scene. “The First Sergeant called me this morning,” he said. “Told me that he couldn’t get a rise out of Miller. Corporal had spent the night in the safe room, same as every month the night before payday.”
The Captain paused. The room was silent. A platoon of officer candidates passed by outside. Train could hear their boots crashing on the frozen Georgia soil, hear them singing the unofficial Fort Benning Infantry School song.
They were past the company office now, their voices growing fainter. But Train knew the song, as well.
“Safe room door is secured with a hasp and padlock inside and out,” Captain Coughlin resumed. “Not exactly Fort Knox, is it, but it’s the best Uncle gives us to work with. Miller locked his side, I personally locked the outside. Sergeant Dillard, Lieutenant McWilliams and I all have keys to the outside lock, but that wouldn’t get us in if Miller didn’t open his. You see?”
Train grunted, then remembered himself and replied, “Yes, sir.”
“That’s why we had to use the fire-axe.” Lieutenant McWilliams sounded as if he disapproved of the whole proceeding.
Train knew the type. It was all beneath him. All beneath Mister Phillips Anderson McWilliams of the Newport and Palm Beach McWilliamses.
Captain Coughlin grasped Train’s bicep. The touch came as a shock. Officers didn’t touch enlisted men. They might become contaminated. Coughlin’s grasp was remarkably powerful. His fingertips dug into Train’s arm.
“What are you doing in this outfit anyway, Train?” He released Train’s arm, stood eye-to-eye with him. Train was taller by four inches easily but he felt no advantage in facing this older man. “Why are you here? Why didn’t you apply for a commission? You ought to be in CID.”
“Criminal Investigation Division? Me, Captain?”
“I said that, didn’t I?”
“Yes, sir. I – I just have to get through Basic first, don’t I?”
“Course you do. All right. Look, I’m calling on your skills, soldier. You know how to deal with a crime scene. You know how to conduct an investigation.”
“Sir.” Lieutenant McWilliams interrupted. “Sir, you’re risking big trouble, sir. This is against regulations. Don’t you want me to call the Provost Marshal? I really think that would be best, sir.”
Captain Coughlin said, “Train, I want you to get to work on this. I’m relieving you of your other duties. You don’t need the training anyway, you know everything a soldier needs to know.”
After another silence Coughlin asked, “What do you need, Train?”
“I don’t suppose you could get me an evidence kit, sir?”
“I’d have to get it from the Provost Marshal. The jig would be up.”
Train pursed his lips. He crossed the room, stood near one wall. He touched his fingers gingerly to the thin structure, then examined them. Fresh whitewash. He laid his rifle carefully on the floor, bolt lever upward. He went back to the doorway and examined the splintered wood.
“Who did this?” he asked.
“Sergeant Dillard.”
“Did you see him do it?”
“McWilliams and I were both witnesses.”
“What time was that?”
“McWilliams and I had breakfast together at the mess hall. Sergeant Dillard came pounding in there to get us.” He looked at Lieutenant McWilliams.
The younger officer said, “We ate at 0530 hours, Train. We were finishing our meal at approximately 0555 hours when Sergeant Dillard arrived. He was out of breath, seemed upset.”
Captain Coughlin grunted. “Go on, McWilliams.”
The Lieutenant looked annoyed. For a moment Train was puzzled as to the reason, then he realized that Captain Coughlin had called him McWilliams, not Lieutenant McWilliams. Train held back a smile.
“We came through the day room, saw the lock was open from the outside. We tried to raise Miller but we couldn’t. So the Captain had Sergeant Dillard use the fire axe.”
“And this room-?” Train inquired.
“What about this room?”
“Did you touch anything? Move anything? Sir?”
McWilliam said, “Nothing.”
Train stationed himself just inside the doorway, studying the damaged wood and the area around it. The walls themselves were made of thin plasterboard. They had been recently whitewashed. Train bent closer to the door- jamb. He studied the wood and the adjacent plasterboard. He didn’t say anything.
Behind him, Lieutenant McWilliams said, “Aren’t you even going to look at the corpse, Private?”
Train turned back, made what might have been an almost imperceptible bow to McWilliams, then addressed Captain Coughlin. “I’d like to be alone at the crime scene, sir. If that’s possible, please. I know, well, normally in police work there are a lot of professionals present. Photographers, fingerprint men, coroner’s people, detectives. I’m not a detective myself, sir, but I’ve been at a lot of crime scenes and I was hoping for a promotion to detective. But we don’t have those professionals here, so if I might, sir, I’d like to be alone in this room.”
“Not possible!” McWilliams sounded furious. “This – this buck private, this plain GI – just because he used to be a flatfoot pounding a beat, wants to act like a big shot and order us around, Captain? Who does he think he is? He belongs back in his barracks, the Provost Marshal should be in charge.”
Captain Coughlin let out a sigh. “Just go and – I tell you what, Lieutenant, scamper over to the mess hall and get us some coffee, will you?”
“I’ll have Sergeant Dillard send a man.”
“No, McWilliams, you go yourself.”
This time Train couldn’t restrain his grin. The Lieutenant looked as if Captain Coughlin had asked him to march around the parade ground in his skivvies. The air in the room was so full of tension you could have picked it up on a Zenith radio. But at last the Lieutenant took his leave.
Captain Coughlin said, “Train, I’ll be in my office. You call me if you need anything, otherwise just come on out when you finish in here.”
Captain Coughlin winked at Private Train. Yes, he did, he actually winked at the buck private. Then he left the safe room. He stopped and drew the damaged door shut behind him, the hole that the fire axe had gouged out admitting light from the outer room.
Train took one more, confirming look at the splintered wood and the adjacent plasterboard. The whitewash was recent enough to show traces of fingers dragging vertically on the door-jamb, then sliding horizontally onto the plasterboard.
Returning to the corpse, Train knelt and examined the two cold hands, first one and then the other. As he’d already noted, the fingertips were white. He lifted them and sniffed. There was whitewash on them.
He studied the wound on the side of Miller’s head, feeling through the bloodied hair to try and determine whether the skull was damaged. It didn’t seem to be. He scuttled across the linoleum and returned with his rifle. He stood over the body, holding the weapon so that its butt-plate was adjacent to the wound. He walked around the body and tried again, from behind.
It didn’t fit. Miller had been hit with something smaller than a rifle butt.
Train studied the safe. He wasn’t an expert safe man, he didn’t know very much about locks, but there was no evidence that the safe had been forced or blown open. If it had been, there would surely have been some reaction
