Terry feigned indifference. “At most,” he countered, “it suggests that D’Abruzzo may have had other grounds for holding a gun to Kate’s head. But nothing tells me that Brian was the reason.”
Flynn stared at him, then stood, a gesture of dismissal. “Ask him again, Captain. Once a lie is embedded in a defendant’s story, it begins to fester. Eventually it putrefies.”
Terry could imagine the vultures circling. “I’ll hold the thought,” he answered. “But so far I can’t smell a thing.”
But he could. At least one person had lied to him. Perhaps more.
“I EXPECT TO BE lied to,” he told Meg harshly. “But I can’t accept knowing less than Flynn does. Not that this is personal. It’s your brother who’ll get fucked.”
She stared at him, lips parting, her eyes reflecting alternating currents of anger and uncertainty. The confines of his office felt hot and close.
“Tell me what I’m missing,” he demanded. “You know these people. That’s what you’re supposed to be good for.”
“This is about Kate, not Brian.” The tremor in her voice betrayed her struggle for self-control. “What makes you think I know?”
Terry forced himself to play this out. “Don’t spit back my bullshit to Flynn,” he snapped. “If Kate was screwing someone, Brian knew it. The only question is whether she had to tell him anything.”
Meg was silent for an instant. Softly, she answered. “Spare me the fake outrage, Paul. Before you start accusing anyone, let’s go to the Marriott. Until we do, you still don’t know as much as Flynn.”
Terry’s instinct was to confront his client at once. But perhaps she was right—details could be telling. “Then let’s go,” he said.
Meg stood, squaring her shoulders, walking ahead of him to the door with a swift, determined stride. For a moment, as Rose Gallagher had said, she looked like the best girl in the world and, perhaps, the most lonely.
THE DESK MAN AT the Marriott, a friendly sort who knew this must be trouble, identified Kate from a snapshot in Meg’s wallet. But he recognized neither of the men who flanked her—Joe D’Abruzzo and Brian McCarran. Pointing to a slight Hispanic man in a bellhop’s uniform, he said, “Ask José. He’s the one who knows about this.”
Stationed by the door, the bellboy was watching their conversation. As they approached, his doelike eyes regarded them with distinct unhappiness. He did not like trouble either or, perhaps, authority figures in uniforms. Terry wondered if he had his green card.
Up close, he seemed very young, with a downy mustache that underscored his lineless face. Quietly, Terry introduced himself and Meg. Then he steered José Calvo to a corner sitting area with a table and three chairs. Sitting between them, Calvo hunched forward, quiet and attentive. Terry slid Meg’s snapshot across the table. “Do you recognize any of these people?” he asked.
Gazing at the photograph, Calvo slowly nodded, placing a fingertip on Kate’s face, then her husband’s. “The lady. And him.”
“Not the blond man?”
“No. That’s what I told the others.”
“What else did you tell them?” Meg asked.
Calvo seemed to squirm, becoming slighter. Finally, he said, “I don’t like seeing people fight.”
Meg, Tony noticed, knew to remain silent until Calvo explained himself. “Too much like my parents,” he murmured.
AS ALWAYS, JOSÉ WAITED near the door, looking toward the entrance or the elevators for anyone needing help with luggage. When the elevator door opened, he felt immediate disappointment. She was certainly a pretty woman. But he had seen her here in the afternoon, several times before. Always she carried only a purse—no business for José; only monkey business for the lady. He was about to turn away when she froze near the elevator, staring at something that seemed to rob her of speech or movement. The stricken look on her face stirred a sorrow in José’s soul.
The man was a soldier, standing with his arms crossed, his expression of confusion and fury too much like José’s father’s. But his movements when he went for her, heavy-muscled yet catlike, had a quality José had never seen.
At the corner of his vision, an elevator door slid open. An old woman with two heavy suitcases looked about for assistance. José hesitated, then went to help. He passed the man and woman, a few feet from him. Her face was pale, his contorted; both were heedless of José. In a low, savage voice, the man told her, “I saw him, you cunt.”
Too much like his parents. Smiling nervously at the old lady, José hoped she had not heard.
