by Zack Klika
The office windows in Captain Warren’s office faced the main street and the barracks on the other side of it. A shit view. Everything was so close on base that Riley wondered how soldiers were ever late to anything. The military made it dummy-proof for all, and yet . . . Riley walked in and stood at attention in front of Captain Warren, who was seated behind a large yew desk that had probably been passed down to new commanders over the last thirty years. Furniture never went bad in the military. He was going over some documents and seemed to have calmed down a bit since they’d last spoken. He probably had remembered who he was dealing with.
“What in the fuck were you thinking?” Captain Warren asked.
Nope. He hadn’t. She might’ve had a little pull with him, but he was still a captain in the United States Army. An easy way to speed up an ass-chewing was to admit you were in the wrong and take whatever you had coming. No point in arguing, even if Riley thought she could get away with it.
“I wasn’t thinking, sir,” said Riley, still unaware as to why she had been summoned.
“Don’t I fucking know it. I’m getting calls from people I should never have to talk to.”
Oh really? Like who?
“I’m sorry, sir,” Riley was saying, but he cut her off.
“Shut the hell up. You’ll know when I’m done talking.”
Riley fell silent. A few moments passed.
“See. That’s me being done. Now why don’t you tell me why you’re going around asking questions about a soldier’s death you have nothing to do with.”
“Just doing my job. I’m doing a tribute piece for her in the Daily. Tim can confirm it, sir.” The lie came so quickly and casually that she impressed herself.
He stared at her with more hate than she was used to. She wondered if it was directed at her or the person who had torn him a new asshole because of her snooping.
“I’m sure,” he said and walked to the window. “Have you decided if you want to reenlist yet?”
“No, sir.”
“Let me give you some advice. Don’t. Take your GI Bill and go to college. Get a degree and find a career you enjoy.”
What he was saying sounded nice, but Riley knew there was more.
“Because, honestly, you don’t fit the mold the Army needs. You’re disrespectful and you don’t uphold any of the core values a good soldier should. And don’t kid yourself into thinking no one knows you sleep in until ten most mornings. You’ve been slipping for a long time, and if it weren’t for our arrangement, you’d have been kicked out a long time ago.”
If she didn’t think he was a pig, she might have been offended by his words. She stood there and kept her face as blank as she could. Captain Warren waved her away with a hand.
“You’re dismissed.”
Riley turned on her heel and left him there staring out the window. The military had never really broken her free spirit and Captain Warren knew it. She never took full advantage of her position at the Fort Campbell Daily either. She could have been writing controversial articles the past four years on the side, trying to impress her peers and win awards. But Captain Warren was right: She was slipping. Jennifer Carlson was going to be her saving grace, though. Her ticket to the big times. A soldier found brutally murdered in the middle of nowhere. All she had to do was figure out who killed her and why. In that moment, the task seemed daunting beyond belief.
Riley wondered who had called Captain Warren and what they said to get him so riled up. She couldn’t ask him who had complained about her. One, because he wouldn’t tell her. And two, because it didn’t matter. She had a pretty good idea who it was.
*
The sun was low in the sky when Riley made it back to her office at the Fort Campbell Daily.
“How’d it go?” Tim asked as she set her things down at her desk.
“Colonel Wright didn’t have much to say about Jennifer. Said they only met once. And he didn’t know anything about who she was training with for SFAS. He’s also part of the old boys’ club.”
“Most of the old-timers are.”
“You’d think someone with a college education would be open-minded enough to see the value of every soldier in combat. Not just the male ones.”
“You’ve got to understand the type of Army guys like him were brought up in. I mean women haven’t even always been allowed to fire weapons in the military. Things are changing, but it’s a slow process.”
An excruciatingly slow process. EO complaints were being handled with a bit more seriousness, but it wasn’t enough. In the last year alone, there were 6,000 sexual assaults reported across bases worldwide. Less than 100 led to a court martial or jail time. Not because the other 5,900 reports were thought to be false—they just had no evidence to go along with the complaint. How do you produce evidence for something that happened when you least expected it and only lasted a few seconds or a few minutes? Riley knew from experience you didn’t.
“Someone threw me under the bus too,” Riley said.
“What do you mean?”
“Captain Warren called me in. Wanted to know why I was asking questions about Jennifer Carlson, so I told him I’m doing a tribute piece about her.”
“Tribute, truth . . . something’s going to be written about her all right.”
Riley agreed.
“Who do you think complained?” Tim asked.
“Agent Sanchez,” she said. “He’s keeping the case close to pocket.”
“Nothing out of the ordinary there,” said Tim. “A detective usually knows when to keep their mouth shut.”
“True,” Riley admitted. “I also spoke with some soldiers outside of Jennifer’s barracks and they said she kept to herself and was never seen with anyone. They also said some SF trainees were snooping around her barracks just before I got there. Asking about her and anyone she may have been seen with.”
“Any idea why?” Tim asked.
Riley could tell this was not part of her training. Tim was stumped and looked the part.
