An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) (20 page)

But after his wife’s death, John had gone a little crazy. He’d been a colonel then, a regimental commanding officer at Camp Pendleton in California. He started hanging out in the bars off base, and one night, he got mixed up in a brawl with a guy over something no one had been able to recall. The Oceanside police broke up the brawl and threw both men in jail for a few days. The story of the fight made national headlines. Everyone assumed Armstrong’s career was over, but when you’ve got two Silver Stars for bravery, something like a bar brawl gets whitewashed with a letter of reprimand. Two years later, he pinned on his first star. Three years after that, he had his second one and was back in combat, orchestrating Desert Storm, answering only to Swartzkopf, Powell, and the first George Bush.

She’d asked him one night in his tent after their lovemaking if there weren’t someone back home to whom he wrote … someone waiting for his return.

“Only the wives of my friends who are wagering on who’ll be the one to fix me up.”

“So, what’s wrong with being set up on a date?” she’d teased, and lay her head against his shoulder. “It must be hard for you to meet someone when you’re surrounded by men all day.”

“I prefer to meet women the old-fashioned way,” he said, nudging her.

“What … in a bar across a crowded, smoky room?” Referring to the O’Club tent at Qatar. “Good luck with that.”

“I met you, didn’t I?”

“You already knew me—that quick meeting in DC a lifetime ago, remember? Besides, we can’t start wars just so you can get laid, General.”

He filled the tent with laughter.
He
did this to her … this bawdy bantering they’d claimed as their defense for squeezing out of life every precious second, when you had to worry about roadside bombings and suicidal jihadists. But she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t been attracted to him since their first meeting a few years earlier. Something had transpired between them that day. He was a war hero, one of the last true heroes in the Corps. To say his name was to evoke a legend: John J. Armstrong, the Marine with two Silver Stars. They say anyone with a Silver Star or Medal of Honor has already died inside from what they’ve lived through and seen. But Armstrong was anything but dead; a risk-taker, sure. And in a tiny desert tent city in the middle of a war zone, he’d plucked Chase Anderson from obscurity and risked it all. If caught, they’d have faced a court martial on charges of adultery, fraternization, and conduct unbecoming an officer. But they’d gotten away with it up to then. She didn’t want to think about the humiliation a public news scandal would have cost Stone and Molly, her parents, and the Corps.

Chase stared back at the computer screen, at the photograph of Armstrong, who was flanked by other officers. She peered closer. Something about the Marine to the left of Armstrong appeared familiar. The caption beneath the photograph only revealed Armstrong’s name. But the man to Armstrong’s left—was it possible? She highlighted and copied the photograph, pasting it into another program so that she could magnify it. Even grainy, she thought she was certain now. The man on Armstrong’s left was none other than Colonel Figueredo. A chill raced from her shoulder blades to the top of her head, which refused to stop tingling.

She heard footsteps outside her door.

“Ma’am,” Sergeant Cruise asked, “have you been in here the whole time? You nearly scared me to death again.”

Chase felt another chill trickle up her back. “Why?” Damn Shapiro and his conspiracy theories that were spooking her.

“I could have sworn I heard you leave a long time ago.” Chase smiled. “You’re just hearing Hawaii’s night marchers, Sergeant Cruise.”

“Don’t say that! That story gives me the creeps … but I could swear—”

Cruise was awfully jumpy tonight, but so was Chase. She rummaged through her desk, choosing a small spiral notebook as a pretense for coming to the office. “Got it,” she said, holding it up.

From the driveway, she stared at her dark home, a black hole between her two neighbors’ that were still awash with light. At Paige’s, the upstairs light that Chase knew to be Sara’s bedroom was on. She tried to picture Molly as she must be by now in her nightgown, silly and giggly from a sugar overdose of brownies and soda. At Samantha’s house, the porch light was on, as well as the lamp in front of the large picture window. An upstairs flickering of colored light through bedroom sheers hinted at a divided household … someone upstairs watching television, while someone was downstairs possibly reading.

