by S. D. Tooley
“Wait, now.” Frank touched the corner of Samuel’s report. “If the original went to Whittier, a copy was in the safety deposit box, where’s the copy that went to the trusted friend?”
“Better question is — who is the trusted friend?” Jake asked. They pondered that question for several minutes. “While we’re here trying to strategize about keeping the lid on this,” Jake warned, “Sam is up to no good. I can feel it. When she and Tim have their heads together, god only knows what havoc they can wreak.” He clamped a hand on Frank’s shoulder and patted it reassuringly. He looked across the table at Carl and said, “I believe the President should spend less time trying to stifle this issue and more time planning damage control. Because the truth IS going to come out. It’s just a matter of when.”
Chapter 70
Sam whipped her Jeep around a corner and down Lake Drive to the hotel. She had entertained the thought of stopping by Preston’s house but decided it was best to let him sweat for a while. The fact that he hadn’t placed a call to her this morning told her he was already sweating profusely.
The dark sedan Tim had allegedly seen in the past had been replaced by a white van. After convincing herself that Tim’s imagination was on overdrive, she finally had seen the suspiciously parked floral van for a floral shop that didn’t exist.
She lost the van on the last turn down an alley on Wentworth. She was going to put a stop to this. Against her better judgment, she let Tim use his computer to access the guest list at the Suisse Hotel. The FBI had spent so little time with Benny, Sam had never suspected they would still be in town.
The elevator doors opened and deposited Sam on the fourteenth floor. She looked around for agents, body guards. No one. The hallway was deserted. Matter of fact, Director Underer had the entire top floor. Suite 1411 was the only room.
She pressed the doorbell twice. The door was pulled open by a tall, distinguished-looking man in horn-rimmed glasses. Carl Underer wore his navy suit like a uniform. She could envision his closet filled with twenty identical suits.
“Director Underer?” She stretched out a hand to him. “Sergeant Sam Casey.”
He clasped her hand and after a faltering moment said, “Of course.” Carl closed the door slowly. “To what do I owe this visit, Sergeant?”
“Please, call me Sam.” She walked around the conference table eyeing the serving tray of coffee and hot water, the laptop computer, telephone, file folders, a black briefcase. She made herself a cup of hot tea. “Why are there two goons following my every move? Watching my driveway?”
She assessed his living quarters with its dark mahogany wood, floral wallpaper, Queen Anne furniture, and wet bar. Hallways branched out like expressway intersections.
“I wasn’t aware you were being watched but I’ll definitely check into it.” Carl motioned toward the conference table. “Please, sit.” Carl stole a brief glance toward Sam’s lightning bolt pendant.
“If you are still in town because of the Hap Wilson case, I might be able to help.” Sam watched for his reaction. He was as stone-faced as the statues at the entrance to the hotel.
A door at the far end of the room by the fireplace opened and an Asian man of medium height and slight build emerged. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had company,” the man said. The air was thick with tension. Carl made no attempt at introductions.
“You aren’t interrupting,” Sam said.
“I’m just going to leave these here for the cleaning lady.” The man placed a stack of newspapers on the couch.
Sam saw the heading Korean Today. She moved to the couch and glanced at the address label.
“Wait.” She looked up at the retreating man. “You’re Lincoln Thomas?”
“Yes.”
Carl swiveled in his seat. “There’s no need to ...”
“Sam Casey.” Sam reached for his hand.
“Yes.” Lincoln’s face brightened. “I stopped by to see you the other day.” His eyes dropped down to her necklace. “Where did you get this?”
Suddenly, Hap’s written words popped into Sam’s head, the report her father had written, the account of Mushima valley. All the names, places, events.
She took a step back, assessed his age. Could it be?
“My, god,” she gasped. “You’re Ling Toy!”
Chapter 71
Carl leaned back in his chair, his elbow propped up on the arm rest, a fist pressed wearily under his chin. Sam was reading Lincoln’s signed affidavit as she paced the floor.
Carl said, “A copy of everything will be given to the Pentagon, Sam. So, we have just about wrapped up everything here.”
“Wrapped up?” Sam pivoted on her heel. “Did I miss something here? Or did you? What about Hap’s killer? My father’s killer? You can’t just let Preston walk. What are you going to do? File a report that those three men died in Mushima Valley of friendly fire and leave it at that?” She glanced at Lincoln who had remained silent. “Did you threaten Lincoln with deportation if he goes to the press?”
Carl held out his hand to retrieve the affidavit. “No one is threatening anyone here, Sam.” Carl’s phone rang. He walked over to the far end of the table and picked it up.
While he spoke, Sam opened a file folder by his briefcase. Her eyes scanned the handwriting, the paper yellowed with age. It was Hap’s writing. He told of the men in his unit, how he believed they were buried in Mushima Valley.
“Things are getting out of control,” Carl said into the phone. He took four long strides over to where Sam was sitting and pulled the folder out of her hands.
The pages flashed in front of Sam’s eyes like a teleprompter. They had a copy of everything that had been in her father’s safety deposit box.
