One Was a Soldier (33 page)

McCrea rubbed a finger over his mouth and made a humming noise.

Sarah’s first impulse was to view Clare’s statements as a symptom of denial or anger. A projection, thrown up because the bald truth of McNabb’s suicide was too painful. On the other hand, she
was
engaged to the chief of police. Maybe she knew something the rest of them didn’t. “What evidence does this investigator have?”

“I don’t know. She’s here trying to get a warrant to search Tally’s house and all her financial records. Russ—Chief Van Alstyne believes she’ll probably arrest the husband as an accomplice.”

“Where’s the money?” Will asked. Sarah was glad he had said it first.

“I have no idea. The
where
isn’t the point. It’s that someone—maybe several someones—had a pretty damn good motive to kill her.”

McCrea shook his head. “If the chief is calling it a suicide, the evidence has got to be locked up solid. He doesn’t cut corners.”

“I know that!” Fergusson sounded exasperated. “I’m not saying it doesn’t look an awful lot like she did it. But think, Eric. You were at the scene. Would it have been impossible for another person to have staged it?”

He paused. “Not impossible, no. Although it would’ve required a hell of a lot of fine-tuned planning to carry it off that convincingly.”

“The sort of planning a lot of money could help with?”

He frowned. “Maybe. Provided the perp had enough brains. Most criminals are dumb as dirt.”

Sarah raised her hands. “I’m feeling as if we’re wandering off track here. We were talking about dealing with Tally’s death—”

“You know what we say in the Corps?” Will’s voice was stronger than it had been. “Nobody gets left behind. Alive, dead, it doesn’t matter. Nobody gets left behind.”

“It’s over,” McCrea said. “There’s nothing else we can do for her.”

Will gave the police officer a look that reminded Sarah of how young he really was. “You can. You could at least dig into it some more.”

“No. I can’t.” Eric bent over in his chair and locked his fingers over the back of his head. Hiding his face from the world. “I’ve been suspended. I can’t do jack shit.”

Will and Stillman stared. Fergusson glanced away.
She knew.
Sarah leaned toward McCrea. “What happened, Eric?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Before she could prod him into revealing more, he said, “I lost it with a suspect. I was mad, and I couldn’t … I lost it.”

Will flopped back onto his pillows. “Oh, God. Look at us. A cripple, a drunk, a washed-up cop, and—” He looked at Stillman. “I don’t even know what you are. An obsessive note-taker with three-generations-old technology.” The doctor drew his PalmPilot closer to his chest.

“I am
not
a drunk,” Fergusson said.

“Reverend Clare, you’ve been to my house. I’ve seen you putting away wine like it was Kool-Aid. I’ve heard my parents talking about you.”

Clare breathed in. “They were talking? About me?”

“And we’re what Tally left behind. Her squad mates.” Will closed his eyes. “Losers and failures. You wanna know who’s going to give her justice? Nobody. Not a damn soul.”

The silence that followed was painful. It wasn’t thoughtful or contemplative. It was the silence of despair. Of ending. Of surrender. Sarah should remind them of the grief process. She should help them connect their feelings with their experiences. She should offer them something positive. She couldn’t. The echo of Will and Clare’s words were drowning out all her other ideas.
Who will give justice to the dead?

She opened her mouth. “We can try.”

“What?” McCrea looked at her.

“I said we can try. There’s no law against asking questions, is there? Talking with her friends or co-workers?” As she said it, Sarah realized she wanted someone to blame as much as the rest of them. She wanted to know she could not have prevented Tally’s death.
This is not a therapeutic response,
she told herself. “I suppose we could … we could…” She spread her hands. “Actually, I have no idea what we could do.”

“There might be some people I could call,” Stillman said hesitantly. “To find out about her service in the 10th Soldier Support. I can probably get some information on the man she met in Iraq as well.” He smiled vaguely. “The old doctors’ network.”

Sarah made an encouraging noise.

“I’ve met the officer who’s investigating the theft,” Fergusson said. “I can see if she’ll tell me anything about what they’ve discovered so far.”

“Why don’t you just
pump
the chief for information?” McCrea asked.

“Euw.” Will made a face. “She’s my priest, remember? TMI.”

