An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) (22 page)

Both Mouse and Stone’s copilot Hammer had been a huge part of her family once. Two single guys who would show up on a Monday night before the football game with a package of hotdogs and buns and a plea to just hang-out with a real family in a real house. Chase always welcomed them. Molly adored both men who, like big brothers, showered her with attention and gifts. An outsider to military life probably couldn’t understand the bond they shared. Stone’s life had depended on the actions and reactions of two others, and their lives on his. Would a woman like Melanie Appleton have understood this? When the meeting concluded, Chase shuffled through the telephone messages, certain to find one from Shapiro. But there wasn’t one, and it was already after noon. Where was he? Why hadn’t he called? The only phone messages were from her insurance company and the body shop.

She had the urge to drive over to the chapel where the meeting was to have taken place the night before. She couldn’t explain why. She looked out the large window at the busy tarmac with its taxiing helicopters and hustling mechanics. She hadn’t been able to run in several days, in fact, not since White’s helicopter crash. Her wreck and the whiplash had made it impossible for a few days. But, physically anyway, she was feeling better, more limber. She would run Perimeter Road toward the chapel, and once there … she didn’t know. Look for some sort of clue that Shapiro and his mystery Deep Throat had left behind?

Ten minutes later she had changed into running clothes and gone in search of North. She found him in the pressroom, half standing, half sitting atop a desk with a notepad in his lap, jotting lunch requests like a short order cook. “I’ll take the number four,” Martinez said and passed the well-worn take-out menu to Cruise.

Cruise was about to order when she noticed that her boss had entered. “Lunch, ma’am?” she asked.

Chase’s stomach growled loud enough that she was compelled to comment. “See what you’ve done?” Chase stared at the menu, the myriad of choices—roast pork, duck, chicken, beef ribs, and on and on— everything was becoming one giant blur. Thanks to Paul Shapiro she couldn’t even concentrate on lunch. “You like number 4, Staff Sergeant Martinez?”

Martinez was twirling an ink pen in his left hand. He stopped. “Yes, ma’am. Only thing I ever get.” Four was the island specialty: roast pork, rice, macaroni salad, and bread. She would never eat half of it, especially after a run, but she could take the rest home.

She handed the menu back to Cruise and said to North, “Number 4.”

He jotted her order onto the page. “Aye-aye, ma’am.”

“I’m running Perimeter,” she said and walked out.

Halfway down the stairs, she nearly turned back for her cell phone that she’d left in her top desk drawer, then reconsidered. She hated its annoying bounce against her waist, the way the rubbing against her skin caused an itch. Stone had been horrified one night when she was undressing for bed and he’d spotted long scratch marks on one side of her waist. She had turned and stared at her reflection in the mirror for several seconds before remembering how she’d been itching throughout that day’s run. Instinctively, she’d scratched at the itch throughout the entire run. “You look like you’ve tangled with a wild cat,” he’d said.

No, she would leave the cell phone behind. To Hell with Paul Shapiro. He’d had all morning to call her. Besides, it was Perimeter Road … where the best
and
worst part of running along a road with such breathtaking views of mountains, the Pacific, and helicopters overhead was that anyone could find her.

She sprinted down the staircase and out the door toward Perimeter. She was surprised how free she suddenly felt. She could imagine as she rounded first one curve that put her office building out of sight and then another curve that provided an unencumbered view of a swelling Pacific that, if she were to continue running, she might run out of her problems the way some people ran out of their shoes. A marathon racer from Kenya, for example. Less than a mile into the race, he’d literally run out of his shoes and never looked back, so the story goes, never caring for anything but the power of the race, of the earth beneath his feet, and so he had run and run on, until he passed runner after runner, until he’d taken the lead. And he won, though officials had disqualified him as the winner. That is, until the declared winner renounced his victory, and declared the man from Kenya—the great racer without shoes—the true victor.

