Inside, natural light brought out the red hues in the boards underfoot and beams overhead. It was so quiet that, if Jimmy hadn’t told me otherwise, I’d have thought the place was abandoned. I tiptoed past the secretarial desk to Morrissey’s office. The door was open, so a knock wasn’t required, at least by my understanding of office etiquette. I peered inside.
Mr. Morrissey, still dressed in his Sunday suit, a sharp-looking fedora perched on the desk next to him, leaned on his elbow over a document. He was the picture of focus, his mouth moving slightly over the words, although I could see in the deep lines around his face that he hadn’t been sleeping well.
Did you set the fire that killed my brother?
A board creaked beneath me, and he snapped to attention as I opened the door the rest of the way, trying not to look like I had been lurking. “You asked to see me, Mr. Morrissey?”
“Thank you, Miss Hightower. Please sit down.” Before I could get close enough to see what it was, he tucked the paper in the bottom file cabinet drawer, closing it and turning to me with an expression just as firm. “I’ll be direct.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything else from you.” Let him decide if that was an insult or not.
“Our lookout saw someone walking out by the scene of the fire this morning.”
Oh no. Gordon had mentioned the lookout tower where Jack had spent his last days, but I hadn’t considered that if they could see fires, they could see us. “Maybe he was mistaken.”
“She,” Morrissey corrected mildly. “My daughter volunteered to take this week’s shift. And she’s very observant.”
Ah. Suddenly Sarah Ruth’s week-long “trip” made more sense. That closed off several potential excuses, including the fact that maybe the lookout was bored or just wanted attention.
“Well. Was it you, Miss Hightower?” It sounded more like a statement than a question.
I paused, thinking frantically. Someone, he’d said. That meant Sarah Ruth had only reported one person. Gordon was still in the clear.
“Yes, it was,” I said coolly, trying not to make it sound like a guilty confession. “I have to say, Mr. Morrissey, that I’m quite concerned by the reports I’ve heard about this ‘accident’ of yours.”
He sighed, and the lines around his face seemed to sag with it. “Believe me, Miss Hightower, so am I.”
A good line, convincingly delivered. But could I really trust anything he had to say?
Only one way to know.
This hadn’t been my plan—I’d decided to hint around with some of the other rangers—but a girl didn’t waste an opportunity when it was right in front of her. “If you don’t mind me asking, where were you the afternoon of the fire? I’m surprised it was able to get out of control so close to your district headquarters.”
“Just after breakfast, I left to lead a training two districts over on identifying and uprooting invasive species.” The answer came out smoothly, almost as if he’d expected my question and prepared for it. “Those, if you don’t know, are ordinary-looking intruding plants that weave in among the natural ones until they take over.”
Now I was the one trying to decide if I’d been dealt a subtle insult. From the glint in Morrissey’s cold blue eyes, my guess was yes. “And when you got back?”
“It was around two o’clock. Richardson, Carlisle, and Yates—rangers here on staff—were with me. That’s when we saw the smoke, rang the bell, and ran for the truck.” He paused. “I’m sure you’ve heard the rest.”
Witnesses. That was good. People who could confirm his story. Because if Morrissey really had been gone until early afternoon, it didn’t fit with Gordon’s latest theory.
Unless Morrissey had someone else light the fire for him.
But who?
Morrissey folded his hands and met my gaze squarely. “I can see you’re concerned about the welfare of these men. That’s all well and good. But I work for the Department of Agriculture, Miss Hightower. Not the War Department. And I don’t appreciate meddlers.”
“I’m not meddling. I’m overseeing.”
He blew out a frustrated breath. “That’s what the woman from your superior’s office said when I called too. ‘Our representative is merely supplying appropriate oversight’ were her words, I believe.”
My breath caught in my throat. He’d called Captain Petmencky and gotten Bea. And thank goodness she’d read off the response I’d jotted down for her in case anyone asked for verification of my mission here. I hid my relief and nodded politely.
