by KG MacGregor
The boy scowled as he looked Zann up and down. “That’s a man’s uniform. Girls are supposed to wear dresses.”
Sandy’s freckles ran together in a blush and she covered her mouth with horror.
Zann dismissed it with a wink. “You know, a little boy in Afghanistan once said the same thing to me. Except I was wearing camouflage that day…even on my helmet. But what surprised him most wasn’t my uniform. It was my rifle.”
“You had a rifle?”
She squatted so they were eye to eye. “You bet I did. All Marines carry rifles.”
“Where is it?”
“Well, I don’t need it here in Colfax. But I always take it when I go out on patrol.”
As the boy chattered about his plans to join the air force someday, Zann caught sight of another familiar face.
Marleigh Anderhall, flushed from the heat, waved a hello from the sunny entrance to the canopy. She was dressed in shorts and a scoop-necked T-shirt. Wisps of hair peeked out from beneath a white cap, strawberry blond in the sun. “Good afternoon, Captain Zann.”
Zann instinctively drew herself up and thrust her shoulders back, surprised at how glad she was to see Marleigh again.
“Sorry, I couldn’t resist calling you that…seeing as how you don’t look much like a civilian right now.”
“It’s just for today. Totally ceremonial.” She said a polite goodbye to Sandy and her son and stepped outside the shade of the tent. “With any luck, this’ll be my last appearance in uniform for the foreseeable future.”
“Too bad. Looks good on you. In fact, I think it makes you look kind of…I shouldn’t say.”
Zann blocked her turn by stepping in front. “Oh, no. You can’t start a sentence like that and not finish it. I look kind of what?”
Marleigh’s mischievous look gave way to a grin. “Kind of amazing…but then I have a thing for women in uniform.”
“Is that a fact?” Now giddy with interest, she congratulated herself on her initial instinct about Marleigh. “Do say yes, Miss Anderhall.”
“Yes, it’s a fact.”
With mock seriousness, Zann nodded and asked, “And this uniform fetish of yours…is it perhaps something you’d like to discuss further? Assuming of course you’re free to fraternize. I wouldn’t want to be accused of conduct unbecoming. Officer’s code and all.”
“I think I could make myself available.” Despite her tentative speech, Marleigh’s gaze was bold and rakish. “But you look a little busy right now.”
“I won’t be busy this weekend. If I had your phone number, I could call you later about potential fraternization maneuvers.”
“You make it sound so sexy.” As Zann patted her pockets for a pen, Marleigh produced a business card. “My cell phone is here. Should I bring my notebook, Captain…or will our next chat be off the record?”
There was something deeply erotic about the way she’d uttered the salutation. “Why don’t we keep this one classified?”
Chapter Four
Until this moment in Chief Otis Maubry’s office, Zann hadn’t realized how much she wanted this job. Police work not only suited her particular skill set, it also appealed to the same core values of discipline and public service that had driven her to join the military. She’d love a job where she got to help people.
The chief liked hiring veterans, he said, ticking off on his fingers the officers at the Colfax Police Department who had served. “There’s Joey Crisp, Pete Nelson…and come to think of it, Eileen Edwards was in the Guard unit that went to Eye-rack.”
Eee-rock. She resisted the impulse to set him straight on the proper pronunciation, as she’d done repeatedly with soldiers under her command. Was he being ignorant or deliberately disrespectful? Marines weren’t allowed to be either, but Maubry wasn’t a soldier bound to an honor code and he certainly wasn’t someone she ought to correct.
After her epiphany at the parade, she’d gone home and downloaded an employment application for the Town of Colfax, meticulously filled it out and hand-delivered it the next morning. Ham had pulled some strings to get her an interview right away. If her skills weren’t enough, her experience as team commander should have gotten her hired on the spot. So why was Maubry so obviously unimpressed?
“This injury of yours…is it permanent?”
That was a clue.
“Most likely not, sir. I’ve kept up my physical therapy and my strength improves a little more every day.” When she first sat down in the chair across from his desk, she’d been careful to position both hands in her lap so there wouldn’t be any overt sign of immobility. “To be honest I don’t know if I’ll get to a hundred percent, but I’m confident I’ll be able to overcome any deficiencies.”
“So could you fire a gun if you had to? Or wrestle a suspect to the ground and get him in handcuffs?”
“Chief, I understand your hesitation, but I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I could do the job.” There was a fine line between self-confidence and bluster. What would it take to convince him? “Most Marines I know can do more with one hand than a lot of people can do with two. You give me this chance and I’ll prove it.”
Clearly skeptical he studied her application again, this time crinkling his nose. “I see you listed our mayor as a reference.”
That had seemed like a good idea at the time. She hadn’t considered the possibility that the chief might have voted for Ham’s opponent. “He and my father are close friends. We all go to the Episcopal church.”
After a long silence Maubry squeaked back in his chair and crossed his hands over a bulging belly. “Truth is I don’t have any openings right now for patrol officers. And I gotta be honest here, Captain Redeker, if I were to have one, well…I’ve already got a file drawer full of applicants looking to transfer from other jurisdictions. Sheriff’s deputies, state troopers. These are all highly-qualified people with hands-on experience doing this exact kind of job.”
