PrivateSector sd-4

by Brian Haig

  He hesitated a moment, then said, “I’m Lieutenant Martin, Alexandria Police.” He then added, “Detective Williams says you might know the victim.”

  My eyes were fixed on the gray car. “Yes. Maybe.”

  He and Williams exchanged looks. Martin said to me, “The only identification we’ve found is her nametag. If the victim had a purse, it was stolen. It could save us hours. You mind?”

  I did mind. I wanted to cling to the faint possibility that it wasn’t her, that this was a really uncanny coincidence, that any second Lisa would come bounding down the walkway with her gorgeous smile and she’d take my arm and off we’d go.

  Instead, he took my arm and guided me. When we were fifty feet away I noticed her blond hair… then her slender body curled up on the tarmac, her arms flung sideways like she’d crashed down, legs splayed at an odd angle, as though they had simply buckled beneath her.

  Her green eyes were locked open and she was staring up at me. I fought an impulse to take a knee and hold her. Shock and pain were etched on her lips. Her body lay on its left side and she was looking over her right shoulder at an impossible angle.

  I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t. Martin’s eyes also were fixed on her face. He asked me, “That her?”

  I nodded.

  He led me away as two uniformed cops started stringing yellow crime scene tape around the car and Lisa’s body, and the ambulance crew began breaking out a stretcher. One detective was slipping plastic Baggies over Lisa’s hands, another speaking dispassionately into a microphone, recording his initial impressions.

  We ended up beside Lieutenant Martin’s unmarked car. He allowed me a respectful moment before he asked, “Her full name, please?”

  “Captain Lisa Morrow.”

  “How do you know her?”

  “We’re JAG officers. We worked together.”

  “As friends or associates?”

  I stared at him.

  He said, “I’m sorry.” He was the decent type, and allowed another moment to pass, then added, “Williams said you talked to her a few hours ago.”

  I nodded. “I’ve just been assigned to the office where Lisa spent the past year. We were going to compare notes.”

  “At this hour?”

  “She was working late.”

  His next question was interrupted by a dark Crown Victoria that raced down the aisle and screeched to a halt beside us. Two guys in cheap suits leaped out, flashing their tin. One pounced in our direction and yelled, “What the fuck’s going on here?”

  Martin approached the guy acting like an asshole and said, “I’m Lieutenant Phil Martin of the Alexandria Police. We got the call about a body.”

  From their short hair, bad suits, and worse manners, it struck me the new arrivals were from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or CID, the military equivalent of detectives.

  “Spell federal territory, asshole,” the older agent said to Martin. He waved impatiently at the other CID agent to go over to Lisa’s body, presumably to inflict the same treatment on the cops over there.

  Martin said to him, “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “I didn’t give you my fuckin’ name. Your assholes are fucking up my crime scene.”

  Appearing quite annoyed, Martin replied, “I was the one who called your night shift at Fort Myer and asked them to dispatch some people.”

  The object of his annoyance was a runt-ugly, nasty-looking face, big hooked proboscis, fat lips, small, tight eyes, and an olive complexion marred by acne scars. He was not a likable-looking sort, nor did he appear to be the likable-type. At that instant in fact, his forefinger was positioned an inch from Martin’s nose and he was demanding, “That right? If you knew we was coming, why are your assholes collectin’ my evidence?”

  I’d had enough. Lisa Morrow lay dead on the tarmac and this guy’s playing territorial prick. I stepped between them, faced the CID agent, and ordered, “Identify yourself.”

  He backed off a step. “Chief Warrant Spinelli.” But he swiftly recovered his lack of manners and said, “And your rank don’t mean shit to me. Get in my way and I’ll charge you with obstructin’ a criminal investigation.”

  Okay, fine. I needed someone to be angry with, and he’d do nicely. I reminded him, very coldly, “Mr. Spinelli, is it not proper military etiquette for junior officers to salute their seniors?”

