He stood by her bed, staring down at her with an appraising stare almost as frightening as unreason. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you. I don’t want to smell him on your skin. I just want you to tell me everything you did with him.”
Mute, Kate shook her head.
Joe shrugged, a heavy movement of his shoulders. Then he went to the nightstand and withdrew the gun. With an almost companionable manner, he sat next to her on the bed, and then placed the gun to her temple.
“Now you can tell me,” he said. A sheen of wetness glistened in Joe’s eyes. “Tell me, Kate. Or you’ll never know the night I choose to kill you in your sleep.”
As Kate closed her eyes, Joe laughed softly. “Maybe tonight,” he said. “First I’m going to the club. Wait up for me until I come back.”
She did not open her eyes until she heard the click of the front door closing.
THE KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT would follow was graven on Kate’s striking but haggard face. Terry felt no pity. “I count another lie,” he said coldly. “Either the story you told then or the one you’re telling now. Which is it?”
Kate sat straighter, resistant. “Everything I said was true—the fights, the times he hit me, the threats he made. I just changed the time sequence to leave out Tony and our affair.”
“With considerable skill,” Terry said. But he had no time to dwell on his anger and disbelief. “Tell me the rest.”
“I went to the bathroom and threw up.” Kate paused, then said slowly, “I was desperate. I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened, or why Joe had threatened me with a gun. That left family. Brian was the one safe person I knew.”
KATE OPENED THE DOOR of the town house before he could knock. Pushing past her, Brian looked swiftly from side to side. “Where is he?”
“At the Officers’ Club,” Kate said quickly. “He’s already been drinking.”
Crossing the living room, Brian searched the hallway. Then he joined her in the living room, his tone softer but still urgent. “What’s happening, Kate?”
“He’s been hitting me.” She sat on the couch, awkwardly and abruptly, feeling the adrenaline that had propelled her evanesce. “Tonight he threatened me with his gun. I can’t go on like this.”
Brian stared at her in astonishment. Then he sat down beside her, covering Kate’s hand with his. “You have to go to his battalion commander.”
Kate slowly shook her head, a gesture of despair. “I can’t, Brian. It would end our marriage.”
“What if he kills you? Where would the kids be then?” Brian spoke slowly and firmly. “You don’t have a choice. No matter what comes out.”
In response, Kate could only shake her head.
“What is it, Kate?”
She put her hands to her face, saying in a muffled voice, “Joe knows I was having an affair.”
She watched Brian take this in. “Whatever you’ve done, that’s not grounds for murder. You need to protect your family.”
Kate wished she could look away. But, despite her own shame, she needed to see his face. Quietly, she said, “I’ve been sleeping with your father.”
Brian simply stared at her, the astonishment in his eyes his only visible emotion. Then his shoulders slumped, almost imperceptibly. “You’d better tell me about this.”
Haltingly, she did. All she could add was the pitiful phrase that kept recurring to her: “We didn’t mean for it to happen.”
For an instant, Brian looked as shaken as she was. “Oh, Katie.”
His voice carried such despair that Kate felt the fault line in his soul: the war had upended his beliefs, and now she had shattered his conception of the father who, whatever burdens he imposed, exemplified self-sacrifice and honor. “I’m sorry,” she said, words that seemed as hollow as the ones she had spoken before.
Brian did not seem to hear. “All right,” he said. “Let’s think this through. If Joe exposes my father, the abuse will come out, too. If he doesn’t, he can blackmail you into taking more abuse—or worse. Either way, this is too volatile to go on.” Suddenly, Brian stood. “I’ll find you a way out of this, Kate. In the meanwhile, I’m taking his gun.”
With a rush of fear, Kate said, “What happens when Joe finds out it’s missing?”
Brian’s eyes were cool as ice, as cool as Anthony McCarran’s. “Tell him who has it. By then I’ll have figured out what to do.”
“HE SURELY DID,” Terry said softly.
No,” Kate insisted. “Please believe me. The phone calls happened almost exactly the way I said.”
THEY WERE GOING TO dinner. The children were gone, and Joe was drinking.