“What? It’s okay if she drinks, but it’s not okay if she—”

“That’s enough.” Fergusson sounded every inch the officer. “I know you’re angry with Russ. I’m pretty pissed off at him myself. But don’t take it out on me, Eric.”

McCrea couldn’t meet her gaze. He dropped his head and mumbled something.

“I don’t have any special contacts or anything,” Will said. “I don’t think any of the marines I knew can help us out.”

“She was closer to your age than to any of us,” Fergusson said. “Maybe you can spread the word among your friends. You never know what somebody may have heard on the grapevine.”

Will looked skeptical. “Most of my friends left for college.”

“So e-mail them. Pick up the phone. They’ll be so happy to hear from you, they’ll tell you anything.”

“Well…” He kneaded his thighs. “I guess. It’s been a while since I’ve talked to anybody. Maybe I can call a few guys. Okay.”

If Sarah hadn’t been watching Fergusson instead of Will, she would have missed the flare of triumph on the priest’s face.
Doing well by doing good, Reverend?
One way or another, something positive might come from this folly. Which made her think. “What about you, Eric?”

McCrea glared at her. “I told you. I’m suspended. I can’t help you.”

“Maybe you should try helping yourself. A structured, goal-oriented activity with no pressure from your work or your family? It could be a good place to work on containing your anger.”

“C’mon, Eric.” Fergusson leaned forward. “We need you.”

“In the first place, I don’t have either my badge or my service piece. In the second, pursuing an active investigation while suspended is grounds for termination.”

Fergusson snorted. “You don’t need a badge to be good at asking questions and figuring things out.”

“Besides, if Tally’s death has been ruled a suicide, you can hardly call it an active investigation.” Stillman didn’t lift his eyes from his PalmPilot while speaking.

“That’s right,” Fergusson agreed.

“Barracks law,” McCrea said.

“Join us, Eric.” Fergusson looked far too sly for someone professing to be religious. “You know you want to.”

“Oh, my God.” McCrea snorted. “This is how you got the chief to do all that crazy stuff with you, isn’t it? You just badgered him until he gave in.”

“Yup.”

“Okay. Okay.” He sighed. “I can question her co-workers. Lyle took statements over the phone from a couple people, but we were looking for evidence of suicidal intent at that point. I’ll see if I can get an idea as to how she might have laundered the money.” He huffed a laugh. “I think you’re all freaking crazy, though.” Then his breath broke, and he bent over again. “I think I’m freaking crazy,” he said in a cracked voice.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11

Eric had hoped that somehow he could get by without telling Jennifer. Dawdle in the morning, maybe, so she didn’t see him not getting into his uniform. It wasn’t until he tried that he realized how set the three of them were in their morning routine. Jen in the shower first while he got Jake up and started the coffee. Then he showered while she dressed and yelled at Jake to hurry up. Downstairs, he and Jake ate breakfast while she blow-dried her hair. He put away the milk and cereal while Jake fed the cats and Jen checked to make sure the boy hadn’t forgotten anything that ought to be in his backpack. Then out of the house, look for the bus, wave good-bye, slamming doors, and they were all on their way, to the middle school and the elementary school and the cop shop.

“What are you doing?” Jennifer bent over, towel-drying her hair. “You’re going to be late.”

He mumbled something. Went into the bathroom. Turned on the shower. Sat on the toilet lid and considered exactly how far he was going to go to keep Jen from knowing about his suspension.

What the hell, he had to take a shower anyway.

He sat at the table and methodically spooned Cheerios into his mouth while Jake read
The Last Olympian
and occasionally managed to get a bite in without taking his eyes off the book. Jennifer’s blow-dryer cut off, and he could hear her putting it in the drawer. She came into the kitchen. Paused with her hand on the refrigerator handle. “You’re not dressed.”

Eric looked down at his khakis and shirt. “Sure I am.”

“Why aren’t you in uniform? Is there something special going on today?” She frowned. “Are you working plainclothes?” Which he did, once in a blue moon.

It was so tempting to say yes. He wiped his mouth. Stood up. “No,” he said. “I’m off for the next ten days.”

Jennifer glanced at Jake, still lost in Percy Jackson’s adventures. She beckoned Eric into the family room. “What do you mean, off? You don’t have any vacation coming until Christmas.”

He took a breath. “I’m on suspension.”

Jennifer’s eyes widened. “Suspension? Oh, my God. What did you do?”

