I BELIEVE IN…THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS…
—The
Apostles’ Creed, The Book of Common Prayer
MONDAY,
SEPTEMBER 5
Sarah Dowling’s first thought, peering
through the wire-reinforced glass of the community center’s
door, was that they were an odd group. Usually returned vets
had a lot to talk about with one another, even if they were
embarrassed to be seen in counseling. She would have thought
that in a tiny town like Millers Kill—she couldn’t help it,
she still saw the place as a cross between a Thomas Kinkade
painting and Bedford Falls—they’d be even easier together,
but none of these soldiers were speaking to each
other.
The two men unracking metal chairs could have
been father and son; both middling height, in khakis and
button-downs, both with regulation crew cuts—the
fifty-something graying, the thirty-something dark brown.
The younger man kept glancing sideways at the older as if
looking for clues on how to behave. He didn’t pay attention
to the young woman opening the chairs in a ragged circle,
watching him. She was maybe midtwenties but dressed like a
teen, with a little muffin top squeezed between low-rider
jeans and a mini-tee. Sarah would have to include her
no-romantic-relationships spiel in tonight’s
session.
The other woman in the group was a decade or
more older than the little cutie, wearing unrelieved black
that almost hid her taut physique. As Sarah watched, she
stirred spoon after spoon of sugar into coffee poured from
the community hall’s industrial-sized coffeemaker. The last
participant—Sarah frowned. A young man, maybe still a
teenager. His hair had grown out, indicating he’d been out
of the service for several months, at least. Well, she could
have guessed that even if he had still been wearing it
shaved to the skin. They didn’t let double amputees out of
Walter Reed until at least four months after admission. His
presence here worried her. If he was having post-amputation
issues, he ought to be seeing a psychologist at the VA
Hospital, not hanging around an LCT’s group.
She
checked her watch, then gathered up her stack of handouts.
Time to get the road on the show. She opened the office door
and strode into the meeting room, the soles of her shoes
squeaking on the polished wooden floor. Beyond the closed
door, she could hear the faint thump and holler of the
basketball game going on in the gym. On the far wall,
construction-paper letters spelling out HELLO SEPTEMBER were
taped over bright cutouts of apples and school buses. A
preschool met here mornings. She thought of the stiflingly
tasteful tenth-story office she had left behind in Silver
Spring. Free at last, free at last.
“Hello, everyone.”
She gestured toward the chairs. “Why don’t we get started?
If we have any latecomers, they can join us in progress.”
She smiled and took her own advice, selecting the twelve
o’clock position in the circle. The woman in black pulled
two chairs out of the way to make room for the teen in the
wheelchair. The rest of the gang of five followed suit,
scraping and clunking the cheap chairs until they were all
roughly equidistant from one another, and twice as far from
her.
“I’m Sarah Dowling,” she began. “I’m a licensed
clinical therapist. For those of you who aren’t familiar
with the term, that means I’ve been trained in psychology
and in facilitating therapy, but I am not allowed to
diagnose or to prescribe medications.” She stood up and
handed the first stack of papers to the graying man seated
to her left. “Take one and pass it along.” She resumed her
seat. “I’ve just recently relocated here from the
Washington, D.C., area, so this is my first group in New
York State. However, I’ve been doing veterans’ counseling
and running the on-base family mental health program for the
past four years at Fort Meade.”
The older man nodded
in approval. Officer, she thought.
“Just to make sure
we’re all on the same page, this is not a Veterans Affairs
program, although it does receive funding from VA, as well
as from New York State and the National Institute of Mental
Health.” She leaned forward. “Participating in our group
will not affect your VA benefits or treatment, nor will it
be in any official record.” For those in the group who would
be continuing on in the service, that was often critical.
Seeking out therapy was still viewed in many quarters of the
military as suspect. Talking about feelings was not a high
priority for the average CO.
“I apologize for
scheduling the first session on Labor Day, but the community
center gave me this time slot, and I didn’t want to lose
it.” She smiled at them. “I was afraid I’d be the only
person here, so believe me when I say I’m glad to meet you
all. Why don’t we start by introducing ourselves, and saying
a little something about our service.” She looked
encouragingly at the older man.
He looked around the
circle, knitted up his brows as if he didn’t understand the
reasoning behind her request, then shrugged. “Sure. If you
think it’s helpful.” He straightened in his seat. “I’m
George Stillman. The Third. I’m a doctor and a lieutenant
colonel in the Army National Guard. I was with a forward
surgical team outside Mosul.”
“When did you get back,
George?”
He smiled a little. “Please. Call me Trip. I
hear George and I look around for my father.”
Sarah
nodded.
“Oh. I got back from my second tour of duty
about two months ago.”
The kid in the wheelchair
looked at him oddly. “Three months ago. You were here in
June.”
The doctor stared at the kid for a moment, then
wrinkled his face into an apologetic smile. “Sorry. We had a
death in the family this summer, and I swear it’s thrown my
whole sense of time out of kilter.” He tapped his palm. “I’d
better start carrying my PalmPilot around again. My wife
calls it my portable brain.”
Sarah smiled reassuringly
at him before gesturing to the young man. “Would you
introduce yourself?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Marine, she
thought, just as he said, “I’m Lance Corporal Willem Ellis,
of the 5th Marine Division.” He looked down at the
prosthetics strapped to his knees. “Formerly of the 5th
Marine Division.” He glanced back up at her, then dropped
his gaze. “I was only in-country a little over two months
when this happened, so I can’t say I saw much traumatizing
action.”
“How ’bout when your mother found out you’d
enlisted?” Sarah was surprised by the black-clad woman’s
accent, a southern Virginia drawl that sounded more out of
place up here in the North Country than her own clipped
urban consonants.
Willem Ellis laughed at the woman’s
remark. “Yeah, I guess that counts as combat. Or at least
battle royal.”
“And you are…?”
The woman
slouched in her seat. “Clare Fergusson.” There was a pause.
Sarah made a go-on gesture. Clare Fergusson sighed. “Major
in the Guard, 142nd Aviation Support. Stationed in Ramadi,
Tikrit, and Kirkuk.” She took a long drink from her coffee
cup. Nothing more seemed forthcoming.
“Aviation
support?” Sarah said.
“She flies helicopters,” the
brown-haired man said. Before Sarah could ask, he went on,
“I’m Eric McCrea. I’m a sergeant. Also in the
Guard.”
“Did you serve with Major
Fergusson?”
“No.” His gaze slid away from her and came
to rest on the doctor. His lip curled up in what might have
been a sneer. “I’m an MP.”
“What were you assigned
to?” the young woman demanded. “Were you on base patrol? At
the Green Zone?”
His lips thinned. “I was on prisoner
detail. Camp Bucca.”
Sarah kept herself from reacting,
but the rest of the group stared. They had all seen the
pictures.
“That figures.” The young woman folded her
arms over her generous chest.
“That has nothing to do
with it.” Eric McCrea’s cheeks blotched with color. “You
think you know what it was like—”
Sarah held up her
hands. “Stop right there.” She gave both McCrea and the girl
a measured look. “Let’s not go jumping in the deep end
before we’ve finished getting our toes wet.” She dropped her
hand, opening it to the last person in the circle. “Why
don’t you introduce yourself.”
The brunette braced her
hands on her thighs. “My name’s Mary McNabb, but everybody
calls me Tally.” She looked at Stillman. “Sorta like you, I
guess. I was formerly a specialist, formerly in the United
States Army.”