And so Chase ran and ran. She knew she would never outrun her grief over losing Stone or over the disappointment now in his possible infidelity anymore than she was likely to run out of her perfectly fitted expensive Nikes. She needed this run to talk to Stone, and so she did. She asked him why he hadn’t told her about his meetings with a therapist. What had there been to hide? What had he suspected or known about the 81 that he hadn’t shared with her? How had he managed to climb back into that cockpit after the first crash in Afghanistan? Could he help her to understand all this? Had he forgiven her for the affair with General Armstrong? Eventually the head noise was replaced with a concentration on nothing but the present moment—the beating of her heart, the way her lungs were filling with air and releasing. By mile three, she found her rhythm … two short breaths that began on the uptake of her left foot, and the long exhale that happened when her left foot again made contact with the ground. In-in, out. In- in, out.

Not until Officer Candidate School had Chase discovered a love for running. All through high school she’d played soccer and hated the laps they’d been forced to run around the track. Even then, she was one of the faster runners, and the girls’ track coach had called her aside one afternoon after practice and asked if she would consider going out for cross-country. She couldn’t think of anything she was less interested in than long-distance running. At least soccer provided a break from monotony. A partial soccer scholarship had helped to pay her way through the first two years of college and relieved the financial burden for her parents. Midway into her junior year, an ankle sprain left her on the sidelines, and by her third year, she was done with soccer altogether, though this had caused a bit of friction between Chase and her parents, who, with Chase’s brother about to enter college, had become too comfortable with the financial ease provided by Chase’s scholarship. And so twenty-year-old Chase, dressed in soccer shorts, a T-shirt, flip-flops, her hair in a ponytail, seized upon a moment of martyrdom that she would never regret—well not until the day she boarded the C-130 for Iraq, leaving Molly behind with her parents—and marched into the ROTC office on campus and signed up. She would show
them
she could take care of herself. The next weekend during dinner Chase confessed her deed and watched her mother burst into tears. Her father’s eyes had grown moist, and the look on her brother’s face had been somewhat readable between shock and guilt for not doing what a son, rather than a daughter, should have been willing to do, but couldn’t. Chase’s mother had returned with a box of tissues. Chase grabbed one and laughed, surprised at how hard everyone was taking it, reminding them, “I’ll be fine. It’s peacetime, remember?”

Only peace hadn’t lasted. For that matter, when had it ever? A year and a half later, after managing to talk her way into a deferment from OCS, she was in grad school when the World Trade Center towers fell to terrorism. For a week, she’d walked around the UVA campus in shock, as did her professors and fellow students. A week after that, she felt compelled to do something, anything, that might make a difference. And that was when she’d walked out of grad school and into a recruiter’s office, tearing up her deferment papers before the young sergeant’s desk.

At Quantico, she’d learned how to field strip a machine gun and how to fire it. She was one of twenty women and ninety men who ran the hills of Northern Virginia, and tackled the obstacle courses. She learned how to fire a pistol and a rifle and how to climb under concertina wire amid smoke grenades and exploding bunkers, how to read a map and to navigate her way through wilderness with nothing but a compass and the moon and stars above her. And after Quantico, she’d been sent to Ft. Meade in Northern Virginia to the Defense Information School where she was schooled on all the rhetoric necessary for becoming a Public Affairs officer. Then she was shipped to Okinawa where she’d met Stone.

Overhead, an 81 roared by, heading out toward the Pacific.
If Stone were alive, he might be flying in that one,
she thought.

The traffic was a bit heavy during lunchtime and as cars approached, she left the surety of pavement for the grass. She could make out the faces of Marines as they headed toward the gate for a respite from their work lives on a Marine Corps base. Sometimes you just wanted to drive off the base during lunch to remind yourself there was a whole world beyond a military vortex of customs, courtesies, and regulations. Sometimes you just wanted to walk through a parking lot without having to salute someone.

She had run a little more than four miles when headlights of an oncoming car flashed several times. She glanced over her right shoulder for whomever the flashing lights had been intended, but there was no one. The headlights flashed again and the car slowed. Cautious, Chase again left the pavement for the grass, taking care not to turn her ankle.

A horn blast startled her into looking up. The BMW was rolling to a stop. Colonel Figueredo looked grim behind his aviator sunglasses. “Get in,” he said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Captain Anderson,” he said, leaning across the seat and opening the door for her, “please get in.”

