Martin Limon: Mr. Kill

The guys on temporary duty traveled in groups, doing repair or installation work on Signal Corps or aviation equipment. The likelihood that one of them would commit a rape, slip off the train in Anyang, and then not be reported AWOL was slim to none. I didn’t scratch them off my list, but relegated them to the lowest priority. That meant that I would start by investigating the three guys from Hialeah Compound who were on in-country leave.

Riley logged me in for an AUTOVON call. After getting through to the 8th Army operator, I read her the authorization number and within minutes was patched through to someone named Specialist Holder, the company clerk at Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Hialeah Compound in Pusan. I identified myself, and Holder seemed impressed that the CID from Seoul would be calling all the way down to their sleepy little unit. I read the list of names to him.

“All on in-country leave,” he told me. “What happened? Somebody get into some shit?”

I didn’t answer but just asked him to tell me about the three men.

He knew all of them. Personally. One of the men was black, so I scratched him off my list. The other two were odd birds, according to Specialist Holder.

“In what way?” I asked.

“Both of them turned down mid-tour leave,” he replied. “Didn’t want to go back to the States.”

I’d turned down mid-tour leave myself, but I didn’t tell Holder that. Turning down your mid-tour is like admitting that you have nothing to go back to in the States. As an orphan most of my life, I fit that category, but that was nobody’s business but my own. I asked, as casually as I could, “So, where are they now?”

“Weyworth is probably shacked up with his yobo, in her hooch right outside the main gate. They have their marriage paperwork in.”

The process of an American G.I. marrying a Korean woman involves piles of paperwork-both on the ROK side and the US side-and usually takes six to eight months. Still, having his paperwork in didn’t preclude Weyworth from taking a trip on the Blue Train.

“Do you have his address?”

“No. But it’s easy to find. Down one of the alleys behind the Kit Kat Club.”

“How about the other guy?”

“Pruchert? He’s stranger still. No telling where he is.”

“What’s strange about him?”

“He likes to go to all those Buddhist temples and stuff. He’s even studying the language, training himself to be some sort of monk.”

“Do you have an address for him?”

“No way. He put down ‘Pusan’ on his leave orders, but he could be anywhere.”

Holder gave me more particulars on both Weyworth and Pruchert, including when they were expected to report back to their units. Both of them had plenty of leave built up and wouldn’t be returning to duty for two weeks in one case and three in the other.

Ernie still hadn’t made his appearance at the CID office, so I went to the snack bar and drank more hot coffee and filled my complaining stomach with a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. I kept thinking of the frightened look on the face of Mrs. Oh when I’d first seen her cowering next to her children on the Blue Train. The cruelty that people can inflict on one another is unfathomable to me. I finished my sandwich and returned to the big silver urn on the serving line to refill my cup. I sat back down and thumbed listlessly through today’s edition of the Pacific Stars and Stripes. International news, comics, sports, but nothing on crime. They have a policy against it. Crime in Korea involving American servicemen isn’t reported unless it’s something big and has already hit the Stateside wire services. There wasn’t a word about the Blue Train rapist, not that I’d expected any.

On the way back to the office, I stopped in front of the PX and bought a red rose wrapped in green paper. When I reentered the CID admin office, I kept it hidden under my coat.

Ernie had arrived. Sergeant Riley was trying to cheer him up.

“You look like dog shit,” Riley told him.

“Get bent,” Ernie replied.

“Sueno,” Riley barked as I hung up my coat, keeping the rose hidden. “The Provost Marshal wants to talk to you. Now. Along with this wasted wreck of a human being.”

Too tired to lift his palm from his lap, Ernie flipped Riley a low bird.

Miss Kim wasn’t at her desk; probably trying to avoid seeing Ernie.

Ernie struggled to his feet, straightened his tie and his jacket, and marched down the hallway toward the Provost Marshal’s office. I held back for a second and, when Riley wasn’t looking, I stuck the red rose in the celadon vase that sat on the front edge of Miss Kim’s desk. It was a vase that had been empty for weeks.

“A brouhaha at the Seoul Train Station,” the Provost Marshal reminded us. “The KNPs had to provide an armed escort just to get you two out of there.”

“The crowd was surly, sir,” Ernie replied. “A woman with children had been raped by an American. They weren’t happy about it.”

“An American?” The Provost Marshal raised one eyebrow.

Colonel Brace was an intelligent man, a decent man, but he was also-to his core-a military man. And a loyal one. That meant that as a full-fledged member of the 8th Army bureaucracy, he threw himself heart and soul into protecting that bureaucracy. Colonel Brace repeated the same line Staff Sergeant Riley had spouted earlier. We had no proof that the perpetrator had been an American; and even if he had been an American, that didn’t necessarily mean he fell under our jurisdiction. He might be a civilian with no affiliation to the 8th United States Army.

The odds of the perpetrator not being an 8th Army G.I. were real but prohibitively small, especially since Private Runnels, the courier who’d sat next to the suspect on the Blue Train, had been convinced that the man was an American soldier, convinced by everything about him: his haircut, his demeanor, the language he used, even the civilian clothes he wore. They looked like they’d been purchased out of the PX, according to Runnels. Still, as long as there was a shred of doubt, Colonel Brace would continue to pretend, at least publicly, that the rape of Mrs. Oh Myong-ja in the latrine of car number three of the Pusan-to-Seoul Blue Train was not 8th Army’s problem.

Instead of responding to the colonel’s argument, I said, “I have some leads, sir. Movements that we have not yet accounted for coming out of Hialeah Compound. Request permission to travel down there to continue the investigation.”

Colonel Brace reached across his desk and grabbed a pipe from a mahogany stand. Thoughtfully, he opened the top drawer of his desk, pulled out a pouch of tobacco, and took his time filling the pipe, patting it down, lighting it, and blowing a puff of blue smoke into the air. All the while, Ernie and I were standing at parade rest in front of his desk. The colonel was disappointed in me, of this I was sure. He had hoped that I’d take his very broad hint and just keep my mouth shut and wait for him to tell us how-or whether-to proceed on the case. Asking for permission not only to continue the investigation but to take specific action put him on the spot. If the case ever blew up in our faces and there was an after-action investigation, I would be able to say truthfully that I had requested permission to continue the search for a suspect. Colonel Brace would be in the awkward position of saying he’d specifically turned down that request.

This was part of the reason Ernie Bascom and I were not popular in the hallowed hallways of the 8th Army Criminal Investigation Division. We pursued cases, regardless of whether the honchos of 8th Army were embarrassed by that pursuit or not. Other CID agents played the bureaucratic game. They trod softly. They investigated only when and where they were told to investigate, like dumb hounds on a very short leash.