“Where did you serve,
Tally?”
“Camp Anaconda.”
That got some whistles
from the rest. “Mortaritaville,” Fergusson
said.
“Yeah, well.” McNabb ran her hands through her
short hair.
Stillman snapped his fingers. “Mary
McNabb. Fractured left ankle. A car dropped on
you?”
McNabb laughed. “I was helping my husband fix it
up for resale. I’m impressed you remember.”
Sarah put
her hands up again. “Wait.” She looked around the circle.
“Do you all know each other?”
They looked at each
other. They looked at her. “Yes,” they all said.
“It’s
a very small town.” Clare Fergusson’s voice was
dry.
Sarah stopped herself before she could ask them
to explain. She’d need a clearer picture of their
interrelationships eventually, but right now she wanted to
focus on opening the first door to whatever issues they
might have. “We’ll get into that later,” she said. “I’d like
to start by discussing your homecomings.”
MONDAY, JUNE
6
Their dispatcher, Harlene, had managed to get a red,
white, and blue WELCOME HOME, ERIC banner printed up and
hung from the front of the Millers Kill Police Department.
It billowed and snapped in the warm wind gusting up Main
Street.
“We gonna have to do the same thing for Kevin,
when he gets back?” Deputy Chief Lyle MacAuley squinted in
the bright morning sunshine.
The youngest officer on
the MKPD had been shipped off for temporary detached duty
almost a year ago, first with the Capital Area Drug
Enforcement Association in Albany, then with the Special
Investigation Division of the Syracuse PD, which saw more
major crimes in two weeks than Millers Kill might see in a
year.
“Kevin Flynn’s welcome home is going to be a
bump up in pay grade, if I can ram it down the aldermen’s
throats.” Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne shook his head.
“What we really need is another officer on the force. That
way, we wouldn’t be overscheduling everybody. I worry that
we’re putting Eric back on the streets too soon. A few days
ago he was eating MREs and holding down a guard post in Umm
Qasr.”
Lyle raised an eyebrow. “I’m impressed. The
only place I could name in Iraq is Baghdad, and don’t ask me
to find it on a map.”
“I was in that neck of the
woods, remember? First Gulf War.” He rubbed the back of his
neck. “God, doesn’t that feel like an age ago.”
“It
was. I think Eric was finishing up high school. Kevin was
probably still in diapers.”
“Hunh.” And Lieutenant
Clare Fergusson had been twenty-three. “They probably
already have our beds reserved up at the
Infirmary.”
“Speak for yourself. I plan to be shot to
death by the enraged father of a pair of twenty-year-old
twins.”
Russ laughed. Lyle gave him a sideways look.
“You hear from the reverend lately?”
Russ’s laugh died
away. “A phone call five days ago. The 142nd is still on
target to ship home in three weeks.” He tried to smile. “Of
course, they were on target to leave last March, too. Until
their tour got extended.”
“She should’a gone into the
chaplain’s corps instead of air support. She’d have been
home by now.” Lyle hooked his thumbs in his duty belt. “A
year and a half’s a long time.”
“Oh, yeah.” The
longest damn eighteen months of his life, and that included
a tour in Vietnam, going cold turkey on cigarettes, and
quitting booze. Sitting home night after night, watching the
casualty counts mount on the news—hell, giving up drinking
again would have been easier. Drinking and
smoking.
“How’s she sounding?”
“Like she always
sounds. Chipper. Everything’s fine. She’s fine. The
weather’s fine.” Russ glanced up at the banner, the granite,
the clear blue sky. “You know what the temperature was in
Basra that day? A hundred and five degrees. I saw it on
CNN.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t decide if
she’s so happy flying helicopters again she’s forgotten
there’s a war on, or if she’s babying me so I don’t…” He
looked at Lyle. “You know how many helos have crashed or
been shot down in Iraq since the beginning of the year?
Fifteen. You wanna know how many pilots have been
killed?”
“No.” Lyle held up a hand. “Stop it, or
you’re going to make yourself crazy. Crazier,” he amended.
“Eric’s home safe and sound, and your lady’ll get here,
too.”
Russ touched the spot where, beneath his uniform
blouse and undershirt, Clare’s silver cross rested against
his chest. She had given it to him for safekeeping the day
she left, and he hadn’t taken it off yet. He might not
believe in a god, but that didn’t seem to stop him from
putting his faith in superstition.
“Eric.” Lyle’s tone
was deliberately workaday. “When I spoke with him, he was
hot to get back into investigation, but if you think he
needs more time, I can find some desk work to keep him
busy.”
“What, running down addresses for check
bouncers and updating the evidence lists? The last thing I
want is for him to think we don’t need him anymore and head
off for better-paying pastures. He’s our best investigator,
after you.”
MacAuley touched one bristly gray eyebrow
and smirked.
“Don’t look so smug,” Russ said.
“Consider the competition.”
“A diamond in an ashtray
is still a diamond,” Lyle said with immense
dignity.
Which made Russ think of his recent purchase.
He hadn’t told Lyle about that. He hadn’t told anybody, yet.
What if she turned him down? A fifty-two-year-old widower
with a bum hip wasn’t any great prize. His phone rang. He
fished it out of his pocket. “Van Alstyne here.”
“His
wife says he’s on his way.” Harlene, who had been at the
MKPD longer than Russ and Lyle combined, didn’t believe in
deferring to rank. “Get in here or you’ll spoil the
surprise.”
“We’re coming.” He shut his phone. “Harlene
says it’s time to get into the squad room and hide behind a
desk.”
“I think she does these surprise parties as an
excuse to stuff us with sweets until we can’t
move.”
Russ thwacked Lyle on his still-flat belly.
“She’s got a way to go with you, then,
old-timer.”
Lyle tugged his uniform blouse into place.
“I gotta keep my boyish figure. Just in case I find the
woman of my dreams hanging around a church or
something.”
Eric thought he might never
have had a better moment, standing in the squad room,
getting roasted by his brother officers. Harlene was
squeezing his arm like she was testing to see if he was
done, and the big boxed assortment from the Kreemy Kakes
diner was on the scarred table where the chief liked to sit,
and the old paint was still flaking beneath the windows, and
nothing was changed. Everything was the same.
“Good
Lord,” Harlene said. “How many chin-ups do they make you do
in the army? You feel like you could pick me up, and let me
tell you, there’s not many men as could do that.” She
slapped her ample hips.
Eric wrapped his arms around
her midsection and hoisted her a few inches off the floor.
She whooped. “Now, don’t tell Harold,” he said, resettling
her solidly on her feet, “but I did it all for you.” In
fact, there just hadn’t been anything to do on his off-hours
except sleep and pump iron. He’d heard up in the Green Zone,
they had round-the-clock computers, and movies, and clubs,
but in Camp Bucca, the only diversions were once-a-week
access to a staticky phone line and the occasional
smuggled-in bottle of hajji juice—Iraqi moonshine that was
rumored to be al Qaeda’s secret weapon against the
occupancy.
“Jesum, Eric.” MacAuley hitched himself up
against one of the desks. “We oughta put you in one of them
beefcake calendars.”
Eric laughed. “I’ll have to ask
my wife first.”
“Might improve the recruitment rates
down to the academy.” Harlene fanned herself.
“Only if
you’re trying to get girls and gays.” Paul Urquhart laced
his hands across his expansive middle, as if a beer belly
were the mark of a real man. The chief frowned.
