“Well now, Mr…. Levine,” the sheriff said as he leaned forward, placing his elbows on this desk and interlacing his fingers on top of a large, outdated 2001 write-on desk calendar that read“Bing Bros. New and Used Automobiles.” His chair creaked under his shifting weight. “In the first place, Locust County doesn’t have a medical examiner. This here’s a coroner state, and that’s just what we have—a coroner—and in the second place, I can almost guarantee you that he doesn’t have no bones left over from 1965.”
Levine sat silently for a moment, until he was sure that Elmore had finished, and then he responded. “Sheriff, I’m sure you can appreciate that that information isn’t exactly what the Bureau wants to hear. There is no statute of limitations on murder, and as I reminded you a few minutes ago, this is an open homicide—a rather high-profile homicide—and the expectation in an open homicide is that important evidence will be retained. Now, I suspect that you may simply be mistaken about the whereabouts of the remains.” Levine knew virtually nothing about homicide investigations, and he was wondering if this small-town sheriff would know enough to call his bluff. “I’m sure your coroner is aware of this case. I guess he’s the one I should really be talking to. I’m here as a professional courtesy only. I need to pay him a visit.” Levine had no prior experience with small-town America coroners, but he’d been debriefed at the office not to expect too much. Unlike medical examiners, coroners usually were elected positions that did not require a medical degree, simply a voter’s card and a felony-free record. In fact, the coroner system originated around the time of the Magna Carta and was more concerned then with tax collection than anything else. In the United States, coroners often were funeral directors who supplemented their income with a county paycheck.
“Knock yourself silly, Mr. Levine, but I’m tellin’ you that you’re wastin’ your time down here in Locust County tryin’ to sniff out anythin’ on that old case. I truly am sorry that that Mr. Jackson fella came down here and got hisself killed and all, but that was almost forty years ago. Don’t serve no purpose to be whackin’ that hornet’s nest—don’t matter what kind of new scientific stick y’all got to do it with. And it don’t matter what exactly the Bureau wants to hear.” Sheriff Elmore focused on Levine’s eyes and didn’t blink. His look took on a sharpness that was almost feral in its hardness. “My advice is to let dead men rest in peace, Mr. FBI Special Agent, just let them sleep.”
“And killers? Mr. Locust County Sheriff.” Levine hadn’t given a real damn about this case ten minutes ago, but that was beginning to change. He rose from his chair faster than he intended. His head swam with the movement and the heat, and he was forced to steady himself by leaning on the edge of the sheriff’s desk. The effect was primal. “Do we let killers sleep?”
The sheriff looked down at his fingers momentarily and then brought his eyes up again to meet Levine’s. The contempt that had blazed from Waymond Elmore’s face throughout the meeting had burned out and been replaced by something else. Something that Levine couldn’t get a quick handle on. “What makes you think a killer can ever sleep, Mr. Levine?”
Chapter 2
U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii
FRIDAY, AUGUST12, 2005
“D.S., how about you callin’ a staff meeting in about five minutes or so…it’ll be a short one,” Robert Dean McKelvey didn’t slow his pace, but rather called out over his shoulder as he walked by the deputy laboratory director’s office. It was Friday morning, but already the day was shaping up to be nothing but a sack of serious headaches. It had started almost immediately. The commander had greeted him at the front door with the news that the secretary of defense was thinking about paying the Lab a visit next week. His plane was scheduled to refuel in Hawaii on his way back to Washington from a visit to China, and his aides thought he could make use of the downtime by visiting the Lab. McKelvey knew that visits like that always added up to nothing short of a painful waste of time and patience. The perfect start to his first day back at work.
