An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) (21 page)

“Won’t there still be people there from the Sunday night service?”

“Which is why it won’t look suspicious. Two cars in an empty parking lot are bound to stir up interest for an MP patrol.” That made sense. But what if Hickman happened to be there?

“I want to be there.”

“No,” he said. “I already suggested it. He said it was too risky for the Public Affairs officer to be seen with a reporter at the chapel on a Sunday night. No way to explain it.”

Was it her imagination, or had the same black sedan just passed her going in the same direction for Waikiki? “You may learn something tonight that will totally clear Stone of any sort of—”

“How early can you get to the office in the morning?”

She thought for a moment. “I’ll have to take my daughter to school. That puts me in the office about seven-fifteen.”

“I’ll call you then.”

“Call me
tonight
,” she insisted. “The minute you leave the base.”

“I’m worried about calling you at home,” he said. “Your home phone—”

“And you think calling my office is less dangerous?” She had to admit, she was beginning to believe all this Deep Throat stuff.

“At least it won’t look suspicious for a reporter to be calling the Public Affairs office, you know?”

“But you won’t say anything to HP about Stone and Melanie until we talk, right?”

“We’ll talk first.”

“Paul,” and she felt her body becoming wracked with emotion. “I have a daughter. I’ll need … I need to plan when I talk with her about what she may learn from other children once this breaks in the media, if it breaks. You’ll give me time, won’t you?”

“Sure.”

She felt like a woman who had just been given a stay of execution. She wanted to thank him, to tell him to watch himself and other things, but she couldn’t choke out the words.

When he asked in a tone of concern she’d nearly forgotten existed, “Are you okay?” the emotion welled up in her throat and threatened to choke her. She tried to speak and couldn’t.

Dark clouds had rolled over Waikiki, and Chase quickened her pace along the four blocks or so from the parking garage on Ala Moana to the Starbucks. In sight of the signature umbrellas and patio tables, the first drops of rain—the size of quarters—began to fall so intermittently that she seemed to be walking between them. She made a dash for the entrance but was held up by three elderly women who were retreating with their coffees and conversation to the indoors as well. Once inside, North wasn’t hard to spot. He was wearing a bright flowered shirt, looking like a typical tourist, and sitting at a small booth, facing the door. He waved and held up a cup to show her he’d already bought her a coffee. She slid in the booth and reached for a handful of napkins, wiping rain from her face and hands as North slid her coffee across the table.

“Thanks.” She took a sip. “So much for your weekend off, huh?” North looked as if he’d pulled an all-nighter. His eyes were red, moist, and weak. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I feel a little worked over,” he said. “Let’s put it this way, ma’am, I’m beginning to feel my age.”

She chuckled. “North, we’re only twenty-nine, for crying out loud.”

“Okay then, out of practice.”

She blew the steam from her cup. “Even that’s hard to believe. What did you learn?”

“I met a lance corporal with HMH-266 last night—maintenance guy—who used to work on the 81—” And here he paused. His shoulders slumped forward as if suddenly overburdened with a heavy weight.

“Go on.”

North slowly leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table, both hands cupping his coffee. “He was a mechanic with 464 in Afghanistan, ma’am.”

“With Stone?”

North nodded. Something in his demeanor told her he was hesitating.

“What is it, North?”

“You know how guys talk, ma’am. After about six beers last night, this guy starts running his mouth about everybody over there and about the 81, how he’d finally been transferred to Hueys midway through his tour.”

“Transferred—why?”

“He says he got into it with a staff sergeant who ordered him to make a false maintenance report. Seems the 81 this guy was assigned to had been having a few problems and needed a thorough overhaul, but the staff sergeant cleared the report so the bird could fly.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, and leaned back, her spine slamming hard against the unforgiving back of the booth. “You’re not going to tell me the bird was Stone’s, are you?”

