Blame the Dead

by Ed Ruggero

  16

  3 August 1943

  1030 hours

  “You’ve got some other scars here,” the doctor said, pointing with his forceps and curved needle to the three other places on Harkins’ forehead where he’d been stitched in the past.

  “Golden Gloves boxing. Took me a while to learn to block with my arms and hands, not my face.”

  “So you unlearned that lesson today?”

  “Something like that,” Harkins said.

  “I hear you knew Nurse Donnelly before the war.”

  “Yeah, we’re from the same neighborhood, same schools.”

  “I have two medical school classmates here on Sicily. I ran into one of them before we left North Africa. And I have a brother in the Pacific.”

  Harkins studied the doctor. Was it possible he’d heard about Michael, was trying to strike up a conversation?

  “He a doctor, too?”

  “No. He’s a lieutenant in the marines. Wounded on Guadalcanal last fall. Spent two months in navy hospitals in Hawaii. Then they sent him back to the front. Some other island no one has ever heard of before.”

  Harkins paused. Everyone was worried about someone. “Tell me, Doc, were you friends with Captain Stephenson, the guy who was murdered yesterday morning?”

  “Well, I knew him, of course. There are only eighteen doctors here at the hospital when we’re fully staffed.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  The doctor studied Harkins a moment. He was a bit older than the other surgeons, though he only wore captain’s bars. Hair long gone, same exhausted look as everyone else on staff, he’d introduced himself as Doctor Trennely. The nurses called him “Good Guy” Trennely. Harkins figured he kept his hands to himself.

  “Let’s say I did not have a high opinion of him, as a person. As a knife, he was great, the times I worked with him.”

  “Can you elaborate?”

  “Well, if you’re any kind of investigator, and I’m going to assume you are, you’ll already have found out that Stephenson was always on the prowl, always looking to shack up with some nurse. I mean, some of them are flirts; I guess they like the give and take. I don’t know. But he wasn’t kind to the women, as far as I could see.

  “I also heard that he tried scrubbing in once when he was drunk,” Trennely said. “As you can imagine, we’re very touchy about our professional standards as doctors, as surgeons. I didn’t see this, mind you, I heard about it later. But that would have been a serious infraction.”

  “Grab-ass was acceptable, though? Professionally, I mean.”

  Trennely paused, made eye contact, didn’t say anything.

  “He ever lose a patient, maybe made a mistake, and someone wanted revenge?” Harkins asked.

  “No. I don’t know. I mean, I wouldn’t have any way of knowing that.”

  “He cheat at cards?”

  Trennely looked surprised at the question. “What?”

  “Forgive me, Doc, but the guy was a major-league horse’s ass. Guys like that tend to have other problems, too.”

  “I don’t play cards with the other surgeons.”

  “Why not?”

  Trennely looked at him and smiled. “I just never learned. Always a bit embarrassed about it, to tell you the truth.”

  “Was Stephenson the only doc bothering the nurses?”

  “I think it’s safe to say he was the worst offender.”

  “But there were others.”

  Trennely hesitated, weighing whether he was being a gossip or a helpful witness. “Wilkins.”

  Harkins wrote the name in his book. “What about Lieutenant Felton? He ever bother her?”

  Trennely laughed, yanked hard on the suture. Harkins flinched, figured the doc mostly worked on people who were under anesthesia.

  “She didn’t take any guff from Stephenson, Boone, or anybody else.”

  “That why she got transferred?”

  “No doubt.”

  He finished his work, tied off the suture with a couple of quick twists of his fingers and hands, and told Harkins, “Keep that as clean as possible, which I know is kind of a joke out here. If it gets painful, tender, that might mean infection, so make sure you come back.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  Trennely rolled his instruments into a soiled cloth. “You close to catching the guy who did this? Who shot him?”

  “Was it you?”

  Trennely looked panicked for a moment. “No, absolutely not!”

  “Well then, I’ll cross you off the list, and I guess that makes me closer.”

