Startled, Julia scanned the empty road ahead, bounded on the left by a high stucco wall topped by rolls of concertina wire. Low mounds of rubble stretched off to the right. She didn’t recognize any of the landmarks.
“Where are we?”
“About a mile from the VNAF Officers’ Club, more or less.”
The words were casual enough, but the faint slur in them brought Julia twisting around in her seat. He’d had more to drink than she’d realized.
“Why did you stop?”
In answer, he flicked the headlight switch and plunged them into drizzly darkness.
“Are you crazy?” she demanded, more nervous about their isolated location than his idiotic behavior. “In case you’ve forgotten, the VC lobbed some mortars over the perimeter fence just a few weeks ago.”
“We’re far enough away from the perimeter. We need to talk, Julia. We need to do more than talk.”
“You’re right about that, but I’m not holding any conversations with you here. Start the Jeep, Hunter. This place makes me nervous.”
He leaned toward her, his face shadowed and dim. One hand tunneled through the hair at the back of her head.
“Good. I want you nervous and off balance and wide awake...unlike DaNang, sweet thing, when a whole houseful of termites couldn’t rouse you.”
“I’m awake, all right, and starting to get real pissed.”
She tried to jerk her head away. His fingers tightened on the back of her neck, holding her in place.
“Pissed is a start, but I think we can do better.”
Stiff-necked, Julia resisted his pull. “What about that little speech at your hootch a few weeks ago?” she sneered. “I thought you weren’t going to play the heavy-handed bad guy any more.”
“I wasn’t.” His mouth hovered inches from hers. She could smell the liquor on his breath and the damp heat on his body. “Then you came sashshaying out of your hootch in those fanny-huggers...”
“They’re hip-huggers,” she ground out, putting her balled fists against his chest.
“You haven’t seen them from behind, Goldilocks.”
His lips brushed hers. Julia straightened her arms, or tried to.
“Gabe, stop it!”
“I don’t think so.”
His mouth came over hers with bruising force. Julia kept her arms stiff and her mouth closed. Disgust washed through her for placing herself in this ridiculous situation.
She wasn’t frightened. Not of Gabe. She knew him too well to be frightened of him. Besides, he was an officer and a.. Well, an officer, anyway. He wore the same uniform she did. Was bound by the same code of ethics that bound her. Still, when he raised his head the glitter in his eyes made her uneasy.
“Listen to me,” she said, wincing inwardly at the breathlessness in her voice. “You’re right. We need to talk. We’ve got to end this silly head game we’ve been playing with each other. It’s not fair to Claire, and it makes us both look like idiots.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Julia. This has nothing to do with Claire, and you know it. This is you and me and the way you get all wet whenever you think you’ve scored a few hits in our little contest.”
Furious, she raised an arm. His hand clamped around her wrist in mid-air.
“Oh, no, babe. Not this time.” With a quick twist, he shoved her arm up behind her back. “This time we take it slow and sweet and nice.”
He pressed her to the seat. Pinned by their combined weight, Julia couldn’t move.
She used her free hand to shove at his chest. His fingers tangled in the chain to her Saint Christopher medal. The delicate silver links dug into the back of her neck, then snapped.
Enraged and panting, she started to struggle in earnest.
“Julia?”
Claire rested her clammy forehead against the door of Julia’s room. She’d conquered the sickness that had attacked her last night, but nausea had hit again just before dawn. Even now, a half-hour later, the roiling in her stomach threatened to rise and choke her. She dragged in short, shallow breath. Slowly, the nausea subsided. Lifting a hand, she rapped on the door again.
“Julia? Are you there? Please, I need to talk to you.”
She strained to hear over the sounds of the radio blaring from the room next door. The Red Cross counselor who occupied that cubicle was listening to the early morning news on the Armed Forces Radio Network while she got ready for work.
