Legacy of War

by Ed Marohn

  The Sally stare that I had accepted over the years continued. She bore into me with her blue eyes, looking for any falsehoods. A minute of added silence passed.

  “Alright. You call me if you get into a funk again. Make your phone call and get out of this office,” she said.

  I nodded and reached for my desk phone, not looking directly into her eyes. She slowly turned to the door and walked out, not closing it behind her, as I dialed an old friend, one who had my back in Vietnam.

  Jim Schaeffer answered his cell phone on the fifth ring. “John Moore, you bastard. Why do I have the honor of you calling me at home?”

  “Because I can’t live without you,” I said. My banter sounded hollow to me.

  “Hey, you shouldn’t make fun of one who saved your ass in Nam.”

  “Yeah—I recall I saved your ass,” I said. I felt a small smile coming on. Jim’s hearty laugh could do that.

  We had a friendship created in the war, formed when we first met in the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division, serving near Cambodia. It further grew when we both served as company commanders in the 101st Airborne Division—he commanded B Company, First/501st Battalion, and I commanded C Company in the same battalion.

  Currently we tried calling each other at least once a month. Before, after his return from Vietnam, some six months after me, we had talked weekly, sometimes daily, healing each other, ridding ourselves of the angst from the killing fields of Vietnam. At first the army hadn’t recognized that many of the returned vets had post-traumatic stress disorder. Jim and I didn’t have PTSD, but we had had our share of nightmares and night sweats those early years after Nam. We witnessed too many of our own soldiers die in battle; an awesome burden of being young company commanders that still nagged us some thirty years later.

  “I need a favor,” I said, refocusing on the reality of the present.

  “You got it, as long as it doesn’t involve getting too drunk like we used to. Kim would kill me.” He laughed again. I shook my head.

  Jim had married a Vietnamese woman whom he had met in the war. Kim was a lovely lady who had given Jim three boys, whom he adored and spoiled. He had served in the army for twenty-five years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel, burned out from the military bureaucracy. He used his retirement income to forge ahead and form a boutique security company, Schaeffer and Sons Inc. His past military career gave him connections to clients who needed bodyguards, like politicians and business executives—anywhere worldwide. I think he had over fifty employees, including his three sons, who were being groomed to run the company. Based in Washington, DC, he utilized the area’s concentrated political network for his business.

  I briefed him over the phone about Reed and his suicide.

  “Look, I don’t know where I’m going with this, but a name, Todd Ramsey, came up and I . . . just want to ease my concerns. I need to find out about Ramsey, a CIA agent, and whether he had a role in Reed’s suicide.”

  Jim fell into his usual supportive role and promised some quick checking with the CIA on Ramsey and to pull any information on Tom Reed from the military records he could access.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I get some info. Are you coming to DC for Christmas with Kim and me? I don’t know why, but she thinks you’re a nice guy. You and I know better,” he said and snorted a laugh.

  “After being married to you, she knows she can only improve,” I retorted. My chuckle eased some of my tension. “I guess it has been a while, and I’ll try to see you guys for Christmas. Just need to work on getting a few open days.”

  “When I call back about your query, you tell me your flight schedule to come stay with us. It’s a commitment, my friend. And make it for a couple of weeks.” Jim hung up.

  Charlotte, Monday,

  December 16, 2002

  After a restless Sunday, working with clients on Monday eased my sour mood. While at my desk sipping from a mug of fresh hot coffee, Sally buzzed me on the intercom. “Jane Phillips is on line two for you. Do you want me to talk to her?”

  Some of the hot brew spilled from my mouth, dribbling down the cup’s side. I hastily set the coffee mug on my desk, watching the black liquid trickling slowly, partly drying on the cup’s side, partly being absorbed on the coaster. Anxiously, I took a deep breath, trying to ease my tightness, and said, “No, I should handle it.”

  I pushed line two. “Hello, Mrs. Phillips. This is John Moore.”

