Blame the Dead

by Ed Ruggero

  “Well, that was an unexpected question. I’ve got to go with Henry the Fifth.”

  “Not Romeo and Juliet?” Patrick teased.

  “Teenage lovers who kill themselves? No, thanks,” she said. “Give me a good battle speech any day.”

  “Eddie?”

  Harkins’ favorite play was Hamlet, and Patrick knew it.

  “The play within the play,” Harkins said. “Hamlet makes the king and queen—who were they? Gertrude and…”

  “Claudius,” Patrick said.

  “Hamlet puts on a play at court that shows how his father was murdered, and his mother and her new husband, who murdered the old king, go a little crazy,” Harkins said. “Plus there’s a lot of talk of ghosts, which I like.”

  “So you’re going to, what? Put on a play?” Kathleen asked.

  “Nah. Hamlet had a theory, which I don’t have yet,” Harkins said. “The important thing was he kept after his suspects, challenging their stories and their memories, until the façade started to crack.”

  “I doubt if every detective knows exactly what he’s doing all the time,” Patrick said. “If the case is complicated, and it seems like this one is, I’ll bet they just keep stirring things up until something gives.”

  Harkins thought about a detective he knew named Kilgore, a squad room philosopher. Kilgore said a detective has to keep moving “like a shark.”

  “Why like a shark?” Patrolman Harkins had asked.

  “Shark stops moving, it can’t breathe. A detective stops moving, the investigation dies.”

  At the time, Harkins didn’t know enough to ask a follow-up question, like “What if you don’t know what direction you should move?”

  “Guess I’ll keep stirring things up, then,” Harkins said, falling back. “Besides, I’m too bullheaded to give up.”

  He’d forgotten to remove his pistol belt, so his canteen jabbed him in the ribs, but he could not muster the effort to sit up again.

  “First, sleep.”

  23

  4 August 1943

  0010 hours

  True to his word, Harkins was asleep a few seconds after lying back on the blanket. Kathleen walked outside with Patrick.

  “I worry about my brother.”

  “Yeah, he worries about you, too,” she said. “Maybe he’ll get this investigation wrapped up soon and he can go back to some other duties.”

  “You mean what he called ‘unfucking fucking traffic jams’?”

  Tired as she was, Kathleen had to laugh. “Father, you shock me.”

  “Yeah, I shock myself sometimes.”

  Kathleen, who could no longer see his face in the darkness, heard a bit of sadness.

  “Michael’s death is eating him up, for sure,” Patrick said.

  “You, too?”

  “Yeah, but Eddie’s got a bigger burden.”

  “How’s that?”

  Patrick looked at her for a moment, then shrugged his big shoulders. “I should probably shut up,” he said. Then, “You know, after this war is over I might not be suited for going back to some sleepy little parish.”

  She stepped close, put her hand on his arm, and stood on her tiptoes to kiss Patrick on the cheek. “That’ll be a good problem to have,” she said. “Worrying about what to do after the war.”

  “See you, Kathleen.”

  “See you, Patrick.”

  The priest walked away, headed back to the unpaved main street where he’d left his jeep.

  Kathleen turned to go back to her stack of casualty tags, then decided to use the latrine. Too much coffee.

  She skirted the edge of the compound—the women’s latrine was on the far northeast corner. She looked at her watch, but it was too dark to see the face. The guys were issued watches with luminous dials, numbers that glowed faintly; nurses had to supply their own watches. Brenda Felton had taken at least two government-issue watches from dead soldiers, handing them out to nurses, saying those boys didn’t need them anymore, while the nurses did.

  She was thinking about one of the men who had died that day on her table. His torso was nearly shredded but his face had been untouched and showed no sign of the terrible pain that had been visited on him. His dog tags had been torn off; unless one of his buddies was also in the hospital and could identify the body, he’d probably end up buried as an unknown. Whenever she heard that term she thought of the family, left ignorant of what had happened to the son, father, brother who had walked out the door one day and would never return.

