Shadows

by Peter J Manos

  “They are a bad idea. I may be a slow learner, but I learned. It’s just that I’m an ex-marine. I wasn’t prepared to question this country’s defense plans. Semper fi’s the motto. But I am being faithful by confronting an idea that puts this country at risk.”

  “You should show the shrapnel to my father.”

  “Yes. I should. I will.”

  She felt herself softening. She’d never even thanked him for defending Edna against those bullies in the street the day of the march.

  She turned toward him.

  “Will, right after the explosion last night you were…you were…brave…you—”

  “Don’t. You’re embarrassing me.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  How absurdly easy it had been to identify Calderone as the launch control officer who’d dropped in on Edna O’Hare that sunny Sunday. Sergeant Haugen had simply to assemble ID photos of those who had that day off and show them to Edna O’Hare for identification.

  It was a bit awkward for a sergeant to grill a lieutenant, but Haugen had the authority directly from Colonel Nichols, indeed, Nichols had texted Calderone with the info. They sat in Haugen’s office.

  “Mrs. O’Hare said you were intoxicated.”

  “Well, I’d had a few beers,” said Calderone. “It’s not a crime.”

  “Not that kind of intoxicated. Your speech wasn’t slurred. Your coordination was intact. You appeared to be seeing things.”

  “I wasn’t drunk, but I’d urinated quite a bit and I think I was dehydrated. It was hot and I was lightheaded and as far as seeing things go, I hope Mrs. O’Hare wasn’t claiming to see other peoples’ hallucinations.”

  Haugen learned that Sergeant Caulfield and Airman Forster had been Calderone’s drinking buddies that day. He would also be speaking with them. But further questions lead nowhere. Sergeant Haugen felt defeated. The O’Hare woman had been convincing and though, in some indefinable way, Calderone had been less so, Haugen realized shortly that he was as likely to get the whole story from Calderone as he was to get him to enumerate his wife’s shortcomings, if she had any.

  “I figured it would come to this,” said Haugen, “so I’ve drawn up a little document, which I want you to sign and after than I’d like you go to directly to the lab to get a tox screen drawn.”

  Haugen was ad libbing. Poker-faced, Calderone evidenced no tell-tale hesitation in signing the formally worded, but toothless document, a denial of the use of drugs other than alcohol.

  After Calderone left the office, Haugen brooded about reporting nothing of interest to Nichols when an idea occurred to him. Yes, it was bold, but Nichols would back him up, he was near certain of it.

  Calderone, Caulfield, and Forster sat at a small table in the cafeteria, having propped the fourth chair against the table to be sure no one would join them, almost as if they’d had a premonition.

  “I don’t know how that O’Hare woman learned my name, but she did and now Haugen has yours.”

  Caulfield shook his head in disgust and Forster moaned.

  “Hey, I didn’t want to be caught in a lie. All I said is that we were drinking buddies. And that’s all you have to say when he comes around to talk. And there is one other little thing…”

  “You know,” said Caulfield addressing Forster, “I had a bad feeling about dropping acid in the first place, but you made it sound so good. Like the Devil sweet talking someone into lust or gluttony.”

  “You Catholics and your sins,” said Forster. “You had a good trip and now you’re trying to blame me because of Joe’s snafu?

  “Just a second. I didn’t screw up anything.”

  “You sure as hell did,” said Forster. “Going to visit the anti-missile witch for a cozy little chat. How stupid can you get? Have you spilled the beans about any other little matter?” Then, speaking softer than he had been, “What about exam questions?”

  Calderone shook his head.

  Deeply involved as they were in this stressful back and forth, they did not see Haugen enter the room. He appeared at their table accompanied by a burly MP, who stood as if frozen, a disinterested look on his face, but a hand on his night stick.

  “Gentlemen,” said Haugen, “May I have your cell phones, please.”

  “What?” said Caulfield.

  “On Colonel Nichols’s orders. Your cell phone, please.” He held out his hand.”

  Haugen had considered a number of preambles but dispensed with them. The shock value of being brusque might be helpful in scaring something from its hiding place.

  “You can’t do this,” said Caulfield.

  “I can. I’m doing it. I’m authorized to have you arrested if you refuse. Hand them over now, please.”

  Calderone should have seen this coming. It had gone too well in Haugen’s office. He was shaken.

  He and Caulfield handed over their phones. When Forster hesitated, the MP tapped Forster lightly on the shoulder with his baton. They provided the passwords as well.

  Pleased with himself, Haugen left the room with three cell phones in his pocket and the codes to open them.

  Calderone, Caulfield, and Forster stared at Sergeant Haugen and his MP as they left, not wishing even to look at each other while those two figures were visible.

  “I’ll bet it was the witch told him,” said Forster. “It’s got to be her. We’ve got to do something about that woman.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” said Caulfield.

  “Nothing. I’m just pissed off, I guess. And anyway, Washington goes out to see O’Hare. I wonder if she ID’d you?

  “How could she do that?” asked Calderone. “She wasn’t there when I visited O’Hare.”

