The Deadly Embrace (17 page)

Stuck between the next two pages was a wrinkled and faded card. Taggart pulled it out of the diary. It was one of the Red Cross cards distributed to American soldiers held by the Japanese and Germans. Dated September 12, 1943, it consisted of just one line: “J.P. Am still alive. I love you, darling. Lloyd.”

I can’t even send him letters or keepsakes. All the official army types will tell me is that he is in a prisoner-of-war camp somewhere in Japan. I have decided to go with the rest of General Kilgore’s staff to North Africa. He has promised to do his best to help Lloyd and me from there. And I’ll be a couple thousand miles closer.

Kilgore had waited almost three months before making his move. They were in North Africa by then. He was on the Allied senior staff—one of the commander-in-chief’s “eyes and ears.” It was apparent that J.P. now only wrote in the diary when in the clutches of despair.

Algiers, November 2, 1943 … There is no one else I can tell these things to. My life may just as well be over. I got awfully drunk last night and not for the first time. But this time he helped me up to one of the guest rooms at Ike’s compound. I don’t remember a lot of what happened after that, but the following morning he apologized and offered me money. In my anger I took it, figuring that it was money that would help Lloyd and me make a new start after the war. What have I become?

“I would like you to check for evidence of water in her lungs,” said Liza to Dr. Channing.

He looked at her as if she were an idiot and muttered, “Are you daft?”

“No, Doctor, I’m not,” she replied firmly. “Based on her rectal temperature at eight-thirty this morning, her state of rigor, and the room temperature in her apartment, one could have safely speculated that the time of death was somewhere around midnight. Yet we know that she didn’t even return to her apartment until three-thirty this morning, which means that something dramatically depressed her body temperature after death. As you know, water conducts body heat away up to twenty-six times faster than air of the same temperature. So I asked for a blood screening that might reveal hypoxemia, and I would now ask that you also check for signs of a petechial hemorrhage in the brain.”

Dr. Cabot was gazing at her with a goofy smile on his face.

“Holy shit,” he said, admiringly.

For the first time since the start of the postmortem, Dr. Channing looked at her with a glimmer of professional interest.

“A submersion injury is largely secondary to hypoxia and ischemic acidosis,” he said, bringing his miner’s lamp to bear on J.P.’s fully exposed heart. “Fluid aspirated into the lungs should have also produced vagally mediated pulmonary vasoconstriction and hypertension. Let’s have a look.”

I am a different woman from the one Lloyd left behind. Kilgore is now finished with me. I knew it from the minute that the new blonde arrived in the office. She can’t even type or take dictation. He said that he had found another important use for me. I am to become an even more invaluable member of “the team
,”
another set of “eyes and ears.” “You never know what kind of information you’ll pick up, honey,” he said. From now on, he will tell me who he wants me to sleep with, when, and where. When I said no, he became very angry. He even suggested that Lloyd might find out what I have already done. My head aches and I can no longer write.

“No indication of hypoxemia and resultant acidosis,” said Dr. Channing, switching off the spotlight and wiping his hands again with the towel. “No signs of asphyxia or water in the lungs… Nothing to suggest cardiac arrest consistent with even dry drowning. No petechial hemorrhaging.” The door to the suite swung open again, and an orderly came forward with a small brown envelope.

“I was told to bring a .25-caliber bullet here,” he said. “It was just fired.”

“Give it to him,” said Dr. Channing, pointing at Dr. Cabot.

Picking up the bullet he had removed from J.P.’s brain, Channing tossed it to Cabot, who caught it in midair. “I want you to see if they match under a microscope.”

“I’m not a trained ballistics expert,” said Dr. Cabot.

“I doubt if you’re even a competent surgeon,” Channing replied, “but you don’t have to be. A good microscope will tell us all we need to know for now.”

“Fine,” said Cabot angrily. “Just don’t ask me to make you look young again.”

Taggart finished his coffee and read the last entry in the diary.

