KIA

by Thomas Holland

  “No need for that delay, Mr. Deveroux. I’ll have my office manager take you, if you don’t mind,” Mann said.

  CHAPTER 48

  Warrensburg, Missouri

  TUESDAY, APRIL 22, 2008

  Walter Mann warmed up to body temperature once Deveroux left the building. His earlier coolness hadn’t directly been the result of Deveroux’s presence, though like many small-county coroners he hadn’t felt completely at ease with a major homicide in his lap and a strange, federal, law enforcement agent asking him questions—regardless of how well the jurisdictional fences were holding up. Ultimately, what had contributed the most to his coolness was the abundance of unfamiliar warm bodies gathered too closely together. After a lifetime in the funeral science business, he’d come to the slow realization that his comfort level lowered in direct proportion to the number of live bodies in the room.

  “We can put him on that table over there,” Mann said. He was pulling on the thick, heavy stainless-steel refrigerator door with both hands and had to use his chin to point at one of the two porcelain-clad embalming tables. “Light’s better over that particular one. Full-spectrum bulbs, you see. True color. It’s where we put on the makeup. I keep the other table as a backup.” The last part of his sentence was lost as he disappeared into the large walk-in refrigerator. He shortly re-emerged, glasses fogged, pushing a wheeled metal cart. A brown, vinyl body bag lay on top, and immediately moisture began to condense on the cool plastic.

  “Not sure what exactly you’re interested in looking at, Dr. McKelvey,” Mann continued with hardly a break. “Head’s separated, you see. They found it in a trash can nearby; so I’m told. I haven’t looked at yet. As I said, the formal autopsy’s scheduled for Columbia.”

  Kel grabbed the end of the cart and helped dock it beside the embalming table. “Can’t say I really know myself,” he answered. “Given that there are two other bodies, one down in Nashville and the other over at Louisville, Agent Deveroux and I were just thinkin’ that we should put a set of eyes on these. Maybe they’re connected, maybe not, but if they are…”

  “I hear you, Doctor. If you wouldn’t mind…take that end, please.” Mann had locked the wheels on the cart and had taken hold of the foot end of the bag with both hands. He nodded at the head end for Kel to take. “On three. Ready? One. Two. Three…”

  Kel gripped the cold, moist plastic, careful to get a firm handhold, and with a heavy thump, the men hefted the bag onto the embalming table. Mann unlocked the wheels with a practiced flick of his toe and pushed the cart aside with his knee. He wiped his moist hands on his pants; Kel did likewise.

  “Been a coroner for twelve years, you see. Never had one quite like this. What exactly…” Mann hesitated.

  “What exactly am I fixin’ to do?” Kel shrugged. “That’s your call, Mr. Mann. You’re the coroner here. You set the parameters. Mainly I just want to get a look-see at this.”

  Mann bit his lip and seemed to be studying the matter. He held a finger up as if he were testing the wind direction. “I’m thinking that you shouldn’t do much. I’m sure you’re very skilled at what you do, but just the same. Doctor Cooke probably wants this untouched.”

  “Agreed. I don’t plan on anythin’ other than lookin’.”

  Mann nodded, paused, then reached across the table and grabbed the zipper. As he opened the bag he said, “This is pretty much how the police brought him in. I was planning on sending him straight over to Columbia for a post-mortem.” He stepped back from the table, clearing the way.

  Kel looked down. A torso was exposed. Snuggled into the bag above the left shoulder was a bloody swaddle; the head wrapped in an ambulance sheet.

  “Mind?” Kel asked, pointing at the swaddle.

  “Hard to take a look if we don’t,” Mann answered. He began unwrapping the sheet; as he did so he nodded to a box on the counter. “Gloves there, if you’re the type that feels the need.”

  Kel was and did. He gloved up and patiently waited for Walter Mann to unwrap what appeared to be a bloody head of iceburg lettuce. Mann pulled the sticky fabric back and flattened the folds so that the head looked to be perched on a nest of mottled-red velvet; then he stood back.

