Duty and Dishonor

by Merline Lovelace

  “The bastard,” he muttered.

  His rigid posture easing, General Titus rubbed the back of his neck. “How close are you to wrapping up your investigation?”

  “I need another week, maybe two. I want to review the transcripts of our interviews with Colonel Endicott and, if necessary, get a written statement from Dean Lassiter when he returns from Europe.”

  The Vice Chief grimaced. “He’ll be back next Friday. In fact, he’s flying home after the summit with the President aboard Air Force One. The National Security Advisor called a while ago to give us a heads-up, and to suggest we might want to proceed quickly with this case.”

  “Why? Is Lassiter hinting that he might splash this case across the front pages?”

  “No. Just the opposite, in fact. He promised that he wouldn’t run with it unless or until we prefer charges. In his considered opinion,” the general said dryly, “it’s not hard news until then.”

  That was fine with Marsh. He didn’t need to spend more hours countering erroneous statements published by the media than working his investigation, as usually happened with high viz cases.

  “I don’t understand, Sir. Why the pressure to move on the investigation, then?”

  “It seems there’s a cabinet-level delegation leaving for Ho Chi Minh City next month to negotiate a new trade agreement. The White House doesn’t want a twenty-year-old murder to hit the front pages and raise haunting memories of the war just when we’re sitting down to talk trade with our old enemies.”

  Personally, Marsh didn’t particularly give a rat’s ass about trade concessions for the Vietnamese government. Professionally, he understood the political ramifications of what was, until a few moments ago, a strictly military matter. He’d been in the business too long to rush an investigation, though, particularly a murder investigation. He’d take whatever time he needed.

  “Keep me posted,” the general said in dismissal.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  A cold, smoggy haze hid the sun as Marsh and his partner drove through DC’s deserted streets. The light traffic constituted one of the few benefits of working the week between Christmas and New Year’s. So many Federal workers were on leave that the drive across the 14th Street Bridge, through the Waterfront district, and over the Douglass Bridge to Bolling Air Force Base took only fifteen minutes instead of its usual, teeth-grinding forty.

  Marsh shed his overcoat and tossed it negligently over his chair. His suit coat and tie followed a few seconds later.

  “Okay, Lyles, you update the time line. I’ll look through the medical records. Then we’ll review the transcripts of the interviews, page by page, line by line.

  Barbara twisted off the cap of a dry board marker. “I still don’t see the significance of this visit to the clinic. The colonel might have been using a diaphragm all along, and simply needed a refill.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “Maybe she and Hunter planned a marathon session. Maybe they intended to continue in her room what they started in the Jeep, only the colonel didn’t have any supplies.”

  Marsh pulled the fat, green-jacketed medical file from the stack of documents they’d collected on Colonel Julia K. Endicott. Dropping the file on his cluttered desk, he settled into his favorite position. The office chair groaned in protest as he pushed it onto its back legs.

  “Tell me something, Lyles. Would you indulge in an all-night marathon with a man whose sexual activities worried you so much that you had to take penicillin tablets first?”

  Struck, Barbara stood poised with the red marker halfway to the white board. “No,” she replied slowly. “I’m not that stupid. Neither is Colonel Endicott.”

  Her gaze drifted to the life-sized image taped to opposite wall. She studied a younger Julia for several long moments.

  “You tell me something,” she challenged, turning back to her partner. “If the colonel didn’t kill Hunter, who in the hell did? And why?”

  The chair legs slammed the floor. His mouth grim, Marsh reached for the medical file.

  “I don’t know, but we’ve got the long New Year’s weekend to try and figure it out.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Get to work, Lyles.”

  “Who?” Julia demanded of the disinterested cat. “Dammit, who? Why?”

  The tom ignored her. Sprawled indolently in the white leather armchair that matched her sofa, he didn’t even twitch his bent tail.

  “I suggest you start showing a little more interest in this case,” Julia huffed. “Who’s going to dump those disgusting sardines into your dish if I spend the next fifteen or twenty years in Ft. Leavenworth?”