Another part of me died this morning. I am so tired of these brass hats with their pompous arrogant staffs throwing their weight around on people who can’t fight back.

Utterly enraged, Taggart slammed the heel of his hand into the side of the desk. He only wished that he had his old heavy bag in the office so he could release the surge of anger that threatened to consume him. Maybe he was a throwback to a different time, but he found the way she had been manipulated by Kilgore, pimped by him, and then thrown away contemptible.

The phone began to ring on his desk. It was Liza.

“I will have a full report for you by tonight, but here are our preliminary findings,” she said. “Although there is a troubling question about the time of death, the pathologist and I agree that J.P. probably took her own life, and that the weapon was the 25-caliber revolver she was holding in her hand. The bullet in her brain matches the gun.”

Taggart already knew that he would be going after Kilgore one way or the other.

“As far as the contusions on her nipples and the other superficial injuries, the pathologist and I concur that these occurred several hours before her death—certainly before she came home at three-thirty,” she went on. “They are consistent with either a sexual assault or violent sex. There were only small traces of male semen inside her vaginal canal, but that is probably because she douched upon her return home and then took a bath.”

Taggart had stopped listening to her. He was remembering the initials he had seen engraved on the ivory butt-plate.

“E.K.”

He felt the furies rising inside him again.

CHAPTER 14

F
rom deep inside the labyrinth of the SHAEF building on Saint James Square, Taggart thought he heard a roll of thunder as he headed down a dark hallway and stopped at the big mahogany door. A polished brass nameplate identified the occupant of the office suite as Major General Everett Kilgore.

Taggart opened the door and stepped inside. A plump blonde WAC with Shirley Temple curls was painting her nails at the reception desk. She was alone in the outer office.

“I’m here to see General Kilgore,” he said. “I called earlier for an appointment.”

She looked up at him and smiled.

“I’ll see if he is receiving, Major,” she said, displaying glistening white teeth. The meaty solidarity of her was undercut by a thin, shrill voice.

After standing up from the desk, she took a moment to smooth the front of her uniform skirt before crossing the room to the door of the inner office. The curls bounced in poetic rhythm as she walked away from him. She knocked once and went inside, closing the door behind her. She was back out in less than a minute.

“He must have left while I was down at the canteen,” she said, slowly ambling up to him. “Would you like to wait?”

“Yeah,” said Taggart, wondering if this was the blonde that J.P. had written about in her diary.

“You’re real good-looking,” she said with a simpering smile. “I bet you know it, too.”

“It’s the uniform,” he said. “The uniform makes the man.”

She had a little button nose. Some men might have thought it was cute. Seeing her nostrils flaring up at him, Taggart thought it looked piggish.

“No, it’s not the uniform,” she said, unfazed. “So what do you do around here?”

She was standing no more than a foot away from him, her sculpted hips cocked in a provocative cant. He smelled good perfume.

“I’m Ike’s golf pro,” he said.

“You are not!” she said, her eyes wide. “Really?”

The door to the inner office swung open, and two officers came out. One was a colonel and the other a captain. They both had aiguillettes hanging from the shoulder straps of their uniforms, identifying them as staff aides. The colonel picked up a briefcase from the conference table and headed toward the door. He stopped a few feet from Taggart.

“Do you know how to salute a superior officer?” he demanded.

Taggart came to attention and saluted him. Frowning, the colonel returned it with crisp precision. When they left, Taggart walked over to a chair under the window and sat down. The WAC went back to painting her nails, her tongue extended between her teeth as she concentrated on the task. Occasionally, she would glance over at him with open interest and then smile.

Thirty minutes passed with no one coming in or out. Considering how busy the rest of the headquarters was, Taggart wondered what General Kilgore really did. Through the window, he watched as the pelting rain drubbed the sentries standing in front of the sandbagged entrance to the building.

He thought of J.P.’s diary, and it made him angry all over again. Like her, Taggart knew all about loneliness and unabated guilt. He was trying to clear his mind when the outer door opened and General Kilgore strode in. There was a physical heft about him, an aura of carefully cultivated dominance. Looking neither right nor left, he disappeared into his office. The WAC followed him through the door, closing it behind her.

