“I know that.”
“Then why—”
“Actually, I wanted to warn you about Shapiro. Hickman’s got a burr up his ass for the man.” Tell her something she didn’t know. “Hickman saw the two of you together after White’s memorial service, talking, away from the others, and he went a little crazy. Just thought you should know what position that reporter’s putting you in.”
“My job is to talk to reporters,” she said. “What would you, or the general for that matter, have me do? I can’t ignore my job. I especially can’t ignore reporters like Shapiro. Better to find ways to placate reporters like him.”
“Placate? In what way?” A flame shot up from the grill, and so did Figueredo from the chair, dousing the flame with water.
“Well, for example,” she said, wondering just how far she should trust him, and then deciding that since he was the base’s intel officer— “this afternoon, Shapiro actually insinuated that Major White’s crash wasn’t an accident.”
Figueredo didn’t look up from the grill, but even under the fading light she detected the rise of his eyebrows. “Really? What’s he basing that on?”
“He seems to think the maintenance records at 464 are being forged to protect the 81 from being grounded. My husband was once the S-3 at 464 and would have known if anything like that had been going on.” Her voice trailed off. For some reason, she actually felt a little guilty for bringing Stone into the conversation. Fearful of another sympathetic look from Figueredo, she turned her back on him and folded herself into a chair.
“You’re still wearing your wedding ring,” he said.
Instinctively, she looked down at her left hand. Several seconds passed before either spoke. Chase broke the tense silence. “Have you ever been married, Colonel?”
He looked up from the grill, and took a long drink of wine. “In my line of work, you never get attached to anything or anyone you can’t leave in fifteen minutes or less.”
“Really? How long have you been using that line to avoid commitment?” It was the wine talking, that and she was fed up with his arrogance. She suspected by his silence she’d hit a nerve. He was flipping chicken breasts. Grease sizzled, and a breeze carried off smoke and the scent to her neighbor’s yard. She thought of Stone and how much they’d enjoyed grilling out. She used to relish the idea that others might be salivating over what she and Stone were cooking up together. Something about grilling out said to others you were solid, together, happy. When she was a little girl during the troubled years of her parents’ marriage, she’d envied the charcoal smell of a neighbor’s grill.
“So, what did you say to Shapiro?” Figueredo finally asked.
“I warned him against spreading some sort of wild conspiracy theory.”
“This chicken is done,” he said, and she wondered if he’d even heard her response. She disappeared inside the house and returned with a platter.
“Damn reporters,” he said, arranging chicken on the platter and shaking his head. “Where would he even get such an idea?”
“He wouldn’t give up his so-called source—” She stopped short of telling him about Major White’s mistress. After all, White had been a friend of Stone’s and, therefore, deserving of her protection. She would have valued the same protection of Stone’s reputation.
Figueredo opened the sliding glass door for her. She said over a shoulder, “I’m just fixing a salad to go with this—suppose I should invite you to stay since you did the cooking.”
He was close enough now for her to smell his aftershave—woodsy or spicy or something like that, but entirely pleasant. “No, thanks,” he said, and handing her the empty wine glass, added, “I’m sorry if I upset you when I mentioned your wedding ring.”
“Colonel,” she said, looking him hard in the eyes, “I don’t talk about my husband to anyone but my daughter and family. I’d appreciate it if you’d—” She stopped because he’d put a finger to her lips.
“Enough,” he whispered. “I’d appreciate a call the next time Shapiro, or any reporter, comes to you with crazy talk of conspiracies.”
When he removed his finger, she said, “No disrespect intended, Colonel, but you’re not exactly in my chain of command. Do you really want to be bothered with such matters?” She stepped inside the kitchen and placed the platter and her wine glass on the counter. Figueredo was still standing in the doorway—half in, half out.
“No disrespect taken, Skipper,” he said coolly. “I only meant I might be able to run interference for you with General Hickman.” He reached to close the sliding door and stopped. “Thank you for the wine,” he said, and closed the door.