North shrugged. “He couldn’t say for certain, ma’am. He’d been gone for almost a month before Major Anderson’s crash. But he did say he’d known both Major Anderson and Major White.” She and North had been together long enough and through enough that she could tell in the way he was avoiding eye contact that he was withholding information.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

His eyes diverted left. “Nothing, Ma’am. I’m telling you everything I know.” He was lying. North, of all people, was lying to her. All the signals were there. He’d leaned back and crossed his arms over this chest. There was that glance off to the left—

North was lying, all right, but why? The only reason would be to protect her from the truth. Of this, she was certain. There was something Sergeant Harrison North didn’t want his captain to know.

“I want to talk to this lance corporal,” she said, and, ignoring the protest that was already mounting in North’s expression, added, “Can he be trusted, you think, to keep quiet about the conversation for a while?”

“Ma’am, I’m not even sure he’ll remember who I am after last night. When I left, he was screaming for carrier quals.” North said he had to join in with the others as they stacked tables end to end, poured beer all over the surfaces, and slid along the length of the sudsy tabletops to a crash landing. “He may have landed himself right into sickbay from a broken neck or alcohol poisoning.”

“The truth, North,” she demanded. “You don’t want me talking to this lance corporal, do you?”

“Ma’am, I’m just saying—”

Chase was staring him down. “I need someone to substantiate the claims Paul Shapiro’s making against the 81. Maybe this Marine’s close to other maintenance personnel at 464. Surely, he knows some of them, has worked with them in the Middle East before his transfer.” What she really wanted was to ask this young lance corporal about the 81 that might have possibly been Stone’s bird that crashed. Dear God, what it could mean if this were true. Armed with this sort of information, she would take it clear to the top. General Hickman and Colonel Farris be damned. “North,” she said, and softened when North, looking like a cornered animal, met her stare, “I need you to make this happen. Please.”

He nodded, and dropped his eyes to the table. “Aye-aye, ma’am.”

CHAPTER 13

B
ack home, she waited all night for the phone to ring. She was expecting two calls: one from Shapiro after the meeting with his mystery source, and the other from North. She paced the house. After tucking Molly into bed, Chase repeatedly checked on her daughter, several times needing to draw the child’s covers back over her tiny, exposed body.

She repeatedly checked her cell phone to ensure the phone was getting a signal. Sometimes coverage on base was spotty, so she was checking for a possible voice mail. Nothing. Nothing at all. Eventually, she lay across her bed, still fully clothed, the cell phone by her side. She must have dozed, for the buzzing of her alarm clock startled her awake.

She was reaching into one of Molly’s drawers for a pair of socks. “Molly,” she called down the hallway toward the bathroom, “we have to hurry, honey.”

Molly burst from the bathroom and raced down the hall toward her room, giggling all the way. The child, so like her father, was such a morning person. Chase had become one out of necessity. “Get dressed,” Chase urged, eager to reach the office and to receive news from Shapiro. “We have to leave in ten minutes.”

“Race you, Mommy,” she giggled, and in one sweep, lifted her nightgown above her head and off her body. The gown sailed across the room and landed in a rocking chair, oddly obscuring the vision of a teddy bear.

By seven that morning, Chase was pulling into her parking space in front of the Public Affairs Office. North, Cruise, and the others wouldn’t arrive for another fifteen or twenty minutes. She would have the time alone behind her office’s closed doors to talk with Shapiro about the meeting with his mystery source.

Five minutes later, she’d started a pot of coffee and was listening for the telephone, adrenaline pushing through the leftover grogginess of sleep deprivation. This was it. Paul Shapiro would be calling any second, and she gave a silent prayer that whatever he had to tell her would totally clear Stone of any suspicion regarding infidelity with Melanie and involvement in a cover-up conspiracy regarding the 81.

Ten minutes later, footsteps were charging up the staircase. Sergeant North called out a greeting and headed straight for the break room to pour himself a cup of coffee. Chase followed. “Anything yet?” she asked.

North had a small bandage just under his jaw, a shaving cut, she guessed. He shook his head. “Couldn’t find anyone who knew how to reach the guy on a Sunday, so I’ll head over to his squadron in a few minutes.”

Back in her office, she moved a few files around on her desk, unable to focus on anything but the impending ring of the telephone, which with North’s presence meant she would now have to let him answer and then wait for him to forward the call. He would most likely ask why Shapiro from the
Honolulu Current
was calling so early. She would have to think up a plausible reason.

