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Heart of War

Page 17

by Lucian K. Truscott


  “Maybe after the convention.”

  “Yeah, everything will be slowing down by then.” She brightened. “So you never told me if you’ve got a guy. Do you?”

  Kara took a sip of champagne. She thought briefly of telling Lannie about Mace, but decided it was too dangerous. She had a big mouth, and even though her boss, General Beckwith, already knew about her and Mace, there was no sense baiting him. She might make a mistake and let it slip she knew, and he might take it the wrong way and use that as an excuse to go after them. No way she could take that chance.

  Lannie grinned. “You do. I can tell.”

  “Nope. Not yet. I just moved down here a few months ago. Give me some time. I’ll find somebody ready, willing, and able.”

  Lannie laughed. “I think this champagne is going to my head. I’m getting the giggles.”

  “It feels good, doesn’t it? Getting a little drunk. Letting go. Being happy.”

  Kara looked into her friend’s eyes. There was pain behind the sparkle and the laughter. She hoped Lannie wasn’t using champagne and talk as emotional camouflage. She had before. For all the goofy charm and energy the girl exuded like natural carbonation, there was a place inside Lannie that Kara had never touched. Maybe nobody had. Maybe not even Lannie.

  Lannie sighed. “Don’t you wish it wasn’t so man-dependent, happiness? I mean, Lord knows, if we didn’t need them so damn much, life would be so much easier.”

  Kara laughed. “Sometimes I wish I was one of my cats. All you’ve got to do is scratch their bellies, and those cats are happy as a clam sunk down in about a foot of muck.”

  They laughed. Lannie said: “I wonder if guys know we talk about them like this?”

  “Guys are worse. Much worse.” Kara took a sip from her glass, and Lannie poured the rest of the bottle and gazed at the bubbles popping at the surface of her glass.

  “It’s different with guys, Kara. I’ve known guys who could be happy as hell with a twenty-seven-inch TV, a cot, and a fridge for beer and a phone to call for take-out.”

  “What kind of life is that, anyway?”

  “It was my life up in Washington, you want the truth.”

  “Mine too, in law school.”

  “But this is a new season, right, Kara?” She raised her glass. “Here’s to guys who wouldn’t know a studbucket if it bit them on the ass!”

  Kara laughed. “I’ll drink to that.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Kara was early, so the nurse’s aide showed her to the waiting room. There were a couple of young male NCO’s standing along the wall, but everyone else in the room was in civilian clothes and female—wives and daughters mostly, although two or three of them could have been young enlisted women. Kara took a seat on one of the amazingly uncomfortable plastic chairs. It was then that she noticed that at least half of the women were pregnant. The young woman next to her was reading People. Kara whispered to her: “Is this the waiting room for Ob-Gyn?”

  She looked up from the magazine. “No, ma’am, they’re up on the third floor. This is outpatient services.”

  The nurse’s aide appeared in the door. “Major Guidry? Captain Evans will see you now.”

  Kara followed the aide down a long corridor and through a set of automatic stainless steel doors. Evans was pulling off a pair of latex gloves. He tossed them into a metal trash can and extended his hand. “Charlie Evans.”

  “Kara Guidry. It’s very nice to meet you.”

  “Same here.” He led her into a small office just off the main autopsy room and pulled up a chair for her at his desk. “Slow week. One training death. A fatal car accident. A death from pneumonia, believe it or not.”

  “I didn’t know anybody died from pneumonia anymore.”

  “It happens. People think they’ve got a cold and ignore it and keep working, and it’s too late by the time the doc gets to them. I see one or two cases a year like that. Pneumonia is an extremely virulent infection. What can I help you with?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Sheila Worthy.”

  “Of course. Frank Hollaway called yesterday. You found the body, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And they gave you the prosecution?”

  “Yeah. Surprised me too.”

  Evans swiveled his chair around and started rummaging through a file drawer. He was wearing steel rim spectacles that gave him a professorial air. He swiveled back around and opened the file. “Tell me what you want to know.”

  “I’m looking for a time of death.”

  “That’s a tough one.”

  “I thought that’d be your answer.”

  “Let’s start with what we know. What time did you find the body?”

  “We got to the car about 2330. I guess it took us about twenty minutes to get her on shore.”

  “My records show the EMT’s got there at 2354.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “She was pronounced dead in the emergency room seventeen minutes after midnight.”

  “I’m trying to get some idea of what time she actually died.”

  “Sergeant Nukanen reported that she appeared to be dead when he reached her. That would have been sometime between 2330 and 2350, according to your calculations.”

  “Closer to 2350.”

  “Well then, we know from Sergeant Nukanen she was dead at, say, 2345. She must have died sometime before that. The problem is, with a drowning it’s very difficult to tell.”

  “Why is that?”

