Blame the Dead

by Ed Ruggero

  “And that colonel was the hospital commander,” one of the women said. “Boone. Colonel Walter Boone.”

  “And that first sergeant is Drake?”

  “Irwin Drake.”

  “How about that nurse, the captain? She came up with the colonel.”

  Two of the women exchanged glances but said nothing.

  “You do know who I’m talking about, right?”

  Finally, one of them spoke up. “Captain Palmer. Phyllis Palmer. She’s the head nurse.”

  Harkins wrote the names in his pocket notebook as the nurses gave him a rundown of the morning. The sirens went off while it was still totally dark. Anyone not on duty headed for the slit-trench shelters; doctors, nurses, and orderlies in the recovery wards stayed with their patients and surgery continued in blacked-out tents. There was an antiaircraft unit, four trucks with quad fifty machine guns, on a small hilltop beside the hospital compound. It would have been impossible to hear anything while those were firing, and none of these women had noticed Stephenson until the all clear sounded.

  Harkins was still listening and writing when a jeep pulled up with a captain in the passenger seat—a deputy provost, Harkins hoped—and a private in the back. Time to turn this over to someone else and get some sleep. Harkins thanked the nurses and said someone would get back to them with more questions.

  The captain climbed out of the vehicle, waved his hand in front of his face in an effort to clear the dust. He didn’t approach Harkins or the body, so Harkins walked toward him. Stuck his notebook in the pocket of his shirt, which was salt-stained, sweat-soaked, and already sticking to him. Ninety degrees at seven in the morning. Fucking August in Sicily. Harkins had been perpetually sunburned in North Africa, where he’d landed back in November as part of Operation Torch, the first big American offensive of the war in Europe. He’d probably stay lobster red until he left this island, too.

  “Morning, sir. I’m Lieutenant Harkins.”

  “Captain Adams, deputy provost.”

  Adams held an army-issue canvas briefcase in front of him. His face was shiny with sweat, his collar and shirtfront dark. On his left collar point was the insignia of the Judge Advocate General Corps.

  “You asked for a photographer, right?” Adams said, punching back the round spectacles that were sliding down his nose.

  The man who climbed out of the jeep wore a private’s single stripe but looked like he was forty. He had a camera with a flash attachment on a strap around his neck, a cigarette stuck to his lip.

  “You a real photographer or an army photographer?” Harkins asked.

  “Ten years shooting Chicago crime scenes,” the private said, eyes scanning past Harkins to the body beyond. “I guess I know what to do.”

  “Make sure you get some ground-level shots, OK?”

  “Ain’t my first rodeo, Lieutenant.”

  “All right, then.”

  Harkins turned and walked toward the body, Adams falling in beside him, holding his canvas bag even tighter.

  “Captain Meyers Stephenson. Surgeon. Single gunshot to the head, a forty-five, I think. Probably as he was running toward the shelter during the air raid this morning. All that noise.” Harkins pointed at the antiaircraft battery. “I haven’t found anyone who saw or heard anything.”

  Harkins knelt beside the draped corpse to remove the blanket for the photographer, and then realized Adams wasn’t with him. The captain had stopped several paces away, looking sick.

  “You OK, Captain?” Harkins asked.

  “I … uh … I’ve never been to a crime scene.”

  “Oh,” Harkins said. He lifted the blanket, used it to fan away gathering flies. They buzzed around his face instead, droning like little fighter planes.

  “He’s gonna get ripe fast in this heat,” the photographer said as he started shooting.

  “You a criminal lawyer, sir?” Harkins asked.

  Adams had a tight grip on the satchel, like he was trying to wring water from it. He removed his helmet. A few thin strands of hair stuck to his sweaty scalp, which he wiped with his shirtsleeve. Some flies attacked, and Adams waved one arm, to no effect.

  “What? Uh, no. I was writing contracts for the War Department in Washington when this chance to come overseas opened up.”

  “You volunteered to ship out?”

  Adams, who had been staring wide-eyed at the body, now looked at Harkins, tried a weak smile. “I didn’t want to have to tell my grandchildren that throughout the whole of the great World War Two I lived in Maryland, where I was wounded once by a stuck typewriter key.”