“How
do you know we don’t already have someone gay on the force,
Paul?” Hadley Knox picked through a Kreemy Kakes box.
Despite her regulation uniform and cropped hair, she looked
more like a model in a commercial than a real cop. “After
all, we’ve already got a girl.” She ripped a doughnut in
half and popped one piece in her mouth. “Come to think of
it, I don’t recall ever hearing about you going out on a
date.”
Urquhart straightened, quivering with outrage.
“I’m divorced! I’ve got kids!”
Noble Entwhistle
squinted, concentrating. He wasn’t the fastest runner off
the block, but he had a prodigious memory for people and
places. “Dr. Dvorak, the ME, was divorced. He’s got grown
kids.”
“Yeah, and now he’s living with a big bearded
guy.” Hadley leaned toward Urquhart, her brown eyes filled
with sympathy. “We’re your fellow officers, Paul. You don’t
have to hide who you are with us.”
“That’s enough,”
the chief said.
Hadley grinned and bit into the other
half of her doughnut.
Eric was laughing into his fist.
It was so familiar, so normal and uncomplicated. “Man, I
missed this place.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” The chief
beckoned to him and stepped away to one of the tall windows.
Eric followed him farther out of earshot of the others, who
were continuing with jokes at Urquhart’s expense. The chief
looked at him, steady, not smiling. “How are you?
Really?”
Eric spread his hands. “You’re ex-army,
chief. You know what it’s like.”
“Yeah,” the chief
agreed, “but I don’t know if what’s going on over there is
like Desert Storm or Vietnam.”
Eric thought of the
wire. The prison barracks. “It’s not like either of them. I
think…” The heat, pounding air and dust and dogs flat
beneath it. Patrolling dirty streets down to the scummy
harbor. “It’s its own thing. It’s…” The eyes of men, hating
on him so hard that if they had had anything—sticks, stones,
bottles—he would be dead. He snapped to focus again. Looked
at the chief.
“It wasn’t any Caribbean cruise, but I’m
okay.” He glanced around at the squad room. “And I gotta
tell you, being back here, with all of you guys, is—” He
didn’t know what to do, shake his head or nod. “It feels
real good.”
“Good.” The chief slapped him lightly on
his upper arm. “Look, if at any time you’re feeling stressed
out, or if you feel like you need to dial back a
bit—”
Eric shook his head. “That’s not going to
happen.”
“If it does,” the chief emphasized, “I want
you to come to me. You don’t have to give me any details.
You don’t have to justify yourself. Just give me the word,
and we’ll lighten things up for you for as long as you need
it.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Eric said again.
And it wasn’t. Home was stressful. Trying to deal with a
wife who’d been running everything her way for a year was
stressful. Discovering his son had gone from being a sweet,
goofy kid to a moody irritable teen while he was away was
stressful. Getting back to chasing down bad guys? That was
pure gravy.
FRIDAY, JUNE 24
“You here to arrest
somebody?”
The man with the fistful of helium balloons
next to Russ grinned. “Huh?” Russ’s focus had been on the
hangar-sized doors at the end of the armory. He couldn’t
decide if staring at the damn things would make the 142nd
Aviation Support Battalion appear sooner or not.
The
man thumbed toward Russ’s brown-and-khakis. “That’s not the
sort of uniform you expect to see here.” He squinted at the
MKPD shoulder badge. “Millers Kill, huh? I’m from
Gloversville. We used to play you guys at b-ball. You rode
us hard for the Class E championship in ’69.”
“I was
on that team,” Russ said. “Class of ’70.”
“Me, too!”
The man laughed. “Hair down to my nipples and a big ‘Peace
Now’ headband I never took off. Who’d’a guessed I’d wind up
here waiting for my girl to get back from war?” He bounced
his balloon bouquet in the air.
“Yeah. Same here.
Well. Not the long hair bit.” Russ clutched the
green-paper-wrapped roses he’d gotten from Yarter’s. They’d
looked a lot better a few hours ago. How had all those
petals fallen off? “The waiting for my girl part.”
A
harried-looking woman elbowed her way through the crowd, one
little kid on her hip and a six-or seven-year-old dragging
along in her grip. “There you are,” she said. “You would not
believe how far we had to go to reach a bathroom.” She
handed the little one over to the balloon man. “Go to
Grandpa, now.”
“Grandpa! Grandpa!” The seven-year-old
pirouetted and leaped. “I think I saw the buses!”
The
balloon guy—the grandpa—nodded toward Russ. “Turns out I
played basketball against this fella in high school. He’s
meeting his daughter, too.”
His wife smiled at Russ,
amused. “You’d better stop whacking those flowers against
your leg or there won’t be anything left for your
girl.”
He could feel the tips of his ears turning
pink. “It’s not—I’m—” He was saved by the rumble of the
buses, bumping over the slow strip into the cavernous
building, a sound immediately drowned out by the roar of the
waiting crowd.
Russ didn’t join in. He watched the
buses maneuvering into place, watched the exhaust rising to
the fluorescent lights above, felt the sound and the light
rising in him, lifting him off his feet, until he wouldn’t
have been surprised to find himself floating through the air
like one of those helium balloons.
The buses parked.
The doors slid open. Guardsmen started shuffling down the
steps, anonymous in urban camo. Was that her? No. Not that
one, either.
He suddenly couldn’t stand it, couldn’t
stand one more minute of not seeing her; after counting off
the seasons, and then the months, and then the days, and the
hours, he realized all the waiting had accumulated, and he
was going to be crushed beneath it.
Clare, he mouthed
without speaking. A stab of pain made him look at his palm.
He had driven one of the roses’ thorns through the paper and
into his flesh.
The dancing girl had stilled and was
looking at his hand. Then she looked up at him. She had
hazel eyes and a pointed nose.
“It’s really hard to
wait,” he said.
She nodded. “My mommy says count to
ten, ten times. She’s a helicopter pilot.”
“So’s
my…friend.”
The little girl reached into her pocket
and pulled out a grubby tissue. She handed it to him.
“Thanks,” he said, wiping up the blood.
“Pumpkin, I
think I see Mommy,” her grandmother said. The girl whirled
and danced away. That’s what their daughter would look like,
he realized. His and Clare’s.
Then she stepped off the
bus. He almost didn’t recognize her. Beneath her black
beret, her hair was short, bleached lighter than he had ever
seen it, and her face, all points and angles, was deeply
tanned. She was looking around, scanning the crowd, her eyes
alight with hope and anxiety.
The band struck up a
tune, combining with squeals from children and the howls of
babies to create an echoing cacophony that guaranteed she
wouldn’t hear him call her name if he was standing five feet
away instead of fifty. Instead, he willed her to find him.
Clare. Clare. Clare.
She paused for a second, closing
her eyes, breathing in as if she could taste the far-off
Adirondack air above the fog of bus exhaust and machine oil
and human sweat. Then she opened her eyes and met his over
the heads of the crowd.
Her mouth formed a perfect O,
then curved into a heartbreaking smile. She blinked hard and
raised one hand, and then she was bumped from behind by the
next man in line and stumbled forward.
He watched as
she lined up with the rest of the brigade and came to
attention. When the last guardsman was off the bus and in
formation, the band wheezed to a stop. There was a shuffle
of dignitaries and brass at the front, and then the families
were welcomed, and a minister gave an invocation, and the CO
read a letter from the governor, and the XO gave a speech
about the brigade’s accomplishments in Iraq, and Russ
thwacked and thwacked and thwacked the roses against his
leg, until he looked down to see his well-worn service boot
decorated with crimson petals.