  Black gums curled back in a huge, lazy yawn. Henry planted his back paws against the chair’s padded arm and levered himself into a more comfortable position. Julia winced as eight needle sharp claws sank into expensive white leather. She’d long ago given up trying to keep the cat off the furniture but she couldn’t bring herself to watch while he added a new set of punctures.

  Stuffing her hands into the sleeves of her baggy Washington Redskins sweatshirt, she walked to the bow-fronted windows. On any other day, the view of Alexandria’s cobblestone streets and wrought iron street lamps would have given her a tiny thrill of pleasure. People and livestock had trod those streets for centuries. Both Washington and Lee had been pew holders at Christ Church only a few blocks away. Gadsby’s Tavern, a short walk from her front door, still served the raisin-stuffed, rum-soaked bread pudding that had delighted Colonial Epicureans. From the moment she’d purchased the narrow, crumbling, four-story house that eventually became her home, Julia had loved being a part of that history.

  She’d spent far more of her savings than she should have renovating the townhouse, but she’d always judged the money well spent. Ruthlessly, she’d ordered the subcontractor to take out interior walls and install tall, thermal-paned windows that echoed a Colonial theme on the exterior and allowed light to flood the interior. The resulting airy, high-ceilinged rooms decorated in shades of white and sand were her refuge from the putrid greens and muddy browns of the Pentagon.

  Today, however, neither the view outside nor the serenity inside soothed Julia. She felt edgy and restless and anything but serene. She dreaded the thought of going to work tomorrow. The major whose desk she’d been occupying would return, and her pride cringed at the idea of ousting the man from his own desk.

  She dreaded even more the long, empty evening ahead. She’d canceled out of the New Year’s Eve party she’d planned to attend, as well as the brunch at a Georgetown bistro a friend had set up for New Year’s Day. Julia had no desire to socialize or field her acquaintances’ sideways looks. What she wanted was the answer to the question she kept asking herself, over and over.

  Who? Who could have taken her weapon from her room and used it to kill Gabe?

  Just about anyone, she was forced to acknowledge. The slatted doors in the women’s quarters were certainly flimsy enough. Many had warped so badly from the humidity that they wouldn’t close, much less lock.

  Strange, Julia mused. She’d never worried about theft on Tan Son Nhut. Off base, she’d stayed constantly wary of the legions of pickpockets who swarmed the streets and the motorcycle cowboys who’d snatch a purse off a shoulder or a watch off a wrist as they zipped by. Within the air base’s confines, though, the tough Vietnamese military police meted out summary justice for all infractions. The local national employees feared them almost as much as the VC.

  Consequently, Julia had been shocked to discover her father’s weapon gone when she readied for work. She’d spent so many long, draining hours at the orphanage the day before, she fallen into her bed exhausted. She hadn’t even noticed the theft until the following next morning.

  Eighteen hours later, Gabe Hunter had been declared Missing in Action.

  Julia had never connected the two events until she’d walked into the Vice Chief’s office twelve days ago. Now she couldn’t get them out of her mind.


  “Who?” She scowled at the empty streets. “Dammit, why?”

  Whirling, she strode to the bookshelves built around the fireplace. The thick gray athletic socks she’d pulled on to combat the chill snaking through the hallways made no sound on the hardwood floors. Folding her legs, Julia sank down and started pulling out the memorabilia that filled the cabinet beneath the stereo unit. With every transfer, she’d promised herself she’d sort through the assortment of albums and scrapbooks and manila folders stuffed with pictures as soon as she got to her new home. At every new assignment, she’d barely had time to hang a few pictures before her job absorbed her.

  She found the album she sought at the back of the cabinet. She fingered the cracked cover, her heart thumping. She hadn’t opened it in years. Hadn’t added anything to it since early spring, 1972. Hadn’t wanted to remember. Her fingers trembled as she lifted the lid.