  In his little office, Haugen made himself a pot of coffee, arranged a notebook and pen on his desk, and opened Calderone’s phone. If he’d acted less quickly, he was certain, all incriminating evidence would have been erased. As it stood, a hundred phone numbers many text messages—some with photos attached—were still there for all to see. All who had access anyway.

  Of interest: Calderone and Forster had exchanged texts as had Caulfield and Forster, but Calderone and Caulfield had exchanged no texts between them. Furthermore the few photos Forster had sent to Calderone and Caulfield were not of pin-up girls, but of sheets of blotter acid, divided into thirty-six tabs, each tab decorated with a tiny likeness of the mad hatter from Alice in Wonderland, his eyes pinwheels, holding a tab of acid in one hand, a clock striking 13 in the other. A tab cost $35, which was a little steep, but this was an air force base, not a college campus, so that acquiring the psychedelic was more difficult than it might otherwise have been. All this Haugen pieced together from individual texts over the course of several hours.

  Forster had exchanged texts, crudely coded so their meaning was not too difficult to discern, with Batman, as the sender called himself, if it was a him. Envelopes, drop-off sites, money were the topics. So Batman was the supplier.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Dr. Rasmussen had cared for Karen Haugen since she was a baby, but his pediatric practice had morphed into a family practice over the years. Karen was so grateful that she would not be shuffled off to an internist just because she had turned eighteen. She was comfortable with him.

  In making the appointment she had refused to tell his receptionist why she wished to see the doctor.

  “So what seems to be the matter,” asked Rasmussen.

  Karen was embarrassed by the reason for her visit, and she was a little afraid. Although she was now an adult her father would nevertheless breath fire if he found out, inflexibly opposed as he was to premarital sex. In this sense he was not her mother’s domesticated lion but rather Karen Haugen’s personal dragon, guarding his gold, in the person of Karen Haugen.

  “This is all confidential, right?” she asked.

  “Yes, you’re an adult and your medical record cannot be shared with your parents without your permission. That’s what you had in mind, isn’t it?”

&nb
sp; “How did you know?”

  “Let’s just call it intuition,” said Rasmussen.

  “Do you know why I’m here?”

  “No. You tell me.”

  She felt the heat in her cheeks and became aware of her heart beating in her chest. She felt as if she’d had way too much coffee.

  “I’d like to have birth control, maybe an IUD, if you think that’s an okay way to do it.”

  “Karen, may I ask you a few questions?”

  She nodded.

  “Are you sexually active?”

  “Oh, God, no!”

  Rasmussen leaned back in his chair.

  “Do you plan to become sexually active?”

  “I’m not planning,” she said, knowing this was not strictly true. “I just want to be ready if anything should come up.”

  She paused now as her cheeks flushed even more because of the unintended, off-color pun. She probably learned to think ‘dirty’ from Suzy. Now she recalled her last date with her boyfriend Jack, whom she’d know since middle school. They were friends even as children, rode their bikes together, went frog hunting and collected crickets, played card games in each other’s kitchens. As their bodies changed with maturity so did their relationship. They no longer played together, though Karen would have liked to. She maintained an interest in the natural world. He less so. They went to movies together or to parties. When they could get away with it, that is when they found a way to be alone, they necked. But Karen had put limits on the geography of their touching. She wondered, sometimes, if he really liked her. Her father must have had his suspicions. Jack thought so.

  “I swear, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was tracking us by GPS,” he’d said, “and you know what, when you were in your room getting ready, he asked me if I’d ever been in trouble with the law. Man! But what really gets me is your—I don’t know—being so… Prudish. You kiss me like I’m your brother or something, or a Chinese paper cut-out you’re afraid of getting wet.”

  “You want to French kiss.”

  “You’re damn right, I want to French kiss.”

  Because of Jack’s pressure and her reluctant acceptance that she, too, had a sexual appetite, she’d long ago started thinking about making this appointment, but when Jack failed even to try to stop his friends from harassing Mrs. O’Hare, she could simply not tolerate the thought of sleeping with him or, for that matter, even with holding his hand.

  When he asked why she was breaking up with him, she forced herself to tell him the painful truth, painful to him, and painful to her. “You’re a coward.”

  “Karen,” said Rasmussen, interrupting her thoughts, “you say you’re not planning?”

  “No…I mean what if I had a boyfriend and what if... You know. I’m not planning, but what if…” She felt the blush growing over her entire face. What if the doctor knew? What would he think of her? But, no, she’d didn’t have a boyfriend. And nothing was going to happen, just what if?

  Rasmussen asked a few more questions about her health, examined her, and then gave her a pamphlet entitled Sexual Health and Hygiene.

  “Margaret will be here in a moment to help you with the insertion. If you have any questions later, feel free to call her or me.”

  As she waited nervously for the nurse, she thought about Will. Was it possible that she was ready for intimacy with someone she hardly knew? Though the idea was brand new to her, she now disliked the notion that women must be the passive ones, the ones who waited.

  When, at the dinner table that night, her father asked what she’d done during the day, she almost fumbled over her answer: she’d gone downtown to look for a dress she’d seen advertised.

  “That all?” said Roy Haugen.

  She attributed to her father an uncanny ability to detect any funny business. Did he know about the visit to the doctor? The very word IUD, spoken by one of his daughters, would probably make him choke on his food.

