Duty and Dishonor

by Merline Lovelace

  Marsh kept silent. When...if...the case against Julia came to a head, Claire Hunter would discover the truth of her assessment. Julia hadn’t given her husband a damned thing willingly.

  “Whatever happened between them, Julia Endicott didn’t kill my husband,” the widow asserted unequivocally. “She wouldn’t have done that to me. Nor would she have stood Godmother to my son if she’d killed his father. If you don’t realize that by now, I question your investigative and intuitive skills.”

  Marsh lifted a brow. “I’m beginning to question them myself.”

  “I’ll go get the letters.”

  She swept out of the room, leaving her visitor to revise his estimate of Claire Hunter.

  She returned a few moments later with a small box embroidered on the top and sides with fanciful red dragons and gold Chinese characters. Placing the box on the coffee table, she traced a finger over one of the characters that decorated the lid.

  “Gabe bought me this box in Hong Kong. During our honeymoon. The shopkeeper said that this symbol means happiness.” When her gaze lifted, her brown eyes held a hard-won peace. “Gabe made me happy those days. Without even trying to, he gave me enough happiness to last a lifetime.”

  Marsh had no answer to that one. He’d need a far greater knowledge of human nature to understand how the same man could inspire such love in one woman and such hate in another.

  She handed him thin stack of envelopes tied with a purple ribbon. Marsh slipped the bow and read the three short letters Gabe Hunter had sent his wife.

  In the first, he asked about her flight home. Told her about the air strikes over Hanoi that appeared to have broken the back of the Easter Offensive. Suggested she follow up his letter to his father with a phone call, just to assure the old man that his youngest and wildest offspring had finally tied the knot.

  In the second, he related that the Shadows had chopped to the Vietnamese Air Force, and answered her question about a name for the baby.

  In the last, he mentioned that his commander had recommended him for a Silver Star, which wouldn’t amount to beans when he got back to the rule-crazy, cover-your-ass, peacetime Air Force.

  Given Hunter’s poor record of performance between his two assignments to Vietnam, Marsh suspected he’d been right. He would’ve had a hard time making it in a peacetime Air Force.

  Hiding his fierce disappointment, Marsh folded the last letter and slipped it back into its envelope. Claire retired the purple ribbon with an ease that said she’d done it many times before. Obviously, she treasured the letters. Just as obviously, she read more into the casual endearments than Marsh had.

  “I didn’t think there was anything in them about Dean.”

  “I just wanted to check it out. Thanks for letting me look at them.”

  Returning the letters to their box, she rose and walked Marsh to the door. Her fingers curved over the brass latch.

  “Is there anything I can do to help Julia?” she asked hesitantly.

  He answered her question with blunt honesty. “You might call her. She still thinks of you as her friend, and she needs all her friends right now.”

  Turning the collar on his jacket up against the icy cold that had come with the night, he walked the curving drive to his car. The stripped-down Camaro looked out of place in the neat suburban setting, like a poor relative come to call. It moved like a prince, though. It’s retooled engine purring, it negotiated the bend in the drive and turned onto the road. Marsh had just put his foot to the gas when Claire came running out of the house behind him.

  “Mr. Marsh! Wait!”

  He jammed on the brakes and shoved the gearshift into park. She was beside the Camaro by the time he got the door open.

  “I’m glad I caught you,” she gasped, her breath frosting on the night air. “I just remembered something. There was an envelope in the box with Gabe’s personal effects. The envelope had some clippings in it.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  She nodded, her eyes excited in the glow from the car’s door light. “I put the box away somewhere. Can you wait while look for it? It might take me a while to track it down.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  There was no way in hell she was getting rid of him until she found that box.

  They searched the garage, the attic, and the storage closet under the stairs. Finally, Claire remembered that she’d shifted some boxes into her son’s room when he moved out. Triumphant, she pointed to a dusty carton on the top shelf of the boy’s closet. Marsh lifted it down and set it on the floor.