Another five minutes and still no call from Paul Shapiro. Cruise and the others were chatting their way up to the second story, following their noses to the coffee.

“Good morning, ma’am,” they called in unison. The office was filling up with voices and chatter about who did what over the weekend. Football scores. Martinez had won the pool a second consecutive week. Laughter. Ribbing. The clink of spoons in coffee cups. Cruise hovered in Chase’s doorway and asked about the weekend. “Quiet,” Chase answered, and compelled to act normal, asked, “and yours?”

This invited more than Chase honestly wanted to know. Her head, trying to stay clear enough for Shapiro’s news, was filling up with Cruise’s weekend recap about time with her son, and Chase thought, at one point, she might even scream at the woman to return to work. But she didn’t scream. She smiled and asked thoughtful questions at all the appropriate pauses before interrupting Cruise as a diversion to ask about the lineup for the upcoming edition of the
Hawaii Marine
.

“I’ll get my notes,” Cruise said.

“No,” Chase nearly shouted, and felt her face blush when Cruise appeared stunned. “I mean … let’s plan an editorial meeting a little later this morning.” Chase glanced at her desk calendar. At 1500, she and North were due at 464’s hangar for a run-through of the upcoming Marine Corps Ball ceremony. As the Public Affairs officer, Chase had the annual duty of reading the Commandant’s speech and the traditional anniversary address from famous Marine General Chesty Puller that was read at every anniversary ceremony throughout the Corps. Other than the practice, she was free most of the afternoon. She glanced at her watch and up at Cruise. “About eleven?”

Sergeant Cruise nodded and excused herself. Chase exhaled, grateful to be alone again with her anticipation of Shapiro’s telephone call. The planning of the base newspaper would have to go on, despite what she might learn in the next few minutes, but she would worry about the newspaper when the time came. Stone had always called her the master of compartmentalization. She’d cringed, too, over the comment. Multi-tasking came with the job, but she had the sense he was complaining about how she compartmentalized him and Molly as well.

Then it was eight, nine, and even ten o’clock with still no word from Shapiro. At ten-thirty, when she could stand it no more, Chase called the
Honolulu Current
and asked to be put through to his desk. His voice mail picked up. She left a brief message: “This is Captain Anderson, Public Affairs, Marine Corps Base, Hawaii. Please give me a call.” She waited another fifteen minutes before trying his cell phone. Again, she reached his voice mail. She left the same message. She called his home phone number, but hung up when his voice mail answered. By the time Cruise, Martinez, and North showed up in her doorway for the editorial meeting, Chase was bordering between anger and worry over why Shapiro hadn’t called.

The editorial meeting lasted a little more than an hour during which Chase listened to her staff discussing the page assignments for various stories. One young reporter, a Pfc who had prepared a news feature about the upcoming deployment of 1
^st
Battalion, 3
^rd
Marine Regiment to Iraq, was to be given his first page-one byline. Another young reporter, who had been pleading for an opportunity to write about anything other than the Pet-of-the-Week feature, had completed a decent piece on the role of helicopter crew chiefs. Cruise suggested the piece be assigned to the first page of the feature section. Everyone agreed.

Martinez chuckled. “Guess we’ll have to find someone else to cover Pet-of-the-Week from now on.” And Cruise passed around the Marine’s photographs that were to accompany the feature on the crew chiefs. The work had enormous appeal and was unlike anything else Chase had seen run in a military newspaper.

“She’s not just capturing action,” Chase said, “or people in profile and uniforms so that we have to rely on the captions to even know who they are. We see too much of that. She’s captured their eyes.” Chase was still studying the photograph of three crew chiefs in flight suits and headgear, leaning with a certain swagger against the open doorway of a CH-46 Sea Knight. The Marine in the center of the photograph with the small moustache, reminded her of Stone’s crew chief, Mouse, who died during Stone’s first crash. Mouse had grown up in a small rural Virginia town not far from Chase’s hometown. In fact, his high school was the out-of-town rival to Chase’s.