An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) (12 page)

With her exotic eyes, black hair, and olive complexion, it wasn’t any wonder Cruise was constantly mistaken for an islander, that is until she spoke. She was a New Yorker with the Brooklyn accent to prove it. “I really don’t know, ma’am. It was a man who called. I remember that, but all I kept thinking was
Oh my God, what about Molly?
The man said I should contact Mrs. Abercrombie about picking up your daughter.
And then I was really confused because I was thinking Molly had to already be with you since you had an appointment with her teacher, but I didn’t say so. I found Mrs. Abercrombie’s number in your Rolodex. Fortunately, she was home and said she’d drive over immediately for Molly.”

“Do you remember what time the call came in?”

Cruise looked at her watch. “Not exactly,” she said, looking up, “except it was late enough that I figured your appointment with Molly’s teacher would have been over already and that Molly should have been with you. About 1600?”

At 1600 the day before, Chase was just learning that Melanie Appleton was Paul’s twin sister. Nearly a half hour before she’d spun out of the Hungry Fisherman parking
lot after discovering Major White’s dog tags had been found with Melanie’s body. It would have been at least another twenty minutes before she careened into the guardrail. By then, Cruise would have been on her way to Kaneohe to pick up Molly.

“You look a little pale, ma’am,” Cruise said. “Are you feeling worse? Should I call the colonel?” At
colonel
, Cruise lifted an eyebrow as if to suggest there were something more between the man and her boss.

“No-no, I’m fine. Just a headache.”

“Be right back with your water.” Cruise bolted from the office, her high heels clicking down the hallway toward the break room.

Chase reshuffled the message slips into a priority order that put Shapiro at the bottom. He had already reached her at home.
Doubtful he was expecting a callback. Her head was pounding under the pressure of unanswered questions. Best to figure out what she did know at this point. She withdrew a yellow legal pad and a pen from the side drawer of her desk. In the middle of the page, she wrote Major White’s name and drew a circle around it. She stared at his name and wondered how Kitty White and her children were coping. She pictured the major the last time she’d seen him, the day he’d flown her and the media around Oahu, pointing out sights as if he were a paid helicopter tour guide.

With Major White in the center of the lined yellow page, she drew a line to the left of it, scrawled
Melanie Appleton
, and circled the woman’s name. The woman whose face she’d first seen in White’s cockpit, and later,
on the day of the crash in the lobby of public affairs as the woman pushed White’s dog tags into Chase’s hand. The woman in black-and-white at White’s memorial service who looked frightened enough when she saw Chase approaching to leap off the cliff. The woman who
had
leapt from Diamond Head with Major White’s dog tags around her neck.

From Melanie, she drew another line and a circle that she filled with Paul Shapiro. This part of the puzzle seemed complete as far as she knew it. And what about Colonel Figueredo? Where did he fit in all of this? She wrote his name on the page and circled it.

She also circled
81 crash
and
hard landing.
When she saw that she’d have to draw connector lines from the crash to everyone
on the page but Figueredo, she realized the crash was most likely the focus point, not Major White, as she’d initially thought. So what did this mean? Was Paul Shapiro right after all? Was there some sort of conspiracy to cover up problems with the 81?

What was she missing? She studied the page and forced herself to keep going. She could connect 464 to White, the crash, and Melanie. But where did she, herself, fit into all of this? She connected her name to Paul’s and Melanie’s since she’d had two physical encounters with the woman before her suicidal leap and connected herself to the crash and of course to White, since she’d flown with him. She held the legal pad at arm’s length for a different perspective. Nothing. There was Figueredo’s name and,
reluctantly, she connected his name to hers. Still, nothing leaped out at her. And yesterday’s accident in the Jeep? Where to figure that on this page? She penned
Jeep wreck
, circled it, and considered who she could connect to it. Herself, of course. And Shapiro, justifying it thinking she wouldn’t have been on the H-3 in a steep descent if not for her meeting with him. And Molly. She wrote her daughter’s name into a circle. There was still that question about the caller and the timing of the call to Cruise. She penned Samantha’s name to the page and connected Samantha to the wreck, to Molly, and to herself. Then she remembered Figueredo’s comment about helping Samantha the night before. Samantha would have been the only one who could have allowed the man in the house. She
connected Samantha to Figueredo. This was maddening.

