“As I said, Chief Deveroux, what is it that you want from me?”
Deveroux shook his head. “Help. Answers. My guys have interviewed over three hundred leads so far. Nothin’. We’re getting’ nowhere real fast. About the only glimmer of light is this fella, Tenkiller, and General Anderson thought…”
“Answers?”
“Yes, sir. General Ander…” He paused and then raised his eyes to engage Fick’s. “Sir, I have a feelin’ that you might just know somethin’ about this Tenkiller. Somethin’ from some investigation you worked on back durin’ the war.”
“Jim Anderson tell you that?”
“No, sir. General Anderson just suggested I call you. That’s all.”
Fick’s eyes stayed focused on Deveroux’s, as if he was waiting for the young man to blink and look away or betray a fiber of weakness. “You know the Bible, Chief Deveroux?”
Deveroux didn’t blink, but his voice caught and he had to clear his throat before he could answer. “Umm, no, sir. Not the way I should, I guess, though my mama would skin me if she heard me admit that.”
Fick nodded slowly and closed his eyes. His took a breath and his voice assumed an edge, like a brittle shard of glass. “Ecclesiastes 4, verses 2 through 3. ‘And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been; who has not yet seen the evil that is done under the sun.’” He sat in silence for a moment and then opened his eyes. He smiled patiently at the confused expression on Deveroux’s face. “If you want answers, Chief, maybe you should talk to Master Sergeant Tenkiller.”
Now it was Deveroux’s turn to smile. He willed himself to maintain eye contact. “I’d like to, sir, but accordin’ to the records, Master Sergeant Tenkiller is dead.”
“I know,” Fick replied quietly. “I killed him.”
CHAPTER 33
U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii
FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2008
“Who worked the case?” Kel asked. He rapped the stack of photocopied newspaper clippings on his desk, aligning the edges, before handing them back to D.S.
“Amy.”
“She’s pretty new,” Kel said involuntarily. The words had tumbled out of his mouth like two dice before he knew it. The fact was that the scientific staff got younger each year—the burnout rate of spending six to nine months out of the year in places where the locals eat cats and have never seen a flush toilet took a predictable toll on career longevity. Comparatively, Dr. Amalie August was actually one of the veterans, with five years on the job, but to Kel and D.S. she was still new. Kel paused.
“Ever feel like John Henry?”
“The guy with the big signature?”
“No. That was John Hancock. I said, John Henry.”
“Oh.” D.S. cast him a look of suspicious confusion, trying to figure if there was a penis joke lurking in the question. Penis jokes play a large, and often unheralded role in science. “Can’t say that I do,” he said, fully expecting himself to figure in a punch line.
“Technology. You know, ‘Before I let that DNA bear me down, I’ll die with a caliper in my hand, Lawd, Lawd.’ Somethin’ like that. Face it, Davis, we’re on the road to bein’ big ol’ lumberin’ dinosaurs, and that road leads straight into extinction.”
“You’re letting Botch-It get to you way too much.”
“Don’t doubt that, but that’s only part of it. I’m talkin’ about our piece of the pie. We’re on the road, bubba, and that signpost up ahead reads ‘extinction.’”
“Hmmm, on the road, maybe, but we’re not there yet. What’s your point?”
Kel smiled and shook his head slowly. “You’re right. We’re not there, yet. They say that the day’s comin’ when you’ll just stick a bone in a little box, a little easy-bake ovenlike thing, turn some dials and cranks and watch some colored lights wink on and off, and it’ll spit you out an instant DNA readin’ like an ATM receipt. No anthropology. No odontology. Won’t need real scientists at all, certainly not anthropologists. Just like John Henry and the steel-drivin’ machine. The times they are a changin’.”
“Okay, I’m a Brontosaurus. I’m still missing the point here.”
“Like I said, we’re not there yet. We’ve been chasin’ our tail on this DNA stuff when the answer was in the newspaper all along. Did Amy see anythin’ on the ankle?”
“Dunno. And she’s out taking care of some things; she leaves tomorrow morning for thirty-plus days in Laos and then a follow-on forty-five-day mission to Vietnam. She won’t be back here until sometime after the Fourth of July.”
“If she’s lucky. Are the remains still out on one of the tables?”
“Nope, she’s already put her cases away.”
Kel pulled a ring of keys from his pocket. He held them up in clear view and gave them a shake as if they were shiny minnows on a string. “How rusty are you, my friend?”
“I creak,” D.S. replied as he stood. He paused long enough to toss the stack of newspaper clippings onto Kel’s desk, and then joined Kel, already at the double glass doors that opened onto the examination floor. Both men briefly held their identification cards against the small rectangular sensor beside the doorframe, waiting for the beep that indicated the computer had logged both their presence and the time. This was followed by a soft metallic click that signaled the lock disengaging. Kel pulled the right-hand door open and held it for his partner and then followed him onto the exam floor. The door swung shut behind them, and the lock re-engaged.
