by David Wind
With Banacek confirming Steven’s own thoughts, the disorientation clouding his mind disappeared. The events of the past twenty-four hours fell into a sequence that was as logical and clear to him, as it was terrifying. “It’s all been spur of the moment, ever since your deputy found Ellie.”
Banacek’s thick eyebrows lumbered upward. “What has?”
“Yesterday you implied whoever tried to kill Ellie was counting on the fact that her body wouldn’t be discovered until spring, if ever. But not only didn’t she disappear, she’s still alive. Don’t you find it curious that the only two people who could have proven I was at home that night died in a plane crash?”
“In my line of work, we call it suspicious, not curious.”
Steven ignored the remark. “No one was supposed to know I was here. I came here so I could work without any interruptions. But Sam’s secretary saw me at the convenience store that afternoon and told him. Which is why they came out to visit—it wasn’t a planned get together.” Steven paused, took a deep breath, and looked away from Banacek. “I think it’s the reason they died.”
Banacek took a last drag from the cigarette and flicked it away. Both men watched the butt arc slowly, turning end over end before coming to rest on the frozen ground.
“Sheriff, I’ve got another question for you. Where was Ellie for the six days she was missing?”
Banacek shrugged. “All we know is that she left Washington on Monday night and showed up in our lake Sunday night.”
“No, you don’t. All you know is that there was a note left in Washington last Monday night, saying she was going to join me. But I wouldn’t take odds she wrote it. You saw her stomach, Sheriff...she was tortured. Those wounds weren’t inflicted Sunday night.”
“Obviously. And if she’d stayed in the lake until it thawed, her body would be decomposed enough so that it’s doubtful if the razor cuts would be recognized for what they are. Which,” Banacek added, his eyes narrowing until all that could be seen were two dark dots encased in folds of flesh, “brings out another interesting aspect: If the murder had gone the way it was intended, and if Miss Rogers’ body was found in the spring, you’d be the prime suspect. Especially when it’s discovered that the last time anyone saw Miss Rogers, she was coming to Greyton to stay with you.”
Although he had been working along the same lines as Banacek, and had come to almost the same conclusion, hearing the sheriff put thoughts into words rocked him.
He looked away from Banacek, following the upward slope of a distant mountain. “Which means, if you’re right, whoever tried to kill Ellie had planned to make it appear I was responsible, whether she had been found now or in the spring.”
<><><>
While the police car’s engine turned into fading echo, Steven’s sadness grew stronger. During the time Banacek had been talking, Steven had kept his emotions under tight control. Now he allowed them to be free.
A deep anguish built. He had grown up with Sam and Larry, and known them since childhood. They were his friends, and as much a part of his life as was Greyton itself. He would miss them.
Why? Was the plane crash an accident, or was it tied into what happened to Ellie? Did they die because they had been with him that night?
The implications of his thoughts stunned him. If Lomack and Londrigan died because of what happened to Ellie, it spoke volumes about the killer’s resources and abilities.
Drawing in a breath of cold mountain air, Steven wiped his eyes and went inside to tell Savak about their friends.
Savak was in the kitchen, dressed, his hair still damp from the shower. He waited for Savak to fix himself a cup of coffee and sit down before he spoke. When he finished, Savak’s surface reaction was exactly what Steven expected. A flickering of his eyelids followed by a curtain of detachment sweeping across his features.
He knew Savak too well to be fooled by appearances. Regardless of the fact that since Nam, Savak had mastered the outward control of his emotions, the corded muscles in his friend’s neck spoke volumes.
After several silent seconds, Savak spoke. “That’s bad for us, Steven. They were your only alibi.”
He stared at Savak, his hands trembling. “I don’t give a damn about that. What I can’t help thinking is that they’re dead because of me.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Savak half shouted, this time failing to keep his features under his usual tight control.
“I think what happened to Ellie and Sam and Larry is being directed at me.”
