Flaherty volunteered that she was probably a local whore and their immediate assumption was that she’d gotten killed by a jealous boyfriend. What had made Flaherty curious was the fact that she’d been shot by a nine- millimeter bullet to the back of the head, just what Harris had asked the locals to be on the lookout for.
Flaherty held a handkerchief to his nose. The body was getting a little ripe. “I took the liberty of circulating her photo around some areas on the assumption that, looking Mexican, she was probably a prostitute. I was right. A couple of her coworkers gave me a name, Juanita Morales, said she worked alone, and said she left with a middle-aged white guy the night before she was found.”
“Anything more about him?”
Flaherty sniffed. “Nah. They were all busy earning a living and didn’t notice anything special about her new friend. They said he was kind of nondescript, frankly.”
“Great work, detective.”
“You think the killer’s the guy who’s wrecking your trains?”
“I would put serious money on it,” Harris said. “I owe you.”
“What do you want me to do with the body?” Flaherty asked. An autopsy would be performed, but that would confirm the obvious—death by bullet to the head. The police would keep her prints and a photo on file as a matter of course.
“Just give Miss Morales a decent burial. She may have died actually helping her country.”
“She’s Mexican,” Flaherty said with a slight grin.
“Okay, helping our country.”
Harris drove away with the bullet in a paper bag. An hour later and back on base, he and another agent were peering through microscopes, comparing the bullet recovered from the woman to the bullets extracted from the border guards and the Mexican kids.
“Son of a bitch,” Harris snarled, although he was not surprised. The grooves on the bullets had all matched. Whoever the saboteur and killer was, he was still on the loose and still killing.
CHAPTER 15
TIM ROLLED ON HIS SIDE AND LOOKED AT AMANDA, WHO WAS lying on her own beach blanket and looking contentedly at the full, billowing clouds. He thought they were cumulus but wasn’t sure. She knew he was staring at her and smiled slightly. She hoped he liked how she looked in her new two-piece bathing suit. Both Sandy and Grace insisted that it accentuated her very slender figure, while the light blue color went well with her lightly colored hair.
“Honey,” Grace had said, “if I had a flat belly and perky little breasts like that, I’d wear one of those suits too.”
However, Grace added, she didn’t. Her figure was more on the voluptuous side and she really needed something to help tuck in her tummy. Like most women, she wore a girdle when out in public. Amanda generally did, too, although she didn’t think she needed one. Not wearing a girdle was liberating but it scandalized older women, which she sometimes found amusing. Where was it written in law that women, especially slender ones, had to wear a heavy and constricting girdle that made a woman sweat and itch? Grace said it made it so much harder for a man to undress her if she wasn’t willing, so maybe that was a selling point.
Sandy sat a few yards away from them with Steve Farris. They seemed to be hitting it off. After some initial shyness, there was now a lot of laughter coming from their blanket. Grace and Merchant were somewhere off on their own. The difference in rank was too much for them all to be comfortable, especially Steve, who was still only a first lieutenant, and Merchant, the Army’s equivalent of a full colonel. Amanda thought that the military’s fixation with rank was silly, but it was something they had to live with.
Amanda rolled onto her side so she could face Tim. “Like what you see?”
“Immensely. You’re beautiful.”
“I’ll bet you say that to all the women who lie half naked on a beach with you.”
“I’d even say it if you were totally naked.”
She giggled. Sandy and Steve turned to see if they were missing something, decided they weren’t, and went back to their own conversation. Amanda liked what she saw of Tim in a bathing suit, even though it was baggy and too large for him and admittedly borrowed from a friend. He was muscular and had told her that he worked out at one of the base gyms to relieve stress. She thought that lying on a California beach was a much better way of alleviating stress. The only mildly disturbing factor was the presence of several destroyers and patrol craft at the opening to San Diego Bay. She rationalized their presence by thinking that they would have been there in peacetime as well.
“Tim, every now and then you have a good idea and this is a wonderful one. Your nephew seems like a nice man and it looks like he and Sandy are hitting it off.”
The four of them were on a beach a mile south of San Diego and it was a Sunday afternoon. A number of other couples had similar ideas, which meant there was little real privacy. Steve’s unit was through packing, and his battalion had been given the weekend off, which was why they were near San Diego and not Steve’s small base. On Monday they’d be heading north and on to the vast wilderness of Alaska to confront the Japanese army that was slowly approaching Fairbanks. Steve was less than thrilled and Tim shared his worry. After all, the woods up north were filled with angry, hungry, and fanatic Japs.
“Will you ever go back to Hawaii?” Tim asked.
“No,” she said softly. “That part of my life is over. I wanted to spend a year or so there on a kind of lark that turned into a tragedy. From what I’ve heard about the horrors of living on the Islands, especially Oahu, I wonder if anyone will ever want to go there on vacation again. I’ll continue nursing here until I get the chance to go back east and then on to med school. Do you think I can make it and become a doctor?”
“Easily,” he responded.
Nor would she have much trouble getting into any med school. Not only was she very bright and well educated, but her nursing experience would help her immensely. And it would not hurt at all that her father was a senior surgeon on the staff at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. But would she like it as a woman doctor in what was a man’s world?
She sat up and brushed sand off her pale skin. “Let’s go in the water. I can’t stand too much sun.”
She’d earlier explained that her badly sunburned body was pretty well healed, but that her new skin was still very tender. The doctors explained that she might be susceptible to sunburn for quite some time, perhaps forever. Therefore, her time on the sun-drenched beach would be limited and infrequent, unless she wanted to wear clothing, which struck her as silly. Why go to the shore if you had to stay dressed? Today was just too nice to spend indoors and, besides, even southern California weather couldn’t be wonderful all the time, especially with winter on the horizon. She would take a few chances and enjoy life.
They waded in and then swam out beyond a large seaweed encrusted raft that shielded them from being seen by anyone on the beach. No other swimmers were in the area so they were deliciously alone. The water came just up to their chests and they stood comfortably, letting this day’s fairly gentle waves splash around them. If the sea had been any rougher, they wouldn’t have been able to stand out there. They would have had to climb onto the raft.
Pleased by the privacy, they slipped into each others’ arms and kissed tenderly, then passionately. Tim was aroused and didn’t care if Amanda knew it.
She nuzzled under his chin. “I guess you really do like me.”
Tim kissed the top of her head. He slid his hands down and lifted her up, squeezing her bottom. So far she’d permitted him very few liberties and he wondered what would happen today, out of view and already half undressed.
She read his mind. “You’re a very good man, Tim. Someday you and I will make love, just not right now.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t. I was hurt once, betrayed by someone I loved very much, and I thought he loved me.”