Come on already! Come
on! What jackass had decided it was a good idea to separate
family members from soldiers they hadn’t seen for eighteen
months? When he’d come home from Vietnam, he’d just stumbled
off a Pan Am flight from Hawaii. Yeah, it wasn’t a hero’s
welcome, but at least he got to hug his mom and his sister,
not stand at parade rest in front of an officer who sounded
like he was running for Congress.
Finally, finally,
the official orders terminating the brigade’s deployment
were read, and the CO dismissed his command, his words
drowned out at the end by a howl of glee from the waiting
crowd as they surged forward, mothers and fathers and wives
and children, arms outstretched, too eager to wait any
longer.
Russ stayed where he was as civilians swept
past him. She had seen him. She had marked him. He had no
doubt she would find him. Sure enough, there she was,
wrestling her way through the crowd, beret stowed in her
epaulet, rucksack over her shoulder, the reverse image of
the woman he had last seen walking away from him beneath a
gray January sky eighteen months ago. Major Clare Fergusson.
She kept her eyes on him the whole while, an undeveloped
smile on her face. She halted in front of him. Dropped the
rucksack to the concrete floor. Looked up at
him.
“Promised you I’d come back.” Her faint Virginia
drawl sounded out of place against the North Country Yankee
burrs and flat Finger Lakes twangs all around
them.
She didn’t leap into his arms. They had been
circumspect for so long, always standing apart, controlling
their eyes and hands like nuns in a medieval abbey. They had
no easy familiarity with each other’s body. The two weeks
they had been lovers—a year and a half ago, before she
shipped out—seemed like a fever dream to him now. The small
velvet box he had stuffed in his pants pocket suddenly felt
like a five-pound brick.
He thrust the roses toward
her. Two more ragged petals fell to the concrete floor. The
bouquet looked as if a goat had been chewing on it. She bit
her lip, just barely keeping a smile from breaking out.
“Why, thank you, Chief Van Alstyne.” She took the flowers in
both hands and buried her face in what remained of them. She
had tiny lines etched along the outsides of her eyes that
hadn’t been there when she left.
“They don’t have much
of a scent.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, brushed the
velvet box, jerked them out again. “But wait till you get to
St. Alban’s. You missed the lilacs, but the roses are
amazing. You can smell ’em halfway across the
park.”
She looked up at him over the fraying flowers,
her smile changing to something wistful. “I can’t
wait.”
He stepped toward her just as she bent to
reshoulder her rucksack. She let go, opening her arms in
time for him to nearly knock her over as he ducked to grab
the duffel for her.
“Screw this.” He kicked the canvas
sack to one side and took her by the shoulders. “C’mere.”
She folded inside his embrace as if she had always been
there, and he kept his arms hard around her, his cheek
resting on her too light, too short hair. Letting the
reality of her, the warmth and weight and solidity of her,
sink into his bones.
“Holding on,” she said against
his chest.
“Not letting go.”
“I want to go
home.” She tipped her face up. “Take me home.”
He
smiled. “Petersburg, Virginia?”
She shook her head.
“No. Millers Kill, New York.”
The parking lot was
throwing off heat like a griddle in the late June sun. He
tossed her rucksack into his truck bed and popped the doors.
He thought for a second, then slipped the velvet box from
his pants to the driver’s seat pocket. He jumped in,
ratcheting the AC to full as soon as the engine caught.
“Sorry,” he said as she climbed into the ovenlike cab. “I
would’ve kept it on for you, but I didn’t want to risk
running out of gas. The army doesn’t seem to have changed
its hurry-up-and-wait policy since I was in.”
She
laughed. “Don’t worry. It’s been so long since I’ve been in
an air-conditioned vehicle, I’ve forgotten what it’s like.”
She unbuttoned her bulky uniform blouse and stripped it off,
revealing a gray T-shirt that stretched across her breasts
when she twisted to drop the heavy shirt and the roses onto
the narrow backseat. His throat went hot and tight. He
shifted into gear and rolled out of the lot.
“Do you—”
He coughed to get his voice under control. “Do you want to
stop for a bite to eat? I went by the rectory yesterday with
the fixings for a couple meals, but I didn’t know what you’d
feel like doing. What you’d want to do.”
She stretched
her arms toward the vents, which had begun blasting cool
air, and closed her eyes. “Oh, Lord, this feels good.” She
smiled, still shut-eyed. “Just to be sitting here in a truck
without having to wear thirty pounds of Kevlar.” She ran her
hands flat-palmed down her T-shirt from her collarbone to
her waist, a perfectly natural gesture that nearly caused
him to swerve over the centerline.
He corrected with a
jerk. Which he was starting to feel like. She had just
gotten in from a combat zone, for chrissakes. She still had
dust on her boots. She was enjoying the first real freedom
she’d had in a year and a half, and all he could do was
salivate over her. She’s not a piece of meat,
asshole.
He focused on getting up the ramp and into
the flow of traffic on the Northway. The only good thing
about the battalion’s delay and the interminable ceremony
was that it put them on the road after Albany’s rush hour.
In his rearview mirror, the Empire Plaza towers caught the
setting sun, their marble and steel surfaces almost too
bright to look at.
From the corner of his eye, he saw
her turn toward him, tucking one leg beneath her. “You’ve
gotten back from more deployments than I
have.”
“Probably.” Definitely. He’d been in more than
twenty years. Funny. He’d thought that would make him more
sure of himself, welcoming her home.
“What were the
first things you always wanted?”
“A shower.” He didn’t
have to think about that one. “A home-cooked meal. A bottle
of whisky. Sex.” He felt the tips of his ears pink
up.
He felt, rather than saw, her slow smile. “Well.
That’s what I want. A shower, Lord, yes. A home-cooked meal.
A bottle of whisky. Sex.”
He took a breath.
“And
I can’t wait to celebrate the Eucharist again at St.
Alban’s.”
He laughed. “I can guarantee you that’s one
thing I never considered when coming
home.”
“Multifaceted, that’s me.” She touched the side
of his face, curved around his ear, traced his jawbone.
“What sort of fixins did you put in the fridge?”
He
swallowed. “Uh. A rotisserie chicken and a bag of
salad.”
She slid her hand down until it rested on his
thigh. “Doesn’t sound very home-cooked to me.” Her fingers
kneaded his suddenly tense muscles.
“Quick,” he said.
“Quick prep.”
“Good.” He heard the snick as her seat
belt unlatched. “I’ve waited eighteen months for you. I
think I’m about out of patience.” She flipped the console
out of the way and slid toward him.
“Buckle up,” he
said automatically, and then she wrapped her arms around his
chest and shoulders and her lips were on his neck, her
tongue flickering along his jaw, her teeth worrying his
ear.
He braced against the wheel, arms shaking, trying
not to let his head drop back and his eyes close. “Clare,”
he got out. “Jesus, Clare…” Her hands were all over him,
touching him, unbuttoning his uniform blouse, tugging his
T-shirt out of his pants. “What are you doing, you crazy
woman?”
She kissed the corner of his mouth. “If you
can’t recognize it, it’s been too long.”
He flew
through the twin bridges, barely keeping the truck in its
lane. “I got it all set up for you at the rectory.” His
voice was a grating whisper. “I got candles.”
“I hope
they’re in better shape than your flowers.” She pried his
belt buckle apart.
He gritted his teeth. “I was
shooting for romantic.”
