One Was a Soldier (38 page)

“Damn.” Her voice was husky. “This thing is worse than a chastity belt.”

He broke off, panting, hard, and realized they were still in the Algonquin’s parking lot. Any guests looking out their windows were going to see a lot more than foliage. “Shit.” His own voice was pretty far gone, too. “I’m sorry.” He laughed harshly. “So much for discretion.”

She shook her head. “It’s Opperman.”

He reached down to adjust himself. “Darlin’, I can guarantee you it’s not Opperman did this to me.”

“No, I meant—” She grinned at him. “Never mind. Come back to the rectory with me. I’ve got a couple of hours before my afternoon appointments.”

“No.”

“Your mother’s place.”

“
God,
no.”

“Your truck.”

He paused at that one. Sighed. “Regretfully, no. Nice idea, though.” He searched her face for a safe spot and settled for kissing the tip of her nose. “I’ve got to get back to the station. Hold that thought.”

*   *   *

At his desk at the end of the afternoon, his vision blurring from the small print the state used on its crime stats reporting forms, his mind kept going back to Clare. Not the good stuff: He packed the image of Clare, nude and in his pickup, into a box labeled
LATER
. Instead, he thought about her exchange with Opperman. Something about it was sticking in his brain.

Lyle came in without knocking, which made him grateful he hadn’t been sitting there trying to figure out how to fit a mattress in the bed of his truck.

“I finished the rest of the midmonth stuff we gotta send on to CADEA for you.” Lyle tossed a folder on his already overcrowded desk before collapsing in the one chair still empty of booklets, bulletins, and circ sheets. “Kevin says in Syracuse they got two full-time civilian employees to deal with the paperwork. Think about that, will you?”

“First another officer. Then a second-shift dispatcher. Third, Tasers. A paper pusher comes fourth after that.”

“Tasers.” Lyle snorted. “When I started out, all you needed was a club. My first sergeant taught me how to break open hippies’ heads with a nightstick. Good times.” He sighed. “You find out anything about Wyler McNabb?”

“According to John Opperman, he was, in fact, sent back to Iraq to join the construction team. They get six months on, six off, and his time card was punched.”

“With a busted jaw. Right.”

“Opperman claimed he didn’t know the guy was out on bail.”

“You believe him?”

“I did at the time. Now I’m not so sure. I don’t doubt Opperman could have sent McNabb off and lied about it just to make my life more difficult.”

Lyle shrugged. “No skin off his nose. He’s not the one posted bail.”

“Yeah. Here’s the thing. He said Arlene Seelye had interviewed him. Asked him about Tally McNabb.” Russ crossed his arms on top of the drifts of paperwork. “Wouldn’t she have also asked him about Wyler McNabb? He was her biggest lead. She knew he worked for BWI Opperman.”

Lyle nodded. “Makes sense. I would’ve.”

“But she also knew McNabb was under arrest.”

“So she told Opperman. You already said he might have known, and sent the guy off to Iraq anyway. He doesn’t care if he takes a dump on Seelye’s investigation.”

“Maybe, but think about it. He’s got a lucrative contract with the army. Why would he chance jerking them around?”

“What chance? When was the last time somebody complained and got rid of Halliburton? Or Blackwater?”

“Those are the big boys. The T. rexes of the contracting world. Opperman’s one of the little guys, comparatively speaking. He’s got to make nice and deliver the goods and keep his accounts clean, because there are five other guys just like him waiting to take his place if he goes down.”

“Then what? It can’t be the money. Opperman’s the CEO and majority stockholder of BWI Opperman. The damn company’s estimated worth is five hundred million.”

Russ raised his eyebrows. “And here I was, thinking you were just a pretty face.”

“I read more’n
Guns and Ammo,
you know.”

“I’m agreeing with you. A million’s small potatoes for him.” He folded his hands. “It’s a hell of a lot for a lieutenant colonel, though.”

“Seelye?”

“The way things played out doesn’t make a lot of sense if she went in there asking questions like we would, right?”

Lyle made a noise of cautious assent.

“What if she never mentioned Wyler McNabb because she had already suborned him? Or because they were already accomplices? She was in Iraq. She told me so herself.”

Lyle sat for a moment, his woolly eyebrows drawn down in thought. “That’s a mighty thin thread to hang her on.”