Chase felt her knees go weak. Her whole body began to quiver with fear. Her palm, sweaty, slipped from the door handle. She slid into the car and braced herself for the worst. “Is it Molly?”

“Your daughter’s fine, as far as I know,” he said, and added, “Buckle up.” He whipped the BMW into a u-turn.

“Where are you taking me?” She wondered if he’d learned about her Saturday night meeting with Paul Shapiro in Nanakuli.

“I’m not sure yet.” His seriousness was unnerving.

“Kidnapping is a federal offense, you know … sir.” When he didn’t answer, just continued driving past the soccer fields and the commissary, she added, “How did you know where to find me?”

“I called your cell phone, and when you didn’t answer, I called your office. Sergeant North said you were out running. You’re hard to miss on Perimeter Road.” He glanced over and forced a half-smile.

A minute or so later, he was veering the car into the empty parking lot at the chapel. Chase had to catch herself from gasping at the irony. It was as if he’d been reading her mind while she was running Perimeter Road and knew this was where she’d eventually end up. The chapel looked abandoned, forlorn in the empty lot. He drove past the chapel toward the Pacific side of the lot and parked near the banyan tree.

He turned off the ignition. Chase swiveled in her seat so that her back was against the door. In profile, Figueredo, with his dark, brooding good looks and chiseled jaw, seemed like a subject for Picasso. She could make out one eye, one nostril, one corner of his mouth. She could almost believe there was only this side of him, that somewhere along the way, the other half of him had been severed and discarded. But where? The war? Was the other half of him still somewhere in that God-forsaken desert with the tribes of Afghanistan?

He opened his mouth and closed it. He seemed uncertain about where to start, and Chase was about to press him, when he blurted, “You’re wanted for questioning at Military Police headquarters.”

“Me? Why?”

“A detective from the Honolulu Police wants to question you about … Dr. Melanie Appleton.”

Chase’s mind filled with rage. So Paul Shapiro had deceived her after all. He’d promised to call at seven-fifteen that morning to fill her in on his meeting with his mystery source and to give her adequate time to prepare Molly for what she might hear about her father. Instead, Shapiro had gone back on his word and had reported what he’d learned to HP. Would everything she’d said the other night, her reaction as a wife when he’d told her about his sister’s affair, appear on the front page of the
Current
in the morning?

Figueredo had removed his sunglasses. In his face was true concern. For her? “Listen, Captain Anderson,” he said, “I need to know something.” He paused. She waited, glancing out at the Pacific and dabbing away the sweat on her forehead. She was overheated from the run and could feel the trickle of sweat making its way down her back. She’d leave a wet impression on his black, leather seat.

Figueredo placed his hand over hers, and she jumped at his touch but didn’t remove her hand. Comfort was now replacing the initial shock. “Chase,” he said, “did you have anything to do with Dr. Appleton’s death?”

Now she pulled her hand away. “What?” she shouted. “Of course not. She committed suicide.”

Figueredo shook his head. “The detective claims there’s evidence to suggest the woman was murdered.”

Chase’s head was filling up with the insinuation. So, Paul Shapiro had been right, after all, about his sister’s death, which meant he might even be right about everything else—Stone’s infidelity, a cover-up conspiracy—

Figueredo stared out toward the ocean for a moment as if something way out there on that vast swell of blueness was far more important. Then, he turned and said, “Your fingerprint was found on a set of dog tags that belonged to Major White.”

“I know all about the dog tags, Major. Of course, my fingerprints might be found on them.” She told him all about the morning of White’s crash and of Melanie’s surprise visit. She described mistaking Melanie for White’s wife, Kitty, and how Melanie had given Chase the dog tags. Chase even told him how she’d thrown the dog tags in the garbage.

“Then how do you explain that they were found on the woman’s dead body?” he asked.

Chase tried to swallow the rise of hysteria in her throat. “I can’t,” she said and turned back in her seat to face the ocean, making out a small white triangle of a sail. Again, Figueredo placed a hand over hers and leaned close. “They’re saying you might be the last person to have seen her alive.”