Heart of War

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “He killed those two men, Dahlia.”

  “They came after his mother! They were going to kill her!”

  “That’s why I don’t want to have anything to do with those projects. They are bad.”

  “The projects may be bad, but the people in them aren’t. I have talked to Mrs. Richards. She is a good person, Mother. She has a steady job working uptown.”

  “You mean cleaning houses.”

  “Yes, I mean cleaning houses. What’s wrong with that? It seems to me I had an Aunt Brunelle who cleaned houses, and she still does, as far as I know.”

  “She comes from your father’s side.”

  “She is my aunt, and she cleans houses, and there is nothing wrong with that.”

  Her mother turned her head defiantly, and Dahlia knew she was about to give in, because that’s what she did, acted up before she gave up. “I don’t know,” she said flatly.

  “Mother, how many times have I asked you for a favor?”

  “You’re not asking for a favor. You’re asking for my soul.”

  “Mother, you should be ashamed of yourself for saying that. I’m asking for one favor. Help Mrs. Richards find a new place to live. Get her into that program the church runs.”

  “St. Anthony’s is not her church.”

  “It could be.”

  “She’s probably Baptist.”

  “I happen to know that she is a good Catholic woman, as if that mattered.”

  She lifted her chin. Now it was coming for sure.

  Surrender. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Dahlia crossed the room and took her mother’s chin in her hands and kissed her on both cheeks. “I knew I could count on you.”

  “I’ll help that woman get out of that project on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You bring your husband home for Thanksgiving. And you get those children of yours to come too.”

  “I promise you Bernie and I will be there. But I’ll have to talk to Charles and Patricia. I don’t know what their plans are.”

  “Well, they can just change their plans if they have to.”

  “Mother, Patricia is a television reporter all the way up in Hartford. If they’ve got her scheduled over Thanksgiving, she can’t just walk off the job. And Charles, he’s over in Fort Sill going to the Artillery School, and I don’t know how much time they’re giving the students off. But I promise you I’ll check with them and tell them you want everyone to come. I’m sure they’ll try to make it if they can.”

  “We’re going to have a party on Friday night, and our congressman is going to be there. You remember him. He lived right around the corner, on Law Street. Johnny Calhoun. He went to St. Anthony’s, same as you and Bernard.”

  “Johnny Calhoun was playing with sticks in the gutter when I left home, Mother.”

  “And he’s in the United States Congress today, thank you very much. And it won’t hurt Bernie in the least to meet Johnny and some of the others who’ll be there. It’s going to be a wonderful party.”

  “The Senate confirms appointments of general officers, Mother. Not the House.”

  “Johnny’s got friends over in the Senate. It won’t hurt.”

  “No, I guess it won’t. But I don’t want Bernie to get the feeling this whole thing is about him, Mother. Promise me that party isn’t going to turn into some kind of campaign function.”

  “I promise.”

  “Now, Mother, I’m going to call Corporal Richards’ lawyer, and I’m going to get her to put Mrs. Richards in touch with you when you get home, and when she calls, I want you to be as nice as you can to her, you hear me?”

  “You don’t have to worry about me. I know how to act after all these years. You just keep in mind who it was who taught you manners, young lady.”

  “I’m not young anymore, Mother, but I love you for saying so, and I love you for everything you taught me.” She kissed the top of her mother’s head. Eunice looked up at her and smiled.

  “See, I can still get you to do just exactly what I want.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “All you had to do was give me a little kiss.”

  Dahlia kissed her on the forehead, and she held her mother and stared out the window. There was no one in the world she loved more than her mother at that moment.

  No one.

  Chapter Eleven

  Two men were mowing the grass, and a third was trimming the hedge in the front yard of General Beckwith’s quarters when Kara pulled into the gravel drive. She drove a little farther around a bend in the drive, and she saw two more men, one pushing a wheelbarrow full of dirt and the other running a leaf blower. A massive pile of leaves had accumulated next to the drive. In her rearview mirror Kara saw a truck pull in behind her and stop next to the leaf pile and begin vacuuming it up. She drove through a covered portico and parked next to a green Volvo station wagon in the rear of the house. Mrs. Beckwith was standing on the back patio, wearing tan pants and a gray sweatshirt with ARMY on the front. She was holding a gardener’s hoe.

  “Major Guidry. Why don’t you go on inside? I’ll be right behind you.”

  Mrs. Beckwith stopped at the door and took off her gardening gloves and boots before she followed Kara into the house.

  “Turn right. Let’s go into the kitchen.”

  Kara walked past the stairs and through a pantry that opened onto a large, well-equipped kitchen. Mrs. Beckwith began to wash her hands.

  “I hope you don’t mind my informality. Morning is really the only time I get completely to myself.”

  “No, ma’am. Not at all. Having a garden like yours must be wonderful.”

  “It is. This garden is my joy.” She dried her hands on a dish towel and smiled. “I’m Roberta, but everyone calls me Robbie.” She chuckled. “That is, when they’re not calling me Mrs. General behind my back.”

  They shook hands. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Very much. I didn’t get a chance to make any this morning, and I refuse to drink the stuff they serve at the Seven-11.”