  Well, his eyes narrowed, but his hand did slowly crawl through the air to his forehead. For about five seconds I let him keep it there before I returned it. Power is a funny thing-one minute you have it, and the next, a bigger dog comes loping into the neigh-borhood and craps on your favorite lawns.

  “Lieutenant, how were you notified?” I asked Martin, who was barely concealing a smile.

  “Somebody called 911 from a cell phone. It was transferred to my station.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “No. They apparently didn’t want to be involved.”

  “And what time did you notify the military police about Captain Morrow’s body?”

  “Right after the call. Nearly thirty minutes ago.”

  I let that revelation hang for a moment before I said to Spinelli, “Fort Myer is only five minutes away.”

  “I came when I got the call. It’s none of your business, Major.”

  Back to Martin, I said, “Lieutenant, I’d like to express the heart-felt appreciation of the Armed Forces. Mr. Spinelli was tardy, and this kind of cooperation shows your professionalism.” To Spinelli I added, “You will now try to act equally professional. You will conduct a proper handoff of evidence and responsibilities. You will handle this task with courtesy and grace. Have I made myself clear?”

  Lieutenant Martin tipped his head and left to inform his people.

  My eyes stayed on Spinelli. I informed him, “The victim is Captain Lisa Morrow, a personal friend. So listen closely, because I will only say this once-mess up this investigation, Spinelli, and I will fuck up your life. This is not an idle threat.”

  “You know the victim?”

  “What did I just say?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you a witness?”

  “No. I overheard one of them mention her name and I offered to identify her.”

  “Ain’t that a fuckin’ coincidence.” His eyes shifted in the direction of Lisa’s corpse. “What happened?”

  “She was murdered.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because unlike you, I saw her body. Her head is twisted at an impossible angle. Somebody snapped her neck.”

  “Uh-huh.” He turned back and studied me. “Wait here. Don’t even think of leavin’.”

  I leaned up against a car. It had been an unseasonably tepid December filled with clammy, rainy days and dull gray skies. But the warm snap had broken the day before; the night was cold and beautiful, a full moon, a star-filled sky, and I stared up at the heavens and cursed.

  Guilt. The circumstances were irrelevant; the guilt was unavoidable and overwhelming. Had I arrived on time, I’d be sitting with Lisa in a cozy bar swapping drinks and laughs and stories. I wondered if she was standing around and waiting when it happened. I wondered how it would’ve turned out had I come twenty minutes earlier.

  Spinelli’s voice echoed through the night, hazing and bullying the local cops. Martin’s people began leaving as more and more MPs began showing up, establishing a cordon around the crime scene, and proceeding through the paces of cataloging a murder. I felt as though I had just swallowed broken glass. A woman of extraordinary talent and great beauty had been left dead on the wet pavement like a piece of crumpled garbage.

  I thought of Lisa’s face, yet for some reason I could not recall her as I always knew her, as I wanted to remember her: happy, smiling, lively, and self-assured. Her death mask was inside my head, and I could not drive it out. The eyes, they say, are the windows into the soul. I believe this to be true, and, in fact, the feature that had struck me most profoundly the first time we met were her
eyes, a very deep, nearly unnatural green. They were striking eyes, and I had observed on many occasions the powerful effect they had on men, women, and often, to my chagrin, on juries.

  I had an odd and sickening suspicion that her killer had posed her body after her last breath. As I mentioned earlier, her body appeared to have simply collapsed, yet the killer may have twisted her neck afterward, wrenched it a few more degrees so that observers of her corpse could not miss her eyes-eyes no longer filled with life and tenderness but with shock and betrayal.

  The shock I understood. Her death was probably sudden but not pointless, and that was registered in her expression. It was the look of betrayal that haunted me to my soul.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A very long and chilly hour passed before Spinelli got back to me.

  He approached with a nasty smirk, withdrew a small notebook from his pocket, flipped it open, and yet, I noticed, there was no pen or pencil poised in his other hand.

  He asked, “How’d you say you knew the victim?”

  “I told you… we worked together. I was meeting her here to discuss a new assignment.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, shit… you did tell me that.” He saluted. “Well, you can go.”