For once, her affair did not appear to taint his thoughts. He sat on the edge of their bed, watching Kate put her earrings on. “Just the two of us,” he said. “Remember how we were before?”
The reference to her transgression, once unthinkable to her, filled Kate with unspeakable sadness. “Yes,” she answered. “I remember how safe I felt.”
Something in her tone seemed to transform his thoughts. His face changed, as though a veil had fallen, leaving his eyes distant and suspicious. Then he stood, sliding open the drawer of the nightstand.
She watched him stare at the empty drawer. His voice almost a whisper, he asked, “Where is it?”
He turned slowly, heavily. The rage in his eyes made her dread having to answer. “Brian took it.”
Joe pushed her down on the bed, hard, pressing her throat. The stench of liquor filled her nostrils. “Brian McCarran?” he demanded.
“It’s not Brian’s fault—”
“It’s never their fault, is it? Always mine.”
Turning, Joe headed for the door. Afraid, she asked, “Where are you going?”
“To get back what’s mine. It’s time to teach the fucking McCarrans whose wife you are.”
He stalked from the room. Dazed, Kate could not remember Brian’s phone number. When she started dialing, the numbers came back to her.
His phone kept ringing, and then she heard a click. In the hollow tone of a recording, he answered, “This is Brian McCarran—”
“I USED THE CELL phone to call Brian,” Kate told Terry. “The one that Tony gave me. That’s the reason Flynn found no record of the call.”
Silent, Terry absorbed the way in which the truth—if it was truth—inverted the narrative of the court-martial. “What happened to the phone?”
Kate looked down. “After Joe was killed, I threw it in the river. If the CID had found it, they’d have traced the phone to Tony.”
“The general again. He’s certainly played an honorable role.”
“He didn’t ask me to,” Kate protested. “No one knew how important that call might be—that Flynn would think we planned all this, and that Brian called Joe.”
Amid Terry’s disbelief, another possibility presented itself more starkly. Perhaps it was true that D’Abruzzo had threatened Brian’s life. Or perhaps Brian’s solution, whether spontaneous or planned, had been to murder him.
There were things he desperately needed to know, but not from Kate. At once he stood. “I’m going to see Brian,” he told her. “If I find out you’ve called him, I’ll blow this whole thing up.”
two
DRESSED IN KHAKIS AND A POLO SHIRT, BRIAN MCCARRAN cracked the door of his quarters. Seeing Terry, he spoke without visible reaction: “If you’re here for Meg, Paul, she went over to your place.”
Terry ignored the door chain between them. “I’m here for the truth,” he said. “You can start anytime you want to. We’ve got until nine o’clock on Monday.”
Brian angled his head slightly, appraising his lawyer with an opaque, alert expression. Terry could imagine him on the roof of the Iraqi police station, planning to eliminate a sniper.
“You lied to the court,” Terry said with the same cold anger, “and you lied to me. You made me part of a cover-up, a pawn in your twisted family dynamic. Now that’s done. The trial isn’t. I’ve got choices, Brian.
But first I want the experience of hearing you tell it straight.”
Silent, Brian kept watching him. Behind the cool, impervious look, Terry sensed the swiftness of his thoughts. Then Brian unchained the door and stepped aside. “Sorry,” he said. “You know how badly I react to angry people showing up unannounced.”
Terry entered the living room, hearing the door shut behind him. Brian waved him to a couch. Taking a chair, Brian inquired evenly, “Where do you want to start?”
“The night D’Abruzzo came to see you. If it helps, you can pretend I’m him. But you can skip the bullets, or the bullshit about wanting to reason with him.” Terry’s voice became hard. “He owned you, Brian. Because he owned your father.”
To Terry’s surprise, a faint, chill smile played on Brian’s lips. “So Joe thought.”
D’ABRUZZO WAS DRUNK. He stood there, flushed and angry, heedless that the door to Brian’s apartment remained open behind him. Brian stood near the chair. “Close the door,” he said. “This is a private conversation.”