  “I don’t blame you. It’s truly godawful.” She poured two cups and led the way to a breakfast room overlooking the back garden. They sat down, and Mrs. Beckwith looked out at the graceful curve of the driveway bordering the garden.

  “They just put new bluestone gravel on the drive. It’s beautiful, don’t you think?”

  “I was admiring it as I drove in.”

  “Cream and sugar?”

  “Black is fine.”

  Mrs. Beckwith stirred a spoonful of sugar into her cup. “I guess you’re wondering why I asked you over here this morning.”

  “You’ve got my curiosity aroused, I’ll admit that much.”

  “I know my husband saw you at the hospital the night that young woman died in the flood. He told me you were the one who found her, you and a Staff Sergeant Nukanen, I believe.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “I’ve heard, not from my husband, that you’re involved in the investigation.”

  “Major Hollaway is in charge of the investigation. I’ve been assigned as prosecutor.”

  “I know something about the young woman who died.”

  Kara studied her for a moment. She was an attractive woman with light blue eyes and honey-colored hair with streaks of gray. She sipped her coffee calmly, as if she had conversations like this every morning.

  “Mrs. Beckwith, I need to know what this is about. I feel like I’m about to get mouse-trapped here, and I’ve got obligations as prosecutor on this case that might turn anything you have to say to me into evidence.”

  Mrs. Beckwith took a deep breath and turned slowly and looked at Kara with a level gaze. “What this is about is the last twenty-six years of my life. That’s when Bill started having affairs. Twenty-six years ago.”

  Kara could have said something, but she remained silent. Mrs. Beckwith looked out into the garden. Her face remained impassive.

 
“I know all about Bill and his affairs. We haven’t slept in the same bedroom in years.”

  Oh-oh. Here it comes.

  “Bill was seeing the young woman you found. You’re a good lawyer, and I’ve heard Major Hollaway is a fine military policeman, and I knew that sooner or later you were going to find out.”

  Kara breathed an interior sigh of relief. She had thought Mrs. Beckwith was going to bring up West Point.

  Mrs. Beckwith sipped her coffee, apparently waiting for her to say something, but Kara had learned that sometimes the best way to get someone to talk was to shut up and listen.

  “He was supposed to see her that night, after his speech to the Officers’ Wives Club. They were going to meet out by the firing range, but the storm came up, and he didn’t go.”

  She stared out the window for a moment, then turned to Kara. Her face seemed to have fallen, sorrow relaxing the little muscles around her mouth and eyes.

  “He left the Officers’ Wives Club dinner and went over to the post child-care center, where several children had been injured. Then he came home, and he was here at home until he got the call from the hospital.”

  “What time did he get home, Mrs. Beckwith?”

  “Just at ten o’clock.”

  Kara waited for a moment for Mrs. Beckwith to say something else, but she was finished.

  “Why are you telling me this, Mrs. Beckwith? This is information that could prove very damaging to your husband.”

  “Because I knew when you discovered Bill was having an affair with the dead girl, it would make him a suspect, and that would have ended his career.”

  “It might still make him a suspect, ma’am.”

  “I know that Bill called you last night, and that you’re going to see him later today. His motives are the same as mine. If he admits his affair to you before you find out about it on your own, you will be less likely to consider him as a suspect.”

  “Then why didn’t you wait for him to admit it himself?”

  “Because I know you wouldn’t believe him. That’s why you had to hear it from me first. You must believe me. He was nowhere near that young woman the night she died. He was at the club, he was at the child-care center, and he was here at home.”

  “You’re making a very serious admission about your husband, Mrs. Beckwith. I’m going to have to report your statement to Major Hollaway and make this a part of the official record.”

  “I guess you know all about serious admissions regarding my husband.”

  All she had to do was glance up from her coffee at Mrs. Beckwith. She knew.

  “I think I can count on you to keep this confidential. If you go to Hollaway and tell him what I’ve told you, or indeed what Bill is going to tell you, Hollaway is going to want to know why this very senior officer and his wife opened up to you and not to him. I think we both know the reason, and I think we both know you don’t want that reason to get out.”

  “That happened a long time ago, Mrs. Beckwith. You were separated at the time.”

  “That’s what you thought. I think if you went looking for the court papers making that separation legal, you would have a hard time finding them, because they do not exist.”

  “If that’s true, how was I supposed to know?”

  “You weren’t. But that hardly absolves you.”

  “It’s still a long time in the past. The statute of limitations on the crime of adultery has long since run out.”

  “You’ve heard the joke about the Army’s memory, haven’t you, Kara? It’s not in a big computer somewhere. It’s in the promotion boards. That’s where truths are hidden. Or come out.”

  Kara pushed her coffee cup away and stood.

  “You’ve thought this out very carefully, haven’t you, Mrs. Beckwith.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “And you have listened very carefully, haven’t you?”

  “I’m wondering, why take the good time out of your day to defend him like this, given what he’s done to you.”

  “I’m not defending my husband. I’m defending myself.” She looked around the kitchen, gestured toward the garden. “All of this . . . it’s my life too. Don’t you see?”