  If I had had an ice pick in my pocket, I would’ve buried it in his forehead. But I had to settle for pouncing over to my car, climbing in, and peeling out of the parking lot with an angry squeal of rubber.

  I went straight to the phone when I got to my apartment, called the Pentagon switch, and asked the operator to connect me to General Clapper’s quarters at Fort McNair, a tiny base along the

  D. C. side of the Potomac that hosts the National Defense University and a number of quarters for general officers.

  Clapper picked up on the third ring and I said, “General, it’s Drummond.”

  Long pause. “This better be important, Drummond.”

  “It is. Lisa Morrow was murdered tonight.”

  He did not respond to this startling news.

  “I just left the crime scene,” I informed him.

  Still he did not respond.

  “The murder occurred around 9:00 P.M.,” I continued. “Somebody broke her neck. Her body was found in North Parking, beside her car. Her purse was missing.”

  After a pause, when he finally did respond, it was a technical question. He asked, “Who’s investigating?”

  I did not perceive this as coldness on his part. I knew Clapper regarded Lisa very highly, that he had been cultivating her for a very bright future, and this news was a bitter shock. But in the Army, business comes before both pleasure and grief.

  “The Alexandria police responded, then CID arrived and took over.”

  “Where’s her body?”

  “I don’t know where they took her.” I allowed him a moment to assimilate this news, before I said, “I’d like to ask a favor.”

  “What?”

  “I want to notify her family. Also, I’d like you to assign me as their survival assistance officer.”

  “All right.” Although he and I both knew this was hardly a favor.

  As you might expect, few organizations match the Army on the issue of death. Practice makes perfect, and the Army has had several centuries and millions of opportunities to work through the kinks. The notification officer is the guy who shows up on the doorstep to notify parents and spouses that their loved one has just been shifted on Army rolls from “present for duty” to “deceased.” The survival assistance officer comes along afterward to help arrange a proper military burial, to settle matters of the estate, insurance, death benefits, and so on.

  These are not duties that draw volunteers. A notification officer gets to share in the family’s look of shock, the onset of grief, the emotional outpouring that is always discomforting and that sometimes turns ugly. It can be a touchy situation, and the Army of course has a manual that instructs one how to inform a family to set one less dinner place setting next Christmas. You are advised to remain stoic, polite, and firm, to strictly limit the conversation to “I am sorry to inform you that your (husband, wife, child) was killed on duty on (fill in the date).” Just be sure to fill in the blanks correctly. You are further advised to bring along a chaplain in the event the situation turns sticky.

  As soon as we hung up, I called the casualty office in the personnel directorate, explained my intentions, and was informed a duty officer would call shortly. An anonymous major did in fact call, arranged for a courier to bring me Lisa’s personnel file, issued me a ticket number to book a flight to Boston, warned me to abide by the Army manual and customs on notification, and wished me luck.

  After three troubled hours of sleep, interrupted by a cheerless courier, I boarded the 6:15 early bird at Ronald Reagan National Airport. I waved off coffee and opened Lisa’s file. The Army personnel file is a compendium of a soldier’s life, from religion, blood type, and past assignments to schooling, awards, and so forth. The way Army promotions work, officers who’ve never met you pick through your annual ratings and personnel file, and from that paper profile determine whether Uncle Sam needs your services at a higher level.

  Soldiers are required to submit a fresh full-body photo once a year to certify you meet the Army’s height and weight requirements, and aren’t too moronic-looking to be promoted to the next grade. The official line is that good looks and military bearing are completely irrelevant, not even considered-and the remarkable lack of physically deformed or ugly people in the Army’s top hierarchy is obviously an odd coincidence. The photos are antiseptic, black-and-white, stiffly posed at the stance of attention.

  I took a moment and studied Lisa’s photo. The Army cautions its officers not to smile for these pictures, and Lisa Morrow was a good soldier, and wasn’t smiling. Yet she was one of those people with a reservoir of inner joy the camera couldn’t repress. She was extraordinarily beautiful, of course, and the camera could not conceal that either. Also, she had incredibly sympathetic eyes, slightly turned down at the edges, eyes that drew you in and soothed your troubled soul. I missed her already. I ripped her photo out of the jacket and stuffed it inside my wallet, a reminder of things to be done.

