One Drop of Blood

by Thomas Holland

  Levine cussed softly to himself and Kel stirred.

  When Levine looked over, he noticed Kel blinking and shifting his weight in his seat. “Have a nice nap?” he asked. “We’re here, except I missed the exit for the rental car place. Got to swing back around.” They were approaching the terminal building.

  Kel sat up fully and shook his head like a wet dog, trying to clear his thoughts. He rubbed his eyes and took stock of where they were. Not in a field surrounded by wet grass and singing birds. “That’s okay. You can drop me off here at the terminal, and I’ll catch the shuttle,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Fact, you can let me off right here.”

  Levine responded quickly and pulled to the curb in front of the terminal, breaking only long enough for Kel to climb out. They agreed to meet at the Sleep-Mor Sunday night. They nodded at each other as if to acknowledge that the trouble between them was resolved.

  Thirty minutes later Kel was behind the wheel of a rented Ford Taurus bound for Millington, Tennessee.

  Chapter 22

  Navy Casualty Assistance Office, Millington Naval Base, Millington, Tennessee

  FRIDAY, AUGUST19, 2005

  Kel called and e-mailed the navy’s Casualty Assistance and Retired Activities Branch frequently to discuss matters relating to CILHI identifications, but he’d only visited their office a couple of times before. New security measures had been put in place since his last visit, and he had a little difficulty navigating from the front gate. Millington is a large base, relatively flat and devoid of memorable landmarks, and easy to get lost on.

  It took him a while, and a couple of loops around the same block, but he finally found what he was looking for on Integrity Drive. It was a red-brick building, not old, but not new either. The interior had been recently renovated.

  On the second floor, Kel passed large, four-color posters for Papa Franco’s Pizza and King Midas sub sandwiches. It had surprised him on his first visit, and even now it took a minute before he remembered that Navy Casualty shared office space with the section that governed the food franchises that operated on navy bases. No one else seemed to appreciate the incongruity of grieving families and extra pepperoni.

  McCann’s office was near the end of the long hallway in a corner suite. The door was open. So far, so good. He poked his head in. The secretary was at her desk typing on a computer, her nose six inches from the screen as if she had forgotten her glasses. Kel tried to recall her name.Marge? Mary?

  “Yes sir.” She smiled when she saw Kel’s head appear. “Can I help you?” She had that west Tennessee cross between a twang and a drawl, and even to Kel’s usually sympathetic ear it sounded more like “Kin ah heap yew?” She was a local hire.

  “Yes ma’am. I hope so. By any chance, is Gary in? Tell him Kel’s here. It’ll only take up a few minutes of his time—I promise.” Kel smiled back. He wished he could remember her name.Martha?

  “Oh, my breath and soul, Dr. McKelvey, now I didn’t recognize you. I’m so used to talking to you on the phone that it’s odd to see you here in the office. I’m Maggie. How’s that weather in Hawaii?”

  Maggie, that was it. “Oh hey, Maggie, I should have recognized the voice. Weather’s gorgeous, same as always—tell your boss that you need to come out to the Lab to discuss business—we’ll show you all around. Speakin’ of your boss, is Gary here? This really will just take a couple-three minutes.”

  “Sure is. I think he’s on the phone, but you just go right on in. Can I get you some coffee or something?”

  “No ma’am, thank you though.” Kel stepped past Maggie’s desk and tentatively peered around the doorjamb of the adjoining office. Gary McCann was sitting at his desk, feet up, carrying on such an animated telephone conversation that the file on his lap kept slipping off, only to be retrieved every few seconds. He was an older man, wiry and spare, with an avuncular nest of silvery white hair. He was well suited to the job of soothing grieving next of kin. He smiled through his conversation and motioned Kel into a chair with several rapid flicks of his wrist. Kel nodded his acknowledgment, but opted to continue standing, walking over to the window to look out at the grassy lot next door. He was still looking out when he heard the phone rattle home into its cradle.

