Heart of War

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did he act any differently than he used to that night?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hollaway looked up from the notes he was taking. “In what way?”

  “He was real nervous, sir. And he kept talking about Lieutenant Worthy.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He was talking about how much he loved her, sir.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, sir. He said he followed her the night she was killed, but that he lost her in the storm. I think he felt like, if he hadn’t lost track of her, he could have stopped her from being murdered.”

  Hollaway took his time noting what Mace had said. “I think there’s a possibility that Lieutenant Parks committed suicide, Sergeant. What do you think?”

  “He was pretty upset, sir.”

  “Upset as in, depressed?”

  “I’d say so, sir.”

  “Would you say that he ran into the live-fire zone deliberately?”

  “Yes, sir. I warned him we were too close. You could see the yellow flags marking the zone. He just took off running and didn’t stop.”

  “And you went after him. Did you call out to him?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And that didn’t stop him?”

  “No, sir. He just kept going.”

  Hollaway stood up. “You’ve been very helpful, Sergeant. Thank you for coming.”

  Mace saluted and left. He was turning the corner to go down the stairs when he ran into her. Rain water was dripping into her eyes from the visor of her cap as she looked into his eyes.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” said Mace, brushing past her.

  Kara watched him go down the stairs, wondering what he had been doing in her building.

  Hollaway, she said to herself as she unlocked the door to her office. She took off her wet raincoat and was hanging it up when a spec-6 stuck his head in the door. “Major Guidry? Colonel Lambert wants to see you.”

  Oh-oh. Here it comes. That MP captain from Fort Polk has already called her.

  “Tell her I’ll be right there.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll do that.”

  She took off her cap and raincoat and hung them on the coat rack and got out a spare pair of military heels she kept in her bottom desk drawer. She slumped into her chair and tried vainly to dry her stocking feet with Kleenex. Those bastards at Fort Polk. There was one thing military law enforcement people had in common with criminals. Turf. They both jealously protected it, and now they were going to make her pay for waltzing into Fort Polk and violating their turf.

  Colonel Lambert was glued to her desk chair, as usual, when Kara reported.

  “Have a seat, Major,” said Colonel Lambert. She finished signing some kind of official document and looked up. Her face was wooden, impassive.

  Kara steeled herself. She was tossing explanations around in her mind like tennis balls when Colonel Lambert smiled.

  “Did you have a nice holiday?”

  “Yes, I did.” She prayed her surprise didn’t show.

  “It’s a nice time of year, Thanksgiving. Did you visit relatives?”

  “Mother lives out in California, and it’s a rough haul, ma’am, even on a long weekend. I just couldn’t hack the airlines this year.”

  “Nor could I. They had a nice spread at the O-Club, though. Were you there? I didn’t see you.”

  “No, ma’am. I drove over to New Orleans and saw some friends.”

  “That must have been wonderful. I’ll bet the food was to die for.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  Colonel Lambert rocked back in her chair. “How is the investigation going?”

  “I’m patching together a time line of her last day, leading up to her murder. It’s coming along. I’ve still got a few blanks to fill in.”

  “I talked to Frank Hollaway at the Thanksgiving buffet at the O-Club. He seemed to think Parks was a pretty strong suspect.”

  “I know he does.”

  “Frank said he didn’t have an alibi.”

  “Neither did Captain Taylor, but I don’t find that at all surprising.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, ma’am, you’re single. So am I. Would you have had an alibi the night Lieutenant Worthy was killed, if you’d had to come up with one? I couldn’t have. I was at home alone. I live outside town on a quiet private lane off a county road. Nobody ever sees me coming or going. Where do you live, ma’am?”

  Colonel Lambert hesitated before she answered. “I live in post housing, but I see what you mean.” She picked up a stack of papers on her desk and tapped them neatly into alignment. “But I’m not sure that’s good enough. Major Hollaway thinks he’s got enough on Parks to hold a postmortem hearing and close out the case.”

  Kara thought quickly. There had to be a way to stall it. “I think we need some more time, ma’am. I don’t think we have enough evidence.”

  “Well, I’ve gone over the evidence with Major Hollaway, and I agree with him on this. I want you to get together with him and prepare the evidence. I’m going to order the hearing. I want the Sheila Worthy case put behind us, Major. This isn’t good for the Army, and it’s certainly not good for Fort Benning.”

  It was obvious that Beckwith had come down hard on Lieutenant Colonel Lambert as well as Hollaway. It was like he was with them in the room.

  “Ma’am, there’s a killer out there, and we’ll bring him to justice.”

  “We don’t have much time, Major. I want this case closed before the base closure commission has its final meeting next month.”

  So that’s the angle Beckwith’s playing.

  “I want to be updated regularly on your progress. I want this case closed, do you understand me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” So she can take the OER Beckwith will write for her up to Washington when she goes fishing for that promotion and new job, Kara thought as she closed Colonel Lambert’s door behind her.

  She found Hollaway standing at her office window.

  “Quite a storm out there,” he said, turning around when he heard her walk in.

  “I’m so tired of the rain, I’d take an assignment to Fort Huachuka, Arizona,” said Kara. “I’d sell my soul to the devil. I’d pay cash to the clerk who cut my orders.”

