Always Faithful

by Catherine Snodgrass

  She gagged and dashed from the room. When the first organ was lifted from the body, Mike joined her.

  The photographer snickered. "Rookies."

  The coroner worked on, ignoring the distraction, but Phillip swore he saw the man’s eyes crinkle with humor.

  Cold-hearted bas—

  Phillip stopped himself. Hadn’t his reaction been the same when Laura first said she didn’t want to come here with them? This morning he had teased, cajoled, then just about bullied her into going by citing professional responsibility. It was no one’s fault but his own if Laura’s heaving stomach drew smiles from the autopsy team.

  Very compassionate of you, Phillip.

  He’d make it up to her after this case was over. Maybe they’d go to dinner. Maybe do a little something else later. That would certainly ease his constant ache for Rowan.

  Phillip silently cursed himself. Now who’s the bastard? It was over between him and Laura and had been for some time now. She certainly didn’t deserve to be used—especially as a replacement for a woman he couldn’t and shouldn’t have.

  Is that what you’ve become, Phillip Stuart? A user of people? Like Donald?

  Evaluating his life over the last several years, it certainly seemed that way. True, he had friendships, but he wasn’t above stepping on people if it furthered his goals. His initial relationship with Laura had served one purpose—he’d needed a woman and she’d been there. There was no thought to her feelings in the matter, save the fulfillment of her physical needs. He cold-heartedly slept with her night after night, satisfying his need for physical release, then just as heartlessly ended the affair.

  Rowan was right. He was his father. The very image of the man he most despised. The realization made him queasy. Then the coroner cut into Kemp’s stomach.

  A vile gas seeped into the room, engulfing them in its stench. Phillip gagged, clamped his hand over his mouth and dashed out, the photographer close behind him.

  Despite his roiling stomach, Phillip couldn’t help but throw out the jibe, "Rookie," before he and the photographer slid onto the bench in the hallway. Laura and Mike were nowhere to be seen.

  The man let his head droop between his knees. Sucking in a breath of fresh air, Phillip closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, willing himself not to lose his breakfast.

  After a second or two, the photographer gave a weak chuckle. "That’s what I get for being cocky."

  "What the hell was in that guy’s stomach?" Phillip asked.

  Before the other man could answer, Phillip caught a whiff of cinnamon. He dared a peek and found Jess holding a toothpick out to him, blue eyes twinkling with unsuppressed amusement.

  "I usually switch to cinnamon when I come to these things."

  Phillip accepted it with a nod of thanks, but his stomach was still too uneasy to do anything more. "Does it help?"

  Jess shrugged. "Doesn’t hurt." He held one out to the photographer. "The examiner asked me to tell you that he wants you back in there, or you’ll have to get yourself a replacement."

  The man snatched the wood away and shoved it into his mouth, then squared his shoulders and marched back in.

  "Braver man than me," Phillip said.

  Jess gave him a light jab in the arm. "You came all this way to get the information first-hand. You’re not going to let a putrid smell stop you now?"

  "Guess not." He poked the toothpick between his lips, and forced himself to his feet.

  Metal clinking into metal greeted them when they walked in. The stench still lingered. Phillip swallowed the urge to puke and edged closer.

  "Welcome back, gentlemen." The coroner pointed to a small metal bowl with his forceps. "Got a little present for you."

  Phillip sidled up, wanting to look but afraid of what he would see. A bullet winked up at him.

  "I found that in his stomach," the coroner said. "The bullet traveled up his thigh, bounced off the hip bone, through the intestines, before stopping there."

  "Is that why he smelled so bad when you opened him up?"

  "Partly…and the fact that he had a killer dinner of liver smothered with onions and garlic, all washed down with beer. Whoever shot this guy could probably smell him coming."

  "Was he drunk?"

  The coroner snorted. "Definitely. Blood alcohol content shows he was well over the limit."

  "Would have certainly affected his judgment," Jess said. "Might even cause him to think his own cohort was the enemy and knock her out."

