After Midnight (2 page)

Unwrapping a stick, he folded it in two, popped it into his mouth, and stuffed the foil paper back in his pocket. While his gaze roamed the rippling water, his mind clicked back to the scene that had greeted him when he’d responded to his deputy’s call.

Unlike Atlanta, the Walton County Sheriff’s Department didn’t investigate all that many suicides. A distraught fourteen-year-old had gulped down a bottle of Tylenol after a break-up with her boyfriend last year. A lieutenant from the base had driven out to a lonely stretch of the reservation and blown out his brains some months back.

Then there was the Baptist minister down to South Walton County, whose boat had been found drifting after the storm that had whipped the usually placid bay into a frenzy last month. In all probability, the Reverend Mr. McConnell had gone overboard by accident, but until his body washed up Steve couldn’t rule out anything, even suicide.

Nor would he close the books on the incident tonight without doing some serious digging. Ron Clark’s death might look like a suicide. It might even smell like a suicide. But the first axiom of police investigations was to work every unexplained death as a possible murder unless the evidence proved otherwise.

Although the Florida Department of Law Enforcement over to Pensacola held technical jurisdiction on capital crimes and had been called in to work the crime scene analysis, the death had happened in Steve’s county. He’d run his own investigation, look into the Clarks’ financial assets and insurance policies. He’d also check out the woman Pat Clark claimed was on her husband’s mind right before he died.

The gum popped, squirting red-hot cinnamon into Steve’s mouth.

Lieutenant Colonel Jessica Blackwell had triggered his interest in more ways than one. She was cool, almost too cool, but Steve had noted the flash of pity in her moss-green eyes when she’d heard how Clark’s wife found him. Blackwell had also lost someone she loved, he guessed. A husband? A child?

She didn’t wear a wedding ring. He’d noted that, too, right after he’d recovered from the double whammy of those mile-long legs and the trim, tight butt displayed to perfection by her cut-offs. Thinking about that rear sent another spurt of cinnamon to assault his taste buds.

With a grimace of acute disgust, Steve pitched the gum into the bay and headed back to his cruiser. He’d sell everything he owned for a cigarette right now, including the 36-foot trawler-style boat he’d bought at a drug auction and fitted out as his home.

Battling the acute craving, he slid behind the wheel and reached for the radio mike. “Dispatch, this is Paxton.”

Willena Shaw’s husky response floated over the airwaves. “Go ahead, Sheriff.”

Steve’s grimace gave way to a grin. The night dispatcher was fifty-seven, carried a good two-hundred and sixty pounds on her five-one frame, and kicked up the pulse of every male in the department whenever she answered or put out a call.

“I’m departing the Blackwell residence, heading home.”

“Ten-four.”

“Who’s the duty officer?”

“Lieutenant Fairborne.”

“Ask him to run a BI on Lieutenant Colonel Blackwell, will you?”

“You got it, sheriff.”

Jess dug into a packing box, the muscles of her neck knotted. A good twenty minutes crawled by until she heard a car door thud and the sound of a car engine turning over. Her fists balled, crunching the wrapping paper she’d just removed from a stack of framed photos.

What the heck did Paxton do all that time out there in the dark? Had he been watching her place. Waiting to see how she reacted to his disturbing news? Thinking she might bolt?

Not this time. She and her mother had tucked tail and slunk away once when Paxton’s predecessor had flashed his badge. She was damned if she was going to run again. She wasn’t a scared, skinny kid any more.

Biting her lip, she glanced down at the framed snapshot topping the stack in her hand. The black and white photo was one of the few salvaged from the constant moves during her gypsy-like childhood. They’d moved so often, she and her mother, shedding a few more unnecessary possessions with each packing, until they could throw everything they owned in a couple of suitcases and a box or two.

Slowly, Jess traced a finger over the glass protecting the photo, her heart aching at the deep grooves carved in her mother’s brow. Helen couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight or nine when the picture was taken, but life had already left its mark on her face.

On her daughter’s, as well. The young Jess scowled ferociously, as though she suspected whoever was taking the picture would make off with the camera. Given Helen’s track record with the losers she invariably hooked up with, Jess probably had good reason to distrust him.

Sighing, she took the photo into the kitchen and set it on the white-painted shelf above the sink, where it could catch the sun.

In the days following Sheriff Paxton’s late night visit, the demands of Jess’s job forced the sheriff and the unwanted memories he evoked into a separate, compartmentalized corner of her mind. There they remained during the busy daylight hours, emerging only at night to push Jess into marathon sessions of old movies and a final, frenetic flurry of unpacking.

By the time Friday morning rolled around, she’d hung all her pictures, put her closets in order, and disposed of a mound of cardboard boxes. Feeling tired but satisfied with her progress, she showered and slipped into tailored, dark blue uniform slacks and a crisply ironed light blue blouse. The embroidered silver oak leaves denoting her lieutenant colonel’s rank glittered on the blouse’s navy blue epaulets.