  Claire knelt beside him as he slit sealing tape. Ignoring her swift indrawn breath, he lifted out neatly folded uniforms and a number of squadron plaques.

  “There,” she murmured a moment later. “That brown envelope.”

  His pulse racing, Marsh slid a finger under the flap and turned the envelope upside down. Three newspaper articles fluttered to the floor. Two he recognized immediately from the grainy, black and white pictures. The DaNang article he could almost recite from heart. He’d spent hours pouring over these articles, all written before Hunter’s death. If there was anything significant in them, Marsh sure couldn’t see it.

  Claire must have seen the bitter disappointment in his face. “Don’t these help?”

  “I’ve read them before,” he replied, refolding the yellowed newspaper. He started to slide them back into the manila envelope when he noticed a handwritten note on the back of one.

  One way ticket to the big time.

  The handwriting looked like Hunter’s, but Marsh asked Claire for the letters again for verification. She retrieved the Chinese box and compared the scribbled note with the addresses on the envelopes.

  “Isn’t that the article that won a Pulitzer for Dean?” Claire asked.

  “Yes. It was awarded in the spring of ‘73.”

  “I guess Gabe recognized the story as a winner right from the start.”

  “I guess. May I borrow this?”

  “Will it help Julia?”

  He couldn’t lie. “I don’t see how, but I’d like her to take a look at it.”

  “If there’s even the slightest chance that article will help her, Mr. Marsh, you can dissect it, chemical test it, or fricassee it.” She pushed herself to her feet. “Please tell Julia I’ll call her tomorrow. I think it’s time I came up to the city. We both could probably use a massage and a facial at a good spa.”

  Marsh strolled out into the frosty night, the clipping tucked in his shirt pocket and Claire’s words ringing in his mind. He doubted Julia would glean anything more from Hunter’s note than his wife had, but it gave Marsh a reason to swing back by her place tonight.

  He occupied himself during the long drive back to D.C. by thinking alternately about the scribbled note, his unfinished investigation, and Julia's naked body covered only with a towel and stretched out on a massage table.

  Washington DC

  The moment she opened the door, he stopped kidding himself. He hadn’t needed any other reason to swing back by her place than her warm, sleepy smile. She leaned against the doorjamb, her hair mussed and her terry cloth robe tight against the cold air.

  “I hope you’re not expecting any mushrooms. Henry took care of them all.”

  “No, I just wanted to bring this by. Hunter’s commander sent it to his wife along with his personal effects.”

  She examined the article in the light from the landing behind her and started to hand it back to Marsh.

  "I've read it. Many times."

  “Look on the back.”

  Holding the scrap of newsprint up to the light, she studied the note. “Gabe was more astute than I sometimes give him credit for. He was right, this article was certainly Dean’s ticket to the big time.”

  There was more to it. There had to be. He raked a hand through his hair, frustrated and unwilling to let go.

  “I'm missing something. My gut tells me that article links Hunter and Lassiter in some way I haven’t figured out
yet.”

  She stared at him for long moments, then rose up on tip-toe and brushed his mouth with hers.

  “Thank you,” she said softly. “Whatever happens tomorrow or next week or next month, you believed in me today. I won’t forget that.”

  “Julia...”

  “It’s all right. I’m not frightened and lonely, as I was last night.”

  “I know. But...”

  “You helped me through a rough time, and I appreciate it. I won’t embarrass you or myself by asking for more.”

  She was right. Marsh knew she was right. Better to end it now, cleanly, since things would start to get real messy tomorrow. Knowing she was right and turning away from her were two different matters, however.

  She was the one who pulled back. With a final good night, she closed the door. Marsh waited until he heard the deadbolt slide into place before he tucked the article in his pocket and walked back to the Camaro.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “You spent the night with her?” Bob Pfligerman’s voice rose to a roar. “You slept with the primary suspect in a goddamned murder case? You’re nuts, you hear me? You’re goddamned nuts!”