  “Dr. Moore, the police called me Saturday night. Is it true that my dad killed himself?” she said.

  I paused, trying to form the correct response, trying to be helpful. “Mrs. Phillips, I am sorry for your loss, but yes, it looks like suicide. I assume Sergeant Wilson explained.”

  “Yes, but what happened?” Her bluntness weighed on me.

  “I wish I knew. They found him dead, and it looked like he took an overdose of his depression and anxiety meds. And there was a suicide note.”

  “I’m not surprised he killed himself, although I had hoped that he was getting on with life. Dad and I had finally reunited. And our son was so happy to finally have a grandfather. . . You see, Chuck, my husband, lost his parents before our son was born.”

  I listened, respecting her time to talk. She needed the release.

  “But he was so uptight these last few days that I knew his PTSD was getting worse. I’d hoped him visiting us over Christmas would help, so my husband bought him tickets to fly out.”

  I stayed silent. She finally stopped talking, and failing to cover her mouthpiece, I heard her crying now. Finally, her silence crept into my office. I waited, allowing the seconds to tick forward. Then I said, “I know this is difficult, but you will recover from this.”

  “Thanks. I don’t know. Look, Doctor . . .”

  “Please call me John,” I said.

  “OK, John. I found his journal, which he left when he stayed with us on December 7. He has been to see me regularly. He needed family, I guess. The journal is confusing. Maybe sort of a diary?”

  I knew the answer: a VA psychologist had told Reed to keep a journal to record nightmares and other PTSD issues to discuss during therapy. “Is it OK with you that I read the journal?” I asked. I thumped my fingers on the desk.

  At that moment, Sally’s voice intruded from the open office doorway, where she stood looking at me. “Sergeant Wilson is on line one.”

  I nodded, holding my hand up. Jane Phillips confirmed that she would send me the journal. I gave her the mailing address and we said our goodbyes. I hung up, wiping my moist palms on my pant legs.

  Nodding to Sally as she left for her office and punching line one, I answered, “John Moore.”

  “Doctor Moore, this is Wilson. I’ve got the autopsy report.”

  “Thanks for calling me,” I said. Sitting straighter, I tried to focus on Wilson’s information.

  “Well, here it is. I’ll give you a quick summary. He died both suffocating on his own vomit and overdosing on his pills. He probably took all remaining antidepressants and anxiety pills, some of which didn’t completely dissolve and lodged in his esophagus.”

  I imagined the pain and fear that Tom must have experienced. I shook my head.

  “Anyway, the ME is saying suicide. There is no evidence for a homicide,” he said.

  I thought of something. “When I saw the body, his fists were clenched.”

  “Doc felt it was reflex. We can even explain the minor bruising on both wrists and both ankles; they’re from his work at the tire plant. He wore heavy boots that rubbed his ankle and carried heavy rubber strips across his arms at his tire-building station.”

  Rubbing my eyes, I said, “Suicides normally happen quickly once the decision is made by the individual.”

  “I think he was determined. We also confirmed the high alcohol content in his blood. He was a mess. Was Reed right- or left-handed?” Wilson asked.


  “A southpaw. Why?” I said.

  “The note was written by a left-handed person. So, it was his handwriting in the note. Look, I got another call, but I knew you left his apartment out of sorts over this. But everything validates a suicide. He must have been totally depressed.” Wilson hung up.

  Putting my phone in the cradle, I stood. My office window now framed an uptown Charlotte with a dark midmorning winter haze creeping through the streets, its perceived coldness causing me to shiver, even within my heated office. Why did Reed kill himself?

  The knock on my door directed me to my watch: It was my 11:00 a.m. session.

  Charlotte, Tuesday,

  December 17, 2002

  By late Tuesday afternoon, Jane Phillips’s UPS overnight package stared at me. I had completed my sessions and was prepared to open the parcel containing Reed’s journal. I hesitated. Reed had killed himself, so what was the point of this? Why did I want to continue exploring Reed? As Sally had said—it wasn’t about me.