“You knew! You knew all along.” Sam could tell by the surprised look on Lincoln’s face that he, too, had been kept in the dark.
“She found the report,” Carl said into the phone. “With all due respect, there was a better way to handle the situation.”
Sam lowered herself into the chair. Her father’s papers, Hap’s affidavit. Her father had called the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee who at the time was Jackson Whittier. Whittier knew and did nothing. Sam felt numb. Anger and shock overwhelmed her.
“They knew,” she mumbled, “and they never bothered to look for them, to confirm what Hap had told my father.”
Lincoln blinked rapidly. “All this time? I came here for nothing?”
Carl dropped the phone to his chest then held it out to Sam.
“President Whittier would like to speak with you.”
Chapter 72
With a dampened paper towel, Sam slowly erased the writing on the white plexiboard. The names of Hap, Bubba, Shadow, and Booker disappeared one by one. Next was Preston, George Abbott, Leonard Ames, and Parker Smith. Their names reduced to faded images before one last wipe erased all evidence of their existence. It took longer to erase her father’s name. It was like losing him a second time, as if his existing on a plexiboard somehow brought him back to life.
With the board completely cleaned off, she gathered the papers from the study and the dining room table and carried them to the living room. She pressed the igniter and brought the gas fireplace to life.
From the hearth in front of the see-through fireplace, Sam stared wistfully at the window seat in the dining room. She thought back to last night and the way Jake’s arms felt wrapped around her, and the look of longing in his eyes, or maybe she had imagined it. Maybe it had been the longing in her eyes.
She struggled to bring her mind back to her encounter with Carl and her conversation with the President. Whittier admitted he had received her father’s package of information. Carl denied having seen it until just recently. But he also had the pages from her father’s safety deposit box. And there was only one person who could have given them to him.
The writing had been on the wall. She didn’t know how she failed to see it. As she watched the flames flicker, she thought of the nigh
t Jake had appeared on her patio. The familiar way his eyes deciphered every movement, registered every detail, his serious demeanor. FBI.
Jake had been nothing more than another watchdog for Carl. His concern had been a lie, the key he finagled out of Abby, his staying here all these nights. She inhaled long and deep, daring those tears to make an appearance. She heard a key in the front door but didn’t look up.
Jake walked down the steps to the dining room. The table was cleared of all the notes, papers. The sandblasted grapevine tree trunk was back in the center of the table with all its greenery, fake cactus, and flowers.
“It isn’t hot enough outside for you?”
Sam tore sheets of paper into halves, then quarters, and slowly fed them to the fire. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him walk over, toss his sportscoat on the couch.
“You’re destroying evidence.”
She looked up at him, gave a resigned sigh and tossed another handful of scraps into the flames, watching the edges curl up and turn to ashes.
“I sold my soul to the devil today,” she started. “I gave President Whittier an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
“President Whittier?” His eyes questioned her as he took a seat on the arm of the couch.
“Yes.” She closed the door to the fireplace and brushed the dirt from her hands. She turned her attention to him, tried to look at him as her nemesis, not the man whose strong arms had protected her in the fall from Preston’s fence. Focus. That had always been her strong point. She just had to force herself to focus.
“In exchange for not revealing that the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee was aware over twenty years ago that the bodies of missing GIs were buried at Mushima Valley, Whittier is going to appoint Abby to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and grant a few other odds and ends.” A tense laugh escaped her throat. “I can almost get used to this deal-making.”
Jake’s face became as stony as Carl’s had been earlier.
“The President, on the other hand,” Sam continued, “will make the murders and Preston’s involvement public. We can finally get the bastard behind bars and reinstate Hap and his unit to their proper, honorable status.”
“He agreed to that?”
He said it cautiously. Sam saw no hint of exposure behind his eyes, those soft brown eyes. Focus. All a lie. Set up. She had to keep saying the words like a mantra. Meanwhile, her chest felt as if a four-hundred-pound sumu wrestler were sitting on it.
“Oh, he blubbered on and on about how he couldn’t give the Black Hills back to the Sioux.” She thought back to the folder Carl had, wondered if Jake might have been behind one of those doors all the time she was there. She felt her face flush, felt tears welling up. Again, she forced them back. “And I agreed to report that my father’s papers were just recently discovered without any hint that the President was ever aware of their existence. He’ll be a hero in the black community. That should be great for votes.”
Sam glared at Jake. “Would you believe, there were two more pages to my father’s report? It mentioned the names of the guys in Hap’s unit and where Hap suspected their bodies had been buried.” She thought she saw a light turn on behind those stolid eyes. She gave him time to digest the information before asking, “How long were you with the Bureau?” She wiped the tears away as soon as they dared to show up.
Jake reached over to help wipe them but Sam pulled away and moved over to the love seat.
“I was going to tell you, Sam.”
“When, Jake? After Preston received a pat on the hand?” She watched him move from the arm of the couch to the couch. The coffee table between them could just as easily been the Grand Canyon.
“I talked to Carl until I was blue in the face. Frank and I both did.”
