The First Wave (9 page)
I tried to focus on Jerome’s notebook, but all I could think about was Diana.Why was I still hanging around here when I should be out looking for her? Maybe it was time to blow this joint.
To hell with the notebook. Probably some French political thing, so why should I care? Still, it nagged at me. I needed to see Jerome alone again and find out just a little more. Then I had to figure out a way to get to Bône. That contact at the supply depot was still the only clue that might lead to Diana. I yawned again, and my feet dragged as I headed to the mess hall to get some coffee. My eyelids were getting heavy and I wanted to take a little nap.Maybe some shut-eye would be better than coffee, I thought. No harm in that.
I was so intent on talking myself into taking time to sleep that I never noticed the truck. I kind of heard tires crunching on gravel but I didn’t pay any attention until the driver laid on the horn. Only then I realized I was walking down the middle of a road, a long driveway that led from the Supply Depot and around the hospital to the main entrance. I jumped to the right just in time to avoid a deuce and a half truck barreling along as if it was on a racetrack. I turned to yell at the driver and give him the single digit salute, but I never got a word out. I was too stunned. Luc Villard was riding in the passenger’s seat, wearing a U.S. Army olive drab shirt and khaki overseas cap, tilted at a jaunty angle. I could swear he smiled at me.
I yelled “Hey Stop!” and swallowed a mouthful of dust and grit kicked up by the truck’s tires. I didn’t stand a chance but I ran after it anyway, making it around the corner of the main building in time to see it hit the main road and turn right. Away from Algiers. Toward Bône.
I watched the truck disappear, lost in the flow of military traffic. People began to run by me, toward the medical supply depot. One orderly nearly knocked me over in his rush, and I turned to follow him, glad to have someone else take the lead.
IT TOOK ONLY A few minutes for a crowd to gather. There were plenty of doctors and nurses looking on, but that wouldn’t do Staff Sergeant Joseph Casselli any good at all. Unless this penicillin stuff could fix a slit throat and put all the blood on the floor back in his veins.
We were crammed into a small storeroom in the Medical Corps Supply Depot. Doctor Dunbar was kneeling over the body, checking the wound. Must’ve been only professional curiosity, since Casselli was beyond all help. Gloria Morgan stood back, her hand clutching a handkerchief, dabbing her moist eyes. I checked the shelves lining the walls all around us. Cases of medical supplies were stacked up everywhere, but the shelves weren’t full. I looked at a clipboard hung on a nail. It was a complete inventory of the stock in the room. There were medical instruments on the list, silk thread, all sorts of bandages and other routine supplies. I flipped to the section marked “Drugs.” Morphine, sulfa, penicillin, and a whole bunch more I never heard of.
“Where’s the morphine?” I didn’t know if this was a drug heist but it was the most logical place to start.
“Who the hell wants to know?” growled a stocky officer, pushing enlisted men out of the way as he squeezed into the storeroom.
“I do, sir. It looks like stuff is missing—”
“And who the hell on God’s green earth are you? Goddamn it, someone tell me what’s going on here!” His forehead was raging red and I could see a vein pulsing on his temple. Maybe Dunbar was about to have another patient. He was a short colonel—otherwise known as a lieutenant colonel—and sported a big unlit cigar clenched between his teeth. He was thick around the waist and gray at the temples. He looked at home in his U.S. Army khakis and had probably been fighting desk wars since before I was born. I decided to play it straight with this guy.
“Lieutenant Billy Boyle, sir! Doctor Dunbar requested that I assist him here after he discovered Sergeant Casselli’s body.”
“Joe? Dead? Jesus H. Christ on a crutch! Dunbar, what happened here?”
Dunbar rose up and automatically dusted his hands off, as if ridding himself of a slight inconvenience. I knew doctors were fanatics about clean hands, but that was about touching patients all day. Live ones. Plus, Casselli hadn’t been dead long enough to get the creepy crawlies scurrying over him, so no need to worry there. My dad had always reminded me to watch for the telltale signs that suspects give. Some people can’t look you straight in the eye when they lie to you. They’ll shift their eyes around and glom onto anything except you. But other people can lie like a rug and never take their peepers off yours. Now, maybe the good doctor wasn’t really a suspect, but that gesture made me wonder. Maybe he should be. A doctor would know just where best to slit a throat. It sounds easy—just slide your knife across the other guy’s gullet—but it can be bungled. Ask Carmine Lupagia, down at the Boston docks. Only don’t expect an answer. Some rookie hit man got his voice box but missed his jugular. The scar isn’t pretty but then Carmine never was much to look at anyway.
“I don’t know, sir,”Dunbar said to the colonel, looking him straight in the eye, which of course told me nothing. “I was going to ask Joe to get some more penicillin for a patient, a friend of the Lieutenant’s here. I saw the storeroom door open and when I went to shut it, I saw Joe lying there.”