  “Well, the famous Dr. Robert McKelvey. Come on in and sit down, sit down…Sorry, that was some chucklehead from Fort Sill. Get this, we’re trying to get a navy funeral scheduled on an army base, and on short notice too—long story…the hoops we have to jump through, right?” he half-winked and gestured toward the telephone that he’d hung up as if the chucklehead was stuck inside it and might be listening. He released a long, though not unpleasant, sigh. “Anyway, what brings the globe-trotting Dr. Kel here? I had a message that you called yesterday. D’you get taken care of all right?”

  “Sure did. Actually, I was down in Split Tree, Arkansas, when I called—ever heard of it?”

  He cocked his head. “You bet. Mrs. Grace Ellen Trimble, resides at something, something, something West Boulevard North. Mother of Jimmie Trimble, Navy Cross awardee. I had to go get a blood sample for DNA testing from her, remember?”

  Kel smiled. He knew that the casualty reps hated having to contact the next of kin of resolved cases, years after the fact, to get blood samples. Nothing like knocking a thirty-year-old scab off. “I remember. Sorry.”

  “Should be. Which reminds me,” McCann said as he searched through a stack of e-mail messages, finally pulling one to the surface and holding it up. “Tell me, what’s all this crap about Mrs. Trimble not being the birth momma? Got a message here from your office that y’all want us to go and ask her whether her son was adopted. Why in hell do we need to go and do that? He’s identified and buried—ain’t he?”

  “Yeah, he is. And the answer is, you don’t. Cancel that request. Bad idea. Bad, bad, bad idea. Believe me. Super bad idea.”

  “Bad idea, huh? I take it you’ve already asked her.”

  “Bad, bad, bad idea.”

  McCann’s eyes showed a great deal of amusement as he deciphered the look on Kel’s face. “She throw you out of her house, or’d she have the sheriff do it.”

  “Didn’t have to. I sort of slunk outta there on my own belly. But I gather you’ve had some dealings with the sheriff down there. I’ve heard about him.”

  “You got that about right. She had him there when I went down for the DNA blood draw. Edmund, Eldon, Etkin—something like that. Big guy with a bad attitude. He’s very, and I mean very, protective of Mrs. Trimble. So what’s going on down there anyway? What would make you fly halfway around the world to little old Millington? Can you talk about it?”

  “I could if there was anythin’ to talk about,” Kel answered. “It’s like jugglin’ a bunch of canaries. FBI is investigatin’ an old civil rights case and somehow managed to get it into their collective brainpans that it may somehow be linked to Trimble’s loss—I’m sure it isn’t, but Colonel Botch-It wants us to be a team player and rebuild some broken fences between the CIL and the FBI…”

  “That Gonzalez case you all messed up?”

  “Screw you, Gary. The FBI botched that one, not us. And it’s Gonsalves.”

  “Okay, okay.” McCann raised his hands in mock surrender. “If you say so.”

  Kel took a breath to regroup. “Anyhow, here I am, spendin’ my time imaginin’ the pile of work that’s accumulatin’ for me at home, and I’m stuck workin’ with this paranoid FBI nutball who’s all wrapped around the axle because it’s a big-time case and his job’s on the line. The Leon Jackson murder—ring a bell?”

  “No. Should it?” McCann was from West Texas originally, and even though he was certainly the right generation, the Jackson case probably had received very little print space in his neck of the woods.

  Kel shrugged and shot his eyebrows. “Not necessarily. It attracted a fair share of attention forty years ago. Anyhow, that’s not why I’m here. What I could use some help with is runnin’ a check on a coup
le of names.”

  “Sure.”

  Kel pulled a small piece of paper from his shirt pocket and looked at the name he’d written on it. “You got access to the VA’s files, right?”

  “Not supposed to.”

  “C’mon.”

  McCann swung his feet off his desk and jiggled his computer mouse to rouse it. He pecked at a few keys in what appeared to Kel to be a totally random sequence, and then asked, “What’s the name and what do you need to know?”

  “First. Dwayne Crockett—last name as in Davy. Marine.”