When not under analysis on one of the lab’s twenty examination tables, human remains were kept locked in a secure evidence area. There were only two individuals with keys—the evidence manager and the scientific director. Kel unlocked the sliding door of the evidence area and held his identification card against another magnetic sensor that would disengage a second, electronic lock. The electric motor engaged and the shelving bay slowly slid open to reveal row upon row of rectangular, white, acid-free boxes, each holding the skeletal and dental remains of a human being. Over nine hundred boxes. Over nine hundred American servicemen who never went home.
“What’s the case number?” Kel asked as he stepped into the aisle and began scanning the boxes closest to them. The cases were shelved chronologically, and the most recently accessioned ones were near the lab end of the shelf. The labels indicated which country each case had been recovered in, but there were three boxes fresh in from Vietnam.
“One-five-one. Two-thousand-eight-dash-one-five-one.”
“One-four-nine, one-five-oh…here we go, one-five-one. Last one.” He slid the box off the shelf and carried it back onto the lab floor to what was commonly called the sixty-minute table, a large examination table set off from the others and designated for short-term analysis. He grabbed the pistol scanner and logged the case out by scanning the bar codes on the box label and his identification badge while D.S. began pulling the contents and placing them on the foam-covered tabletop. There were several large clear-plastic bags, each sealed with blue evidence tape that would tear if tampered with. The face of each bag had been labeled with the accession number using a black permanent marker.
D.S. sorted the bags by their contents, holding each one close to his face so that he could better see what was sealed inside. He was at a stage in his life where he needed bifocals but could never seem to make them work. Instead he removed his glasses and squinted a lot. Finally, he found the bag he was looking for, the one that contained the bones of the right leg and foot. As Kel joined him, D.S. snapped on a pair of latex gloves and then slit the side of the bag with a pair of scissors, making a three-inch cut, just large enough to remove the bones of the lower leg and foot. He would have to reseal the opening with more evidence tape as soon as they were finished, and that was easier to do if the slit in the bag was kept small. This case hadn’t been examined repeatedly and the bag was still relatively free of taped-over cuts. Before it left the lab it would be o
pened again and again and again—analysis, DNA sampling, peer review, inventory—and sealed again and again and again until it resembled a patchwork quilt of crisscrossing blue tape.
Davis Smart was in his element. He had a natural affinity for bones that wasn’t well served by his deskbound managerial duties, and when the opportunity arose to actually handle skeletal material he became almost childlike in his enthusiasm. Holding his glasses in his mouth, he flicked an involuntary look at the ceiling as if to make sure that all the lights were full on and then turned his focus to each of the lower leg bones, the tibia and fibula, holding each up close to his face and squinting. He made small atonal humming noises as he rotated each one several times, before turning to Kel. “There ya go,” he said, holding the bones up. “I guess that answers that. Score one for anthropology. You’re right. DNA? We don’t need no stinkin’ DNA.”
CHAPTER 34
Warrensburg, Missouri
FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2008
Doan Minh Tuyen had not aged particularly well. Once tall and thin and manfully constructed of corded sinew and gristle, he had found his later years to be a constant battle against waxing soft corpulence. Being diagnosed with adult-onset diabetes almost ten years earlier had not helped the situation, and at almost sixty-nine he found himself huffing and blowing hard after even the most innocent round of movement, such as hefting himself out of his car and walking to the slatted-steel-and-aluminum bleachers overlooking the baseball diamond at Crane Stadium on the Missouri Central University campus. He’d been inclined to stay seated in the front seat of his 1994 Ford Escort and wait, but lately closed spaces, even the front seat of his own car, had a way of bringing on a gripping claustrophobia that he couldn’t explain, let alone deal with satisfactorily. Tonight he favored the crisp, early spring breeze and the smells of new growth that it brought in its wake and the riffling leaves that reminded him of his youth and of change and stability at the same time, to the stale cigarette smell and vertigo inducing odor of canned fruit deodorizer that filled his car. He took a deep breath and held it as long as he could before discharging. A thin fog of condensation formed in the cool air and quickly drifted away toward the street light like his future. He repeated the action, again and again, until he felt an oxygen buzz begin to form in his head.
It was a little past eleven o’clock and by all conventional rights he should be snugged in bed; the one made all too vacant by his third divorce three years ago next Saturday. Instead he sat on the cool aluminum plank of the ballpark bleachers and tapped his foot impatiently—or was it nervously?—and waited for the voice to show itself. The vaporous voice on the phone that seemed to know too much and yet could know nothing at all. The voice from a different time, a different place, a different Doan Minh Tuyen. That Doan Minh Tuyen, the one from thirty-eight years ago, had been young and vital and, despite the chaos of the time, was full of promise; that Doan bore only a faint structural resemblance to the bloated, watery waste that he’d become.
Doan Minh Tuyen had been defrosting a thick slab of frozen pizza and was looking forward to the practiced routine of a mindless stretch of televised sitcoms when the wall phone beside the refrigerator had rung. Reflexively he’d answered, assuming that it was one of his night managers needing some direction. Work calls seemed to be about all he received anymore, and with the quarterly inventory underway at the warehouse he was prepared for a flurry of late-night questions. Instead it was a low, almost muffled voice that began stirring the thick slurry of a life that he’d hoped had long ago settled and stratified.