“And the reason you asked Lieutenant Boyle to help you?”
“He brought the patient in this morning, claiming to be from headquarters. Allied Forces HQ. I thought I should check up on him, so I radioed for confirmation. Turns out he is. He’s on Eisenhower’s staff. Some sort of investigator, so I figured—”
“So you figured that you’d call in a headquarters snoop before you informed your commanding officer of a death on his post? You may be a skilled medical man,Dunbar, but otherwise you’ve got shit for brains!”
I hadn’t really liked Dunbar from the moment I met him, but listening to this short colonel bawl him out was getting even more irritating than he was. I never much cared for the kind of guy who threw his weight around and cursed someone who couldn’t give it back as good as he got it. I didn’t like it when Brother Aloysius, the vice principal, did it back in high school, didn’t like it when Sergeant Halloran did it my first year as a rookie cop, and didn’t like it much more when those down-South drill instructors did it at OCS.
“Where’s the morphine?” I repeated.
“What the hell are you going on about, and why the hell are you still here?”
“Well, sir, Colonel . . . ?”
“Colonel Maxwell Walton, sonny boy, and you better answer me or I’ll kick your ass back to HQ so fast. . . .” He apparently couldn’t think of exactly how fast so he just let it hang there. I took the opportunity to get a word in while he thought about it.
“Okay, Colonel Walton. What I’m going on about is the distinct possibility that Sergeant Casselli was murdered by a drug ring, and that you’ve got morphine missing and who knows what else. Maybe they even took that new penicillin stuff.” I watched his eyes dart around the room, focusing on the ransacked shelves, on Gloria, and finally on Dunbar. He was just realizing that he might be in a pickle. Just to twist the knife a little, I kept going.
“I understand you’d like me out from under, sir, so I’ll just get back to HQ now and give them a security report on the 21st General Hospital, Colonel Maxwell Walton, commanding.” I started to walk away, struggling to keep the smirk I felt coming off of my face.
“Now hold on here, boy,” Colonel Walton said. “Maybe for once Headquarters staff could be of some use around here. What kind of investigator are you, anyway?” I knew my youthful good looks—my youth, anyway—did not impress.
“I used to be a cop. Sir. The rest is a long story and my boss would probably shoot me if I told you.”Walton eyed me for a minute, trying to decide how much of this was bullshit. He looked at Dunbar. His stare turned from quizzical to hostile. There was no love lost there. Gambling debts didn’t make for good relations between COs and junior officers.
“Okay, Doctor,” Walton said, nearly spitting out the word. “You take Boyle and conduct an official investigation. I expect a preliminary report before the end of the day, including a tally of all missing items. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” was all Dunbar could say. I began to wonder about the wisdom of leaving a guy with heavy gambling debts in charge of investigating a potential theft of drugs worth a fortune on the black market. But then I remembered I didn’t give a hoot for any of this.Too bad Joe had ended up this way; I had other business.
“Sorry I can’t help out, Colonel, but I’m due at HQ. I just brought in my buddy for treatment this morning and I’ve got to get back—”
“You,”Walton said, pointing a stubby finger at me, “stay here. I’ll call headquarters and straighten this out. Who’s your commanding officer?” Before I could say anything, Gloria walked over and laid her hand on Walton’s arm.
“It’s Major Sam Harding, Max. I know him from back in the States. If I give him a call, I’m sure I can persuade him to let us borrow Billy for a while.” She smiled at Walton and he turned into a pussycat. She had a magic touch. I couldn’t wait to see Harding under her spell.
Gloria left with Walton and I got rid of everyone else except Dunbar and one GI who I put to work checking the inventory.
“Thanks, Boyle,” Dunbar said as soon as the crowd thinned.
“Don’t mention it. I’ve never been a fan of pompous blowhards, especially when they’re wearing brass. You’re not his favorite MD, are you?”
“Hardly.” He looked around uneasily, and jerked his head down toward poor Joe on the floor. “What do we do now?”
“First thing is, you tell me why Walton stuck you with this job.”
“That’s easy enough. He gets to keep his distance in case this thing goes south. If we find anything, he claims the credit.”
“Yeah, that’s SOP,” I said. “What I want to know is why
you
.Why are you the patsy?”
He shrugged. “I’m here?” His edge was gone now. He wasn’t the sarcastic upper-class kid anymore. Alone in a room with only a corpse and me, he seemed like just another guy under the thumb of a lousy boss. A guy in debt. Maybe a guy who’d kill to solve his problems? A little murder to cover a drug theft?
“How deep are you into him?”
“What do you mean?”
I didn’t say anything. Sometimes silence is the most effective interrogation technique. I knelt down beside Joe’s body and felt his hand. It was still warm and flexible, but a little rubbery. The fingertips had started to turn blue.
“Couple of hours at the most, probably less.” I said.
