A Long Day for Dying

by Patrick A. Davis

  I said, “You still don’t sound like you’re sold.”

  A shrug. “All I know is, Weller ain’t no killer. I’ve flown a couple of trips with her. Got to know her pretty well. She’s a good kid. I wouldn’t read too much into her running off. She just got spooked. Hell, everybody thinks you guys are only looking for someone to pin this on, to keep the senator happy. Pretty clear to me that Weller had orders to get the hell out of Dodge if you guys started pressuring her too hard.”

  “No kidding,” I said dryly. “You figure that out all by yourself?” My comment came out more sarcastic than I’d intended, and I saw at once that Andy had taken offense.

  He stuck his jaw up to mine and growled, “You trying to be a wiseass, Marty?”

  Christ.“No. I was only—”

  “You think I’m stupid? Is that it? You think I haven’t got the smarts to work a homicide? Fuck you.”

  “Andy—”

  He poked my chest. “Let me tell you something, buddy boy. I’m only trying to stop you from wasting your time on Weller. You and Simon fuck this case up, you walk away. Go home to your cushy civilian jobs. Leave me to catch all the shit—”

  He was really getting worked up. He wasn’t shouting yet, but he was getting there. I said, “Andy, take it easy.”

  “Screweasy.” Another poke, harder. “You know what I’m saying is true. For crying out loud, we got a dead fucking chairman of the Joint Chiefs. That’s mighty tough to explain. The brass will look for someone to hang, and Andy here is going to be front and center. You blow this thing, and you might as well hand them the goddamn rope.” He stepped back, glowering.

  I said, “Andy, I didn’t really think about—”

  “Fucking right, you didn’t.”

  “Look, I’m sorry.” And I tried to sound like I meant it.

  “Yeah, well…” He rubbed his face hard, his anger fading. When he spoke, he sounded almost apologetic. “Aw, hell. I guess I’m a little spun up. It’s just that this case is important to me. You probably heard CID’s been trying to force me to retire for years, prove me unfit.”

  I shook my head, even though I had.

  “This could be their chance. Probably will be, unless you find the perp. If I get canned, I don’t know what the hell I’d do. The job’s all I’ve got. At my age…”

  He fell silent, and a sadness crept into his eyes. I felt for him. I couldn’t help it. Despite his faults, I’d always liked Andy. Why, I’m not certain. Maybe I secretly envied his lack of ambition and the freedom that gave him.

  I said softly, “We’ll find the killer, Andy.”

  “Sure you will, Marty. Sure you will.”

  But I knew he didn’t believe it, and neither did I.

  He forced a smile. “What the hell. They fire me, they fire me. Life’s a bitch, and then you die. Right, Marty?”

  I didn’t answer him; he wasn’t looking for a response. Watching him, I thought about how pathetic he suddenly seemed. Gradually, an idea occurred to me—one I tried to ignore, but couldn’t. Despite my reservations, I heard myself say, “If things don’t work out, you can always come work for me.”

  He appeared dumbfounded. “Noshit? This is straight?”

  I told him it was.

  For once, Andy seemed at a loss for words. “Jeez, I…I really appreciate this, Marty.”

  “I can always use someone with your experience.” I handed him my card with my office number and home numbers.

  He stared at me as if he still didn’t believe my offer was genuine. That someone would actually want him. He said, “Andy of fucking Mayberry.”

  With a crooked grin, he tucked the card away. As he did, he glanced at Simon and Amanda, who were visible at the rear of the bus. “What the hell are they looking for, anyway?”

  I told him.

  “Crap,” he grunted. “Just like Weller’s lipstick containers Amanda took up to Martha. I’ll put up a month’s pay nothing’s going to come of it.”

  Again, he felt compelled to defend Weller. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought Andy had a personal interest in—

  And then I realized what it probably was. Andy was always falling in love or lust. Young or old, it didn’t matter. To Andy, every attractive female was a potential conquest.

  “Before I forget,” he said, turning to me, “I talked to that customs officer, Margie Benson.”