It didn’t take a genius to know what just happened. He could have told her right away that there weren’t any openings, or even had his secretary do it over the phone. Instead he’d granted her a courtesy interview solely because of her relationship with Ham. While that might have been politically prudent for him, it had wasted her time.
He went on, “Now there’s a vacancy in the evidence room but it’s only part-time. Couple of hours every morning…ten bucks an hour. That’s where we catalog what comes in and goes out. Drugs, weapons. Might be some answering phones when things get busy.”
In other words, the equivalent of a clerk. A quiet voice in her head said it was perfectly respectable work—her own father had started in the file room at the clerk of courts—and she could prove herself. The louder voice however was howling with insult.
“Not quite what I’m looking for, but thanks for your time.”
Walking back to her car, it occurred to her that she’d suffered more rejection in the last two months alone than in all the rest of her life. Her forced separation from the Marine Corps felt like a betrayal. She’d recognized the same self-pity the moment Maubry had deemed her unfit to do the job.
* * *
“Just coffee,” Marleigh said, scooting into a diner booth. She barely had time for even that, with the school board meeting in forty minutes to unveil their new bathroom policy for transgender students. It was sure to be a free-for-all and she didn’t want to miss a minute. This chat couldn’t wait though, because it bugged her to pieces to feel like she was sneaking around.
A dark green Dodge Charger slowed and turned into the parking lot, coming to a stop just yards away from Marleigh’s window seat. For a split second, the blue lights mounted across the top flashed a cheeky hello. Michelle Lisper exited the vehicle in her green and khaki uniform, ceremoniously donning the wide-brimmed campaign hat of the Vermont State Police.
Marleigh had always been hot for that uniform, a point “Troop” used to her advantage every chance she got. When they first met four years ago, Troop had boasted
of a carousel of semi-steady girlfriends, periodically favoring one over another like a flavor of the month. Now she was down to only two, she said. Which probably meant three. The demands of the VSP took precedence over the expectations of a permanent relationship.
At first Marleigh had been lukewarm about getting involved with someone who wasn’t interested in being exclusive. Why spin her wheels on a romance that was going nowhere? Then after a couple of dates she came to appreciate how liberating it was to go out with someone for fun without worrying about the long-term stakes. After all, there weren’t that many single lesbians in Colfax, and if she was honest with herself, Troop wasn’t someone she’d want to marry anyway.
Tossing her hat into the booth, Troop asked, “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“What, a girl needs a reason to ask you to lunch?”
“Come on, Marleigh. You know better than to bullshit a bullshitter. You call me at lunchtime, I figure you’re looking for the inside scoop on the Conover investigation.” She leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “You didn’t hear this from me but his blood work came back a two-point-one. That’s almost three times the legal limit. Mark my word, somebody’s going to to jail.”
Quite the juicy tidbit on their state assemblyman, but not at all the reason for her invitation. Still, it was the most newsworthy tip she’d gotten all week and she couldn’t ignore her professional duty to ask questions. “And the woman who was with him?”
“Cynthia McIntosh…she’s about half his age and works at the Capitol. And that’s absolutely all I know about it.” She waved their waitress over. “Bacon cheeseburger, fries, Pepsi. And don’t bring me that diet crap.”
Marleigh’s mouth watered. “It’s not fair you get to eat all that junk and never gain an ounce.”
“Because my high-intensity circuit training burns more than your Pilates.” She helped herself to a sip of Marleigh’s coffee. “What’d you order? Let me guess. Cottage cheese and carrots.”
“Actually I’m just having coffee. I have to be at the—”
“What, you invite me to lunch and don’t even eat? Next you’ll be telling me you aren’t picking up the tab either.”
Exasperated, Marleigh rummaged through her bag for her wallet.
“I was kidding! What’s so important it couldn’t wait till next weekend?”
“About that…I’m afraid I have to cancel.”
“Jeez,” Troop whined dramatically. “I can’t go to this wedding by myself. Last time Gran was so desperate to marry me off, she tried to fix me up with my own cousin.” She snorted with mock indignation as the waitress delivered her fries. “So what’s up with you next weekend? You have to work or something?”
“No, but I have a feeling something else is going to come up.”
“You have a feeling. What’s that, some kind of psychic gift?”
It was tempting to carry on with their playful tone, but Marleigh didn’t want to minimize the importance of what she needed to say—that she genuinely felt she was on the verge of a significant relationship. “I met somebody and our first date is tomorrow.”
Troop paused just long enough for Marleigh to note the earnest wrinkle in her brow. “What’s that got to do with next weekend? You renting a U-Haul?”
“Very funny. No, but this one’s got a different vibe to it. I want to focus on her without any complications. It might turn into something.”
“Fine, but I don’t see what that’s got to do with us.”
“That’s the point—it doesn’t. It has to do with me.” It crossed her mind that Troop understood her perfectly but was being deliberately obtuse. “Why are you making such big deal out of this? We’ve both dated other people. You see Renate practically every week.”