  * * *

  Harkins walked outside, saw a jeep parked next to his own, Colianno talking to someone. As he approached, he saw that it was Captain Adams, the contract lawyer turned deputy provost. Harkins saluted.

  “Lieutenant Harkins,” Adams said. “Based on what Private Colianno has told me, it sounds like you’re making some progress. I’m glad to hear that, and your replacement will be, too.”

  “My replacement?”

  “Investigator. I found a guy in the Seventh Army Headquarters who was with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. I got his boss to assign him to the provost marshal. You’ll be going back to your unit.”

  “No, sir. Tell him thanks, but no thanks. I want to see this through.”

  Adams looked surprised. “You were dead set against being the lead in this. You even made a big deal, said you weren’t qualified.”

  “I was exhausted, talking crazy. I’m on it now, and I don’t want to let up. I can get this done quickly, before your Georgia boy can get his gear packed to get over here.”

  Adams looked perplexed. “I don’t understand.”

  “Look, Captain. I appreciate your trying to help me. But this place is a mess, and I’ve started to make progress. Got some momentum.”

  “On the murder?”

  Being a team player had already burned Harkins once today. Should he trust Adams? The guy was being straight with him, but he was as inexperienced as Harkins when it came to investigations.

  “On the murder and some other things.”

  Adams took off his helmet and glasses, wiped his balding head with a kerchief. Harkins looked into the back of the jeep, where Colianno had stashed an M1 Garand next to the carbine he’d already come up with. The paratrooper was hoarding weapons.

  “It might not be that easy. Colonel Boone called the provost again this morning to complain about you. Says that you’re asking all sorts of inappropriate questions of the nurses, stirring up trouble that has nothing to do with the murder. He says you’re clearly unqualified.”

  “That’s because I rattled his cage.”

  “Meaning what?”

  Harkins looked at Colianno, who sat in the jeep, one hand resting on the steering wheel, listening.

  “Take a walk, Colianno,” he said.

  When Colianno was out of earshot, Harkins faced Adams. “Look, Stephenson raped one of the nurses. He told her, or at least implied, that Boone would never do anything about it because he, Stephenson, had something on Boone.”

  “Jesus. What did Stephenson have on him?”

  “I don’t know, but I intend to find out. The way the doctors chase the nurses, this hospital has been a nightmare place for these women to work. Before my little run-in with the colonel this morning, I thought maybe Boone didn’t know how bad things were.”

  “And now?”

  “Whether he knew or not, I don’t think he’s at all interested in changing the way things are.”

  Adams chewed the inside of his cheek. “What does that have to do with your actual job of finding the murderer?”

  “I think it’s all tied together. If Stephenson really did have something on Boone, and then Stephenson started attacking these women because he thought he had free rein, then maybe Boone decided to get rid of the problem.”

  “So Boone is a suspect?”

  “One of them. Stephenson pissed off a lot of people.”

  Adams put hi
s glasses back on slowly. “You think other women were attacked?”

  “Yes, sir. Maybe not raped, but threatened; they sure didn’t feel safe.”

  “I already told the provost I was replacing you.” Adams drummed his fingers on the hood of the jeep. “But.”

  Harkins waited, then said, “But?”

  “But he left for a big planning meeting in North Africa a couple of hours ago. Big brass talking with the Brits about the next campaign; mainland Italy, I guess. He’ll be gone a day or two. I might be able to stall him, put my Georgia boy on ice for a bit, but you’re going to have to wrap this up fast.”

  “Thanks, Captain.”

  “You won’t be thanking me if we both wind up in hot water.”

  “I’ll get my notes written up and make sure you get a copy,” Harkins said. “But I’m not going to keep Boone briefed.”

  Adams retrieved his canvas briefcase from the front seat of Harkins’ jeep. “You know, I once left a job because my boss patted my wife on the ass as we were walking out the door of a company party. The next day I went into his office and told him that made her uncomfortable and that I wasn’t happy about it either.”