  “Andy, I specifically told you—”

  “Keep your shirt on, Marty. You guys were busy, so I figured I’d call. I was cool. I didn’t even come close to hitting on her. So…you want to know what she said about those customs decs or not?”

  I sighed, already beginning to regret the job offer. “Go.”

  “Dead end. The Glenlivet belonged to Garber. A couple other people bought booze. Wine and Bailey’s. No one else except Garber brought back hard liquor. Or if they did, they didn’t declare it.” He squinted, looking past me. “That didn’t take long. Looks like they’re finished. What’s that Amanda’s carrying? Can you tell?”

  I turned as Simon and Amanda emerged from the bus, their heads bent in conversation. Their grim expressions told me Amanda hadn’t exaggerated the importance of the evidence.

  And that’s where I was looking now. At the folded square of cloth in Amanda’s gloved hand. The telltale baby-blue color confirmed what it probably was.

  “It’s a uniform shirt,” Andy said.

  Amanda and Simon never bothered to explain the shirt’s significance; there wasn’t any need. Amanda just held it up to Andy and me. I shook my head while Andy kept saying, “I still don’t believe it. It can’t be Weller. Dammit, it can’t.”

  But there was no denying what we were seeing. All but one of the buttons on the front of the shirt were missing. Even more damning were the spindly tendrils of white thread hanging down.

  Someone had torn off the buttons with great force.

  18

  Acar horn blared, startling us.

  We gazed down the flight line and saw a gleaming black stretch limousine rolling toward the hangar. Simon pointed to the adjacent parking area, and the limo cruised around and parked. The windows were tinted too dark for us to make out the chauffeur’s face, not that I’d have recognized him. Since Romero’s death, Simon had gone through dozens of drivers. Most rarely lasted more than a few weeks before he found some excuse for letting them go. Even after two years, he couldn’t bring himself to replace his lifelong friend.

  This was one reason Simon and I remained close, despite having little in common except our jobs. We were both coping with the loss of someone we’d loved. Not that we went around crying on each other’s shoulders; we rarely did anymore. But there was a comfort in knowing that we could.

  Amanda began refolding the shirt, her voice clipped, angry. “This tells us it was self-defense. That bastard Garber was drunk and jumped Weller. Tried to rape her. She fought him off and managed to grab the bottle. End of story.”

  Andy said, “I know it looks that way, but…Jesus.”

  “Now we know why the SECDEF is pushing to keep this quiet,” Amanda said. “Think of the fallout if the word got out that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was killed while attempting to rape his aide.”

  Simon had an uncomfortable expression. Like me, he wasn’t completely buying this scenario. To Amanda, I said, “There’s still a hole in your theory.”

  “Way ahead of you, Marty. It’s the one thing I can’t get around. How did Weller restrain Garber until he died?”

  “She couldn’t,” Simon concluded.

  “Not without help, anyway,” Amanda said. “And that’s the problem. Garber wouldn’t have jumped her if someone else had been present in the compartment. That means they had to be alone. We also know Weller couldn’t have left to get someone to help her, because if she had, Garber would have taken off. Right?”

  We all nodded.

  Amanda’s eyes dropped to the shirt in her hand. “So what the hell are we missing? This has got to be the motive. W
eller must have been the one who hit him. But how’d she hold him down without help?”

  The only response was a sudden rumble from the hangar.

  The hangar doors opened to a gap of maybe ten feet. We stepped clear as the Humvee containing General Garber’s body drove out onto the tarmac. The giant doors immediately closed behind it.

  Andy jammed two fingers in his mouth and whistled piercingly, signaling the driver to stop. To us, he said, “It seems to me you guys are forgetting something. Marty, didn’t you say Weller was trying to confuse the investigation? Take the heat off the generals?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s gotta be it, then. The shirt’s a plant. Weller coulda planted it herself. I know this girl. She’s smart, thinks on her feet. She knew you’d go through her bags. Take it from me, that’s the way it played out. I’ll let you know what I find out from the doc. Something tells me he’s going to be one cooperative son of a bitch.” He turned and hurried toward the Humvee.