EVEN THE MEMORY MADE Calvo seem miserable. Studying Kate’s picture, he said, “I wanted to help this lady. But I couldn’t. Maybe the man had a right to his anger.”
Meg, too, looked miserable. “Had you seen him before?” she asked.
Calvo shook his head, still looking at the photograph. “We see soldiers all the time here,” he said slowly. “They sort of look alike to me. But this one I’d remember. He scared me just by how he walked.”
On the drive back to Bolton, Meg seemed to concentrate so deeply that she receded within herself. Her head was bowed, and her thoughts opaque save for the worry written on her face. Terry’s own concern was simple: If not Brian, who? But the problem hardly ended there.
WHEN BRIAN CAME THROUGH the door of his quarters, returning from his first interview with Dr. Blake Carson, Meg and Terry had been waiting in his living room for over an hour. Looking from one to the other, Brian said to Meg, “It’s a good thing you called me, sis. Otherwise I’d have shot you. Sadr City, you know.”
Though he tossed off this mordant remark casually enough, Brian’s handsome face looked weary. Gently, Meg asked, “How was it with Dr. Carson?”
Brian sat across from them. “Not going there,” he said softly. Terry could not tell if “there” meant Iraq or his meeting with Carson. It was not even clear that he was addressing Meg.
Abruptly, Terry asked, “Who was Kate’s lover?”
At once Brian was alert, looking directly at Terry. In an even voice, he said, “Meg already asked me.”
“Now I am. And don’t even dream of telling me you don’t know. In the McCarran-Gallagher family, your filial bond is the stuff of story-books. It’s all I ever hear.”
Brian glanced at Meg. Then, to Terry’s complete surprise, he flashed a smile no less captivating for its irony. “Families love their stories, don’t they? Sometimes they’re even true, though not as often as you’d like. That’s why Norman Rockwell is the great American artist.”
“Not in my family,” Terry retorted. “All I want from you is the truth.”
Brian regarded him in silence. Slowly and succinctly, he said, “It wasn’t me, Captain Terry.”
“Then who?”
“That’s Kate’s business, isn’t it?”
“Not anymore. Now it’s Flynn’s—and mine. If Kate had a lover—no matter who it was—you knew that when you took D’Abruzzo’s gun.”
Brian held Terry’s gaze. Calmly, he asked, “Why is that?”
“You’d known her your entire life. In the last few months, you saw each other once a week. She told you about Joe hitting her. She turned to you when she needed protection. And yet Kate didn’t tell you she had a lover or that Joe knew that?” Lowering his voice, Terry demanded, “Tell me what you’re hiding, Brian.”
Brian’s face became stone. After a moment, he said, “Were you ever ashamed of anything, sir?”
Terry hesitated. “Now and then.”
“Then maybe, at least once, you were too ashamed to talk about it. Even—or especially—to the people who think they know you best.”
Behind the mask, Brian’s blue eyes held a seriousness so profound that Terry wondered if he was speaking about Kate or about himself. “A man’s dead,” Terry retorted. “What you’re talking about is a luxury.”
Terry felt Meg watching them, as still as a caught breath. Then Brian broke the silence. “Not to me,” he answered simply. “I didn’t plan to kill Joe D’Abruzzo
. That’s the only truth that matters to me. Or should matter to you.”
Terry stared at him. At length, he said, “Maybe you’ll tell the next guy, Brian. Hopefully before it’s too late.”
Without looking at Meg, or awaiting an answer, Terry walked out the door. He stood on the sidewalk in the soft light of early evening, watching officers and soldiers drive home from work. He felt Meg behind him, just before she touched his arm.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you,” she said quietly. “But Brian’s an honest person. I know that he has reasons for whatever he chooses not to say.”
Though surprised at Meg’s touch, Terry shook his head. “This is suicide in slow motion, Meg. I hope you can change his mind.”
Meg’s fingers slipped away. Their drive back to her hotel was silent, Terry struggling to sort out his thoughts and feelings. Once or twice Meg glanced at him but said nothing.
two
THE NEXT MORNING, TERRY GOT UP AT FIVE A.M. AND DROVE IN darkness to the Fort Bolton Athletic Center.
