assumption rests on his willingness to tell us what that reason was.
Beyond so-called compelling personal circumstances, that is.”
Karen did not like the fact that she was coming into this conversation cold, but she made her decision. “You do not have to reveal the reason, especially under these circumstances, I I she said, making it clear that she thought “these circumstances” had something of the flavor of a kangaroo court to them.
“Now look here, young lady,” Kensington began, but she ignored him. “I need to confer with Admiral Sherman,” she announced. “Privately. Excuse us, please. We’ll be right back. Admiral?” She took Sherman by the elbow and steered him toward the door.
“Goddamn it, JAG, she works for you. Do something,” Kensington protested, but Admiral Carpenter had a peculiar look on his face and was starting to shake his head. Karen pelled Sherman through the door of the inner office and pro then out into the A-ring corridor, pulling the outer door shut as she went through.
“What’s the deal?” she asked.
He sigped. “Mcnair’s told them everything. They want me to put my papers in. Ask for early retirement. If I don’t, they’re going to proceed against me for disappearing without notice. It would probably start with some kind of psych evaluation at Bethesda. Kensington started in with some kind of bullshit about how concerned they were about this Galantz situation. How they had lost confidence in my ability to focus on my duties with this extreme personal threat hanging over my head. How it would make the Navy look bad if I were to be hauled into a courtroom, an admiral in uniform, for being involved in two murders.”
“But Carpenter knows that’s a lie,” she argued. “He knows full well you’re not a suspect and that you were never involved.”
Sherman nodded as two commanders walked by, trying hard not to stare.
“I pointed that out. But strangely enough, Admiral Carpenter has had very little to say in there,” he said. He paused for a moment. “And I’m not about to beg him to speak up. If this is a setup, then he’s part of it’ ” Karen recalled what Galanti had said about the admirals being part of this. “But why?” she said. “You’re one of them. You’re a flag officer.
Why aren’t they protecting you?
Why are they so ready just to let you go over the side?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t done anything, other than bolt the other day.
And that wasn’t from fear of Galantz, but from overwhelming disappointment. You make flag, it’s not supposed to be this way., Karen.
Hell, at, this point, I’m ready to do what they want.”
“You shouldn’t do that. You should fight them.”
“But how? I don’t know where I stand. Kensington said he just got off the phone with the Vice Chief. If there’s a four-star against me, there’s no point in fighting it.”
Karen tried to make him look at her, but he resisted.
“You don’t know that,” she said. “He may just have said that. He may have been talking to the Vice about’t something entirely unrelated.
You said it yourself. You worked for all those years to wear these stars. At great personal cost, may I remind you.”
He looked at her then, and she saw in his eyes that he had crossed an important psychological bridge and was now prepared to bum it. He took her hands. “Karen, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? The career has been everything. For all those years, it was my career, my advancement. I was always so very important, so very busy. And now my wife’s in an institution, and my son is in league with my worst enemy. All for-what?
Preserving my almighty stars?” He dropped her hands, and the emotion seemed to leak out of him. “To hell with these people.”
“Is there anybody else you can talk to?” she asked. “Any other flag officers?”
He laughed. “My contemporaries are all guys against whom I competed for the first star. Now we’re competitors for the second star. If that three-star in there has put the word out, nobody in this building is going to return my calls.”
The door to the outer office opened, and a yeoman stuck his head out.
“Sir? The admiral was-“
“Yeoman?” Sherman barked.
“Yes, sir?”
“Bring me a pair of scissors.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Looking baffled, the yeoman retreated back into the office.
“Where’s von Rensel?” Sherman asked. “He’s … he’s gone looking for Jack, I think. He was supposed to wait at his house until we got back or he heard from Mcnair.”
Sherman nodded. The yeoman returned with a pair of scissors. Karen could see the EA standing at his desk, trying to see what was going on out in the corridor. Sherman pulled out his wallet and extracted his ID card.
He took the scissors and cut the ID card into four pieces. He handed the pieces and the scissors over to the yeoman. “Give these to your boss.
Tell him I’ve gone to look for my son.”
“But,-sir, the admiral-“
“Tell him what I said, young man. Tell him Captain Sherman left with his lawyer.”
Train stopped short of the clearing containing the decrepit trailer and checked his watch: just past 1:00 P.m. He looked around. He was standing behind a large scraggly bush, which put him mostly in the shadows. There were no sounds coming from the trailer, and the woods both above and below the trailer were silent and strangely devoid of birds and insects.
He wondered briefly about all the talk of snakes.
Gutter stood by his left side, ears up, eyes alert. Train eased the Glock out of its waistband holster, checked the chamber, and then sent the dog forward to scout the place out. Gutter trotted into the clearing surrounding the trailer, stopped, and then put his nose down and began to cover the ground between the trailer and the plastic- covered hootch to the right, where Karen had said she first found Jack.
Train considered crouching down but then dismissed the idea. He was simply too big to hide behind anything much smaller than a house anyway.
The place felt abandoned. He had thought he had seen the dark silhouette of a fallen-in house up there among the trees near the top, and there were signs that there had once been a road or a driveway, now entirely overgrown, beyond the dead tree. Gutter disappeared behind the trailer and then reappeared a minute later on the far side.
Train considered his options. The dog would find anyone hiding outside the trailer, although not necessarily someone inside the trailer. Karen said the guy rode a motorbike, and there was no motorbike in sight. As the day warmed up, the aroma from all the trash around the trailer was becoming stronger, accompanied by the whine of flies. He could not imagine someone living like this, and yet he knew that there were lots of other trailers just like this in these parts. The dog came loping back to him, and Train, satisfied that no one was lying in wait ahead, decided to go check out the trailer itself He looked over at the huge dead tree lying across the road, then took Gutter back to it, instructing him to stay down underneath the trunk. Train was pretty sure he could handle Jack if he was in I that trailer, and while he would have preferred to keep Gutter with him, he wanted the Dobe between him and those two thugs down below.
He could always call him in if there was trouble. GUTTLVR flopped obediently onto his belly, giving Train a mildly resentful look.
Train patted him, reinforced the command, and then walked down the path lea . ding to the trailer, proceeding carefully, with the Glock in his right hand but held down by his side. He went straight up to the door, - knocked, and then stepped back, holding the gun behind his back. He kept looking around the clearing to make sure no one was moving, hoping that Gutter still had a view of the clearing. He knocked again and called out Jack’s name. Nothing moved inside the trailer. He knocked a third time, more forcefully, making the side of the trailer rattle. Then he tried the door handle and found the door unlocked.
He looked around again and then pushed the door in, hard enough that it banged all the way back to the wall. He called Jack’s name again and then listened carefully, but there were no sounds coming from the trailer. The gun pointed up now, he went into the trailer. He felt the floor sag beneath his feet as he took shallow breaths against
