An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) (29 page)

“I’ve done some of that already, but go on.” She could hear his pen scratching across paper.

“You’ll need the actual dates of each one, the exact locations, details to help identify one from the other. Then march over to the Pentagon and file a Freedom of Information Act request on each one. Stipulate that what you want are the actual crash investigation teams’ findings. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah. Go on.”

“Well, that’s a start. Then get up to Hartford, Connecticut.”

“What’s up there?”

“AeroStar’s headquarters. You’re looking for someone who will verify that General Hickman’s in line for a consulting position on the 81’s new minesweeper. And while you’re up there asking, throw around Figueredo’s name too. See what happens.”

Perimeter Road was busy with lunchtime traffic and runners. Chase felt guiltier with every Marine she passed. Had she done the right thing? Perhaps she should have called her contacts at Public Affairs in DC instead and asked for help, but she knew what action they’d have taken. They’d have run whatever she told them up to the next link in the chain of command, and eventually, someone would have picked up the phone and called Hickman or Farris or Figueredo. She’d have given almost anything to have been able to discuss this with General Armstrong, but he was still in Iraq. Had Figueredo been lying about Armstrong initiating this so-called investigation?

She was driving past a group of runners in matching shirts and shorts from one of the squadrons; she didn’t catch which, though the name would have been written on the backs of their shirts. How turbulent her life had become. Nothing had been normal since Major White’s helicopter crash and her wreck. Oh, who was she kidding? Nothing about her life had been normal since the war—since she and Stone had been separated a year, her in Iraq and Stone in Afghanistan. Nothing had been normal about their reunion, either, thanks to Stone’s survivor’s guilt, his drinking, and her own survivor’s guilt that involved her infidelity with General Armstrong.

She hadn’t planned to stop at the commissary on the way off the base, but a banner stretched across the front of the base theater advertising a Halloween party and open house reminded her she needed candy for trick-or-treaters that evening, and lots of it. Ridiculous that she had to worry about this now, but she did. Stone had always called her the master of compartmentalization, and well, she glanced at her watch. She could make it. The candy would most likely be up front near the registers. She would dash in and out and still make it to Okamoto’s by 1200. Besides, so what if she was a few minutes late?

A Halloween display with creepy fake spider webs was easy to spot. Chase walked the length of the display, passing the picked over ghoulish masks and costume packages with their flame retardant assurances. She made her way to the candy, taking in the choices of hard candy, candy corn, and chocolate bars. As a child, she’d always looked forward to Halloween, to dressing up, to walking down sidewalks at night, passing princesses, witches, ghosts, and black cats. She liked to pretend she was alone, that her father wasn’t a few yards behind her—even then she was pushing for independence. She’d try to put as much distance between herself and her father and brother as her father would allow before calling after her to slow down. How different Molly was, and suddenly Chase was wondering if perhaps she was doing something wrong as a parent. Shouldn’t Molly be pushing for a certain amount of independence? As a mother, shouldn’t she be encouraging her daughter to do so?

She grabbed several large bags of the individually wrapped chocolate bars—the Nestle Crunches, Snickers, and Hershey’s miniatures—candy she considered the best Halloween finds when she’d returned home with her brother and emptied their orange pumpkin-shaped buckets in the middle of the living room floor for their parents to inspect.

“Trick, or treat?”

Chase jumped. She was staring into a familiar face nearly concealed by a ball cap worn low on the forehead so that even the man’s eyebrows were hidden. “Major—”

Major O'Donnell held up a finger to quiet her. He looked over his shoulder at the shoppers waiting in line for checkout. Satisfied, he turned back to Chase. “Walk with me.”

Chase could feel her heart beating against her chest. O'Donnell was supposed to be in the psych ward of the base hospital. What if someone spotted the two of them together? How would she explain it? For that matter, how had he gotten from the base hospital to the commissary? Of course, it was more than coincidence that he should find her there. So, after two weeks of everyone believing he’d suffered some sort of mysterious mental breakdown, here he was. He appeared much the same, a little taller maybe than she remembered, but perhaps that was because he also looked so thin.

