One Was a Soldier (49 page)

Trip pulled the PDA from his pocket and set it on the table. “I take notes.” He smiled weakly. “I’ve always taken good notes. It’s important for a clinician. I can keep things in my head for a day. Or two.” Something blank and frightening drifted through his eyes. Clare involuntarily stepped back. “It’s … disorienting, sometimes. Like going forward on a moving walkway. People and pictures flash by and then they’re gone.”

Flora yanked a chair from the table and collapsed into it. “Dear Lord. Dear, dear Lord.” Olivia sat next to her aunt and held out her hand. Flora took it, squeezing hard enough so that Clare could see her knuckles whitening. When she finally spoke, her voice was calmer. “Trip. You
cannot
practice medicine while you’re suffering from this.”

“I thought so, too, at first! But really, Flo, I can. I haven’t forgotten any of my training.” He pointed toward Russ. “Russell Van Alstyne. Fifty. Married. O positive, no drug allergies. Compound dissociative fracture of the right tibia. Two pins in a Stinowski conformation. No postoperative complications.”

“That’s good,” Russ said, “except I’m fifty-two and widowed.”

Trip’s face went blank again.

“Trip,” Clare said, “your sister could have told you everything that night. For all you know, she might have named her killer. Didn’t you take any notes?”

The doctor looked at the PDA. “No,” he finally said. “I reread her file after I spoke with you at the office. I don’t have anything.” He ran his hand over the top of his close-cropped gray hair. “You have to understand, I was still hoping then … I wasn’t taking notes consistently.”

Flora rocked forward in her chair. “Dear Lord.”

Russ crossed his arms. “Mrs. Stillman, do you recall anything from that night?”

She took a deep breath. “Olivia spent the day here with Iola, swimming and biking. Ellen came over from work. She must have arrived around five thirty. No.” Her brows knit together. “She was later than we expected. Six thirty.”

“Go on,” Russ said.

“We had drinks while Trip grilled. We ate. The girls were tired out and wanted to watch a movie. I joined them.” She paused again. “We made sundaes right before that. I remember warning the girls not to drip on the sofa. It was then that Ellen asked Trip if they could talk. She went out to her car to get something, and right after she came back in they disappeared into his study. The girls and I were already in the family room.”

“Did you see what she went to get from the car?”

Flora shook her head.

“Olivia?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Did either of you see her carry anything back to the car when she left?”

“Just her purse,” Olivia said, “but that was small.”

Clare looked at Russ. “What do you think it was?”

His face was grim. “The question is,
where
is it?”

“If she left anything, it’s in Trip’s study.” Flora stood up. “Our cleaning service only dusts and vacuums in there, and the girls and I hardly ever go in.”

Russ opened his hand in a you-first gesture. They trooped—or in Will’s case rolled—down the hallway and through the foyer and squeezed into a small room at the front of the house. It was a true office; desk and file cabinets and bookcases and a whole shelf of tiny papier-mâché skeletons playing instruments, golfing, and otherwise enjoying the afterlife. Russ touched a skeletal police officer with a fingertip. “
Calacas.
From
El Día de los Muertos.
”

“The Feast of All Souls,” Clare said. “Coming right up.”

“We’ve been collecting them for years,” Flora said. “Ever since we honeymooned in Mexico.” She bit her lip again as she looked at her husband. “Do you remember?”

He took her hand. “Every minute. It’s just the present I’m having trouble with.”

Russ pushed to the center of the small room, scanning the contents. “Can you tell if anything here is out of the ordinary?”

Both the Stillmans shook their heads.

“It might have been papers,” Russ went on. “If she was getting a payoff to look the other way—” He held up one hand at Trip’s sound of protest. “
If
that’s what happened, she might have documentation of a separate account. Something unconnected to her usual bank.”

“You’d put any paperwork in the file cabinets, wouldn’t you, darling?”

“Let’s take a look,” Russ said.

Trip retrieved a ring of small keys from his desk, squinted at their labels, and began unlocking the first file cabinet. Each drawer had its own key.

“That’s a good system you’ve got.” Eric rolled the top drawer open. “Most folks’ file cabinets you can get into with a bent paper clip.”

