trying.”
“He said he would respect your wishes to keep this closehold,” she said, lying.
The admiral smiled again. “Sure he did. Well, I guess we’ll see. I’m still not used to the idea of Galen’s being gone, which is more important than my professional worries.
Anyhow, the weekend cometh. I don’t suppose the police will be working this over the weekend.”
“Should I call if something comes up?”
“No, I don’t think so. Oh, you can always leave a message. But I’ll be out of town until late Sunday. If you have anything to report, call me at home Sunday, why don’t you?
Otherwise, I’ll be in the Pentagon Monday until about eleven hundred; then I’ll be headed down to the Academy for the service.” He paused. “Do you want to come to the service?”
She was taken off guard. “Well, I-“
“It’s going to be a pretty big deal. The CNO and most of the bigs will be there. Full military honors. CNO’s office is handling the arrangements.” He paused. “It’s just that things seem to be happening when you and I are together.”
She must have assumed a strange expression, because he was suddenly backpedaling. “That didn’t come out right, Commander. Karen. What I meant was-“
It was her turn to smile. “I think I understand, Admiral.
If someone is watching us, we might be able to see who it is if we make the effort to look.”
“Yes. That’s what I meant. If that makes you nervous-“
It seemed to her that he was the one being nervous. “I have a suggestion,” she interrupted. “Let me see if I can get Train von Rensel to come along, too. He keeps reminding me that he’s the trained investigator. He might see something we don’t.”
He stood up. “Good idea. Let him see this record, and that picture. It’s old, but it’s a start.” She stood up as well and gathered her purse. The admiral continued. “Maybe we ought not to tell the cops too much about von Rensel. Let him work the web independently. If he and NIS can ferret out Galantz, perhaps we can take care of this problem inhouse.”
She thought about that as they walked out of the lounge.
“Well, I think that’s a good idea, up to a point. I mean, Mcnair knows he’s in the picture. And we already told them we’d try to get some NIS help. But if Train can get a line on Galantz, then we probably need to let Carpenter decide when to bring in the police.”
“Of course,” he said quickly. “Let me call us a cab back to the Pentagon. Then I’ll walk you to your car.”
SUNDAY Late Sunday morning, Karen was reviewing her tax forms when the light of the beautiful spring day streaming through the study windows overwhelmed all her good intentions and drew her outside. She walked down to the barn and spent a few minutes talking to Sally, but then the extension phone in the tack room started ringing. It was Detective Mcnair.
“Commander, good morning,” he said. “Sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but we need to find Admiral Sherman. No one’s answering at his home, and a patrol car reports his car’s gone. Any ideas?”
“He’s out of town. Let’s see, he told me he’d be away until this evening, I think. I don’t know where, though. Has something happened?”
She almost said had something else happened.
“Well, yes and no. Remember your syringe? The lab report came back on it late Friday. The thing is, we need to get Admiral Schmidt’s body into the ME’s lab. There’s something we need to check out.”
Karen felt her heart sink. “Don’t tell me: There is a connection between that syringe and Admiral Schmidt’s heart attack.
“Whoa, now, Commander. You’re getting way ahead of us. We just need to check some things.”
“Are you talking about doing an autopsy?”
He paused, as if trying to decide how much he could tell her. “Well, a partial one. Normally when the deceased’s own doc pronounces, we don’t do an autopsy. But we need Admiral Schmidt’s blood type, and a sample, if we can get it. There was human blood and a residue of potassium chloride in saline solution in that syringe.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”
“An injection of the right amount of potassium chloride into a vein can stop a heart. Admiral Schmidt died of a massive heart attack.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah, well, we’re still speculating at high speed here.
But someone left a syringe in your car, a syringe that hadn’t been cleaned or rinsed out. Almost as if someone wanted us to make this connection. Potassium chloride, Sherman, and the old man’s heart attack.”
Karen found herself nodding into the telephone handset, at a total loss for words.
“Commander?” Mcnair said at last.
“I’m here. I just don’t know what to say, other than Admiral Sherman and I had a conversation very much like this Friday night. We were trying to figure out why in the hell someone called into nine-one-one to report a Navy guy doing dope in a parking lot. We wondered if it was really about the syringe and not him.”
“Well, we pulled that string, too. Asked the nine-one-one dispatchers to check their logs to see where that call came from.”
“And?”
“No joy in Mudville. The caller-ID function was disabled because the phone company is changing around all the northern Virginia area codes.
They’ve been taking segments of the caller-ID system down after nine P.m.”
Karen was silent again. Damn. So it could have been Sherman making the call himself. Sally stuck her head into the tack room and waved good-bye. She had a folder of show entries under her arm. Karen waved back and then remembered the Galantz records.
“Oh, we have the SEAL’s archived records,” she told Mcnair. “They came in late Friday afternoon. There’s a picture, although it’s many years out-of-date, and taken when he was very young.”
“We’ll want anything you can give us. And I think maybe we need to meet again.”
“Yes, I agree. So does Admiral Sherman. But he wants me to go with him to the service in Annapolis on Monday afternoon.”
“He say why? Or would that be normal?”
Karen hesitated, then explained their reasoning, leaving out the fact that Train would also be going along. It was Mcnair’s turn to hesitate.
Finally, he agreed to the logic, although he seemed to question the prudence of it.
“Look, Commander, this guy’s stawng Sherman. If that was him calling nine-one-one, then he’s seen you. If he’s bent on knocking off people close to Sherman, he may target you next. He seems to have no problem finding out who’s who.
“That thought’s occurred to us, Detective.”
“Yeah, I suppose it has. Well, let me get onto this other problem. If Sherman calls you, can you let him know what’s going on? We’re scaring up a court order to do the partial autopsy. Fortunately, there aren’t any grieving relatives, so we plan just to do it. Hopefully, we’ll beat the embalmer.
Oh, by the way, there is the outside possibility that the Navy may have to do their ceremony around an empty box Monday.
“Oh, wonderful. You get to tell the CNO’s office.”
“Yeah, I know. But we need to schedule that meeting. I don’t like the way this thing’s shaping up. Technically, if Schmidt was iced, this qualifies as a serial kill.”
“On that optimistic note-“
He laughed. “Yeah. Right. We’ll be in touch. Watch your back, Commander.”
Karen hung up and walked out of the tack room and into the empty aisle way, the skin on her back tingling just a little.
Sally had left, and the horses were turned out. She stood for a moment in the shadows of the aisleway, thinking about what Mcnair had said: “Watch your back.” There it was again. The barn was empty, and the concrete aisleway felt cold and threatening in comparison to the bright rectangles of warm sunlight framed by the doorways at either end.