  “OK, then,” Harkins said, nodding. “Let me show you what we have. Can you come a little closer, sir?”

  Adams took two short steps toward the body. Harkins used his pencil to point to the entrance wound. Adams nodded, his lips pressed together.

  “Come around this side,” Harkins said, directing Adams so that he could see the top of Stephenson’s head. “Exit wound.”

  “Is that…?”

  “Skull fragments,” Harkins said.

  Adams brought his canvas bag to his mouth and turned away. He made it to a drainage ditch behind the hospital tent before losing his breakfast.

  Harkins stood and got out of the way of the photographer, who was unfazed by the scene. Then he followed the captain.

  “You all right, sir?”

  Adams nodded yes, then leaned over again, choking up a bit more.

  Harkins rubbed his eyes, which felt like they had sand beneath the lids. The photographer was shaking his head, probably thinking what Harkins was thinking. No way Captain Adams was going to take over the investigation this morning.

  “Are you the provost marshal?”

  It was Drake, the hospital first sergeant. When he walked up to Adams, the lawyer wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Drake did not salute.

  “Captain Theodore Adams, Sergeant. Deputy provost.”

  “That’s first sergeant, Captain,” Drake said.

  Harkins had made this mistake before. It took a long time and a lot of work to become a first sergeant, and the job came with massive responsibility. Drake was the top noncommissioned officer in the unit and oversaw the daily operation of the hospital outside of the actual medical work: everything from who set up the tents and where to who pulled guard duty. He had to look out for two hundred enlisted men and thirty-plus officers, all so that the medicos could concentrate on saving lives. First sergeants deserved to be called by their full title. Still, Harkins thought, Drake didn’t have to be such a gold-plated ass about everything.

  “Right,” Adams said, intimidated. “First Sergeant.”

  “You going to take over this investigation from our patrolman friend here?” Drake asked, tilting his head toward Harkins.

  “I’ll initiate the paperwork, yes.”

  “Can we move the body now?”

  Harkins looked at the photographer, who gave him a thumbs-up. He had the shots. Harkins met Adams’s eyes and nodded.

  “Yes, ah, First Sergeant,” Adams said. “We can move the body now.”

  “You got a stomach bug?” Drake asked.

  “No, I … I’ve never seen a murder victim before.”

  Drake looked at Harkins, who could almost read the older man’s mind. Fucking amateurs.

  “Well, Captain, you’re going to need a little more grit than that to hunt down a murderer.”

  Drake motioned Adams closer to the body, then put his arm around the man to keep Adams from turning away. The first sergeant was either teaching him or messing with him. Harkins thought it a toss-up.

  “Entrance wound at left occipital bone. Exit at the frontal bone, of course, forward of the coronal structure, I’d say. Left cerebral hemisphere destroyed pretty completely.”

  As Drake talked and pointed, the flies came back, and that was all Adams could take. He stumbled back to the drainage ditch.

  Harkins stepped beside Drake, who said, “So far, looks like neither you or the deput
y provost are up to the task.”

  Harkins looked around. The orderlies Drake had brought along were not close enough to overhear.

  “You don’t seem all that upset by what happened here this morning, First Sergeant.”

  Drake looked at Harkins for a long few seconds, looking sad, maybe a tiny bit amused. “Are you that much of a dumbass, Lieutenant? You think the first person you talk to is going to, what? Confess?”

  Harkins, who’d been hoping exactly that, didn’t answer.

  “Now, shall we do what the colonel wanted and get this body out of here?” Drake said.

  “Sure.”

  When Drake walked away, Harkins motioned to the orderlies. “You got a morgue, right?”

  One of the men spat a stream of tobacco juice into the dust. “Yeah, but they won’t keep him long. In this heat he’ll be cooked like a Coney Island dog in two hours. Got a temporary cemetery about a half mile from here.”

  They unfolded the stretcher, then covered Captain Stephenson with the blanket, gently tucking it in along the sides as if to make him comfortable. When they lifted him, Harkins—acting more out of habit than faith—crossed himself.