He wasn’t sure why he’d agreed to the meeting. Perhaps it was curiosity, perhaps it was fear, perhaps—had he been able to ever answer the question—it was out of some sort of involuntary obligation, like breathing or digesting. The caller had wanted to meet near a jogging path on Whiteman Air Force Base, but Doan Minh Tuyen had suggested Tompkins baseball field at MCU instead, his pride still stinging from the loss of base privileges. For over twenty years Doan’s Show-Me Beverage had maintained a commercial lock on the soft-drink concession on base. It had been a lucrative quarter century, but now Doan Minh Tuyen couldn’t even get past the pimple-faced airmen who manned the front gate, who had no idea of what war was really like or where Vietnam was located on the map and who looked at him as if he were an ignorant Mexican gardener come to trim the grass.
Doan tugged at the small bottle in his hand—a cheap, tongue-numbing, generic gin—and held the warm liquid in his mouth momentarily before forcing it down audibly. His ball-busting second wife had got him drinking gin, though certainly not generic brands—she’d just as soon be seen eating cat litter as drinking an off-brand of liquor, let alone cheap generic stuff. The bitch, he thought as he closed his eyes and tilted his head backward, feeling the bones in his spine pop and snap with pent-up tension. He slowly swiveled his head round and round, stretching the muscles in his neck as he replaced the screw cap, before setting the bottle beside his feet.
It was dark and there was a creeping moistness that had eased in behind a slow-moving cool front that the weatherman hadn’t predicted. In the near distance, somewhere past right field, past the parking lot that abutted Warren Street, a tired bobwhite was working the dim evening. Crickets squeaked and chirped from somewhere unseen, and each yellow-white streetlight illuminated a crawling knot of early spring insects.
Doan Minh Tuyen held his left arm up at eye level and rotated his wrist back and forth until he caught a faint shag of light on the face of his watch. Eleven-fifteen. Long enough, he thought as he started to stand, accidentally kicking the gin bottle over and knocking it into the darkness below the bleachers. He heard it hit the ground with a muffled tink.
“Shit,” Doan said, grabbing at the air. He sighed and slowly stood up, taking a moment to straighten his limbs, and then began to stiffly clunk his way down the aluminum bleacher seats. The gin had taken its effect in the hour or so he’d sat waiting, and now navigating a straight line proved adventurous. He paused in the mud at the bottom, steadying himself with one hand on a fifty-gallon metal drum that served as a trash can, and bent over to better peer under the seats. It was too dark to see and much too dark to go chasing a half-empty bottle of cheap gin. Doan Minh Tuyen might not be as well to do as he once had been, but he also wasn’t so hard-put that he had to crawl around under some muddy bleachers, amid the gum and spit and used condoms, to retrieve a few ounces of grain alcohol. But then he saw it—a small glint of light caught by the curve of the bottle. It was within easy reach after all.
It happened as he straightened up. It was painless, at least initially, and quick. He felt his head jerk back, something pressed hard against his mouth, and he heard a soft, rhythmic squirt and splash like someone urinating in the grass. He dropped the bottle.
“My old friend, Major Doan,” came the whisper in his ear. It was the voice, the one from the phone. The breath was warm and almost passionate, as a lover’s should be. “How have you been all these years?”
Doan Minh Tuyen tried to turn and look at the face behind the words, but his neck wouldn’t respond; the muscles wouldn’t answer the direction.
It was only then that he realized that his throat had been cut.
CHAPTER 35
U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii
FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2008
Kel turned and started walking to the door. He’d gone two steps before pausing and turning back. D.S. was still humming and looking at the tibia in his hand.
“Instead of rebaggin’ that stuff immediately, how ’bout we get some x-rays just to make sure. Document it. Can’t hurt, can it?” Kel said.
“I was thinking the same thing,” D.S. replied. “You want me to do it or assign it out?”
“You’re a damn sight better readin’ radiographs than me, and almost everyone else is deployed or sick or overworked as it is. Just let me know what you find. I need to go call Thomas Pierce and give him the news.”
Kel turned and started back tow
ard the door.
“Hey, Dr. Dinosaur,” D.S. called out.
Kel stopped and turned. D.S. nodded at the door. “Remember when we used to have doorknobs?”
Kel smiled and held his identification card against the small sensor on the doorframe, waiting for the computer to log him off the lab floor. The sensor beeped and the door clicked. He returned to his desk, looked at his watch, and picked up the phone.
Kel knew that it was nearing the end of the normal workday on the East Coast, but Thomas Pierce, director of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, seldom kept normal hours. Kel also knew that as with his own, the most productive part of Pierce’s day began in the late afternoon when all the crisis junkies had retired for the day. At nearly fifty, he had closed out a productive military career and was engaged in a new one as the first civilian director of the AFDIL.
“Armed Forces DNA Lab, this is Dr. Pierce.”
“Hey, Dr. Pierce, why aren’t you at home with your family?” Thomas Pierce was one of Kel’s favorite people in the world, and one of the few who he could voluntarily call on the telephone without having to spend thirty minutes working up to it.
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