“What do you mean?” Dunbar said, his voice tinged with anger.
“You’re the doctor, you ought to know about rigor and all that stuff.”
“You know what I’m talking about.Who told you?”
Now that’s what I mean about silence. If I had badgered him, he might have clammed up. Instead, he’d already confirmed it was true. I raised Joe’s arm up straight.
“This guy. His throat is cut as neat as a cadaver. Any idea who could do such a thing?”
“Fuck you, Boyle.” Ah, no more mister nice guy. He turned and walked out.
I laid down Joe’s arm and looked at the body’s position. His legs pointed to a row of shelves on the back wall. There was a crimson spray across the boxes stacked there; he was probably standing facing them when he was cut. Doing what? Was he ordered to stand there while his killer took the drugs, or was he about to take something himself?
I looked at his throat. The cut went ear to ear, severing all the major veins and arteries. Professional. I checked his pockets. Nothing except a pack of matches. I rolled him over and checked for a wallet. It was in the back pocket of his khakis, sodden with the blood he was laying in. I went through it carefully, laying out the slips of paper and bills on his chest. The usual stuff, nothing that told me anything.
I squatted next to the body, just looking. And thinking. Something bothered me about this killing. It made three deaths that I’d seen so far in North Africa, none of which were courtesy of our official enemies. Georgie at the roadblock and then Pierre at the hotel, both killed by Vichy officers, Villard and Bessette. Now Joe at the hospital, assailant unknown. German commandos raiding medical supplies? Not likely.Was this linked to Pierre’s complaints about smuggling and drugs? Maybe. Especially with Villard having shown up. Part of me wanted to bolt and start looking for Diana. The other part of me was trying to put the pieces together, betting they’d add up to something that might help me find her. Although Villard driving around wearing an American uniform and one dead supply sergeant could add up to something I wanted no part of. Smugglers and black marketeers were not what I was interested in. I wanted to find Diana, and Luc Villard had stashed her somewhere in Bône, which is the direction he was headed just a little while ago. I didn’t want my search for her complicated by an irrelevant crime, but maybe I could use this murder to get some official muscle working for me. Find one bird and kill another with the same stone, something like that. Or maybe I should just get the hell out of here and have a drink at the Bar Bleu. Only problem with that was, last I heard, the French were still shooting at us out there.
Another problem was right at my feet. I had only met Joe a few hours ago, but he’d seemed like an okay guy. Somebody else didn’t think so and that bothered me. Plenty of guys were going to die in this war; there was no cause to murder one more.
I tried to put Diana out of my mind and focus on Joe’s body. I had seen my Dad do this at crime scenes more times than I could remember. He always made sure I was called in for crowd control so I could watch and learn the ropes. Too bad I never thought to ask him was exactly he was looking for as he hunched down next to a body, his eyes scanning from head to toe. So I did the same thing, and waited for something to jump out at me. There was a lot of blood. It covered the floor around Joe and soaked into his shirt. I looked again at the arm I had picked up a minute ago, his right arm. The shirt sleeve was soaked in blood but there was something else I hadn’t noticed right away. The sleeve was cut, right at the cuff, and underneath there was a deep slash on his forearm. A defensive wound? Had he tried to block the knife and taken the first cut on his arm? I looked at the wound on this throat again. One clean cut. No evidence of a false start. I turned his head to get a better look at his face. There was a small scratch on his right cheek, starting just below the eye and ending just on the edge of his mouth. How did that get there?
“Excuse me, Lieutenant?” It was the GI who was checking the stock. He was a young kid, just a PFC. He was skinny and wore glasses that he kept pushing up as they slid down his nose. He looked pretty pale but I couldn’t tell if that was his natural color or if he was going to lose it all over me. I got up and backed up a couple of steps. He kept glancing down at Joe.
“It’s better if you look at me, Private.What’s your name?”
“Willoughby, sir. I’m Sergeant Casselli’s . . . I mean I was the sergeant’s supply clerk.” He was holding a clipboard with both hands. They were trembling.
“Okay,Willoughby. Let’s step outside for a minute.”
The idea didn’t bother him a bit. It was a little cooler in the hallway and he slouched against the stone wall and let out a deep breath.
“Not a pretty sight,” I said. “Is that your first dead body?”
“Well, sir, we had some casualties yesterday that I helped move out for Graves Registration, but they were different. I didn’t know them.”
“Yeah, it makes a difference. Had you known Joe long?”
“Since England. I got transferred to the 21st when the unit was based at Blackpool. We knew we were gearing up for something big when we got selected to try out this penicillin. Sergeant Casselli was pretty excited about it. He said it was our chance to really make a difference and save lives.”
“Was he a good noncom?”
“Well, he wasn’t full of himself, like some. He let me do my job. He wanted to transfer to the infantry and get into combat. I admired him.”
