them. Yet it didn’t appear to diminish her pain. Ro wore the physical proof of Anita’s pain on her face, in the form of stitches.
As they filed into the chapel they diverged into two lines and filled the pews accordingly. Ro felt a tug on her sleeve as she was about to slide into the next available pew.
“We’ve saved you a seat closer to the front.” Miles had walked around the back of the chapel and across a still-empty pew to reach her. She followed him through the pew and up the side aisle to a row only four or five from the altar.
She took her seat and inhaled deeply before she looked around. Most of the wing staff and dozens of enlisted sailors from other squadrons within the wing had crowded into the chapel. The chapel’s roof reached heavenward with its exposed wooden beams that glowed in the soft sunlight, but even the majesty of the quintessentially Northwest architecture lent little consolation to the funeral attendees.
It was never easy to lose a shipmate, but it was worse when it was assumed to be a PTSD-related suicide. They’d all been touched by the war, and a majority of them had wrestled with their own post-traumatic stress demons. Suicide was rampant in the military, to the point that each service had regular suicide awareness briefings for all its members—mandatory workshops that lasted anywhere from an hour to a full day. Suicide prevention among returning war veterans garnered attention from the highest levels of government, and for good reason.
The nation was losing too many of its most promising young citizens. Citizens who’d stepped up and put country before self.
All the prevention in the world hadn’t stopped Perez from taking the plunge off the West Beach cliff. Ro had heard the commodore say the same thing repeatedly over the past few days. She’d felt compassion for Sanders in those moments, even knowing that he most likely committed fraud over the aircraft-frame maintenance stats. It was hard on a leader when one of his own was in pain or suffering. Perez was dead and nothing the commodore did could bring him back.
Of course, if Sanders had committed murder, her compassion was moot. She forced the harsh thought away. There’d be time to figure out the truth surrounding Perez’s death later. This was the time to focus on his passing.
Ro sat next to Miles in the midst of their colleagues. They wore their service dress blues as the navy hadn’t yet switched over to summer whites. Not until Memorial Day.
They stood as the starting music swelled on the classic organ. The pipes resonated with the grief that echoed in each one of them, but especially the Perez family. They were brought in from the side altar door and seated in the front row. Ro made out Anita, her two children and her parents. There were other people with them who she assumed were extended family and close friends.
Anita had mourned the death of her marriage a while ago, but it didn’t make the situation any less tragic. Especially for two innocent children whose father was taken from them too early.
The casket came up the center aisle in a classic military procession with all the honors due a fallen hero. Ro bowed her head as the casket moved past their pew and she welcomed the sure, warm grasp of Miles’s hand, uniform or not.
The chaplain was at the front of the center aisle, and raised her hand to begin the service. Then she blessed the casket.
The chaplain was a navy captain and of a nondenominational Christian faith. Ro tried to focus on the chaplain’s soothing words. She had obviously found her calling as she managed to create tiny rays of hope even in these dark circumstances.
It occurred to Ro that she’d found her own calling as an intelligence officer—she could never have come up with the words to comfort family and friends of the deceased the way Captain Brunello did. But the flag-draped casket made her question whether her calling was the same as it had been a decade and a half ago. She was free to leave the navy at any point; she didn’t owe time for graduate school and had long ago completed her obligatory service.
Had Perez ever found his calling? She didn’t imagine that he had, he’d died so young.
Several of Petty Officer Perez’s colleagues stood up to make their own statements after Perez’s brother gave the eulogy. Ro listened for anything that was contrary to what she and Miles had already learned over the past few days but didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary.
What she did find interesting was that each speaker spoke of what a great guy Perez had been and how he’d helped his fellow sailors whenever possible. A few of the sailors mentioned that they’d met him in a support group that Ro assumed was AA. They said that Perez had taken them under his wing and walked with them on their journey to sobriety.
“It doesn’t add up. How could he be this great guy and do what he probably did?” she whispered to Miles.