“The SF guys could have been from her training group,” Riley said, her thumb tapping away at the desk. “But it doesn’t make sense that they would go around asking questions at the barracks if they were the killers. Maybe they’re trying to figure out who killed Jennifer too, which means it probably wasn’t a hazing gone wrong.”
“I wouldn’t write off the SFAS course just yet. Maybe a soldier from another group didn’t want her there. The two that were snooping around the barracks should be easy enough to track down if they’re currently attending SFAS. Try to catch them off guard with a visit at the end of the workday.”
“Got it,” Riley said as she scribbled the task down in her small notepad.
She had hoped Tim would have more to contribute after hearing about all the information she gathered. No luck. Her thumb stopped tapping as she remembered the photo.
“I found this in her room,” she said, digging the portrait of Sergeant Brown out of her pocket.
Tim took it, then frowned after inspecting it for a moment. “He looks familiar.”
“Really?” Riley asked.
Tim sat down at his computer and started typing. Riley waited for an answer.
“Here,” Tim said, ushering her over to him. “He was killed in a training exercise two years ago.”
Riley read over the article Tim had pulled up in his email. It was Brown all right. She didn’t remember the story. The article said Andrew Brown was conducting driver’s training with his unit, FSC 2-142, when he took a turn going too fast and rolled the five-ton truck he was in. He was ejected from the vehicle through the windshield and declared dead by the first responders.
“I don’t remember this story,” Riley said.
“You should read the news more. It was posted on the Clarksville Times website. Not a big enough story to take up physical real estate in the newspaper.”
Insult aside, there were a few details in the article that bothered Riley.
Riley finished the artic
le and said, “I’ve never heard of training exercises going on off base, especially something like driver’s training.”
“And it says he was alone in the truck,” Tim piggybacked, so fast, in fact, that Riley knew he was following her train of thought. “That doesn’t make any sense. You always have two in the truck. I have a contact at the Clarksville Times. I’ll see if they can give me some more information about the incident.”
Riley printed the article, folded the sheets of paper, and stuffed them in her pocket.
“You think Jennifer knew him?” Riley asked.
“What brigade was she with again?”
“Third,” said Riley.
Tim cocked his head. “That’s the same brigade Andrew Brown’s unit was in.”
“Is that a big enough coincidence?” Riley said. “There are close to three thousand soldiers in the 3rd Brigade.”
“We’re just spitballing here.”
“Okay. So maybe she did know him.”
“Not through the brigade,” said Tim. “The timeline doesn’t add up. He died almost a year before Jennifer arrived at Fort Campbell.”
“Maybe she knew him before she joined,” Riley said as she pulled out her notepad and flipped through pages that were covered in jumbled notes. “Here. She joined the Army in Clarksville and had Fort Campbell guaranteed as her first duty station in her enlistment contract. Who the hell requests Fort Campbell?”
“It’s possible she’s from the area. Were there any emergency contacts in her record?”
“No next of kin and I don’t think the emergency contact is a real person. ‘Mark Smith.’ The phone number she gave for him went to a phone that’s not in service anymore. Bogus address too. I tried looking him up. There are over two thousand Mark Smiths between Kentucky and Tennessee. It’s like no one knew her before she joined the military.”
“I’ll try and get Andrew Brown’s records,” Tim said with enough conviction that Riley knew he would. “In the meantime you need to find out if his unit has any information.”
“I was just warned to back off by Captain Warren.”
“Be careful then.”
Riley grinned.
“You talk to the responding detective yet?” he continued.
“I tried calling, but the desk sergeant wouldn’t give up any names. I’ll pay the police department a visit tonight and try to work out who it is.”
Riley just hoped it was a different desk sergeant on duty when she arrived. The later she went, the better her chances of that being a reality were.
“That’s good,” Tim said.
Riley closed her eyes, trying to piece together a puzzle that she was missing all the pieces for. She needed to find out what the connection between Jennifer and Andrew was, but she didn’t know enough about either one of them.
“You think you’ll have Andrew’s file by tomorrow?” asked Riley.
“Maybe,” Tim said. “It might be hard because of the weekend.”
Weekends were sacred on base, and everyone tried their best to enjoy them to the fullest.
“Okay. I’ll keep at it over the weekend,” said Riley. “Let me know if you find anything out.”
There was only so much someone’s military record could tell a person. Jennifer’s had not proven too useful. She hoped Andrew’s record would be a different story.
*
Riley grabbed a glass of water from her kitchen counter and chugged it. The uniform she had spent most of the day in was now airing out in the closet, replaced by an old pair of blue jeans and a loose black sweatshirt that hung below the belt loops. Long, thick hair fell over shoulders. She still didn’t have any makeup on, but out of her uniform she looked like a completely different person. She filled up the glass again and made her way to the living room, sitting down at the edge of the couch.
If Riley had applied herself and tried to write the kind of hard-hitting stories she saw in big-name newspapers, she might have been a bit better at digging up information that mattered. As it stood, she felt like she had gathered a plethora of useless information. She had to start asking the right questions.