  * * *

  He found Adams sitting on a supply crate around the corner of the big tent.

  “Well, I made an ass of myself, I guess,” Adams said.

  “Lots of people lose it at their first crime scene.”

  “Yeah, but I gave our friend the chance to show he’s boss, right?”

  “I’m pretty sure he never doubted that he’s the boss,” Harkins said. The adrenaline rush was fading. He wanted to check on Thomas, then get back to his tent and close his eyes.

  Adams stood. “What now?” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to start the paperwork saying that there’s been a murder here,” Adams said. “How are you going to proceed?”

  “I’m proceeding back to my bivouac,” Harkins said. “I’m not an investigator. That’s your job.”

  “I’m not a detective.”

  “Neither am I. I was a beat cop. You need somebody popped in the head with a nightstick, I’m your guy. But this is serious stuff. Aren’t there any detectives or former detectives with the provost marshal?”

  “We’re stretched thin,” Adams said. “This one belongs to you and me.”

  “Captain, I’ve been on duty for twenty-four—” Harkins looked at his watch. “Make that twenty-six hours. My driver dropped over with a fever. We were headed back to link up with the rest of my platoon and get some sleep when we got flagged down. Hell, we just happened to be driving by.”

  “Good thing,” Adams said. When Harkins didn’t respond, he added, “Well, good thing for me, I guess. Not so great for you.”

  Harkins pressed the heels of his hands to his eye sockets. He wanted to look up and see a potbellied Philadelphia detective, somebody with a bourbon habit and thirty years’ experience. But there was just Adams, with his crumpled briefcase and a string of vomit on his shirt.

  “Look, I’ve done exactly zero investigations, unless you count contract scams,” Adams said. “You’ve at least got some idea of what to do next, right?”

  “Kill myself.”

  “What?”

  “I said I guess I do, but I’m going to need help. There’s got to be a hundred thousand GIs on this island. Somebody had to have been a detective, or at least a sheriff.”

  “Absolutely,” Adams said. “I’ll start looking right away. In the meantime, we both better get to work.”

  2

  2 August 1943

  0800 hours

  After Adams went back to a desk somewhere, Harkins found Stephenson’s tent and looked through the dead man’s gear. There was a wooden footlocker stenciled STEPHENSON, MEYERS, CAPTAIN, USA MC.

  Harkins used the ax from his jeep’s pioneer kit to break the lock. Inside the chest he found some toiletries, two of the new paperback books—mysteries, by the look of them—that were available to every GI, some clean and some dirty clothes, a half-dozen medical journals, seventy-two dollars in cash, a half-empty bottle of Tennessee whiskey, and three pairs of women’s panties, different sizes, none of them especially clean. Under the panties Harkins found three dozen condoms, which seemed like a lot for a guy who had a full-time job. No personal letters or even letter-writing materials. There was a pistol belt with a canteen and an empty holster hanging from the central tent pole. The weapon was probably stored with the supply sergeant, since doctors did not routinely carry sidearms.

  He looked around the tent, which Stephenson had to himself, though there were two unused cots. He walked outside along a line of five other pyramidal sleeping tents, poked his head in one or two whose inhabitants were elsewhere. Looked like Stephenson was the only doctor who lived alone.

  Next Harkins headed for the mess tent, where he found three nurses sitting by themselves, heads close together, whispering. The sidewalls of the tent were rolled up to let the air flow through, but the sun beating on the roof drove the temperature up. Two GIs in stained and sweaty T-shirts hovered over a grill, serving late breakfast to people coming off shift. The place smelled like bacon and burned canvas.

  “Mind if I sit down, ask you a few questions?”

  A first lieutenant with tight, dark curls said, “You doing the investigation?”

  “For now,” Harkins said, dropping onto a bench at the rough lumber table. There was one dirty mess kit in front of the three women, three cups of coffee, and the bottom of a shell casing, sawed off for an ashtray and filled with butts.

  “Name’s Harkins. Eddie Harkins.”