  Phillip caught another whiff of the deceased and rolled the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. "Maybe. I’d have a heck of a time proving that one. Seems a stretch."

  Jess shoved a fresh toothpick between his teeth. "Won’t be any harder than anything else."

  And, if Kemp attacked Rowan, the question still remained—who shot Kemp? "Any chance the wounds were self-inflicted?"

  The coroner plopped Kemp’s liver on a scale, and noted its weight into the recording microphone. "None. Nothing supports it. This guy definitely fought with someone before he died and gave a good account of himself. Just look at all the bruises he’s got." He motioned to the arms and torso. "You can even see the imprint of the other guy’s knuckles."

  "Guy? Not girl?" Phillip asked.

  The coroner laughed. "Not unless she had man hands. The average woman could never have taken this man on face to face and given him this type of pounding. Look at the size of him. He’s built like Herman Munster." He spread his arms wide. "In addition, look at the size of the bruises left by the assailant’s knuckles. The hands that caused those marks were large, powerful. A man’s hands, in my opinion."

  A smile tugged at the corners of Phillip’s mouth.

  "Looking at the trajectory of the bullet, it’s likely that Kemp was knocked down first, then shot."

  Phillip nodded thoughtfully. Rowan could have shot Kemp with no problem, but she lacked the brute strength necessary to knock him to the ground before shooting him. In addition, her knuckles were unmarked, unbruised. The force she would have needed to pound those marks into Kemp would have left her knuckles bloody and raw.

  "So the angle of the bullet and the splatter of brain matter conclusively show that Kemp was on the ground when he was shot?" Jess’ voice demanded absolutes. "He wasn’t shot from a distance?"

  The coroner nodded. "Powder burns are on his temple," he said simply. "I’d say Kemp was struggling with someone who had a gun. He was knocked to the ground and shot point-blank. Simple as that."

  Jess pointed to Kemp’s leg. "What about that? Before or after death."

  "Definitely after. There’s no swelling or bleeding. Why do you suppose someone would want to shoot a man who was quite obviously already dead?"

  "I can think of one good reason." Phillip tossed the gnawed toothpick into the nearest trashcan, leaving the room and its grisly contents.

  * * *

  The ride back to Twentynine Palms was quiet. In the back seat, Phillip and Jess stared out their respective windows. Still battling queasiness, Mike drove while Laura sat beside him ramrod straight.

  "There’s a rest stop," she suddenly said. "Please…I need you to pull over."

  Mike careened into the exit. Before he could come to a complete stop, she was out of the car and running for the ladies’ room.

  "All right," Mike twisted around to look at them, "what did you find out?"

  Taking turns tag-teaming the information, Phillip and Jess talked as quickly as possible.

  Mike massaged the back of his neck. "So…nothing conclusive either way. She might have shot him, but it’s unlikely she beat him up beforehand. Now what?"

  "When did you arrange to have Rowan examined?" Phillip asked.

  "Couldn’t get her in for an appointment at the base hospital until tomorrow morning."

  Phillip muttered a curse. Were they ever going to get a break? Why was everything so damned difficult?

  "They’re booked, Phillip. No way to get her in earlier." Mi
ke gripped the steering wheel. "Malcolm should have had her examined more fully the night of the murder."

  There were a lot of things Malcolm should have done. "If you ask me, Collins should be fired." He waited for Jess to come to his colleague’s defense. Silence echoed from the other side of the seat.

  "If we have to wait until morning, then we have to wait. It’s not like I don’t have enough to occupy my time until then."

  Like the Lava Base investigation reports regarding the equipment thefts, the ones that had piqued Rowan’s concern in the first place. An enormous pile of those memos, bulletins, and reports waited for him in his room.

  "Sounds like an all-nighter to me." At the sight of Laura making her way back to the car, Mike paused and pushed open the door for her. "If you bring your work down to the office, I’ll help."

  Not a bad idea. Just as quickly, Phillip dismissed it. He needed to concentrate. Just knowing Rowan was in the same building would be too much of a distraction. He would want to be with her, to keep an eye out for her safety, protect her at all times.

