A Study in Honor

by Claire O'Dell

  It was a dreary interview, even worse than the one with Garcia. Allen told us that the veteran in question, Private Deborah Geller, had died late Friday night. Primary cause was heart failure, she said. Secondary cause, blood clots leading to dementia. Other than a prescription to regulate her blood pressure—and the script had lapsed three weeks ago—the patient did not have any unusual pharmaceutical history, official or unofficial. Holmes appeared unsurprised. She handed over two official orders. One, she explained, for a copy of the existing autopsy. The second, to retain the body until a second autopsy could be performed.

  “As for now, we only need to clear up a few loose ends,” Holmes said cheerfully. “Did you run the usual tests?”

  Allen shook her head. “The cause of death was obvious, at least without any evidence to the contrary—”

  “—so you forwarded the body to the funeral home. Good enough. We only need to know the name—”

  “You don’t understand,” Allen said. “Private Geller has been cremated. A personal request, found among her papers.”

  Oh. Yes. That was a final decision.

  We, all three of us, spent a silent moment in remembrance of Geller’s death and destruction. I had no doubt that Allen and her staff felt true remorse. It did not make anything better. Deborah Geller was dead, her body transformed to ashes because her flesh and her bones had proved inconvenient.

  We rode in silence to the airport and boarded our plane. The sleet had died off, but clouds muffled the stars and moon. I stared out the window at the lights from the terminal. I felt curiously empty, empty and colder than mere physical cause could explain. A thought niggled at me, that the circumstances of Geller’s death felt off, but I could not pinpoint why.

  Inconvenient. The word popped back into my mind, but I was too weary, too distressed to make sense of that.

  Sara laid a hand on my shoulder. “Steady now,” she said softly. “We’re almost home.”

  “Tell me that when we land safely,” I said.

  “If I can,” Sara replied. “If I can.”

  We were both speaking in allegories, and we knew it.

  Our pilot returned us to Dulles by midnight. By one a.m. we were climbing the outside stairs to 2809 Q Street. We negotiated the outer locks, the elevator, and finally the locks to our own apartment. It was comforting, having to work through so many layers of security. More comforting knowing that Holmes could take care of any infelicities with the local police.

  When we finally broke through the last barrier to our apartment, Holmes marched onward to her bedroom. I made it as far as the parlor, where I tossed my duffel bag to one side and dropped into the nearest chair.

  The rooms smelled of wood polish and the scent Hudson Realty’s cleaning service liked to use. And someone had built a fire from well-seasoned beechwood. The flames burned bright and hot. A few logs had crumbled into ashes and embers, but one on top had not yet caught fire. Interesting. However, I was too exhausted to dissect the clues.

  Holmes was picking out a desultory tune on her piano, crisp single notes, from a work I couldn’t recognize. It started off slow at first, then gradually picked up speed until the notes were like a waterfall of music. Sharp, yes. Not like knives, but like pinpoints of rain. I let my eyes fall shut and thought about what I had seen and heard and survived the past few days.

  Four veterans dead this past week. Four veterans from the same squad. A coincidence? Impossible, according to the gods of statistics. And yet I had no proof, not even a clue about why they had died, only the tug of truth in my gut.

  Truth, as Saúl Martínez would tell me, didn’t matter once you were dead.

  My friend, you are so wrong, I thought. But I’ll let you argue the point when we talk.

  Half an hour or so, and the music came to a gradual and natural conclusion. I wondered, briefly, who was this Sara Holmes. Did she have a history, recorded in painstaking detail, in the annals of the FBI or CIA, or wherever she called home? Or was she pure invention, called up by the nation’s need? A Peter Pan of national security?

  As if summoned by my thoughts, Holmes came into the parlor and took the chair opposite me. “So,” she said. “What did you think of your first spy mission?”

  “Useless,” I said. “Useless, pointless, and a grand waste of time and the federal budget.”

  “On the contrary,” Holmes replied. “We found out a great deal. For one thing, no one attempted to kill us.”