  Kel bent forward and poked at the head with a gloved finger. It was hard to figure out how it was oriented—it had jagged flaps of raw skin at both ends and was one massive clot of dried blood. Kel moved the lumps and flaps of tissue around until the eyes and nose were recognizable, and then stood back and looked, tilting his head to the side like a portrait artist. Both the coroner and he bobbed and weaved like a couple of pigeons, changing their relative points of perspective without actually handling the head. Trying to get a better look. Everything was bloody; the coarse, black hair—what was left—was matted with rust-colored clumps and hung down like a soiled mop; the face was covered with a thick layer of sticky red dust, and here and there, small tatters and fragments of trash were stuck fast.

  Walter Mann tentatively reached out and straightened the hair, lightly brushing it back from the forehead with his fingers, returning it to some semblance of life. In doing so he exposed a circular patch of cream-colored skull, about the size of a playing card, right where the frontal hairline should have started. He stepped back and looked at Kel, as if he expected some sort of explanation. When he got none, he asked, “What do you make of that, Doctor?”

  Kel paused, leaned forward, and looked closely at the exposed skull, noting several short, parallel grooves incised into the bone by a sharp metal blade. “Well, sir, if I had to guess, I’d say this fella had been scalped.”

  CHAPTER 49

  Travis Air Force Base, Fairfield, California

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1970

  So far, so good.

  He deposited the additional forty-five cents that the operator said was needed and waited for her to complete the connection.

  It had proven easier than he’d hoped, though that hadn’t kept him from looking over his shoulder for the last twenty-one hours. Expecting a tap on the shoulder. A challenge he couldn’t answer. A one-way ride to an eight-by-ten-foot cell, and a future without sun and wind and flat, open ground to run over.

  The original plan was to catch a contract flight out of Saigon direct for Honolulu and then San Francisco and from there to simply disappear. That hadn’t worked out. When he showed up at the Tri-Service Air Traffic Coordination Office at Tan Son Nhut airbase, he recognized the clerk and realized that there was no way his papers would hold up. Instead he opted for a ticket on the Flying Tiger Freedom Bird out of Bien Hoa. Bien Hoa to Alaska and then Braniff to Frisco.

  A minor change in plans.

  The closest that it had come to unraveling was when an MP at the departure center at Bien Hoa had tossed his duffel bag looking for restricted items. Jimmy Lee Tenkiller had been careful to sanitize his gear, removing everything with a nametape or laundry mark, anything that could betray him, anything that even sniffed of trouble. It was when the MP was helping him stuff everything back into the bag that he picked up Tenkiller’s Bible—the one the spinsters in Broken Arrow had given Jimmy Lee so many years ago, the one he’d never read but felt the need to carry with him—and noticed the worn, gold-leaf letters embossed in the upper right-hand corner: J L Tenkiller. The MP had looked up at the black, plastic nameplate over Tenkiller’s left uniform pocket, his eyes formulating a question.

  “A buddy’s,” Jimmy Lee had said quickly; adding a shrug for emphasis. “Gave it to me for good luck.”

  “Must have worked,” the MP had replied. “You’re going home, aren’t you…” The MP looked again at the name above his pocket. “Master Sergeant Bergeron?”

  Tenkiller flinched at the spoken name. It was the first time anyone had said it out loud, and it rang so foreign and sour that it made him swallow hard before he answered. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  The rest of the trip had been smooth. His papers were in order. He’d cleared his Company S-1; his PCS orders were signed and countersigned appro
priately; he’d scuffed up his newly issued identification card so that it had the career-worn look of an army master sergeant; his khaki Class-B uniform was starched and creased and his shoes glossed with Methodist pride. None of it had proven that difficult to obtain or do—at least for a man with Tenkiller’s connections. A man who can get crates of claymores and pallets of four-deuce mortars for the Viet Cong can easily wrangle a new ID card and a new nameplate, and as a senior supply sergeant at the largest supply depot in the world, he had the juice to get small favors done without questions being asked. In the big picture, a set of orders for someone named Master Sergeant James Bergeron had proven to be the least of his problems. Being recognized on the way out was the real concern, for while Jimmy Lee Tenkiller had few friends, he had many acquaintances.