Normally, she wore boots and battle fatigues to work, as did most of the military personnel on base. Today, however, she had a meeting with inspectors from the regional EPA office. They were bird-dogging clean-up of the solvents that had cost Jess’s predecessor his command and weren’t real happy about the slip-shod procedures that had led to the dump in the first place. Neither was Jess, for that matter.

A soft breeze tugged at the hair she’d tamed into a French braid as she backed her Mustang convertible out of the garage. Giving in to impulse, Jess put the top down. The slap of the cool dawn air was worth an occasional snatch at the flight cap down she tugged down square on her forehead.

Five minutes later she drove onto the Mid-Bay Bridge. From seven a.m. on, a steady stream of vehicles rumbled across the soaring arch of concrete. But this early, with the sun little more than a faint haze on the eastern horizon and the bay still a hazy pewter instead of its usual electric blue, she could make it from her condo to Eglin Air Force Base’s back gate in just under twenty minutes.

In the weeks since she’d arrived in Florida, Jess had come to love the early morning drive across the twelve-mile bridge. At this merging of sea and sky, of dark and light, she put the night behind her. With one hand on the wheel and the other poised to grab her hat if necessary, she relaxed and reviewed the day ahead.

It would be a hectic one. Seven-thirty, stand-up with her deputy and division chiefs. Nine, the Wing commander’s staff meeting. The EPA inspectors at one-thirty. At three…

Her mouth thinned. At three, she’d perform one of the less pleasant duties that came with command – administering punishment under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. She didn’t look forward to busting a fourteen-year veteran who’d served with distinction in the Gulf War. Particularly since taking the man’s stripe was the final punitive act before processing him for discharge under other than honorable conditions.

She hadn’t met Technical Sergeant Ed Babcock -- he’d been unavailable the few times she toured or stopped by the Fuels Management Flight -- but the First Sergeant had briefed Jess on the man’s deteriorating duty performance and off-duty conduct over the past year. Turns out his supervisor had been covering up the sergeant’s repeated absences in a well-meaning if misguided effort to salvage a highly qualified fuels specialist. Only after Babcock plowed his car into a tree did Bill Petrie reveal the scope of the problem.

A serious lapse in judgement on the supervisor’s part, Jess thought grimly. Instead of trying to hide the matter, he should have sent Babcock for help. After the DUI, Jess’s predecessor had finally directed the NCO into a forty-day rehab program at the base hospital.

From all reports, Babcock had stayed sober after the rehab program until two nights ago, when he’d tied on the mother of all drunks and almost destroyed the casual bar at the NCO Club. To add insult to injury, he’d cold-cocked two of the cops who’d tried to subdue him. The First Sergeant had bailed him out of jail yesterday morning and begun the inexorable paper process that would lead to his discharge.

Well, with more than three hundred active duty military and civilian personnel in her squadron, Jess figured she’d be lucky if putting a decorated war veteran out of the service was the worst personnel problem she’d face in the next few years.

The sun was spreading its humid glow as she exited the bridge and drove through the sleepy towns of Niceville and Valpariso. Traffic slowed for the approach to Eglin. The security force specialist squinted at her decal and whipped up a smart salute. Jess returned it and passed through the buff-and-brown painted gate.

When she drove onto the base proper, her pulse hitched. Those massive fuel storage tanks off to the left were hers. So was the huge supply complex just beyond the tank farm. Although she’s spent her entire career in the supply business, she still found it hard to believe she now commanded the largest operation in the air force. Her people managed some sixty-two thousand individual line items valued at $885 million, processing over a hundred thousand transactions a month for everything from pencils to laser-guided missiles. In addition to the supply items, they maintained eight hundred equipment accounts valued at another $540 million, and dispensed some forty million gallons of aviation fuel annually.

It was an awesome responsibility, one Jess had trained for, had worked for, yet she couldn’t suppress a thrill of sheer excitement at the scope of the operation. Her mind was clicking on the latest reverse post and MICAP – Mission Incapable – rates when she pulled into her reserved parking place in front of Building 500. The monstrous Harley Davidson hogging the slot next to hers indicated her deputy was already at work.

Sniffing appreciatively at the scent of floor wax and coffee that greeted her inside the double glass doors, she nodded to the clerk on the reception desk, then hung a left. The lights in the command suite confirmed her deputy’s presence. Going on forty years of civil service and Al Monroe was still the first one at work.

Tugging off her hat, she breezed through another glass door. She didn’t recognize the young woman seated in one of the leather armchairs. The petite redhead clutched her hands in her lap and gave Jess a nervous smile. Jess returned it, then aimed a questioning look at the tall, scarecrow-thin civilian standing in the door to his office.

“’Morning, Al.”

“Good morning, colonel.” With a tip of his head, the deputy chief of supply indicated their early visitor. “This is Eileen Babcock, Sergeant Ed Babcock’s wife.”

“Ex-wife,” the redhead corrected in a voice as thin and brittle as new ice. “Our divorce was final two days ago.”

“Ex-wife,” Al amended. “She’d like to talk to you.”

Oh-oh. A newly divorced wife. An ex-husband about to be kicked out of the service, with accompanying loss of pay and entitlements. He’d have no job, no way to pay alimony or child support.

