Greg Iles - Blood Memory

“It is,” says Dr. Cage. “That’s one reason we lost that war. You want to guess how many rounds were expended by army and marine snipers during Vietnam per dead enemy soldier?”

Michael shakes his head. “One?”

“One point three nine. Those boys were very good at their job. But that kind of killing is much more difficult than returning fire at a man who’s trying to kill you. It’s done in cold blood, looking through a scope at a man ten times life-size. You watch him smoke a cigarette or take a piss, and then you blow his head into ragged chunks of gore and bone. Think of John Kennedy’s head exploding in the Zapruder film. That’s what you see every time you shoot. Once you have pictures like that in your head, they never go away.”

Dr. Cage takes another sip of Diet Coke. “My point is, Luke was under great stress even before he was pressed into the White Tigers. And in that unit, things changed for the worse, and damn quick.

“The Tigers were essentially a terror unit, sent into Cambodia to harry and kill NVA forces hiding in a neutral country. These were covert operations carried out behind the lines, under the command of officers who had cast aside the rules of organized warfare. They took few prisoners. When they did, it was to torture them. Rape was used both as an intimidation tactic against the local populace, and also as a reward for the troops. They rarely distinguished between soldiers and noncombatants. Almost everyone they encountered was considered a target.

“When Luke protested against extreme acts of cruelty, he was ridiculed by his fellow soldiers and looked on with suspicion by his superiors. He soon learned that if he failed to go along with the prevailing authority, he’d wind up as dead as the rest of the people who came in contact with the White Tigers.”

While Dr. Cage pauses to think, I rummage through the bag until I find the wire string of “rotten prunes.” Fighting my revulsion, I hold the string out to the doctor.

“Do you know what this is?”

Dr. Cage takes the string from my hands and lays it on his desk. With a magnifying glass from his pocket, he examines one of the blackened chunks.

“Ears,” he says.

“What?” asks Michael.

Dr. Cage looks up at us. “It’s an ear necklace. Never seen one. Where did you get it?”

“Daddy kept it hidden in a bag with some other things.”

“It’s a war trophy. When some soldiers killed an enemy in Vietnam, they cut off one or both ears and strung them on a necklace, much like Indians taking scalps.”

“I’ve heard of that,” says Michael. “But I guess it never seems real until…”

Dr. Cage shrugs. “They did it with foreskins, too, but that’s nothing new. They were taking foreskins as trophies back in the Crusades. War has always been barbaric. Only the tools have changed.”

It’s hard for me to visualize the father I knew living in the world Tom Cage is describing. “So, my father cut the ears off his victims?”

“ Victim isn’t the proper word during wartime,” Dr. Cage says, “though it may be fitting in cases like this. But it’s difficult for me to imagine Luke Ferry stooping to mutilation. There aren’t more than twenty ears on this necklace, and Luke had thirty-six confirmed kills as a sniper alone. He probably killed many more without a spotter present to make it official. No, I’d be very surprised if this necklace belonged to Luke.”

“Why?” asks Michael. “Given all that you’ve told us?”

“Because Luke risked his life to bring the men who’d done this kind of thing to justice. As soon as he got back to Vietnam from Cambodia, he went over the head of his CO and reported what he’d seen. Higher authority did exactly what they always do when someone ignores the chain of command. Within a week, Luke was back in action with the White Tigers. That’s when he was wounded-according to Luke, by his fellow soldiers. It’s a miracle he got aboard a medevac chopper alive. He said that if it hadn’t been for one man, he’d have been left to bleed to death in a rice paddy.”

“What happened to him after that?”

“He was never the same. The things he’d witnessed had pushed him beyond his limit. When he learned they were going to send him back to the Tigers again, he lost it. He started yelling about everything he’d seen, and the next thing you know, they were processing him out on some kind of special discharge. They didn’t give him a section eight, but it amounted to the same thing. His post-traumatic stress disorder kicked in even before he made it back to the States. I could tell you about that, but something tells me that’s not what you’re really here for.”

Michael was right: Tom Cage is a perceptive man.

“Go ahead,” Michael says. “Tell him.”

“What do you know about childhood sexual abuse?” I ask.

Dr. Cage looks surprised. “I’ve seen some in my time. I haven’t treated children for years, but in the beginning I did. Treated anybody who walked through the front door.” He takes a sip of Diet Coke and looks over at his bookshelves. “My fear is that I’ve seen a lot more sexual abuse than I realized at the time. That there were kids I could have helped if I’d only had more courage, or better eyes to see.”

“Why more courage?” I ask.

“I think we see what we want to see. Or maybe what we can afford to see. When I started practice here, there was no such thing as Child Protective Services. Just the welfare department. And in those days, men had virtually absolute control over their families.” Dr. Cage’s eyes have focused somewhere in the middle distance. He might as well be alone in the room. I’m about to clear my throat when he snaps out of it and looks up at me. “I was thinking of some particular cases. Particular children. But that was a long time ago. I hope they turned out all right.”

There’s an uncomfortable silence that no one seems inclined to break. For some reason, I feel I can trust this man. Reaching into the bag, I remove the three Polaroid snapshots and pass them across the desk. “I found these in the bag with the other stuff that Daddy kept secret.”

Dr. Cage takes a long look at each Polaroid, then looks up at me. “What’s really going on here, Cat? What are you trying to figure out?”

“I think my father may have molested me.”

“Do you have some reason other than these pictures to believe that?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.” He glances at the snapshots again. “These pictures look like damning evidence, I know. But taken by themselves, they’re like the ear necklace. Merely possessing them seems like evidence of perversion, but you don’t know the circumstances by which Luke came to have them.”

“Why would he hide them if he had nothing to be ashamed of?”

Dr. Cage shrugs. “We may never know that. Have you gone through everything in that bag?”

“Everything but this,” I reply, holding up the sketchbook.

“Why did you pass over that?”

“I don’t know.” An image of Louise Butler comes into my mind. “Someone already told me what was in it. Sketches of DeSalle Island, stuff like that.”

“Do you mind if I take a look?”

I pass the sketchbook across the desk, and he begins flipping through it.

“Looks like you’re half right. There are some sketches of a black woman here…some poetry. A wildflower pressed between two pages. Wait…look at this.”

“What?”

“It’s a typed note. Oh yes, listen to this. ‘Private Ferry, It’s come to our attention that you’ve been talking about the time you spent west of the Mekong River. We thought you’d learned your lesson in sixty-nine. Since you didn’t, here’s a little reminder from your old friends who wore the tiger stripes. Keep talking and your ears will wind up on one of these. We might even have to run a night op on that little girl of yours. Remember those? You took an oath, soldier. Never forget it.’”