“Jesus Christ on a fucking cross! Listen to yourself. You’re talking conspiracy. You’ve been in Washington too long, Steven; you’ve been to too many cocktail parties.”
He shook his head, once. “It fits, Arnie.”
“Don’t even think it, much less say it. Everyone pleads conspiracy. For your own good, and for Ellie’s, don’t bring it up again.”
The phone rang, interrupting their argument. He answered it and listened to an unfamiliar voice ask for Savak. Handing Savak the receiver, Steven sat back down and stared at the sediment in the bottom of his cup, trying to calm his frayed nerves.
When Savak finished, he said, “That was the duty officer at Andrews. Georgetown has cleared Ellie’s transfer with Greyton. A medevac chopper is scheduled to reach Greyton at three. It will return to Andrews with you and Ellie. An ambulance will be waiting.”
Fifteen minutes later, Steven went from room to room, carefully shutting off the lights and securing the windows. He turned off the boiler and closed the gas petcock.
When Steven was satisfied that everything was done, he and Savak loaded their bags into the car and opened the garage door.
He backed out of the garage, and used the remote to close the garage door. Before driving into Greyton, Steven looked back at his house. A strange premonition of a coming doom made him wonder if he would ever be back. He pushed the feeling aside and drove off.
They were halfway to town, passing Walt Higgens’ old Gulf station, abandoned during the gas crunch, when Savak broke their silence. “I’ll take the attaché case back to the office today. I’ll also make the arrangements to have your car driven to Washington.”
“Arnie, I—”
“For Christ sake don’t thank me again.” Savak’s voice was rough with emotion. “Let’s just get Ellie settled into Georgetown. Once that’s taken care of, and if you feel up to it, come into the office tomorrow and go over everything with Pritman. But, let’s take it one step at a time. First Ellie.”
Steven nodded, grateful for his friend’s understanding. A moment later, he thought about Lomack and Londrigan and forced himself to keep his voice casual. “Arnie, why don’t you come back with Ellie and me? You can have one of the pilots at Greyton field take your plane home.”
In the ensuing silence, Steven felt Savak’s studying gaze. He turned slightly and saw a half smile on Savak’s mouth. “That wasn’t even a good try. No, Steven, I’ll fly myself home. But thanks for worrying about me.”
Steven gripped the steering wheel tightly. “I’ve lost enough friends today.”
“You won’t lose me,” Savak promised.
Silence fell again, broken only by the air slipping over the windshield and the tires rumbling on the blacktop. A quarter of an hour later, Steven left Savak in the hospital’s lobby and went upstairs.
The neurosurgeon, with a nurse in attendance, was examining Ellie’s sutures. When the doctor finished, and while the nurse bandaged Ellie’s head, Skolnick said, “She’s doing much better, Mr. Morrisy. There’s no sign of infection and the swelling is well below the danger point. I don’t foresee any problems with the transfer. I’ve already spoken with the neurology people at Georgetown. They’ll take very good care of her.”
“I hope you don’t resent—”
“Not at all,” Skolnick said, dismissing Steven’s words with a casual wave. “I only wish our equipment was up to Georgetown’s caliber.”
He shook Skolnick’s hand. “I app
reciate all you’ve done for Ellie.”
Skolnick held Steven’s hand in a tight grip while staring intensely into his eyes. “Just remember that when she recovers from the coma, she’ll be in a very delicate emotional and mental state. I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to have no memory. Can you?”
When Steven replied, his voice was thick with emotion. “There have been times when I’ve prayed for just that. I have a photographic memory.”
“Complete and instant recall?” Skolnick asked, finally releasing Steven’s hand.
“Basically,” he said. “I have to use memory triggers. With the right trigger, I can remember anything that I’ve seen, read, or heard since my third birthday.”
“Technically, eidetic. That can be very beneficial for her. Your memories of shared experiences will help give her back a little of herself.”
“The coma? How much longer will it last?”
