The Wandering Ghost (george sueno and ernie bascom)

by Martin Limon

  Ernie let her chin go and stepped away. He turned to three men standing at the far end of a counter. They’d stopped working now and were looking at us. The ranking man wore the insignia of a buck sergeant.

  “You let her come to work like this?” Ernie asked.

  The buck sergeant shrugged. “It’s her life.”

  I read his name tag: HOLLINGS.

  “She should be in a program,” Ernie said.

  “Been in one. Fell off the wagon a week ago.”

  Ernie looked back at Specialist Korvachek. The MP report said her first name was Anne. Ernie walked over to the water cooler in the corner of the office, grabbed a paper cup from the dispenser, and filled it with water. Then he walked across the office to Korvachek’s desk and tossed the cold water directly into her face.

  She sat up sputtering.

  I expected her to start cursing but she was too surprised. Ernie stepped around the desk, grabbed her by the arm and hoisted her to her feet, walking her toward the open door.

  I followed, closing the door as we left the office, warning off the three men inside with my eyes. Soon, the three of us were in the center of the warehouse. Piles of folded canvas and green wool blankets towered above us like pungent cliffs of cloth.

  “Matthewson,” Ernie said, grabbing Korvachek by her narrow shoulders. “Talk.”

  The young woman’s head swiveled and her eyes rolled. “You’re cops.”

  “Good guess, Miss Marple. What happened to Jill Matthewson?”

  “I don’t know. She’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “There.” She pointed vaguely toward the main gate and beyond to the city of Tongduchon.

  “She went to the ville?” Ernie said.

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She always went to the ville. She worked there and when she was off duty she went there, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Korvachek seemed surprised by the question. She waved her hand again. “To get away from this shit.”

  “To get away from the army?

  “Yeah. And all the jerks who are trying to pinch your butt and call you names.”

  “Some of the other MPs were giving her a hard time?”

  “Of course. I told that other guy that. The one with the big nose. What’s his name?”

  “Bufford?” Ernie asked.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Mr. Bufford.”

  “So this GI who was giving Jill a hard time, what was his name?”

  “Not a GI,” Korvacheck said. “Any GI. They’re always making comments about your body, or what they want to do with you, or rubbing their crotch and leering. You know, things like that. That’s why Jill wanted to get away.”

  None of this had been in Bufford’s report. Not surprising. Not only would he not want to embarrass the Division but in the United States Army such behavior is so routine that it’s not worth mentioning.

  A door opened and slammed, the same door Ernie and I had used to enter the Central Issue Facility. I motioned to Ernie and we ushered Anne Korvachek deeper into the bowels of the CIF warehouse. Once in a position where we hoped nobody could hear us, we stopped. Above us now, instead of mothballed army blankets, a jagged mountain of entrenching tools-short-handled shovels- loomed. Ernie resumed his questioning.

  “When Jill went to the ville,” he asked, “where did she go?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Korvachek answered. “We weren’t that close. She didn’t tell me.”

  She pouted as she crossed her arms. Ernie let go of her and stepped back, giving her a chance to breathe. After a moment of silence, I said, “It’s important, Anne. I know you didn’t want to tell those other investigators. But we’re not from Division, we’re from Eighth Army.”

  She snorted. “Same difference.”

  “No. There is a difference. We don’t want to embarrass Jill or harm her in any way. Her privacy is her privacy and if she doesn’t want to be in the army anymore…” I waved my hand in a broad circle. “If she doesn’t want to put up with all this, that’s her decision. We’ll honor it. We’ll tell her what to do and who to talk to and how to go about requesting a discharge. It may not be easy and she might be punished for going AWOL, but we’ll tell her straight. And the only reason we’re up here and the only reason we’re looking for her is because she hasn’t contacted her mother. Her mother wrote to her congressman about Jill’s disappearance and started this investigation rolling. At least Eighth Army’s part in it.”

  “Her mother?” Korvacheck asked.

  “Yes. Jill hasn’t contacted her. No letter, no phone call, no nothing.”

  Anne’s brow furrowed and she started to chew on the nail of her thumb.

