One Was a Soldier

packages, wondering if it had gone missing between Plattsburgh and the resort and they were barking up the wrong tree, wondering why he was spending his Saturday here, in a place he loathed, instead of looking at properties with Clare, wondering where she was, what she was doing, what she was wearing-

“Russ! Get up here.” Lyle’s shout snapped him out of his reverie. Jesus H. Mud-Wrestling Christ. Love was making him soft in the head.

He trotted back up the corridor. “Look at this.” Nichols pointed to a narrow door set into the corridor. It must have swung inward, because boxes marked LATEX PAINT and H-455 AC FILTERS were stacked tight on either side.

“Locked?”

“Uh-huh. Deputy Chief MacAuley is on the phone with the manager right now.”

“She’s coming down with the keys.” MacAuley stepped back within hearing range, snapping his phone shut.

Within minutes, they heard the brisk tap-tap-tap of LeBlanc’s heels. She had pulled her chatelaine off her waistband and was flipping through the keys and cards. “Oh.” She stopped when she saw where they were. “I’m afraid that’s just the alcohol lockup. The wine cellar, if you will.” She held up a key. “Do you want to look anyway?”

“Yeah.” Russ tried to keep the doubt out of his voice.

She opened the door. It was, as promised, stacked with crates of booze and racks of bottles. No shrink- wrapped pallet. No stacks of cling-sealed money.

Russ walked away as the manager resealed the room. He listened with half an ear to Lyle, asking her about other rooms, asking her where a bookkeeper or a construction worker might go with no questions asked.

“I’m sorry,” LeBlanc said, “there’s really no order to the storage in this area. It’s just shove it in where you can. If it was important to be able to access something quickly, it would have been unpacked and put somewhere else. The garage, or the tool shed, or the power plant-this is a big complex.”

Important to be able to access something quickly . McNabb delivered a pallet here. He’d want to be able to find it again, no matter what outdated appliances or busted furniture got stacked on top or in front of it. So how would you mark it? Not on the floor. People would notice. Nothing right by the thing-it might get moved. He looked up, to the shadowy space above the hanging fluorescent lights. Cement blocks rose smooth and unmarked to where massive I-beams transected a dim, unfinished ceiling. Pipes and conduits and electrical wires, barely visible but there, open for fast repairs. Hard to reach, unless you were authorized to work in the area, but-he made a tossing motion, as if he had a ball in his hand. You could throw something.

He spotted it. A length of bright orange twine, the stuff you could pick up at any sporting goods store. Each end was tied to what looked to be, in the half-light, a stack of heavy-duty washers. A homemade bolo. Curled around a cold water pipe, hanging a few inches off either side. You’d never notice it unless you were looking straight up-and who would be staring past the lights instead of getting in and out as fast as possible?

“Here,” he said.

“What?” Nichols trotted down the corridor toward him. “How do you know?”

Russ pointed at the dangling cord.

“I’ll be damned,” Nichols whispered.

“Help me move this stuff.” He and Nichols started removing the plastic five-gallon buckets piled like a wall beneath the marker.

“Wait. Look.” Nichols leaned against the stack of boxes to the left of the buckets and pushed. The cardboard tower slid away, revealing a dolly, empty except for a blue plastic tarp. Nichols pulled it toward himself. It rolled easily out into the open corridor.

Peering into the narrow, shadowy space they had revealed, Nichols breathed in. “I think this may be it.”

“Let me see.” Russ replaced Nichols in the gap. He could see white opaque plastic stretched over a cracked and splintered wooden pallet. The corner closest to the wall had been ripped open and resealed with duct tape. Russ tried to reach it, but he couldn’t fit.

“Let me try.” Lyle was five inches shorter and a good fifty pounds lighter than Russ. He squeezed into the angular space sideways. Past the rest of the buckets, he was able to turn toward the wall. He got down on one knee. Russ could hear the ripping sound of tape being torn away.

“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.

FEAR THE LORD, YOU THAT ARE HIS SAINTS, FOR THOSE WHO FEAR HIM LACK NOTHING.

– Psalm 34, The Book of Common Prayer

MONDAY, OCTOBER 17

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?”