  “With other kinds of fatal trauma, say, death by gunshot, or death by stabbing, or death by blunt-force blow to the head, you can make certain calculations. You can measure blood loss. You can measure the amount of blood that collects and congeals around the point of impact from a blow to the head. You can also make an estimate based on body temperature. After the heart stops beating, the body begins to cool. Of course, in the case of drowning, if the body is submerged, it is cooling even before the heart stops, and after the heart stops, the cooling is more rapid. The temperature of the water affects how fast the body loses heat.” Evans took off his glasses and cleaned them with the edge of his jacket. “In every case all you’re really getting is a rough estimation, usually in hours, not minutes. It’s an inexact science.”

  “What about the wound in her neck? She wasn’t bleeding when we got to her.”

  “That’s because her heart had stopped pumping blood.”

  “Did she lose much blood?”

  “Hardly any at all. It was a very small wound, and it did not sever an artery. The wound to her neck was not the cause of death. Drowning was.”

  “So the closest we can come is . . . ?”

  “If you put me on the stand, I would have to say she could have died anytime between 2100 and when Sergeant Nukanen reached her at 2345 or so. That’s about it.”

  “The time of death could have been as early as 2100? Are you sure of that?”

  “As certain as I can be. If she had drowned any earlier, her body temperature would have dropped lower than it was when we measured it in the emergency room. Twenty-one hundred is a solid lower limit for the time of death. I’ll swear to that.”

  “What else can you tell me about the knife wound, Doctor?”

  “It was fairly deep, but it didn’t do too much damage. Certainly not enough to kill her. Hollaway and I surmised that the stabbing took place away from her car. She rushed back to the car and drove away, trying to escape her attacker. She was panicked, and she drove straight into the flash flood and stalled the car. I’m pretty sure her attacker was standing right there and watched the water engulf her.”

  “Do you have any idea what kind of knife was used in the attack?”

  “It was single-edged, sharp. If I were to guess, the knife went in up to the hilt, so the blade wasn’t much longer than three, three and a half inches.”

  “That sounds a lot like a kitchen paring knife to me.”

  “Or a pocket knife, maybe even a switchblade. Har
d to tell.”

  “Aren’t switchblades a lot longer? Five inches or more?”

  “Most of them. But I’ve seen smaller switchblades. Then there’s always the chance the knife didn’t go in up to the hilt.”

  “Quite a few imponderables.”

  “About as many as there are in every murder case I’ve been in on. Is this your first?”

  Kara felt her face flush and wondered if he noticed. “Yeah.”

  “Welcome to the club.”

  “It’s not something I was looking forward to.”

  “None of us do. Not even Frank, and he’s got one of the sunnier dispositions around, for a cop.”

  “Yeah, Frank is great. It’s a pleasure to work with him.”

  “Anything else I can help you with, Major?”

  “You didn’t find any sign of sexual activity?”

  “None.”

  “Did you do a pregnancy test, Doctor?”

  A smile formed slowly on Evans’ face. “You know something? I didn’t.”

  “Can you still do one?”

  “Sure.”

  Kara stood. “I’m very interested in those results, Doctor. When can you get them to me?”

  He checked his watch. “Too late today. First thing in the morning.”

  She was standing at the door. “Thanks, Doc. It was nice meeting you.”

  “Same here.” He paused at the door, wiping his glasses on the hem of his jacket again. “What made you think of the pregnancy test, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Kara gave a teasingly exaggerated shrug. “I don’t know. Feminine intuition?”

  She could still hear Captain Evans laughing as she turned the corner and went through the automatic doors.

  Kara ran her finger down the list of names on the buzzer of the main gate leading into the complex. She hit the keypad with his code, and the gate swung open. She had convinced Hollaway that Randy Taylor should be handled one on one. It was already getting dark by the time she found his apartment.

  Randy answered the door wearing jeans and a cable-knit sweater. “Come in. I just put on some coffee. Would you like a cup?”

  Kara was right behind him. “Sure, if you’re offering.”

  Randy handed her a steaming mug and sat down across from her. He was in a garden apartment complex out near the airport. Kara studied the room. It was furnished with the typical strange mix of styles you came across in Army houses: a few inherited antiques, some pieces from an assignment in southern Germany, a couple of prints from a TDY in Japan, some Central American ceramic figures picked up after Jungle Warfare School in Panama.

  “Did you get those wood carvings in Germany?” She pointed across the room at several reliefs of quaint village streets hanging on the wall.

  “Yeah, in Oberammergau. Do you like them?”

  “Yes. I wanted to get down there to Bavaria when I was overseas, but they kept us pretty busy.” She sipped her coffee. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

  “I want to help out in any way I can. Sheila was a friend. A good one.”

  Kara put down her cup. “You and Sheila dated for a while, is that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How many times did you go out?”

  “Six, seven. Something like that. We met going through in-post processing the day we both arrived for our duty assignments. We didn’t know anybody at Fort Benning, and I guess we kind of fell in together.”

  “When was that?”

  “About a year ago.” Randy shifted nervously in his chair. “Can I ask what this is about? I mean, why I’m being questioned?”