  The pages had yellowed, and the small, square snapshots harked back to an era of Kodak Instamatics. Julia swallowed at the shots of a teary-eyed, younger version of herself hugging her mother good-bye at the airport. For the first time since her mother’s death five years ago, Julia didn’t experience a pang of loss. She felt only a brief, shameful moment of relief that Mary Elizabeth Endicott hadn’t lived to see her daughter accused of murdering her lover.

  Biting down on her lower lip, she turned the page. Pictures taken during her two-day wait at Travis Air Force Base just outside San Francisco filled the next few pages. She’d used the layover to explore the city. The soaring, fog shrouded spans of the Golden Gate Bridge made her throat tighten. So many troops had departed from Travis for Vietnam. So many had left more than their hearts in the city by the bay. They, like Julia, had left their youth.

  A few more pages brought her to a land of patchwork paddies and purple mountains, of bright red pagodas and armed camps surrounded by guard towers and rolls of concertina wire. Julia smoothed the wrinkles from the plastic covering the photos. There they were, she and Claire, in fatigues and silly grins, standing side-by-side at the entrance to the women’s quarters. A few shots of the MACV compound followed, taken Julia’s first week at work. Then a more somber, tired-looking Claire sitting cross-legged on Julia’s cot, a wine glass in one hand and a Ritz cracker in the other.

  When she lifted the album to take a closer look, a brown envelope slid out. Edging a nail under the flap to loosen it, Julia withdrew a handful of black and white stills. Her stomach lurched, then a white hot rage rushed through her veins.

  She stared down at Gabe Hunter’s laughing face in loathing. She’d destroyed the few snapshots that included him before she’d left Vietnam. Somehow, she’d missed these copies of the shots taken the first day she’d introduced Lassiter and his photographer to Hunter.

  “Damn you!”

  Grabbing the edges of the photos, she’d torn them almost in half before reason cut through her fury. Breathing hard, she dropped the black and white stills to the floor beside her. She’d study them later, when she could look at them without feeling this murderous rage. Maybe they would give her some clue as to what and who and why.

  Her breathing slowed as she paged through the rest of the album. At the back of the book, she discovered her stash of folded newspaper clippings.

  During her year in Vietnam, her duties had required her to read and analyze thousands of stories. Some had shocked Julia with their biased view of a war everyone wanted to end. Some had infuriated her with their restrained treatment of an enemy who committed far more atrocities than allies pilloried in the same paper. A few had portrayed the war as she knew it. Those, she’d saved.

  Dean Lassiter’s account of the rocket attack at DaNang was among them. Julia unfolded the yellowed clipping and read again a tale of heroism above and beyond the call of duty.

  The story of the young maintenance tech carrying his wounded VNAF counterpart to safety moved her, as it had so many years ago. Dean’s stark, unvarnished prose captured a moment when men in uniform were still heroes to her, and Gabe Hunter still occupied a secret place in her heart.

  How stupid, how incredibly young and stupid she’d been then.

  Sighing, she refolded the clipping. The DaNang story had won Dean his Pulitzer, but his famous Men’s Room interview launched his career as a political analyst. Julia sorted through the clippings and unfolded another, longer one.

  This one showed the newly appointed ambassador to South Vietnam and a hollow-eyed Dean Lassiter framed against a door to a men’s room. Dean’s flight had landed at Yakota Air Base in Japan to refuel just moments after the diplomat’s plane had touched down for the same purpose. The reporter had cornered the ambassador in the air terminal’s men’s room. Their interview had begun over the urinal and finished in the hall outside.

  In the course of their conversation, the new ambassador had let slip that the White House planned to accelerate U.S. troop withdrawals in South Vietnam. Although he hadn’t said so in so many words, the diplomat certainly implied that the troop withdrawals were geared more to the upcoming Presidential election in the States than the still far from stable military situation in South Vietnam.

  Lassiter had sold that piece to UPI and AP, and seen it plastered on the front page of every major daily. Julia had gasped when she’d read it over the teletype, then silently applauded Dean for articulating what so many of the troops felt. The peace process had drug on too long. The war was still claiming too many lives. Re-election politics be damned, it was time to end it.