Calling Thomas was a no-brainer. He was the only person she trusted enough to get what she needed. Things had been left open-ended during their last encounter. Well, not really. Riley probably shouldn’t have squeezed his balls as hard as she did, but she was in a hurry and didn’t have time for his games. She made the call anyway.
“What do you want?” Thomas asked when he answered the phone. “You can’t need a refill already.”
“I want to take you up on that dinner invitation. I need some help first, though.”
It was quiet on the other line.
“Yeah, okay. What do you need?”
“You know where the 2nd Battalion’s barracks are?”
“Sure.”
“Sure?” She was beginning to regret this decision.
“Yes, I know where it’s at.”
“Great. I just texted you a photo. It’s of a soldier named Andrew Brown. He was killed in a training exercise a few years ago. I just need some basic information about him.”
“What’s this all about?”
“Do you want to take me out to dinner or not?”
The line went quiet again for a few seconds.
“Okay,” Thomas said. “What kind of stuff do you want know about him?”
“He was with FSC 2-142, 3rd Brigade. I need to know what his job was in the unit. Who he hung out with. Anything really. A snapshot of the kind of soldier he was. You think you can handle it?”
“Yeah. I’ll pick you up tomorrow night for dinner,” Thomas said and hung up.
Riley threw some bottles of water and pieces of fruit in an old grocery bag and headed out for the night. Her first stop: a stakeout at the SFAS course. The soldiers who were in the course got pushed pretty hard and would often have sixteen-hour days to look forward to for the duration of the course. With any luck, Riley would spot a soldier with a black eye and a lean and get some answers that helped her story.
Chapter 13
When Lee woke up, he had seven missed calls from Johnson. He called him back, got chewed out, and assured Johnson he would be on time. The Crown and Cokes had one positive effect on him: They helped him pass right out when he got home. That seemed to be all he wanted to do as of late, sleep it all away like some bad dream.
He’d never been to the Clarksville Speedway before, but he knew it was full of racists, bigots, homophobes, fuckheads, and their kids. None of the hate was hidden. During his sophomore year of high school he heard about a group of teenage rednecks a town over who strapped Confederate flags to their trucks and drove around throwing rocks at anyone who wasn’t white. Luckily no one was seriously injured, but just the idea that that kind of hate still existed in the world bothered Lee.
Satisfied with his wardrobe choice, slim blue jeans and a basic gray hoodie, he made his way to the race. Traffic was light on the back roads he took. Outside of town, it was mostly just hills and trees. The speed limit ranged from thirty to forty miles per hour. Thirty on the winding roads where a deer might be standing cluelessly around the corner and forty on the roads where you could really open up your ride and see what it had.
Stars hung over the speedway by the time Lee arrived. A dirt parking lot sat in front of the gates that led to the track. Wrapping around the two was a forest that seemed to touch the sky. Lee found an open spot and parked close to the entrance. His phone started ringing before he put the car in park.
“Are you here?” Johnson asked.
Lee said, “Just pulled up.”
“Good. You know what to do.”
The phone clicked in Lee’s ear. He lowered it back into his pocket and tried to come to terms with what he was doing. It was one thing to tell yourself you were ready for something. It was an entirely different thing to go through with it. He popped open the glove box and looked at the pistol. He was just being paranoid. A gun wouldn’t be necessary for what he was
doing. If anything, it would only get him in more trouble. And he didn’t want to be another hypocrite who believed in gun reform but had a piece for personal protection. He closed the glove box, leaving the gun where it was.
Dome lights flooded the dirt track that the derby cars shot around. People could be heard cheering all the way at the back of the parking lot where Lee was. Fuckin’ hillbillies, he thought. This was their life. Drinking, laughing, hating anyone who didn’t look like them. It was disgusting. How in the world groups of people like this still existed was beyond him.
A huge warehouse was to the side of the dirt track. Separating the two was a set of bleachers that had a max capacity of one thousand people.
Lee made his way to the entrance, which was just an opening in the old gate that blocked off the dirt track and warehouse from the parking lot. A big redneck bouncer eyed Lee down as he handed him a five-spot for admission.
“It’s pretty crazy in here tonight,” Lee said. His best effort at small talk.
The bouncer took the money and went on to the next person in line. Lee went in and decided to grab a bottle of water before tracking Buck down. It was not a diverse crowd. More welcoming than he expected, though. He caught a few dirty looks, but no more than he was used to.
When it was his turn in line, he put a dollar on the counter and a pretty girl handed him a water. She smiled at him, revealing three missing teeth in all the wrong places. He feigned a smile and headed to the bleachers. Not that he had anything against women who were missing teeth—he just needed to find Buck.
The bleachers gave a complete view of the oval track. Ten beat-up cars lapped around and around. Each one decorated completely differently from the next. All of them pieces of shit. Lee looked around, trying to pick Buck out of the crowd of hundreds. The smell of weed was so strong that Lee felt himself catching a secondhand high.
