Heart of War

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “I’ll drink to that,” said Kara. “So. You’re closer to your guy in Atlanta up here too. Must be nice.”

  Lannie didn’t miss a beat. “You noticed, huh? Atlanta’s only a few miles up the road.”

  They pulled up stools and sat at a counter separating the kitchen from the living room.

  It’s now or never, she thought.

  “Lannie, there isn’t any guy in Atlanta you met on the internet.”

  Lannie feigned surprise. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about General Beckwith.”

  Lannie relaxed with a little smile. “I see you figured out my little secret.”

  Kara was grim-faced. “Yes, I did.”

  “Neat, huh?” Lannie swilled down the last of her glass excitedly and poured another. “Oh, Kara, he is the most sexy man I have ever been with!”

  Kara took a sip of wine. This was going to be even harder than she thought.

  “You don’t seem very excited for me, girlfriend,” said Lannie, picking up on Kara’s mood.

  “I’m not.”

  “Oh, what are you going to say now? He’s married, and I shouldn’t be going out with a married man? Even you must have made a pass or two at a married guy over the years. Everybody does it, Kara.”

  “Yeah, everyone ends up going out with a married man at least once in her life. But not everybody falls for a liar and a murderer.”

  Lannie sat there for a moment, staring into her wineglass with a hurt look. “What are you talking about?”

  Kara leaned closer to her friend. “Beckwith killed Sheila Worthy, Lannie. I can prove it.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  Kara sat silently for a moment. “Lannie, I know this is hard for you, but you’ve got to hear me out.”

  Lannie stood up, her back to Kara. “Hard for me? My best friend walks into my apartment and tells me the man I love is a murderer, and it’s hard for me?” She turned around. Her eyes had filled with tears. “I knew you could be jealous, Kara. I’ve heard you talking about some of the other women we’ve known. We even made a joke out of it, remember? I used to call you Miss Green Gills, when you went off on somebody who had lucked into meeting a gorgeous guy.”

  “Lannie, if there’s one thing I do not feel at this moment, it’s jealousy. I’m worried about your safety. I came here to warn you—”

  Lannie held up a hand, stopping her. “Warn me? All you’re doing is hurting me.”

  “I’m not trying to. I’m trying to tell you what I know so you won’t end up getting hurt. Or worse.”

  Lannie took a couple of steps away from the counter and turned. “How can you do this to me? I thought we were friends.”

  “We are friends. That’s why I came here.”

  “You can’t be serious, Kara. Is this some kind of sick joke you’re playing? If it is, it isn’t funny.”

  “I came here as a friend, Lannie. He killed Sheila Worthy, and he probably killed another girl out at Fort Polk five years ago. I don’t want you to be next.”

  “This is incredible! I don’t believe what I’m hearing!”

  “Lannie, he was having an affair with Sheila Worthy. His wife told me he had a date to meet her out by the firing range the night she died, and even he admitted it to me later. Both of them claim he was home at the time Sheila was killed, but I think she’s lying to protect him.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You have got to believe me, Lannie.”

  “What did you think I’d say? Did you think you’d shock me, and I would throw a jealous fit and tell him to go to hell? I love him, Kara. I love him like I’ve never loved anybody in my entire life.”

  Kara stared into her glass of wine. “I knew this was going to be difficult when I got in the car to drive out here, but we’ve been friends a long time, Lannie, and I don’t want anything to happen to you. I’m sitting here, as your friend, and I’m telling you that this man you’ve fallen for is a killer. If I didn’t know what I know about him right now, I’d say, hey, more power to you. Go for it. But it’s not like that. He’s a very dangerous man, Lannie, and I don’t want you to end up dead like Sheila Worthy.”

  Lannie picked up her glass and drained it. “Bill Beckwith is the most honest, open human being I have ever met. I cannot believe that you think he killed that girl. I cannot believe it! I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Kara, but you have come into my house and you have hurt me very, very deeply. I don’t know what I ever did to you to deserve this kind of betrayal. What have I ever done to make you act like this?”

