Heart of War

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “Who might that be?”

  “Beckwith. I just don’t see the commanding general as a murder suspect. He doesn’t come up on the screen.”

  Kara took a sip of coffee and stared out the window. She felt like saying to hell with it and telling him what she knew, but then she thought about last night, lying in bed next to Mace, and how safe he made her feel, and she thought, there’s no way I can do anything to hurt this guy. No way at all.

  “You look lost in your thoughts, Kara. You disagree with me about Beckwith?”

  She took a deep breath. “No. Go on.”

  “Okay, that left us with five. Two I discount out of hand. I just don’t see these two guys coming out of left field and killing a girl they couldn’t have known. Both of them are second lieutenants over in the Infantry Officer Basic Course. They’ve been on post for less than a month. You know the way IOBC is. They don’t have time to wash their socks, much less run out to the firing range in the middle of a storm and kill a lieutenant they didn’t know.”

  “What’s the statistic? Ninety percent of people who are murdered know their killer?”

  “That’s right. The guy who killed Sheila knew her. I take that as a given. So that leaves us with three. One of them is another guy I don’t like as a suspect. He’s been here at Benning for two months. He was gone on TDY for thirty days out of sixty. He’s got a steady girlfriend up in Atlanta. There’s just nothing I can find that would connect him to Sheila.”

  “So that brings us to your favorites.”

  “Yeah. We’ve got a Headquarters guy, he’s single, and he dated Sheila several times. The second guy is the kid who came to your house. Parks. I ran his records, tracked down their college stuff. There’s a picture of the two of them in the yearbook. They were voted ‘most likely to make general,’ or something like that. He was in a fraternity, and she was in the sister sorority to the frat. I talked to the colonel in charge of the ROTC program. He told me Parks took Sheila to the Artillery Ball. He went off to Infantry Basic Course, and she went into the Adjutant General’s Corps.”

  “And they started dating again when they got stationed together here at Fort Benning.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Who’s the other guy?”

  “You’re going to love this. Beckwith’s aide.”

  “Randy Taylor? We met him at the reception for the Sec Def. He was with a friend of mine, Lannie.”

  “I was there. Remember?”

  “He dated Sheila Worthy?”

  “Three or four times. Dinner at the O-Club, a movie, that sort of thing.”

  “That doesn’t sound serious.”

  “Not on her part, from what I can tell. There wasn’t much talk about them around Headquarters. But Parks and Sheila were definitely serious. I talked to Sheila’s roommate again. She told me Sheila said he was the love of her life in college.”

  “And he turns up on the N.S. Meyer list.”

  “Like a big dog. Bought his gold insignia just before he graduated from college. Gold second lieutenant’s bars. Gold Infantry crossed rifles. Gold U.S.’s.”

  “So when are you going to question him?”

  “When are we going to question him, you mean. Today. After lunch, if that’s good with your schedule.”

  “I already talked to him once, Frank. Maybe you ought to take a stab at it alone.”

  “I want you there, Kara. He came to you in the first place. You established a rapport.”

  “Okay, I’ll meet you.”

  “He’s over in the 2nd of the 29th. You know where it is?”

  Kara took a deep breath. Mace’s unit. She exhaled. “I’ll find it.”

  “We’re going to get the guy who killed Sheila, Kara. This is the Army. He can’t run and he can’t hide, and we’ll track him down and nail his ass.”

  Kara was walking toward the door. She didn’t turn around. “Yeah, we sure will, Frank. See you later.”

  She parked the Cherokee in a dirt lot next to the 2nd Battalion headquarters building. Hollaway was standing two cars down, waiting for her.

  “Hey, Frank. Ready?”

  “Sure.”

  They started walking toward the mess hall, a wood-frame building across the street from the headquarters.

  “Parks know we’re coming?” asked Kara.

  “I called him this morning. He’s meeting us in the mess hall.”

  “Did you tell him we’re considering him a suspect?”

  “Not yet. We don’t have a probable cause to conduct a search of his personal effects. All we’ve got is his name on the N.S. Meyer list.”

  “Yeah, and he already came to my house volunteering to help out, Frank. He’s not exactly stinking to high heaven.”

  “He could have been trying to throw you off his scent by appearing to be cooperative.”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  Hollaway opened the mess hall door. It was an enormous room with a serving line that separated the kitchen area from the tables. A huge coffee urn dominated the center of the room. The only concession to modernity was a salad bar that had been set up along the far wall. Lieutenant Parks was in the kitchen talking to two of the cooks. His face paled when he saw them.

  “Major Guidry. I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “I’ve been assigned to the investigation, Lieutenant Parks. This is Major Frank Hollaway.”

  Parks led them to a table in the corner. Hollaway sat down and opened his briefcase. He took out a yellow legal pad and a pen. He pointed at Kara. “Major Guidry is the JAG officer on the investigation of Lieutenant Worthy’s murder. I handle the police duties. We have some questions for you.”

  Parks swallowed nervously. “Yes, sir.”

  Hollaway leaned back in his chair. “We’re trying to put together an idea of how Sheila led her life. We’re talking to everyone who knew her, Lieutenant Parks.”

  Kara watched Parks closely. His accent came from somewhere in the Midwest. Wisconsin, she guessed. He looked like an athlete. His whole life was ahead of him. Sheila’s death had been the first bump on his road.

  Hollaway made a note. “You attended Beloit, up in Wisconsin, didn’t you, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You told me you dated Lieutenant Worthy in college,” said Kara. It was always best to go over material you already had the answers to, see if he started trying to hide things right off the bat.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Did you date her steadily?”

  Parks paused for a moment before he answered. “We were pretty serious there for a while.”

  “What happened?”

  “You go your separate ways when you graduate, ma’am. I guess that’s what happened to us.”

  Kara leaned forward and got his attention. “You told me you had talked about marriage, Lieutenant. That’s the kind of detail we’re looking for here. You might say something you think is insignificant, but it might turn out otherwise.”

  Parks’ voice was flat. “Oh. I see what you mean.”

  “We were talking about your relationship in college.”

  “We thought about getting married, but we knew we’d both have to go off to our basic courses first, so we decided to wait.”

  Hollaway made another note. “Did you stay in touch? When you went off to your separate assignments, I mean.”

  “Yes, sir. On the internet. We e-mailed each other.”

  Kara asked: “Were you both dating other people during that time?”

  He looked down at his hands. “I was. I don’t know about Sheila. We never talked about it.”

  “Did you start dating Lieutenant Worthy soon after you both ended up at Benning?” asked Hollaway.

  “Not right away.”

  Hollaway was scribbling on the yellow legal pad. He glanced at Kara, nodded, letting her know to take the lead.

  “Why was that, Lieutenant Parks?”

  “I knew she was seeing someone else.”

  �
��I thought you said you hadn’t talked about dating other people.”

  “We didn’t, ma’am. But I could tell.”

  “How was that?”

  “Lots of things.”

  “Like what, Lieutenant? If she was dating other people, that might be important.”

  “I used to call her at night, and somebody was always clicking in on her call waiting.”

  “That could have been a friend. Or friends.”

  “She always took the other call. If it was just one of her friends, she would have stayed on the line with me some of the time, anyway.”

  “I see.”

  Hollaway looked up from the yellow pad. “Do you know who else she was seeing, Lieutenant Parks?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “It wasn’t like that. She had her life. I had mine.”

  “But she was definitely seeing other men,” said Kara.

  “I think she was seeing only one man.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I knew her for a long time, ma’am.”

  Hollaway pushed his chair back. “I think I’ll have a cup of coffee.” He walked over to the urn and filled a cup. Parks was watching him. Standing at the coffee urn, Hollaway asked: “You and Lieutenant Worthy dated here at Fort Benning, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How many times?”

  “I don’t know, sir. A bunch.”

  “Ten? Twenty?”

  “We were seeing each other once or twice a week.”

  Kara watched him closely. “Were you intimate?”

  His face darkened. “This is getting pretty personal, ma’am.”

  “Murder is a very personal business, Lieutenant.” She glanced at her notes. “Where were you when you learned that Lieutenant Worthy had been killed, Lieutenant?”

  “It was the next day. I heard at work, ma’am.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “One of the men came back from sick call. He said everybody at the hospital was talking about it.”

  Kara watched him closely. “You told me you asked her out the night she died, but she had another date. Did you end up going to the club alone that night?”

  “No, ma’am. I went home.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Off post. I’ve got an apartment over in a new complex out on Magnolia.”

  “Can anyone vouch for you being there?”

  “I live alone, ma’am.” He paused for a moment, looking down at his hands. “I want to understand something here. Am I a suspect?”

  “Not at the present time, Lieutenant.”

  “ ‘Not at the present time’? Then there’s a chance I could be a suspect?”

  Hollaway stepped in. “Anybody on this post could be a suspect, Lieutenant. That’s the way you go about a murder investigation. When you start you don’t rule anybody out.”

  “Do I need a lawyer? Is it like that?”

  “We’d tell you if you were a target of the investigation, and you would be advised to get a lawyer immediately. We’re way short of that stage with you, or anybody else for that matter.”

  Parks’ eyes were flinty. “I don’t think I should answer any more questions.”

  “We can compel you to answer, Lieutenant Parks,” said Kara.

  “Then maybe you’d better go ahead and do that, Major Guidry.”

  Hollaway stepped in. “That’s all we have for now, Lieutenant.”

  Kara stood. “You’re acting like you’ve got something to hide, Lieutenant.”

  Parks’ face was a blank mask. “I don’t have anything to hide.”

  Hollaway touched her arm, and they walked away. Outside, Hollaway stopped to tie his shoe. “Well? What did you think?”

  “I think killing is his job, and he has no alibi.”

  “That could describe three-quarters of the men on this post,” said Hollaway.

  “You’re right about that.”

  “So do you think he did it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I was a little rough on him. Maybe I scared him off.”

  “And maybe he does have something to hide.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The thing about having a friend like Lannie Fulton Love was talk.

