Duty and Dishonor

by Merline Lovelace

  “Was this taken on your wedding day?”

  Claire moved to stand beside him. “Yes.”

  She’d never liked the shot, but it was the only professional portrait taken at their hurried wedding. An Air Force photographer had snapped it just as Gabe slipped the ring on her finger. Claire was wearing the silly tent-like outfit they called a trapeze dress back then...not by choice, but because she couldn’t get into her Air Force uniform. One of the other women had scrounged up a little round pillbox hat with a half veil. The dainty hat and veil looked ridiculous with the trapeze dress, but every bride needed a veil, she’d insisted.

  Julia was in civvies, too. She’d donned the only dressy outfit she’d brought with her to Vietnam, and looked far more like a bride than Claire did. A simple length of white linen with a square neck and short cap sleeves, the sheath dress flattered her slender figure and set off her shoulder-length blonde hair. She stood at Claire’s left as her maid of honor, still and pale, her face lacking its usual lively animation.

  Even Gabe appeared different. His sun-streaked tawny hair had been tamed into place, and he wore a starched and crisply ironed 1505 tan uniform instead of the green flight suit he normally lived in. He stood at Claire’s right, his hand holding hers as he slid the ring he’d purchased that afternoon onto her finger.

  Claire gazed at the picture as though seeing it for the first time. There she stood, between Julia and Gabe...where she’d always stood. The aching sense of betrayal that had been her constant companion since Julia’s visit a few days ago sharpened to a long, pointed spike.

  “May I borrow this for a few days?”

  She pulled her gaze from the grainy color photo. “Why, Mr. Marsh?”

  Stretching out a hand, he lifted down the silver-framed photo. “I’d like to make a copy of this, if you don’t mind. I find it easier to focus on the subject of an investigation if I can keep a physical image in front of me.”

  Claire’s hands curled around her upper arms again. For all her sense of betrayal, she couldn’t bring herself to believe that Julia was the ‘subject’ of the investigation into Gabe’s murder.

  “I want it back after you make a copy,” she told the agent. “It’s the only picture of the three of us.”

  “Of course.”

  She stood unmoving while he examined the faces in the photo. Then his gray eyes lifted to Claire’s. “If Julia Endicott wasn’t jealous, what reason could she have had to kill your husband?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A thick, smothering fog had descended by the time Marsh drove through the brick gates of Bolling Air Force Base. He turned left, heading past the row of condemned World War II buildings that awaited their fate. As he passed the office of the Air Force Chief of Chaplains, he grinned. He’d always found it ironic that the headquarters for the chaplains and the OSI were collocated on the same air patch. One group specialized in redeeming sinners, the other in making them burn for their crimes.

  He pulled into his slot at the Investigative Ops Center and let himself into the secured building. As always, one or two of the doors in the long, narrow hallway showed light through their frosted glass panes. Long days and late nights came with the so-called honor of working at OSI headquarters.

  Flicking the light switch in his own office, he tossed the rolled-up tube he’d carried in with him onto his desk and shrugged out of his overcoat. A knuckle to the throat loosened his tie. He yanked open the center desk drawer and pawed through it in search of a roll of Scotch tape. As always, the drawer’s jumbled contents reminded him of his ex-wife.

  Before she’d left him, Carlene had catalogued several thick volumes of complaints about his absorption with his work, his long hours, his frequent travels, and his irritating personal habits. His tendency to leave the toilet seat up and his damned messy drawers headed her list in the last category. Unimpressed by Ted’s observation that she left the seat down as often as he left it up, Carlene had handed him a suitcase and the keys to the ‘73 Camaro he spent his days off restoring. A year after their divorce, she’d married an orthodontist. Marsh had met the man several times. He had no doubt the doc not only put the seat down, he carefully Lysol-ed it first.

  He finally found the roll of tape shoved far back in the drawer. Peeling off a couple of long strips, he unrolled the paper tube and stuck the poster-sized print to the wall. Two more pieces anchored the bottom edge.