Turning, Joe kicked the door shut and took two steps toward Brian. Involuntarily, Brian stepped back. Seeing this, D’Abruzzo smiled a little. “Are you afraid of me, Brian?”
“Yes. But not for me. Thanks to you, I stopped caring in Sadr City.”
The reference to Iraq caused D’Abruzzo to stop moving, as though immobilized by the shame and fury Brian read in his eyes. “You are afraid, Brian—just like you were then. You’re a fucking coward.”
Brian imagined the gun in his hand, the savage joy of obliterating this man’s face until he had emptied the clip. He placed his hand on the arm of his chair, as if to retain his balance. “It takes a brave man,” he said softly, “to live with sending good men to the slaughter. I guess it helps to drink yourself senseless or slap around your wife. And when that fails to salve your self-contempt, there’s always the thrill of holding a gun to her head.
“Personally, I think the better choice is for you to blow your own brains out. But if you’re not brave enough for that, you might consider psychotherapy.” He paused, draining his voice of sarcasm. “Let this be, Joe. Get help—for your sake, for Matt and Kristen, and for Kate. You own the biggest piece of what she did. Destroying two families is the coward’s way out—”
“You pious little shit. This is all about the Great Man, not any of us lesser fools. Give me the gun or I’ll break his marble statue into pieces.”
The crazy energy in Joe’s voice deepened Brian’s fears—caged with this man in his living room, he felt Joe’s pathology spinning out of control, with consequences he could not restrain or predict. With the same quiet, he said, “Along with your family, your marriage, and your career? Bringing down my father isn’t worth that. And given what you’ve done to Kate, you haven’t earned the right.”
“He was fucking her.”
Once more, a burst of fury fogged Brian’s thoughts. “Maybe you should have—”
D’Abruzzo’s face turned florid. When he took another step, Brian reached for the gun. It was pointed at D’Abruzzo before he saw D’Abruzzo’s eyes widening in surprise. Struggling for self-control, he said in a tight voice, “We’re going to talk, Joe. You sit on the couch. I’ll sit in this chair. We’ve got all night for you to sober up. Then we can make sense of this.”
Shaking his head, D’Abruzzo took another step, extending his hand palm up. “Give me the gun, Lieutenant. Now.”
“No. You’ll use it on Kate.”
D’Abruzzo took another step forward, as though determined to dominate or die. “Hand it over,” he demanded. “Or I’ll shatter your windpipe and gouge your fucking eyes out.”
Brian shook his head. “Straighten yourself out, Joe. Or I’ll protect Kate any way I can.”
D’Abruzzo kept moving. Brian felt his gun arm straighten. Flinching, D’Abruzzo whirled as the gun jumped in Brian’s hand.
THEY FACED EACH OTHER in the dim light of a standing lamp. “In this version,” Terry said coolly, “self-defense seems a little more ambiguous. Was Joe attacking, or afraid of getting shot?”
“Attacking.” Brian hesitated. “At least that’s what I believed.”
Terry watched him closely. “What happened then?” he demanded.
Brian’s eyes clouded. “I really don’t remember. I don’t recall the last three shots at all. The next thing I knew, he was lying against the wall in a pool of blood with a bullet in his back. I sat down in the chair, wondering why I’d shot him.” His voice filled with doubt. “Was it to defend myself? Or to protect Kate, or my father? Or because I hated him? Or because I was afraid of taking orders? I didn’t know. I still don’t know.”
“So you called Meg.”
“Yeah. I was pretty scattered. But I told her everything I could.”
“Including about your father?”
Slowly, Brian nodded. “She had to know.”
“How did she react?”
“She got very quiet. But when she spoke, she sounded just like always: calm and even cool, someone to rely on. She said I’d be all right until she got to Fort Bolton if I followed her advice: call the MPs but don’t talk to CID.”
“Why did you talk to them?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Then let me guess, Brian. You wanted to cover up for your father. If you didn’t give them some kind of story, they might keep digging.”
Watching Terry intently, Brian shook his head. “I told the truth as I knew it. You can believe that, or not. All I did was leave my father out.” His tone became even. “Whatever my reason for shooting Joe, he was dead. I wasn’t so far gone that I didn’t grasp the benefit of that.”