She suddenly had the uneasy feeling she was being watched. She glanced in the rear-view mirror. The house across the street belonged to a lieutenant colonel and his wife. They were childless and kept to themselves. Other than a street cookout for the Fourth of July, neither Chase, nor Stone as far as she knew, had ever bumped into them. Their house was dark, but the porch light was on. She checked her side mirrors. The street behind her was quiet. She was beginning to feel silly when her cell phone rang, startling her and nearly causing her to shriek. She fumbled through her purse for the phone and flipped it open.

“Where have you been?”

She recognized his voice, and decided right then and there that her fears of being watched were spot on. “Where do you think I am?” she asked, willing a degree of calm into her tone.

“Samantha Harold said you were going to the movies alone. I left her house a few minutes ago and noticed you still weren’t home.”

Convinced he was somewhere, watching, she turned off the ignition and gathered her purse. She quickly made her way up the sidewalk with the phone pressed to her ear. From somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog, a large one given its bark, disturbed the quiet.

“I’m fine, Colonel. Is there anything else?” she asked, fumbling with the key and the lock. She switched on the porch light and the light to the foyer. Once inside, she locked the front door and set her purse on the foyer table. In the kitchen, she flipped on lights, even flooding the backyard. She suddenly wanted every light on in the house, every overhead, every lamp.

“What movie did you see?” he asked. Despite his direct order, she wasn’t ready to tell him about her meeting with Paul Shapiro.

“Sir, it’s late. I appreciate your concern.” She’d reached her bedroom and flipped on light switches, even the one to her walk-in closet. When the light illuminated Stone’s uniforms, for the first time she felt numb and absent of the usual sentimentality. She spun through the combination of a small gun safe and removed Stone’s .45. “I suppose,” she added, “Samantha gave you my cell number?” She’d have a terse conversation with her friend in the morning.

He didn’t answer the question. “It’s not exactly safe,” he was saying as she reached Molly’s room and turned on all the lights, “for a woman to be out this late at night alone, Skipper.”

“Well, I’m safe and sound,” she said, now back in the living room, standing in the middle of a house on fire with light.

CHAPTER 12

C
hase tossed and turned all night over the thought of Stone’s infidelity and what, if anything, there was to tie him to a 464 conspiracy regarding the 81. She was still mulling it over in the morning, while making a pot of coffee in the kitchen. Her mind flashed with images of Melanie—Melanie in the photograph; Melanie at the office the morning of White’s crash; Melanie at the memorial service. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t mentally place either White or Stone in an intimate relationship with the woman. Was it mere denial? Would Kitty feel the same way? Most likely Kitty had known that her husband was seeing a therapist, right? But then, how to explain Melanie’s photograph in his cockpit?

And, what if all this did lead to Stone as a possible suspect in a conspiracy to hide the truth about the 81, as Paul Shapiro believed? She imagined the barrage of telephone calls from the media, Sergeant North down the hall in his office, compelled to answer questions about his boss’s private life—how long had the Andersons been married? How had Captain Anderson been informed of the news of her husband’s infidelity? Of his possible involvement in altering squadron maintenance records? Nothing was adding up. And now there was Colonel Figueredo’s role to consider in all this. Sure, he was the base’s Intel officer, but that didn’t justify his checking up on her. And what to make of his association with General Armstrong?

The way she was seeing it, there were two reasons for Figueredo’s interest in her. Either there truly was a base conspiracy to hide the mechanical flaws of the 81 and Figueredo was in some way involved, which would explain his order that she inform him of all contact with Paul Shapiro and the sense that he was watching her house last night, or he was—ridiculously, mind you—interested in her. The latter was unthinkable.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and sent a question to the universe—to Stone. “Help me understand all this, Stone,” she whispered, her eyes shut tight. “For your sake … for Molly’s.” When she opened her eyes, she landed on her backyard view of the Pacific, placid, unyielding.

An hour later, Molly bounded breathlessly through the front door. Chase was at the kitchen table, pretending to read the newspaper, pretending because she had just moments earlier received word from North about what he’d uncovered the night before at the NCO club. They’d considered a quick meeting at the office, but Chase dismissed the idea. “Let’s meet some place extremely public,” she said, and they’d agreed to meet at 1400 at the Starbucks on Ala Moana Boulevard in Waikiki. She’d have to ask Samantha or Paige to watch Molly again, and while she hated to impose, there was no other way. Molly had run toward the back of her mother’s chair and wrapped her arms around Chase’s shoulders. “Erin’s going to Koolau Ranch for a horseback ride through the valley,” she said breathlessly. “Miss Samantha invited me too. Can I go?”