  Marsh assumed his thinking position...one foot on the bottom desk drawer, chair tipped back, hands in his pockets...and gave himself over to the urge that had driven him to stop at a commercial duplicating center just outside the base. He’d had several copies of the wedding picture made, and a blow-up of just Julia Endicott. Life-sized and unsmiling, she gazed back at him from the wall.

  Christ, she was something then!

  She was something now, Marsh admitted, but the hair and make-up styles of two decades ago flattered her fine-boned beauty more dramatically than today’s softer styles. Her silvery blond mane fell in a smooth curve to her shoulders. A heavy smudge of green shadow on her lids emphasized her seductive eyes. Dark mascara and eyeliner deepened them to the color of a high mountain pine.

  The sculpted cheekbones hadn’t changed over the years, or the full mouth, although Marsh preferred the soft red gloss she used on her lips now to the pale pink that had been so popular then.

  The drift of his thoughts brought him up short. Frowning, he chinked the coins in his pocket together... another annoying habit of his, Carlene had acidly pointed out. The minutes stretched. A door slammed down the hall. The darkness showing through the windows deepened to an inky black.

  “Why did you kill him?”

  The beautiful, still creature didn’t reply.

  “Why, Julia?”

  Marsh didn’t know when the suspect had transitioned from Colonel Endicott to Julia in the private reaches of his mind, but he wasn’t surprised that she had. As he’d told Claire Hunter earlier, he focused better with the image in front of him. He needed to personalize the subject. See him or her as someone capable of the emotions that drove a person to commit crimes. Get past the barrier of rank that always complicated a military investigation.

  The eagles on Julia Endicott’s shoulders didn’t intimidate Marsh. He’d investigated too many people in his nineteen and a half years to get wrapped around the flagpole by the fact that she outranked him. Some agents who’d come up through the enlisted ranks couldn’t make the leap from being trained to follow orders to questioning those who gave them. Not even the anonymity of civilian clothes could overcome that mental obstruction. Marsh had never had that problem.

  Rank aside, something about this woman kept her just outside his reach. He still couldn’t see into the mind behind those wide, clear eyes that fascinated him so.

  “Why, Julia? What happened between you and Gabe Hunter that turned you into a killer?”

  He studied the unsmiling mouth. The firm chin. The long slender neck above the square-shaped bodice of her white dress.

  Suddenly, his chair thumped against the floor. Yanking his hands out of his pockets, Marsh rose and planted his knuckles on his desk. Once more, he followed the long, clean, bare line of her throat.

  “Bingo!” he said softly.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “We need to talk about the Saint Christopher medal found with Captain Hunter’s remains. I’d like to know exactly when and how you lost it?”

  Her face expressionless, Julia weighed her answer to Special Agent Marsh’s question. She was ready for it. She’d had eight days to prepare herself. Eight days before she resumed an interrogation interrupted first by her decision to consult an attorney and then by the long Christmas weekend. Eight days to remember, and to prepare herself for this question.

  She now discovered that eight days weren’t long enough. Moisture dampened her palms. Slowly, carefully, Julia laced her fingers together.

  “I lost it the night I went to Dean Lassiter’s party at the Caravel
le.”

  “That was May thirteenth.”

  “Was it, Mr. Marsh?”

  She was stalling. She knew it. Ted Marsh knew it, as well. His smoky eyes narrowed fractionally, then he pulled a small black notebook out of his pocket and made a show of flipping through the pages.

  Julia didn’t fool herself. She didn’t doubt for a moment that the OSI agent had every word in the notebook filed in his mind. He’d simply turned the tables on her by letting her nerves stretch thin while he thumbed through the notebook.

  He looked different this morning, she thought, unable to pinpoint just why. He wore the same pinstriped navy blue suit she’d seen him in before. Today, he’d teamed it with a pale blue shirt and a patterned maroon tie. The silver threads in his dark mahogany hair showed clearly in the light, as did the faint white lines at the corners of his eyes. Outwardly, he presented the same neat, no-nonsense image he had during their previous interviews.