“I told Eileen you have to get ready for stand-up in twenty minutes,” Al said, offering Jess an easy out. “With your schedule so crowded after that, I suggested she call Mrs. Burns and make an appointment.”

The woman surged to her feet. Desperation darkened her brown eyes. “Please, colonel, I just need a few minutes.”

“Of course. Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

“I’ll just grab a cup, then,” Jess said, depositing her briefcase on the conference table in her office. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“Want me to call in the First Shirt?” the deputy asked quietly while Jess filled her mug. “He can handle this.”

“I’ve got it.”

Thank God the first pot of coffee Al brewed each morning before the secretary arrived was thick as sludge, with a kick like a bee-stung mule. Jess would have valued him for that alone, never mind his unfailing courtesy, steel-trap memory, and forty years of experience in the supply business!

Coffee in hand, she closed the door and took a seat at the conference table opposite the redhead. In the harsh glare of the overhead fluorescent lights, the woman looked older than Jess had first thought. Mid-thirties, maybe. And tired. Extremely tired, if the shadows bruising the skin around her eyes were any indication. Her clothes were Florida casual – a short-sleeved, loose-fitting dress in thin black knit and low heeled sandals. The cluster of seashells polished to shimmering iridescent beauty and looped through a black cord to form a necklace added an unexpectedly sophisticated touch.

“What can I do for you, Mrs. Babcock?”

“I heard Eddie… My husband…” She stopped, pulled in a breath. “I heard my ex-husband is supposed to see you this afternoon.”

“Yes, he is.”

“I also heard you’re going to bust him. Maybe kick him out of the air force.”

Jess didn’t bother to ask where she’d gleaned her information. If Sergeant Babcock and this small, nervous woman had been married for any length of time, Eileen Babcock have a good idea what a DUI, a string of failures to repair, and a recent arrest for being drunk and disorderly conduct would do to a military career.

“I can’t discuss your ex-husband’s situation with you,” Jess told her. “Even if you weren’t divorced, I wouldn’t discuss it until I talked to him first.”

“I understand! Honestly, I do.” She scuttled to the edge of her seat, gripping her hands so tight Jess thought the bones would snap at any moment. “I just wanted you to know that what happened is my fault. All my fault. You’ve got to give Eddie another chance.”

“Mrs. Babcock…”

“He never drank anything more than a couple of beers at a time until two years ago.”

If the woman’s eyes had looked bruised before, they were haunted now.

“He was asked to teach a course on fuel additives at the American Petroleum Institute. He was gone for almost a month. When he got home, he found out I’d slept with another man.”

Jess hadn’t seen that coming. Shifting in her chair, she cleared her throat.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Eileen Babcock put in swiftly, bitterly. “There’s nothing anyone can say that would make a difference at this point. It happened, okay? I can’t change that, as much as I wish I could. All I’m asking is for you to understand why Eddie went off the deep end.”

She must have heard the desperation in her voice. She clamped her mouth shut and closed her eyes. When the red-tipped lashes fluttered up again, Jess felt a tug of pity for the desolation on the woman’s face.

“Eddie and I started dating in high school. We were married the day after graduation. I never looked at another man until…until this happened. Never wanted another man.”

Tears slid down her cheeks. Her throat working, she forced out a full confession.

“To this day, I don’t know why I did it. He was younger than I was. A college kid! Down here for spring break, if you can believe that. I was flattered, I suppose. And Eddie was gone so much.”

Pushing away from the table, Jess dug a box of Kleenex out of her desk drawer and offered it to the redhead. Awash in tears and self-loathing, Eileen swiped almost angrily at her cheeks.

“I’m not like you, colonel. I didn’t want a career. I’ve held odd jobs…I worked as a cashier at the BX and waited tables at the NCO Club…but all I ever wanted was to be a wife and a mother.”

“That’s a career in itself,” Jess said gently.

Without conscious thought, she rubbed the puckered skin between her thumb and finger. Like Eileen Babcock, her mother had waited tables to pay the rent and put food on the table, but Helen had saved all her love, all her devotion for her only daughter.

“Yes, well…” The tissue shredded, falling like snowflakes onto Eileen’s black dress. “It turned out I’m sterile. Eddie and I couldn’t have kids, but for all those years we had each other. Then we lost even that.”

Jess couldn’t help herself. Although she had no business discussing Sergeant Babcock with his former spouse, the despair in the woman’s face dragged her in.

“Did you try counseling?”

“We went to the chaplain. The mental health clinic. Finally a private counselor. The more Eddie swore he forgave and forgot, the guiltier I felt. It got so I couldn’t stand to have him look at me, let alone touch me. That’s when… That’s when we he started drinking.”

She picked at the tissue shreds, her shoulders slumping. “It’s funny when you think about it. Once we separated, I qualified for a training program for displaced homemakers. Now I’m starting a career in banking I never wanted and Eddie’s losing the only one he’s ever known.”

Her gaze lifted to Jess, begging for understanding, for leniency, for anything that might help the man she’d hurt so badly.