  Kathleen felt rather than heard a footfall behind her. Before she could turn, she was shoved forward, her foot caught from behind. She didn’t even have a split second to throw her hands in front of her and so hit the ground stretched out, her face in the gravel, all breath punched from her chest. Then there was a weight on top of her, a big hand on the back of her head, then something cold and hard, and she knew it was the muzzle of a pistol pressed to the base of her skull. Everything was darkness; there was no sound except her lungs trying to find air, no conscious thought until there came unbidden a complete sentence: This is how I die.

  Her attacker pulled the pistol’s hammer back, the click distinct as a thunderclap. She tried to buck the man off, tried twisting to see his face, but he pressed her skull as if trying to crush it with one hand.

  She kicked her feet to the side, trying for some leverage, and the man let out a snort that might have been a laugh at her efforts.

  Then he pulled the trigger.

  When she felt the urine hot in her pants she realized the pistol’s chamber had been empty, and by the time she formed that thought, he was gone.

  24

  4 August 1943

  0030 hours

  As soon as Kathleen Donnelly limped back into the admin tent and woke Eddie Harkins, she knew she’d made a mistake.

  “What the hell happened to you?” he said, instantly awake and on his feet. He helped her into the only chair and turned up the kerosene lamp, which she’d left lit. He leaned in, examined her bloody nose and already swelling lip.

  “Jesus Christ, Kathleen! Who did this?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking at her hands, her left palm a bloody scrape. Mentally, she was already past flipping through suspects and on to the danger other nurses might be in.

  “Was it one guy?” Harkins was furious, eyes wide, breath shallow. His pulse was probably through the roof. “I’ll bet it was that shit Wilkins. I’ll kill him.”

  “Stop,” Donnelly said. She had to buy some time, figure out a sensible approach that didn’t start with a shootout. “Fill that basin with water and bring me that packet of towels,” she said. Harkins buckled on his pistol but did as instructed.

  She tasted salt, put her hands to her mouth, felt the wetness below her bottom lip, where she may have bitten herself. She probed the sides of her nose with shaky fingers. It was swelling, but did not seem to be broken.

  “Did you see anything?” he asked. “Did he say anything?”

  “Where’s Colianno?”

  “He asked where Colianno is?”

  “No. I want to know where Colianno is. I want him to find Ronan for me. She might be in danger, too, so I’ve got to get her out of here.”

  “Both of you have to go someplace safe.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Donnelly said.

  “Jesus, Kathleen. We’re not playing games here. I’m going to get you out of here, and I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  “Nobody asked your fucking opinion, Eddie,” she shot back, the adrenaline boiling up in her, coming out aimed at him. “We’re down three nurses, and we’ll be down a few more if Boone gets rid of Savio and Melbourne. We can’t be any more shorthanded around here without putting the patients at even more risk.”

  “And you’re not at risk?” Harkins demanded.

  “We’re all at risk,” she said. “I’m a soldier too, you know.”

  The sentiment surprised her, because that’s not how she thought of
herself. She was quite sure she’d never referred to herself as a soldier, and it sounded contrived, a little corny. But it was also true that her duties went far beyond nursing.

  “I’m responsible for Ronan since Felton left, and I’m not going to have her walking around here with some maniac on the loose. She’s the bigger threat to Boone, or Wilkins, or whoever is behind all this shit.”

  “She won’t be at risk after I shoot those two bastards.”

  “And what if it’s not either one of them? What if it’s someone you don’t even suspect yet? Then what? You feel better but this place is still screwed up?”

  “I’m going to yank them out of bed, see if they have alibis.”

  “No, first things first. Find Colianno, find Ronan. Neither Wilkins or Boone is going to talk to you. They’ll just deny everything anyway.”

  “Do you think it was one of them?”

  “Well, they’re both pissed off at you, that’s for sure, and this might be about getting you to back off. I mean, if it were about me, he would have done something more.”

  “Did he try to, you know…”

  “Rape me? No. And he obviously didn’t want to kill me, because he could have.”