“What if I told you she left town yesterday? The same day Wyler McNabb did?”

“I’d say it’s likely her investigation petered out here and she went after the next lead. We’re talking cash, stolen overseas by a bookkeeper. It’s probably sitting in an account in the Cayman Islands right now.”

“Which is one of the reasons Seelye wanted to search McNabb’s house so bad. We were just looking for evidence pointing to suicide. She’s a financial crimes specialist. If there’s anything to lead her to an offshore bank or some other money-laundering operation, she’s going to find it at Tally’s house. Or at her place of employment. Or at her family’s or friends’ houses.” He reached for the phone. “Hang on. I want to check something out.” He dialed the courthouse.

“H’lo Washington County Courthouse Lila Greuling speaking may I help you please.”

“Lila, it’s Russ Van Alstyne.” When he had worked for her dad back in high school, he’d always let talkative little Lila follow him around, “helping.” His patience with an eight-year-old paid off when she became a clerk of the court.

“Well, hel-lo, handsome. What can I do you for?”

“I’m looking to find out if Judge Ryswick issued a residence-and-accounts warrant on Wyler McNabb, 16 Musket Way, Millers Kill.”

“Not through me, he didn’t. When would this have been?”

“Sometime in the past week. The investigating officer was an army MP, but it might have come through the DA or the Feds.”

“Lemme check with the other girls.” The line went to music. She was back in less than a minute. “Last thing fitting that description came out of your own department on the thirteenth. Deputy Chief MacAuley got a warrant against Mary McNabb’s Allbanc accounts.”

“Okay. Thanks much, Lila.” He hung up. “Seelye never searched the house.”

“Legally,” Lyle said.

“Or the accounts. A suspect has money hidden away. What’s the first thing you do?”

“Search all the accounts I can find.” Lyle rubbed his lips. “Damn, I wish I’da spread the net wider when we asked Ryswick for that first warrant.”

Russ shook his head. “Not your fault. We didn’t know McNabb had stolen the money at that point.”

“We’ll never get another warrant out of him. The case is in Seelye’s jurisdiction, not ours.” Lyle straightened in his chair. “Wait a minute. If she’s looking for the money for herself, how come she didn’t go ahead and search those accounts?”

“Maybe she already found out where it’s hidden. She might have talked to McNabb. Or like you said, she could’ve searched his place illegally.”

“Or she might have been behind the B and E at Tally McNabb’s mom’s place.”

“Maybe. If she’s dirty, everything’s up for grabs.”

“Your fingers are twitching.”

Russ looked down to where his hands were resting atop paperwork. “Yeah?”

“You do that when you’re trying to figure something out.”

Russ sighed. “Yeah.”

“Army property. Stolen in Iraq. No way it’s our case.” Lyle buffed his nails against his pants. “Officially.”

“It’s definitely not our case.”

“So there’s no call for us to do any investigating.” Lyle looked up at him again. “Officially.”

“Nope.”

“It sure is interesting, though.” Lyle grinned at him.

Russ found himself grinning back at his deputy chief. “It sure is that.”

*   *   *

Russ picked up and put down the telephone three times after Lyle left. He had been an MP for a long time, but he was a civilian cop now, and he knew the kind of runaround he would get if he tried to trace Colonel Seelye through the usual channels. If he was going to ignore his good sense and pursue this, he had to figure a different way in, but it was getting late, and his brain kept stalling out. The mental snapshot of Clare in his truck had become a motion picture, complete with interesting sound effects. He’d have thought after all those years of holding himself in check, he’d be able to do without for a few lousy weeks, but Jesus, he was going cross-eyed from wanting her.

The hell with it. He shelved the problem of the out-of-his-jurisdiction theft in favor of loading the pickup with quilts and driving over to Clare’s place.

Unfortunately, when he got home he discovered a dead furnace, a rapidly cooling house, and a mother who had been waiting for him to play handyman.

“I’m sorry, Russell, but you know the repairman charges sixty dollars just to come out, let alone the cost of fixing up the old beast.” His mom fussed around him as he disassembled the pilot light, looking for the problem. “You didn’t have any plans, did you?”