  “You promised you wouldn’t tell,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

  When she didn’t answer, I took her silence for consent. “But it’s beyond that now,” I continued. “Jill Matthewson could be in danger. She could be hurt. She could be praying that someone finds her.”

  Anne Korvachek let out a deep sigh. “I didn’t want to tell that other guy. What’s his name?”

  “Bufford,” Ernie said again.

  Korvachek nodded. “Yeah, Bufford. He acted like Jill had done something wrong.”

  She had, actually. In the military, not reporting for duty is a crime but I didn’t say that. Instead, I said, “We don’t think she’s a criminal. We think she needs help.”

  She studied Ernie and me again and made her decision. “I don’t know much. While she was on patrol, out in the ville with the other MPs, she came to know some of the girls who work there. Korean girls. You know, strippers and stuff like that. She said they weren’t so bad and some of them were friendly and started talking to her. One of them helped her find a hooch. A cheap place, somewhere in the ville, away from the bar district. I don’t know exactly where ’cos she never invited me to go with her. But it’s quiet, she told me, and there was a nice old mama-san who taught her how to do things. You know, how to get water out of the well, where to hang her laundry, how to change the charcoal, things like that. It was the only place where Jill could get away from all the GIs leering at her and making comments and trying to talk her into taking off her pants.”

  “This friend of hers,” I asked, “this stripper who helped her find the hooch, do you know her name?”

  “No.”

  “Which club does she work at?”

  “I don’t know. More than one, I think. And I don’t know what she looks like. Jill and I weren’t close.”

  Neither Ernie nor I asked why. Instead, we stared at her. When she could no longer bear the silence, Anne Korvacheck said, “Me and Jill, we’re into different things, you know?”

  We knew. According to everyone we’d talked to, Corporal Jill Matthewson didn’t smoke or drink or do drugs and, until she disappeared, the Division chaplain claimed that she’d attended church services every Sunday. Something told me that Anne Korvachek hadn’t attended church services in quite a while. I wanted to hug her and tell her to forget all this military stuff and go home to her family. Instead, I remembered she was a soldier. And I remembered that she might have information important to our investigation.

  “Druwood,” I said.

  “The dead guy?”

  “Yes. Do you know what happened to him?”

  “Jumped off the tower at the obstacle course. That’s what everyone says.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “In this hellhole? Why wouldn’t I?”

  “So you think he killed himself.”

  Anne Korvachek shrugged. “How would I know?”

  “Did you know him?” Ernie asked.

  “No. But Jill did. He was an MP.”

  “Did she know him well?”

  “Too well. He was always hanging around the barracks, asking about her.”

  Ernie and I froze. This could be the connection we were looking for, the type of connection that broke a case. I didn’
t want to ask a question that would lead Anne Korvacheck down a preconceived path, so I used an old technique. I simply repeated the last thing she had said.

  “Asking about her?”

  “Yeah. You know. Trying to get a date. Hoping she’d start liking him. Jill didn’t dislike him but she didn’t like him either. She avoided him.”

  Ernie glanced around, listening. I heard it, too. Squeaks. Shoe leather? No, more like mice. Pest control should’ve been a high priority in a huge warehouse like this. Apparently not so. I turned my attention back to Anne Korvachek.

  “Was he stalking her?”

  “No. Nothing like that. He was just a big dumb puppy dog. Sick with love.”

  “Love for Jill Matthewson?”

  “Not ‘love’ love. A crush, like.”

  I was about to ask Anne Korvachek another question when something hard thumped against wood. Anne and I glanced toward the sound but Ernie looked up. And then he leaped at us. Screaming.

  For a moment I thought my partner, Ernie Bascom, had gone mad. He shoved me with his right hand and shoved Anne Korvachek with his left and knocked us both against the open wood frame foundation of the holding bin. I clunked my skull against a two-by-four but Ernie kept pushing until I dropped to a sitting position and kicked myself backwards beneath the safety of the wood-slat platform. Anne Korvachek did the same.

  The Central Issue Facility rained shovels.

  About two tons of them. They clattered to the cement floor with an enormous din, sometimes slamming down hard on their flat metal edges, sometimes gouging sharp corners into the cement, leaving half-inch-thick, arrow-shaped dents. Ernie kept shoving Anne and me until our arms and legs and other vulnerable body parts were protected beneath the wooden platform from the landslide of entrenching tools.

