Without realizing at first that he was doing it, Chief Warrant Officer Thomas Edward Lafayette Deveroux took a precise half step back, locked his heels softly, and saluted crisply. “You were a soldier, sir,” he said.
“Who’s a soldier, Dad?” It was his youngest son, Thomas, who’d seen his father acting strangely and felt the need to investigate. He grabbed his father’s left forearm near the elbow.
Deveroux looked down and smiled. “Just someone I met once. Someone I hardly knew.”
Thomas seemed to take this nonanswer in easy stride. After a moment he changed directions. “Mom says that these are all the people who died in the war.” He reached out and touched one of the names cut into the rock, following the curves of the letters with his fingertip. “In Vietnam? They all died there?”
It took Deveroux a moment to answer. “No, son. Not all of them. Just some of them.” He looked up and saw that his wife and other son were working their way along the wall toward him. He looked back at his youngest and finished his answer. “There are others. Others not on the wall. Some died during the war; some folks took years to die.”
“What are y’all talkin’ about? Who took years to die?” Susan Elaine said as she walked up and took her husband’s other arm. She put her chin on his shoulder.
“Someone Dad used to know,” Thomas replied as if he was the target of the question. “A soldier. Just like Dad.”
Susan Elaine smiled in that way that still made Deveroux’s breath catch in his throat and reminded him of how wonderful his life really was. “That’s your father, all right,” she said. “Always a soldier.”
Before he could respond, the phone on his belt began to play the theme from Mighty Mouse. He reached for it out of reflex, and then stopped and looked again at Susan Elaine, and that smile. Instead of answering it, he hit the button on the side of the phone, muting the ring. He smiled back at his wife and grabbed both of his sons by their hair, shaking their heads playfully. He remembered what Kel had said.
Time to start picking up the pieces, he thought.
EPILOGUE
National Park Service, Museum and Resource Center, Landover, Maryland
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2008
Gene Marino was starting the second week of his year-long internship at the National Park Service, Museum and Resource Center, in Landover, Maryland. He was still learning the ropes and was glad for the help that Chris Pulliam was always quick to offer.
“Hey, what do I do with something like this?” Marino asked. He’d been cataloging artifacts that had been left at the Vietnam Memorial—flags, identification tags, letters, the usual offerings—but he hadn’t dealt with anything like this before. Not in his two weeks on the job.
“Like what?” Pulliam called out from over the wall of his cubicle.
“I don’t know. It’s like a…a box.”
“Like a box? How’s it like a box?”
“Well, I guess it is a box,” Marino replied. “Not too big, ’bout the size of a shoebox. Little smaller. Black. Real shiny wood. Pearl design. It’s a picture of a woman in one of those funny cone-shaped hats bending over doing something. Pulling up weeds or something.”
“Is she naked?” Pulliam’s voice indicated his preference in the matter.
“Nope. But she’s got one of those long dresses with a slit.”
“What’s in it?” Pulliam asked as he walked around the corner to join Marino.
“The box? Dunno. It’s locked or something.”
“Best get it x-rayed.” Pulliam sighed at the hassle. “It may be a bomb or a pound of that Agent Orange stuff, or something. Anthrax maybe. We can’t curate an unopened box. Too many nutzoids out there.”
“I hate nutzoids, don’t you?” Marino nodded.
“Don’t you know it.”
“I haven’t had anything x-rayed before. How do I do it?”
“Well, you gotta call…ahhh…never mind. That’ll take too long.” Pulliam looked around to see who else was within earshot. “Look, it’s not a bomb. We know that, right? I mean, really. Probably some love letters or dirty pictures; something like that. Just go ahead and open it. Is there a lock or anything?”
“Don’t see one.”
“Hmm, well then, in that case,” Pulliam looked around again, “there’s two ways to skin that cat. We can call the conservators, they’ll come over here all snooty and yell at you for not wearing cotton gloves or some other war crime, or—this is my personal favorite—we take a screwdriver to the sonofabitch and pop it open. Just do me a favor and wait until I’m back in my cubicle so I can deny I even know you when you get your ass handed to you in a Dixie cup.”
It took longer to find a flathead screwdriver than to force the lid on the box. It separated with a cracking sound when the thin bead of glue around the top gave way.
“Cool beans,” Gene Marino said as his eyes caught the contents.
“What is it?” Pulliam again responded over the wall of his cubicle. “I didn’t hear an explosion.”
“Nope. No explosion.”
