Читать книгу Once Stalked - Блейк Пирс - Страница 14

As Riley watched the six uniformed men carry Sergeant Worthing’s flag-draped casket to the gravesite, she admired the solemn cadence and precision of their actions.

She was also struck by an eerie contrast between this ceremony and his actual death. The murder of Sergeant Worthing had been abrupt and brutal.

His funeral was elegance itself.

The military cemetery was in a lovely place, high on a hill in a remote part of Fort Nash Mowat. Riley could see the Pacific Ocean in the distance.

Riley, Lucy, and Bill were standing off to one side of the ceremony. She could see Sergeant Worthing’s widow and family seated on folding chairs beside the grave. She could watch the fifty uniformed young men and women in Worthing’s training platoon standing stiffly at attention.

She also spotted civilians of an unwelcome sort nearby – a small group of reporters and photographers crowded behind a rope barrier.

She stifled a groan of discouragement.

After three murders, there was no longer any way to keep the press away from Fort Mowat. The publicity was certainly going to add to the pressure of solving the case. Riley just hoped that the journalists wouldn’t make too much of a nuisance of themselves.

Probably too much to hope for, she thought.

Once the coffin was in place over the grave, the chaplain began to speak.

“We commend to the almighty God our brother, Sergeant Clifford Jay Worthing, and we commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust …”

Riley was surprised to feel herself choke up at the chaplain’s words.

What was it about this funeral that was getting to her?

Then she realized …

Daddy.

As a Marine captain, her father had been eligible for a funeral with honors like this one.

Had he gotten this kind of funeral? Riley didn’t even know. Not only had she refused to go to his funeral, she’d taken no part in its planning. She’d left all that to her estranged sister, Wendy.

She’d never grieved over her father’s death. Nevertheless, she felt sad at the thought that he might not have been buried with full military honors. But who would have gone to the funeral, aside from Wendy? Riley’s father had died with no real friends as far as she knew. And Riley and Wendy were all he had left of family.

Riley remembered something that one of her father’s former buddies recently told her.

“Riley, your daddy was a good man. But he was a hard man too. He couldn’t help it, ’Nam made him that way.”

Tears welled up in Riley’s eyes.

He’d been a terrible father. But he’d been a good soldier. He’d given everything he had to the Marines – including his humanity, his capacity to love.

As the honor guard lifted the flag and held it taut above the casket, Riley thought …

He deserved this.

Riley thought she should have made sure her father had his full honors funeral, even if no one had been there to witness it except Wendy.

She was jolted out of her sad reverie by the firing of guns. A seven-person squad fired three volleys into the still air. Then the quiet was broken again by the mournful sound of a bugler playing taps.

The honor guard ceremoniously folded the flag, and an officer presented it to Sergeant Worthing’s widow. The officer whispered something to her – doubtless some word of support of support or solace.

Then the officer gave the family a slow-motion salute, and the service was over.

*

Before Sergeant Worthing’s platoon could leave the cemetery, Col. Dana Larson called them together. She introduced them to Riley, Bill, and Lucy and told them that they were here to investigate the three recent murders.

Riley scanned their faces, looking for some telltale sign of emotion. She detected nothing – certainly not grief.

She guessed that many of the recruits had hated Sergeant Worthing’s guts and weren’t sorry that he was gone.

Riley stepped forward and spoke to the gathered recruits.

“My colleagues and I are very sorry for your loss. We don’t want to disturb you right now, just after the ceremony. But if any of you has any information that might help us, we hope that you’ll talk to us.”

Then the platoon was allowed to disperse. Riley, Bill, and Lucy broke up and wandered among them, hoping to draw somebody out. Pretty soon two recruits, a young man and a young woman, approached Riley. They introduced themselves as Privates Elena Ludekens and Maxwell Wilber.

They seemed to be uneasy and reluctant. Riley thought she understood why. Informing on a fellow recruit couldn’t be easy.

Riley said, “Look, I get the feeling that Worthing wasn’t the most popular drill sergeant at Fort Mowat.”

The two recruits nodded and mumbled in agreement.

Riley continued, “But we’re looking for someone whose animosity was out of the ordinary. If you know anyone like that, please tell me.”

Ludekens and Wilber looked at each other.

The young woman said, “The sarge really rode one of us especially hard.”

“His name’s Stanley Pope,” the young man added.

“Tell me about him,” Riley said.

The young man said, “He’s got a real mouth and a bad attitude. The sarge busted him for it.”

Riley felt a surge of interest.

“Busted him?” she said. “Explain that to me.”

The young woman said, “Almost all of us in the platoon are PV1 – private E-1. Just ‘fuzzies,’ they call us, because of this.”

She pointed to a blank Velcro patch on her shoulder.

The young man said, “When we get through basic training, we’ll get our ‘mosquito wings’ – chevrons – to show that we’ve become second-class privates. But Pope had his mosquito wings already when he came to Fort Mowat.”

“How?” Riley asked.

The young man shrugged.

“You can come in as a second-class private if you have an associate’s degree. Or if you’ve got a Boy Scout Eagle badge. That’s how Pope got his.”

“But he talked back to the sarge once too often,” the young woman said. “So the sarge busted him, took away his chevron, demoted him to PV1 – a fuzzy just like the rest of us. He didn’t take it too well.”

Riley’s curiosity was rising by the second.

“Where can I find him?” she asked.

Private Wilber pointed to the gravesite.

“He’s right over there,” he said.

A young man was standing alone beside the grave, looking down at the casket with his arms on his hips.

Riley thanked Privates Ludekens and Wilber, who wandered off. Riley saw that Bill and Lucy had each found some recruits to talk to.

Riley walked toward the private who was standing beside the grave. He was a lanky young man with an intense, brooding expression on his face.

What’s on his mind? she wondered.

She planned to find out.