  “He alive or dead?”

  Kel shrugged. “Alive, I hope.”

  McCann pecked a few more keys. “Got two showing. Desert Storm and one from Vietnam. Both alive as of last month.”

  “Gimme the Vietnam one. Phone number?”

  “Coming up.” McCann clicked a mouse button and his printer engaged. “Next.”

  “Next one is a Vietnam case, so call up your MIA file.” Technically, there were no more MIAs from Vietnam. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, military review boards had amended the status of all the missing servicemen to presumed Killed In Action, but the term MIA continued to be used informally.

  Gary clicked and pecked. “Go.”

  Kel leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk. McCann turned the monitor slightly to an angle where Kel could see it more clearly. “I’m interested in a guy named Elmore, E-L-M-O-R-E, Raymond, or Ray, some combination like that. I think he’s navy, but I’m not sure. I may be mixin’ him up with Trimble. I’m curious as to when and how he went missin’.”

  “Shit. That’s the name. Elmore. Sheriff Elmore—the big guy. Don’t tell me this is the same Elmore…”

  “Same family, anyhow…a brother.”

  “Did I just say don’t tell me? Don’t tell me. Shit. What’s this about anyhow? Never mind. Nope. I don’t know nothing, and I don’t want to know nothing.” McCann shook his head while he pecked away at the keyboard like a trained rooster and then clicked his mouse. He read silently for a moment before looking over at Kel. “E-L-M-O-R-E? One L, right?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Nope. No Ray or Raymond Elmore listed as missing.” Spelling it with two Ls was no more productive.

  “Well now, isn’t that curious.” Kel knit his brows and squinted at the computer monitor. “None, huh? Try resolved cases. Maybe he was identified. Though if he was, the sheriff and the rest of the town don’t seem to know it.”

  A few more key pecks and McCann said, “No luck. Nine Elmores are listed as resolved casualties—all in South Vietnam, but none are named Ray or Raymond or anything at all like that. There’re five in the Army, four Marine Corps, no Navy, no Air Force. I didn’t think that name rang any bells for me. He’s not a navy casualty that I know of.”

  “Any on that list happen to be from Arkansas?”

  “Let’s see.” McCann ran his finger along the names on the screen as he read. “California, Oklahoma, Arizona, hmmm…nope, no Arkansas. There’s one from Missouri—Kansas City, but that’s it. When’d he supposedly die?”

  “In 1966, I think. Give or take a year max.”

  McCann returned his finger to the screen. “You’re in luck there. Two of ’em bought the farm in 1966, three died in 1967, couple in ’68…a ’65 and a ’69—but none of them are named anything like Ray or Raymond, not even any middle names that are close. And they’re all resolved. All identified.”

  Kel stared at the screen.

  “You sure this Ray Elmore fella died in Vietnam?”

  Kel thought about sleeping mockingbirds. “No,” he said softly, “I’m not.”

  Chapter 23

  Navy Casualty Assistance Office, Millington Naval Base, Millington, Tennessee

  FRIDAY, AUGUST19, 2005

  Gary McCann went outside to smoke a cigarette while Kel used his telephone. It took three calls to track down Dwayne Crockett; first to his home, then his office, and finally his cell phone.

  “Mr. Crockett,” Kel began. “Sorry to bother you, sir. Your wife said it was all right to use this number. My name’s Robert McKelvey, and I’m with the army. I was wonderin’ if I might ask you a few questions. It’ll just take a minute. Is this a good time?”

  Dwayne Crockett had returned from the Vietnam War to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1969. He’d taken over the management of his father-in-law’s drive-through car wash and, with a work ethic tempered by a vision of his own thin mortality, had built it into a successful chain that now was washing cars in over twenty-six locations. For the last thirty-seven years his routine hadn’t varied; every Friday he visited a different location and sat in his vehicle while the spray and the soap did their job.

  “Sure thing. You’ll have to speak up, though. It’s kinda noisy where I am. What’s the name again?” Dwayne Crockett spoke above the roar of the water blasting his windshield.