The neurosurgeon’s expression changed. “I’m afraid that’s something we have no way of knowing. Aside from external causes, a coma is also a mechanism the body uses to help heal itself. So pinpointing a time when Miss Rogers will emerge from the coma is impossible. Only nature, and God, can know,” the neurosurgeon admitted before leaving with the nurse.
Alone, he sat next to Ellie. He glanced at her left hand and remembered the missing ring. He lifted her hand, separated her fingers, and saw what he hadn’t seen yesterday.
Putting her hand down gently, he caressed her soft and unresponsive skin before going to the nurses’ station. He asked the young nurse with the pretty face and experienced eyes to call Chuck Latham. While she dialed, he looked up at the clock on the wall behind her. It was ten o’clock.
“Doctor Latham’s in the ER the nurse informed him after she hung up. “He’ll be up as soon as he’s free.” When he returned to Ellie’s room, he was hit by a wave of fatigue. He sat down heavily, waiting for the tiredness to pass. He knew the four hours of sleep he’d gotten weren’t nearly enough.
The clarity of his thoughts grew indistinct. Briefly, he was transported backward in time. He began to live the nightmare of his past, to smell again the scents of the jungles, and to hear the cries and the...
He grasped Ellie’s hand, holding it tight in an effort to anchor himself in the present. He knew stress and exhaustion were responsible for triggering the unwanted memories.
All of them—himself, Latham, and Savak—had learned to deal with the past in their own ways. Savak’s method was to remember everything so that he might eventually be able to expunge the guilt he bore—and the rage that came later.
Latham had dealt with his past by funneling his energy into creating a new and different life. After his discharge, he’d returned to college and then gone on to medical school. Medicine had become his salvation. Healing others helped him to heal himself. Latham had been the first to come to terms with the past, and the first to marry.
Steven had the perfect escape. He simply didn’t choose to remember.
Only it wasn’t working anymore.
He bent forward, closed his eyes, and pressed his forehead to the back of his hand. He tried to hurl the memories back to the hidden part of his mind. But he was no longer the same Steven Morrisy who had been able to choose to forget.
He’d fallen in love with Ellie and changed.
“No!” he whispered, stopping himself from thinking about the war, and the prison camp.
Then he felt a presence. He pushed aside the fuzziness and lifted his head. Blinking, he focused on Chuck Latham.
“You okay?”
“Fine, just a little trip down memory lane.”
“I understand,” Latham said, looking from Steven to Ellie and misreading Steven’s comment. “You wanted to see me?”
Steven pointed to Ellie’s hand. “Her ring. It’s still not on.”
“I know. I checked the safe and talked to my ER staff. She wasn’t wearing it when she was brought in.”
“What about the paramedics?”
“I checked with them as well. They don’t remember seeing it.”
“They could be lying.”
Latham shook his head. “I know the two men who were on duty Sunday night. They aren’t lying. I trust them and I know they wouldn’t risk their careers or their reputations to steal a ring.”
“She wouldn’t take it off, Chuck.”
“She was in freezing water, Steven. Skin contracts. It could have fallen off.”
“The damn ring was too small. She put it on when I gave it to her. And she struggled to get it on. It hasn’t been off since.” He grasped Ellie’s hand and lifted her ring finger. “Look at her knuckle, Chuck,” he said, pointing to the gouges low on the sides of her knuckle.
Latham bent to examine Ellie’s ring finger. When he stood up again, Steven saw the understanding surface on Latham’s face long before Latham said, “Someone forced it off. But not in the last few days.”
Chapter Eight
“This thing has got me so damn wound up I can’t think straight.”
They were in Latham’s office, drinking coffee and waiting for the medical helicopter’s arrival. He’d been chased from Ellie’s room so that the medical preparations for her transfer could begin.
“I keep thinking about Ellie’s stomach, and then I start to flash back to Nam. Jesus, when I think about it, I—we were so...”