  She decided in that instant that she wouldn’t tell Harkins about the pistol, the empty chamber, the certainty she was about to die.

  “Eddie, you’ve got to promise me you’ll give yourself time to think first, time to cool down before you go rattling Wilkins or Boone. That might be exactly what he wants.”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever did this to me probably knew about you and Wilkins, and certainly knows about the investigation. Hell, I’m not a problem for Boone, so the only good reason to attack me is to distract you, maybe goad you into flying off the handle. Maybe Wilkins is waiting for you somewhere, plans on shooting you when you attack him.”

  Harkins was quiet for a moment, and she hoped that meant he was thinking about slowing down.

  “We’ve got to take a longer view,” Donnelly said. “Not react in the moment.”

  “Lindner,” Harkins said.

  “What about him?”

  “Lindner was connected to Stephenson, went to the bordello with him. I’m going to pull Lindner’s chain a bit, see where that gets us.”

  Harkins stepped close to her, dipped a towel in the basin he had filled, used a corner to wipe grit from her cheekbones. “Anything broken?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Mostly I was just scared. Angry, too.”

  “You fought?” Harkins asked.

  “You’re goddamn right I fought. And I’m not done, either. But we’ve got to be smart about this, Eddie.”

  “OK,” he said.

  “Let’s go find Ronan.”

  Donnelly stood, brushed off the front of her uniform. Her trousers were stained in the front; if Harkins noticed, he didn’t say anything. He pulled his pistol from its holster, yanked the slide back and checked the chamber, where a .45 round gleamed dully.

  “All right,” he said over his shoulder as he pushed aside the tent flap. “We’ll do this your way for now.”

  * * *

  Donnelly found Ronan asleep in the nurses’ tent, along with six other women snoring and stretched across their cots, no air stirring in the August night. Ronan slept facedown, one arm above her head, the other hanging off the side of the cot. Donnelly touched her shoulder, which was slick with perspiration.

  “Moira, wake up.”

  Ronan opened an eye, rolled onto her side and then immediately into a sitting position, ready for an emergency, though not the one Donnelly brought.

  “Get your stuff,” Donnelly said. “I want you to come with me.”

  Ronan lifted her shoes, shook them to make sure she didn’t put her foot on top of one of the spiders that liked to climb inside, then jammed a foot into each. She’d been using her blouse as a pillow; she shook it out and put her arms in, began buttoning it.

  “We have mass caz?” she asked Donnelly.

  A “mass caz” meant mass casualties, a wave of patients and all hands turn to.

  Two other nurses watched them now, so Donnelly lowered her voice. “Grab your duffle and the rest of your gear.”

  Ronan knew now that she wasn’t going to lend a hand in surgery; she was moving. She was suddenly wide awake, and it took her less than a minute to stuff all her belongings into the duffle bag, which was less than half full when she finished.

  There was a small light hanging from a central tent pole. When Donnelly walked past, Ronan said, “What the hell happened to your face?”

  Donnelly didn’t answer, just led Ronan out of the tent. Outside, Harkins had already found Colianno, and the four of them climbed into Harkins’ jeep, the nurses crammed in the narrow backseat.

  “We can’t go to the admin tent,” Donnelly said to Harkins.

  “Where to, then?”

  “Let’s go to the ward tents. Good Guy is on duty, and there’ll be a couple of nurses and some orderlies, too. A crowd. I think that’s what I need right now.”

  Ronan did not ask any more questions as they drove, and she followed Donnelly quietly into one of the two big ward tents. There was very little going on, a couple of nurses moving about, checking on patients. Most of the men appeared to be sleeping.

  “Doc Trennely here?” Donnelly asked one of the women.

  “He’s asleep in the corner,” the nurse said. She took Donnelly’s chin between her thumb and forefinger, examined the scrapes and bruises. “Want me to clean that up for you?”

  “No, thanks,” Donnelly said.