Almost no one was there. He took the basketball out of his locker and went to one of several courts, the thud of his sneakers echoing in the barnlike structure. His sleep had been broken by the dream of his father; now, trying to sort out his troubled thoughts, he played the solitary game his father had devised for him.
It was before their family had lost everything. Paul was ten, intent on sharpening his shooting eye. So Frank Terry had bolted a hoop to the garage and marked ten spots along the driveway, creating an oval from one side of the basket to the other—which Paul followed from one spot to the next, taking a shot from each. His goal, all the more special because it was so seldom reached, was to sink ten shots without missing. Paul would try every morning before school when the weather was good; on most mornings his father would drink coffee and watch him from the porch. On Paul’s first morning of perfection, his father, proud and not entirely teasing, had suggested he might go to Notre Dame on a basketball scholarship. Even then Paul sensed that finances were tight; within three years, his father was dead, and the bitter truths that emerged opened the fault line in his life. Walled off from him by her own evasions, his forlorn mother had turned to God. Paul had turned inward.
Now, as he remembered Frank Terry, his thoughts of his father’s death merged with his reflections about Meg McCarran. Since his conversation with Rose Gallagher, Terry realized, he understood Meg far better than he had allowed her to know. But the shock of recognition, uncomfortable in its resonance for Terry, did not make decoding the McCarrans any simpler.
His first shot clanged against the iron rim. “There’s something I’m not getting here,” he had told Colonel Dawes the day before. “Not just whatever Brian isn’t saying. There’s a missing piece, one that has to do with family. And I can’t grasp what it is.”
Sitting with Paul at the Officers’ Club, Dawes had sampled his bourbon, tasting the first sip with obvious relish. “Your instincts are pretty good, Paul. You’ve always been more than a by-the-numbers lawyer—you have a deeper sense of people. Trust that.” At that moment Terry had realized how deeply he would miss Harry Dawes.
His second shot fell through the net without touching metal.
Brian was lying to him—or, at the least, concealing something painful. Perhaps others were, as well. What Terry did not know was whether this had anything to do with Joe D’Abruzzo’s death.
Were you ever ashamed of anything? Brian had asked him. But Terry could not decipher what—or even who—had surfaced this elliptical reference.
He missed the next shot, a metaphor.
TWO HOURS LATER, PAUL Terry and Meg McCarran sat with Dr. Blake Carson in the corner of a Starbucks in Bethesda. Looking at Meg, Carson said, “What I have to tell you isn’t news—your brother is in tough shape. To say the least, his psychic defenses are elaborate. But he’s also quite self-aware: when I went through the behaviors you described—the twitchiness, the spacing out, the sudden spurts of anger—he pretty much copped to all of them. A couple of times he displayed a certain gallows humor and a keen sense of irony. I very much wish I’d known him before Iraq.”
Meg was silent. “What about his nightmare?” Terry asked.
Carson put a curled finger to his lips. “When I asked him, all he said was that it’s about Sadr City, that it makes no sense, that he really can’t remember much. I pressed him for details, and finally he said something about a young Iraqi boy. In the dream, Brian reaches out to him, even though he knows the kid is dead.”
Meg’s eyes clouded. “Did you ask him what it meant, or whether it related to some actual experience?”
“Sure.” Carson gave a brief shake of the head. “It was the damnedest thing—for a moment he closed his eyes, and the blood drained from his face. All he gave me was a riddle wrapped in a monotone, ‘Dead kids can’t explain themselves.’ ”
Terry felt a brief frisson. “That was all?”
“Yup. After that, he completely shut down. It was painful to watch.” He turned to Meg. “Your brother has a core of toughness—he can still put one foot in front of the other. But he’s haunted by something he won’t—or can’t—reveal. And as near as I can tell, he has almost no vision of the future. When I asked him how he saw his life in five years, he said, ‘The same as it is now, except maybe in a military prison. Assuming the best.’ ”
Meg touched her eyes. “What did he tell you about combat?”