The chill pragmatism of the answer made Terry pause. “Did you tell the general what you knew?”
“No.” Brian’s eyes hardened. “The whole thing made me so sick I could barely look at him. If he hadn’t crossed the line, D’Abruzzo would still be alive. Instead he set the shooting in motion by acting contrary to everything he’d told us—told me—about honor and integrity. My father was as dead to me as Joe D’Abruzzo. To tell him how I felt was more than he deserved.”
“Bullshit, Brian. You lied for him. In fact, you lied yourself into a court-martial for murder.”
“That wasn’t the plan,” Brian retorted. “The plan was just to keep my father out of this. Then you found out that D’Abruzzo had told that army captain that Kate was ‘fucking McCarran.’ It was obvious that Flynn would keep on digging until he found Kate’s lover—”
“So despite your contempt for your father,” Terry interjected, “you decided to exchange a charge of adultery against him for charges of murder and adultery against you, risking your career and a lifetime in prison to save General Anthony McCarran’s reputation. Seems a little disproportionate, doesn’t it?”
“We’re McCarrans,” Brian responded with quiet sarcasm. “I had the family honor to consider.” His tone changed again, becoming level and practical. “He was a sitting duck for adultery charges. But I didn’t know if I was guilty of anything. By the time I had to choose, I understood the basis for our defense—there weren’t any witnesses but me. And I’d begun to see how good you were. Consider my decision a vote of confidence—”
“How did you know I wouldn’t leave?”
Brian flashed his smile, no less engaging for its irony. “Let’s say I had my hopes. I saw the way you were starting to look at Meg. I’d even begun to imagine you’d want the pleasure of joining our family—”
Terry gave a harsh laugh. “As opposed to the Manson family?”
Brian’s smile faded. “Don’t blame her, Paul. She had nothing to do with the worst of this. And you should stop to remember who our family includes.
“You think I did this for my father. You’re off the mark. If some McCarran had to be Kate’s lover, which one of us would be easier for Rose Gallagher to accept? The answer was very clear to me.” Brian leaned forward, speaking with a passion and intensity Terry had never heard. “Rose gave us ev
erything. She gave him everything. She dedicated the biggest piece of her life to making our lives whole. Maybe Kate resented that. But this was my call, not hers. Rose loves my father. I wasn’t going to let Kate turn her mother’s sacrifice into a heartless joke. Kate had no standing to object.”
Terry stared at him. “Or to deprive you of the unique pleasure of your position.”
Brian met his stare, then covered this with a guarded smile. “That’s a little deep for me.”
“Oh, I think not. I credit your feelings about Rose—if not their primacy. But in the end, I think this is about your father.” Terry’s voice quickened. “For the first time in your life, you felt superior to him in every way. You’d protected Kate from her husband. You’d covered up his moral failure. You, not he, were protecting the family—including Rose. And once he knew that you knew, and what you’d done for him, he could never face you again. The fact that no one outside the family would ever know made it all the sweeter.
“That’s not all. You’d come to despise the army. But given the code of the McCarrans, you couldn’t find an honorable way out. By admitting to an ‘affair’ you hadn’t conducted, you designed the perfect exit strategy, while standing the McCarran code of honor on its head. Whatever else happened at the court-martial, at its end the army would dismiss you. You could walk out without being seen as a coward.”
Brian’s face was stone. “I’m glad that’s all so clear to you. Speaking for myself, I’m on trial for a shooting I mostly can’t recall. I don’t know if I’m innocent or guilty—and, if I’m guilty, of what. I get to face how fucked up I am without being able to tell you what that has to do with this. I don’t even know why I shot him.” A touch of acid crept into his voice. “You think this trial is hard for you to live with? Then you try living with that.”
Terry stood. “You’ve done your damnedest to make me, Brian. But I’m the one who gets to drop out.”
Terry turned away. As he headed for the door, Brian repeated softly, “Don’t blame her, Paul. Do whatever else you like, but don’t blame her.”
In the Name of Honor Page 41