  “McKelvey. Robert McKelvey.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr…. You’re in the army, you say?”

  “No, sir. Work for the army. I’m a civilian.”

  “So what can I do for you, Mr. McKelvey?”

  Kel hesitated, not sure how to proceed. His father had always told him, when in doubt, put your head down and bull through it. Kel put his head down and bulled. “Mr. Crockett, did you serve in Vietnam with a navy corpsman by the name of Jimmie Trimble?”

  There was noisy silence on the other end.

  “Mr. Crockett?” Kel said, not sure if he’d lost his connection.

  “You’ll have to excuse me. I haven’t heard that name spoken in a long time, Mr. McKelvey,” Dwayne Crockett replied slowly, his voice barely audible over a roaring in the background.

  “So you knew Jimmie Trimble?”

  “Yes, sir, I did. I did. Why do you need to know this, Mr. McKelvey? No offense, but that’s a part of my life that I don’t discuss freely. And here you are calling me out of the bright blue, and all.”

  “I understand,” Kel offered up. “You see, I work for the lab that recovers and identifies the remains of missin’ U.S. servicemen, and I’m workin’ a case right now that kinda involves Jimmie Trimble.”

  “Jimmie Carl.”

  “Sir?”

  “Jimmie Carl. He always went by Jimmie Carl.”

  “Yes, sir. This case involves Jimmie Carl Trimble.”

  “How so?” Dwayne Crockett cut Kel off. “Can’t say I understand. Jimmie Carl was recovered and identified. I recovered him.”

  Kel thought about the case file he’d read the night before. He’d read Crockett’s name on the recovery report. “That’s right. Yes, sir, I read your report. It’s the young Marine that died with him…”

  “Evans.”

  “Chester Evans. He wasn’t recovered. That’s who we’re lookin’ for really. The problem is that we’ve recovered some remains from the site that don’t match either Trimble or Evans.”

  “Lot of good men were killed that day. Thirty-two, in fact.”

  Kel was nodding as he strained to hear Crockett. “That’s correct, but not from where we did our recovery. Only two that should be there at that location—Evans and Trimble.”

  “If you read my report, Mr. McKelvey, then you know that…well, we didn’t recover all of Jimmie Carl. His remains weren’t intact.” Dwayne Crockett paused and nursed a ragged thought. “I always knew there could be more of him out there somewhere, but the area was so hot with VC that we couldn’t search everywhere.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve seen the identification file that they did at the mortuary in Tan Son Nhut. Your recovery was more than adequate given the conditions. The real problem is that what we found recently doesn’t match him. Doesn’t match his DNA.”

  Crockett was quiet for a moment and then he spoke. “So what do you want from me?”

  Kel hesitated. “Don’t really know, Mr. Crockett. I was hopin’ that maybe you could tell me somethin’ that might make sense of it.”

  Crockett laughed. “You weren’t in Vietnam, were you
, son? No offense, Mr. McKelvey, but, make sense of it? That’s what you want? You want sense. Nothing over there made any sense. What could I possibly tell you that would make any sense? Maybe you want me to tell you that Jimmie Carl’s death made any sense? That it? That he died for a good cause. How ’bout you want me to say he was a hero?”

  “No, sir,” Kel tried to interrupt. “I—”

  “I did three tours in Vietnam. Three. You think I’m a hero, Mr. McKelvey?”

  Kel started to respond, then realized that no response was expected. He unconsciously hunched his shoulders as if bracing for a storm. He hated telephones.

  “You hear that word used a lot nowadays. Hero. Shit. I weren’t no hero. I did what I was asked to do; what my country asked me to do; what I had to do. My family’s been in the Marines since before the Spanish-American War. Crocketts bleed red and gold. You understand me? I volunteered and I didn’t have a choice. Few of us did, really. That’s the ugly little secret. You do what you have to—for whatever reason. Most of us were there because we didn’t have any choice. You understand? Too afraid not to go. But heroes, heroes have options. Heroes are the ones that make the hard decisions.”