“Will do, Commander.”
Commander Stark hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. The springs under the seat creaked as they compressed, and he set his feet back on the surface of the desk. He replayed in his thoughts the things Eugene had told him. He mulled over the pieces of information, trying to acquire a picture in his mind of several different possibilities. Fifteen minutes later, the phone on his desk rang with the peculiar tone that indicated the call was coming from a secure cell phone carried by one of his troopers.
He picked it up and said, “Stark here.”
“Sir, this is Trooper Wyatt. You asked me to call,” a firm and confident female voice responded.
He explained to her what Eugene had told him, including incident specifics, the name of the Doyon security guard, and descriptions of the two men and their vehicle. Once done, he said, “You will also need to interview the two men at the Salt Jacket General Store. The owner, Linus Balsen, and a customer who spoke briefly with the suspects, Marcus Johnson.”
Without hesitation, she said, “Yes, sir. I’m about five miles from Johnson Road now, so I should be there in a few minutes.”
“Report directly to me on what you find. I’m heading home in a few minutes, so call my cell phone. I also want your written report to come directly to my desk. I’ll be handling this case myself.”
“Yes, sir.”
“By the way,” he added before hanging up, “we need to keep this under wraps, even from the rest of the command, until we get an idea of just what is going on. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. I won’t tell anyone else without an order from you.”
“Good. I’ll be waiting for your call.”
Stark hung up the phone and closed his office for the night.
“Caroline is going to be worried sick,” he said as he headed out the door. It was nearly ten o’clock.
Chapter 5
Richardson Highway
Salt Jacket Alaska
17 December
21:44 Hours
Trooper Lonnie Wyatt pressed the disconnect button on her secure cell phone and snapped it back into the cradle on the dash-board of the white turbo-charged Ford Crown Victoria police cruiser as she drove down the Richardson Highway toward Johnson Road.
Her mind reverberated with the name Commander Stark had mentioned: Marcus Johnson. The name of the man she had been in love with since high school, the man who had proposed to her. The man she rejected because he wouldn’t leave the Marines for her.
“I’ll kill Dad for not telling me he was in town,” she said out loud. She found herself shocked by the sound of Marcus’s name on her own lips. “Come on, girl. You’re an Alaska State Trooper. Keep it professional and get the investigation over with.”
Born Sukmi Kim, Lonnie was the adopted daughter of Eugene and Leslie Wyatt. The couple had taken her into their family while stationed with the US Army in South Korea in 1975. She was six years old when she had been orphaned after a relatively peaceful demonstration for student’s rights escalated into a nightmare as North Korean Communist infiltrators shot it out with South Korean soldiers and police. Her parents, graduate students at Yonseh University, had been on their way to pick Sukmi up from her grandmother’s house. They got caught in the crossfire and died huddled in each other’s arms.
Sukmi’s grandmother’s health declined rapidly after the loss of her only son. She had a stroke two weeks later and Sukmi found herself left to a neighbor. When it became clear that her grandmother’s condition would not improve, the neighbor took Sukmi to live in an orphanage. Because of her age—most people adopted babies—the little girl stayed there for nearly a year.
Then along came Eugene Wyatt, a twenty-two-year-old sergeant in the Communications Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, at Camp Casey. The Army base was located in the small city of Dongduchon, nestled in the mountains just north of Seoul. It was only thirty miles south of the demilitarized zone where North Korean soldiers faced off daily with their South Korean and American counterparts across a tense, three-hundred-yard-wide, land-mine-studded border manned by heavily armed soldiers from both sides.
Eugene had always wanted a family. He and his wife, Leslie, found that they could not have a child of their own. The couple decided that adoption was their best choice, and South Korea at the time was practically overflowing with children waiting for homes.
They drove forty miles to the city of Seoul and found the Blessed Angels Catholic Orphanage in the midst of the bustling metropolis along the banks of the Han River. When the Wyatts entered the courtyard, the children all stopped what they were doing and stared at the white-skinned, round-eyed Migook who walked past them. Looks of hope sparked on some of their faces, while others seemed to know that once again, they would be passed up. They turned away and sullenly continued their games. Eugene and Leslie had initially, like most couples, wanted a baby.
Six-year-old Sukmi sat alone on the concrete steps that led to the massive, dark wooden front door of the stone-and-timber-frame three-story building. The little girl had a single, thickly woven braid of long, black hair hanging down to the middle of her back. She looked up at the kind faces of the man and woman who approached. Her eyes were filled with the pain of a life broken, of hope nearly crushed. As they approached, Sukmi’s pleading gaze captivated both Eugene and Leslie as if her fragile soul cried out from within the tiny body, begging to be redeemed from the misery her life had become.
Eugene was immediately overwhelmed with compassion for the pretty little girl. Inside the building, he asked the nun who spoke with them about the girl on the steps. Once they heard her story, he and Leslie agreed that if she was willing to