  Harkins tried to picture Adams confronting a boss. Confronting anyone. “What happened?”

  “He told me that women like that kind of attention, that she only complained to me because she didn’t want me to think she was flirting. I told him to go fuck himself. Took me three months to find another job, and I took a pay cut.” Adams looked at Harkins and smiled. “But, damn, that felt good.”

  Harkins smiled. Adams wasn’t so bad.

  “You know,” the lawyer said, “you must be doing a pretty good job.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “’Cause if you were a real screwup, and if Boone didn’t want things to come to light, he’d be fighting to have you stay on the case.”

  17

  3 August 1943

  1330 hours

  After Adams left, Harkins spent an hour typing up his notes in the nurses’ admin tent. The need to concentrate calmed him a little bit.

  “You type really fast,” Colianno said as he came in. He dropped an envelope on the table. Crime scene photos.

  “Took typing in high school.”

  “’Cause you knew it would be useful doing police reports?”

  “No, because the class was full of girls. Learning to type was icing on the cake.”

  “Was Lieutenant Donnelly in your class?”

  Harkins pulled the sheet and carbon copies from the roller, tapped the edges on the table. “You’re really taking to this detective stuff, aren’t you?” he said. “How about you just get the jeep, and we’ll go find these other doctors.”

  When Colianno didn’t move, Harkins looked at him, waiting.

  “Lieutenant Donnelly told me about your brother. I’m real sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Last night, after that Kraut plane almost gave you a haircut, you were smiling; a little later, I mean.”

  Harkins leaned back in the folding chair. “Yeah, I don’t know what that was about, to tell you the truth.”

  “Couple of the guys talked about that feeling,” Colianno said. “After a fight, or a close call. They felt like laughing, or they did laugh, just cracked up. One of our sergeants said it’s because you’re just glad to be alive. That you shouldn’t feel bad about it.”

  “Thanks, Colianno,” Harkins said.

  When the paratrooper left, Harkins looked down at his hands. He would never forget the image of that burning aircraft headed straight for him, and he wondered if Michael had seen the torpedoes coming at his ship.

  “Shit.”

  He pulled out the crime scene photos. They were grim, as he expected. Harkins had seen these kinds of photos used in court, and he knew that investigators sometimes put them on bulletin boards in their squad area, but he wasn’t sure what he could glean from them.

  “Still not a detective,” he told himself.

  Harkins put one copy of the report in an envelope, wrote “Captain Theodore Adams, Deputy Provost” on it. He put the other two copies in a folder on the field table, then used a brick to weigh it down in case the wind picked up. He grabbed his gear and headed out the door, then looked back to where the reports lay.

  In a precinct house, a detective would keep this kind of stuff locked up in a cabinet, but there was no such place here. He grabbed the file folder and was about to stuff it in his musette bag when he saw a crate labeled “Records,” with patient folders in Kathleen’s handwriting. He wrote a note asking her to hang on to the file, then hid the paperwork in her collection of similar folders.

  When Harkins stepped outside, Colianno started the jeep and put it into gear. Before they rolled, he looked up and said, “Uh-oh.”

  Harkins looked up and saw First Sergeant Drake approaching. The big man waved when he saw Harkins.

  “You want me to drive away?”

  “Nah. Let’s see what he wants.”

  “Some stuff going on you should know about, Lieutenant,” Drake said.

  Harkins and Colianno looked at each other. Lieutenant.

  “OK, First Sergeant.”

  “OK if your troublemaker hears this?” Drake asked, pointing a thumb at Colianno.

  Harkins nodded. “He’s been quite helpful, actually.”

  “Colonel Boone is pushing to get rid of more of the nurses. He told the clerk to start typing up the paperwork. Ronan, Donnelly, Melbourne. Couple of others.”

  “All the ones who have something to say about Stephenson.”

  “All the ones you need to keep around, I figured.”

  “Can you stop him?”