“South Vietnamese forces aided by American air strikes repelled North Vietnamese attacks on their forward positions northwest of Hue,” the announcer intoned solemnly. “A total of two hundred communist troops were killed and five tanks destroyed.”
Claire rapped again. “Jules?”
The radio cut off, and the door next to Julia’s opened. Susie Johnson, a petite redhead who performed the grim service of verifying and relaying family emergency notifications to U.S. military personnel, stepped into the rainy dawn.
“Hi, Claire. Are you looking for Julia?”
“Yes.”
“I think she’s in the showers. I passed her going downstairs when I was coming up a little while ago.”
“Thanks.”
Tilting her head, Susie eyed Claire’s face. “That must have been some party you two went to last night. You look almost as bad as Julia did.”
Claire returned a noncommittal answer as she followed the redhead along the balcony and down the wooden stairs. With a cheerful wave, Susie headed for the entrance to the women’s compound.
Claire reached for the handle to the screened door of the latrines, then froze. The unmistakable scent of kemchi assaulted her nostrils and sent her stomach into convulsions. She rushed past the astonished mama san who cleaned and ironed and cooked her personal meals on a hot plate in the cement-floored utility room. Falling to her knees, Claire lost the little she’d been able to force down in the past twenty-four hours.
The retching went on endlessly, one wave following another. When the heaving finally subsided, she clung to the stool and tried to stem the tears that streamed down her cheeks.
“Are you all right?”
Julia’s voice sounded low and infinitely weary. Claire tried to reply, but the only sound that emerged from her raw, aching throat was a moan. The door behind her pushed open.
“Claire! What’s wrong?”
Her eyes blurred by tears, she saw only the aquamarine of Julia’s silk kimono. She tried again to speak, but couldn’t work any words past the sobs that suddenly racked her.
“I’ll get you to the clinic.” Julia reached for her wrists. “Come on, let me help you up.”
“I don’t need to go to the clinic.”
“Yes, you do. You’re sick.”
I’m not sick. I’m pregnant.”
For long moments, Julia didn’t move, didn’t speak. The awful silence spurred Claire’s pride enough for her to swallow her sobs. Sliding her hands from her friend’s loosened grasp, she swiped the back of her wrist across her eyes.
“I know, I know. This is the seventies.” She managed a watery laugh. “Any woman who gets herself pregnant is a fool. I didn’t... I mean, I used... Gabe used a condom, but...”
“Don’t!”
Claire winced at the harsh, stinging lash. Her heart twisting, she read the condemnation and disgust in the her friend's paper-white face. She’d counted on Julia to help her through this.
Some of her despair must have shown in her face. Julia closed her eyes and seemed to shudder. Then she sank to her knees in the tiny stall and held out her arms. Whimpering, Claire threw herself forward. Fresh tears soaked Julia’s silk-clad shoulder.
“It’s okay,” she murmured.
“No, it’s not! Oh, God, it’s not! I’m too far along to get rid of it, even if I wanted to, and I don’t, Jules, I don’t! I couldn’t live with myself. I couldn’t ever go to Mass again.”
“I know, I know.”
“They’ll... They’ll kick me out of the Air Force as soon as they find out. You k
now they will. If Gabe won’t marry me, I’ll have to go home to my parents. They... They won’t ever let me or the baby live this down.”
The hand stroking the back of her head stilled. “You don’t want to marry Gabe Hunter, Claire."
“I do,” she wailed. “I do!”
“You can’t. He’s got a mean side. He’s...”
“He’s never been mean to me, Jules. Never! Of all the men I’ve met, he’s the only one who hasn’t made me feel like a freak because of...of these...damned balloons!”
“Oh, Claire!”
She pulled back, her face ravaged by tears. “He doesn’t want to get married. He’s told me that before we made love the first time. What am I going to do?”
Julia opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it. Her throat worked for a few moments before she finally replied.
“He’ll marry you.”
