A Knife Edge (29 page)

I put my hands behind my head and looked out her window. A file of trainees triple-timed past on the roadway, heads down, looking inside themselves for something extra. I said, “I dunno … it's real unlikely a healthy CCT hotshot would cut his own harness.”

“But it's also conceivable that a dedicated soldier who sees his career in the crapper and himself in a wheelchair might,” she said.

“You really think it's possible Ruben killed himself to set up Butler?” I asked as I watched a young airman using a toothbrush
to paint the rocks marking the edge of the road white. I wondered if he'd be expected to clean his teeth with it later.

“It's possible,” Clare said. “You're the investigator, Vin. The question is, which of those answers would
you
want to lock in?”

Neither of us said anything for a few moments while we both chewed over the options. Then a question unrelated to the current investigation rose out of my subconscious the way a body stuffed in a trunk and sunk in a river can pop to the surface. “You mind answering a question related to another case?”

“Sure, if I can.”

“You had much experience with badly burned bodies?”

“Depends. What do you want to know?”

“Is it possible a body can get so badly burned that identification through DNA ceases to be an option?”

“How was this particular body burned?”

“Major gas fire.”

She nodded. “DNA is not invincible. It fact, it's pretty easy to destroy, and fire is as good a means as any. Gas burns at over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. If the fire is sustained, and the temperature is high enough, like in a gas fire, the body ends up deep-frying in its own fat. Eventually, if this cooking continues, the body broils away happily like any piece of meat left in the oven too long, and it gets turned into carbon. If that happens, there's no DNA left. In a fire like that, you probably won't get dental records, either, because the head will have been burnt off. The same with the hands, arms, and legs. Fingerprints will be the first things to go. Identification is going to have to come through some other means. Does that help?”

“It's going to help me turn vegan.”

“So,” said Clare, “where do you go from here?”

“The Pentagon.”

“Not you, the case …”

“Which one?”

“Which one do you think?”

“On this one? That's it for me, Clare. I'm done. It's up to the next guy.”

“What next guy?”

“My replacement.”

“This one's going to end up in the freezer; you know that, don't you?” Clare gave me the how-could-you? look.

“You know, I don't want that to happen, either. I've got a couple of thoughts, but you'll have to see them through, if you can.”

“Such as?”

“You'll need the local PD and maybe a court order or two.”

“We've got a reasonable relationship with the local cops. What you got in mind?” Clare asked.

I told her about a few of those things—phone and bank records for Amy McDonough and Juan Demelian, Ruben's attorney. Others I kept to myself on account of they had more to do with what was on tonight's menu over at her house.

I returned to the train wreck that was my makeshift office. I had quite a bit to do before leaving Hurlburt Field, a major task being the rationalization of my expenses onto a DD Form 1351-2 for e-mailing to the GAO. For one thing, my wallet was so stuffed with receipts it felt like I was sitting on a shoe. For another, I was almost broke. I also had to see that Ruben Wright's effects were packed back into storage, and write up my notes on the case for that next guy, if there was a next guy.

I was repacking the stereo into its box with foam blocks that wouldn't go back in the way they came out when the cell rang. I should have checked the screen before answering it. “Special Agent Vin Cooper.”

“Vin.”

That familiar voice. Hearing it was like being in an elevator that had just had all its cables cut. “Anna. Hey—how's it going?” I said as I dropped through the shaft.

“Good. And you?”

“Good. Happy New Year, by the way.”

“And Happy New Year to you,” she said. “I tried to phone you.”

“Yeah, Arlen told me.” I didn't call her on the lie.

“So, how was your night?”

“Pretty good,” I said.
Pretty good? Jesus!
“Yours?”

“It was okay. Vin, I… I've got some news.”

“Yeah, Arlen said you—”

“Vin, I've met someone.”

I should have seen it coming. She'd said she had some news.
Some
news usually meant bad news with nothing good to counterbalance it. I knew for certain she hadn't tried to call, though she'd probably been thinking about doing so quite a bit. “You've met someone?”

“Yes. Someone I like.”

“How much do you like him?”

“Vin, don't make this more difficult than it already is.”