  Phillip realized that he felt…jealous. He wanted to watch and see who she shared her smile with, to question any look another man gave her. He wanted to pound his fist in to the face of any Marine who got close enough to smell the sweet, tempting fragrance of her perfume. Staying in the same building would not be a good idea.

  "No thanks, Mike. At least one of us should get some sleep."

  * * *

  "A common thread. A hint. A clue. Something!"

  The urge to hurl the reports against the wall was too great. Now, Phillip could understand Rowan’s frustration. The reason she became involved. Unless that sector of the base had suddenly become the desert’s version of the Bermuda Triangle, something highly illegal was going on in the Lava training area.

  In the last month, a fighter jet had crashed there. Apparent cause—an errant bullet from the ongoing military training exercise. The trouble with that theory was that the jet was in a no-fire zone. Fortunately, the pilot had ejected safely.

  Not so fortunate was the helicopter crew flying over that same area a few days later. That time the investigators determined the cause to be a ruptured fuel line. Two men lost their lives in the crash, and the military exercises screeched to a halt for three days while the investigation took place.

  But that didn’t stop the rash of bad luck at Lava. Recovery teams and their parent units all began reporting losses of equipment. A computer here, tools there, the pistol that wound up in Rowan’s hands. And once the training exercises started up again there were two reports of skittish pilots firing on the employees of a mining company adjacent to the base.

  Phillip spent all night dissecting the reports, searching for something, anything, to help him break the case. There had to be something somewhere in the reports that explained the death of Charlie Kemp. Explain why Rowan was being set up to take the blame for his murder. He found one common element. The general location of the incidents. Hoping a fresh approach in the morning would net him some results, Phillip set everything aside.

  But morning at the office proved to be as fruitless, and he was aggravated by the fact that worrying over Rowan’s case had kept him awake. Noon approached and he’d made little progress from the day before.

  "By the look on your face I’d say you had a rough night."

  Phillip looked up at the sound of Jess’ voice. He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You could say that. I don’t understand what could be so important that someone would take the risk of causing all these accidents rather than be discovered."

  "UFOs?"

  He would have laughed if he had been more awake. Instead, Phillip flashed Jess a look from one eye that said, "Spare me, please."

  Chuckling, Jess slid to the sofa. "Where have all the incidents occurred?"

  Phillip flipped the base map around and pointed. The intense look on the other man’s face jolted him. "What? What is it?"

  The answer was slow in coming. Finally, Jess frowned and pushed the map back to him. "That’s the same damn area where those target devices are always being stolen."

  It was too simple. "Someone wants to protect their livelihood as a scrap dealer enough to kill?"

  "Maybe not that so much as their identity." Jess narrowed his eyes.

  "You mean someone who has a lot to lose."

  Jess nodded slowly. "Someone who has access to the Lava area. Someone in the military. Possibly someone with enough rank that they would want to protect themselves and their career…at any cost."

  Mike ducked into the room, shutting the door behind him, his normally serious face alight with excitement. "I got a call from the doctor. Other than a bruise on her hip and shoulder from when she fell and the mark on her face from where she was struck once, there isn’t any other mark on Staff Sergeant McKinley to indicate she was in a fight. Plus, there’s no way her fists ever came into contact with Kemp hard enough to make those bruises the coroner showed us."

  Phillip tossed his pen to the desk. "That takes care of that. Gentlemen, I’d say we have enough to get the charges dropped."

  Jess leaned forward. "Don’t be too hasty."

  Was the man crazy? "It’s circumstantial…all of it. And sloppy circumstantial evidence at that. No judge would put Rowan away with this much reasonable doubt."

  "And no one knows but the three of us," he replied. "Look, we have a dangerous situation here…a dangerous person. Kemp lost his life trying to uncover this. Staff Sergeant McKinley put her reputation and career on the line as well. Are you going to let that go to waste?"

  "Well, I’m certainly not going to let her be court-martialed for it." Phillip’s voice bordered on a snarl. He forced the anger down.