“Gullible?” Savak offered.
“Stupid,” Steven amended.
“We weren’t stupid,” Latham said, looking up from the file on his desk. Steven saw a specter of the past in Latham’s eyes. “We trusted them. We needed to believe we were on the right side. We were the apple pie boys who grew up on World War Two movies and infallible ideology.
“But man-oh-man did those army shrinks sure know what they were doing! We were together again. And because we were, we knew we could pull it off. We always did the impossible when we were teamed up.”
“Yeah,” Savak agreed sarcastically. “We were three times as gullible and idealistic as anyone else.”
“In a way, you’re right too,” he said, looking at Latham, “about how we were brought up. We accepted certain things as intrinsic. Even when we knew the war had become something it never should have, we couldn’t embrace a philosophy that made what we believed in wrong.”
“Which was the reason you re-upped for the second tour, wasn’t it?” he asked Latham suddenly. “Do you remember the night before we crossed into Nam, when Arnie asked you why you volunteered for another tour?”
“I told you I wasn’t ready to go home yet,” Latham answered quickly. Too quickly, Steven thought, for it to have been very far from his everyday awareness.
“It was more than that, wasn’t it?” Steven’s voice was rough, his throat dry. “You were too filled with guilt about what you had seen and what you’d been a part of to go home without trying to rectify it, at least in your own mind.”
Latham’s round face showed strain. “I felt dirty. I’d go out on patrol, day after lousy day, and we’d hit the villages the intelligence reports said were NVA controlled. Most of the time we didn’t find Charlie. We usually didn’t find men of fighting age. Just old men, kids, and women.
“But we couldn’t take a chance because the women usually had weapons under their clothing. And those little kids...they’d smile at you and, a minute later, pull out a grenade and blow the brains out of the men nearest to them. So we’d react before we could be killed. And you know what hurts so damn much about that?”
From the corner of his eye, Steven saw Savak’s pale face mirroring his own emotions.
“They didn’t think they had a choice!” Latham shouted. “They’d heard Charlie’s propaganda about how the American devils were killing everyone. The worst part was those women and kids weren’t on one side or another. I believe all they wanted was to grow their food and live the way they’ve lived for the last thousand years or so.
“But they’d been so filled with half-truths they were
scared that one of our patrols would slaughter them. It happened enough times for their fears to be real,” Latham finished, his eyes challenging each of them in turn. “Yes, I felt dirty and guilty and needed to make up for it so I signed up for another tour.”
Steven broke off Latham’s intense stare. “We all had our rationales for taking the mission. But beneath all the bullshit, it was pretty much the same. Each of us wanted to be able to go home and to not be ashamed.”
Latham picked up a pink memo slip from his desk and began to shred it in neat quarter-inch strips. When a little more than half the paper was piled on his desk, he said, “Pathetic, wasn’t it? What we wanted was so simple. What we got was so damn...”
Steven knew they would never find the exact words to describe their innermost feelings. Then he wondered if there were any words to convey the depths of what happened in Vietnam.
“This is getting sick!” Latham said, glaring at them. “All we’re doing is bringing things up we don’t need to think about. It’s long over. For God sake, drop it!” After Latham fell silent, the anger in his eyes vanished and his voice took on that uniquely professional air reserved for doctors. “It’s two-thirty. The copter will be here soon. I’ll check on Ellie.”
Steven started to rise. Latham waved him back. “I don’t need you getting in the way.”
When the door closed behind Latham, Steven continued to stare at it. “I didn’t mean to get him upset.”
“It happens,” Savak said, his words sharp and uneasy.
“What about Ellie’s sister?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” When Steven shook his head, Savak explained that he’d called the office earlier and learned Simon Clarke had tracked her down. “Carla Rogers is a GS 14 statistician at Treasury. She’s on vacation, no one knows where.” He picked up his coffee and took a sip.
“He left word in case someone hears from her?”