Most people at the Lab called himKel. Actually, he had been called Kel pretty much his whole life, at least by those on familiar terms, and even some that weren’t. Robert had been his father’s given name and his grandfather’s before that, and while his parents gave it to their youngest son for sentimental reasons, the family also had intentionally shied away from using it with reference to him to avoid the inevitable confusion that would follow. There would be noBig Bob andLittle Bob for the McKelveys. The problem, of course, was that it didn’t leave many options when you needed to call him for dinner. His middle name, Dean, wasn’t at all a serious contender for casual use. It was an unrealized childhood aspiration hung on him by his three older brothers almost fifty years earlier. They had lived and breathed St. Louis Cardinal baseball at that point in their lives and wanted the newest addition to the family to grow up like one of the famous Arkansas Dean brothers. The sobering reality was that if his parents had not intervened to the extent that they had, he’d have been named RobertDizzy McKelvey for sure—or even worse,Daffy. Kel always reckoned that by comparison to those two very real possibilities, Dean wasn’t so bad—so long as no one used it, which no one did. But the basic problem remained: Ex-out Robert and Dean from the usable list of names and that didn’t leave much by way of an option except Mac—which everyone hated. In the end, he was called Kel. Had been for as long as he could remember.
“Jesus F. Christ, we need a visit from the SecDef like I need someone to piss in my left ear,” Kel muttered to himself as he unlocked his office door and stepped square into a pile of memos and brown case-file folders that people had been feeding under his door while he’d been gone. A few skated out from under his foot. It was like stepping into a puddle of slippery brown mud. Kel had just flown in from spending a week in the communist time warp of North Korea, and thanks to the combined magic of jet travel and the International Date Line he had managed to arrive thirty minutes before he’d taken off. As if five workdays in a week were not sufficient, he now had the opportunity for an encore performance. Not only that, but days at the CILHI must be measured in dog years, he often thought; one week gone somehow added up to seven weeks of accumulated work. Certainly there appeared to be at least seven-weeks’ worth of folders piled on his floor.
And now the secretary of defense.
Nothing personal against the SecDef, he had seemed to be a nice enough guy the few times Kel had met him, but VIP visits to the CILHI were like putting your tongue in an electric pencil sharpener—a novel enough experience the first time around, but not something that needed frequent repeating. And lately they were repeating much too frequently. Besides, Kel knew that the chances were quite high that the only productive thing to come out of this visit would be the first sergeant getting all the cigarette butts policed up out of the parking lot—which was not a bad thing—but more often than not, visits of this level began with the commander having everyone jumping through flaming hoops of shit, and then ended, at the last possible moment, with the entire visit being canceled.
Kel stood looking at the folders scattered underfoot. In one shining epiphany it occurred to him to simply close the door, go home, and never return. Then it passed, and he knelt and began scooping the pile into his arms. That’s when Davis Smart poked his head in.
“Everyone’s ready and waiting in the conference room,” D.S. reported as he glanced at the accumulated paperwork. He smiled. “I promised everyone you’d keep it short. Told ’em you had lots of work to do.”
Kel looked up at his deputy. His eyes were much too bright for any workday morning, Kel decided, especially if you were starting your second one in the last twenty-two hours, and he couldn’t help but notice theit-sure-is-crap-to-be-you tone that edged itself into his voice.
“Can you believe all these files?” Kel asked.
“Wait till you open your e-mails—I was out sick for two days and I had over five hundred waiting for me when I got back. I’ll bet you have a tho
usand, fifteen hundred, easy.”
“Great,” Kel said, standing up. He was normally taller than D.S. by a couple of inches, but he was still kinked up from the long airplane flight, and they were now leveled almost eye to eye. “That’s what I need, and, oh, by the way, are you ready for some really good news? The commander snagged me on the way in. It seems that the SecDef has decided that the CILHI is an absolute must-see. This comin’ Friday’s what I’m told. We continue to be the hottest tourist attraction on the island.”
“Yeah. But look on the bright side, at least we’ll get all the cigarette butts picked up.” D.S. smiled. “C’mon. Staff’s ready.”