  It was close enough to his actual DEROS—Date of Estimated Return from Overseas—that Tenkiller hadn’t worried about being seen at the airport. People knew that he was short—a double-digit midget for the last three months—with only a few days left in-country, so if anyone saw him boarding an airplane headed east, they’d just assume his time was up. He could explain being there. The problem would be if they saw his nameplate or his orders or heard the strange name paged—that he couldn’t explain—so Jimmy Lee Tenkiller had spent most of the time before boarding hunkered in a bathroom stall, and once on the plane had requested a blanket to cover his chest while he feigned sleep. By the time he changed planes in Alaska, he was relatively sure that none of the other passengers knew him, and he collected his duffel bag quickly at Travis and was on the street before there was an opportunity for a chance encounter.

  As he signed the guest ledger at the Thunderbird Motel in Oakland using the name James Bergeron, Jimmy Lee Tenkiller was struck by a profound sadness. The man who once had been cheered by stadiums full of people, who once had been his country’s hope for Olympic gold, who had served his country honorably for over fifteen years, had just disappeared. There were no footprints leading out of Vietnam. No fingerprints. No breadcrumbs. Nothing to connect Master Sergeant Jimmy Lee Tenkiller’s disappearance to the boarding pass of the nonexistent James Bergeron.

  Nothing.

  His life was over.

  The telephone clicked twice as the operator completed the switching.

  “Hello,” the voice said. The phone crackled with a poor connection. It hissed and popped like an old phonograph record. “Hello?”

  “Eddie? Eddie, it’s me,” Jimmy Lee Tenkiller said. “Eddie, I need some help.”

  CHAPTER 50

  Rolla, Missouri

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23, 2008

  It had taken Shuck Deveroux almost five-and-a-half hours to make the drive. He hadn’t gotten out of Warrensburg until almost ten o’clock, and by the time he’d pulled into the outer skirts of Rolla, Missouri, the sun was pegged square in the clear-blue afternoon sky. As he’d gotten closer to town, and seen that afternoon was waning, he’d called General Ngo Van Thu on his cell phone—completely mushing the man’s name into a string of incomprehensible syllables—to say he was running behind schedule. Ngo had responded curtly that he had no more time on the afternoon’s calendar, but that he could possibly free up some time to talk with Deveroux in the evening—around eight-thirty—provided it was kept short. Having already invested the better part of the day on the road, Deveroux found himself on the short branch of the decision-making tree and agreed to meet Ngo at his home that evening and forgo returning to Warrensburg until the following morning.

  Next had been a courtesy call to the local Rolla PD. He’d spoken to one of the senior homicide detectives to tell him that he was in the area and would be interviewing one of the town’s citizens and to make sure he wasn’t perceived as stepping onto anyone’s turf without permission. The detective—a gruff-sounding man who blew his nose frequently during the conversation and sounded as if he were chewing on something juicy—had been cooperative, though not very inquisitive, and had supplied some useful background information on Ngo Van Thu.

  Deveroux had then called General Fick to tell him that the meeting was postponed until later that night, and Fick responded by telling him to take a room at the DeVille Motel in nearby Waynesville and sit tight. It was near Fick’s farm, and they could meet at the motel’s diner for an early dinner before driving into Rolla for their meeting with Ngo.

  Now, sitting at a scuffed, wood-grained Formica table across from Paul Fick, he was taken by the change in the older man’s appearance. It was only two weeks since their last meeting—the one at the little airport outside Memphis—but Fick’s looks had changed. He was still flint hard, and the eyes still seemed capable of seizing the minute, but now there was a brittle crust of mortality that hadn’t been there before.

  Deveroux was hungry, having not stopped to eat on the drive down from Warrensburg, and he ordered a jumbo bacon cheeseburger, onion rings, and sweetened iced tea that he’d fortified with three packets of sugar. Fick had ordered only the iced tea, which he drank without any augmentation—a condition that a true, bone-bred southerner like Deveroux found incomprehensible. At first Deveroux had picked politely at his food, almost nibbling, made uncomfortable by having a senior officer—retired or not—sitting at the same table not eating, but in the end his appetite had proven persuasive, and he began taking noisy, enjoyable mouthfuls.