“I don’t need romance,” she
said. “You had me at ’Scuse my French.’”
She laughed
against the back of his neck, and he laughed, and he said,
“God, I love you,” and her hand closed around him and he
groaned, laughed and groaned and shook. “Stop.”
She
pulled his T-shirt away from his neck and bit into his
shoulder. “Do you mean that?”
“God! No.” He thumped
the back of his head against the headrest. “I mean yes.” He
flapped a hand at her in a half-assed way. “I don’t want to
make love with you for the first time in a year and a half
in my goddamn truck.”
“I missed you,” she said into
his skin. “Oh, my love. I missed you so much.” She stroked
him, once, twice, three times. He made a strangled sound in
the back of his throat. Exit 14 was coming up fast. He could
pull off there. Where could they go? It wasn’t dark enough
to park behind—he lifted his eyes to the rear view mirror
and saw the whirling red-and-whites behind him.
“Oh,
shit,” he said. “Clare, get off me.” He glanced at the
speedometer. Eighty miles an hour. He jerked his foot off
the gas and signaled to pull over.
Clare looked back
over the edge of the seats. “Uh-oh. Is that what I think it
is?”
“Sit down and buckle up.” One-handed, he
attempted to zip back up and refasten his belt.
“Can I
help you with that?”
“I think you’ve helped quite
enough, don’t you?”
Laughing, she swung back into her
seat and put on her seat belt.
“Christ.” He brought
the truck to a standstill and turned off the ignition before
stuffing his T-shirt back into his pants. “Let’s hope it’s
not somebody I know.”
In his side mirror, he saw the
state trooper get out of his car. Russ placed his hands on
the steering wheel in plain sight. Clare had hers over her
mouth, trying—not very successfully—to stifle her
laughter.
The trooper reached Russ’s window and
signaled him to roll it down. Russ complied. The trooper
glanced into the cab, taking in Russ’s radio and switch
light, the lockbox and roses in the back, and Russ’s
crumpled uniform blouse, hanging loose over his
T-shirt.
“License and registration,
please.”
Russ reached for his rear pocket. “I’m
retrieving my billfold,” he told the statie. “Clare, will
you get my registration out of the glove box?” He waited
until she had gotten the slip of paper, then passed both
documents through the window.
The trooper studied
them. “Sir,” he said, “are you a peace officer?”
Russ
sighed. “Yes, I am.”
“In Millers Kill?”
“That’s
right.”
“Can I see your identification,
please?”
Russ flipped open his billfold and handed it
to the guy. The trooper studied the badge and ID. Looked up
at Russ. “Chief Van Alstyne?”
Russ pinched the bridge
of his nose beneath his glasses.
“That’s correct,
Trooper—” he peered at the man’s name
tag—“Richards.”
Richards handed the billfold, license,
and registration back to him. “Mark Durkee’s in my troop. He
was one of yours, right? He speaks very highly of
you.”
Russ couldn’t think of a good response to
that.
“Do you know why I stopped you, sir?”
“I
was driving fifteen miles over the posted limit with an
unbelted passenger in the front seat.”
“Actually, sir,
when I first picked you up, you were going twenty-five miles
over the speed limit. I’ve been following you for eight
miles. You didn’t notice me?”
“I
was…distracted.”
Trooper Richards looked at Clare, who
was doing her best good-soldier imitation. “I
see.”
“She’s just gotten back from Iraq,” Russ said
inanely.
“Welcome home, ma’am.” The trooper eyed Russ.
“I don’t need to lecture you on the importance of safe
driving, do I, sir?”
“No.”
“Or the importance of
making sure everyone in the vehicle is properly
belted?”
Russ resisted the urge to check his pants to
see if anything was still hanging open. “No.”
“Then I
trust the next time I make you at eighty miles per hour,
you’ll be responding to a call.” He glanced at the radio
mount. “You haven’t been on the radio, have
you?”
“No.” Russ frowned. “Why?”
“Your
dispatcher’s looking for coverage. A bar fight at some place
named the Dew Drop Inn. She’s sent one unit out, but she
wants another for backup.”
“I’ll get on it. Thanks for
the tip.”
The trooper touched his hat. “You have a
good night then, sir.” He glanced at Clare.
“Ma’am.”
“Thank you, Trooper Richards. I’ll try to see
that he does.”
The trooper’s stone face twitched.
“After you get him home,
please.”
“Absolutely.”
Russ powered up his
window as Richards got back into his car. “God.” He pinched
the bridge of his nose again.
“What? You got out of a
ticket. If I’d been driving it would’ve been two hundred
dollars and a point off my license.”
“I’d rather get a
ticket, if it meant I wasn’t going to become tomorrow’s
coffee break hot topic. Staties are gossip hounds. They make
Geraldine Bain seem like a hermit under a vow of silence.”
The Millers Kill postmistress was better known for passing
on the latest tidbits than she was for handing out the mail.
He switched on his radio and unhooked the mic. “Dispatch,
this is Van Alstyne, in own vehicle. I understand you’ve got
some trouble?”
Harlene’s voice came on immediately.
“Chief? What are you doing on the air? I thought you were
picking up Reverend Fergusson?”
“I’ve got her right
here. What’s up?”
“Brawling at the Dew Drop Inn.
Hadley’s on her way, but I thought she should have some
backup.”
“Good call.” Knox had graduated from Police
Basic a year and a half ago, and she had come a long way,
but he didn’t like the idea of a woman alone tackling the
lowlifes that frequented the Dew Drop. “Who’ve you
got?”
“Paul’s tied down with a three-car accident out
past Lucher’s Corners. Tourists. Eric’s in the hospital with
a drunk driver.”
“Lyle?”
“Off fishing
somewheres. I left a message for Kevin. He was planning on
getting back to town today. I asked him to call me if he can
assist.”
“He doesn’t have to report for duty until
tomorrow.”
“Tonight, tomorrow, what’s the
difference?”
He sighed. “I’m on my way.”
“No!”
Harlene sounded scandalized.
He looked at Clare. She
nodded.
“I’m on my way. ETA thirty minutes. Let Hadley
know.”
“What about Reverend Fergusson?”
He
looked at Clare again.
“I guess I can be patient a
little longer,” she said.
He keyed the mic. “Reverend
Fergusson,” he said, and she smiled at him, as if there were
a chance in hell she’d do as he asked, “will wait in the
truck. Chief out.”
Love makes people do
some pretty dumb-ass things, Officer Hadley Knox thought. In
her case, it had convinced her a self-absorbed La-La Land
user would make a good husband and father. She had paid big
for her mistake; crawling back to her grandfather’s hometown
for refuge, taking this pain-in-the-ass job to support her
kids.
In the case of the shaved-head army guy in front
of her, it had made taking on a small-town thug and his
posse seem like a good idea. He had paid for it with a split
lip and battered face.
When she arrived at the bar,
he’d been getting the worst of it from a group of the Dew
Drop’s finest: skinny-shanked guys with ropy muscles and
nicotine-stained teeth. The big black guy in camo pants
looked like he could have taken on two, maybe even three of
them, but five tilted the odds way out of his
favor.
Hadley had waded in, rapping elbows and knees
with her extendable baton, giving it her best Russ Van
Alstyne impression: hard voice, big presence, short
commands. A pair of construction-worker types helped her
take hold of Soldier Boy and drag him back into the jukebox
corner; the locals retreated behind one of the pool
tables.