“Frank?” She was beginning to feel like the punch line of a bad joke. “You trusted Frank enough with the truth but not me?”
“It was what Carl wanted. And as far as Carl changing the President’s mind, Carl’s hands were tied, Sam. We both want nothing more than to see the reputation of Hap and the others cleared. And I DO want Preston to be tried for murder.”
He reached across that canyon for her hand. For a brief moment he touched her. It unleashed her flood of tears again. She pulled her hand away and leaned back. Her eyes were penetrating, accusing, the same piercing coolness she had exhibited the first time she met him at Preston’s.
“You had the videotape of me at Preston’s but you never used it.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Now I know why. You needed to be Carl’s eyes and ears. He needed to know how close I was getting to the truth, how much I uncovered.”
“That may have been true in the beginning.”
She saw pain behind those brown eyes, but told herself he was a good actor. Where was Abby when it came to witnessing the true Jake Mitchell, the man she seemed to trust and mother ad nauseam? Abby’s powers picked a bad time to go on shutdown.
The grandmother clock in the corner of the dining room clanged, echoing off the walls, filling the cold silence. Sam leaned an elbow on the back rest of the loveseat. Her fingers tugged on her hair, winding and unwinding the strands around her index finger.
She despised the fact that Jake had broken through her shell, that he had made her vulnerable. More important, she hated the fact that he made her feel emotions that were foreign to her.
“You discovered Lincoln Thomas was Ling Toy and whisked him right off to Carl.”
Jake leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He studied his hands as if answers were written in the deep creases. “There’s nothing I can say that will make you understand why I had to do what ...”
Her head turned sharply. “You’re right.” She was beaten. She didn’t have one more ounce of fight in her. Her emotions had zapped it all out. Rising slowly from the couch she said, “I want you out of here.” As she passed him she ordered, “NOW.”
She opened the front door and stood waiting. Jake placed his hand on the door, leaned close to her. Distance. She needed to distance herself from him before she weakened.
“Sam.” His voice was a whisper. “Don’t do this to ...”
She turned away. “Call first before you stop by to pick up your things. Make sure I’m not here.”
Quietly, he left. She closed the door, started climbing the stairs to her room but dropped down on the third stair, too emotionally drained to move. She drew her knees up close and wept.
All this time she had never been able to find a way to get rid of him. She never knew it could be so easy, or so painful.
Chapter 73
“You hardly touched your meal,” Alex said.
Abby pulled her shawl up around her shoulders and leaned back against the bench outside of Flanigan’s. The restaurant was across the street from the Three Oaks Shopping Center, a huge, renovated, enclosed center with aqua-colored spires at its entranceways.
Abby looked up toward the sky. The bright lights from the center and Flanigan’s parking lot hindered any view of the stars on this clear night.
“I just have this uneasy feeling.”
A young couple walked past, the mother holding the hand of a young girl. Abby smiled at the girl whose wide eyes stared back. The mother and daughter took a seat on the bench next to them while the father walked off to the parking lot.
The little girl, dressed in a pale yellow shorts outfit which matched her corn-silk hair, walked over to them.
Holding out her doll to Abby, the girl said, “See my dollie?”
“Your dollie is beautiful.”
“Josie.” The young mother gathered up her daughter. “Let’s not bother the nice people.” She led Josie back to the bench.
“You should not let your grandmotherly hormones take over your emotions, Abby. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go out tonight. We should have stayed home.” Alex rose from the bench, positioning his hat on his head.
“I only wanted to give Sam and Jake some time alone.”
A large bird
was circling the parking lot. Seagulls scurried from their feasts of food scraps. Patrons emerging from the restaurant looked up as the bird with its forty-inch wing span descended on a nearby light pole.
The hawk turned its head, its beady eyes trained on Abby. It let out a rambling diatribe, a screeching that drowned out the noise from the traffic and the hungry seagulls.
Alex studied the bird and asked Abby, “What does the hawk say?”
Abby sighed heavily and hung her head. The hawk’s report on Abby’s home front was not good.
“Come.” Alex helped Abby up from the bench. “Why don’t we go take in a good blood and guts war movie?” He wrapped a consoling arm around her shoulder. “Definitely no romance movie.”
As they walked toward the truck, Abby patted his hand and asked mournfully, “Dear Alex, is there really a difference?”
Chapter 74
Two hours had passed since Jake left. Sam rose slowly from the staircase and walked through the study to the bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face and brushed her teeth.
Her last meal had been eons ago. Lunch maybe? But she wasn’t hungry. The pain she felt was new to her. It felt as though a large hand had reached into her chest and pulled her heart out. It was a pain she never wanted to feel again.
She lowered herself onto the couch in the darkened study and pulled her feet up under her. Why wasn’t Abby home? She needed a shoulder to cry on. Her emotions betrayed her as the phone rang sending a glimmer of hope through her veins. No matter how much she wanted to, she refused to talk to Jake.
She listened to the voice on the recorder. It was vaguely familiar. When he said his name was Cain, she rushed to the phone.
“Yes, this is Sergeant Casey.”