  Fick watched him quietly for most of the meal, deflecting any stabs at conversation until the plate of food was well spent. As Deveroux was stirring up the thick slurry of sugar layering the bottom of his tea glass, Fick took a small, preliminary sip from his own glass and opened the conversation.

  “You read the file I gave you, Chief Deveroux?”

  “Yes, sir, I did. You put a lot of work into that.”

  “I’m not fishing for compliments, Chief. Don’t waste your time. Or mine. I’m wanting to know what you plan to ask General Ngo when we meet with him.” Unlike Deveroux’s more imaginative handling of the name, Fick’s pronunciation betrayed a working familiarity with Vietnamese that was undimmed by almost four decades.

  Deveroux took a long swallow of tea, as much to collect his thoughts as to slake his thirst and settle his meal. He carefully placed the glass back on the table’s surface, registering it with one of the several water rings, before answering. “Well, sir. I guess I’ll start out by askin’ him if he’s in fact General Ngo.”

  “And assuming he is?”

  “Then I’ll ask if he’s been in touch with Mr. Doan in Warrensburg, Mr. Trinh—” He took notice of the look on Fick’s face. “Forgive how these names are comin’ outta my mouth. Ummm, Mr. Trinh, he’s the one down in Nashville, or Mr. Linh who got himself killed there at Fort Knox. See if those names ring any bells with him, and if so, when was he last in touch with them. There’s obviously a connection between these folks—these five brothers—but the question, I guess, is do they know what it is?”

  “Or who?” Fick added.

  “You mean who’s killin’ them?”

  Fick nodded.

  “Or who, that’s right. Is it one of them? One of the brothers. Who’s the fifth one? Ahh, Major…Colonel…” Deveroux picked up the folder that had been resting on the booth seat next to him and began undoing the string.

  “Colonel Pham Van Minh,” Fick answered. “He was Ngo’s brother-in-law.”

  Deveroux looked up and smiled. “That’s it. Good memory, sir. The other four are accounted for, but I haven’t figured out where this Colonel Pham Van Minh is yet. A buddy at INS is workin’ it, but…”

  “You won’t find him,” Fick answered.

  Deveroux knotted his forehead and let his face ask the question.

  Fick didn’t answer immediately. Instead he took a bottle of pills from his pocket and poured out a handful, which he popped into his mouth and swallowed. He took a small sip of tea to work them down, and then he looked at Deveroux, his head slightly inclined to one side. “Colonel Pham Van Minh, Army of the Republic of Vietnam, husband to Ngo Van Thu’s youngest
sister, Linh, not seen since 12 September 1970—sixteen days before Jimmy Lee Tenkiller sprouted wings.” He saw Deveroux begin scanning the file. “Won’t find it in there. No proof, but word on the Saigon cocktail circuit at the time was that he got crossways with his brother-in-law, and that no one got crossways with Ngo—even family.”

  “You sayin’ his brother killed him?” Deveroux asked.

  “Brother-in-law. Yes, I am.”

  “The same General Ngo we’re goin’ to go visit here in a few minutes?” Try as he might to copy Fick, the name still came out sounding as if he had a thick piece of gristle caught in his throat and was about to choke—EN-go.

  Fick nodded and took another shallow sip of tea.

  “You believe it, sir?” Deveroux continued. “From what you know, could Ngo do it? Or was it rumor mongerin’?”

  “I do.”

  Deveroux continued looking at Fick.

  “Ngo had a reputation,” the general felt the uncharacteristic need to elaborate.

  “Reputation?”

  Fick nodded. “Word at the time was that he was a sadistic sonofabitch. Used to get his fulfillment by beating young girls almost to death. He had a French…not even sure what to call it…a swagger stick, a riding crop, baton, some damn thing. Braided leather over a birchwood core. It was said he would almost flay the girls with it.”

  “Why didn’t anyone stop him?” Deveroux asked. “I mean, if everyone knew about it and all; if you knew about it.”

  Fick closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath. He seemed to have aged and withered just in the time they’d been talking. “Why indeed?” he said quietly. “Someone should have, Chief Deveroux. Maybe I should have, but I was on another mission. I was focused. I wanted that bastard Tenkiller. I wanted the Five Brothers—not just Ngo. The problem was…no one else did.”