  Kara looked into her eyes. They pleaded from the same bottomless pool of hurt that her mother’s used to plead, on the nights her father didn’t come home. She would come into Kara’s room and stroke her back and say softly, to herself more than to Kara . . . it’s okay . . . everything’s going to be okay . . . and Kara would turn over in the dark and she could see her mother’s eyes in the light streaming through the window from the streetlight outside, and though she never saw tears, she knew her mother was crying inside.

  Kara picked up her purse and got ready to leave.

  “I understand, Mrs. Beckwith. I understand only too well.”

  ***

  The General had taken off early for some reason, so Randy Taylor wrapped things up at Headquarters and jumped in his car and drove off post. He changed clothes at his apartment downtown and headed north toward Atlanta, which was only about an hour away.

  Fort Benning had few advantages as an Army post, but its proximity to Atlanta was definitely one of them. Randy had spent a tour at Fort Carson, which was about an hour from Denver, and Carson was the only post that compared to Benning in this way. The year he’d spent at Fort Rucker, Alabama, a long, long way from a city, had been like being stranded on a desert island. Fort Rucker was surrounded by a wilderness of hole-in-the-wall country and western bars and cinder-block strip clubs and used-car lots and fast-food joints and not much else.

  He pulled into downtown Atlanta just after dark and had no trouble finding the Peachtree Hotel, because he had been there many times before. He parked in the garage and took an elevator to the twenty-second floor and knocked on Suite 2255. Ed Teese came to the door, a cordless phone pressed to his ear. He was still wearing his Class A trousers and shirt. He waved Randy inside and kept talking.

  “I understand that. Right. I’ll get right on it. I’ll talk to Senator Maldray about it first thing tomorrow.”

  He pressed Off and reached for his address book. Randy sat down on the sofa.

  “I’m sorry about this. I’ve got to make one more call.”

  “That’s okay. I’ve got all night.”

  Ed smiled. “That’s nice to hear.” He dialed the phone and waited for the ring. “Major Andrews, I need you to do a favor for me.”

  Randy wandered into the bedroom. Ed’s uniform jacket was hanging neatly on a jacket stand, the stars on his epaulets gleaming in the dim light. His freshly shined shoes were at the foot of the bed, which had been turned down, his pajamas neatly folded atop the pillow. In the bathroom a single toothbrush was laid out next to a travel-size tube of toothpaste lying next to a razor. There was one of everything, and each item was in its place. He sat down on the edge of the bed and thought about all the hotel rooms he’d been in, just like this one.

  You live alone, and when you leave, you travel alone, and you take a shower alone, and you brush your teeth alone, and you go to sleep alone, and when you get up in the morning, you get dressed alone and drive to work alone.

  Life in the closet. It must be the same all over the world.

  He heard Ed cradle the phone, and then he was standing in the bedroom door. He had a five o’clock shadow that hardened his features and emphasized the crinkles at the corners of his mouth when he smiled. He looked older than when Randy had seen him in Washington only days ago.

  “So how is life at the Home of the Infantry?”

  Randy stood up. “It could be better.” He took Ed’s hands and kissed him. “It could be a lot better if you got down here to Atlanta more often.”

  “I do my best. We’ve got two factories producing components for the new laser range finders, and I get down here on quality-control inspections every chance I get.”

  “How long are you staying?”

  “Overnight. I’ve got to be back for a meeting tomorrow at 1400. Somebody
from Fort Leavenworth is coming to meet us with the report on Training and Doctrine from the TRADOC Analysis Center at the Command and General Staff College.”

  “Sounds fascinating.”

  Ed laughed. “You’ll be out there at the Command and General Staff College soon enough, so don’t make fun.”

  “Ed, I’m thinking about getting out.”

  “What?”

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about resigning my commission. It’s been on my mind for most of the last year.”

  Ed led him into the suite’s living room. They sat on the sofa. Ed muted CNN, which had been burbling softly in the background. “This is all my fault. I should have never taken you to meet Terry and Jack. We should have never asked you to watch Beckwith for us.”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with it. I’m just tired of living this goddamned lie. The other night Beckwith had me escort a hot new captain I know he’s screwing. So there I am at this big reception for the Sec Def, and I’ve got to take her around and introduce her to all these assholes and make believe we’re both having such a wonderful time. It made me sick.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Just another gorgeous girl Beckwith found up in the Pentagon and arranged to ship down here. She’s his new liaison to the base closure commission. Captain Lannie Fulton Love. Isn’t that just perfect?”

  “I know her. She used to work down the hall from me in the Pentagon. Beckwith’s got taste, at least. She was one of the prettiest girls in the Department of the Army.”

  “Oh, he’s got an eye, all right. You should see the bevy of young things he’s cycled through Headquarters. It’s been like the invasion of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders around there.”

  Ed laughed. “He’s really that open about it?”

  “I don’t think the staff suspects anything. He and the missus put on a big show around the post. They’re at the club, lovey-dovey at a table in the corner. They make a show of taking a walk through the main post on Sundays after chapel. You can’t miss them.”

  “You’re sure he’s seeing this girl?”