  Talk, talk, talk. All you did was talk. It had been better when Lannie was up at the Pentagon. You could chat endlessly on the internet via e-mail: messages left, messages received, hours spent at the keyboard doodling into the ether. The great thing was, you could pick up your e-mail when you wanted, and reply at your leisure. But now she was right next door, and the phone rang constantly. The phone was ringing right now, in fact. She picked up.

  “Hi, Lannie.”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Who else calls at nine o’clock at night?”

  “Are you still up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m coming over. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. Where are you?”

  “I’m making that turn, you know, by the Seven-11.”

  “The Quik Stop.”

  “That’s the one. Be there in a minute. Bye.”

  Kara hung up. Peesh the cat jumped from the top of the sofa to her shoulder and purred in her ear. “What do you think this crazy girl is up to now, Peesh? You’re a woman. You must have an idea.” Peesh wrapped herself around Kara’s neck and rode up there as she walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine. Out the window, headlights appeared on the drive. She heard Lannie gun the engine and shut it off. Her car door slammed. She ran up the stairs and pressed her face and fingers to the window next to the front door. Kara laughed. She looked like a Cabbage Patch doll. She opened the front door, and Lannie breezed in carrying a paper bag, heading for the kitchen. She opened the bag and pulled out a bottle of Dom Perignon.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “No occasion. I just felt like splurging.”

  “On captain’s pay?”

  “Hey, a girl’s got to let it loose every once in a while, don’t you think?” She unwrapped the foil and untwisted the wire holding the cork in place. Holding the cork with a kitchen towel, she turned the bottle slowly until the cork slipped out of the narrow neck with a soft hiss.

  “You look like you’ve done that before.”

  Lannie grinned. “Once or twice. You want a glass?”

  “Sure.” Kara got two champagne glasses from the cupboard, and Lannie filled them with the bubbly wine. They each took a sip and Lannie licked her lips. “Just goes to prove, you get what you pay for.”

  “So what’s new in your life in the last six hours?”

  “Six hours?”

  “We talked at fifteen hundred, remember?”

  “I’ve been getting ready for the AUSA convention in Washington. The base closure commission is having a hearing up there on the Thursday the convention starts. Every three-star and four-star in the Army’s going to be there. Very astute of them. Putting us on the spot in front of the brass.”

  “Who’s giving the testimony?”

  “The General. I’m spending all my time getting his briefing ready.”

  “You had better make it good.”

  “Don’t I know it? This feels like finals at Woo Poo. I’m telling you.” She drained her glass and refilled it. “You going to the AUSA convention?”

  “Yeah, I guess I’ll show my face. I want to see what the new model Apache looks like. They’re supposed to have a mock-up of the cockpit on display.”

  “You’ll probably run into some of your pals from Aviation there.”

  “I’m sure I will.”

  “What’d they used to call their cockpit seats?”

  “Studbuckets.”

  “Assholes.”

  “You’re telling me?”

  “You’re well out of that mess of hormonally impaired gorillas.”

  “I was good at what I did, Lannie. My scores were in the top five percent of the entire branch.�
��

  “Yeah, I remember. They spend all that money training you and then just blow it off. It’s a crime. What they’re doing to women in the Army is giving lip service a bad name.”

  Kara laughed out loud. “I couldn’t put it better if I tried!”

  Lannie was giggling into her glass. She slugged back the rest of her champagne and reached for the bottle. “You want some more?”

  “Sure.”

  Lannie refilled their glasses. One of the cats walked along the counter, and she gave its neck a rough rubbing. “Which one is this?”

  “Wally. He’s the prince of the family.”

  “And the other one is his monarch?”

  “King Weird. Last of the Galahads.”

  “He’s the cat you found when you were living on that river during law school, right?”

  “It was more of a creek, but they called it the Gap River. Yeah. He was about four inches long and wet and scared, and I took him inside and dried him off with a towel and gave him some milk, and he curled right up in my lap and went to sleep. It was love at first sight. Did that ever happen to you?”

  “Yes. This year.”

  “So you do have a guy. Tell me about him. How’d you meet him?”

  “You’re not going to believe this. E-mail.”

  “Come on. That doesn’t happen.”

  “It did this time. I answered a post on a bulletin board. He e-mailed me back. This was, like six months ago. We got to know each other; he was in Atlanta, I was in Washington. Then I moved down here, and so I e-mailed him I was coming, and we made a date to hook up one night, and I was real nervous, ‘cause he could have turned out to be a real dog, but I walked in this club up in Atlanta, and he was at the bar, and Kara, this guy is gorgeous. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “So you’re still seeing him.”

  “He’s right at the top of my list.”

  “You’ve got to introduce me to him. If he’s as gorgeous as you say, I’ve got to meet him.”

  Suddenly Lannie’s face fell. “Yeah. Right. Problem is, he travels all the time on business, and I’m going to be pretty busy until the AUSA convention is over. The General is taking this whole thing real seriously. He and the missus are giving a big party. I’ve got my hands full, between the base closure commission hearing and the party and all the rest of it . . .”