“We all have several sides to us, Ro,” Miles whispered back, and she fought to not close her eyes and simply absorb the warmth of his breath on her face, the minty scent he always seemed to have. That was due to the ginger mints he was fond of. She’d seen the tin of candies in his truck.
“Either I’m tired, crazy or these people knew a different guy than we’ve been finding out about.”
“We’ll work it out later.” Miles was squeezed next to her on the uncomfortable wooden pew, so it was easy enough for him to hold her hand without anyone noticing. He squeezed tightly for several seconds and met her gaze.
Trust me.
His silent plea was as loud as if he’d used the microphone on the altar’s podium.
Ro wasn’t ready to accept his request, or figure out if he was trying to express something more profound than his shared sorrow. She turned her attention back to the front of the church.
The commodore stood up from his seat next to Karen and walked to the podium. He looked up from his prepared statement and his stare seemed fixated on her. Steely gray and none too pleased, judging by his disapproving expression. She gulped. Could he really see her and Miles from several rows away?
“Petty Officer José Perez served his country with the utmost dignity and respect.” Sanders turned to Anita and her kids. “You can be proud of your husband’s service until the end of your days, Mrs. Perez.” He went on to address the children and ended with, “Your father loved you both very much.”
Ro sighed. Of course the commodore had to make those remarks. He’d been Perez’s last boss, after all. But maybe he should have asked around before he tried to paint Perez as the perfect family guy. It wasn’t necessary and it was downright shameful to put Anita through this. The kids were one thing; they needed to know their father loved them and that he’d died doing an honorable job for his country.
It wasn’t so honorable if what CMC Reis told you is true.
She tried to ignore the thought.
“What?” Miles whispered.
She shook her head.
“Nothing.”
How could she begin to explain that she was thinking horrible things about the deceased? And that in this moment of grieving she was gaining clarity on her own life—if only she had the courage to take advantage of it?
The commodore stood in front of the altar, ready to present Anita Perez with the flag from Perez’s casket. They’d opted not to do the usual graveside ceremony at the funeral service, as Perez’s will stipulated he be cremated and his ashes scattered at sea. Anita had requested that the casket stay in place in the chapel as everyone left, giving the mourners each a chance to file by Perez’s remains and p
ay their final respects.
When it was her turn to stand in front of the casket for a few seconds, Ro did what she always did at military funerals. She placed her gloved hand on the casket and said a silent prayer that José Perez had found lasting peace.
Ro looked up as she turned to walk out of the church and for the second time caught Sanders eyeing her.
He knows.
She had no idea how or when, but somehow Sanders knew that she and Miles suspected him. Maybe he’d found out they’d been with the command master chief. Lydia’s statements had been damning, and if he knew she’d told them about her affair—and knew, therefore, that they hadn’t told him—he’d have every right to be angry with her and Miles.
Unless he was guilty of bribery and falsifying government documents. Then his anger would be based on fear.
And dangerous.
* * *
RO LEFT THE CHAPEL and walked out to the side parking lot. There wouldn’t be a flyover with the missing man formation since Perez hadn’t been aircrew. All she wanted was to get back to the office and change into her civilian clothes. The commodore was giving the entire wing the afternoon off.
“Ro, wait up.” Miles fell into step next to her. “Can I bum a ride? I walked here.”
“Of course.” She pushed the unlock button on her key fob twice and motioned to the passenger’s side. “It’s open.”
Once inside her small fuel-friendly sedan she turned to Miles. With his size, he looked like a walking stick insect squeezed into a baby-food jar.
He gave her a bemused smile.
“This is why I prefer to drive, by the way. I fit in my truck without breaking my neck.”
Ro thought he looked adorable—and completely silly. Her laughter caught her off guard, and when her chuckles turned into all-out mirth she clasped her hand over her mouth.
“I’m sorry, Miles, you just seem so uncomfortable,” she gasped between howls.
“Hey, if it can make you laugh on a day like today, it’s worth my spine, believe me.”