  “Plausible,” Simon murmured, staring after him.

  “You serious?” Amanda said. “You think Weller would go that far?”

  A shrug. “Her fingernails suggest she might. Andy, hold on a moment.”

  He strolled after Andy, who had just opened a rear door of the Humvee. Amanda sighed and turned to me. “You agree with Simon?”

  I thought back to Weller’s interview. “Weller’s nails are, what, close to a half inch long? If she fought with Garber, odds are she’d have broken a couple. At least scratched him.”

  “And if she didn’t fight him?”

  “Amanda, you said yourself there was a struggle.”

  “I said Garber attacked her. We don’t know she fought back.”

  “Huh? Why wouldn’t she—”

  “Think about it, Marty. When Garber jumps her, she knows she can’t possibly fend him off. He’s twice her size. Screaming won’t help her either, not with all the soundproofing. So she decides to play along. When he lets down his guard, bam—She lets him have it with the bottle.”

  “Mind telling me who helped her restrain Garber?” I said.

  “Who knows? All I’m saying is, it could have happened that way. That’s what I’d have done if I’d been in her shoes. I’d go with the flow, wait my chance, then kill the son of a bitch.”

  Yes, I thought, she probably would.

  And I decided I was okay with that.

  Amanda and I watched as Andy and Simon stood by the Humvee, talking quietly. From the bits and pieces floating toward us, we knew they were discussing Weller. Amanda shook her head and turned to me. “Okay, maybe I’m mistaken.”

  “Can I get that in writing?”

  She gave me a pained look and kept on talking. “Odds are Garber never jumped Weller. There are too many holes. She wouldn’t be putting on this guilty act if she’d killed him. She’s not that crazy.”

  “No.”

  She shook her head. “But for the life of me, I don’t understand why she’d want to make Garber look like a rapist. It can’t be simply because she wanted to confuse the investigation.”

  “Maybe she was trying to make a statement.”

  “A statement?” Her brow knitted. “Like what? You think she was trying to tell us Garberwas a rapist? Maybe raped her?”

  “Or tried to.” I shrugged. “That would explain why she hated the guy so much.”

  She was quiet, thinking this over.

  We were standing side by side, and I became aware of Amanda’s nearness to me. Once again, I found myself fixating on her. I quickly looked away. What was wrong with me? Since Nicole’s death, I’d never even noticed other women. Certainly not Amanda. Hell, we were just coworkers, friends. Nothing more. We couldn’t be anything more. And yet…

  I went back to the nights when I’d look out the sliding glass door and see her sitting on her porch all alone. That’s when I remembered feeling the first subtle stirring of attraction. I’d find myself wanting to go over, keep her company. But I never did. I couldn’t, because—

  “Uh-oh,” she said. “Wonder what that’s about?”

  Andy appeared startled at something Simon had just said. Simon kept on talking, and Andy’s head bobbed. Andy patted his jacket pocket, as if responding to a question.

  Amanda picked up on the gesture and said, “The check for Dr. Bowman?”

  “Be my guess.”

  “How much, you think?”

  “Enough to get Billy interested.”

  “So we’re talking thousands?”

  “Possibly more.”

  Amanda checked her watch. “We’d better head on back. We haven’t got time to screw around, and the natives are probably getting restless.”

  “Simon won’t be much longer.”

  “How about I swing by and ask Martha if any buttons turned up in the compartment? Meet you at maintenance?”

  “Fine.”

  As Amanda turned to go, she hesitated, then asked softly, “Does Andy really think I’m a dyke?”

  The statement hung in the air. “You know Andy. He shoots his mouth off before he thinks.”

  Her eyes crawled up to mine. “It’s not just Andy. People have been spreading that stuff around about me since the academy. After all these years, you’d think it wouldn’t get to me. I try not to let it, but I’m not as tough as people think. Sometimes I just get tired of putting up with all the…”

  She bit her lip and looked away. The hurt returned to her eyes, and I found myself thinking about my comment to the helicopter pilot. My own little joke. And all the others I’d heard around the OSI office over the years. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Why? It’s not your fault.”