She studied the effects of her puzzle that looked as if she’d been doodling an elaborate spider web. Then it was suddenly clear, as if she’d been staring at one of those pixilated diagrams that after a while of staring eventually revealed the hidden picture. She hadn’t connected lines from Figueredo to Melanie and White, and she’d have to since he seemed so clear about knowing the two had not been lovers. Now every road, so to speak, led back to Figueredo. He was the single connection to everyone and everything, even to Paul Shapiro, Melanie’s brother.

Seeing Molly’s name on the list created a sense of urgency in Chase to reach out to her daughter. She glanced at her watch. Molly would soon be clamoring aboard the school
van with her little friends for the short ride through Kaneohe to the aftercare program. Chase wished she could be there when Molly’s van pulled up. But since she was without transportation, the best she could do was ask Mrs. Kamaka to have Molly call when she arrived. Chase was reaching for the phone when Cruise returned.

“Here you go.” She set down the coffee and a Styrofoam cup of water. “You know,” she said, glancing down at the notepad, “I do remember something about the man who called yesterday.”

Chase gulped a pain pill, then slid her forearm across the notepad, hoping the move appeared casual enough. She motioned for a nonplussed Cruise to take a chair. “What do you remember?”

“His voice was so familiar that I
remember thinking I was expected to know who he was and that I’d only embarrass both of us by asking. Guess I still haven’t figured out who it was, though it’ll probably come to me in the middle of the night.”

“Things like that happen to me all the time.” She blew the steam from her coffee, and took a sip. “Let me know if the name comes to you. I’d like to thank whoever it was for being so thoughtful.”

“Can I get you anything else, ma’am? You look a little pale.”

“I’d like to see yesterday’s
Current
and the clips, and today’s clips, please. And ask North to bring me everything we have on the 81.”

As soon as Cruise was out of the office, Chase phoned Mrs. Kamaka at Molly’s
aftercare. When the woman came to the phone with her lilting
Aloha!,
Chase explained she wanted Molly to call when she arrived.

“We were all so upset to hear about your wreck yesterday,” the woman said. For nearly thirty years, Mrs. Kamaka had been running the day care that provided the after-care program for Kaneohe Elementary. She was proud of her Hawaiian heritage and insisted on sharing the folklore with the children. Every week, Molly came home with new words and a deeper appreciation of the Hawaiian stories behind Sacred Falls, the island’s mountains, and volcanoes. “It wasn’t too serious, I hope.”

“The Jeep’s in much worse shape than I am.”

“Cars are replaceable.”

Cruise walked in, set the
Honolulu Current,
the stack of clips, and a heavy binder of 81 information on the corner of the desk, and left. “So you’ll have Molly call as soon as she arrives?”

“Of course,” Mrs. Kamaka said. Chase was about to hang up when the woman asked, “Is anything wrong, Mrs. Anderson?”
Mrs.
Anderson. Chase hadn’t been called that in a year. Even before Stone’s death, she could probably have counted on one hand the number of people who had called her this. Mrs. Kamaka, for one. The base electrician shortly after they’d moved into the house, for two. He’d asked
Mrs.
Anderson, despite the fact she was standing before him in a military uniform, for
Major
Anderson’s work telephone number so the two could discuss the estimate. The military world
certainly had its misogynistic tendencies. She had taken Stone’s last name because they agreed this was the thing to do since they hoped to have children and sensed the same last name would grant them eternal family cohesiveness. At OCS years before she’d met Stone, she’d been just a last name, Morris, her maiden name. Since marrying Stone, she’d been called Anderson or Captain Anderson or just Skipper. Even at the officer’s club on a Friday night—those Friday nights spent there with Stone before his deployment—during a round of introductions that had included Stone, Chase was
Captain
Anderson, the major’s wife.

“Everything’s fine, Mrs. Kamaka,” she said, hearing the falter in her own voice as she worried about Molly’s safety.