“Unlike you, I live in this town, and I care about the people in it, first and foremost my staff. So if you’re really here to interview the COs, you have my blessing.”
The “and if not . . .” hung in the air, an unspoken threat.
He suspected something. That was easy enough to tell. But it wasn’t that I was Jack’s sister. Something else was going on here. I could feel the subtext bristling between us, but, like a scene in a screwball comedy of errors, we were both dancing around it.
“Well,” I said, standing and smiling tightly, “then it’s a good thing all I want is the truth.”
CHAPTER 20
Gordon Hooper
January 22, 1945
After a long day’s work, hot water pouring down your back was a welcome feeling, during January in particular. Sometimes the other COs started singing in the shower—folk tunes and praise choruses from the Mennonite songbook, and even the occasional popular song when the Apostle Tom wasn’t around. One time, Shorty gargled a full verse of “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral” before he choked on a high note.
The point was, fellows let their guard and their pants down at about the same time in the shower house. That made it the perfect place for a Monday night interrogation—and better, one where Dorie couldn’t possibly listen in and then tell me what I did wrong.
So when I saw Lloyd lift a stiff white towel out of the clean laundry bin an hour before curfew, I did the same, hauling along my kit with its toothbrush and government-issue soap that smelled like congealed disappointment.
“Going to wash up, boys?” Shorty barreled his way past us to the door before we could answer. “Better hurry, or I’ll get all the hot water.”
So much for a private conversation with Lloyd.
Not like you’ll find anything out anyway. Dorie probably gave you this job because she knows you’d mess up anything serious. You’re useless at this.
Stop it, I ordered myself, pulling up my coat against the cold wind. That’s what my father had always said about me. Useless.
But it wasn’t true. I could do this.
Once we’d taken three of the four shower stalls, I took a deep breath and started in on the interrogation as I undressed. “Awful, wasn’t it? Morrissey telling us about Jack like that yesterday.”
“Sure was.” Shorty’s voice from the stall next to me, usually animated, had tempered a bit. “Don’t think it’s sunk in yet.” Lloyd didn’t add anything, but I heard the spray of his water turning on.
“I wish I’d gotten the chance to . . . say something to him before he left for the lookout.” I cleared my throat over the rising emotion. Not now. “Which reminds me. Did either of you notice anything . . . strange about Jack before he . . . you know, before the accident?”
“Like the fact that he ate his cornflakes dry instead of putting milk in them?”
“No, Shorty. Strange like . . . something he was worried about or someone he was upset with. You know.”
I winced, grateful they couldn’t see my expression. Acting casual was not my calling.
Thankfully, it didn’t sound like Shorty noticed. “Nothing I can think of. Except it seemed like the Apostle Tom was extra mad at him just before he left. I said to him, ‘What’d he do, Tom, freeze your long johns?’” Shorty’s braying laugh was distorted by the water. “He just said something about Jack not being worthy of our respect.”
True, that was a step above Thomas’s general dislike. I’d noticed it too, on the
day Roger joined the military. But Dorie told me she’d spoken with Thomas and didn’t think he had anything to do with it, whatever that meant.
I turned on the shower, stepped under the lukewarm water, and pitched my voice louder. “I can’t help wondering . . . what was Jack doing down there at the fire? Instead of calling it in, I mean.”
“There was a shovel up in the lookout with the rest of the emergency supplies,” Shorty reasoned. “Maybe he saw the smoke and didn’t want to bother us with a little blaze like that. Only when he got there, it wasn’t so little anymore.”
That didn’t sound like Jack, but I held my peace. “Say, Lloyd, did any of you fellows working in the woods see the smoke?”
Finally Lloyd spoke up. “I was building fences with a crew a few miles east of the camp. It was business as usual the whole day. We didn’t even hear the fire bell ring.”
Another dead end. There was one more question, one Dorie had given to me, and then I was on my own. “Why do you think they took Jack to an army hospital? Why not a closer one?”