  "I’m not saying you should. I’m saying let the hearing on Monday go without presenting this evidence." Jess’ eyes glittered like two chips of blue ice.

  Mike braced himself against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. "And what will that accomplish?"

  "Hopefully, it will give the person responsible some breathing room to hang himself. He’ll think he’s successfully framed Rowan for his crime, and become lackadaisical. Then we nail him."

  "And if not?"

  "Then by the time the court-martial goes, Phillip will have doubled the evidence to clear her beyond anyone’s doubts. Ballistics reports, the autopsy report, forensic evaluation from the crime scene."

  Phillip massaged the ache in his forehead. "I don’t know. It sounds like we’re using her as bait."

  "Then talk to her. Ask her. I’d be willing to bet she’d agree," Jess said.

  That was the problem. He knew she’d agree. Phillip was the one who didn’t want to take the risk. He looked at Mike.

  Mike shrugged and adjusted his glasses. "Wouldn’t hurt. I don’t think she’s back from the doctor yet. Probably went to grab a bite of lunch."

  Reluctantly, Phillip found himself nodding. "I’ll talk to her after lunch then. If she agrees, then that’s how we’ll proceed."

  "All right then." Mike swung open the door. "You look like you need a to burn off some stress. Want to join us in a little basketball?"

  "Be right there."

  * * *

  Humiliated. It didn’t matter that the examination had been done for her benefit. She’d still felt violated when forced to strip down. Having photographs taken of her body had added to her discomfort. Yes, the doctor remained sympathetic and courteous, but still…

  She pulled her van to a stop at the office. As usual, the men were engaged in their noon ritual of basketball. The sand between the two legal services buildings was packed down into a rough basketball court. Not NBA regulation, but still popular with the Marines. To her surprise, Phillip was in the thick of things.

  He was as good at athletics as she remembered, sinking shot after shot with precision and flair. Adding to his skill was the glorious wonder of watching his sleek body in motion, something the other women in the office had definite
ly noticed as well.

  Rowan wandered to the shaded bench where Ellen and another woman sat, ogling the men—and one in particular. Their appreciation of the male physique could run a little bawdy at times, and judging from the giggles she knew now was no exception. However, this time silence descended when she approached.

  She said nothing, but simply squeezed onto the end of the stone bench to watch the action. A beep from a car horn turned all heads toward the adjacent parking lot.

  A tanned, darkly attractive man in a cherry red Mustang waved. Phillip shouted back and the car door opened. In a flash of gray fur and floppy ears, Oscar the dog zoomed toward his "daddy."

  Phillip had little time to prepare. The minute he squatted down to Oscar’s level, the dog pounced, knocking him down flat in the sand and smothering Phillip’s face with doggie kisses. The basketball game halted while players laughed at Phillip and the wiggling mountain of gray fur pinning him down.

  Rowan gave her first genuine smile in a week.

  Another horn sounded from the parking lot, followed by a voice that normally brought joy to Rowan’s heart.

  "Mom!"

  The blood drained from Rowan’s face as she lurched to her feet. Rather than take Ian home, the Cubmaster had brought him to her. Another carefully laid plan ruined. Somehow she had to salvage the situation.

  She forced her legs to move. Phillip mustn’t see Ian! But Ian, in his delight at seeing his mother and longing to share every tidbit of his adventure, had already started to run her way.

  If she could get him into the building before— Too late.

  Distracted from his joyous reunion with Phillip, Oscar abruptly turned toward the noise and made a galloping beeline for Ian.

  Dog and boy met in the center of the make-shift basketball court. Ian shrieked with delight as Oscar transferred his tongue-licking to the boy’s hands and face. The silence surrounding them was deafening. Everyone waited to see what Rowan said and Phillip did. Her well-known secret was seconds away from implosion.

  Phillip chuckled and rose to his feet. Nothing like the love of a dog, no matter how exuberant. Judging from the boy’s laughter, he thought so, too. And Oscar loved children.