One Was a Soldier

“What did you talk about?”

Trip stood there, still, pale, his mouth slightly open. Only his eyes moved, darting from side to side as if trying to find an escape from his head.

“Dr. Stillman?”

Clare could hear the man’s breath rasping in and out.

Flora Stillman’s face pinched in worry. “Darling, you must remember. It was the last time we saw her alive.” She glanced up at Russ. “I assumed they were talking about their mother. She’s been getting a bit difficult, and he tries hard not to drag me into it.”

“Was that what you were talking about, Dr. Stillman?” Russ’s voice had sharpened, like a knife that was about to cut through to the truth. It could be a family member, looking to inherit. “Your mother?”

Silence. Clare heard a rattle in Trip’s throat, like the harbinger of death. “I can’t remember.”

Flora faced Russ. “He’s been under a lot of stress lately.”

“I don’t need word-for-word. The general gist is fine.”

“I can’t remember,” Trip said.

Russ stepped toward him. “You can’t remember what went on between you and your sister the last time you saw her alive? Even though you were alone together for an hour?” He dropped his voice. “Maybe that wasn’t the last time you saw her. Maybe you were up at the resort the night of July twenty-ninth. Maybe you were watching as she drove away.”

“For God’s sake!” Flora threw her arms around her husband, as if to prevent Russ from dragging him away.

“I can’t remember.” Trip’s face fell in on itself. “I can’t remember anything.” He disengaged from his wife. “I’m sorry, Flo. I’m so sorry. I’ve been lying to you. To you, to the partners, to everybody.”

Clare had the stomach-dropping sensation of seeing her own life reenacted as a morality play.

“I’m not-I don’t have PTSD. I’m not stressed, or getting older, or preoccupied. I have a traumatic brain injury to my frontal lobe. The effects include migraines, impaired judgment, and a pervasive loss of short-term memory.”

Flora pressed her hand over her mouth. “Oh, dear Lord.”

“I diagnosed myself back in…” He wiped his hand over his eyes. “I don’t know. Back in the summer, I think. Not long after I got home.”

Flora squeezed her eyes shut. “I knew something was wrong. I knew it. I thought maybe you were drinking or taking drugs or-” She hiccupped and started to cry. “I don’t know what I thought.”

Stillman folded his arms around his wife. “Oh, Flora. I’m so sorry.”

“I should have said something,” she sobbed. “I should have made you go to a neurologist instead of trying to ignore it and hoping you’d get better.”

Trip shook his head. “No, sweetheart, no. I wouldn’t have listened to you. I’ve been in carry-on mode since I figured it out.” He bent down so he could peer up into her face. “You know. Stiff upper lip. Onward, the six hundred.”

Flora gasped, a cross between a laugh and a sob.

“Your PalmPilot,” Clare said, coming around the table toward him.

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-mache skeletons playing instruments, golfing, and otherwise enjoying the afterlife. Russ touched a skeletal police officer with a fingertip. “ Calacas. From El Dia 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.