  That provoked a laugh from me. “Which means?”

  “Which means this is not a professional case. Or rather, it’s not from the true professionals.”

  My breath caught at the implication, even though I had suspected the same.

  “You believed the New Confederacy was involved,” I said, just to make sure I understood her.

  She hesitated a very long moment. “Let us say I needed to eliminate certain elements in our mystery.”

  Right. All those parallel possibilities.

  “So these trips were nothing more than . . .”

  “. . . to give whoever attacked you last week a reason to attack again. They did not. Which means you were an accidental target. It also means they had no access to my activities and conversations on Thursday and Friday.”

  Now more clues slid into place.

  “You used me as a decoy,” I said softly. “Not because of Belinda Díaz, but for that other case you cannot and will not tell me about. Because I have no security clearance in these matters, even if they concern my life.”

  For once, Holmes seemed ashamed. “I did. I’m sorry. Well, no, not really. You would be in danger no matter what I did.”

  Liar. If I had stayed in that awful hostel room, if I had never met you, I would be in no danger at all.

  There was no need to say that out loud, however. Holmes knew that as well as I.

  “Let’s pretend,” I said, “that last Wednesday night was a coincidence. What about that other case? You have adversaries there, no? What if they find out your identity? Can you guarantee my safety then?”

  A pause followed that question, one that continued so long I realized that silence itself was her answer.

  Interstitial

  October 19.

  Sunday, according to the world’s electronic calendars. My body insists at least a month of terror, rage, and frustration has taken place since last Wednesday. Perhaps I was right. Perhaps Sara does have the special talent of turning time inside out. Time and lives. I suspect I am not her only victim.

  No, I’m no victim. Belinda Díaz is a victim. So are Molina and Walker and Geller. Accidental companions of war, failed by their commanders, their doctors, their nation.

  By god, I want a name and a face to blame. Forget Alton. What about the Red Squirrels, those who died that day to make their impossible victory possible? Or the ones who lived on, branded with dishonor?

  After I left Sara alone with her silence, I lay awake in bed wondering how much she knew that she refused to admit to me, to herself. I am certain she knows a great deal more about Belinda Díaz’s heroic squad and the reconnaissance mission that ended their lives. I told myself that I would confront her again the next day.

  Only the next day arrived with Sara already gone from the apartment, and a text message saying she had errands to run.

  Errands. A report to her superiors? Or simply avoiding my questions?

  You overthink everything, Angela once told me.

  That was near the end, after I told her I intended to volunteer for the army. When we spent our days not in making love, but in argument and regrets.

  My parents made other, more pointed comments.

  My sister rolled her eyes. It turned out we were already moving in opposite directions, quite literally, and she relocated to the West Coast two years later.

  Huh. Overthinking again.

  So let’s keep it simple. I am exhausted in heart and mind, if not my body. I grieve for the dead. I want answers. Justice. An end to the gray smothering my l
ife. I want this cup taken away from me. I want . . . any number of contradictory things.

  For now, I’ll settle for breakfast.

  13

  Sara returned my tablet Sunday night, between that dark midnight hour when I lay awake and staring into nothing, and when my alarm clock sounded. As with everything else, she had arranged the scene with a careless artistry. Power cord connected. Electronic stylus off to one side. And the tablet was tilted down over its keyboard, almost but not entirely closed, as if I had left in a hurry. A faint blue glow leaked around the edges, ensuring I would notice the moment I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

  I stared at the thing, immediately suspicious. Everything looked so ordinary—too ordinary—as if Sara had re-created the scene from a photograph of my habits.

  The blue glow rippled in time with the screensaver. I could picture the swallows in flight, wheeling around the confines of that ten-by-fourteen sky. The flickering caught the edge of a paper note, tucked underneath the keyboard.

  Oh, no. Not obvious at all, Agent Holmes.

  My first impulse was to ignore the note. Or burn the damned thing, and never mind any explanation or apology. Luckily, I had no matches or lighter. A fire would set off the smoke detector, no doubt. I could just picture the emergency squad arriving with bells and whistles and a fire hose to extinguish the flames.