He felt a flare of irritation at her instant conclusion that he was the problem. It could have been an administrative action. If he had been involved in a shooting, for instance. Which he would have told her about as soon as he got home yesterday. His anger deflated. “I got into it with a suspect who resisted arrest. The chief thought I was too … physical.”

“Physical? As in what? You hit the guy?”

“Look, Jen, he was—”

“You hit some guy, right?”

He looked toward the bookcase, littered with pictures of Jake and half-completed craft projects. “Yeah. I hit him. Put him in the hospital.”

She covered her mouth. “Oh, Jesus,” she said into her palm.

“Listen—”

“No. You listen. First it was yelling at Jake and blowing up at me. Then it was threatening that doctor. Now it’s beating up suspects.”

“For God’s sake, Jen, he threw the first punch—”

She shook her head. “You have a problem, Eric. A serious, serious problem. You need help, and your little group isn’t cutting it. I don’t know if you need psychotherapy or drugs or what, but you find someone who can help you and you get yourself sorted out.” She gulped. “Or I’ll leave and take Jake with me.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to wait around for you to start beating on us, too.”

Her words took his breath away. His stomach ached and his chest was tight. “I would never, ever harm you or Jake. I love you. You two are my whole life.”

Her face fractured. “There was a time when you would have said the same thing about a suspect. That you’d never hurt anyone if you could help it.” She pressed her fingers against her mouth for a second. “You were always the most conscientious, sweet-natured man I knew. Sometimes you had to do hard things, but you never let them make you hard. I loved that about you.”

Loved that. Past tense. His gut knotted itself even tighter. “I just need some more time. To get my bearings again.”

“You’ve been home four months now. It’s getting worse, not better.” She stepped back. Looked around the room. Lifted Jake’s backpack off the desk. “Get help. Or I swear to God, I’m out of here.”

*   *   *

Clare had tried dropping by the Stuyvesant Inn, to see if she could meet with Arlene Seelye, but the two MPs had been out. She lingered as long as she could over her mother’s menu options, but there was only so much time she could kill debating brown sugar versus mustard glaze on the Virginia ham, and eventually she had to leave unsatisfied.

When she got home, she had a message on her machine. “Hey, it’s me. Are you there?… No? Huh. Look, I’m sorry. I know this whole thing with Tally McNabb has been hard on you. I shouldn’t have hammered on you like that. I’m flat out today—I gotta meet with the board of aldermen about Eric’s suspension—but maybe we can have lunch tomorrow? At the diner?”

She tried to reach him but had to settle for playing phone tag. Frustrated, she called her junior warden, Geoffrey Burns, Esq. Not about Russ—there was no love lost between the two men—but about Arlene Seelye. “She’s investigating a theft from the army,” Clare explained. “The suspect is dead, but her husband lives here, and Colonel Seelye thinks he knows something about the missing money. What does she do?”

“She’ll go to Judge Ryswick for a warrant.” Geoff didn’t hesitate. “She’ll want to search the house and, based on what she finds there, any accounts that might be in either spouse’s name or further locations, like a second home, cars, boats.”

“Can she arrest the husband?”

“As an accessory? Possibly. She might get the Feds involved. Undoubtedly, your fiancé as well, since the guy’s in his jurisdiction. Are you sure you want to marry him?”

“Yes.” Despite their disagreement over Tally McNabb. “And I expect you to at least pretend to have a good time at the reception.”

Next, she phoned Assistant District Attorney Amy Nguyen. She had met the woman just enough times to justify calling her on a fishing expedition. Unfortunately, Amy hadn’t seen anyone fitting Seelye’s description at the courthouse, and she hadn’t heard anything about a possible arrest involving the FBI in their area.

That evening, she sat for a long time with one of the sleeping pills Trip had prescribed in one hand, and a highball glass full of Macallan’s in the other.
I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t.

He’s not going to spring a blood test on me the day after I got the prescription filled.

She chased the pill down with a long swallow of Scotch.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12

Wednesday morning, she told herself the same thing when she popped two Dexedrine.
It’s too soon for a blood test.
The familiar jittery rush of heat went through her when the pills hit her system, and she thought,
Okay. I can get through today.
She wouldn’t be tempted to drink before early evening, and she’d burn that bridge when she got to it.