“Any anthrax? Cloud of spores?”
“Nope. Come see. Lots of neat shit. There’s a cool knife.”
“Yeah? Even cooler. And look, it’s got something scratched into the back of the handle. K-E-N-D…looks like a name, doesn’t it? Kendrick? I wonder if his name’s on The Wall.”
“Maybe. We can check that later. What else is there? What’s that?”
“Some medals. These are Purple Hearts, aren’t they? And are these Silver Stars?”
Pulliam took the items from Marino. “These two are Purple Hearts, this one’s a Silver Star—you’re right about that—but these two other stars aren’t medals. These are rank insignia. They look like they’re from a general’s uniform—probably a brigadier. You know, like a one-star general?”
“Way cool,” Marino replied. “Suppose this Kendrick guy was a general?”
Pulliam shrugged. “What’s that? Dog tags?”
“Yeah.” Marino removed a chain from the box and was counting the dog tags strung onto it. “Bunch of them. Two, four, six…there’s sixteen here, and look, one of them’s for our buddy, Kendrick.” He held the tag at an angle to better illuminate the embossing. “Kendrick-comma-Patrick-R-period.”
“Let me see,” Pulliam said.
As Chris Pulliam was reading the names on the tags, and counting them a second time, Gene Marino removed a small OD-green cloth bag from the bottom of the box and undid the drawstring. “Gross,” he spurted out, dropping the bag onto the tabletop.
“What is it?’ Pulliam asked as he put the dog tags aside and reached for the bag.
“Dunno. Looks like a bunch of dead mice or something.”
“Mice?” Pulliam repeated skeptically. He poured the contents of the bag out and gingerly fingered the three items. He was silent for a moment as he thought. “It ain’t dead mice.”
“Yeah? What d’you think it is, then?” Marino asked. “Looks like mice.”
“Not sure, but…”
“But?”
“I got a buddy who’s an anthropologist at the Smithsonian,” Pulliam replied. “He lives out this way. I’ll see if he can stop by on the way home and take a look at this.”
“Why? What do you think they are?”
Pulliam shook his head slowly and flipped one of the items over with the tip of a pencil. “Not my field, but they sure look like…” he paused.
“Like what?” Marino asked.
“Human scalps.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
So here we are again, at the end of a story that took the efforts and work of a great many people. There’s the usual cast of characters. David Rosenthal, publisher at Simon & Schuster, should be near the front of the receiving line, followed very, very closely by Marysue Rucci, a great editor and a delightful lunch companion. Leigh
Feldman is a super agent and an equally nice person. Then, of course, there are the folks who actually turn the pig’s ear into a silk purse. They include Ginny Smith and Al Madocs of Simon & Schuster and Ros Perrotta of Darhansoff, Verrill, and Feldman. I can only hope they get a year-end bonus for their patience.
My wife, Mary, was there from the beginning, of course—as she always is and always will be. She read, reread, and then, read again the manuscript and resisted blessing my heart as much as she could. This is noteworthy, because to a southern woman, people who need their hearts blessed include congenital half-wits, mass murderers (whose mothers certainly didn’t raise them that way), and individuals so hopelessly headed down the wrong path that there’s no reasonable expectation of redemption. I suspect she saw me in at least one of those categories. I hope that one day we encounter the devil at a backyard party just so that I can watch Mary bless his heart.
As I’ve pointed out before, the U.S. Army CILHI is no more, having evolved into the larger Department of Defense Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. The CILHI’s legacy is carved into the marble headstones of literally tens of thousands of American servicemen who have been recovered, identified, and returned home. The mission continues under new management. It is an awesome job.
This is a novel, which I think, if I remember tenth-grade literature class correctly (though I must admit to blanking out on most of my adolescent years—something to do with a lack of blood getting to my brain), means that it is a fictional story. Bits and pieces of it resemble cases and situations that I have been involved in over my career, and while those cases and situations served as some sort of launching point, it is, in the end, a fictional flight. This means that the characters are made up and that any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental—so don’t try to read too much into it. And don’t blame the U.S. Army or the U.S. government, either.
Finally, research for this book, to a very large degree, involved driving dust-strewn rural back roads, looking out the windows, and sucking in what it meant to grow up and mature in Arkansas. My companion on many of these road trips was my brother, Jim. We have taken our last journey together and though the ache throbs undiminished, it was a wonderful life.
Table of Contents
Cover
Colophon
Also by Thomas Holland
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS