Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

“I will, sir.”

Skip took a deep breath. “It may work, and it’s certainly worth trying; I’ll be indebted to you whether it works or not. A moment ago I said I liked to pay my debts. Are you going to stay in the Army?”

Miles nodded. “I’ll have to, sir. It’s damned hard to get a civilian job, sir. That’s what everybody says. I qualify for a pension—they say I’ve got twenty years’ service—but for a corporal that’s not much.”

“Suppose you could get a civilian job, a good one?”

“Then I’d put in for a discharge, sir. I’d have the salary, whatever it was, and my pension, too. I’d be set.”

“Do this for me, and I’ll get you one.”

Miles swallowed the last drop of his beer, and paused as though afraid to speak. At last he said, “Really, sir?”

“Yes. I’ve got connections. Let’s go see Chelle.”

* * *

Someone was shouting in the infirmary, his hoarse voice audible far down the corridor: “Hey! Hey! Anybody! Come here!”

The middle-aged woman who had sat at the desk when Skip and Susan had come to see Chelle was dead, her body slumped across the desk, her white cotton blouse bullet-torn and scarlet with her blood. Chelle’s bed was empty, her pillow on the floor, her sheets tangled.

The man in the big room next to hers stopped shouting as they came through its door. “Don! What the hell’s going on?”

“That’s what we want to know, sir,” Don said; Skip felt that he spoke for both of them.

Five minutes later, they found Dr. Prescott’s body behind his desk in his consulting room.

* * *

Hours later, Skip told the captain, “He had been dragged there. He’d heard them shoot his nurse and had come out of his office. The gunman shot him three times and dragged him back inside. I don’t know why.”

“We’ll find him,” Captain Kain promised.

“Will we? We’ve spent three hours looking without finding him.” Skip took a long swallow of a vodka-and-tonic he felt sure he should not have asked for. “Can he get off the ship?”

“No.”

Skip raised an eyebrow. “Just like that?”

“Yes, just like that. You’re going to suggest that he could escape in a lifeboat.”

“Couldn’t he?”

“No. It takes two people to launch one, one at each davit—two able-bodied men with strong arms. If they were going to ride in the boat themselves, they’d have to jump into the sea after they had it down. That’s how it would be done if we were sinking. Do you want to hear more?”

Skip nodded.

“Very well. That wouldn’t be possible if it’s only one man. He could threaten Ms. Blue with death and force her to help, agreed. He could also force her to jump before he did. But you say she has a broken arm. I doubt that the strongest man in my crew could operate one of those davits without two sound arms. No doubt Ms. Blue is strong for a woman, but with her right arm broken? There’s not a chance.”

“Suppose—”

“That there are more than one. Exactly. That’s the chance we cannot take. Here’s another, one you may not have thought of. Suppose he’s got a great deal of money. He finds a couple of my sailors and offers them … Oh, ten thousand noras to let down a lifeboat for him. Some of my men wouldn’t take it, I know. Others might. I’ve got patrols on the Boat Deck watching the boats for just that reason.”

“An inflatable raft,” Skip suggested. “He forces her to jump, jumps in after her, and inflates his raft. She’d have to climb aboard or drown.”

“Normally, we have only one lookout, a man who looks forward. Now I’ve stationed a man aft to watch for that, or a suicide attempt.” The captain sighed. “For a raft or dinghy of some kind, or a body overboard.”

“You think he might kill her.”

“Of course I do. Who is he? Why does he want her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then we can’t even begin to guess—”

The captain was interrupted by his phone. When he hung up, he told Skip, “That was Dr. Ueda. She’s a passenger, but she’s agreed to fill in for Dr. Prescott until we reach port. There are a lot of wounded in the infirmary, and she’s found women with medical backgrounds to help her take care of them.”

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” Skip said.

“Naturally not. But it was my duty to find somebody, and I did. While we were searching she’s been looking at bodies, Dr. Prescott’s and Nurse Eagan’s, and those poor girls who used to work for Virginia.” The captain paused. “If I weren’t so damned tired I could probably think of their names.”

“Amelia was one,” Skip told him. “The other was Polly, I think. Or Paula. I don’t remember the last names.”

“Amelia Nelson, I believe, and Polly Lutz. They were both killed by the explosion. No bullets.”

“I’d assumed that.”

“You were right,” the captain said, “but now we know. Eagan was shot once through the heart. Prescott was shot three times.” The captain paused.

“You’ve got something.” Putting aside his drink, Skip leaned forward. “What is it?”

“I do. Or rather, Dr. Ueda does and I don’t know what it means. Prescott was shot once in the abdomen and twice in the chest. The bullets in his chest probably came from the gun that killed Nurse Eagan. Dr. Ueda can’t be sure of that, but she says the wounds look the same. The third bullet is from another gun.”

When Skip said nothing, the captain added, “It’s about the same size, or she thinks it is. Everything else is different. It didn’t expand, and the metal doesn’t look the same. She weighed them, and that third bullet is quite a bit heavier. The bullet that killed Eagan looks like the ones from Prescott’s chest.”

“There are two of them. Two shooters.”

“That’s how it looks. Did Ms. Blue have a gun?”

Skip nodded. “She did when I came to see her. Yes.”

“Could she have been one of the killers?”

“Of course not.” Skip made it as positive as he could.

“Why not?” The captain smiled to take the sting out of his question.

“Chelle isn’t a criminal, just to start with. I’ve talked to people who believe that the Army turns its soldiers into heartless killers, but I’m in the business of defending people accused of crime and I know how low the crime rate is among returned veterans.”

“It doesn’t bother you, defending criminals?”

“I’m not finished yet, and in fact I’ve hardly begun. I’ll get to that in a moment. Second, Chelle was badly hurt. She’d be killing the people who were trying to help her.”

Skip raised three fingers. “And third, she didn’t have a ghost of a motive. The real killers had a clear one: they wanted Chelle.”

“Why?”

“I could guess, but I’m not going to. It would only be a guess, and I prefer to deal with facts. Fourth, Chelle is right-handed and her right arm is broken. She said your doctor put in a plate and held it in place with screws driven into the bone. She could hold her gun when I handed it to her. But could she have shot it? I’d like your honest opinion.”

“Yes,” the captain said. “With her left hand.”

“Possibly, but notice how unlikely it is. Fifth, from what I saw at the scene, the nurse was standing behind her desk when she was shot in the chest. If Chelle had left her room and shot her— Just a minute.”

Skip’s mobile phone was vibrating. He took it out and flipped it open.

Susan appeared in its small screen. “ ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ Do you remember saying that, Mr. Grison? You quoted it during the Zayas trial.”

“Correct.”

“I’m going to disprove it.” Susan’s smile was bitter. “We’ve got your precious Chelle. She’s a mess, but…”