  By eight I was in a rental car, cursing Boston traffic and making my way to the Beacon Hill section. I reviewed what I knew about Lisa and her family. Her father was also an attorney, she had three sisters, and an affluent upbringing. All four daughters were close in age and friendship. I knew Lisa had attended a tony girls’ prep school in Boston, then the University of Virginia for undergrad, then Harvard Law, a school that contributes very few people to military service, as firms like Culper, Hutch, and Westin offer juicier paychecks and, apparently, nicer wardrobes.

  I knew Lisa’s mother had died when she was a teenager. As the eldest, she filled the familial vacuum. She and her father were extremely close in the way that only wifeless fathers and elder daughters can grow to be. All in all, this was going to really, really suck.

  The house turned out to be an impressively wide brownstone set on the downslope of a hillside cluttered with similar homes. Nice neighborhood, and judging by the Mercedeses, Jags, and Beemers lining the curbs, an exclusive preserve for professionals who aren’t looking for success-they’ve already landed there. I spent ten minutes hunting for a parking place and appeared on the Morrow doorstep at 8:45.

  I drew a sharp breath and tried to compose myself. The notification officer ordinarily has no acquaintance with the deceased, and it’s no great ordeal to remain calm and stoic. But I gathered my nerves and rang the bell, and half a minute passed before the door was opened by a gentleman in a dark business suit. On the far side of his sixties, I’d guess, trim and fit, with wispy silver hair and silver eyebrows perched atop two very green eyes. The face was leathery and lined, a face that had spent a lot of time outdoors, a warm face, etched with character and intelligence, that also looked like it could get tough if the situation warranted.

  We stared at each other for a few seconds, and before I could get a word
out of my lips, he sagged against the doorjamb and emitted a long, terrible sigh. Those with loved ones in the military know an unhappy moment is in the making when an anonymous officer in dress greens materializes on your doorstep.

  I struggled unsuccessfully to contain my emotions. “Mr. Morrow, I’m Major Sean Drummond. Lisa and I were, uh, good friends.” That “were” popped the cork prematurely, so I raced to say, “I’m sorry. Lisa died last night.”

  When I said “died” he nearly collapsed, and I reached out to steady him. Neither of us spoke. His eyes closed and tears began spilling down his cheeks. I tightened my grip.

  A woman’s voice inside said, “Daddy, who is it?”

  A choking sound erupted in his throat. A young woman appeared, saw me, saw her father crumpled with grief, and yelled, “Oh God… not Lisa?”

  Mr. Morrow pulled away from me and he and the younger woman collapsed into each other’s arms. This lasted a minute or so, them moaning, me standing miserably, clueless about what to do, or say, or not do, or not say next.

  I finally managed to say, “I am terribly sorry. Lisa and I worked together. We became close friends. She was a gifted lawyer and she was a, well, a great person.”

  Appropriate words. But to the ears of a father who had burped her, changed her diapers, shared in a lifetime of great triumphs and few failures, they inevitably sounded wooden, empty, and condensed.

  He apparently sensed my discomfort and said, “Come in, won’t you?”

  He took his daughter’s arm, and I followed them down a hall-way to a study at the rear of the house. The house itself-spacious, high-ceilinged, furnished tastefully with heavy wooden pieces, leather chairs, and oriental carpets-was a masculine home muddied by occasional frilly touches, evidence of four daughters. Pictures were everywhere of four young girls, from infancy through adulthood-graduation shots, a wedding picture, four girls on a boat with Mr. Morrow, hair blown back, all laughing. Above the mantel in the study hung a portrait of a woman beautiful enough to make you gasp; Lisa’s mother, I guessed, blond-haired, green-eyed, looking curiously at the painter through two large orbs that exuded sympathy, a resemblance eerie enough to give me a shock.