“Yes, but I don’t let her come between you and me. All you have is one date. You don’t even know if you’re going to like her and already you’re bailing on me for next weekend. How come you’re so serious all of a sudden?”
She decided to let that be a rhetorical question. It was true that Troop had only seen her lighter side, since Marleigh could never be serious about someone with a philosophical aversion to monogamy.
“Is it anybody I know?”
“That depends. Did you happen to catch my story last week about the Marine who got wounded in Afghanistan? She won the Bronze Star for valor, but then they made her retire on account of her injury. She came back to town last month. Malcolm Shively found out about her medal and made her grand marshal at the Fourth of July parade.”
“A woman winning the Bronze Star? Are you fucking kidding me? How’d I miss that?”
For some reason Marleigh thought of how Bridget had bristled upon learning Marleigh didn’t read her work. It shouldn’t have been surprising that Troop didn’t read hers.
“So what is it about her? I mean other than the obvious. I always said you liked me better in uniform than naked.”
There was more truth to that than she wanted to admit.
“I don’t know, it’s just a feeling. What she did over there…she’s a real honest-to-God hero. She took out four Taliban who were getting ready to attack the Marine base. And she did it all after getting shot.” As Zann had done, she made a slicing motion across her arm. “Bullets cut the nerve here and now her arm doesn’t work right. So she’s out of the Marines and back in Colfax…for good, I hope.”
“You always did have kind of a thing for hero-worship,” Troop declared, picking at her fries.
“Yeah, I know. I even confessed that I was a little starstruck when I met her. But then I got to know a lot more about her during the interview, like why she enlisted and how she felt about some of the things they asked her to do as a soldier. I thought she was…I guess the word’s noble. I saw her again after the parade and got the impression she was flirting with me, so I flirted back.”
“And now it’s the real deal, huh?”
“You think I’m stupid.”
Troop laughed. “I know you’re not stupid. But you’ve definitely got a fetish for the whole ‘knight in shining armor’ thing. Admit it—your favorite thing about me is the whole state trooper business. I wouldn’t want to see you fall in love with an idea and have the real thing turn out to be something completely different.”
“Come on, give me more credit than that. I’m not a ten-year-old reading princess books.” Her voice took on an edge as a stew of resentment boiled over. She’d been complicit in her own empty future by convincing herself that having Troop as a part-time girlfriend was better than no girlfriend at all. It wasn’t, not when what she really needed was a partner. “Can you honestly blame me for wanting something better out of life? All we’ve done is burn time. Now I’m thirty-four years old and have practically nothing to show for it.”
“Whoa! You’re totally misreading what I said. I just don’t want to see you disappointed. You should do whatever you think will make you happy.” She took Marleigh’s hand, a gesture that bolstered her sincerity. “All I’m saying is if it doesn’t work out, I’ll still be around.”
Except Marleigh wouldn’t be coming back, no matter what happened with Zann Redeker. She’d settled too long for too little.
Chapter Five
At the ding announcing a new email, Zann scrambled across the bedroom to her laptop. An ad for car insurance, exclusive rates for veterans. She’d gotten dozens of come-ons since her separation was finalized, from which she deduced that her name and email address had been sold to a marketing company for veterans.
She was watching for a response to the application she’d sent electronically the night before, even just a confirmation it had been received. Cerberus was a private contractor that provided security for corporations doing business in the world’s hotspots. Their ads were all over the Internet on sites aimed at veterans. They needed scores of ex-soldiers with expertise like hers, and officers especially were encouraged to apply for management positions. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya…but as a team manager she wouldn’t be b
ack on the front lines toting a rifle.
Cerberus looked like a good fit on paper, but she admittedly had reservations about the company’s culture. One of her fellow Marines had called them a bunch of cowboys, guys who were itching for an excuse to act aggressively but unbound by the military’s ethics and rules of engagement. Their zeal and lack of discipline resulted too often in unnecessary civilian casualties, including some for which the international courts had found them culpable. Joining such a company meant owning the worst of its blunders.
On the other hand, it was a chance to impose her own values, to bring about a better corporate culture from the inside out. An influx of Marines was bound to elevate both standards and judgment.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, she yanked the laces of her new hiking boots to secure the instep. Lightweight and vented, they barely topped her ankle and felt flimsy compared to the rugged ones she’d worn almost daily for the last eight years. Yet another aspect of civilian life she’d have to get used to—at least for now. Cerberus could change all that.
To break the boots in, she’d worn them the day before on a solitary hike through Wright Park north of Middlebury, where she’d happened upon the ideal site for her planned picnic with Marleigh. Not only quiet and scenic, but also somewhat off the beaten path. A good place for them to get to know each other.
Nearly all of her hiking gear was new. The backpack, the water bottle, the poncho in case of rain. Her USMC duffel bag under the bed held the equivalent pieces in camouflage, all purchased from the PX at Camp Lejeune. They were far superior in quality to these, but she’d decided against unpacking them. Vermont wasn’t Afghanistan and she didn’t want to look like one of those survivalist kooks.