  Kara hung her head. “Nothing, Lannie.”

  “I know. I’ve never done anything to you. That’s why I’m going to ask you to leave, please. Now.”

  Kara stood up. “Lannie, I—”

  Lannie pointed at the door. “Please. Spare me. I’ve heard enough for one night.”

  Kara grabbed her purse and walked to the door. She hesitated for a moment, then she heard Lannie sob behind her and walked out. It was one of the most difficult things she had ever done in her life. Now it was over, and she felt empty, expunged of emotion, limp with sadness. As she got into the Cherokee, she saw a light blink on in what was probably the master bedroom. Kara knew she wanted to call Beckwith, but Lannie faced the lonely reality of every woman who loves a married man. She couldn’t call him at night, because he was at home with his wife, and no matter what happened, you did not violate the sanctity of the married man’s home. But she faced something else too, something not faced by any of the other fools who played by an adulterer’s rules.

  Danger.

  Kara put the Cherokee in gear and drove away. For a moment there, she had wondered if Lannie wasn’t at least just a little right when she accused her of being jealous. She thought back to when she was a cadet and he was a major, and the night they stole that was filled with their passion. It seemed so long ago. Had a youthful indiscretion turned into an adult obsession? Mace certainly thought so. Now she had opened herself up to Lannie, and she probably did too. But she knew she wasn’t dealing with a memory. She was dealing with a killer.

  She turned onto the highway and headed south. The next few days would be crucial. If she could come up with the girl from Fort Polk, the pieces of the puzzle would start to come together, and the picture they would form would be that of a handsome, cunning murderer wearing general’s stars. She could push the case forward and get him charged and remove him from Lannie’s, and the Army’s, life forever.

  There was an old Volkswagen GTI parked in front of her house when she drove up. Frank Hollaway was standing on the front porch.

  “I’ve got something for you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper and handed it to her.

  “What’s this?”

  “An address for the girl from Polk, Patti O’Brien. It’s in Chicago.”

  Kara studied the page. “I know right where this is. It’s on the near North Side, just off Lakeside Drive. How’d you get it?”

  “I ran a check through Finance and this popped up. Seems she had some leave time coming when she got out.”

  “They usually count up your days and pay you in cash when you’re going through out-processing.”

  “Not when it’s a Sunday, they don’t.”

  “She processed out on a Sunday?”

  “Yep. Finance at Polk wasn’t open except for a duty NCO, and they don’t give the duty NCO the keys to the cash cage, so she had to leave a forwarding address.”

  “Bingo!”

  “Are you going to call her?”

  “I’ll try in the morning. No phone number?”

  “Nope. Just the address.”

  “Well, this is a big help. Thanks, Frank.”

  “Anytime.”

  “You want to come in for a cup of coffee?”

  “I’m bushed. I’ll talk to you tomorrow at the office.”

  “Okay. Thanks again, Frank.”

 
; “No problem.” He got into his car and headed down the drive.

  Inside, she took off her overcoat and was hanging it up when she saw the red light blinking on her answering machine. She pressed Play.

  “Uh, uh, I was just calling to, uh, tell you I hope there are no hard feelings. I guess I was a little rough on you that night in New Orleans. I’m sorry. I hope everything’s okay with you. Bye.”

  She played the message over again, listening for some kind of signal in his voice, a tone that would let her know what he was thinking, if he still loved her. He sounded hesitant, nervous, like he’d been thinking about making the call all day and was glad when it turned out he got her machine.

  At least it was something.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  There wasn’t enough time to meet at the condo, so they settled on a motel they had used before out on old U.S. 80, across the river and west of Phenix City. It was one of those places the interstates had passed by, and so apparently had everyone else, because the parking lot was empty when Lannie pulled in just before noon. She looked around for his car but didn’t see it. She gave the desk guy the phony name they used, and he gave her a key to a room on the back side of the motel. She unlocked the door and found him waiting inside.