Five minutes passed. The WAC came out again. She was no longer smiling.

“You can go in now,” she said nervously.

Kilgore was standing at the window of his large office with his back to the room. His hands were clasped behind his back. Dramatically turning to face Taggart, he pointed to the chair in front of the big polished desk.

A silver-framed photograph sat on the edge of the blotter. It showed a solemn General Kilgore with his arm around a portly, gray-haired woman, the two of them surrounded by four teenaged children.

As he sat down, Sam looked up at Kilgore closely for the first time. The shaved head and fleshy nose were vaguely reminiscent of Mussolini, but the small, close-set monkey eyes undercut any appearance of imposing intelligence. His carefully pressed uniform was obviously tailored. There was no disguising the barrel chest, linebacker’s neck, and long powerful arms. He used his physical menace to full advantage.

“I’ve made a little time to see you, Major,” said General Kilgore in his baritone voice. “I’m not sure why. I don’t like policemen.”

From across the desk, Sam picked up the scent of his strong aftershave. He remembered smelling the same cologne in one of the bottles in J.P.’s bathroom. The thought of it made him furious again.

“Yeah… we’re real popular wherever we go,” replied Taggart. “I assumed it was because I made it clear to one of your aides that if you didn’t see me I was going straight to General Manigault.”

“Didn’t you forget something, Major?”

“What’s that?” asked Taggart.

“Sir,” commanded Kilgore.

Taggart forced a lazy grin.

“Sir,” he repeated.

“Staff cooperation within the security command is vital,” pronounced Kilgore, his jaw rigid. “We need to make sure everyone is on the same page. As I’m sure you know, there is an invasion coming.”

“Yeah… and I’m sure you know that Lieutenant Barnes is dead,” said Taggart, adding, “sir.”

The general’s silver eyebrows suddenly arched in a steeple of sympathy. When he stepped away from the desk again, Taggart’s eyes strayed down to his feet. His polished black boots had two-inch lifts.

“I was deeply sorry to hear about that,” he said, as if fondly recalling a good soldier fallen in battle. “I gather it was a suicide.”

“A suicide?” said Taggart.

“I just assumed....I’ll confide something to you,” he said. “She wasn’t very happy with her life. Her husband survived the Bataan death march and is being held prisoner by the Japs.”

“Yeah I know,” said Taggart. “But that’s pretty gamy coming from you, General, isn’t it, sir?”

Kilgore was staring out the window as if the fate of the invasion hinged on his continued delivery of well-aged steaks and Johnny Walker Red to the top Overlord commanders.

“What did you say?” he demanded, pivoting to face Taggart.

“You’ll be sorry to learn that she was killed with your gun.”

“My gun?”

“The bullet they took out of her brain is a 6.35-millimeter slug. It matches your pistol—the one engraved with your initials.”

Kilgore stared at him for almost ten seconds.

“I gave that weapon to Lieutenant Barnes some time ago… for her personal protection,” he said, beginning to pace slowly back and forth in front of the window. “We were in North Africa at the time. There was a constant danger from street criminals. I was worried about every female member of my staff.”

“Because your heart is pure, is that it?” asked Taggart. “Sir?”

Kilgore’s mouth went hard.

“I won’t take that from you,” he said.

“Two young women from the same office have died in less than a week. Lieutenant Marantz says that you knew both of them.”

“I don’t know any Lieutenant Marantz,” he said.

“She worked in the same office,” said Taggart, “and said that after your return from North Africa you asked for them both by their first names.”

The general’s hand rose from the desktop. He extended it toward Taggart as if quieting an obnoxious heckler.

“You would be wise not to take this any further, Major.”

Taggart felt the rage steadily rising in him again, like a blazing fire.

“Where were you last night, General—say, from around three o’clock to five?”

“Asleep in my bed,” he came right back.

“Really? Which bed?” asked Taggart.