  “Doc Trennely told us to wake him right away if anything changes with one of the patients,” the woman said. She checked out Harkins and Colianno, then Ronan with her duffle bag. “Shall I wake him?”

  “No, that’s OK,” Donnelly said. She wanted as little attention as possible, and the ward in the middle of the night was about as quiet a place as you could get and still be around enough people that you weren’t going to be attacked again.

  “You’re going to wait here for me, right?” Harkins asked Donnelly.

  “Yes.” She looked at her watch; it was nearly 0230. “I’m going to want her out of here before dawn,” she said, tilting her head toward Ronan, who stood whispering to Colianno.

  “You have someplace in mind?” Harkins asked.

  “Not yet. We’ve got two hours to come up with a plan to get her someplace safe.”

  “OK.”

  “Where are you going right now?”

  “Talk to First Sergeant Drake,” Harkins said. “He’s going to want to know about this assault, and he’ll know where Boone is now and maybe where he was a few hours ago.”

  When she looked around, Donnelly saw Colianno put his arm on Ronan’s shoulder. It was no secret the paratrooper was sweet on her. The gesture looked comforting, and she thought about what she’d told Harkins about why she’d slept with him. She’d wanted to be held. She wanted it still.

  Harkins pulled a pistol from the back waistband of his pants, a revolver, like a policeman might carry. “You know how to use this?”

  “Point and shoot?”

  Harkins showed her the thumb safety, showed her how to pull the hammer back. The noise made her think of her attacker, who had wanted to terrify her.

  “Click, point, shoot,” he said.

  25

  4 August 1943

  0300 hours

  Harkins took Colianno with him to find First Sergeant Drake, though the paratrooper clearly wanted to stay behind with Ronan and Donnelly.

  “They’ll be fine in the ward tent,” Harkins said. “There’s got to be a dozen people in there, not even counting the patients.”

  Colianno hit the jeep’s starter and pushed it into gear.

  “You think they’re going to be OK,” Colianno said, “but since we don’t know who jumped Lieutenant Donnelly, we don’t know for sure. Could have been one of the docs on duty, or one of the orderlies in the tent right now with
them. You should have left me with them, Lieutenant.”

  Harkins got into the passenger side of the jeep. “I need you with me to make sure I don’t shoot Wilkins and Boone on sight.”

  “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

  “We’ll come back as soon as we can. Before dawn, for sure.”

  “OK,” Colianno said. “Where we going?”

  “Let’s go wake up First Sergeant Drake.”

  Drake’s sleeping tent was near the middle of the hospital compound, in line with the tent that held both the orderly room and Boone’s office, a supply tent for nonmedical supplies, and, just a few dozen yards way, Boone’s sleeping tent. Harkins wanted to approach on foot, so he had Colianno park the jeep on the hospital’s main street.

  “First Sergeant?” Harkins said as he knocked on the post beside the door flap. “It’s Lieutenant Harkins.”

  Drake reached the door so quickly Harkins wondered if he’d been waiting for visitors. The big man appeared in a T-shirt, boxer shorts, and his GI shoes, no socks.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked Harkins.

  “There’s been an assault. Can I come in?”

  “Shit,” Drake said. He turned away from the door and Harkins followed him inside, motioning for Colianno to wait.

  Drake used a match to light a kerosene lamp, then adjusted the wick until there was enough light for Harkins to see. There was a cot with a single sheet, a lumpy pack of some sort that Drake might have been using as a pillow, a field desk piled with papers held down by rocks functioning as paperweights.

  “Who got attacked?” Drake asked.

  “Nurse Donnelly.”

  Drake sucked his teeth. Harkins could see that it irked him—was a blot on his professionalism—that the hospital seemed to be spinning out of control.

  “How is she doing? She hurt?”

  “Shaken up, I guess. No major damage that she’d admit to.”

  “She’s a tough one, Donnelly is,” Drake said. He found his pants in a tangle on the floor, shook them out, pulled them on one leg, then the other, stepping back into his shoes. “Surprised you came to me first,” he said.