  Finally, the shovels stopped falling.

  Ernie and I clawed our way out of the avalanche. He ran behind the platform that had only recently held the entrenching tools. I followed. When we found no one there, we ran toward the door that had opened and slammed.

  No one there either. Not inside. Not outside.

  Wheel marks in gravel. Nothing we could trace. Apparently a getaway vehicle had been waiting. Whoever had slipped into the warehouse and toppled the enormous pile of entrenching tools had planned his escape well.

  Ernie and I dusted ourselves off.

  Sergeant Hollings and his crew were still cowering, afraid to come out of the back office. When we frightened them into talking, they claimed they hadn’t seen anyone enter or leave the warehouse, and they had no idea who’d tried to shove two tons of entrenching tools atop Ernie, me, and Anne Korvachek.

  I believed them. But only because they appeared to be genuinely scared. But why were they so scared? What was happening on Camp Casey that was creating a climate of fear? When I asked that question I received only shrugs and grunts and finally I gave up. I figured there was no way-short of torture-I was going to extract any information from them.

  In a corner of the warehouse, Anne Korvachek sat alone on a stool. Crying. I tried to comfort her but it didn’t work. Instead, when she wouldn’t stop sobbing, I told her to get herself back into the rehab program. She said she didn’t want to and anyway it was none of my business.

  I thanked her for her cooperation and we left.

  Coincidences, of course, are something cops are taught never to believe in. The fact that another young MP, Private Druwood, had been involved in a serious incident-an incident that led to his death-only a few days after Corporal Jill Matthewson’s disappearance was a coincidence in and of itself. But when you added the fact that Private Druwood-at least according to Anne Korvachek-had harbored an unrequited crush on the selfsame Corporal Jill Matthewson and he’d actually been following her around, then the coincidence was too great for Ernie and me to ignore.

  Late in the morning, Ernie and I stopped at Camp Casey’s 13th Field Dispensary. As usual, four or five Quonset huts of various sizes were hooked together by short walkways. I wanted to take a look at Private Druwood’s body. Maybe it would tell me something that would give me a clue as to Jill Matthewson’s disappearance. More likely, it wouldn’t. But if the corpse was still here on Camp Casey, I wanted to see what I could. In any investigation, more information is always better than less.

  We entered through the back, via a loading dock where Division ambulances pulled up and delivered soldiers who’d been injured in field training. Field training is the lifeblood of any infantry division. A way for young soldiers to stay in combat trim. As such, it was constantly being conducted somewhere in the Division area.

  We pushed through double swinging doors. A young man, stripped to the waist, sat on a metal table staring at his bleeding arm. A jagged shard of purple bone stuck through the flesh. A tall man with swept-back brown hair ministered to him, blood spattering his white coat. He jabbed the young soldier’s biceps with a syringe and told him to lie back and try to relax, the MEDEVAC to transport him to Seoul would arrive in a few minutes. The young man seemed unsure but then, apparently, the drugs kicked in. His eyeballs rolled back in his head and he leaned to his side and the tall man in the white coat eased him down onto the metal table. When the young soldier was arranged neatly, the tall man turned to face us.

  “What are you doing here?”

  His name tag said WEHRY. His rank was specialist six. Not a doctor, a medic.

  “Druwood,” I said, flashing my identification. “The body still here?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Yes. We’re going to send it down to Seoul on the same chopper transporting this young man.”

  “We want to look at it,” Ernie said.

  Wehry straightened his spine, thrusting back his shoulders. “Absolutely not. The body is encased and prepared for transport and no one is going to look at it until it reaches the medical examiner in Seoul.”

  Ernie and I glanced at one another. We had developed a routine for this type of contingency. In a bureaucracy as cumbersome as the United States Army, we’re forced to perform it often.

  Ernie approached Wehry, his face twisted into a sneer, his body relaxed, hands on hips, doing everything he could to convey to Spec 6 Wehry that Ernie was totally disgusted with his response.