Shorty made a dismissive noise. “How should I know? Why don’t you ask Morrissey?”
I imagined that meeting, asking questions that strongly implied I suspected Morrissey of . . . what? Murder? Some kind of cover-up?
“It’s . . . I can’t, that’s all.”
A squeak of Shorty’s water shutting off told me he’d applied his trademark rinse-and-be-done method of personal hygiene. “Listen, if you’re worried about looking dumb in front of the boss, I’ll ask him. How about that?”
My mouth opened in surprise, letting in some suds that I immediately spat into the drain. “You’ll ask Morrissey the questions I just asked you?”
“Sure, why not? I say a dozen stupid things before breakfast. Ol’ Morris won’t think a thing about it.”
“And you’ll tell me his answers.” This was too good to be true.
“That’s what I said, didn’t I?” Shorty’s footsteps stopped outside my shower curtain, the hem of his bathrobe visible. “Hey, it’s gonna be all right. I know this hit you hardest of all, but Jack would want us to keep going.”
I swallowed hard against the sudden wave of emotion. “Thanks, Shorty.”
“Don’t mention it, Wingtip. That’s what I’m here for.”
I was so grateful I didn’t even tell him to knock it off with the nickname, given to me by the citified shoes I’d been dumb enough to bring with me from college in Philadelphia.
Once Shorty had left for the bunkhouse, it was just me and Lloyd. What else would Dorie want me to ask? I wasn’t any good at this, with nothing to go on but suspicions and half-baked theories.
“You’d better be careful with those questions, Gordon.”
My hands froze from scrubbing soap across my body. The way Lloyd said those words . . . “Is that a threat?”
He laughed, the polished port-and-cigars laughter of a true Southern gentleman. “Of course not. I just know how the army is. What they’re willing to do to protect their secrets.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t want to say it when Shorty was around but . . . I saw something strange. Have you wondered why the army sent a WAC to our camp right now, after the accident?”
“Hadn’t thought to.” Because I already knew.
I braced myself for the inevitable, tried to think of what I’d say in response. Lloyd was our chess champion who was studying law and had a private tutor growing up. Of anyone here, he was the most likely to figure out that Dorie was really Jack’s sister.
“Anyone can see the army is using her to investigate the fire. Just like the army jeeps that arrived in the middle of the night after Jack’s accident.”
My soap slipped out of my hand to the shower floor, skidding a smudge across the concrete. Not the words I’d expected. “The what?”
Lloyd’s water turned off, but I kept mine going, the hot spray welcome against my back now that the other two had stopped draining the water heater’s resources. “You know I wake up before calisthenics to walk in the woods most mornings.”
“Sure.” He treated it almost like a religious duty.
“That morning, I saw two jeeps parked outside the ranger station. By the time I came back from the woods when the rising bell rang, they were gone.”
I tried to process that, to sort out how it would fit with my theory of Morrissey starting the fire. “Maybe it was just the forest supervisor paying a visit. Rangers use jeeps too.” To the great disdain of old-timers like Les Richardson, who remembered when “the true vehicle of a ranger was fueled by oats and carrots.”
“Not ones with a white star and US Army written on them.”
No way to argue with that. “Did you tell anyone else?”
“No. I assumed they came with Morrissey’s permission. Now that the WAC is here, it seems like just one more instance of government interference.” The sound of metal rings scraping against the rod told me he was getting ready to leave, and I could see his feet stop in front of my stall. I shut off my water, trying to think.
“Why would the army interfere in a lightning fire accident?”
The only sound in the shower house was the drip, drip, drip of leaky spigots.
Then, in Lloyd’s debonair, radio-worthy voice, “Maybe they don’t think it’s an accident.”
Hearing someone else say it out loud chilled me. But how did all of this fit with the other details we knew? With our theory that Morrissey had started the fire as an experiment?
Not now. Thinking could come later. For now, I had a captive witness.
“Did you see anything else?” I pressed. “Any people near the jeeps? Flashlights? Voices?”