  “I’m Felton,” the first lieutenant said. “This here’s Savio. And Melbourne.”

  Felton held a cigarette between long fingers; the nails on one hand were ringed with a crust of something dark. Dried blood, maybe. The other women were both second lieutenants, one grade below Harkins and Felton. Savio had black hair and almond eyes and could pass for a local in Sicily. She was smoking and fidgeting with a lighter, flipping it open and lighting it; flipping it closed. Her fingernails were chewed to the quick. Melbourne had big shoulders, an athlete; straight hair pulled in a tight bun and a small gap in her front teeth. Even sitting down, she looked tall.

  “You a detective?” Melbourne asked. “I mean in real life.”

  “No. I was a beat cop in Philadelphia.”

  “The army doesn’t draft detectives?”

  “None of the ones I knew,” Harkins said. “And I wasn’t drafted.”

  “Great,” Melbourne said. “So we’re all volunteers. Patriots.”

  Harkins wasn’t sure he had the patience this morning for a hostile interview. Maybe Melbourne was as tired as he was. Maybe she’d been a friend of the victim.

  “What can you tell me about Captain Stephenson?” Harkins asked.

  The three women exchanged looks with each other, said nothing.

  “I went to Stephenson’s tent,” Harkins tried. “Looks like he lived alone. Was the only doc who lived alone. That seemed kind of odd.”

  “He was one of those guys people either liked or hated as soon as you met him,” Felton, the senior nurse, said. “Some of the docs liked him, I guess, or at least thought he was fun to be around. Though apparently not enough to share a tent with him.”

  “Any idea why?”

  Nothing.

  Harkins’ head swam like he’d just been tagged with a good jab. He wished he’d had a few hours’ sleep, even an hour. He wished he’d paid more attention to how detectives back home conducted interviews.

  Just behind the nurses and under the rim of the tent, he saw the legs of a stretcher detail, four men carrying a body wound head to toe in a dirty sheet. A pair of filthy boots, possibly the dead man’s, stood at the foot of the stretcher.

  “Any idea who might want Stephenson dead?”

  “I don’t know about dead,” Felton said. “But he was a train wreck, a disaster. A lot of people who wanted him gone. Transferred
out of the hospital.”

  “Why?”

  “Last week a nurse passed out drunk in his tent—this is down near Gela. She choked on her own vomit.”

  “She make it?”

  “No.”

  “Was it Stephenson’s fault?”

  Felton let blue smoke drift from her mouth, picked a speck of tobacco from her bottom lip with thumb and forefinger. Harkins waited.

  “Who knows?” Felton said. “He said he’d left the tent before it happened, and somebody found him passed out in the latrine the next morning, so he left her at some point. But it could have been after.”

  “Stephenson gave liquor or tried to give liquor to lots of nurses,” Melbourne said. “Whitman accepted. One time.”

  “How do you know it was only one time?”

  “She was like most of us. Tried to avoid Stephenson mostly.”

  Felton said, “Whitman was a little bit lost, I think.”

  Savio spoke up for the first time. “I’m not sure it’s going to be worth getting in hot water with Palmer,” she said to the other two women, her eyes on the table.

  Harkins flipped a page in his notebook. “Is that Captain Palmer, the head nurse?”

  “Yeah,” Felton said.

  Felton watched the smoke curl from the end of her cigarette. Melbourne, her hands clenched like she was about to hit someone, watched Harkins. When a cook dropped a metal tray, Savio jumped, fumbling her lighter.

  “Are other people in danger?” Harkins asked.

  “I don’t think anybody anticipated this,” Felton said. “Murder. I mean, Jesus.”

  Harkins said, “Has there been other violence?”

  “Depends,” Melbourne said. “You consider it violent when a man shoves you up against a cabinet or a table and grabs your tits, grabs your ass? Tries to kiss you on the fucking mouth?”

  Harkins hadn’t expected the women to talk like every other GI he’d met in nineteen months in the army. He looked down at his notes. “That stuff goes on here?”

  “Every goddamned day,” Felton said. She glanced at Savio, who was petite and looked twenty, tops. “To some more than others.”