Chapter 3
Quang Nam Province, Republic of Vietnam
WEDNESDAY, 12 OCTOBER1966
First Lieutenant Dwayne Crockett found it hard to get his bearings. His head was swimming, and the overpowering smell of kerosene and scorched earth stung the lining of his nose and made him salivate as if he were going to vomit. Everything had changed, and he hadn’t counted on that. He closed his eyes and he could see it; the image was seared into his brain, and he knew he would never forget a single detail. Not a single, life-rending detail.
But now everything was changed.
The napalm strike that had killed Jimmie Carl Trimble—the napalm strike that Dwayne Crockett had called in on his medic’s head—had accomplished its purpose of buying enough time and space for him to extract his remaining men. Successive flights of Air Force F-105 Thunderchiefs and Marine Corps Corsairs had then thoroughly relandscaped the area into the oily, blackened moonscape that Dwayne now surveyed.
Everything’s changed.
He’d lost seven men, including his medic and friend; there were another five injured. And those were just his men. Two other platoons had been hit a couple of klicks away. All totaled up, Operation Snap-Dragon, as some chair-warmer at Headquarters had named the mission, had spent the lives of thirty-one Marines and one navy corpsman—Dwayne Crockett’s navy corpsman. Predictably, the SITREP, the daily situation reports sent out by headquarters, established for the record—lest the facts somehow confuse the matter later—that the operation had been an overwhelming tactical and strategic success. The enemy had been sorely hurt; set back months, if not longer; its will broken. Perhaps that was all true. All Dwayne knew was that he and his men had successfully had their asses handed to them in a shiny paint can, and he had the ghosts of seven dead men to hang around his neck for the rest of his life.
Initially the commander hadn’t wanted Dwayne to lead the recovery mission for the bodies. He was too junior and too personally involved, the Old Man had said, but that was before Dwayne had insisted almost to the point of physical insubordination, and now he was here—on the surface of friggin’ Mars trying to piece together his bearings. He’d wanted to come back immediately. So had most of his men. Gear up and get back. Same day. Instead, they were told to wait. They waited. And waited. It had taken six days for the area to cool off—figuratively if not literally—during which time Dwayne had slept very little. He’d lost men before—too many in his short commission—but never like this. Never had he so plainly anted-up another man’s chips to save his own life. Everyone said that he did what was right; everyone said he’d done what he had to do; everyone said that he’d saved the lives of his men. He was even up for a medal. But he would always wonder.
Had he done it to save them?
Had he done it to save himself?
For six long days the radio conversation replayed itself over and over and over in his brain. He heard it waking and sleeping.“Make the call, Lieutenant…Semper Fi…No forgiving necessary, Bubba…” Over and over and over. And then that last cryptic—what was it? He had barely been able to hear it over the searing rip of the incoming jets. Had it been a request? A plea? What was it?“Call me…” Jimmie Carl had asked him, and then nothing but static and a wall of heat and the greasy smell of kerosene.
Call you what? Jimmie Carl, call you what?
That had been six endless days ago. Now they were back, and in force this time. They’d come back with a purpose and a will that had been lacking before. Dwayne’s small recovery team was phalanxed by two reinforced Marine infantry companies and enough air support circling overhead to level the eastern Tennessee foothills of his youth.
Predictably, the first five bodies had been located relatively quickly. They were in the open, and in the heat and humidity they had started going fast. Decomp was in an advanced stage for only six days; yellow-brown bones with soft, unrecognizable lumps and masses of wet tissue. And maggots. Everywhere. Millions of them. The bodies were found near the small grassy clearing near where the Vietnamese had first struck Dwayne’s men less than a week ago. The majority of the shitstorm unleashed by the Thuds and Corsairs had been almost half a klick to the south and southwest. Some ordnance—mostly antipersonnel bombies—had scattered its way here, and a couple of the bodies were partially fragmented. There were some Viet bodies here as well, but from the looks of the injuries they probably had been killed by Dwayne’s men and not by the metal rain unleashed from above.
It was farther to the south that Dwayne was having a difficult time getting his landmarks. Jimmie Carl had taken cover in a small bomb crater near a cluster of trees and elephant grass. But where were the trees? They were all gone to splinters, and the whole friggin’ field was nothing but craters now.
