The Last Hour (37 page)

“I’ll wait for your call,” I said, and then I was out the door, running down the hall and back to my office. I threw my phone and other personal things into my purse and walked out of the office.
 

Lori was on her feet and met me in the hallway. She whispered urgently, “Carrie ... what happened in there?”

I shook my head, rapidly, and said in a high-pitched, uncontrollable voice, “My life is falling apart. I can’t talk about it now or I’ll start screaming. I’ll call tomorrow.”

“Tonight,” she said, giving me a concerned look.

“Tonight,” I replied. “I ... ok. I’ll call you tonight.”

And then I half-ran, half-stumbled, out of the building.

If there’s a crappier way to spend an entire day than repeating the same story, for the hundredth time, for a lawyer, I don’t know what it is. I’d arrived promptly that morning at Major Elmore’s office, and found him sitting behind an enormous steel and plastic military desk painted battleship grey. The back wall of Elmore’s office was covered in awards and decorations, including the citation for his Bronze Star. When I walked in, I was immediately drawn to that wall, and found myself reading the award citation. Simple and unpleasant story. IED blew up a Humvee south of Baghdad, burning fuel splashed all over the place. Elmore ran into the fire to pull one of his soldiers out of the fire, and got himself all fucked up in his efforts.

“Did he live?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The soldier you pulled out of the burning Humvee.”

He shook his head. “No. Too badly burned. But he made it home with his face intact. For the funeral.”

I winced. Then I said, “I don’t need a civilian attorney. You’ll do.”

He didn’t answer. He knew what I meant, and I knew what I meant. You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. You can’t occupy a country without fucking some people up. He got it in a way no lawyer fresh out of law school was ever going to get it.

So I sat down, and he slid a list across the table to me. I scanned it. It was five other members of my squad, plus Sergeant First Class Colton. Sergeant Hicks was on the list too, probably because he was my other accuser.

I looked at the list, then back at him. “I want to know everything about these people. I want to know their underwear size. I want to know where they took shits in Afghanistan, and how often.”

I nodded. I picked a pen off his desk and struck three names from the list. “These three don’t matter. They were FNGs.”

He squinted. “That was your whole fire team. All of them?”

“Yeah. Not one of the three was out in the field longer than a week before Weber got blown away.”

I started writing new names on the list.
Weber. Roberts. Kowalski. Paris.

“These are the guys who matter in this equation,” I said.

“Will they testify?”

“Paris will. You’ll need a medium for the rest.”

He nodded. “Gotcha. I don’t think that’d be admissible in court anyway. So tell me why these are the guys I need to be concerned with.”

I swallowed. “Gonna take some time, if you want that kind of detail.”

“Go.”

And so I spent the day telling the story, starting with basic training with Dylan Paris and ending with Kowalski, and his comet-trail of ragged children in Dega Payan. By that time it was four in the afternoon, and my throat was dry, and I was ready to shoot the next person who asked me any fucking questions. Talking about Kowalski always killed me. You see all that yellow ribbon “Support Our Troops” crap, and soldiers being called heroes in the media. But the only real hero I knew was Kowalski, who didn’t even hesitate one fucking second when it was time to decide between his life and that little girl’s. I doubt he ever had time to think about it, to rationalize it, to weigh anything.
 

I’m not a big one for public displays of emotion of any kind. But talking about that day,
thinking
about that day, made my eyes water.
 

“I’m done for today, Major.”

“I told you, don’t call me that.”

“Fine. Not another word.”

“Fine. See you tomorrow. 9 a.m.—get some rest.”

I nodded and slid back my chair.
 

He said, “Kowalski sounds like he was a real guy.”

“He was a complete prick. But he did the right thing when it counted.”

I headed out the door without another word.

I was halfway across to NIH before I called Carrie. I was a mess, and my thoughts were turning back to Kowalski and the disaster that day turned out to be. The thing is, I still hadn’t visited his mom and his little girl. I’d been home for months, and I hadn’t even made the effort. I wasn’t sure I could face them, and I sure as hell wasn’t sure I could look his mother in the eye and tell her what happened to him in any detail.
 