Chase was tossing the salad when she thought of White’s dog tags. She glanced over at the garbage can and remembered she’d emptied the trash since. The bag was in the large trash container already at the end of the driveway for the morning pickup. Three minutes later, she’d retrieved the top bag in the garbage can and was bending over it in the garage, her right arm rummaging past a napkin with Molly’s chewing gum and past the stubs of lettuce and spines of tomatoes and peppers, past the bloody Styrofoam chicken tray she’d tossed the night before—moving the chicken to a dish for overnight marinating—past an empty milk carton, past two mornings’ worth of coffee grounds, and herbal tea bags. But she couldn’t find the dog tags. She began from the top again, sifting past each nasty item to the bottom. Nope. She checked the bottom of the bag for holes, and finding the bag intact, shook it hard, listening for the rattle of metal. Nothing.
“I’m hungry,” Molly said, startling Chase into a half-scream.
“You scared me half to death, Molly,” she said angrily, immediately regretting it.
“I’m sorry,” the child whispered. “Did you lose something, Mommy?”
“Yes,” Chase said, and sighed. There was only one explanation: the dog tags had to be in another bag. She considered pulling out the others, but Molly was standing there in the doorway, hungry, and smarting from her mother’s harsh tone. She gave up the search. After all, why should it matter now? Because returning them was a chance at redemption with Kitty? “Go wash up, honey,” she said and smiled at her daughter. “I’ll be right there.” She tied up the trash bag and carried it back to the end of the driveway.
That night, Chase lay in the king-sized bed, staring at the whirling ceiling fan. She replayed the day in her mind—the strange confrontation with Shapiro and White’s mistress and the strange visit from Figueredo. What she hadn’t given much thought to until now was the news of Major O’Donnell’s suicide attempt. O’Donnell had been one of White’s golfing buddies. Had O’Donnell been so overcome with grief that he tried to end his life as well?
The image of Shapiro’s shocked expression when she trumped him by naming his source as White’s mistress flashed through her mind. What if she were wrong about that? Had she just given Shapiro ammunition for a story, a detail he would attribute to Chase? She could lose her job over such a foolish slip.
Now she felt sick. Physically sick. Pain was shooting up the back of her head. She was on the verge of another migraine. She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her chest was pounding; her heart racing. She was sweating. She hadn’t had but one migraine since Stone’s death, and he’d always known what to do for her.
When the overhead light flooded the bedroom, she groaned. Molly was standing in the doorway. “Mommy?” she whimpered, “Can I sleep with you?”
“The light, sweetheart, please turn off the light.” Thankfully, the room went dark. She heard Molly scamper across the floor. Chase groaned when the bed jolted. The child’s face, now inches from Chase’s, looked concerned. “Are you okay, Mommy?”
“Mommy has a really bad headache, honey.”
“I know how to help, Mommy,” she said, and softly, hypnotically, traced the lines of Chase’s eyebrows, something Chase often did for Molly to help her fall asleep.
CHAPTER 6
In her office the next morning, she was overl
ooking Cruise’s newspaper layouts when the private telephone line buzzed.
“Captain Anderson?” It was Paul Shapiro.
“How did you get my private number?” She was furious, and she hoped her tone indicated so.
“Silvers gave it to me a year ago. I was guessing you guys hadn’t bothered to change it.”
“From now on—”
Shapiro interrupted. “Look, I need to see you. Can we meet somewhere off base?”
“Why?”
“I’d rather not say over the phone.”
“Paul, cut the Deep Throat act. What do you want?”
“Honest, Captain Anderson,” he said, “I can’t say over the phone.” His voice was pleading with a tone that hinted her whole world was about to change, like the day she’d received the news about Stone’s crash and no one would tell her whether or not he’d survived until she arrived aboard the Navy ship and saw the chaplain walking toward her.
“Look, Paul,” she said, “I can’t tell you anything about Saturday’s crash, if that’s what you’re after. Not until the investigation has been completed. And if this has to do with something other than the crash, you need to put it in writing and send it through proper channels. But please refrain from calling my private—”
“Have you seen the paper this morning, Captain Anderson?”