  Hesitantly, I opened the package and pulled out Tom’s notebook—a typical college-ruled, spiral-bound notebook with a shiny black front and back cover. As I flipped through the first ten pages, scanning his scrawling penmanship, I found very little that gave me new insight on Tom Reed or his killing of innocent villagers. He rambled about his work, about his better relationship with his daughter, about his grandson.

  It was the eleventh page that got my attention. The second and final paragraph gave a possible trigger for Tom’s death: December 6: I saw him today. After all these years, it was Ramsey. I recognized him immediately. He stood in the hall at Salisbury VA. He looked past me and continued walking by me. I thought he hadn’t recognized me. When I turned to check him out again as he turned the corner, he glanced back at me. I know he recognized me. He still scares me. And why was he there? Then memories of the village near My Son came back, and the horror I committed. Other things are still vague in my head—about the ancient tribe in Nam, but my mind just has this blank. I don’t want to remember!

  This confirmed that Reed’s mind had repressed a very harrowing event that occurred in Nam. Running into Ramsey brought the trauma back—the horror of killing civilians. I now felt that his connection with Ramsey was the real story: the sinister, violent things that he had done with and for Ramsey. Did the killing of so many villagers finally cause anxiety overload for him on Friday night—enough to kill himself? The answer seemed to be yes.

  I sat at the desk realizing that in our Friday session, I had helped create a crack to his repressed memory, allowing it to flood out later, overwhelming him, and I wasn’t there to help him. I rubbed my tired eyes, attempting to remove the sadness that I now felt. In trying to heal him, did I help him commit suicide?

  But something bothered me. Why did he lie to me on Friday, December 13? He said he didn’t remember Ramsey in the hall at the VA until he got to Rock Hill, just before our session. His own notes in the journals contradicted that by stating he had immediately recognized the CIA agent in the VA hospital.

  I had to know more about Reed and Ramsey. This would help me understand the awful pain Reed felt that forced him to commit suicide. I had one way to find out, and that would be to go to Washington, DC, and use Schaeffer’s connections. It would be better to have a face-to-face with Jim and avoid the phone. I picked up the desk phone and dialed him at his office and invited myself to visit him at his home.

  “Hey, I’m glad you are coming early, but plan on staying for Christmas. Your room is reserved for you, buddy.”

  “I think that will work. And I need to get my questions answered . . . to help me deal with it emotionally. I’m afraid I opened a Pandora’s box that Reed couldn’t cope with,” I said.

  “I’m still waiting for all the info on Ramsey and Reed. Hope to have it when you get here,” Jim responded.

  “Good. I’ll call you when I arrive tomorrow. I’m staying at a hotel for the first night because my flight will get in late.” I hung up after Jim agreed.

  I called US Airways and booked Wednesday’s 10:00 p.m. flight to Washington Dulles International Airport. I had client sessions tomorrow to handle first. Glancing at the clock, I saw that it was past five. I turned off the lights to my office and headed to Sally’s office, hoping she was still here. Her door stood open and she sat writing at her desk.

  As she looked up, I blurted, “Would you handle the few sessions I have for Thursday through Christmas? I have to fly out to DC tomorrow night.”

  We hadn’t talked much about Reed’s death since Saturday. She sat back and sighed.

  “John, are you getting involved with something that isn’t your concern?”

  I paused. “Jim Schaeffer invited me to spend Christmas with him and Kim.” I didn’t explain that Jim was gathering information for me as well. I hated the lie.

  “Hmmm,” she murmured.

  Sally was a good friend as well as my associate, in ways replacing my dead wife by giving me brutal honesty when I needed it. Sometimes she knew me better than I knew myself. She suspected there was more.

  This time I shook my head. “OK, I did ask Jim to gather some information for me to help me understand why Reed would kill himself.”

  Sally stood up, turning away from me toward her office window overlooking the streets of Charlotte. Talking to the window, she said, “Just be careful. I’ll cover your sessions but keep me informed on what the hell you’re doing. You owe me for the worry you cause.”

