One Was a Soldier (2 page)

“We gonna have to do the same thing for Kevin, when he gets back?” Deputy Chief Lyle MacAuley squinted in the bright morning sunshine.

The youngest officer on the MKPD had been shipped off for temporary detached duty almost a year ago, first with the Capital Area Drug Enforcement Association in Albany, then with the Special Investigation Division of the Syracuse PD, which saw more major crimes in two weeks than Millers Kill might see in a year.

“Kevin Flynn’s welcome home is going to be a bump up in pay grade, if I can ram it down the aldermen’s throats.” Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne shook his head. “What we really need is another officer on the force. That way, we wouldn’t be overscheduling everybody. I worry that we’re putting Eric back on the streets too soon. A few days ago he was eating MREs and holding down a guard post in Umm Qasr.”

Lyle raised an eyebrow. “I’m impressed. The only place I could name in Iraq is Baghdad, and don’t ask me to find it on a map.”

“I was in that neck of the woods, remember? First Gulf War.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “God, doesn’t that feel like an age ago.”

“It was. I think Eric was finishing up high school. Kevin was probably still in diapers.”

“Hunh.” And Lieutenant Clare Fergusson had been twenty-three. “They probably already have our beds reserved up at the Infirmary.”

“Speak for yourself. I plan to be shot to death by the enraged father of a pair of twenty-year-old twins.”

Russ laughed. Lyle gave him a sideways look. “You hear from the reverend lately?”

Russ’s laugh died away. “A phone call five days ago. The 142nd is still on target to ship home in three weeks.” He tried to smile. “Of course, they were on target to leave last March, too. Until their tour got extended.”

“She should’a gone into the chaplain’s corps instead of air support. She’d have been home by now.” Lyle hooked his thumbs in his duty belt. “A year and a half’s a long time.”

“Oh, yeah.” The longest damn eighteen months of his life, and that included a tour in Vietnam, going cold turkey on cigarettes, and quitting booze. Sitting home night after night, watching the casualty counts mount on the news—hell, giving up drinking again would have been easier. Drinking
and
smoking.

“How’s she sounding?”

“Like she always sounds. Chipper. Everything’s fine. She’s fine. The weather’s fine.” Russ glanced up at the banner, the granite, the clear blue sky. “You know what the temperature was in Basra that day? A hundred and five degrees. I saw it on CNN.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t decide if she’s so happy flying helicopters again she’s forgotten there’s a war on, or if she’s babying me so I don’t…” He looked at Lyle. “You know how many helos have crashed or been shot down in Iraq since the beginning of the year? Fifteen. You wanna know how many pilots have been killed?”

“No.” Lyle held up a hand. “Stop it, or you’re going to make yourself crazy. Crazier,” he amended. “Eric’s home safe and sound, and your lady’ll get here, too.”

Russ touched the spot where, beneath his uniform blouse and undershirt, Clare’s silver cross rested against his chest. She had given it to him for safekeeping the day she left, and he hadn’t taken it off yet. He might not believe in a god, but that didn’t seem to stop him from putting his faith in superstition.

“Eric.” Lyle’s tone was deliberately workaday. “When I spoke with him, he was hot to get back into investigation, but if you think he needs more time, I can find some desk work to keep him busy.”

“What, running down addresses for check bouncers and updating the evidence lists? The last thing I want is for him to think we don’t need him anymore and head off for better-paying pastures. He’s our best investigator, after you.”

MacAuley touched one bristly gray eyebrow and smirked.

“Don’t look so smug,” Russ said. “Consider the competition.”

“A diamond in an ashtray is still a diamond,” Lyle said with immense dignity.

Which made Russ think of his recent purchase. He hadn’t told Lyle about that. He hadn’t told anybody, yet. What if she turned him down? A fifty-two-year-old widower with a bum hip wasn’t any great prize. His phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket. “Van Alstyne here.”

“His wife says he’s on his way.” Harlene, who had been at the MKPD longer than Russ and Lyle combined, didn’t believe in deferring to rank. “Get in here or you’ll spoil the surprise.”

“We’re coming.” He shut his phone. “Harlene says it’s time to get into the squad room and hide behind a desk.”

“I think she does these surprise parties as an excuse to stuff us with sweets until we can’t move.”

Russ thwacked Lyle on his still-flat belly. “She’s got a way to go with you, then, old-timer.”

Lyle tugged his uniform blouse into place. “I gotta keep my boyish figure. Just in case I find the woman of my dreams hanging around a church or something.”

*   *   *

Eric thought he might never have had a better moment, standing in the squad room, getting roasted by his brother officers. Harlene was squeezing his arm like she was testing to see if he was done, and the big boxed assortment from the Kreemy Kakes diner was on the scarred table where the chief liked to sit, and the old paint was still flaking beneath the windows, and nothing was changed. Everything was the same.

“Good Lord,” Harlene said. “How many chin-ups do they make you do in the army? You feel like you could pick me up, and let me tell you, there’s not many men as could do that.” She slapped her ample hips.

Eric wrapped his arms around her midsection and hoisted her a few inches off the floor. She whooped. “Now, don’t tell Harold,” he said, resettling her solidly on her feet, “but I did it all for you.” In fact, there just hadn’t been anything to do on his off-hours except sleep and pump iron. He’d heard up in the Green Zone, they had round-the-clock computers, and movies, and clubs, but in Camp Bucca, the only diversions were once-a-week access to a staticky phone line and the occasional smuggled-in bottle of hajji juice—Iraqi moonshine that was rumored to be al Qaeda’s secret weapon against the occupancy.

“Jesum, Eric.” MacAuley hitched himself up against one of the desks. “We oughta put you in one of them beefcake calendars.”

Eric laughed. “I’ll have to ask my wife first.”

“Might improve the recruitment rates down to the academy.” Harlene fanned herself.

“Only if you’re trying to get girls and gays.” Paul Urquhart laced his hands across his expansive middle, as if a beer belly were the mark of a real man. The chief frowned.

“How do you know we don’t already have someone gay on the force, Paul?” Hadley Knox picked through a Kreemy Kakes box. Despite her regulation uniform and cropped hair, she looked more like a model in a commercial than a real cop. “After all, we’ve already got a girl.” She ripped a doughnut in half and popped one piece in her mouth. “Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever hearing about you going out on a date.”

Urquhart straightened, quivering with outrage. “I’m divorced! I’ve got kids!”

Noble Entwhistle squinted, concentrating. He wasn’t the fastest runner off the block, but he had a prodigious memory for people and places. “Dr. Dvorak, the ME, was divorced. He’s got grown kids.”

“Yeah, and now he’s living with a big bearded guy.” Hadley leaned toward Urquhart, her brown eyes filled with sympathy. “We’re your fellow officers, Paul. You don’t have to hide who you are with us.”

“That’s enough,” the chief said.

Hadley grinned and bit into the other half of her doughnut.

Eric was laughing into his fist. It was so familiar, so normal and uncomplicated. “Man, I missed this place.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” The chief beckoned to him and stepped away to one of the tall windows. Eric followed him farther out of earshot of the others, who were continuing with jokes at Urquhart’s expense. The chief looked at him, steady, not smiling. “How are you? Really?”

Eric spread his hands. “You’re ex-army, chief. You know what it’s like.”

“Yeah,” the chief agreed, “but I don’t know if what’s going on over there is like Desert Storm or Vietnam.”

Eric thought of the wire. The prison barracks. “It’s not like either of them. I think…” The heat, pounding air and dust and dogs flat beneath it. Patrolling dirty streets down to the scummy harbor. “It’s its own thing. It’s…” The eyes of men, hating on him so hard that if they had had anything—sticks, stones, bottles—he would be dead. He snapped to focus again. Looked at the chief.

“It wasn’t any Caribbean cruise, but I’m okay.” He glanced around at the squad room. “And I gotta tell you, being back here, with all of you guys, is—” He didn’t know what to do, shake his head or nod. “It feels real good.”

“Good.” The chief slapped him lightly on his upper arm. “Look, if at any time you’re feeling stressed out, or if you feel like you need to dial back a bit—”

Eric shook his head. “That’s not going to happen.”

“If it does,” the chief emphasized, “I want you to come to me. You don’t have to give me any details. You don’t have to justify yourself. Just give me the word, and we’ll lighten things up for you for as long as you need it.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Eric said again. And it wasn’t. Home was stressful. Trying to deal with a wife who’d been running everything her way for a year was stressful. Discovering his son had gone from being a sweet, goofy kid to a moody irritable teen while he was away was stressful. Getting back to chasing down bad guys? That was pure gravy.

FRIDAY, JUNE 24

“You here to arrest somebody?” The man with the fistful of helium balloons next to Russ grinned.