Public Affairs received the Current each morning. One of North’s duties was to scan the paper and clip any article that pertained to the Corps, especially Hawaii-based Marines. Each article was scanned and emailed to DC for review. This was DC’s way of keeping a worldwide pulse on the Corps’s image as it played out in the press.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Bottom of page 5—I’ll hold.”
Chase punched the button that placed Shapiro on hold. She hit the intercom button. “Sergeant North, please bring me the first section of the Current.” A few moments later, North appeared in the doorway. “Have you already clipped this section?”
“I was just getting to it, ma’am,” he said apologetically.
“Thank you—close my door on your way out.”
She waited for the door to close before punching the hold button. “Okay, Paul, I’ve got the paper. I’m turning to page—” She gasped when she read the headline and recognized the face in the small photograph that was embedded within a column. WOMAN’S SUICIDE LEAP SHOCKS FAMILY, FRIENDS. Major White’s mystery woman was dead.
“You see why I need to meet with you?” he asked, his voice breaking with emotion. When Chase didn’t answer, he said, “Please, Captain Anderson. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
Shapiro had insisted they meet after the lunch crowd rush in a tiny obscure restaurant called The Hungry Fisherman on the windward side of Oahu. He seemed surprised Chase actually knew the place. In fact, for a second, her knowing about it almost caused him to reconsider until Chase explained that she and Stone had only stumbled across it during their early weeks on the island when they were sightseeing. She could only remember the name, vaguely the restaurant sign, but not the location, and Shapiro had provided directions.
After they agreed to a time, she stepped out of her office with the proofed pages of the Hawaii Marine and located Cruise and Staff Sergeant Martinez in the pressroom. They were discussing story ideas for the upcoming issue. Chase could hear North on a telephone call down the hall in his office. She set the newspaper pages on the long conference table in the middle of the pressroom. “Nothing big, here,” she said to Cruise. “I’ve circled a few typos. Good job on the photo layout of 167’s crew chiefs.”
“Thanks, ma’am,” Cruise said. “I’ll email the files to the Current right now.” Ironically, the very paper for which Shapiro reported was the Hawaii Marine’s printer.
Martinez teased Cruise, “They’ll faint if you email it before deadline.” He was right. Cruise was meticulous in her duties as editor. So much so that Chase found herself occasionally apologizing to the Current for missed deadlines. Still, Cruise was good and it showed. The paper had just been nominated for its first award.
“And to think I was going to offer to bring you back lunch,” Cruise said with a smile to Martinez.
On the way back to her office, Chase paused in the doorway. “By the way, I nearly forgot about an appointment I have this afternoon with Molly’s teacher. I’ll be leaving around 1430.”
“Aye-aye, ma’am,” Cruise said, distracted by Chase’s copy editing marks in the galleys.
Back in her office, she was about to dial O’Donnell’s number at headquarters to leave word about her afternoon appointment when she remembered O’Donnell was still in the base hospital. She dialed the XO’s number, and was startled when General Hickman picked up instead.
“Captain Anderson.” His voice had a sing-song quality that made her wonder if he’d had too much vodka with his morning orange juice and had wandered into the XO’s office by mistake. “I want to commend you for how you’ve handled the media since Saturday. Outstanding job.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now, what can I do for you this morning?”
Chase explained that the base newspaper had been proofed and was off to the printer. She provided a short brief about the front-page material that would include a news story about the crash and an obituary for Major White and the others. Then she lied about having an afternoon appointment with Molly’s teacher. “So I’m afraid I’ll be gone most of the afternoon, sir.”
“Family comes first, Anderson.” The tone was warm, fatherly. “Don’t ever forget that.”
“No, sir. I won’t.”
A few hours later, she was whizzing along the H-3 in Stone’s old Jeep, facing the curvy road and its steep climb. The H-3 connected the base to Kaneohe and Pearl Harbor and had taken twenty-seven years to build, not because of construction delays or funding problems, but because the highway was being constructed over ancient burial grounds. For years, Hawaiians protested, but lost another battle to America’s Manifest Destiny.