“They’re fireproof as well. I’ve got patient information in here, and it’s important to keep it safe.”

“I noticed a keypad by your front door,” Russ said. “Do you have a security system?”

“Yes.” Flora stepped forward and took the handle of the bottommost drawer. “You can remove these entirely and put them on his desk if you don’t want to work bent over.”

Clare hadn’t noticed any keypad, but she could tell what Russ was thinking. Tamper-resistant file cabinets in a wired and alarmed house must have been as close to a safety deposit box as Ellen Bain could come without actually going to a bank and leaving a paper trail.

As Trip unlocked his way through the cabinets, Eric and Clare pulled out the lowest drawers and set them side by side on the desk. They ran out of room well before Trip ran out of files. “I’ll get the card table,” Flora said.

Clare tugged on the next-to-last drawer. Something shifted inside, thudding against the metal front.

“Look at all this.” Eric kept his voice low. “Do you think he’d have put it under her name? Or stuck it in anywhere?”

Clare drew the cabinet drawer out slowly. It didn’t look any different than the others. Lots of manila folders, color tabbed, hanging on rails.

“Mom kept everything.” Olivia looked up from where she was going through the top left drawer. “That’s the reason there were so many boxes. Everything and copies of everything.”

Clare unlatched the metal tab holding it in place and lifted it from the cabinet. She tilted the drawer one way, then another.
Thunk. Thunk.
“There’s something in here.”

Russ took the drawer from her. “See if you can get it out.”

Clare shoved the folders back. A hefty envelope file had been wedged into the bottom of the drawer. She grabbed it and wiggled it free. It was more than an inch thick, its flap held in place by two thick rubber bands. She showed it to Trip.

“I’ve never seen it before.” His mouth twisted. “That I can remember.”

“What is it?” Will asked.

Russ let the drawer thunk onto the carpet. “Let’s see.” He removed the rubber bands and opened the flap. The folder was stuffed with papers.

“Here.” Flora toted a card table through the door and kicked its legs into place. “You can put it here.”

Russ dumped the documents onto the surface. Clare picked one up: three sheets stapled together. The first two pages were an accounting, directed to the financial administration of the coalition, for thirty metric tons of steel rebar. It was detailed enough to make her eyes swim—cost of transport inter- and intracountry, cost of labor, percentage cost of insurance, interim and final disposition. The sheet stapled to it was much simpler: an invoice from Birmingham Steel to BWI Opperman for five metric tons of rebar. She flipped back to the second page. There was a string of signatures: one from the Secretary of Finance (Coalition), one from the Quartermaster General’s Office, one from the Field Director of Operations (BWI Opperman), and one from the CID Compliance Officer attached to 10th Financial Support. That signature was neat, firm, and recognizable.
Lt. Col. Arlene Seelye.

“Russ.” Clare held the document out for him to see.

“I know.” He read the signature. He showed her the papers in his own hand. “This one’s for insulation. Five thousand square feet billed to the coalition, with an invoice for seven hundred and fifty square feet from a distributor in Kentucky.”

“Are they all bills?” Eric asked.

“This isn’t. This is a copy of a legal document.” Will had parked his chair at the edge of the card table and was flipping through a hole-punched collation of thirty or more pages. “I think it’s a contract for services between BWI Opperman and the coalition government.”

Olivia looked over his shoulder, her forehead creased. “My mom didn’t have anything to do with the legal department.”

Clare picked up another paper. Rubberized tiles. She read another. Ductwork. And another. Sewage piping. All of them billing for five or six or seven times the attached invoices to BWI. All of them signed
Lt. Col. Arlene Seelye.

“I just noticed this.” Eric pointed to the bottom corner of one of the elaborate coalition accounting forms. There was a small slash, followed by
MM.

“Mary McNabb.” Clare handed the form to Russ. “That was Tally’s real first name.”

“She prepared these,” Russ said, “and Arlene Seelye signed off on them. Every one.”

Clare leaned against the paper-strewn card table. “There must be fifty of these paired-off invoices.”

“More, I think,” Will said.

Trip ran his fingers over one. “These are all copies, not originals. Ellen must have spotted the discrepancies early on and started keeping track.”

“I don’t understand,” Flora said. “
Was
Ellen involved in some sort of criminal activity?”