Chapter Twelve
Washington DC
Ted Marsh planted a foot on a desk drawer and tipped his chair back to catch the sunlight streaming in through his office windows. Located in a low, single-story building across the parking lot from OSI headquarters, the Investigative Operations Center was one of the many World War II-era buildings on Bolling Air Force Base scheduled for demolition. The heating system worked sporadically and the air conditioning refused to work at all, but the building’s interior had been gutted a decade or so ago to provide outsized, comfortable offices with plenty of natural light -- a rarity in federal structures.
Hands in his pockets, Marsh jingled his loose change and skimmed the time-line Barbara Lyles had constructed on the dry board that took up one wall of his office. A long blue line stretched horizontally across the board. Red x’s and scribbled notes intersected it at periodic intervals. The entries clustered at the right end of the line were the ones that held Marsh’s interest.
May 13: CS, JE, and GH attend party at Caravelle Hotel. CS leaves early. JE and GH depart together just before curfew.
May 15: CS and GH marry.
May 28: CS, now CH, returns to States, separates from AF under regulation requiring discharge of married women unless waiver approved.
Jun 11: JE spends birthday at orphanage.
Jun 12: JE reports weapon missing. GH fails to show for mission pre-brief same afternoon.
Jun 13: Jeep checked out to GH found alongside road to Long Binh; GH declared MIA.
Eyes thoughtful, Marsh fingered his loose change. “We’re missing a piece of the puzzle.”
Barbara took a step back, a red marker in her hand. Frowning, she scanned the board. “What’s missing? We’ve reconstructed the dates, the events, and the players involved. We’ve got the body, or what’s left of it. We’ve got the weapon. We’ve got the motive.”
“I’m having second thoughts about the motive.”
Barbara’s brows lifted. “Since when?”
“Since I talked to Lassiter. He’s right, Lyles. Julia Endicott doesn’t possess a co-dependent or insecure bone in her body. I’m having trouble seeing her as a woman scorned and in a jealous rage.”
“You don’t think the colonel had plenty of reasons to be jealous? Hunter comes on to her for months. They may or may not have slept together on several occasions. They certainly shared a bedroom in DaNang. The heat between them peels the paint off the walls at Lassiter’s party. Hunter leaves with her that night. Two days later, he marries her best friend, whom he’s also been sleeping with. That would certainly work me into...”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“If he was so hot to have sex with Julia, why did he marry Claire Simmons?”
“A man like Hunter might not consider the two mutually exclusive,” Barbara drawled.
“We’re missing something,” Marsh insisted. “Why did he marry Claire at that particular point in time? She was due to ship back to the States in less than a month. He was supposed to DEROS in July. Wouldn’t it have been more logical to wait and get married at home, with their families around them?”
“They were in the middle of a war. One of them, Hunter in particular, could have bought the farm any day.”
“They’d made it through the war for ten months. Why not wait two more?”
Barbara tapped her chin with the marker. “Okay, how’s this scenario? Claire knows she’s leaving soon. Although she insists there wasn’t anything going on between the man she loves and her best friend, she’s heard rumors or sensed the attraction. She gives Hunter an ultimatum. Forces him to choose once and for all.”
“Maybe.”
Marsh wasn’t convinced. Although he wouldn’t categorize Claire Hunter as a mouse the way Lassiter had, his instincts told him she wouldn’t have issued any ultimatums to Hunter. She loved him too much to risk losing him that way. Despite the odds, her love had prevailed. She’d married Hunter, given birth to his son, stayed true to his memory all these...
His chair hit the floor with a thump. “Have you still got the microfiche of Hunter’s personnel records?”
“Yes, on my desk.”
“Do they record his son’s birth date?”
“I don’t know. I suppose...” Barbara drew in a swift breath as she grasped the question behind his question. “Do you think Claire was pregnant? That’s what got him to the altar?”
“It’s a possibility. Can you track down the birth date?”