She followed him reluctantly, neither of them speaking until they rounded the aisle out of the front view of shoppers in checkout lines, and then it was Chase who broke the silence. “I’m supposed to be downtown at police headquarters in half an hour.”

O'Donnell paused in front of the rack of magazines and romance novels and eventually feigned interest in a magazine about homebuilding. He flipped through the pages. “You talked to Joe Figueredo?”

“Talked and then some. You should have warned me the colonel was capable of assault.”

“What? Impossible.”

“I assure you, sir, I know when I’ve been assaulted. I had to kick him out of my house last night. I plan to call Major Sims this afternoon and report the colonel for breaking and entering.”

“You’re making a mistake. Look, Figueredo is one of the most honorable men I’ve ever known, Chase. We go all the way back to OCS. The man distinguished himself during the first Gulf war and was handpicked by Armstrong for colonel above all of us.”

“Major, I’m telling you …

“And I’m telling you, Chase, that Joe Figueredo is the real deal. I don’t know what happened between the two of you last night, but I can easily imagine that in the course of his investigation that’s involved your husband he’s probably grown pretty protective of you … maybe he’s even developed feelings. Hmm … Armstrong won’t like hearing that.”

“What? You knew?”

O’Donnell returned the homebuilding magazine to the rack and selected another, this time a fitness magazine with a beefy bodybuilder and pretty blonde in a yellow bikini on the cover. “I was Armstrong’s administrative officer, Chase. Of course I knew.”

Oh my God,
she thought. Why couldn’t a hole just open up right here in the commissary aisle and swallow her? But that would be too kind, she supposed. Karma supported the need to humiliate her over the infidelity, so now she could add O’Donnell to the growing list that also included, apparently, Colonel Figueredo. Until now, the list had been short: Armstrong, of course, and Sergeant North.

O’Donnell said, “Armstrong’s been worried about you ever since learning that your husband died, since I told him what was going on over here with 464 and Hickman’s influence over Farris, and how Hickman has been playing you.”

“I don’t even know what to say, Major—”

O’Donnell interrupted. “Look, let me spell this out for you. I’m not crazy. Whistleblowers commit suicide, so goes the old saying. I’ve been working with Armstrong and Joe for months now, even signing myself into the hospital to throw off Hickman’s suspicions. But I don’t have time to pull punches for you, so here goes.” He put the fitness magazine back among the others, but out of place, with the stack of magazines for motorcycle enthusiasts, then turned to face her. He was unsmiling, a much more serious version of the Major O’Donnell she’d known all these years. “Brace your pretty ego, Skipper. Hickman’s been playing you for months, ever since he got a consulting job offer from National AeroStar. Remember the crash last year that prompted your little media dog-and-pony show? Tony was your pilot?”

Chase nodded. “Stone and I argued over it. He didn’t want me to go.”

“The day after, Hickman called me into his office and told me to stop bugging DC with phone calls about replacing you. He said it was best to keep you right where you were.”

“But I don’t understand. He’s been acting for months now as if he’s finally satisfied with my work. The Navy Commendation Medal …”

“All to keep you bluffed, dumb, and happy. And not asking too many questions. Look, Hickman’s not getting that second star. This cushy defense consulting job is as good as it gets for a retired general. Hickman will get to play big man in DC and get paid five times more than his cronies, but only if National AeroStar keeps the M-81 and gets the new minesweeper contracts. You’ve been Hickman’s pawn in all this. Everybody’s been afraid to talk to you, afraid of spilling something. Afraid you would screw up so bad Hickman would have to replace you with a senior officer he might not be able to push around.”

How naïve, no
cocky
, to believe she’d won him over. She’d fallen right where he wanted because she’d always had to prove herself at every job. Even with Armstrong at first…. Her head was suddenly throbbing and her forehead felt hot and damp. She wiped away the sweat and rubbed her palms together. They were sweaty too. “Colonel Figueredo confirmed last night that Major White had a hard landing three weeks before his crash—”

“And it never got reported,” O’Donnell said, finishing the sentence for her. “Not one problem with a National AeroStar helicopter—and believe me, there have been plenty you don’t know about—not one has been reported.” His voice dropped several decibels. “Until Tony’s crash, of course. Even Hickman couldn’t hide that one. He went nuts when Farris called him with the news. I was there, catching up on paperwork. Hickman was screaming into the phone, calling Farris incompetent and a whole lot more …” She thought back to Farris’ voice on the phone that day as North was driving her back to the office.
I trust you’ll handle this delicately
. But by then the media were already gathering at the main gate, waiting for her statement.