One huge, blackened sea of bomb craters for a hundred meters in every direction.
Everything had changed.
It took the better part of three hours to locate the spot, during which time the men of Dwayne’s protective umbrella grew increasingly anxious. The talk grew louder and more rapid-paced as adrenaline levels increased beyond the level of fighting efficiency. Few men relish the idea of dying to recover the already dead, even never-leave-a-buddy-behind Marines, and every minute spent on this moonscape was another roll of the dice, in their eyes. Steadily the talk grew louder and more pointed, but Dwayne didn’t want to hear it. He had already decided to shoot the first sonofabitch who tried to pull the plug on this mission—regardless of their rank. He’d abandoned Jimmie Carl Trimble once; he wouldn’t do it again.
As it turned out, it was a young Hispanic lance corporal who first spotted the body. He had followed the sound of an electric buzz, almost like that given off by an old neon light about to flame out, and it turned out to be an enormous swarm of flies.
His other senses took over from there.
When Dwayne reached the crater, it took him several moments to realize that what he saw the men working with was a human body and not one of the many burned tree trunks that had been tossed like wheat straw so randomly about the clearing. Jimmie Carl Trimble’s lower body, the legs and hips, were gone. Never to be found. His upper body, the head and torso, was charred and weeping a clear yellow fluid, and the muscles in his arms had contracted in the heat so that his arms were pulled up in front like a dog begging for table scraps. But it was a body. Once your brain patterned the features it was unmistakable. And it was Jimmie Carl’s body—Dwayne didn’t have to bend over and examine the blackened dog tag visible amid the burned chest wall. It was Jimmie Carl’s body—the pair of surgical forceps fused to the left breast tissue, right where Jimmie Carl carried them in his left pocket, told him what he needed to know.
Dwayne Crockett turned away as two of his men used their rifle butts to roll and tip the remains into a green body bag.
“Call you what? Jimmie Carl, call you what?”
Chapter 4
Split Tree, Arkansas
FRIDAY, AUGUST12, 2005
“You be Mr. Levine?”
Special Agent Levine had been so royally pissed off when he left Sheriff Elmore’s office that he could have taken a bite out of an anvil and crapped nails for a week. That, combined with the absolutely brain-melting heat, had conspired to make him feel like he’d been spun around very quickly in circles and snapped on the back of the head with a wet towel. He had purcha
sed a can of Pepsi Cola from the overweight blind vendor who ran a gum-and-cough-drop store in the corner of the courthouse’s main lobby and was taking a seat at a small, unstable, cranberry-colored Formica table when the young deputy sheriff approached him.
“I’m Special Agent Levine, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and what can I do for you, Deputy?” Levine kept his eyes focused on the beads of sweat forming on his can of Pepsi and readied himself for what appeared to be the start of Round Two. “Can I assume Sheriff Elmore sent you to find me? And what might be on his game plan? Going to try and give me a body cavity search?”
The pie-faced deputy eyed Levine with that proprietary blend of awe and disdain that small-town cops reserve for federal agents. He tried tilting his head sideways in hopes that a change of perspective would enhance his understanding. It didn’t. “No sir, can’t rightly say I’m into that sort of thing—but then I’m just a small-town sheriff’s deputy.”
Levine looked up at the deputy for the first time. He was a young, chubby kid, with short cotton-blond hair and deep blue eyes the color of roadside chicory. His face was shiny and moist, but not sweaty, just moist. He was average height, maybe a shade smaller, and he adequately filled out a tan uniform shirt similar to the one that Sheriff Elmore had been wearing. His name badge readBEVINS , and aside from a six-pointed star over the left pocket, an American flag on one sleeve, and an embroidered Locust County sheriff’s patch on the other, his uniform was relatively plain and stood in sharp contrast to his glossy black leather gun belt, from which hung a vast array of all of the latest crime-fighting accessories that the county budget could handle.
One Drop of Blood Page 3