Now, she noticed the soldier kept looking
toward a trio of girls backed against the bar. Two of them
had long acrylic nails and streaked hair scraped back in
Tonya Harding ponytails, but the third was a blunt-fingered
natural brunette with a Dutch Boy bob. Short. Practical.
Like maybe it fit under a helmet. Tears had smeared the
girl’s makeup, but she looked more angry than upset. “Tally,
get your ass over here,” a good-looking guy in a Poison
T-shirt and steel-capped boots yelled; in response, the girl
flipped him the bird.
The soldier lurched forward.
Hadley blocked his path. “Sir, you have got to stay here.”
The man wiped his bloody nose on the back of his hand and
stared over her shoulder. “Sir? Are you listening to me?”
Hadley slapped her baton into her palm for
emphasis.
The man shrugged off the hands holding him.
Hadley nodded to the two guys behind him, letting them know
it was okay, even though she was worried it wasn’t. The air
in the Dew Drop sparked with the tension of a boxing ring
between rounds. “What’s your name,
soldier?”
“Nichols,” he said. “Chief Warrant Officer
Quentan Nichols.”
“What are you doing here, Chief
Warrant Officer Nichols?”
Finally, he focused on her.
“You ask that of everybody who visits this podunk town? Or
just the black folks?”
She thumbed toward the pool
table. In the light cast by the hanging lamp, she could see
the good ol’ boys scowling and glaring at the CWO. Poison
T-shirt was at the center, speaking fast and low to the guy
next to him. “I want to know why that man and his buddies
were trying to take you apart.”
“Maybe they’re down on
the army.” His eyes darted back to the angry brunette. This
guy was a worse liar than her eleven-year-old.
She
pointed the baton toward the girl. “You know
her?”
Nichols jerked his attention back to Hadley. “We
were talking.”
“Uh-huh.” She slapped the baton into
her palm one more time. “Stay here.”
She crossed the
scarred wooden floor toward the bar, her boots sticking with
every second step. She was maybe five feet away from the
girl, close enough to read the in memoriam tattoo circling
her arm, when she heard the thud of footsteps and the shouts
and she whirled to see the locals charging Nichols. Shit!
Dumb, sophomore mistake. She should’ve shut those assholes
down once and for all before talking with anybody
else.
Somebody bumped her from behind, sending her
stumbling. She staggered upright, baton at the ready, but it
hadn’t been aimed at her. The brunette had joined the melee,
punching and kicking at the white boys like Xena, Warrior
Princess, while her girlfriends screamed and
wailed.
Hadley breathed in deep and bellowed, “Break
it up!” One of the construction workers, a fresh-faced blond
with pierced ears and impressive muscles, came in on
Nichols’s side. Oh, great. Hadley advanced toward the
nearest man, baton extended, and whacked him: back of the
thigh, side of the arm. He staggered away, howling, but two
more roughnecks came off their bar stools in defense of the
home team, causing the construction worker’s buddy to wade
in, airlifting another guy, who went flying into the
jukebox. Shit! Property damage. Hadley advanced again,
whacking away with her baton, trying to weigh her
blows—pain, not injury, because injury could mean
lawsuits—aware that she wasn’t going to be able to stop them
unless she reached the ringleader, aware that getting into
the middle of the fight would make her utterly
vulnerable.
A crack, rifle-sharp, sliced through the
meaty thuds and half-voiced curses, bringing every head up
for a second, like a pack of coyotes spotting a much larger
wolf. “Police!” a man bellowed from the door.
Now or
never. Hadley thrust herself into the crowd, driving the
butt end of her baton into stomachs. Men folded, retching,
around her. She reached Poison T-shirt, grappling with
Nichols, and swung the baton with all her might into the
small of his back. He arched upward, screaming, and Nichols
lunged toward him, knocking Hadley aside, and then there was
a tall, lean man blocking the way; yellow letters on a black
T-shirt, cropped red hair, and Officer Kevin Flynn was
twisting Nichols’s arm around like a pretzel, bringing the
soldier to his knees.
“Straps?” he asked, speaking
loudly to be heard, and she tugged the plastic restraints
off her belt and tossed them to him.
Poison T-shirt
was pawing at his back. “You broke something!” She captured
one wrist with her cuffs and locked the other one in place.
“Didja hear me? Jesus Christ, you broke my friggin’
spine!”
She pushed his shoulder, nudging the back of
his knee so he’d get the message. “We will provide
transportation to the hospital if you’ve been injured.” He
collapsed into a sitting position. “Sir,” she tacked
on.
With two cops in the room and the instigators
restrained on the floor, the air went out of the balloon
fast. Poison’s buddies limped back to the bar and the pool
table, clutching their midsections and wiping blood off
their mouths. The frosted-blond gal pals tried to drag the
brunette away, but she shoved them off to kneel beside
Nichols. “I’m sorry,” she said, low, for his ears alone.
“I’m so sorry, Quentan.”
“Goddamn it, Tally!” Poison
T-shirt made to rise from the floor. “You were supposed to
have got rid of him!”
Hadley pushed his shoulder down,
harder this time. “Stay seated. You get up again before I
tell you to and I’ll cuff your ankles as well.”
He
sank back down, glaring at the brunette across the
floor.
Hadley gestured to Flynn to step away, out of
earshot, trying to figure out what was an appropriate way to
welcome a fellow officer back after a year. A fellow officer
she had dumped after a very against-the-regs one-night
stand.
The earringed construction worker came up to
them, grinning and wiping his hair out of his eyes. “Hey,
Kev! Haven’t seen you in dogs’ years, man. Where you
been?”
“Hey, Carter.” Flynn bumped fists with the guy.
“I was away on detached duty. Albany, and then Syracuse.” He
sounded older to Hadley. More assured. Or maybe she had
forgotten his voice.
“Dude. They put you on a SWAT
team or something? You look like you’re ready to blow shit
up.”
Flynn did look like a tactical agent, with the
black police T-shirt and the many-pocketed pants laced
inside a pair of paratrooper boots.
“Badass Officer
Flynn,” she said under her breath.
“Yeah. Well.”
Flynn’s cheekbones went pink and he rubbed the back of his
neck, popping a bicep and a blue Celtic armband. Hadley knew
neither the muscle nor the tattoo had been there a year ago.
He still looked like a reed next to Carter’s bulk, but he
had put on some much-needed weight while he was away. She
became aware that she was staring at him.
“So.” She
bobbed her chin at him. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, but
what the hell are you doing here? I heard you weren’t back
on duty until tomorrow.”
“Harlene called me, looking
for backup for you.” He glanced to where Poison was rocking
back and forth on the floor. “Although it looks like you
didn’t really need it.”
She snorted. “Right. John
McClane with boobs, that’s me.”
Carter stared at her
chest. “Who?”
“Die Hard,” she and Flynn said at the
same time. He dropped his eyes to the floor and smiled
before looking back up at Carter.
“You know this guy?”
Flynn gestured toward the black soldier, who was sitting
quietly, bent well forward to take the stress off his
shoulders.
“Never saw him before in my life.” Carter
dragged his gaze away from Hadley’s chest. “But I know that
dipshit.” He flicked a finger at Poison. “We worked together
on the new resort before his ass got fired.” Carter shook
his head, sending his blond hair swinging. “What a tool. I
figured if he was against somebody, I’m for
him.”
“What’s his name?” Hadley asked.
“Wyler
McNabb.” Carter smiled winningly at her, displaying teeth as
dazzling as the diamond studs in his earlobes. “What’s
yours?”