  “Where’s your car?” she asked, removing her cap.

  “I’m not going to park outside this dump in broad daylight. It’s down the street.” He pulled her toward him, and they kissed. “Where have you been? You told me you’d be here by noon.”

  “It is noon, Bill.”

  Nervously he checked his watch. “What’s this about, anyway? I don’t like being yanked off post in the middle of the day. I had to cancel a lunch with the mayor of Columbus.”

  “I had to see you. Kara Guidry came to see me last night.”

  “She told you I was seeing Sheila Worthy, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “If she keeps up with this kind of slander, I’ll bring charges against her. I’ll put her behind bars.”

  “You don’t have to worry about her, Bill. She’s just a jealous, angry woman.”

  Beckwith stood up, his face suddenly red. “She’s going to take her goddamn lies to Bernie King, and he’ll put rumors out all over Washington, and if that happens, it’s all over. Everything that we’ve worked for will go down in flames.”

  “You don’t have anything to worry about, darling. You’re twice the man King is. He’s a loser, Bill, and you’re a winner. Did you hear about Senator Maldray’s speech? That put King in his place.”

  A lean, satisfied smile crossed Beckwith’s face, and some of the color drained from his cheeks. She sat down and he stroked her hair. “I should have brought you on board a long time ago.”

  “What have I always told you, Bill?”

  “If I leave things to you, my worries are over.”

  “Exactly. And aren’t we right on schedule, like I told you we’d be this time last year? Aren’t you one of two generals under final consideration for chief of staff?”

  “I’d rather be one of one.”

  “But then, that wouldn’t be a horse race, would it? That wouldn’t be the United States Army we have come to know and love.” They laughed.

  “That’s the problem with the Army today. Chicken-shit indecisiveness. Nobody will make a damn decision.”

  “But decisions come easily to you, darling. That will be a change for the Army. Finally we’ll have a leader who knows where he wants to take us.” She pulled him close to her, reaching for his belt buckle. It came undone with a soft click.

  He checked his watch. “I’ve got a meeting at 1330.”

  “That gives us fifteen minutes. I love pressure, don’t you, darling? It’s so sexy.” She unzipped his uniform trousers and stroked him. “You want it, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Slowly she lowered her head, whispering softly: “Tell me what it’s going to be like when you’re chief, darling. Tell me what you’re going to do to them. Tell me again.”

  “Ranstead? I’ve got plans for Ranstead. I’m going to put him on a slow boat for the Solomon Islands. He’s going to find himself watching the sun set over a garrison of fifty men standing guard over an old ammo dump . . . oh . . .”

  Kara called Chicago information and asked for a Patti or Patricia O’Brien, but they had no one listed by either of those names. Hollaway walked in just as she was dialing the Chicago Police Department.

  “I stopped by to tell you I got a report on a sample I sent out to a lab awhile back.” He handed her a manila envelope. “It’s a new thing . . . newish, actually. There’s a guy up at Georgia Tech in the Department of Geology who’s kind of a crime buff, and he has established kind of a database on dirt.”

  “Dirt?”

  “Well, that’s an inelegant shorthand for it. What he does is, you send him a sample and a location, and he analyzes it and gives you a report that amounts to an exclusivity check. Either that, or you can do it the other way around. Send him a sample without a location, and he has a look at it, and he comes back with a report on the likelihood of where it came from.”

  “That sounds wild.”

  “I took a couple of samples from the area where you initially found Sheila’s car and sent them in.”

  She opened the report and started reading.

  “He got a very interesting result. The statistical likelihood that those samples came from anywhere other than the area immediately surrounding the firing range at Fort Benning is practically zero. It’s like that low area over near the river was part of an ocean floor eons ago or something, and there are specific things you find there that make it very, very unique.”

  “That is interesting, Frank. What you mean is, if we were to take soil samples somewhere else, say, from the bottom of somebody’s shoe, and he checked them against the sample you sent him, he could give you a statistical probability on whether or not they came from the same place.”