  Julia had started to refold the article when the date line at the bottom of the page snagged her gaze.

  June 12th. That couldn’t be right. Dean had left Saigon on June 10th, the morning after his farewell party. That would’ve put him in Yakota on the eleventh.

  Wouldn’t it?

  She stared at the date. She’d never paid attention to it before. She’d never had reason to. Shrugging, she folded the clipping and slid it back into the article.

  Two hours later, she’d returned the albums to their cabinet and was trying to force herself to open a can of sardines for the impatient cat. She reached into the kitchen cupboard and retrieved a tin, then stared at the label without seeing it. As it had for the past two hours, her mind kept returning to the date at the bottom of Men’s Room article.

  When had Lassiter really left Saigon?

  Julia gave herself a mental shake. Come on, Endicott, she admonished silently. Get a grip here. The flights to and from Vietnam crossed the International Date Line. That no doubt explained the date discrepancy.

  Didn’t it?

  Tossing the can of sardines onto the counter, she ignored Henry’s disgusted expression and walked back into the living. Brow furrowed, she searched among the crowded bookshelves for her world atlas. She’d bought it years ago, before the USSR fell apart, but national boundaries didn’t interest her right now. She fanned the pages once, twice, looking for Asia. To her intense disappointment, the continental map didn’t show the International Date Line. She fanned the pages again.

  “Come on, come on. You’ve got to be here.”

  Finally, she flipped to the front of the atlas. There it was, on page one, a map of the world showing the line smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Lassiter’s plane wouldn’t have crossed it until after they departed Japan. If his plane had touched down at Yakota to refuel on the 12th, he had to have left Saigon a day later than he'd originally intended.

  Okay. She had her answer. So what? Why did this one little piece of information tug at her mind, like the half remembered lyrics to an old, old song? What difference could it possibly make?

  The question she couldn’t answer still echoed in her head.

  If she didn’t kill Gabe, who did?

  It could have been anyone, she reminded herself. Even Lassiter.

  Dropping the atlas, Julia walked to the sofa on legs that suddenly felt a little shaky. She sank into the sofa cushions, telling herself she was crazy to even think it. Dean and Gabe had bee
n buddies. Pals. Two opportunists who worked the system to their own advantage. Why would...? Why would...?

  The idea was so ridiculous she couldn’t even articulate it in her own mind.

  And couldn’t get it out.

  She tucked her knees under her, thinking back. To the first meeting between the two men. Their instant rapport. Lassiter’s trip to DaNang. The rocket attack. Julia’s flight up-country. A snowfall of termite wings.

  A long-forgotten snipped of conversation drifted through the haze of her memories. She heard a faint echo of Gabe’s voice, telling Dean not to worry. Assuring him that no one saw anything. No one but him...and Dean.

  Her heart thumping, she stared unseeing at the thin sunlight filtering through the windows. Some time later, she reached for the phone. She needed to do some research. Most libraries would be closed for the New Year’s holiday, but Julia knew at least one she could get into.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Shivering from a combination of nervous excitement and the biting January cold, Julia pushed open the glass doors to the Air Force History Office. A smile lit her face as she caught sight of the slender, silver-haired man who walked forward to greet her.

  “Thanks for coming out on a holiday to let me in, Jonas. I really appreciate this.”

  “I’m glad I can be of assistance, Miss Julia,” he replied in his rhythmic Virginia cadence. “I’ve got the computer up and running for you.”

  The glass doors swished shut behind them, encasing them in the silence of a deserted workplace. Courteously, the Civil Service employee helped Julia out of her down-filled jacket. She hadn’t taken the time to change her jeans and Redskins sweatshirt. In sharp contrast to her informal attire, Dr. Jones Moreton wore the crisp white shirt, black tie, and gray wool cardigan with the leather patches at the elbows that had become his trademark throughout the Air Force.