“Not much.” Carson ran his fingers through his thick mane of hair, his expression puzzled and a little frustrated. “When I asked about his worst experiences, he said, ‘People dying. Gives me a lot to choose from.’ But he wouldn’t offer names or details.”
“What about the scar on his neck?”
Carson puffed his cheeks. “That was weird. He sat back in the chair and gave me that incredible smile of his, like we were two pals sharing a joke. ‘RPG damn near took my head off,’ he told me. ‘Another few inches, and I’d have joined the McCarran Hall of Fame. I just can’t catch a break.’ ”
Meg turned away, gazing out at the street so that neither man could see her face. When she turned back to them, Terry saw a film in her eyes. “My impression,” Carson told her gently, “is of a sensitive man who’s in a great deal of pain. Unlike so many other vets, he doesn’t drink in an effort to dull it. Your brother’s still on the cross, Meg. Maybe that’s what Brian thinks he deserves.”
Meg gazed at her coffee. “You call Brian ‘sensitive,’ ” Terry said to Carson. “Are some people predisposed to PTSD?”
“There’s a lot of debate. Some analysts think that childhood experiences likely create a heightened vulnerability. Others believe that prewar variables can help account for some, but not most, of the occurrences of PTSD.” He glanced at Meg. “Of course, your mother’s problems with alcohol, and her ultimate suicide, must have been traumatic for him. Brian was nine, right?”
Meg glanced at Terry, her gaze suggesting discomfort that he knew about the manner of Mary McCarran’s death. Then she slowly nodded. “Yes,” she told Carson, “Brian was nine.”
Carson pretended not to notice her reaction. “We talked a little about his childhood,” he told her. “He said you were the best sister on the planet, and that Rose and Kate helped look after you both, especially when your dad was gone. All three of you are very important to him.”
Meg looked too shaken to respond. For her sake, Terry pretended to watch the customers drifting in and out, the usual mix of business types, mothers who had just dropped off their kids, and students with part-time jobs. “What about the general?” he asked.
Carson wagged his head, eyes narrowing in thought. “In certain ways I think Brian feels like an orphan. I didn’t know Mom, but to me she sounds depressed, maybe even paranoid, and not able to give her kids much emotional support. In contrast, Dad personifies dignity, strength, and honor. But he wasn’t around that much.
“It’s clear that Brian tried to identify with his father. What choice did he have?
He was a male, and his mother had killed herself. But, because of that, Brian may also have felt that his father failed Mary the way he failed Brian himself. That sets up a fairly ambivalent relationship between Brian and General McCarran—Brian had no one else to emulate, yet your father set expectations without providing the warmth Brian craved. Which is more or less, I’d guess, what the general must have felt about his own father. Except that his absence was sanctified by death.”
Terry saw Meg grimace. “You disagree?” he asked.
“I just don’t think about it much.” Turning to Carson, she said, “In your business, don’t they call wallowing in the past ‘counteradaptive’?”
Carson smiled a little. “So is ignoring it. In my book, people who wall off their past too often sleepwalk through their future. But we were talking about Brian.”
After a moment, Meg nodded. “I understand,” she said. “Given where Brian is now, this stuff matters.”
“It surely does.” Carson turned to Terry. “Take how pissed off Brian is at those dolts at the VA. That’s genuine—Brian clearly cares about his guys, and understands how war has hurt them. But his anger is also symbolic of his feelings toward the general. As with the general, he thinks the army expects these kids to perform wonders in Iraq but provides no support when they come back fucked up as a result.”
Terry felt himself trying to imagine Brian’s inner landscape. “So how does Brian see himself?”
Carson considered the question. “He didn’t say much about Iraq. But my guess is that—as bad as it clearly was—Brian found an identity different from his father’s. General McCarran succeeded by always completing the mission; quite consciously, Brian seems to have cared less about the mission than about his men.”
“On what do you base that?”
“A couple of things,” Carson answered in a contemplative tone. “Including what little he was willing to say about D’Abruzzo.”
In the Name of Honor Page 11