  Meanwhile, the alarm clock was beeping its querulous reminder that morning had arrived. I slapped the button to shut off the noise, then wearily padded across the room. Sara never did anything without a reason. I might distrust those reasons, but if she offered me any clues, I’d be a fool to ignore them.

  I extracted the note and awkwardly unfolded it with my single hand.

  All that is yours is yours once more and without reservation.

  To answer your question: I did not, but others did and will continue to.

  —S.

  Classic Sara it was, the words splashed across the page in brilliant blue ink. I recognized those flourishes from all her previous messages. Like those previous messages, the note was written on milk-white parchment with the same mysterious arrangement of dots in the upper right corner.

  I had discarded those other messages without thinking. This time, I wedged the sheet underneath my tablet to hold it open and ran my thumb over the dots. They were barely perceptible, just slight imperfections in the otherwise smooth surface of the page, but they appeared only in that top corner, nowhere else. I ran my thumb over the dots a second time, pressing harder.

  There was a pause of nothing, a moment where I felt only the sweat from my nightmares, the panic and subsequent irritation of knowing that Sara Holmes had once more manipulated me. Then I felt a trembling against my thumb, a faint pricking that ran the length of my arm.

  I plucked back my hand—too late. One moment, the paper lay before me, whole. The next, a cloud of white specks exploded around my fingers.

  The grenade exploded only a few feet away. I was lifted off my feet and landed on my back, dazed and unable to breathe. Dust filled the air, obliterating the dawn. All I could see were shadows darting around me. Rebel soldiers. Our own troops and the other surgeons and nurses. And above me a cloud of burning motes that were surely the dead.

  Images from the past dropped away. I was huddled in the far corner of my bedroom, trembling. I ran my hand over my face, felt the damp of tears and sweat. My ghost arm’s presence was stronger, with a sharp ache just below the elbow where the bullet had shattered my bone. And in the center of the room, bits of Sara’s message whirled around, white and glittering in the cold light from my tablet’s screen.

  Damn, damn, damn you, Sara Holmes.

  I leaned back against the wall and stared at the patterned ceiling, waiting until my heartbeat slowed and the panic leaked away. Sara played a game. She always did. They all did, those agents of my beloved government. Why was I surprised?

  I reconsidered the past few days, the truth of what had happened, separate from the script inside my head. So. The FBI had returned my tablet. Or rather Sara had, along with a warning. At least the message read that way.

  I did not, but others did and will continue to do so.

  Oh, yes. The code was obvious now. Her people had searched my tablet and its memory sticks. They had ransacked my cell for every call I had made. And they would continue to monitor everything I texted or emailed, especially now that Sara had shared certain secrets with me. Warrantless searches were illegal, but no doubt the government could produce the necessary paperwork. Sara might even say it was for my own safety.

  Abruptly I realized I had been rubbing my hand against my leg. Trying to scrub away the ashes. Oh. Ashes. God. Deborah Geller was nothing but dead and ashes now. The panic rose up again, bitter and strong. I slammed my fist against the floor.

  No, no, no. Breathe deeply. Focus on one small thing. The voice of my PT nurse overlaid that of Faith Bellaume, and together they led me through the exercises to recapture my rage, to hold it lightly between my fingers, both ghost and flesh, then let it flutter away like the ashes still hovering in the air.

  What do you want? Bellaume had asked me, time and again.

  I want justice. I want the truth. Signed, Sentimental Girl.

  What if the truth was nothing but a series of coincidences? Faith’s own words, but they were very like the arguments Sara had given me early on Sunday morning.

  Fine. Then we know, and we can move on.

  Sara believed we knew the truth.

  Or her superiors believed that, and Sara was being practical. They had dismissed Belinda Díaz’s death as if it didn’t matter. They had ransacked my life and my emotions, then tossed them aside. Even Sara had offered no more apology than I did not, but others did.