  I didn’t trust myself to reply.

  Abruptly, she began speaking. Her voice had a faraway quality, as if she were talking more to herself than to me. “I’ve always been a jock since I was a kid. I suppose that’s part of it. What makes the rumors so easy to believe. The first one started when I was a junior. There might have been some before. Probably were…Anyway, that was the first one I knew about. I went out with this guy for a few weeks. He was a senior. We had a fight because I wouldn’t put out. He paid me back by telling his buddies I was into girls. A lez. He thought it was a joke. But it wasn’t a joke. Not to me. The rumor got all over the school. People would say things to me, write things…” She blinked rapidly, turning to me. “It got so bad, I considered quitting. Almost did. But then, he would have won. So…I put up with it. When I became an officer, I thought things would change. It didn’t. I suppose that’s what’s bothers me the most. That maybe it won’t ever change. But…that’s not true. Not entirely. It’s the realization that maybe it’s my fault. That there’s something about me that makes guys assume—”

  “Don’t go there. You’re not to blame. It’s the way men are. We’re sexist assholes.”

  She was silent, her face open and vulnerable.

  I said, “You know you’re a bright and attractive woman.”

  She blushed. “Marty, please…”

  “Remember what you told me, that guys can’t handle a strong, competent woman. You were right; a lot of them can’t. They’re too damned insecure. That’s why they make up crap about you. It’s a way to bring you down to their level. You have to remember that no one believes the rumors. They really don’t.”

  “I wish I could believe that.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Andy believed the rumors.”

  I had no reply.

  Neither one of us said anything for a while. Even under the bright sunlight, her skin appeared taut and smooth. Staring into her perfectly formed face, I felt something awaken inside me. I inhaled deeply, but the feeling remained.

  She flashed an embarrassed smile and started to leave. “Sorry to get so heavy, huh?”

  “Sure. Amanda…”

  She looked back.

  I reached for my wallet, dug out a business card, and passed it to her. “It’s the helicopter pilot’s ca
rd.”

  She frowned at it. “Why are you giving it to me?”

  I tried to smile like I meant it. “Give him a call. You never know.”

  “Marty, I said I wasn’t interested.”

  “Look,” I said. “It’s not right, what you’re doing. You can’t give up on relationships because of a few bad experiences—” I clammed up at a sudden coldness in her eyes.

  “Relationships?” she breathed. “You’retelling me about relationships?”

  Uh-oh.“Amanda, I’m only trying to—”

  “I can’t believe this. I really can’t. You of all people giving advice on relationships.Please. ”

  Her tone was harsh, almost mean. I had no idea why she was reacting this way. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You really don’t know? Some fucking detective you are.”

  “Know what?”

  She threw up a hand. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter. Besides, you couldn’t handle it.”

  Now I was getting angry. “What are you talking about?”

  “Isaid, forget it, Marty.”

  “Dammit, if there’s something I should—”

  “I’mtired, Marty. I’m tired of waiting, hoping for something that will never come. But most of all, I’m sick and tired of you. Here, you like this guy so much,you go out with him.” She flung the card at me and walked away.

  Tired of me?

  Amanda motored around the corner of the hangar. She was really moving, her long legs flying. I’d never seen her lose her temper like this, certainly not toward me. Whatever was behind her reaction, I was convinced it was more than my remarks. It had to be more than my remarks. Dammit, I hadn’t said anything.

  I turned at the sound of a car door slamming. The Humvee began driving toward the exit. Through a rear window, I could see Andy grinning at me from the backseat, indicating he’d caught my scene with Amanda. With his big mouth, I figured I had maybe a week until every military investigator in area found out about our blow-up.

  When it rains, it pours.

  With a sigh, I shifted my attention to Simon, who was strolling up to me. “Want to tell me what that was about?” he asked mildly.