“Stone’s in the middle of all this, Chase.”

“Stone could never have been blackmailed if it meant putting his Marines in danger.”

O’Donnell’s face screwed into anger. “What did Joe tell you about the blackmail?”

“That Stone made the mistake of following Farris’ unlawful order a little over a year ago to alter the squadron’s maintenance records. But I know my husband, and Stone would never have allowed himself to be blackmailed.”

O’Donnell was staring at the floor. “That’s all Joe told you about Stone?”

When he looked up at her, she saw something in his face she couldn’t recognize. God help her, was it … pity? “Yes,” she answered.

O’Donnell ran his hand over the bill of his ball cap as if he might consider removing it. Then he rubbed his eyes. “Can’t be helped, can’t be helped,” he kept muttering to himself.

“What can’t be helped?”

He let out a heavy sigh. “Yep, Joe’s in love with you all right.” He removed the ball cap, ran a hand over his high-and-tight stubble, and wedged the cap back on his head. “Goddamn it!”

“I assure you otherwise, sir.”

“It’s the only explanation.”

The only explanation for what? This was maddening, and she’d had enough. She reached out for his shirt sleeve and tugged hard, pulling him toward her, and whispered, “What the fuck are you talking about, Major?”

He glanced down the aisle and nodded toward the woman who was pushing a shopping cart with a toddler in the seat, swinging his little legs and reaching out at everything that seemed within his grasp. The woman, preoccupied, was shaking her head at the boy’s every request as they rolled by Chase and Major O’Donnell. Chase watched them reach the end of the aisle and disappear. She was about to ask again, when O’Donnell held up a finger to stop her. Two giggling teenagers—one grabbing for hairstyle magazines as she passed Chase—disappeared around the corner.

“What has this got to do with Stone?” she demanded to know.

“Joe’s obviously trying to protect you. No wife would want to know this about her husband—”

“Are you going to tell me Stone really was having an affair with Melanie Appleton? Colonel Figueredo claims he’s the one who was sleeping with her. Was he lying about that?”

O’Donnell looked like a man who would have rather faced a firing squad than face Chase Anderson at that moment in the aisle of the commissary. “Chase,” he whispered, “Stone was not having an affair with Melanie Appleton.”

“Okay, then what is it?

“Stone was having an affair with Tony White.”

Chase’s knees buckled and she felt herself floating down on airy nothingness until O’Donnell, anticipating this reaction, reached out with a rough hand to catch her. “I’m sorry,” he kept muttering as she tried to steady herself with one hand on his forearm and the other on the magazine rack and dry heaving every few seconds. “You left me no choice …” he added. “Joe left me no choice …”

CHAPTER 17

A
s soon as she cleared the gate, she dialed Paul Shapiro’s cell phone. Just minutes after O’Donnell’s bombshell of information, she’d somehow managed to keep it together enough to get through the checkout line and to the rental car. She was vacillating on a wheel of emotions that ranged from self-loathing to pure rage. How dare Stone put himself in such a situation that had led to the endangering of so many lives! If Stone or Tony White had stood up to Farris and Hickman, White’s crash could have been avoided, as well as all those senseless deaths that went along with White’s crash. All the senseless deaths from all the 81 crashes since … how far should she look back?

Before she left O’Donnell at the commissary, he had tried to soften the blow by explaining that Stone and Tony would have done nearly anything to avoid humiliating her and Kitty. O’Donnell explained that someone, he wasn’t sure who, had intercepted a revealing email between Stone and Tony, and the email was all Farris and General Hickman needed to keep Stone where they wanted him. By blackmailing Stone to sign false maintenance reports, the co-conspirators were confident they could ride out the rest of Hickman’s time on active duty. Hickman had guaranteed Farris a position as well.