He paused for a moment, like he was thinking. “No, that was all.”
“Come on, Lloyd. You’ve got to have noticed something.”
“Well, for one thing, I noticed that Shorty stole your towel.”
My . . .
I yelped, drawing back the curtain and feeling around on the hook for something that wasn’t there.
I caught a glimpse of Lloyd, clad in his pajamas and a broad smirk. “And, it seems, your clothes as well.”
His laughter echoed in the shower house.
I always dreaded the walk back from the shower house during the winter, but with my wet hair flopping around my ears, wearing nothing but Lloyd’s damp towel draped around my waist, it was especially unpleasant.
I should have been annoyed at my clean feet getting caked in dirt or nicked by rocks as I hurried along the path to the bunkhouse, but they’d turned numb as an iceberg, so I barely felt a thing.
Should’ve known better than to trust Shorty to do me a favor with no strings attached. When I get a hold of him . . .
“Who’s there?” a voice called out.
I stopped stock-still, my fist clutched around the towel. There was only one thing to do: dive into a nearby bush to hide as a flashlight wove its way down the path toward me. The branches scraped against my bare chest as the light bobbed closer. “I know I heard something. Speak up! This is the district ranger.”
I closed my eyes. Of course it was Morrissey. He had a college-dean air about him, just the person to show up at the most inopportune moments.
But why was he out so late?
“Who’s there?” he demanded, closer now.
I poked my head out of the shrubbery, squinting into the flashlight beam. “Gordon Hooper, sir.”
“Hooper?” He frowned, probably noticing my dripping hair. “What’re you doing there?”
There was no way around it. He was going to think I’d nicked food from the kitchen or something unless I came out and said it. “I’m naked, sir.”
“Excuse me?”
“Someone”—I decided against naming names, not wanting to be like Tattletale Thomas—“absconded with my clothes. Sir.”
There was a pause, and then he laughed, gruff and long, which would have felt very man-to-man except for the fact that I didn’t feel parti
cularly manly at the moment. Just cold, which was why I cut him off with a snappish, “If you’re finished, I’d like to get inside.”
“Good. There are women on the property, you know.”
“Yes, sir.” I was highly aware of that particular fact. Thank God it hadn’t been Mrs. Morrissey or Sarah Ruth or—I shuddered inside—Dorie.
He peeled off his thick mackinaw hunting jacket, revealing the Forest Service uniform underneath, and passed it through the branches to me. “Here. You need this more than I do.”
I almost refused it—it was only another fifty yards to the bunkhouse—but then I thought about it. No bushes, just open road, and what if someone else was out for a late-night stroll? Besides, I’d already lost all feeling in my arms.
I grabbed the coat, soft and smelling like cigar smoke. “Thanks.”
He laughed again. “This is just what I needed, Hooper. It’s been a long week.”
And I almost snapped that Jack’s death was more than just some inconvenience that made him work late hours and put him in a bad temper. But I stopped myself. Hadn’t I said I’d try to be less angry?
Besides . . . it had been a long week. For all of us.
“Bring it back to the ranger station in the morning, will you?”
“Yes, sir.” I shielded myself with the coat and stumbled out of the bush, the branches scraping at me.
Frozen fingers fumbling with the buttons, I tugged the coat on above my towel and brushed a few leaves off of my shoulders before making for the bunkhouse. There I was, wrapped in dun-and-red tartan like my Scottish ancestors—though I’m sure Nelson’s side of the family would take issue with the figure I was cutting—waddling awkwardly over the open ground to the bunkhouse. There would be no sprinting, not with the loose knot of the towel around my waist.
There were no further hails or unexpected peeping Toms, so I covered the fifty yards to the bunkhouse without incident, bursting through the door. Heads all down the row of bunks rose, and laughter burst out, along with a few joking taunts.
“That color looks good on you, Hooper.”
“The height of fashion, as usual.”
The Lines Between Us Page 17