  “Yeah. He’s testified as a forensics witness in several trials. No acquittals so far.”

  “Can I keep this?”

  “That’s your copy. I’ve got the original in the evidence file. And something else came in. I got the autopsy results on Lieutenant Parks. He was taking an antidepressant. One of those new ones. The level in his blood established that he’d been taking it for some time.”

  “Well, that goes some distance to back up your suicide theory, doesn’t it?”

  “I reported this to Colonel Lambert. She has ordered the postmortem hearing on Parks.”

  “Well, I guess we’d better get to work.”

  “Yeah. I’ll summarize my investigation and get it on your desk in the next couple of days.”

  “Okay, Frank. That’ll be great.”

  She waited until he was out of sight down the hall. Then she closed her office door and picked up the phone and called Detective Brenda Fogel of the Chicago Police Department. They had been classmates at West Point. Brenda had been an MP who resigned after six years and moved back to Chicago and went to work for the Police Department. She had risen to deputy chief of the Homicide squad. Kara asked her to run a check on Patti O’Brien. Fogel said she’s put a squad car on it and get back to her.

  Robbie Beckwith had showered and was in her pajamas by the time the General got home. He clomped in through the kitchen door and started banging around the kitchen, looking for a glass, probably. He still didn’t know where anything was, never had, not in any of the quarters they’d lived in. She put on her robe and went downstairs.

  “Where are the goddamned glasses around here, Robbie?”

  “Where they’ve always been, Bill. Right in front of your face.” She pointed at a cabinet. He got himself a glass and plopped some ice cubes in it and filled it half full of scotch.

  “Bad day at the office?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “I’m getting lots of RSVP’s. It looks like ninety percent of the people we invited are coming.”

  “Maldr
ay?”

  “He’s coming, but his wife is in the Caribbean, so he’ll be stag.”

  “General Carson?”

  “Him too.”

  He walked right past her into the den and sat down heavily in his armchair. He picked up the remote and flipped on CNN. She followed after a measured interval. A few swigs of scotch and a minute or two of news worked miracles on him. She poured herself a glass of wine and straightened the glasses he had shoved aside when he reached into the cabinet. Finally she sat down on the sofa. Her voice was soft, unobtrusive, a little dark, like the lighting in the den.

  “I heard something interesting today.”

  “Really? What?”

  “Dahlia King stage-managed some kind of party for her husband over the Thanksgiving weekend in New Orleans. Very political. The whole Louisiana congressional delegation was there, along with some big-wigs from Texas and Mississippi and Oklahoma and Arkansas.”

  “That’s just politicians cruising for black votes.”

  “That may be true, but their voyage took them to the shores of Bernie King’s empire, and the way I heard it, they were impressed. He gave a speech that brought down the house.”

  “Asshole thinks he’s Jesse fucking Jackson.”

  “We’ve got to pull off something like that at the party, Bill. Public speaking is such an important part of the chief of staff’s job. You’ll have a captive audience. I’ve got just the subject for you. You’ll hit a home run.”

  His eyes brightened. “What are thinking I should talk about?”

  “Army family values.”

  The words hung in the air between them like a puff of smoke from the barrel of a gun.

  “I’m serious. You can talk about the worldwide Army family. You can throw in stuff like ‘brothers in arms.’ You can celebrate the crime-free family environment found on each and every Army post. You can even brag about being ‘married to the Army.’ It’s win-win, Bill. You’ll have them in the aisles, cheering at the top of their lungs. You’ll make mincemeat of King, and the delicious thing is, he’ll have to sit right there and listen to you, and he won’t have a chance to address the same crowd. It will be a knock-out punch. He’ll never recover. Every one of those ‘honorable gentlemen’ will go back to Washington with ‘Army Family Values’ ringing in their ears. ‘Army Family Values’ will be a political gold mine, and who will hold the deed? You will. How will they possibly deny you the chief’s office after we’re finished with them?”