Julia Spencer-Fleming - One Was a Soldier

“Well?” Russ wanted to shove the buckets aside and get in there himself.

Lyle grunted. Stood up. Shifted to the side and edged back toward them. He had a wad of heavy plastic in his hand.

“Well?”

Barbara LeBlanc butted up against Russ. “What is it?”

Lyle stepped free. “This is one of the empties.” He handed Russ the stiff, crumpled plastic, and then, like a magician producing a rabbit, held up more of the stuff, wrapped crudely around stacks and stacks of cash. Twenties, in bricks of five hundred, enough to fill a small suitcase.

“Oh. My. God.” Barbara LeBlanc’s voice was faint.

“Gotcha,” Russ said.

– Psalm 34, The Book of Common Prayer

Sarah was looking at the black cats and flying witches pinned to the walls of the community center’s meeting room. Lots of black and purple and green crayon, with one defiantly pink-and-yellow standout, as if Glinda the Good Witch had taken to her broomstick. Some little girl was not lowering her princess standards, even for Halloween.

“Hey, y’all, look who I brought.”

Sarah turned at the sound of the Virginia drawl. Clare Fergusson rolled Will Ellis through the doors. He smiled and waved, and if she hadn’t known better, she would never have guessed the boy had narrowly escaped death by his own hand.

“Welcome back, marine.” Eric McCrea got up from his folding seat and shook Will’s hand. “You’re looking a lot better than you did last week.”

He was, too. His hair had been shaved away to a sandy brown fuzz, and he had some color in his face. He was still far too thin for such a big kid-after seeing his father and brother in the ICU, Sarah realized Will must have stood over six feet before the amputations-but he had lost that ghastly drawn expression he’d had in the hospital.

Will ducked his head. “Feeling better.” He paused, taking in the smaller than usual circle of chairs. “Where’s Dr. Stillman?” His voice had an edge of panic.

“He’s fine.” Sarah took the seat opposite Will. “He was on call this evening and had to go in to the Glens Falls Hospital. He told me he probably wouldn’t make it tonight.”

Fergusson put the brake on his chair and set off for the coffee table. “How are things now that you’re home?” Sarah asked.

“Better. More honest.” He rubbed his thighs. “We started family therapy while I was an in-patient, and we’re going to keep it up for a while.” He smiled briefly. “Never saw myself as the kind of guy who’d be seeing two therapists a week.”

“If you had diabetes and, say, an ulcer, you’d see a specialist for each condition. It’s no different for mental health. Eric? How are you doing? You’re still on suspension?”

“Yeah.” He bent forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, his face toward the floor. “It’s been… tough. My wife…” He looked up at her. His face changed. “She just doesn’t get that I need a little time! I was gone for a fucking year, and she won’t even give me a few months to readjust to being back.”

“Have you thought about entering marriage counseling? Or family therapy, like the Ellises?”

“Oh, Christ, don’t you start, too. That’s what she said.”

“So?” Fergusson dropped into her seat with her customary cup. “What’s holding you back?”

“I’m a cop. Do you know what that means? I have the most fundamental job in the world. Because nothing else matters if people and property aren’t safe and if the law isn’t enforced.” He smacked himself on the chest. “ We’re the line between civilization and the jungle. The only line. You trust me to do that job, you gotta trust me to have my head on straight.”

Sarah waited a beat. “So… what does your suspension mean?”

Eric turned away. “I made a bad call. I’ll take my punishment and that’ll be the end of it.”

Sarah waited, but he didn’t seem inclined to continue. “Clare? How about you?”

“I think he ought to accede to his wife’s request. Even if he doesn’t think he needs it, it would strengthen their relationship.”

Sarah pursed her lips. The caretaker strikes again. “I was asking how you are this week.”

“Oh.” Fergusson rubbed the end of her nose. “Good. Busy. Stressed.” She paused, and Sarah opened her mouth to ask about drinking, but Fergusson went on. “There’ve been a lot of developments in the police investigation around Tally’s death. They may break open part of the case soon.”

That snapped McCrea out of his sulk. “What’s going on? I called Lyle MacAuley yesterday, and all he’d tell me is that they were bringing in somebody from the army for a possible arrest on the theft.”

“There really was money stolen?” Will sounded bemused. “I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined that conversation or not.”

“The MKPD found it Saturday,” Fergusson said. “Something like six hundred thousand dollars. It was hidden at the Algonquin Waters.” Fergusson was quite effectively derailing any inquiries into her own emotional life. Sarah wasn’t sure if the priest was aware of it or not.

“So what was MacAuley talking about?” McCrea said. “Why didn’t they just tag it and ship it back to the army? Or hand it over to the Feds?”

“Russ-the chief-thinks Lieutenant Colonel Seelye may have been after the money for herself when she showed up here asking questions.”

Sarah didn’t want to get sucked into Fergusson’s self-protective behavior, but she had to ask. “Was that the other officer we saw at Tally’s funeral?”

“Uh-huh.” Fergusson drank some coffee. “The MKPD and Russ’s JAG contact-the Judge Advocate General’s Corps-are trying to get her to incriminate herself.”

“How?” Will asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen Russ since last Friday. Most of this I got from a phone message he left me.”

McCrea’s glance sharpened. “Does the chief think this lieutenant colonel had something to do with Tally’s death?”

Fergusson’s face, which had been rosy and animated during her conversation, fell into disapproving lines. “He still insists she killed herself. He won’t listen to any-” Her mouth worked, as if she were trying to find the right word.

“Other evidence?” Will offered.

“Sensible arguments.” Fergusson frowned into her coffee.

“The ME’s conclusion was pretty well grounded,” McCrea said.

Fergusson gave him a look. “Don’t you start, too.”

Time to steer this into a therapeutic mode. Sarah looked around the tiny circle, gathering each of them in. “If Tally McNabb did, in fact, kill herself, we have some hard work to do. How do we accept an unacceptable death? How do we find meaning in an act that denies meaning?”

“I got the chance to talk with my other therapist about her while I was in the hospital,” Will said. “It sounds weird, but looking at her situation helped give me a different view of my own stuff.” He glanced at Sarah, as if for permission to continue. She nodded encouragement. “See, I can look at Tally and think, she could have returned the money, she could have gotten a different job, she could have kicked her husband to the curb. Things were hard for her, real hard, but she had options. She could’ve taken them.” He rubbed his thighs. “It kind of made me see that even when I don’t feel like it, I have options, too.”

Fergusson put her coffee down and leaned toward Will. “Yes, you do. And you have your family and friends and a great cloud of witnesses all around you. Wherever you look, there’s someone who loves you looking back.”