His cigarette holder waggled from side to side in his mouth.
“You inspected J-two?” I asked. J-2 was the place where Whitcomb had stolen the typewriter.
“Yeah.”
The window above us was open and cold air billowed in like a small gray cloud. I was grateful for the fresh air.
“The violations wouldn’t have been caught at all without surprise inspections,” Strange continued. “They were small things. A safe left open during the workday while everyone was out of the room for a couple of minutes. A Top Secret cover sheet on a Secret document. Things like that. The only other thing I noticed was a couple of documents out of numerical order. Just slightly out of place. As if someone had been in a hurry and shoved it back into the file without checking the numbers. Not something many security clerks do. Finding an out-of-sequence document can be a bear. Take you all day. So you learn to be careful.” He shook his head. “That wouldn’t have bothered me at all if it wasn’t for the rumors I’ve been hearing.”
“What rumors?”
“Not violations, exactly. Just shit being tampered with. A guy down at Camp Market. He swears nobody but him touches his files, but when he comes in one morning, a couple of documents have been moved. He’d placed them in the file a certain way, flush up to the left side of the safe. In the morning, they were in the center.”
“You security guys are a meticulous lot.”
Strange ignored me. His cigarette holder quivered a little faster.
“Another guy at Army Support Command swears somebody came into his office. Dust that he leaves atop the filing cabinets on purpose was moved. Not much. Just like somebody had breathed on it.”
“So why didn’t he report it?”
Strange looked up at me wide-eyed, as if I were mad.
“And have a bunch of outsiders tampering with our files? We in security handle our own properties. Don’t need a bunch of ham-handed MP’s stomping around.” He thought about that for a minute. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
Somebody new entered the latrine. We were quiet until he urinated and left.
“That pig didn’t even wash his hands.” Strange scowled.
“Some people,” I said. “So tell me what happens. You security NCO’s get together sometimes and compare notes. And if you find something suspicious going on you investigate it yourself?”
“Dick Tracy.”
“So what’ve you found out so far?”
“Nada. Zilch. Not a goddamn thing. But we’re keeping our eyes open.”
“If somebody did break into those files, how would they do it?”
“Not from one of us, that’s for sure.”
I waited.
“All of our combinations have to be backed up. In case we’re killed in the line of duty or smothered from muff diving or something. There’s always a security officer.”
The words “security officer” came out as if they were something unclean.
“Usually a young lieutenant assigned to keep an eye on an experienced security noncom. A young dick who doesn’t know shit about security.”
“So the security officer might’ve compromised the combinations?”
“Who else?”
“I don’t know. There’s no other way?”
“Had to be those young shitheads.”
“But compromising each one of them, at all those different compounds…” I shook my head. “Sort of difficult, isn’t it?”
“Only way. It couldn’t have been experienced NCO’s.”
“I see you’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“Sure have.”
“Keep your ears open. Watch the security reports. If you hear anything else, especially about Captain Burlingame at J-two, let us know right away.”
Strange nodded.
“Also, can you find out what the subject was of the documents that were tampered with at J-two?”
Strange looked at me from beneath raised eyebrows. “Do you have a need-to-know?”
“I might. In an investigation you’re never quite sure what you need to know.”
He lowered his eyes. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good. Can I buy you a beer?”
“No. No beer.” His cigarette lighter waggled. “Had any strange lately?”
He was persistent, that’s for sure.
“Not much. Only a couple of sisters out in Itaewon.”
“Yeah?”
“Both of them skinny. Listen, I’d tell you all about it but I have to get out there.”
“Pity.”
“I’ll fill you in completely next time we talk.”
“That’ll be soon?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
I left Strange in the latrine. As I walked out, the door to the commode creaked shut.
What with all the running around on the Whitcomb case, Ernie and I had fallen seriously behind on our black market detail paperwork. I wandered back to the CID office. It was dark now and cold, but when I strode down the familiar creaking hallways, there was still warmth left in the old brick building.
I turned on the lamp over Riley’s desk, rummaged around for some typing paper and some carbon, and went to work.
It was quiet here. Relaxing. Sometimes I enjoyed working late. It gave me time to think. Time to review details that I might’ve missed early on.
But no matter how much I tried to concentrate on the black market paperwork, I couldn’t keep my mind off the Whitcomb murder. And the murder of Miss Ku.
I wondered about what Strange had told me. About a bunch of paranoid security clerks losing sleep because a folder had been misfiled or a rat had knocked some dust off a safe. Security guys were a bunch of kooks. Every one of them weird in some way, and Strange was the weirdest of them all.
Still, there could be something to it. They were sensitive to these things. But what did it have to do with the Whitcomb case? Probably nothing. Cecil had gone to J-2 to swipe a typewriter. That’s all.
I shoved it out of my mind and continued typing the reports on the black-marketeers we’d arrested.
After a while, I fixed myself a cup of coffee and sat down in a vinyl chair in the break area. Maybe I nodded off for a few minutes, I’m not sure, but what brought me fully awake was the sound of footsteps.
They seemed to be coming from down the hallway. I pulled the. 38 out of the shoulder holster.
Holding the short barrel in front of my nose, I crouched forward through the doorway and out into the hall. Nobody. I squatted, listening.
More sounds. Something creaked. Not in the hallway, but down the stairway that led into the cellar.
I didn’t remember the last time I’d been down there. Maybe the time we shuffled some furniture around the offices. There was nothing down there now but a big old cast-iron coal furnace and some supplies that the cleaning crew used.
Staying close to the wall so the old floorboards wouldn’t squeak as much, I walked to the front of the stairway and listened again.
No sound now.
Whoever was down there must’ve heard me.
If it was one of the janitors working late, the light would be on. But it was dark down there. As dark as the night that embraced the ghosts of Cecil Whitcomb and Miss Ku.
I reminded myself that I had the revolver. It was loaded. Five shots. I stepped down the stairway.