“No. It looks like she was documenting someone else’s fraud.” Russ pointed to the legal document in Will’s hand. “Can I see that?” Will handed it over. Russ scanned the first page. Flipped through a few more pages. Stopped and folded the sheet over. He held it out to Trip. “Double-check me. What’s this contract worth?”

Trip pulled a pair of reading glasses on and examined the page. “Sixty million dollars.”

Clare breathed in.

“BWI Opperman signed a contract in which it was paid sixty million for construction in occupied Iraq,” Russ said. “Your sister was the accounts-payable bookkeeper for that part of the business. It was her job to keep track of and pay the bills BWI Opperman’s special projects department generated.”

Trip nodded.

“Somehow, she got hold of the invoices on the accounts-receivable side.” Russ held up one of the coalition forms. “I doubt she was ever meant to see these. She put the two side by side and saw BWI Opperman was buying and shipping about a sixth of what they were billing the government for.”

“You mean they were pocketing the difference?” Will said.

Eric took the copy of the contract from Stillman. “Holy shit. That’s fifty million dollars.” The sum seemed to hang in the air for a moment.

“Fifty million dollars,” Will said, “and they just disappeared it into a bunch of papers.”

“The company wouldn’t even have needed to suborn the folks who hand out the contracts,” Clare said. “All they needed to buy was the army clerk who created the invoices and the finance investigator who was there to prevent fraud.”

“It sure explains Seelye’s actions, doesn’t it?” Russ’s voice was dry. “No wonder she wasn’t interested in splitting the million with Nichols. She was already on the BWI Opperman payroll.”

“They must have promised to pay Tally off, too.” Eric turned toward Russ. “Do you think they screwed her over after she did her part? Is that why she stole the cash?”

“No. She got paid. With Wyler McNabb’s job.” Clare looked at Eric. “Tally’s mother said Wyler always felt he owed his job to Tally.
That
was her payoff. He went from being a high school dropout to having an income that bought them luxury SUVs and casino vacations.”

Russ nodded. “He knew about the contract fraud. He didn’t know Seelye, but he knew about the fraud. That’s probably why he got named manager. One less person outside the fold. When she deployed a second time, her husband went over with the crew.”

“Huh.” Eric picked up the contract again. “And then he sees the money the DOD’s flying in and starts thinking,
Why shouldn’t I get mine?
If his wife can cover up the theft of fifty million, it’s a cinch she can hide a single pallet of cash.”

Russ chewed the inside of his cheek. “I’ll bet you a million of my own Opperman and Seelye had no idea that money had been stolen. They must have been shitting bricks when Nichols started investigating.” He tilted his head toward Flora and Olivia. “Excuse my French.”

“Wait.” Clare dropped the paper she had been holding. “Opperman?”

“
Mr.
Opperman?” Olivia’s eyes were wide.

“Who do you think was behind this? The man is the CEO and controlling shareholder. He owns the company. The real theft here isn’t shrink-wrapped cash. It’s fifty million dollars, and it wasn’t stolen by someone seducing an MP or sweating a pallet onto a cargo plane. It was stolen by people wearing suits and signing agreements in air-conditioned offices. It was stolen by someone who believes people can be bought and sold with gifts and jobs and, and”—he looked at Olivia—“four-year scholarships to SUNY Geneseo.”

“No.” The girl went pale. “Oh, no.” Her aunt put an arm around her shoulder.

Russ leaned forward and braced himself on the rickety table, his large hands spread protectively over the documents there. “But Ellen Bain wouldn’t be bought. She assembled this evidence, and she brought it to the one soldier she knew she could trust. Her brother.”

Clare could picture it. Ellen Bain, picking her brother’s brain for information on the military police and the financial affairs divisions, entrusting the package to him, swearing him to secrecy. Not knowing that within a day or two, he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone even if he wanted to.

“Why didn’t I warn her?” Trip’s voice cracked. “If we talked about all this, why didn’t I call the police and keep her here until the law took over?”

Clare ached for the self-accusation in his voice. She knew what it was like to ask
Why didn’t I?
after it was all too late. “You couldn’t have known, Trip. She probably thought she was risking her job and her benefits, not her life.”