  “Thanks, Sally.”

  With her back to me, she waved me away. Her bowed head worried me. I looked down, then turned away and walked out of the office.

  I thought Sally turned to look as I departed. Somehow that felt good.

  I had finished packing for my flight Wednesday night and now had to decide what to do about dinner. It was almost seven.

  The doorbell rang. When I opened the door, Sally stood there with a plastic bag of food from the Thai restaurant we occasionally use for working lunches at the office.

  “I thought you would need some food and maybe company. You seemed a little out of it at the office,” Sally said, stepping into my condo.

  She looked exceptionally enticing, wearing a flirty, silky skirt, countering her business look at the office. She turned to me and noticed my stare.

  “Want me to set this food in the kitchen?”

  “Aw . . . yes, please,” I said.

  An hour later, we had finished eating and I was stuffed but happy, due to the wine, the meal, and her presence. We laughed about some of our silly experiences with our clients. We laughed to just laugh—her presence became cathartic.

  Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was her sitting next to me, maybe it was my loneliness, but I suddenly leaned into her and kissed her, gently at first. With no resistance from her, I put my arms around her as she did the same, and we became meshed as one.

  I heard her dressing as I woke up. It was almost five on Wednesday morning.

  She smiled at me as I eyed her beautiful, partially nude body. “I need to get home and shower and get a change of clothes for work.”

  “Stay, please. We could do breakfast.”

  “Next time, John. And you should know, last night was special.”

  “So, there is a chance for us together?” I said, a big grin on my face.

  “You think?” Finally dressed, she leaned over and gave me a long kiss. We clung briefly, but she had the willpower and released me. “I’ll have coffee and rolls waiting for you at the office. Now get ready.”

  As Sally disappeared from my bedroom and headed to the condo’s front door, I lay back down. What a gorgeous evening last night had turned into. Our lovemaking was more than I could have expected. It seemed we both needed each other. Damn, I should cancel the DC trip, I thought. What was the point of going now? Sally had changed things in my life.

  Washington, DC,
Thursday, December 19, 2002

  By seven that morning, I sat in the Courtyard Hotel’s restaurant. After a breakfast of two eggs over easy with two strips of crisp bacon, I relaxed with my second cup of coffee. I would have favored a Denny’s, but I was not up to driving around to find one. My room had been waiting for me when I arrived in Washington, DC, past midnight and, after quickly putting on sleep shorts and T-shirt, I brushed my teeth and plopped into bed to catch five hours of sleep. I never enjoyed traveling on business, and this whole trip had the same feel: I used to consult for human relations with Fortune 500s. They had me jetting all over the world to help implement psychological evaluations in their hiring practices. The hotel beds now were better than in the earlier years of my travel, but they were still hotel beds.

  Sipping my coffee nervously, I looked at my small list of phone calls to make. The first one was to Sally. She knew I had committed to stay over the holidays with Jim Schaeffer and was good with that. But she wanted me to drop my inquiries about Reed. I stated I would once Schaeffer briefed me, but deep down something pulled me to continue to investigate.

  Handling my cell phone on the restaurant table, I had waited for a decent time to call. I dialed Sally’s office number and she answered on the first ring. “Hello, John.” Her cool tone came through.

  “Are my sessions going to be OK?” I asked.

  “Yes. I’m ready,” she said.

  I tried to think of something funny to say, but her seriousness stopped me as she said, “Just finish whatever you’re doing and get back to Charlotte. You are playing with issues that don’t concern you.”

  “Well . . . here are my plans. I need to see someone besides Jim who can shed some information about a war program involving Reed in Nam.”

  A subdued Sally replied, “Yes?” There was more silence. “Well at least you’re being honest now.”

  I felt dejected by her tone, so I didn’t mention Ramsey to her. Sally could be tenacious and stubborn and now, after our night together, upset with being relegated to a secondary role. She cared for me.