I could have made it easier and told her about Clare. That would have let her off the hook, but it would also have left me hanging on it.

“I just needed to be honest with you,” she said.

There you go again, Anna, reading my mind,
I thought. “So, how long have you been seeing this guy?” I asked. “It is a
guy
you've been seeing… ?”

“Vin…”

“It could be a chimp.”

I heard her make an impatient
tsk
sound. “He's JAG. A lawyer.”

“Oh, right, so that would make him a chump.”

She went on to say she'd been seeing the guy for a month. A month? A JAG lawyer? It was like a joke with a really unfunny punch line. She'd been seeing the guy since long before she'd paid me that impromptu visit before Christmas. I felt my Clare-guilt absolved. What had that trip to my bed been about, anyway? Was she maybe comparing us, deciding which way to jump? Or who she was no longer going to jump?

“Vin, I'm sorry this has hurt you.”

I didn't say anything on account of there was nothing to say.

“You know it wasn't working—the distance, the bad phone calls, the silences…”

“The piano principle,” I said.

“Piano principle?”

“Your friend Steinway and his postage stamps.”

“Yeah, right…”

“I guess this makes it official, doesn't it?”

“I guess it does,” she replied.

Even though we'd already called time, a part of me was still hanging on to the improbable. She and I had history. We'd worked the toughest case of my career—and hers—together. The slow death of separation had finally done what bullets and a car crash had failed to do.

“You there, Vin? … Vin … ?”

“Yeah, I'm here … So has this JAG lawyer got a sense of humor?” I asked.

“I… I don't know… well, yeah, he does.”

“You don't sound too sure about it. You need to tell him my favorite lawyer joke and watch for a positive reaction,” I said. I gave her the two-lawyers-in-the-bank joke, which got a laugh. I hung up and stared at the phone a while.

T
he C-130's interior smell was a mélange of hot kerosene, grease, and gasoline. Up at the front of the aircraft, not too far from where I sat, a battered, tied-down Humvee leaked fluid onto the bare aluminum floor. I knew how it felt. My bladder was on the verge of doing likewise. I had the pins and needles in my fingers along with the sweats and the shortness of breath. I was well aware of the classic symptoms of avia-phobia even before reading about them in my new flying companion,
Have a Nice Flight,
on account of the only time I experienced them was when I sat in an aircraft. And the fact that these symptoms were “classic” didn't make me feel any better about having them.

The aircraft lurched, bucking forward as the pilot tested the brakes. And then the engines screamed as only engines in C-130s can, and we turned onto the strip and accelerated. I did what the book suggested I do when in an aircraft heading down the runway. I pedaled, just like Fred Flintstone in his Flintstone car pedaled. This, according to the book, was to give me a feeling of control over my situation. It was supposed to help. It did. It helped me feel like the village idiot, especially as I only noticed the smirking loadmaster strapped into the troop seats on the opposite side of the aircraft after we'd taken off. He began flapping his arms like bird wings, which is one of the ways people lose their front teeth.

Driving a rental back to D.C. wasn't an option. The fact that I had to get my ass up to the captain's office by 1300 hours didn't give me the chance to dick around on the nation's highways. As is often the case at an Air Force base, there happened to be a flight leaving and headed my way. Lyne got me and my well-thumbed copy of
Have a Nice Flight
on it.

The book didn't recommend getting comatose with a bottle of single malt as a means of overcoming my fears, a suggestion that would have suited me just fine. Instead it recommended distraction. In the lexicon of modern weaselspeak, the book called this “thinking positive thoughts.” I put my cynicism away and gave it a go. There was the bust-up with Anna—nothing positive there. I thought about Ruben's last few months and couldn't see much good there, either. I thought about dinner the previous evening at Clare's. And I thought about how wrong I'd read it. After the night in the hotel, I believed she'd been having fun with me when she'd said I was being presumptuous about sex being on the table, or words to that effect. But no. In fact, we ate fried rice with her son, Manfred. One of the things I learned about Manny was that he wanted to be a rotary-winged pilot, ironic given what had happened to his dad. Or maybe not. Maybe it was the kid's way of conquering the loss: He couldn't beat ‘em, so he was going to join ‘em—or would when he grew big enough to reach the pedals.