Chase pulled her daughter from around the chair. Hugged her. Stared into her daughter’s blue eyes, Stone’s blue eyes. “But you’ll be gone all day—” she said in a pretense to hide her relief. “Besides, I thought you were terrified of the night marchers—”

Molly stiffened, then relaxed. “They only come out at night, Mommy. Remember?”

“Then you better be home before dark,” she said, giving Molly a squeeze.

A few hours later, Erin came over to round up Molly. Chase thought of walking across the yard to talk with Samantha about giving out the cell number to Figueredo, and then reconsidered for now, anyway. After Molly left, she straightened the house, finally getting around to turning off the excess lights, and headed out for the drive downtown. Since she was early for her meeting with North, she’d lose herself among the shoppers and sun worshippers on Ala Moana—lose herself in their sea of flowery clothing and clouds of coconut sunscreen.

Instead, halfway there, Chase found herself pulling the rental car into a deserted parking lot of a drycleaners and reaching in her purse for her cell phone and Paul Shapiro’s business card. She chose the cell number.

His voice was sleepy at first and then took on a startled quality. “Chase … oh, Captain Anderson … is everything all right? Are you okay?”

“Well, not really. You’re about to expose my late husband as an adulterer, maybe even worse—”

“Listen, I’ve been up all night, if you want to know the truth. When I got home last night, I had a call from … him, the source. He’s got it, Chase. He’s actually got proof about the … well, we shouldn’t talk about this on the phone.”

“Does this proof clear Stone?” She watched a black Honda sedan with dark tinted windows pull into the parking lot and disappear behind the building, and she guessed it to be the owner’s.

“I haven’t seen the evidence yet,” he said. “We’re meeting tonight. I’m finally going to meet this guy, Chase.”

The black sedan reappeared. It stopped, and for a moment, Chase expected a dark window to roll down and for someone to demand an explanation for her loitering in his parking lot on a Sunday afternoon. But no window rolled down. Instead, the sedan remained parked, idling.

“Are you there?”

“Just a minute,” she said, feeling uneasy, but grateful that Paul was on the line. After a moment, the black sedan drove off, merging into traffic that was headed, as she had been earlier, toward Waikiki.

“Strange,” she muttered.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“Nothing … just a car that pulled into the parking lot. It felt a little strange.” And then she remembered that Paul was to meet his source that evening. “So you’re meeting this guy tonight?”

“Wait … what kind of car?”

“I don’t know. Some sort of dark sedan.”

“Get out of there!”

“What?”

“Melanie said she was nearly run off the road by someone in a dark sedan—”

“Yeah, but—”

“Just get to a crowded place. Now!”

“Okay, okay.” She gunned the rental car out of the parking lot and checked the rear-view mirror for the stretch of empty asphalt behind her. “Whoever it was is gone.”

“I don’t care. Keep your eyes open. Get to a public place as quickly as you can.”

“Waikiki public enough for you?”

“I want you to be careful.”

“Me? You’re the one meeting Deep Throat tonight.” She released a nervous giggle and looked in her rear-view mirror. She was alone on the road.

“I asked him about Melanie’s death, whether his evidence would help me prove she didn’t commit suicide.”

“And?” Ahead in her lane was a pick-up loaded with pineapples, and she signaled for a lane change.

“He said he’d tell me about Melanie tonight.”

A shiver danced up Chase’s back. “I don’t like the sound of it, Paul. Are you sure it’s even safe to be meeting this guy?”

“We’re meeting on base.”

“On
base
,” she shouted. “How? Where? You know you aren’t allowed on base without an escort from my office.”

“He said there would be a VIP pass waiting for me at the guard shack. All I have to do is show my license like any Joe-Blow and get my pass to drive on.”

“And then what?”

“We’re to meet at eight, at the chapel.”