  Marsh didn’t bother to point out to his boss that half the Investigative Operations Center could hear his bull-like bellow. Instead, he stood at a loose parade rest in front of the colonel’s desk and waited for him to vent his temper. Pfligerman always needed a venting period.

  Marsh had met him for the first time during their early days in OSI, when Pfligerman was a captain and Marsh a former NCO with a brand new officer’s commission and shiny second lieutenant’s bars. Marsh had recognized immediately that the big, brawny captain with the white-walled crew cut and foghorn voice possessed one of the keenest minds in the business. Pfligerman in turn had shamelessly exploited Marsh’s experience. In the months they worked together, he’d also gained a healthy respect for Marsh’s instincts. Their paths had crossed off and on throughout their Air Force careers. Bob’s had culminated in his assignment as the Investigative Ops Center commander. Marsh’s could very likely culminate right here in Pfligerman’s office.

  “Let me get this straight,” the colonel boomed. “You drag out an open-and-shut investigation to follow some dead end leads the suspect herself hands you! You go rushing over to her house, find her stoned out of her gourd, and don’t even get her to the hospital for a blood test! You swallow her story about someone drugging her in one gulp, and you crawl into bed with her! Jesus H. Christ, Marsh, why didn’t you just hand her your badge with your balls. She’s gonna cost you both.”

  “She didn’t kill Hunter.”

  “Oh, right!” His sarcastic reply bounced off the walls. “She didn’t kill him! Did she let that little piece of information drop when she was whispering sweet nothings in your ear? I don’t suppose it even crossed your mind that the colonel might have enticed you into her bed to compromise you and your investigation?”

  It had crossed his mind...for all of ten seconds. Maybe twenty. He was too much a cop not to think about the possibility. Another woman might have been able to pull off that desperate need for human contact. Not Julia. She’d stripped her emotions down to the core.

  “She didn’t shoot Hunter, Bob.”

  “Dammit, that’s not for you to decide! You’re job is to collect the evidence and present it to her commander. He and the Judge Advocate will decide whether the evidence is sufficient to present to a trial by court martial, in which case the court will decide if she did it!”

  “I need more time.”

  Pfligerman’s fleshy face turned brick red. His cheeks puffed, as though they were about to explode. Then he caught Marsh’s eye and deflated like a punctured blowfish.

  “I can’t give you any more, Ted.” He rubbed a hand across what remained of his flat top. “The White House is breathing down the Chief’s neck about this goddamn trade mission to Vietnam. Now we’re hearing rumors that this journalist you’ve managed to royally piss off is planning an exposé on the military’s inability to police itself. When word gets out that you spent the night with Endicott, my ass is grass right along with yours.”

  “I know. I’m sorry about that part.”

  Pfligerman’s big shoulders rolled in a shrug. “I can handle it.”

  From long experience, Marsh knew that the man who was more his friend than his superior had passed his flash point. Bob burned hot, but he burned fast. Sure enough, Pfligerman waved him to a chair, then slumped his heavy-set body in the seat behind his desk.

  “I have to relieve you, Ted. I have no choice. You’ve compromised yourself and your investigation.”

  It was no more than Marsh had expected but it still stung. He’d spent most of the early hours before dawn in his office, weighing the pros and cons of telling his boss about those hours with Julia.

  Common sense had told him to just keep his mouth shut. If neither he nor Julia talked about what happened, chances were that their secret wouldn’t leak out for a while, if at all. His edgy, uneasy instincts urged otherwise, however. He couldn’t protect Julia while he was investigating her, and he refused to ask her to hoard another dark secret. She’d borne too many, for too long.

  He’d expected Pfligerman to relieve him. He would have done the same if one of his subordinates had come to him in a similar situation. Still, the reality of it left Marsh distinctly tight around the edges.

  “Look, Bob, I understand your decision to take me off the investigation. You have no choice. But I’m not giving up on this case or on Colonel Endicott. I’m going to keep asking questions...on my own, if necessary.”