Ahead was the Harano Tunnel that bore through the mountain. She switched on her headlights, emerging a mile or so later into full sunlight. She cautiously glanced over her right shoulder at the mind-blowing view of the island. Her ears cleared from the altitude adjustment. If not for the road beneath her, she could have tricked herself into believing she was looking back at the base on Mokapu Peninsula from the air, from a helicopter. She could make out the oil tanks, the five hangars, the air traffic control tower, the turquoise water of Kaneohe Bay, even the tiny white triangles of sails. Ahead, the road curved along a stretch of mountainous jungle of palms and vines through the Halawa Valley. She was daring to drive over sacred ground. Hawaiians would scold her for driving over the graves of their ancestors: “Kapu, kapu,” forbidden, they would say, to cross over the sacred site of Papahanamoku, Mother Earth, who had given birth to the Hawaiian Islands.
Forbidden or not, she continued toward her meeting with Shapiro, glancing at the beauty around her. There’s an old Marine saying that there’s no worse duty station than the one where you currently are and no better duty station than the one you just left. How else to explain why so many asked for second and third tours back to Iraq? Hadn’t she found the transition to this so-called paradise a difficult one? A selfish one? Some people, she thought, herself include, apparently had to suffer extra doses of hell before they could recognize paradise.
Topographically, Hawaii was paradise, for Chase anyway. She loved palm trees, loved the music of wind in the palm fronds, loved the exotic birdcalls, the bright green geckos that darted through her house, even if she was forced to clean up what they left on her walls and upholstery. Still, there was also something mysterious, perhaps even sinister, about Hawaii. The jungle could make her feel almost claustrophobic. And the mountains? Jagged and fluted and aching for a benevolent hand to level and smooth them. They were intimidating and intensely green against the blue sky and jewel-toned water. Hawaii was beauty derived of chaos.
War had
been a little like that. One night in Iraq while embedded with the NBC crew outside Fallujah, she’d been compelled to man an M-60 machine gun in a bunker when North had shoved the weapon in her hands so that she could cover his run to the rear for more ammo. It was a suicide run, and she’d shouted at him not to go. But he had gone anyway. She called him every dirty name in the book while she squeezed off rounds, gingerly at first, then steadily as her OCS training came back to her, the red tracer rounds intersecting with those of nearby weapons. So this was combat, she thought, marveling at the beauty of the red sea of tracers. Her mind had flashed to Stone. How had he, how had anyone, ever faced this red scissoring of incoming fire? She’d never faced anything like it, and when she glanced over her shoulder at the NBC crew huddled in a corner of the bunker behind her, there was nothing but fear in the correspondent’s face. Maybe he was able to read the fear in hers. But she dismissed his lack of confidence, eventually forgetting after a few hundred more rounds that he and his cameraman were hunkered on the dirt floor behind her. She was only conscious of the hot cartridge shells grazing her hands and arms and that she had morphed from public affairs officer to the Marine who had been trained to fight, and that her job now was to cover Sergeant North’s suicide run to the rear and back.
Her meeting with Paul Shapiro could be considered suicidal in the career sense. At least, Colonel Figueredo would probably call it that: General Hickman, most certainly. What could Shapiro possibly have to tell her that required such secrecy? Until she knew, there was no point telling anyone about her meeting. Depending on what she learned, she might consider calling the arrogant Intel officer, then again, maybe not. He wasn’t in her chain of command. As a staff officer, they were on level playing fields.
One thing was certain: Tony White’s mystery woman was dead. The article hadn’t reported, thankfully, that there was any connection between the woman and Major White, although Chase’s heart had been skipping and racing ahead of the sentences that detailed how Japanese tourists in a late-night stop at a Diamond Head lookout spotted the woman’s body on a rocky shelf jutting out over the ocean. Only the brief mention that Melanie Appleton had been troubled for some time. According to a source quoted as “the family spokesperson,” no one suspected she was troubled to this extent. But does anyone? Who would have suspected Major O'Donnell of a suicide attempt?
An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) Page 6