  The change was internal, Julia realized with a sudden clenching in her stomach. Although he kept his expression neutral and his voice emotionless, she sensed a keener, sharper edge to him.

  Dampness slicked the back of her neck as well as her palms. Too late, Julia wished she hadn’t opted to wear her heavy wool Air Force sweater and dark blue uniform slacks this morning. Outside, their warmth helped combat the blast of Arctic air that had swept into the District a few days ago and lingered like an uninvited guest. Inside, however, they added to her nervous heat. She wasn’t about to pull the sweater off over her head now, though. Not with Marsh observing her so steadily.

  “According to Dean Lassiter,” he stated, flipping the damned notebook shut, “you attended a party he hosted at the Caravelle Hotel in downtown Saigon on the evening of May thirteenth, 1972. You arrived with Captain Hunter and Lieutenant Simmons around seven that evening. You left with Captain Hunter at approximately ten-thirty. Were you wearing the St. Christopher medal when you left?”

  Before Julia could frame her answer, the young defense attorney at her side pushed his wire-rimmed glasses higher on the bridge of his nose and intervened.

  “Do you have a copy of Mr. Lassiter’s statement? I’d like to...” He corrected himself immediately. “That is, Colonel Endicott should review it before she answers your questions.”

  Julia bit down on the inside of her lower lip. Deliberately, she reminded herself that Captain Brian O’Rourke came highly recommended by a friend who knew the personalities in the Washington Area Defense Counsel’s office. In the days she’d worked with the lawyer, he’d impressed her with his quick grasp of the evidence. She just wished he didn’t look young enough to be her Godson, or stumble every time he remembered that he was here to advise, not defend. She wasn’t on trial...yet.

  “Mr. Lassiter didn’t make a formal statement,” Marsh replied. “We spoke off the record the night he left for a Christmas vacation and then for a trip to Paris to cover the summit. He’s prepared to provide a signed statement, however, should one be necessary.”

  So Dean was out of town, Julia thought. That’s why he hadn’t filed a story on Gabe’s murder and her supposed role in it. He would, though. If and when this inquiry led to formal charges, he’d capitalize on his personal knowledge of the players involved to turn out one of the brilliant, double-edged pieces he did so well. He’d paint a vivid picture in his imitable style of a woman brought to justice after so many years, and condemn the system that had taken so long to bring her there.

  So far, the story had captured little in the way of public attention. The Air Force Times had run a picture of Gabe and a few lines about the on-going inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his death. Several major dailies had called for confirmation of the rumor that Colonel Julia Endicott’s sudden transfer from the Air Force PAO office was connected to this inquiry. The Post and the Christian Science Monitor had both shown interest in the story, but a crash of a commuter jet crammed with people heading home for Christmas had overshadowed all other news.

  When Gabe’s remains were buried last week, the NBC affiliate in the town where Claire now lived had sent a reporter and camera crew to interview the widow. She’d declined to appear on camera. She’d put herself and her son through the ordeal of a public memorial service once before, she’d told Julia over the phone when she’d begged her not to come. She didn’t want to go through another.

  The possibility of the far more sensational ordeal of a trial had remained unspoken between them. Julia knew that her answer to Marsh’s question might well decide whether that trial would take place.

  “Yes,” she said slowly, “I was wearing the medal when I left the hotel.”

  “You weren’t wearing it when you posed for the Hunters’ wedding picture two days later.”

  I’m sorry, Claire. He knows, or he’s close to guessing. I have to tell him.

  “What happened to the medal, Colonel Endicott? How did Captain Hunter gain possession of it?”

  Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, she admitted what she’d never told anyone...except the lawyer she’d met for the first time a few days ago.

  “Captain Hunter tore the medal from my neck when he raped me, or tried to. I’m not sure which.”

  Marsh didn’t so much as blink. “You’re not sure if you were raped, Colonel?”

  “No, Mr. Marsh, I’m not.”

  In the periphery of her vision, Julia caught a flash of red wool as Special Agent Lyles leaned forward. She ignored the other agent, her entire being concentrated on Marsh.