  “Do you realize what you’re doing, Wehry?” Ernie asked. “Obstructing justice? Do you have any idea who sent us here?”

  “I don’t care,” Wehry replied. “We have procedures. No one can traipse in here and start examining bodies.”

  Ernie stepped to his left, opening his jacket, letting Wehry see the hilt of his. 45 in its shoulder holster, making him worry that Ernie was about to pull it. I moved to the right. The injured soldier moaned as I did so, and then Ernie raised his voice and started gesticulating wildly. Wehry crossed his arms and was having none of it, shaking his head resolutely. I stepped to the far side of the room and pushed through a single swinging door.

  It wasn’t hard to spot the corpse. A body bag, full of something long and lumpy, lay on a metal cart. I stepped quickly toward the bag and examined the red tag on the bottom. DRUWOOD, MARVIN Z., PRIVATE (E-2). I reached to the top of the bag, grabbed the zipper, and pulled.

  I don’t think anyone ever gets completely used to the odor of death. I know I haven’t. It slapped me like a clammy hand enveloping my face, suffused with the raw, gamy scent of meat.

  Holding my breath, I examined the body as best I could. Feet, legs, genitals, hips, abdomen, chest: all body parts were intact but none of them looked normal. Everything, especially the arms, was scraped red and raw. The elbows and fingers had virtually no flesh left on them whatsoever. The nails, without exception, were torn, bent back. Had the body been dragged behind a jeep? That was the first thing that leaped into my mind. But then some part, like maybe the lower legs and feet, would’ve been spared the shredding. But nothing on Druwood’s body had been spared. It was as if he had been dragged, face down, along cement. The neck was bruised and slightly askew; it had probably snapped. The face look
ed surprised, mouth open. I closed the eyes. But the biggest attention-getter on the body of the late Private Marvin Z. Druwood was the front top quadrant of his skull. Smashed in. Red and pulpy with shards of bone sticking out. That impact is what had killed him, and probably snapped his neck at the same time. I leaned down to look more closely at the gaping wound and saw gravel. Flecks of it. I carefully removed one of the larger pieces and held it up to the overhead light. I rubbed it between my fingers. It was jagged. Applying only a very light pressure, the tiny chunk crumbled into powder.

  Cement.

  He’d fallen from a great height and cracked his skull on something made of cement. Pretty much what the provost marshal and Warrant Officer Bufford contended. Still, there were things here that didn’t add up. Had the body been scraped in the fall? Or after it?

  The door squeaked behind me. I turned. Red-faced, Spec 6 Wehry stood in the open doorway.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  I didn’t bother to answer. Instead, I zipped up the bag, rubbed my hands on the side of my coat, and walked past him. In the back room of the dispensary, I passed Ernie and the injured soldier still laying on his gurney. I kept going, onto the loading dock. Then I hopped down onto the gravel-topped parking lot. At the far edge, I stood for a while, staring across a vast expanse of lawn at the helicopter landing zone on the far side of the Camp Casey parade ground. Hands on my hips, I took deep breaths. The cold Korean winter filled my lungs.

  I felt it now. The old remorse. The old anticipation of something horrible that was about to happen that I couldn’t do anything about.

  My mother was still young. Still healthy, still beautiful, and yet she was dying. I was her only child. The women stood around her, their heads covered with black shawls, candles flickering in brass holders. They mumbled prayers in Spanish, kissed the tips of their fingers, and then caressed the silver crucifixes hanging at their necks.

  I wanted it to stop. I wanted things to return to normal. I wanted my mother to laugh and shout and pinch me and chase me around the backyard of the little hovel in East L.A. in which we lived. But she was so pale and her breathing was labored and she didn’t move. And then later-I’m not sure how much later-the priest told me that she was gone. My father had already fled, run off to Mexico like the coward that he was. I moved in with foster parents, first one set and then another, the entire program compliments of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Los Angeles. Living like a fugitive, I started to become alert to people’s moods, the flickering of their eyes, the inflections in their voices, the double meanings in the words they spoke. I dealt with the jealousy of the other kids in the families, the hatred of the fathers when they watched me shovel beans into my mouth, the impatience of the mothers when I dirtied one pair of blue jeans too many.