  “I window shopped,” she said.

  Roy Haugen turned to Lilly.

  “I went to Molly’s to play,” said Lilly. “She has a swimming pool. A kind of pool made with plastic. It isn’t very deep but it’s fun.

  “Her parents were home, I take it.”

  “Roy,” said Amy, “you know I wouldn’t let her go to someone’s house if a responsible grown-up wasn’t present. Really.”

  “Her mom,” continued Lilly, “told us a funny story about seeing a witch downtown, with a pointy hat and everything. But she’s not a real witch, is she?”

  “That was Edna O’Hare,” said Amy, “and she’s not a real witch. I wrote an article about her. She’s protesting the replacement of the Minuteman missiles for new ones.”

  “Her again? And you’re going to give her publicity? You know she’s invited my airmen to drop by for coffee? That woman is a troublemaker.”

  “Don’t worry too much,” said Amy, “I think it’s unlikely that Wilburn will publish it. He said, and I quote, ‘One off kilter protester does not a story make and besides the Grumman team is in town and we don’t want them to feel unwelcome.’”

  “What about your day, Daddy?” said Lilly.

  On the base it was business as usual except they hadn’t found the lost grenades yet. And as far as he knew nobody had gone to drink coffee with the troublemaker. He’d started asking, which struck Amy as an invasion of privacy.

  The talk turned to a possible winter vacation someplace warm. Minot was rough in the winter. They discussed the possibilities. As they said on the base, freezin’s the reason.

  Later that evening, Karen knelt beside her chest of drawers, opened the lowest drawer and, from underneath the neatly folded clothes, pulled out one of O’Hare’s flyers. Why had she kept it? She’d read it so many times. Her father would have seen it as dangerous contraband smuggled into the house.

  But nothing as dangerous as the pamphlet entitled, The Kleerwand IUD, Usage and Care.

  Chapter Fifty

  There was no way Brad Wilburn could reject Amy’s article about Edna O’Hare, after all, the woman’s house had been bombed.

  Mysterious Explosion Threatens Local Woman

  Two nights ago, while Edna O’Hare of Ward County was entertaining guests, an explosive device detonated on her front porch. No one was injured. Sheriff Bjorn Andresen would not speculate about a possible motive.

  Ms. O’Hare, a well-known figure in Minot, dresses as a witch to bring attention to her campaign against replacement of the aging Minuteman missiles with the new Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD). She believes that a deranged individual is trying to frighten her into silence, though most observers consider her crusade quixotic and fruitless. On the other hand her attire as a witch may have disturbed an already unquiet mind.

  There are no suspects.

  * * *

  Amy had written a longer, more detailed article, including O’Hare’s reaction to the bombing, her arguments against the GBSD, and the reactions of people she’d spoken with about it. She had also mentioned the likelihood that a grenade, stolen from the air force base, had been used. Wilburn cut the article down to a nubbin, which appeared on a back page of the paper. Nevertheless, such drama and intrigue drew wide attention through town.

  Some people who, despite their residence in Minot, had never heard of the GBSD were now expressing their opinions like nuclear war planners. Rumor had it that Dr. Rasmussen, a popular family physician, supported O’Hare, arguing that it was a question of public health as there was no conceivable medical response to a nuclear war, which land-based ICBMs made more likely. But when he was approached, he denied having an opinion one way or another, which seemed odd since he’d spoken against the GBSD at a council meeting.

  After she’d read the article three times, Ellen Conklin called Claudia Cummings to her suite in the Grand Hotel, which housed the visiting Grumman entourage.

  “Have you read the article?”

  “Who hasn’t?” said Cummings.

  “I think that O’Hare woman is b
asically a harmless crank, but someone obviously doesn’t think that. A bomb! Can you believe that? There is a nutcase under every bush. I actually feel sorry for the woman. I wouldn’t want to see her hurt. She’s a human being, no matter what she says. In any case she’s powerless, but I do have one concern. What if someone influential starts talking up this nonsense? I know it won’t stop the project, but it may sour community relations. Do you think I’m a worry wart, Claudia?

  “Which influential person do you have in mind?”

  “Andrew Rasmussen,” said Conklin.

  “And?”

  “And I don’t know. You’re the public relations expert. I’m just blowing off steam, I guess. There’s nothing anyone can do.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  Claudia Cummings felt no compunction to talk about her coup. Dr. Rasmussen would not present a problem. Besides, Conklin was a bit straight-laced and might not have approved.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The large wall clock read 9:47 a.m. and Joe Calderone had yet to say more than a few words. Washington assumed it was just a bad mood, a headache, or a family squabble and refrained from asking him about it until now. They’d already gone through the morning routine, checking the status of each of their ten missiles and attendant monitoring devices and silo systems.

  Calderone sat morosely at his console, thumbing through a code book.

  “Hey, Joe, something bothering you?”

  Without looking up he said in an uncharacteristically curt tone of voice, “None of your business.”

  This must really be bad thought Washington, best to stay out of it.

  “But now that I think about it,” he added, “maybe it is your business after all, goddamn it.”