Manny was a good kid, but laying carpet would have done more for my libido.

The closest Clare and I came to sex was dessert. She fixed us each a banana split. Given what I knew of her proclivities, this was practically pornographic.

When dessert was finished, it was bedtime—Manny's. Clare read him a story. Afterward, we sat on her back porch, listened to the frogs in the marsh beyond the fence, and talked shop—about the case, about past cases. The conversation ran its natural course until there was only one topic left to discuss. Clare sipped her glass of wine and said, “I meant it when I said just dinner.”

“OK,” I replied.

She picked a small bug out of her glass that was beating its wings furiously, swimming in panicked circles on top of her wine. She flicked it away. “It's been fun.”

“Yes, it has.”

The frogs croaked in unison somewhere in the darkness until one of them missed its cue. “You were just passing through, Vin, and that made what we were doing possible. Remember?”

I remembered. “But now I'm so passed through I'm out the other side?”

“Yes,” she said. “I'm really going to miss you.”

“The feeling's mutual.”

She gave my hand a squeeze. “So we've had a nice farewell dinner. I don't want to ruin it.”

“Can't we ruin it just a little?” I asked.

A short while later, we shook hands at her front door—buddies. It seemed the right thing to do at the time. But now, sitting in a climbing C-130, when I needed a positive distraction, I had none. So instead I focused on a spot on the floor, ground my teeth, fought the pins and needles, and wondered why the hell I hadn't studied accounting.

*   *   *

Flying time to Andrews AFB in Washington, D.C., was a little over three hours. I stepped off the C-130 with my ears ringing, feeling like I'd spent a couple of hours rolling around inside a steel hubcap with a handful of gravel. I took a cab to my apartment. It was exactly as I'd left it—quiet and empty. The über-mold in the fridge hadn't even managed to regroup for a renewed assault. I had a quick shower, threw on my Class A uniform, and walked out the front door half an hour after I arrived. The sky was gray and so low I could almost touch it. The fingers of my left hand ached—a sure sign that snow was in the air.

It started coming down as the cab climbed the ramp on to the Beltway. It fell slow, like white ticker tape. In between songs, the radio warned a big storm front was headed D.C.'s way. A little
snow was OK. Too much and the only people who'd benefit from it were the kids who might be forced to skip school if the drifts got too deep.

The cab slowed along with the surrounding traffic as the snow became heavier and the temperature kept dropping. Nevertheless, I arrived outside Chip's office with two minutes to spare. I had enough time to release two buttons on my coat when Schaeffer's door burst open. He was in his Class As too. “Fall in, Major,” he said as he strode past. Perhaps I was being unfair, but striding was something I thought he was incapable of. Schaeffer's face was red and he didn't look pleased. I was pretty certain he wasn't going to wish me Happy New Year.

We climbed a level and walked to the other side of the building. I followed Chip through an unfamiliar section, took some more turns, came through several doors requiring the swipe of his security card, and through another couple needing his card as well as a ten-digit code punched into their touchpads. One set of doors even required a scan of Chip's retinas. While he was being scanned, I kept a lookout for Tom Cruise and his Mission Impossible team.

Thirteen minutes after we set off, and, disproving Arlen's seven-minute theory, a female naval officer with the rank of lieutenant snapped open a set of double doors as we approached. Once inside, I could see there was a bunch of people sitting around a large, rectangular table. Flat-screen computer monitors faced each chair at the table, and the room was ringed by large television monitors at standing height. The light wasn't good as it was provided only by table lamps and the flat-screens. I took all this in at a glance, my synapses popping away like corn on hot steel. Although I couldn't see exactly who was who, I caught enough stars to know there was a who's who of high-ranking brass in the room. However, it was the presence of three people dressed in civilian clothes that gave my pulse rate a push: the U.S. Secretary of Defense; one Bradley Chalmers, now back from his little trip to Guam; and Dr. Freddie Spears. The
doctor didn't look up when Schaeffer and I walked in, which told me I was expected. For a second or two I thought the smile on Chalmers's face meant he was pleased to be in my company again. When I looked again, I saw it was a snarl.