  “We’re talking to everyone who knew Sheila, trying to fill in some blanks. Quite frankly, there are more than a few of them. It appears that she kept pretty much to herself.”

  “She was quiet and a little shy, and I think she was intimidated by having a Headquarters job. Everybody around her was a major or a colonel. It can be a little scary until you get used to it.”

  “Can you tell me why you two broke up?”

  “We didn’t break up. There was nothing to break up. We were just friends.”

  “I’m sorry if this is getting personal, but investigations like this have to cover ground that’s sometimes uncomfortable.”

  “I understand.”

  “After you stopped seeing Sheila, did she start seeing anyone else?”

  “I saw her in the O-Club a couple of times with a guy. I can’t remember his name . . .”

  “Barry Parks?”

  “That was him.”

  “Did she ever talk about him with you?”

  “She told me he was someone she had known in college.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “She was a very private person. I guess you’re finding that out.”

  “Did Sheila have any close friends? Was there anyone else she talked about?”

  “Her roommate. Becky Carrington.”

  “Lieutenant Carrington told us she thought Sheila was having an affair with a married man. Do you know anything about that?”

  He hesitated, and his eyes flicked quickly away before he answered. He knew.

  “Like I said, she kept pretty much to herself.”

  “Randy, I have to ask you where you were on the night Sheila died.”

  “You don’t think I—”

  Kara interrupted. “We’re asking everyone who knew her. There’s a chance someone may have seen her car. She had to pass straight through the middle of the post to get out there on the South Gate Road that night.”

  “I was with the General at the O-Club. He gave a speech to the Officers’ Wives Club.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I got there about 1900 and left about 2130.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I went home.”

  “We think Sheila might have been driving out to the firing range about 2130. You didn’t see her, did you?”

  “No.”

  Kara stood up. “That’s all I’ve got for now. I want to thank you for your cooperation, Randy. I know it’s difficult, losing a friend.”

  “She was a sweet, sweet girl. I’d give anything if . . .” His voice trailed away.

  “If what?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. It’s just sad she’s gone.”

  Mace was coming into the barracks when he heard Lieutenant Parks’ voice.

  “Sergeant Nukanen, have you got a minute?” He found Parks sitting behind his desk. “Close the door, Sarge. Have a seat.”

  There was something about the look in Parks’ eyes . . . Mace had seen it before, with another lieutenant just before he had a breakdown, and they had medicalled him out of the service. Parks looked cornered, like a man with few options and no exit.

  “Have you got the men ready, Sarge?”

  “Yes, sir. They’re loaded up and ready to go.”

  “Great.” Parks fished in his drawer and came out with a sheet of paper. “I wanted to make sure you were up on platoon operations for the coming year.” He pushed it across the desk to Mace. It was a training schedule for the next six months. “Stick this in your files. It’ll give you a head start on what the captain has planned for us.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Mace. He didn’t know where this was headed. It was very unlike Parks to include him on company planning. All he expected Mace to do was show up every morning and run the platoon on a daily basis. Long-range stuff was for officers.

  Parks handed him a set of keys. “This is a copy of my keys for the arms room and the platoon files.” He pointed at a locked file cabinet in the corner. “I keep meaning to give you a set. This morning I remembered when I was over at the PX and had them made up. I wanted you to have your own keys in case I, uh, I’m on vacation or on TDY and forget to give you mine.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “We’ve, uh, had a pretty good year together, Sarge. You and the platoon and me, I mean.”

  “Yes, sir, we have.”

  “I wante
d you to know how proud I am of both you and the platoon. This has been the best year I’ve had in the Army. They say there’s nothing like command, and they’re right.”

  “The men are proud of you too, sir. Everybody knows you’re the best platoon leader in the battalion.”

  “That’s very nice of you to say, Sarge.” He stood up, checking his watch. “I don’t want to keep you. I know you’ve got a lot to do.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Parks offered his hand, and they shook hands. “Keep up the good work, Sarge. The Army needs men like you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  She could hear the phone ringing when she got out of her car. As she raced up the porch stairs and unlocked the door, her answering machine picked up. She ran to the receiver, panting, out of breath. “Hello?”

  “That’s a real unfamiliar sound you’re making there. For a desk jockey, I mean.”

  She paused, catching her breath. “You should talk.”

  “Listen, something weird happened this afternoon. Lieutenant Parks called me in and gave me the training plans for the next six months, and my own set of keys to all the locked areas in the platoon.”

  “So?”

  “It was like he was preparing for him not being around much longer, Kara.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I think he’s going to split.”

  Kara whistled. “Where is he now?”

  “They came down tonight with a big readiness alert for tonight. He’s in there getting the platoon ready to go.”

  “He’s got his field gear on and everything?”

  “Yeah. I’m not saying he’s going to split tonight. I just think he’s considering it.”

  “What kind of alert are you guys on?”

  “I don’t know. When they’ve done it before, they get us all loaded up, and then they call it off.”

  “I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

  “You’d better make it quick. There isn’t much time.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Outside the motor pool at a pay phone.”

 

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