  “And then the sun and the heat would fry your brain, and you’d want out of there too,” laughed Hollaway.

  “That’s the Army brat in me. Take a reassignment anywhere, anytime, just for the change of scenery.” She perched on the edge of the desk. “I just came from Lambert’s office.”

  “I can’t get over the way she reminds me of Kathy Bates,” said Hollaway. “I mean, I’m sitting in there with her, and the whole time I’m thinking I’m James Caan, and she’s got this huge sledgehammer in her hand.”

  Kara laughed. “You don’t sound like you find her particularly thrilling to work with.”

  “General Beckwith called me over the weekend. At home. The pressure’s on.”

  “The pressure of wanting an appointment to chief of staff, you mean.”

  “You’re probably right. Are you ready to go to the hearing and present the stuff we’ve got on Parks?”

  She took a deep breath. “I’ve got to tell you, Frank, I don’t think so. It’s the lack of physical evidence against him. I mean, all we’ve got is that damn U.S. insignia and the fact he had been Sheila’s lover. If that car hadn’t gotten swamped, and we could have dusted it for prints and had your forensics guys go over it, I bet we wouldn’t be sitting here today commiserating with each other. We’d have caught the guy by now, and we’d be downtown at the Horseshoe Bar and Grill ordering huge steaks and the best bottle of wine they’ve got.”

  “I just interviewed Parks’ platoon sergeant. He thinks Parks may have committed suicide. He told me he was yelling at him, and Parks simply ignored him. He said the yellow markers for the live-fire zone were clearly visible, and the artillery was impacting very, very close to where they w
ere standing, and Parks just kept going straight into it. Maybe he figured it was just a matter of time before we pulled together enough circumstantial evidence to call him in.”

  “Would you have cashed your check like that, Frank, if you were the killer? I mean, you’re sitting there, and you know for sure that the flood destroyed all physical evidence, and you know you haven’t got a record that would make you a suspect, and you’ve been interviewed by the two investigators in charge and they didn’t lay a glove on you. Would you have committed suicide under those conditions? I don’t think so.”

  “I still think there’s a strong probability he killed her and then he killed himself, Kara. I think we should take what we’ve got to the postmortem hearing and be done with it.”

  “Look, I understand the pressure we’re under. But isn’t everyone a little eager to put this thing in a box and shove it in a closet? I mean, we don’t want to do a rush to judgment here. There’s the dead girl to think of. Sheila Worthy was the daughter of an officer. I can guarantee you that if we try to sweep this case under the rug, Colonel Worthy is going to be all over us.”

  “You need something solid to take to Lambert if you want to delay the hearing, Kara.”

  She opened her briefcase and laid the Xeroxed files from Fort Polk on her desk.

  “I drove to Fort Polk over the weekend, Frank. I found some evidence over there that I think bears on this case.”

  Hollaway looked surprised. “Fort Polk? What does that hellhole have to do with Sheila Worthy’s murder?”

  “A friend of mine tipped me off,” she lied. “There was a very similar murder at Polk about five years ago. A young female lieutenant by the name of Jansen was stabbed in the neck in a densely wooded area. They never solved the crime. It’s still an open case. That’s why I don’t think we should rush into closing the Sheila Worthy case.”

  Hollaway whistled. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “I know Parks wasn’t even in the service five years ago. He couldn’t have stabbed Jansen at Fort Polk, and I don’t think he stabbed Worthy at Fort Benning.”

  “We’re going to have to run a cross-check on our suspects lists. See who was stationed out at Fort Polk back then, if anyone.”

  “You think you can handle that, Frank?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’ll get right on it.”

  “While you’re at it, see if you can’t track down an address for this woman.” She handed him the file on Lieutenant O’Brien.

  “How does she fit in?” he asked, looking up from the material.

  “She was the dead girl’s roommate. We need to talk to her.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “We’re getting close, Frank. We’re going to break this case.”

  “You sound pretty confident for someone who’s got no suspects, no physical evidence, no circumstantial evidence, no motive, no nothing.”

  She grinned and shooed him out of her office. She was not at all certain that they were going to break the case, but she wasn’t going to let him know that.

  It was still raining when she got home. She fed the cats and started a fire in the fireplace and poured herself a glass of wine. The cottage was a cozy place on a cold winter night. The only thing missing was Mace. She picked up the phone and started to dial his number and then hung up. It was hard, but it was better to wait. Maybe he would call her. Maybe she’d run into him downtown.

  Maybe he wouldn’t call. Maybe she’d never hear from him or see him again.

  She drained the last of the wine. He had made her feel like a teenager when they were together. Now they were apart, and she still felt like a teenager, sitting by the phone, waiting for it to ring, knowing it probably wouldn’t. Why couldn’t life be easier? Why was it that when you got in your thirties, every day you went under another assault of shitty realities? Was it just women, or did men feel the same way, that life was hard and getting harder?

  She got up and whistled for the cats. How much was choice and how much chance? Did it matter?