  If I had a week to myself, I might . . .

  Too bad, girl. You don’t have a week. You have a job and bills.

  One small bite at a time, I told myself. Wrestle with the angel later.

  A cursory check of my tablet showed nothing added or altered, as far as I could tell. But then, the FBI would not leave an obvious set of tracks. I logged into my email account without any problem. There was no reply from Saúl, but I did have a dozen pieces of spam and one inventive phishing attempt.

  My cell, which I found in my duffel bag in its usual pocket, showed no recent calls attempted, none received, and none missed. The “Limited Service” message had vanished. The cell itself was fully charged, which I would not have expected, not after three, almost four days in the custody of the FBI. A mistake? Or possibly Sara giving me an extra warning that someone else had handled my cell?

  I need to be careful. But I can do that.

  Later, after the workday was over, I could dig through the VA medical records for more clues about Belinda Díaz. Until then, I had to face the ordinary world of my workday, with its regulations and standard questionnaires. I could only hope I did someone some good today.

  * * *

  The routine of Monday morning carried me along the next two hours. By 7:35 I had boarded the D2 bus for Dupont Circle. By 8:10, I had transferred from the Red Line onto the D8 bus, which crawled like a slug down Rhode Island Avenue. It was another gray October morning, the air outside dirty and damp, the air inside the bus dry enough to suck the moisture from my bones. I rested my head against the window and timed my breaths—One, two, three, start again, Captain Watson, I know you can—until the windowpane fogged up and I was confronted by a Washington, DC, smothered in silvery nothingness.

  I swiped my hand over the glass and stared at the blurred vista passing by. Seven long hours stood between me and the day’s end. Maybe I could bribe Alice to order an entire tray of coffee from the Ethiopian shop. She did that sometimes, depending on whether she liked you. I thought she might like me. It was hard to tell most days.

  Exit the bus. Walk to the next stop.

  The day was colder than I expected, even for October. Cold and raw. The dampness soaked through my fleece jacket, sending a ripple of goos
e bumps over my skin. Funny how none of my memories from childhood included damp or cold, only a few picturesque seasons of winter white. Most likely I’d never thought about sleet or gloves or heating bills in those days. Now, my belly tight against the raw wet weather, I wished I had kept the coat and gloves Sara had provided for our useless Michigan trip.

  I stuffed both hands into my jacket pockets and stomped down Mount Pleasant Street toward Irving. My metal hand ached as much my flesh one. I ignored both and trudged past the thicket of election posters covering the lampposts and buildings. Almost November. Almost election day. Had I registered to vote? I needed a new Metro pass, too.

  The sun ticked upward, offering no warmth. I boarded the H2 bus and bullied my way into another window seat. I would have to ask Thompson how to find out what happened with those samples she sent to Capitol Diagnostics. It wouldn’t magically return Díaz to life, but it might explain things. I badly needed, wanted, an explanation, and if Sara refused to help, I would have to investigate on my own.

  My bus arrived at the VA Medical Center only five minutes late. I jogged up the sidewalk, ahead of a dozen other stragglers, with my duffel bag drumming against my back. I pulled my employee ID from underneath my jacket by its lanyard and swiped it over the reader.

  The reader beeped and flashed red.

  Shit. The reader was notoriously difficult. Especially on days when you could least afford its antics. Swearing under my breath, I rubbed the card against my jacket and made a second, slower attempt.

  The reader clicked, then emitted a series of red and white flashes. The orderlies behind me laughed. I twisted around to swear at them. They all flinched back, then their eyes went wide when the door snapped open. Mine did too.

  Three security guards poured out of the entrance to surround me.

  “Janet Watson? Please come with us.”

  “What? What did I—”

  The white employees snickered. The black ones went quiet. Even those I counted as friends did nothing as the guards confiscated my ID and hustled me away from the employee entrance, around the corner of the building, and through another, smaller doorway. I only struggled once. The biggest guard twined his arm through mine and gave a twist. I gasped.