Chapter 81
I HAD BEEN working the Schoolgirl case hard—for the girls, for Justine, a little of both, and had finally gotten to sleep. The buzzing of the phone jerked me out of a dream. My heart was pumping so hard, I thought I’d bust a valve. I opened the phone, didn’t even bother to let the caller speak.
I shouted, “Not yet,” then slammed the phone down on the table.
That bastard. I was so close to getting it. So close to figuring it out. I almost had it. What was I missing about Afghanistan and that exploding helicopter?
I dropped my head back onto the pillow. The dream was still vivid in my mind, and it played out like a movie on the blank screen of the ceiling.
The dream matched up with what I remembered of that day. I’d been standing at the ramp of the CH-46. I heard artillery popping from the fifty-cals as the helicopter burned. Men screamed.
Danny Young was on his back in the dark. His flight suit was soaked with his blood, so much of it, I couldn’t see where he’d been hit.
I called his name. Then everything stopped. There was a sound in my ears, like static, and my vision blurred.
I tried, but I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t get a clue what had just happened. I’d just lost a few seconds, though.
The action began again.
In life as in the dream, I had pulled Danny out of the aircraft, slung him over my shoulder, started to run with him across that burning battlefield.
I’d put him down safely and then—what?
I was flat on my back, and Danny was lying lifeless a few feet away. I had died and come back. With Del Rio’s help.
I put a pillow over my face, and more images of Danny came to me as I lay in my soft bed.
Danny had been a dairy farmer, the son of a son of a son of a dairy farmer in a small town in Texas. He had enlisted in the Marines because he felt it was his duty. And also so that he could get the hell out of the barn. I’d done the same—to get free of my father.
There was something so open about that kid, so gee-whiz about everything, that I had to love him. He had no guile. And while he was mostly innocent, he was also very aware of words and of feelings.
I’d served with him for just six months before he died, but in those six months, he was the only one besides Del Rio I could talk to in the squadron. The only guy who didn’t see me as privileged, just let me be myself.
I flashed ahead to meeting Danny’s wife, Sheila, when I got back to the States. She had strawberry blond hair and gray eyes. I remembered sitting in a small dark parlor in their house. There was black fabric draped over the mirror. The small-scale furniture was uncomfortable and looked unused.
I told Sheila that I’d been with Danny when he died. I told her that he’d been unconscious. That he hadn’t been in pain. That he was a brave man. That we’d all loved him. Every single word of that was true.
Sheila had clasped her hands across her distended stomach. She didn’t sob, but the tears poured down her face.
“We’re going to have another girl,” she said.
The static filled my mind again. It was that blank in my memory that told me something was missing. Something else had happened. What was it? What didn’t I know?
The damn telephone started to ring again.