I had to clear my head and at least try to show a brave face for Carrie. I closed my eyes and counted to ten, then dialed her number. She didn’t pick up.
Damn.
I kept walking. I was almost to the car anyway. She’d call back soon.

When I got to the car, I walked around it in a circle. God, what a beast. It was a black so glossy you could see your reflection in it, even though that model hadn’t originally been made in black. Thirty-five years old, with half a million miles, and it ran like it had just rolled off the assembly line. Well, except lately it had been kind of bitchy about starting sometimes. Carrie had sent it to the Mercedes dealership twice in the last two months to get worked on, and they’d sworn there wouldn’t be any further problems. We’d see.

I lit a cigarette and leaned against the car. I had a half-decent book to read on my phone until she got off work.

Five minutes later I spotted her. She was moving across the parking lot, quickly, her face pale. I stamped out my cigarette and put the phone away and moved toward her. She looked at me, and my heart fell through my stomach, because the moment she met my eyes her face broke up in the worst pain I’d ever seen her in. Tears started pouring out of her eyes, and I pulled her to me, wrapping my arms around her, as if that could somehow protect her from whatever the hell it was.

“Jesus Christ, Carrie, what’s wrong?”

She just shook her head and pressed her face against my shoulder. Her whole body was shaking, and I couldn’t tell if it was anger or grief or what. She didn’t want to talk, so I just held her. Her breathing was ragged, and then she muttered, “I could kill someone right now. We need to go. Now.”

She took out her keys, hands shaking as she unlocked the door.

I eyed the shaking hand and said, “You want me to drive?”

“No,” she said. “I need something I can control.”

No clue what the problem was, but that I could understand. Whatever was eating her, it was bad. I got in the other side, and she turned the key, muttering, “You better fucking start,” under her breath. I watched her. Carrie rarely cursed, although I knew I’d been a bad influence on her on that front.
 

The car started, the engine a low hum, and she put it in gear and we pulled out. Only when we were sitting in the traffic slowly exiting NIH onto Old Georgetown Road did she start to tell me the story.

By the time she was done, we were almost home, and my mind was reeling. The thought that Carrie of all people had been accused of falsifying research? It was laughable. It was ... appalling. And the worst part was, people would believe it. Just like they’d believe that I pulled the trigger.
 

“We’re getting drinks tonight. A lot of them,” I said.

“Deal,” she replied, her voice fierce. “Let’s go change, then go. I’m so angry I could scream.”

Since we were only going to be home for a few minutes, she pulled the car into the valet parking lane in front of the condo and shut it off. I think both of us breathed a sigh of relief. Until we saw the fucking gaggle of reporters, and the reporters saw us, and started running over.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” she screamed.

“Let’s just go,” I said.
 

“You can’t go out in uniform.”

“We’ll stop at Target or something and I’ll buy clothes.”

She nodded and cranked the car. And the damn thing wouldn’t turn over. Again. She sagged in her seat and leaned her head against the steering wheel.
 

“Jesus,” I said. “Try again?”

She tried to crank it. Not a sound. I sighed, frustrated, angry. But then, suddenly, I saw us as we’d been the day before. Curled up in bed watching movies and eating popcorn and having sex like a couple of horny teenagers. And I blurted out, “Would it help if I got out and pushed?”

She was leaning against the steering wheel, her eyes closed, when I asked the question. But then she snickered. Just a little. And the tiniest, smallest bit of a smile appeared at the corner of her mouth. She gave me a disbelieving look and said, “It might,” and I said, “Look, let’s just run for it.”

She nodded, gathered her purse, and we both opened our doors at the same time. I hurried to move around to the front, and she met me there. The reporters started shouting questions. Lots of them. I took her hand, and together we pushed our way through the reporters and into the building.

Carrie handed her keys to the concierge, and said, “Can you call the Mercedes dealership again? And tell them if they can’t fix it this time, they should push it off a cliff?”
 

The concierge nodded and said, “What should I do about the reporters?”

Carrie looked out the window at them. “Call the police?” she suggested. “They’re on private property.”

We got on the elevator, and Carrie threw her arms around me. “Do you always quote Star Wars when you’re nervous?”

I laughed, and she laughed, and then we were holding each other up, laughing together. Twenty minutes later we’d changed and cleaned up and headed back downstairs. I was wearing blue jeans and an old hoodie and sunglasses. She had a hat, and her hair brushed down covering half of her face. No one would be fooled. But we were planning on leaving via the loading dock anyway.

On the bottom floor, Carrie peered around the corner. There were still half a dozen reporters out there. She grabbed my hand and said, “This way. I used to go out this way when I didn’t want the concierge reporting me to my parents.”

I grinned. “What were you up to that you didn’t want them to know about?”

She snorted. “Not much. I’d sneak around the corner and go hang out at the bookstore.”

“Wild child,” I said.
 

The loading dock stank of spoiled food, but she knew her way in the dark. We came out of the alley halfway down the block from the building, and well out of sight of the reporters.
 

“Time for that drink,” she said, leading me into one of the many bars on Bethesda Avenue.

I leaned against Ray. My head was swimming. I’ve never been a heavy drinker, never really liked the feeling of being out of control, never liked the dizziness or the hangover after.
 

Ray, on the other hand, put away half a dozen shots. He was slurring his words, and three or four times had returned the conversation to his anger with his platoon sergeant, with the Army, with Nikki and her stupid complaint that just might wipe out my career.

I didn’t have anywhere to be in the morning, not for the foreseeable future. But Ray did. So finally, we paid our bill and staggered together out of the bar and back toward home. It was still early, only about seven, but we were both emotional wrecks, and that had taken its toll.

The reporters were gone when we arrived, and a Montgomery County police cruiser sat prominently in the valet parking area. Thank God. Getting out through the loading dock was easy, but I’d learned as a freshman in high school, you couldn’t get back in the building that way.

The night concierge was at the desk as we walked by. He waved, and I waved, and then we headed back up the elevator. I turned to Ray, resting my hands against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around me and gave me a somewhat sloppy, drunken kiss.

“We’ll get through this,” he said.

“We will,” I replied.

“But first, we’re going to have wild, animal sex.”

“Mmmm, that sounds good. Tell me where.”

“Everywhere,” he crooned in my ear. “Sh…starting on the living room floor. I want to touch every inch of your body. Everywhere. I want you to be mine, Carrie. Forever.”

My body was on fire. When the elevator stopped I grabbed his hand, and we sprinted for the door to the condo. I fumbled in my purse for my keys, but Ray already had his out and was starting to unlock the door when he stopped, his hand on the knob.

Our bodies were touching down their entire length, and I felt the sudden change in him, from relaxed, slightly drunk and turned on, to alertness. And I realized why a second later. The door was unlocked. He reached out and turned the knob and pushed the door inward forcefully.

“Shtay here,” he said. He wasn’t making a request.

I reached in my purse for the can of Mace I carried, and stood in the door as he walked into the apartment.

A moment later I heard Ray’s voice, tense, hostile, but still a little slurred from the alcohol. “Who the fuck are you?”

My heart leapt, suddenly pounding, and then I heard a response that sent me stumbling into the apartment. My father replied, “I should be asking you that, since you’re in my home.”

What was
he
doing here? I don’t know why that suddenly terrified me, but I rushed in there, and found my dad and Ray staring across the room at each other, and neither of them looked friendly. Dad was wearing his normal semi-relaxed look ... an old, well-worn jacket with patches on the elbows, slacks, and an open collared shirt. Over the last five years or so, his neatly trimmed hair had begun to go white.

“Um ... Ray ... meet my dad. Dad ... this is Ray Sherman.”

Shock dawned on Ray’s face. “Mr. Thompson ... sorry ... I thought you were—”

“A burglar? Hardly. Carrie, it’s good to see you.”

My anxiety was palpable as I walked to my father. He kissed me on the cheek.