  “I can delay. Send the clerk away for half a day, have him do a bad draft, that kind of thing. But no, I can’t actually stop him, and you can’t, either. He’ll say this is for the good of the hospital and the patients. He’ll put in a request for replacements, trading nurses with other teams, and he’ll probably get his way. He’s still the boss.”

  “For now,” Harkins said.

  “You got a plan?”

  “I have to talk to some of the other docs,” Harkins said. “You ever see any stuff around here looks like it was taken from a church?”

  “Sure,” Drake said. “Doors and benches, stuff like that.”

  “Nothing gold?” Harkins said. “Nothing that looked like it could be sold?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what Stephenson might have been talking about when he told Ronan that Boone would never stop him? Did Stephenson have something on Boone?”

  “I don’t know,” Drake said. “You planning on talking to Lindner?”

  “The Kraut doctor?”

  “Yeah. He and Colonel Boone and Captain Stephenson talked a lot, met a few times. And today Boone and Lindner went for a ride.”

  “Where?”

  “Nowhere, probably. Riding in a noisy jeep someplace out of the compound is about the only place you can talk without ten people overhearing you. But Boone was pissed off when he got back, and Lindner didn’t look too happy, either.”

  “What’s your take on Lindner?”

  “Excellent surgeon. Saved a couple of guys with scary wounds. Drives me crazy that he wears a GI uniform—he put a little P above the pocket, for prisoner. And I don’t like that he comes and goes just like our doctors. But Colonel Boone likes him. In fact, Colonel Boone has called in a few markers to keep Lindner here.”

  “Because he’s a good surgeon?”

  “That’s the story,” Drake said.

  Harkins’ circle of people connected to Stephenson was growing. He wanted to eliminate at least a few names.

  “OK, thanks, First Sergeant. Thanks for the information. Glad you’re on our side in this.”

  Drake looked surprised. “Your side? What is this, high school? I ain’t on your fucking side, Lieutenant. That dead doctor probably got what he deserved, you ask my opinion. This is about Colonel Boone. What he’s doin
g to the nurses is wrong. We’re down almost a third of what we need to do all the surgeries these wounded kids need. And in case you ain’t noticed, the war hasn’t slowed down any. Jesus H. Christ.”

  Drake turned and walked away, muttering something about amateurs.

  When Harkins looked at Colianno, the paratrooper said, “So, is he still on your shit list?”

  18

  3 August 1943

  1400 hours

  “Let’s go talk to these other docs,” Harkins said when he climbed back into the jeep. He took off his helmet and rubbed his eyes. He was operating on four or five hours of sleep in the last forty-eight. He poured water from his canteen into a kerchief and used it to wipe his eyes, the back of his head.

  He turned in his seat to check out Colianno’s growing arsenal. He’d added a trench knife, the handle made out of studded brass knuckles. There was a small wooden ammo crate with three hand grenades rolling around inside.

  “You got a thing for firearms, don’t you?”

  Colianno looked at him, then turned back to the road. “I lost my weapon in the jump,” he said. “Plane was going too fast and when I went out the door the prop blast tore everything off of me. Weapons carrier, musette bag, bayonet. I was on the ground, by myself, and in the dark without a weapon. Makes an impression on you. Next time we jump, I plan to have a few extras.”

  “Where will next time be?”

  “Seems pretty obvious we gotta go to the mainland from here. Of course, the Krauts don’t know where we’ll land. Long as we keep that a secret, we got a chance.”

  “Better you than me,” Harkins said, looking up. “Turn here. Let’s go back to where they found the body.”

  There were slit-trench air-raid shelters scattered around the compound, with a cluster near the nurses’ tent and another by the enlisted men’s tents. Colianno parked the jeep next to the trench nearest where Stephenson was shot. It was thirty feet long by two and a half feet wide, with sandbagged walls on one side and a rim of sandbags, piled four high, all around the upper edge.

  Harkins got out of the jeep and walked to the spot where Stephenson’s body had been sprawled, carrying the envelope of crime scene photos. Pulled out two shots of the corpse, laid them on the ground, oriented as the body had been.