“Not Available.” She turned toward Flynn.
“Will you find out what McNabb’s story is? I want to talk to
her.” The brunette was hunkered down next to Nichols,
arguing with him, from the tone and her body language,
though Hadley couldn’t make out what they were
saying.
Hadley slid her baton back in her duty belt
and squatted next to the girl. “Ma’am, I need to talk with
you.” Hadley stood up. “Leave your friend for a minute, and
let’s go over there where we can have some privacy.” She
waited while the girl rose, then steered her toward the dark
corner past the jukebox.
“Am I in trouble?” Up close,
she was older than Hadley had guessed. Flynn’s age, maybe;
twenty-five or twenty-six.
“Let’s try to figure out
what happened before we start assigning blame. What’s your
name?”
“Tally. Tally McNabb.” She rubbed her hand over
her in memoriam tattoo. “It’s really Mary, but nobody ever
calls me that except my mom.”
“Okay. Private
McNabb?”
“Specialist. But I’m out of the army now.
It’s just plain Tally.”
“Okay. Tally. Chief Warrant
Officer Nichols there said he was talking to you before the
fight started, but you two didn’t just meet tonight, did
you?”
Tally shook her head. “We served
together.”
“In Iraq?”
Tally nodded.
“Did
Nichols come here looking for you?”
Tally nodded. She
looked at her feet. She was wearing red and white high-tops.
“He wanted to see me again.”
“Uh-huh.” Hadley glanced
over to where Flynn had hauled McNabb off the floor and was
questioning him. “Is that your brother, then?”
Tally
sighed. “My husband.”
Oh ho ho. “Wait here.” Hadley
crossed the floor, now decorated with blood spatters to go
with the spilled beer, and gestured to Flynn. “Officer
Flynn?”
He laid a hand on the guy’s shoulder. “Sit
down.” McNabb did so, groaning theatrically. “I’ll be right
back. Don’t move.”
Hadley retreated a few steps to
make sure the guy couldn’t overhear them. Flynn closed in,
towering over her. He was definitely taller than she had
remembered. Either he had grown or she had been squashing
him in her mind’s eye. “What is it?” he said.
“What’s
his story?”
“He says he works construction for BWI and
your girl over there’s his wife. He claims the black guy
came into the bar and started hassling her. When he told him
to back off, the guy swung on him.”
Hadley nodded. “I
got a slightly different take. The one on the floor is Chief
Warrant Officer Quentan Nichols. Specialist Tally McNabb
says they served together in Iraq and that Nichols came here
because he, quote, wanted to see her again.”
“Ah-hah.”
Kevin sucked in his lower lip. “Yeah, that does put a
different perspective on it. Whaddaya want to do?”
She
felt a flush of pleasure. He might be eight years her
junior, but he’d been on the force for five of those years,
and whatever they’d had him doing in Syracuse and Albany the
year he’d been gone, it was clearly more involved than
manning the radar gun and making DARE presentations. She had
assumed he’d be telling her what to do.
“I think we
ought to book both of ’em. That’ll give ’em time to cool
off, and make sure the bar owner has an arrest report if he
has to make an insurance claim.”
Flynn
nodded.
“I’m going to try to gauge how safe the wife
feels. Ask her if she wants to file a restraining
order.”
“Against which one? The husband or the
boyfriend?”
Hadley shrugged. “I dunno.” She almost
made a crack about one man being as bad as another, but that
wasn’t fair to Flynn. He was a good guy. Too damn good. She
had no doubt that beneath the menacing black uniform and the
pumped-up bod, he still had the heart of an Eagle Scout. An
Eagle Scout who’d been a virgin until he was twenty-four.
Until she had nailed him. God.
“Okay, look,” she said,
then the door opened. Another soldier, in urban camo and a
black beret. This one was a woman, older, and she swung
through the door with the ease and command of someone used
to stepping in and taking charge.
“Military police?”
Kevin said, and then, right on her heels, the chief walked
in.
“No.” Hadley started to smile. “It’s her. She’s
back.” She waved. “Reverend Clare!”
Clare
waltzed into the Dew Drop like she was going to tea with the
bishop. No, scratch that. She wouldn’t have been that
enthusiastic about sitting down with her superior. Russ
lengthened his stride, crunching across the gravel parking
lot, and caught up with her inside the door.
He
blinked, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness in the
entryway. No fighting—at least not at the moment. Clusters
of people at the pool table, the bar, half hidden in the
darkness of the booths at the back.
Two perps
restrained on the floor, bloodied but conscious. Hadley
standing at the midpoint between ’em, talking to an officer
in tacticals—Russ blinked again. It was Kevin. Twenty pounds
heavier and looking like a real live grown-up. Huh. He was
going to have to stop calling him “the Kid.”
Clare, he
saw, had scanned the scene and was sensibly holding back. Or
at least she did until Hadley waved. “Reverend Clare!” Well,
she did go to Clare’s church. He could hardly blame her for
being happy to see her pastor again.
The two women
embraced, but Russ’s attention was caught by the perp in the
BDU pants. He had been leaning forward, taking the pressure
off his cuffs, but now he sat upright, craning his neck to
get a better look at Clare. His expression, beneath the
blood from his nose and a cut on his temple, was
wary.
Clare was hugging Kevin now, setting the kid’s
cheeks on fire. Russ crossed the floor. “Couldn’t wait to
get started, huh?” He shook Flynn’s hand. “It’s damn good to
have you back again, Kevin.” He slapped him on the shoulder,
seeing, as he did so, the blue tattoo twining around his
officer’s arm.
Kevin’s eyes followed his gaze. “It
doesn’t show in uniform, Chief. I made sure of
that.”
“Hmn.” Russ turned toward Hadley. “Knox? Talk
to me.”
“Two guys, one gal.” She indicated the sullen
white guy on the floor. “Wyler McNabb, the husband. He was
here with his wife, Specialist Tally McNabb.” She pointed
toward the black soldier. “Chief Warrant Officer Quentan
Nichols, the boyfriend, who showed up apparently unexpected
by either of the McNabbs.”
“A warrant officer?” Clare
looked up at Russ. “May I speak with him?”
“Do you
recognize him?” At Knox’s and Flynn’s puzzled expressions,
he added, “Most of the army’s aviators are warrant
officers.”
“No…” Clare’s expression was
thoughtful.
“Then hang on a sec.” He turned to Knox.
“Where’s the woman?”
She swiveled. “She was right here
a minute ago.”
“You didn’t have her under
restraint?”
“No. We figured—” She glanced at Flynn.
“That is, I figured there were several individuals involved
in the fight, but these two were the proximate cause. Since
nobody else was hurt”—she laid her hand on her baton—“or
hurt enough to complain to me or Officer Flynn, I thought we
should book the two principals and leave it at
that.”
She still had a tendency to give information
like she was answering a quiz at the police academy, but he
had to admit, she was always thorough.
“Go see if
she’s in the ladies’ room. Clare?” He tipped his head toward
Nichols.
Clare walked over to the man and plopped
cross-legged in front of him as if sitting on a dirty
barroom floor were something she did every day. “Chief
Nichols,” she said, “I’m Clare Fergusson.”
He took a
long look at her insignia. “Major,” he said. “I thought you
were 31B for a minute there.” 31B? Russ couldn’t help
himself, he stepped forward. “Then I heard the officer call
you Reverend, but you don’t have any chaplain’s cross
on.”
“That’s my civilian job,” she said. “I’m Guard.