“No, Mom, it’s fine.” He managed a quick call to Clare between flushing out the draw line and his trip to Tim’s Hardware for new spark plugs. She commiserated with his oil-stained, thwarted lust, told him he was a good son, and then hammered the nail in his coffin when she said she was headed out the door to the Foyers’ dinner, and no, she didn’t expect to be home before ten or eleven.

As a result, he went to bed as frustrated physically as he had been mentally, and he woke up like a man who had been bitten by bedbugs, his involuntary abstinence transformed into an itch to find out the truth about Arlene Seelye.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14

It was an itch he didn’t have a chance to scratch until after he had given the morning briefing and taken an
A.M.
patrol. He got back to the station at lunchtime, shut the door to his office, and tossed his lunch bag onto his desk.

He needed a favor. Who did he know who could help him? He had been out of the army for a decade now, an eternity in an organization where twenty years meant a career and the unwritten law was up or out—rise in the ranks or leave. He flipped through his ancient Rolodex, passing on one name and discarding another until he came to the card for Major Anthony Usher.

Tony Usher had been a raw WO1 when Russ took him under his wing during the brief, intense days of Desert Storm. Impressed by Usher’s combination of careful attention to detail and sheer smarts, he boosted him into the ranks of the CID. After several years of solid investigative work, Usher decided his true calling was on the other side of the aisle. He applied for and was accepted to OCS and from there went on to law school. He’d been with the Judge Advocate General’s Corps for three years now, and if he didn’t know everyone involved in army law enforcement, he knew someone who knew someone.

Russ had copied Usher’s latest contact information from the annual Christmas letter he got. He figured it was a fifty-fifty chance the man was at the same posting, so he felt he’d already accomplished something when the private who answered put him through.

“Major Usher.”

“Tony? It’s Russ Van Alstyne.”

“Chief Van Alstyne! Well, I’ll be damned. How are you? Hey, Latice and I were so sorry to hear your news about Linda.”

“Thanks. I appreciated the card. I’m doing well. I’m actually getting married again. End of this month.”

“Well, hush my mouth. Good for you. Let me guess, high school sweetheart?”

“Nope. She’s an Episcopal priest from southern Virginia who’s fourteen years younger than me.”

Usher roared. “Damn, Chief, you always could land in a pile of horse shit and come up smelling like roses.” His laughter died down to a wheeze. “So. Sweet as your life is, I don’t think you’re calling me just to brag.”

“Got a favor to ask.” He outlined the situation with Seelye, what he knew about her so-called investigation, what he had heard about Quentan Nichols, and what he suspected, based on the events of the past week and a half.

“Hm-mm. It does sound like sloppy police work, to say the very least. Can I ask your part in this? I’m not seeing where you have a duty to investigate.”

“I don’t. Which is why I’m calling in a favor instead of going through official channels. There’s been no crime in my jurisdiction—yet—but several persons of interest live in my town, or worked in my town, or keep popping up in my town. I want to be prepared, and for that, I need more info.”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Might take me a while. I’ll try and get back to you before the end of the day.”

As it turned out, Russ had logged out and swapped his uniform for jeans and a flannel shirt and was headed to the parking lot before Usher called again. He checked the number on his cell phone to make sure it wasn’t his mom—if her furnace acted up again, she could start a fire and wait till he got home. He was looking forward to an entirely different sort of hot date tonight.

“Van Alstyne here.”

“Hey, Chief, it’s Tony Usher.”

Russ climbed into the cab of his truck to escape the cold wind blowing off the mountains. “You know, Tony, you can call me Russ. You outrank me now.”

Usher laughed. “Right. How many people you know in that little burg of yours call you Russ?”

“Well … the Episcopal priest does, but I call her ma’am.”

“Mm-hm. That’s what I call Latice. You know the three little words every woman wants to hear? ‘Right away, honey.’”

Russ laughed.

“Okay, I got the skinny on this lieutenant colonel of yours. She’s U.S. Army Financial Command, attached to the 10th Soldier Support Battalion, but you probably knew that already. Her specialty is financial fraud and loss prevention, which makes her a logical go-to person when you’ve got a theft of this size. She has a good record, nose clean. Married, with two kids in college.”

Russ started up the truck’s engine. “That must call for some money.”

“Tell me about it. The schools Kanisha’s looking at run to fifty thousand a year.
I
may have to rob a bank next fall to pay for it.”