“I understand, Mrs. Anderson. Nothing like a wreck to wake us up to how fast life can change.”

When Chase finally reached General Hickman by phone—he’d been tied up with a visiting admiral from Pearl Harbor for several hours—she discovered him genuinely concerned. “I heard you were in a wreck yesterday. How are you?”

“A little stiff from whiplash, but not bad, considering, sir.”

“I’d like to see you in my office first thing in the morning.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

He hung up without stating the purpose for the meeting and before Chase could explain she was at the mercy of others for
transportation. Just as well. He would have expected her to figure out the latter on her own. She blamed the pain. She wasn’t thinking clearly, except how grateful she was that Hickman had hung up before she’d embarrassed herself. She made a mental note to call for a rental car.

For a few moments, Chase sat there with the phone still cradled against her neck as she stared out the window at the busy tarmac. Stone’s squadron of 81s (she still thought of 464 as Stone’s squadron) was quiet at hangar one, like obedient pets, waiting. No maintenance crews were hustling about today. Other than the parked cars in the lot, she could have believed everyone had been ordered home for the day.

Life at the other four hangars was active, though. A Cobra gunship was taxiing
past the still 81s on its way to hangar three. It slowed to a hover yards ahead of the Marine on the ground who waved commands. The Cobra finally settled onto the tarmac and the rotor blades slowly came to a halt. From hangar two, a Huey taxied by and lifted off. She felt the vibrations as it soared overhead.

There was a knock on her door. “Enter.”

It was North. “Paul Shapiro on line 2, ma’am. He won’t talk to me. Says he’ll only talk to you.”

“Line 2?”

He nodded and was about to dash out of her office when she stopped him. “North,” she said, “a couple of things—” She gestured him in the office and motioned for him to close the door.

“Yes, ma’am?” His face was stitched with concern. How well they knew each other. How much they’d been through together. North was the only person she knew she could count on.

“Two things,” she started. “First, there’s absolutely nothing going on between Colonel Figueredo and me.”

North had taken the chair in front of her desk, and was sitting upright on the edge. “Okay, ma’am, but you don’t—”

“Second,” she interrupted, “did anyone from 464 notify us about a hard landing that Major White may have had in his 81 about three weeks or so ago?”

“No, ma’am.” He shook his head. “No hard landing or any aircraft incident that I’m aware of. What makes you think White had a hard landing?”

“Shapiro’s got a source that’s hinting there was one.” She paused. Just how far should she involve her sergeant? What she really wanted to do was pick up the phone and call Colonel Farris and ask the outright question, but if Shapiro was right, she would be showing too much of her hand. If she uncovered evidence of a cover-up, she’d have to take the evidence directly to N.I.S.

If she was wrong and insinuated too much too quickly—

“Who are you close to over there at 464?” she asked North.

North thought for a moment. “There’s a crew chief I did a feature on a few months ago. He was pretty happy with the story, especially when it showed up in his hometown paper.”

“Right,” she said. “I remember that. Listen, I need you to wander over to 464, talk to the crew chief on the pretense of another feature on whatever and see if you can glean anything about this so-called hard landing. And while you’re at it, take his temperature on the 81.” North raised his eyebrows. “Don’t kid me,” she added, “you sergeants know more about what’s really going on around here than anyone else, especially more than most officers.” She smiled.

“Roger that, ma’am. Headed there A-SAP.”

Before she dismissed him, she glanced at line two of the telephone that was still blinking. “There’s more we need to talk about, North, but I need to take this call.”

“Aye-aye, ma’am,” he said, and closed
the door behind him.

She opened the
Current
to the obituaries and gasped when she saw that someone from the Appleton family had provided the same photograph of Melanie that Chase had seen in Major White’s cockpit. Chase scanned the obit. Melanie had been twenty-eight and was survived by her father and her brother, who were all mentioned by name.

She punched the blinking light on her telephone. “Captain Anderson.”

An exasperated Shapiro blurted, “Finally! We
have
to talk.”

“I know.”

“When?”

“Now. And it’s my turn to ask the questions.” She pushed the newspaper aside. Underneath was the yellow notepad with the
spidery cluster she’d created.