“Huh?” Russ’s focus had been on the hangar-sized doors at the end of the armory. He couldn’t decide if staring at the damn things would make the 142nd Aviation Support Battalion appear sooner or not.

The man thumbed toward Russ’s brown-and-khakis. “That’s not the sort of uniform you expect to see here.” He squinted at the MKPD shoulder badge. “Millers Kill, huh? I’m from Gloversville. We used to play you guys at b-ball. You rode us hard for the Class E championship in ’69.”

“I was on that team,” Russ said. “Class of ’70.”

“Me, too!” The man laughed. “Hair down to my nipples and a big ‘Peace Now’ headband I never took off. Who’d’a guessed I’d wind up here waiting for my girl to get back from war?” He bounced his balloon bouquet in the air.

“Yeah. Same here. Well. Not the long hair bit.” Russ clutched the green-paper-wrapped roses he’d gotten from Yarter’s. They’d looked a lot better a few hours ago. How had all those petals fallen off? “The waiting for my girl part.”

A harried-looking woman elbowed her way through the crowd, one little kid on her hip and a six- or seven-year-old dragging along in her grip. “There you are,” she said. “You would not believe how far we had to go to reach a bathroom.” She handed the little one over to the balloon man. “Go to Grandpa, now.”

“Grandpa! Grandpa!” The seven-year-old pirouetted and leaped. “I think I saw the buses!”

The balloon guy—the
grandpa
—nodded toward Russ. “Turns out I played basketball against this fella in high school. He’s meeting his daughter, too.”

His wife smiled at Russ, amused. “You’d better stop whacking those flowers against your leg or there won’t be anything left for your girl.”

He could feel the tips of his ears turning pink. “It’s not—I’m—” He was saved by the rumble of the buses, bumping over the slow strip into the cavernous building, a sound immediately drowned out by the roar of the waiting crowd.

Russ didn’t join in. He watched the buses maneuvering into place, watched the exhaust rising to the fluorescent lights above, felt the sound and the light rising in him, lifting him off his feet, until he wouldn’t have been surprised to find himself floating through the air like one of those helium balloons.

The buses parked. The doors slid open. Guardsmen started shuffling down the steps, anonymous in urban camo. Was that her? No. Not that one, either.

He suddenly couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand one more minute of not seeing her; after counting off the seasons, and then the months, and then the days, and the hours, he realized all the waiting had accumulated, and he was going to be crushed beneath it.

Clare,
he mouthed without speaking. A stab of pain made him look at his palm. He had driven one of the roses’ thorns through the paper and into his flesh.

The dancing girl had stilled and was looking at his hand. Then she looked up at him. She had hazel eyes and a pointed nose.

“It’s really hard to wait,” he said.

She nodded. “My mommy says count to ten, ten times. She’s a helicopter pilot.”

“So’s my … friend.”

The little girl reached into her pocket and pulled out a grubby tissue. She handed it to him. “Thanks,” he said, wiping up the blood.

“Pumpkin, I think I see Mommy,” her grandmother said. The girl whirled and danced away. That’s what their daughter would look like, he realized. His and Clare’s.

Then she stepped off the bus. He almost didn’t recognize her. Beneath her black beret, her hair was short, bleached lighter than he had ever seen it, and her face, all points and angles, was deeply tanned. She was looking around, scanning the crowd, her eyes alight with hope and anxiety.

The band struck up a tune, combining with squeals from children and the howls of babies to create an echoing cacophony that guaranteed she wouldn’t hear him call her name if he was standing five feet away instead of fifty. Instead, he willed her to find him.
Clare. Clare. Clare
.

She paused for a second, closing her eyes, breathing in as if she could taste the far-off Adirondack air above the fog of bus exhaust and machine oil and human sweat. Then she opened her eyes and met his over the heads of the crowd.

Her mouth formed a perfect O, then curved into a heartbreaking smile. She blinked hard and raised one hand, and then she was bumped from behind by the next man in line and stumbled forward.

He watched as she lined up with the rest of the brigade and came to attention. When the last guardsman was off the bus and in formation, the band wheezed to a stop. There was a shuffle of dignitaries and brass at the front, and then the families were welcomed, and a minister gave an invocation, and the CO read a letter from the governor, and the XO gave a speech about the brigade’s accomplishments in Iraq, and Russ thwacked and thwacked and thwacked the roses against his leg, until he looked down to see his well-worn service boot decorated with crimson petals.