She tossed the red marker onto the tray attacked to the dry board and dusted her hands. “Sure. If it’s not in Hunter’s personnel files, the Accounting and Finance Center should have it. Mrs. Hunter would have claimed survivor’s benefits for the child during the years her husband was still listed as MIA.”
“Check it out, will you? I want the information before I talk to Mrs. Hunter again.”
“When are you talking to her again?”
Ted reached for the phone. “This afternoon, if she’s available. If not, I’ll delay our meeting with Colonel Endicott and her lawyer until she is.”
He punched in the number, hoping Claire Hunter would answer. Marsh wanted out of the office. After two days of cooling his heels while Colonel Endicott consulted with an attorney, he wanted to get the case rolling again. His eyes narrowed on the dry board. He wanted to know what happened between May 13th and May 15th, 1972.
“Yes, Mr. Marsh, I was pregnant with my son when I married Gabe.”
Claire stood at the living room window, rubbing her hands over her sweater-clad arms. She felt as cold and as brittle as the ice coating the bare tree limbs in her wooded front yard. Like them, she wasn’t sure how much more she could take without cracking.
Tomorrow, she’d attend a second memorial service for her husband. This time, the ceremony would be small and private, with only her and her son and Davey’s wife in attendance. There’d be no honor guard, no bugler playing taps in a haunting tribute to a warrior who’d never returned from the battlefield. Tomorrow, she’d say good-bye to Gabe for the second time.
Today, she was burying the last of her dreams. All these years, she’d held onto the illusion that her husband had developed more than a careless affection for her. She felt strangely empty, almost weightless without it.
“My son doesn’t know,” she told the man standing quietly behind her. “I never told him. There wasn’t any reason to.”
“I don’t see a reason to now. I just needed to understand why you and Captain Hunter decided to get married at that time, with so much going on in-country.”
So much going on between Gabe and Julia, he meant. He was too polite to say so.
Claire stared sightlessly at the bare tree limbs. As if it had happened yesterday, she could remember every moment of the night Gabe came pounding on her door and demanded to know why the hell he had to hear about her condition from Julia. His eyes shooting blue sparks, he’d instructed her to make whatever arrangements she wanted.
He’d relented when the tears that Claire couldn’t seem to turn off started down her cheeks. Taking her in his arms, he’d given her th
e same assurances Julia had. It would be all right. Everything would work out.
Claire had wanted desperately to believe him. During their post-wedding three-day R&R in Hong Kong, he’d treated her like a real bride on a real honeymoon. She didn’t need to pull the albums from the shelf in the living room to recall the vivid images of those brief, wonderful days. In her mind, she could see Victoria Peak silhouetted clearly against an impossibly blue sky and hear the waves slapping against the sides of the junk that took them to a floating restaurant. In her heart, she felt a whisper of the aching desire that had brought her into Gabe’s arms each night. He loved her. He needed her. She'd made herself believe it.
In the past few days she’d forced herself to face the truth. Gabe had married her to give their child a name, but the kind of love Claire wanted to give him wouldn’t have held him. He craved excitement. He needed the adrenaline fix he got every time he took his plane up. He would’ve left her eventually for someone more exciting, more challenging.
Like Julia.
Claire’s mouth curled down. Even now she couldn’t face the truth. If she were honest, she’d admit that Gabe had left her for Julia while they were still in Vietnam. Swallowing her bitterness, she faced the investigator.
“Why did you need to know the reason Gabe and I married? What possible difference could it make to your investigation?”
He chose his words carefully. “The evidence points to Colonel Endicott as the person who killed your husband. We need to understand what could have driven her to commit murder. It’s possible that your marriage enraged her or made her jealous to the point of violence.”
“That’s absurd,” Claire stated flatly. “Julia wasn’t jealous. She’s the one who told Gabe about the baby. She stood beside me at my wedding.”
Marsh absorbed her statement without comment. Tucking his hands in his pockets, he strolled across the room to study the silver-framed photo on the mantle above the fireplace.
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