Julia Spencer-Fleming - One Was a Soldier

“Ma’am? Can I help you?”

A flicker at the corner of the garage. Hadley twitched toward the movement, then relaxed when she saw another army guy coming toward them. This one was in urban camo, like Nichols had been, but was younger and lighter-skinned. He was also carrying a sidearm.

“I’m Lieutenant Colonel Arlene Seelye.” The woman stepped toward her. She was older than Hadley had thought at first, midforties at least. “I’m looking for Mary McNabb, also known as Tally McNabb.”

“You’re military police?”

Colonel Seelye nodded. “Specialist McNabb is absent without leave. We’re here to return her to her battalion.”

Hadley tried not to let that little piece of info rock her back. AWOL? They had all been working on the assumption that McNabb was quit of the army. The chief needed to be in on this. “Can you wait here a moment, ma’am? I’ve got to report back to my dispatcher and tell her what’s going on.”

Colonel Seelye cut her eyes toward the small houses flanking the McNabb place. “Observant neighbors.”

“It’s a small town, ma’am. We try to look out for each other.” Hadley walked back to her unit with the cop strut she had picked up from watching Deputy Chief MacAuley-not too fast, not too slow. Owning the situation. Inside, she raised Harlene and let her know what was going on.

“Hold on a sec,” Harlene said. “The chief’s just calling in.” Hadley’s line went dead. She looked through the windshield at the two MPs. They had turned toward the house, so their backs were toward her. She wondered what they were saying to each other.

“Hadley?”

“Yeah. I mean, here.”

“The chief is on his way. He wants to talk to ’em, so don’t let ’em leave before he gets there.”

Hadley almost asked how she was supposed to accomplish that, but she knew what Harlene would say. Think of something! “Will do,” she said. “Knox out.”

As she crunched across the leaf-strewn lawn, the colonel and her backup turned again to face her. Detective and beat cop, Hadley thought. Plainclothes and uniform. The look was familiar, even if the outfits were different.

“So…” Colonel Seelye squinted at Hadley’s name badge, causing fine lines to radiate from the corners of her eyes. “Officer Knox. Can you tell us where we can find Mary McNabb?”

Harlene hadn’t said anything about concealing the truth from them. “I’m sorry to tell you this, ma’am, but Tally McNabb is dead. She was found floating in her backyard pool yesterday.”

The younger guy’s head jerked toward Seelye, but the officer only blinked slowly. “That would explain the crime scene tape around the fence.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And your department is investigating this as…?”

“Death by gunshot, probable suicide, ma’am.”

The colonel held herself very still. Finally she said, “Who is the lead investigator on the case?”

“I guess that would be the chief. Although the dep-the deputy chief and Sergeant McCrea are working it, too.”

“The chief of police.” Seelye raised one eyebrow. “How many sworn officers does the Millers Kill Police Department have, Officer Knox?”

There was something in her voice that kind of went up Hadley’s spine and made the answers to her questions pop out. “Eight, if you include the chief, ma’am. Plus two part-time auxiliaries.”

“That’s… small. Your department can’t have had much experience with homicide or violent crime.”

“You’d be surprised, ma’am.”

Whatever the colonel was going to say was cut off by the grind of tires on asphalt. Hadley kept her eyes on the MPs. Behind her, a car door thunked. The young guy darted glances to Seelye, but Seelye simply watched, not asking anything, not registering any surprise. Hadley thought she’d never seen such a self-contained woman before.

“Officer Knox.” When the chief greeted her, she turned to him. He gave her a nod and continued on toward the colonel. “I’m Russell Van Alstyne.” He held out his hand. “Chief of police.”

“Lieutenant Colonel Arlene Seelye, U.S. Army Military Police, attached to the 10th Soldier Support Battalion.” They shook hands. “I came here to pick up one of our soldiers who was absent without leave, but your officer here tells me we’re too late.”

The chief nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“Can you tell me what your investigation has turned up so far, Chief?”

“Tally McNabb’s autopsy indicated death consistent with suicide by handgun, although we haven’t found any note. She seemed to be under some marital and job stress.” The chief glanced at the younger, armed soldier. “Of course, if she was hiding out from you folks, that would have been a whole other problem that we weren’t aware of.”

“Are you considering her death as a possible homicide?”

The chief shot a look at Hadley. She straightened. “Her husband’s been missing since before her body was discovered. We have a BOLO out on Wyler McNabb. I suspect that we’ll be able to clear the case pretty quick once we find him.” He looked assessingly at the house. “One way or the other. What’s the army’s story?”

The colonel shrugged. “McNabb went on leave in May, a couple months after her last deployment, and never came back. Her case kept getting shuffled to the bottom of the pile-you can imagine the sort of stuff we have to deal with when an entire battalion of young men and women get back to the States after a year. However, her company went back on alert this month, which shot her file to the top of our roster. So here we are.”

The chief nodded. “So here you are. Was there anything else going on with her? Was she in trouble?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like you said, we ought to at least consider the possibility that she was killed. If McNabb was involved with something criminal, that would open up some new lines of inquiry for us.”

Colonel Seelye smiled faintly. “I assure you, Chief Van Alstyne, as far as the army is concerned, not showing up for work is a crime. Let me ask you something. Other than the autopsy, what is your evidence for suicide?”

“Well”-the chief hitched his thumbs in his gun belt and spread his legs a little-“we checked for a note, like I said, and we went over her credit card statements and her mortgage book to see if she had money troubles.”

“Did she?”

“Not that we could tell.” He scratched the back of his head. In the two years she had been on the force, Hadley had never seen him do that. It made him look like a hayseed.

There was something wrong here. The chief was the original what-you-see-is-what-you-get guy. Why was he suddenly acting like an ignorant small-town sheriff?

“You know, it would be very helpful to us if we could take a look at her effects,” the colonel said.

“For someone AWOL?” The chief huffed a laugh. “Why on earth for?”

Colonel Seelye tilted her head. “She may have had help in keeping out of sight and off the battalion’s radar screen, so to speak. If she had any accomplices, we’d like to know.”

“Hmn.” The chief rubbed his chin. “Well, the problem with that is, this is Wyler McNabb’s house, and you’ve got no cause to enter a civilian’s home.”

“He’s wanted for questioning in a violent death.”

“Yeah, but wanted ain’t proved, as we say up here. If he checks out clean, my department could be in a heap of trouble if we let some army investigators paw through his things.” He grinned at the MPs. “Unless you think her being AWOL had some bearing on her being dead.”

Seelye shook her head. “No, of course not.” She smiled back at the chief. “Still, you can understand our position, can’t you? If we have soldiers evading their sworn duty, morale drops, training suffers, and eventually, you have men and women in harm’s way who know that their brother and sister soldiers have sold them out.” She clipped her jaw shut, as if she realized she had gone overboard.