I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with 31B.”
“I am.” Russ
reached down and hauled Nichols into a standing position.
“It’s the MOS for military police. Mr. Nichols isn’t an
aviator, are you, Mr. Nichols?”
The man shook his
head. On his feet, he was several inches shorter than Russ,
but he must have outweighed him by ten, twenty pounds of
solid muscle. And Kevin had put him down?
“He’s an
MP,” Russ said. Clare scrambled up off the
floor.
Nichols eyed him. “You army?”
“I was. A
long time ago.” Russ held out his hand to Hadley. “Gimme
your clip, Knox.” She frowned but fished it out of her
pouch. He turned back to Nichols. “Are you going to give me
any more trouble if I cut you loose?”
“No,
sir.”
“You don’t have to ‘sir’ me.” Russ snipped the
clip through the flexible restraints. “I was a CWO just like
you.” He glanced at Clare. “Her, you have to call ma’am,
though.” She made a face.
Nichols rubbed his
wrists.
“You have any ID?”
Nichols reached for a
pocket on the side of his BDUs. “I’m retrieving my
billfold.” Russ caught Clare’s flashing look from the corner
of his eye.
He took the leather wallet. Twenty bucks.
A military police badge. A base ID for Fort Leonard Wood, in
Missouri. An Illinois driver’s license with a Chicago
address. “You’re a long way from home, Mr. Nichols.” He
handed the ID back. “I don’t suppose you’re working a case
and just happened to forget to notify the local law
enforcement?”
The flat, wary line of Nichols’s mouth
widened into an embarrassed grimace. “No.”
“Didn’t
think so. Would you care to give your version of
events?”
Nichols’s gaze shifted away from Russ. “I’ve
been trying to contact Tally—Specialist McNabb—ever since I
got back stateside. She didn’t answer my e-mails. Her phone
wasn’t working. I decided to take leave and come out here to
talk to her in person.”
“Did you know Specialist
McNabb was married?”
Nichols kept his eyes straight
ahead. “Yes, sir. Chief.”
“And you didn’t think that
might be the reason she was ignoring you?”
“She…I was
under the impression the marriage was broken,
Chief.”
Russ let his silence speak for
him.
“It’s not what it sounds like! She wasn’t—”
Nichols turned to Clare. “It’s different over
there.”
“Yes.” Clare nodded, a small, sober agreement.
“It is.”
Russ sighed. “So you came to the Dew
Drop—how’d you find out she was here, anyway?”
“Her
neighbor gave me a friend’s name and address. The friend
told me where I could find her.”
“You flash your badge
around to get that information?”
Nichols grimaced.
Fresh blood welled out of the cut in his lip. “Yes.” He
looked at Russ. “I didn’t set out to do it. It was the only
way I could get the neighbor to open her door and talk to
me.” His mouth twisted. “I take it seeing a black man on
your porch is no common occurrence here in the Great White
North.”
Russ opened his mouth. Closed it. “Mr.
Nichols, what would you do if a civilian law enforcement
officer came onto your post, used his police credentials to
question a dependent, and then went to the enlisted men’s
club and got into a fight with somebody’s significant
other?”
To his credit, Nichols didn’t hesitate.
“Arrest him and charge him.”
Russ nodded. “Wait here.”
He crossed toward the bar. Hadley met him halfway across the
floor, coming from the opposite direction. She looked
upset.
“She’s not in the building anymore,
Chief.”
“Not anywhere?”
“I checked both
restrooms. The second bartender says the door to the storage
room out back wasn’t locked, because he’d been hauling kegs
in and out. Once you’re in the storage room, you can get out
through the delivery door.”
Russ huffed in
frustration. “Is she trying to get away from Nichols? Or
from her husband?”
“Maybe from you,” Hadley said. “She
was hanging around the boyfriend, and she sure didn’t seem
afraid of her husband. He yelled something about her getting
rid of Nichols, after he was in custody, but she ignored
him. She only took off after you and Reverend Clare came in.
Maybe she thought you were here to haul her away?”
He
glanced back toward Nichols. Clare was still standing there.
She was speaking to him in low tones that didn’t carry. As
Russ watched, she laid her hand on Nichols’s arm.
He
shifted his gaze toward Kevin and Wyler McNabb. The latter
was still seated on the floor, still complaining loudly
about his injuries. “What’d Kevin do to him?”
“I hit
him with the baton just above his tailbone.” Hadley
indicated the spot on her own back. “I figured it would hurt
enough to make him forget about fighting for a while,
without causing any real damage.” She frowned. “You don’t
think I did, do you? Really hurt him?”
He snorted.
“No.” He looked at Nichols again. The chief had settled
himself back on the floor, hands open on his knees, the
image of compliance. Clare was making a beeline for Russ and
Hadley.
“He doesn’t have any place to stay,” she said
without preamble. “I was thinking—”
“No.”
She
frowned. “You could at least hear me out.”
“You’re not
putting him up at the rectory, Clare.” He held up one hand
to forestall whatever half-baked idea she was about to start
in on. “Knox, get the address and phone number from the
husband. Try to get some friends’ or relatives’ names,
too.”
She nodded and strode off toward the guy, one
hand still resting on her baton. Clare immediately said, “We
can at least help him find a local motel.”
“He’s going
to be spending the night in the lockup.”
Her mouth
dropped open. “For defending himself in a bar fight? You
can’t do that to him.”
He stared at her. “Of course I
can.”
She blew out an impatient breath. “You know what
I mean. Out here, it’s thirty days’ community service or a
couple hundred bucks, but when the army gets wind of it,
it’ll mean serious trouble.”
She was right. What was a
normal Friday night on the town for a twenty-year-old
enlisted kid could be a career killer for a thirty-year-old
CWO.
“I didn’t say I was going to charge him, just
that I’m going to book him.”
She spread her hands in a
what? gesture.
“Look.” He touched her sleeve lightly,
drawing her in closer. “My primary concern right now is the
woman they were fighting over. She’s taken off, and I don’t
know if one, or both, of these guys is a threat to her.
Until I can locate her and get some more information, I
don’t want to release either of ’em. So I’m going to send
Knox out to track her down, and in the meantime, both men
can cool their heels in the county jail.”
“You’re not
going to book the husband? He started it.”
“What are
you, the judge and jury? I’m going to develop facts, Clare.
Then I’ll make a decision. That’s how people who think
things through do it.”
She made a noise.
He
smiled despite himself. “I gotta talk to the owner.” He
started toward the bar. She fell into step beside him. He
sighed. “Now you’ve seen what all the fuss was about, why
don’t you go back to the truck and wait for me?”
“Are
you kidding?” She looked around with lively interest. “I’ve
never been in the Dew Drop Inn before.”
“For a very
good reason. This piss-hole is no place for
a—a—”
“Officer? Lady? Priest?”
“A nice
Episcopalian.”
She laughed.
The owner, washing
glasses behind the bar, looked up at Clare. Then at Russ.
Back to Clare. Then to Russ. “Chief.” His balding head
dipped in a motion halfway between greeting and warning.
“She with that black guy?”
“She’s with me.” Russ
spread his hands on the bar. The odor of yeast and wood and
wet soapy rag, the smell of his days as a drunk, rose up
around him. For a second, he felt the deep, gut-pulling urge
for a Jack Daniel’s. He ignored it. “Want to tell me what
you saw?”
“That black boy came in, ordered some fancy
beer I ain’t never heard of. Told him I got