  Pfligerman’s color started to rise again. “Don’t put me in the position of having to suspend you permanently.”

  “That’s your decision.”

  “Why don’t you ever make things easy?” his boss asked waspishly.

  Marsh grinned. “Easy isn’t my style. I thought you found that out when we worked our first undercover gig at Eglin.”

  Pfligerman shuddered at the memory of the weeks they’d spent masquerading as marijuana cultivators at the huge base in the Florida panhandle. They’d battled mosquitoes the size of B-52s, trigger-happy deer hunters, and the occasional overzealous local law enforcement type to tend their five-acre patch. In the process, they’d infiltrated the drug underground and, eventually, helped bust a sales and distribution network that stretched clear across the southeastern United States.

  Pfligerman leaned forward, “Look, this is the best I can do. You’re officially off the Hunter case as of now. Lyles will take over as lead investigator. You’ll work any questions you want asked through her, got that?”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Now get the hell out of here. I’ve got to make some phone calls,” he said glumly.

  Marsh didn’t move. “I want some electronic surveillance for Colonel Endicott.”

  “What?” Pfligerman’s voice rocketed off the walls. “You want me to plant a bug on her? Are you out of your friggin’...”

  Ruthlessly, Marsh cut him off. “I’ll get her consent. It’s just for a few weeks, until this case is resolved one way or another.”

  “It could be months before a court is convened!” the colonel exploded.

  “Not with the pressure from the White House and Lassiter. The case is going to move fast from here on out, and you know it.”

  “Yeah, right. It would have moved faster if persons unnamed hadn’t dragged their feet!”

  Marsh ignored his sarcastic comment. “I’m asking for this as a personal favor, Bob. I don’t know how or why the colonel was drugged, but I’m convinced she was. I want some surveillance for her.”

  The OSI commander glared at him for several seconds. “All right, all right. I'll sign the authorization. Now get the hell out of my office.”

  Marsh received more than one sideways glance as he left the OSI director’s office. The rumor mill would spread the word that he’d been relieved around the headquarters faster than a Pentium processor, but h
e knew the tight, close-mouthed OSI community would keep that fact within these walls. Unless, of course, Lassiter got hold of the information.

  Frowning, Marsh climbed the stairs to his office and gathered the notes he’d made during the long, eventful weekend. Then he strode down the hall to Barbara Lyles’ office. Smaller and far neater than his, the cubbyhole reflected Barbara’s personality. A huge, framed poster of modernistic pyramids shading from red to purple dominated one wall. Disgustingly organized bookcases marched along the other.

  “You’ve got the Hunter investigation,” Marsh told her by way of greeting. “Pfligerman will make it official as soon as he’s finished explaining to the Chief how his chief investigator compromised himself.”

  Barbara swiveled her chair around and joined the tips of her long, perfectly shaped nails. A striking picture in gold and onyx, she surveyed her partner coolly. Her former partner, Marsh amended.

  “Just how did his chief investigator compromise himself?”

  Hitching a chair over to her desk, Marsh recounted the events that occurred after Barbara had departed the office Saturday afternoon. She didn’t comment or interrupt, but her brows soared at several points.

  “So we’re back to where we were a week ago,” she summarized when he finished. “We’ve collected a whole pile of evidence that suggests the colonel had the means, the opportunity, and a good reason to drill a couple of holes in Hunter, and a gut feel that she didn’t. Unfortunately, the gut feel doesn’t go into the report.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll have to finalize the report, Ted,” she said quietly. “I don’t see where else I can go from here.”

  He spread the folded news clipping on her desk, along with the notes he’d made Saturday afternoon. “You can try to track down the maintenance tech who figured in Lassiter’s DaNang story.”

  “Not a problem,” Barbara replied, scribbling the details on a note pad. “I’ll access the personnel data files.”

  “Good. While you do that, I’m going to check out this Italian photographer, Remo D’Agustino.”