  She was in bed, about to turn out the light, when she saw the photograph of herself and Lannie on her dresser. It had been taken a few years ago at the beach in Ocean City, Maryland. She had driven up from law school in Charlottesville, and Lannie had driven over from Washington. It had been a wonderful weekend. They lazed around on the beach all day and stayed up late drinking wine and talking and laughing. The last day they were there, one of those photo guys came by, and they paid him five bucks and he took their picture. Now, as she turned off the light, their smiling faces looked so young and eager and alive.

  She dreaded it, but she was going to have to talk to Lannie. At least this much in her life wouldn’t be left to chance. She had to tell her friend what she knew about Beckwith, even if it meant breaking her heart.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  They were in Mrs. Beckwith’s Lexus on Victory Boulevard, and she was driving.

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Randy. You know the Army. We requested the painting they’re doing at the quarters six weeks ago, and they have to get around to doing it this week. Did you ever see so many drop cloths and ladders in your life?”

  Randy laughed. “Well, you’ve got a big house, ma’am.”

  “Too big. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Randy. You’re a sweetheart to help me.”

  She parked in the lot outside Randy’s apartment, and they went inside.

  “Where can I put these boxes, Randy?”

  “Over there, ma’am.” He switched on the lights. She put the boxes down and collapsed on the sofa.

  “I’ll get the rest of them out of the trunk, ma’am.”

  “I am positively exhausted. I do not understand why every bit of the responsibility to get this party ready has fallen upon you and me. I spoke to Bill about it last night, and I asked him if there weren’t some discretionary funds available to hire a party planner, but he said no, we’d have to do it ourselves. Not fair, is it?”

  “Doesn’t seem so, ma’am.”

  Randy unlocked the trunk and got the rest of the invitation boxes and went back inside.

  “I have got to get these invitations done. I’ll tell you what. I’ll make excuses to Bill if you’ll stay here and help me this afternoon. I’ve got my list right here, and I’m going to separate them out by category. We’ve got active-duty Army, we’ve got retired, we’ve got corporate officers, we’ve got members of Congress . . . it’s going to take us the rest of the day.”

  “Sure. I’ll be glad to, ma’am.”

  “You’re a saint, Randy. I swear that you are.”

  He grinned. “I don’t think I’ve ever been called a saint before.”

  She laughed. “Always a first time.”

  Randy helped her arrange the piles of invitations on the dining room table. There wasn’t enough room. “I’m going to take these and go in the kitchen and spread them out on the dinette, ma’am. We’ll have more room that way.”

  “Good idea.”

  In the kitchen, he started addressing envelopes. He turned on the radio and thought about the call he’d gotten from Ed. He read an article over the phone that had been in the papers that morning in Washington. Senator Maldray had made a speech at a fund-raiser in Virginia, attacking affirmative action. At the end of the speech he had laid into General King without mentioning him by name: Certain people in the armed services have risen to positions of power and responsibility and are now using those positions to protect the affirmative-action policies that got them there. What kind of message are we sending to our young soldiers and sailors, Maldray had asked, if we tell them that the color of your skin matters to promotion boards and presidential appointments?

  Ed said that everyone in Washington knew the speech was a direct warning to the President that he meant to oppose General King in the Senate if the President dared to appoint him chief of staff. It was looking more and more like Beckwith had the job sewed up, Ed had said. Randy was glad his
brief involvement in the military’s political process was over. Ed said if Beckwith made it, he was going to resign from the service. Randy thought that maybe he would too. He hadn’t really made up his mind. But whatever he did, at least he knew the most powerful military man in the world wouldn’t consider him his sworn enemy. And neither would his wife.

  Kara drove through the gate to Lannie’s condo complex and looked at the cars parked outside the condos as she searched for Lannie’s unit. None of them had military stickers. The complex was way north of Columbus, in the suburbs surrounding Atlanta. Under other circumstances she would have thought Lannie had made a strange choice of a place to live, giving herself an hour’s drive to work when there were plenty of nice places right outside Fort Benning. But she knew what Lannie was doing, putting miles between herself and the military. For south Georgia, anyway, they didn’t make a better trysting spot than this one. She found Lannie’s condo in a distant corner of the complex. It was an end unit, with covered parking for two cars and its own separate entrance behind a wall. She cut the engine and turned off the headlights and got out.

  She had been dreading this moment all day. Lannie wasn’t going to buy her warnings about Beckwith. She was probably in love with him. She rang the doorbell.

  The door opened. Lannie’s surprise was obvious. “Kara! What are you doing here?”

  “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by,” she joked. She handed Lannie a bottle of good French Bordeaux. “I needed somebody to drink this with, and your name came up.”

  Lannie laughed. “I had no idea you knew where I lived.”

  “It wasn’t easy to find. You’re kind of out of the way here, aren’t you?”

  Lannie led the way to the kitchen and got out a corkscrew and opened the bottle of wine. “I got tired of living around a nest of other single officers when I was up in Washington. Everywhere you looked, all you saw were people with shiny shoes and uniforms carrying briefcases full of Pentagon homework. I figured when I got down here, I was going to find myself a place where I could get away from all that, and I did.” She reached into a cabinet and got a couple of wineglasses and poured. “To good wine, fast cars, and faster women.”