  “Tell me what happened, Colonel.”

  His voice was low, steady, seductive in its invitation to throw off the weight that had pressed down on her for so long. Julia could tell him. She’d managed to tell O’Rourke without losing her composure. But she couldn’t watch him watching her while she did.

  She shoved back her chair and rose. His dark brows slashing downward, Marsh started to get up as well.

  “Keep your seat,” she ordered with a sharp, unconscious note of command. “I’m not going anywhere. I just need to move around.”

  Not wanting her sweaty palms to betray her nervousness, Julia folded her arms. Back stiff, she focused on one of the pen and ink sketches of various Air Force aircraft that decorated the conference walls.

  “Captain Hunter and I left the Caravelle a half hour before curfew." She forced the words through a raw, tight throat. “His new hootch mate had driven Claire back to the base earlier. I was preoccupied and didn’t notice that he took a different route once inside the gates to Tan Son Nhut. He stopped the Jeep on a deserted stretch of road along the perimeter and attacked me.”

  “He sexually assaulted you?”

  “He tried to.”

  “He didn’t achieve penetration?”

  She could do this, Julia told herself. She could tell him about that black, awful night.

  “I don’t know. A little, I think. I was struggling and he had to...had to...”

  She stopped, breathing hard and fast through her mouth. Dammit, she could do this! She had to do this! Sooner or later, Marsh would find the record of her visit to the clinic in her medical file. He’d know then what she’d hidden for so many years.

  She should have torn that entry out of her medical records years ago. She would have, if the corpsman who’d issued her the spermicidal jelly and penicillin tablets hadn’t discreetly labeled the purpose of her visit as birth control. Now, Julia knew, the time and the date of that entry damned her.

  Zero-four-five hours, May 13, 1972. Hours after she’d left the party at the Caravelle. Hours before she’d knelt beside a retching, sobbing Claire.

  Remembering too late that visit to the clinic, Julia had driven to the hospital at Bolling a few days ago, only to find that her medical records had been requested by the OSI for “review”. She’d realized then that it was only a matter of time until Marsh concluded that she’d lied about engaging in sexual intercourse with her victim.

  Now, she had no choice but to relive the night she’d t
ried so hard to forget. Her fingers dug into the thick wool of her sweater. Unseeing, her eyes fixed on the ink sketch. Forcing herself to breathe more slowly, she finished her terse account.

  “Hunter had to straddle the gear shift. He got my slacks down, but we were both at an awkward angle. When he...” She dragged her tongue across dry lips. “When he positioned himself for entry, I brought my knee up between his. Hard. There was some...degree of penetration...for a moment.”

  After all these years, she could still feel rage and shame and disgust. The black and white sketch blurred. Her eyes burned with the tears she refused to shed. She hadn’t cried on May thirteenth. She wouldn’t cry now.

  “Here.”

  She blinked rapidly at the sound of a deep voice at her shoulder.

  Julia had accomplished many things in her life that gave her a sense of pride. The fact that her hand didn’t shake as she reached for the glass Marsh held out would rank right at the top of her revised list. The water slid down her aching throat like a cold, icy shock.

  “Thank you.”

  He took the empty glass from her hand. “Can you go on?”

  When she nodded, he set the glass on the small silver tray beside the water carafe. He hitched a leg on the corner of the table. His wide shoulders blocked the others from her sight. Julia could have been alone with him.

  Somehow, that made it easier. She wasn’t telling the story to an audience. She couldn’t see the damned tape recorder. There was only Marsh and her.

  “Technically, I don’t know whether Captain Hunter raped me or I impaled myself when I kneed him. Personally, I don’t care.”

  “I don’t think a jury would, either. Why didn’t you shoot him right then?”

  The question was so off-hand that Julia could only marvel at the casual invitation for her to incriminate herself.

  “I might have, if I’d been able to get to my gun. Unfortunately, Captain Hunter anticipated just such an eventuality and kept my purse out of my reach while he... recovered.”