A Knife Edge

TWENTY-EIGHT

It was still dark outside when the cell started ringing, dragging me from a sleep so dark and deep it was like I had to crawl up from the bottom of a coal mine. I stumbled around the room, barking my shins on various bits of furniture and swearing until I located my pants and pulled the goddamn thing out of a pocket. “Jesus H. Christ,” I muttered under my breath. The ringing stopped. The screen announced one missed call. Who the fuck would be ringing at five a.m. on New Year's Day, for fuck's sake? The question was enough to vaguely awaken my curiosity, which was still more asleep than the rest of me, and every bit as grumpy. “It had better be the goddamn Pope,” I said aloud.

Half asleep, Clare asked, “Who is it?”

“What? Don't know yet. Missed it.”

The cell suddenly buzzed in my hand. I stabbed the green button. “What?” I snarled at the caller.

A recorded voice informed me that I had a new message. I hit the button.

Sounds of a party spilled out of the earpiece. “Special Agent Cooper? You there, dude?”

It was a familiar voice, but I couldn't place it.

“Happy New Year! Hey, I found out why that slut, Amy fucking McDonough, didn't turn up for work today.” Boris — Boris from Elmer's — with a head full of ecstasy and booze from the sound of it. “She's in Pensacola General, dude. She went to see her doctor and ended up there. Just heard the news from some bimbo friend of hers at this shindig here. Hey, sorry about what happened yesterday. That was, like, totally rude of me, you know? Anyway, like, Happy New Year. Have a nice life.”

“Everything okay?” said Clare, rising onto an elbow, now fully awake.

“Yeah. Might have a lead on Ruben Wright's girlfriend.”

“That's good.”

I wasn't sure what to do — go back to bed, or get an early start.

“You coming back to bed?”

“Thought I might take a shower.”

“Sure. But first, let's get you all dirty.”

Clare sure knew how to settle an argument.

The first of January was shaping into a fine day. At breakfast, Clare and I ate enough for four. The old lady in the orthopedic shoes approved, a healthy appetite being, so she said, akin to a healthy mind. If only she knew. Maybe she'd give it some further consideration when she changed our sheets and wondered why we appeared to have baked a cake in bed.

Clare headed back to Fort Walton Beach with her bag of tricks, looking forward to picking up her son and hanging out with him for the day. I went the opposite way — into town and Pensacola General Hospital. I'd called beforehand to make sure Boris wasn't pitching me a curve ball. An Amy McDonough had indeed been admitted.

I made my way to the front desk and badged the person sitting beneath the word “Reception.” She was a petite, small-boned woman wearing frameless glasses on the end of her nose and a thin blue cardigan around her shoulders. She reminded me of a frightened bird. The woman checked the computer screen after pecking at a few keys. Yes, Amy McDonough was a patient, but not for too much longer. She told me the computer expected that Ms. McDonough would be checking out in the morning, once the doctors had done their rounds. I asked what McDonough had been admitted for and was told I'd have to speak with a doctor. She also gave me a ward and directions to help find it.

Even with the directions, locating the ward wasn't easy. The hospital was a rabbit warren of additions piled on carelessly over the years with little thought given to the whole. Once I got to the ward, though, Amy McDonough's red hair made her easy to spot. She shared the room with a woman who was lying on her side, a fluid the color of butterscotch flowing through a tube attached to her gut into a plastic bag hanging below her bed. She was snoring lightly. Amy was sitting up flicking through an old Vanity Fair. The Hollywood couple on the cover were embracing and smiling ferociously for the camera. It was the same couple who'd recently battled through the divorce courts, ripping into each other and each other's bank accounts.

I held up my badge. “Ms. Amy McDonough? Special Agent Vin Cooper. I'm with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. I'm looking into the death of Master Sergeant Ruben Wright. I believe he was a friend of yours.”

McDonough bit her lip. Her eyes watered and then plump tears plopped onto her cheeks.

“Can I help you, sir? It's a bit early for visiting hours.”

I turned. A guy — who looked too young to get a driver's license — wearing a doctor's coat with a stethoscope over a shoulder was standing behind me, hands on his hips, head at an indignant angle. I showed him the badge, which, I hoped, would have the effect of automatically extending visiting hours. “I'm inquiring into the death of an associate of Ms. McDonough's,” I told him. “I have just a few questions for her.”

The doctor motioned me to follow him around the corner, out of earshot. “I won't be releasing the patient today. I'm concerned about her mental state. She's in shock.”

“Can you tell me what her medical problem is?” I asked. The look he gave me let me know I was about to get the old doctor-patient-privilege lecture. I headed him off at the pass. “Look, Doc, I'm just here to ask a few questions about the deceased. Your patient's not a suspect. I'll be sure to tread carefully.” The doctor appeared to wrestle with this spray of half-truths. The moment of indecision lingered, and then he said, “She's anemic — lost a lot of blood.”

“You want to tell me why?” I was thinking maybe a gunshot wound, or maybe a—

“She came here after having her pregnancy terminated at a clinic. Started bleeding and wouldn't stop.”

An abortion. That wasn't on my mental list. Maybe it should have been. I kept the surprise out of my face.

“You have ten minutes,” he said.

I walked back into the ward, feeling a little like the clouds had thinned to reveal a hazy sun. Amy McDonough was now sitting up, legs over the side of the bed, blowing a puffy red nose into a wet wad of tissues. “I'm going to ask you a few questions,” I said, using my most soothing tone, the doctor observing my bedside manner from around the door. I gave him a brief reassuring smile. He frowned and walked off down the corridor.

I dropped the act and sat on the bed opposite the redhead. “Did Ruben know you were pregnant? And that Butler was the father?” I asked.

McDonough sniffed, and avoided eye contact. “Yes. I didn't tell him, but he knew.”

“Who told him?”

“I don't know.”

I did. Wignall's comment about Butler came to mind: He's the type who likes to get the business done quick so he can get down to the pub and brag to his friends about it.

“Did you know Ruben had multiple sclerosis?”

“What?”

“You weren't aware of that?”

She shook her head. Her chin quivered.

“He was diagnosed with it a couple of months before he died,” I said.

She shook her head again.

“Did you know one of the symptoms of MS is impotence, Ms. McDonough?”

“God, I didn't know…”

“What was your relationship with Ruben Wright?”

“We were f-friends.”

“I thought you were more than friends — lovers, perhaps.”

“W-were … Our relationship had changed.” She took a deep breath and shuddered.

“Was he aware of that change?” I asked.

McDonough nodded.

“Do you think Ruben was suicidal?” I asked.

“I don't know.”

She didn't appear to know a lot.

“How long have you been seeing Chris Butler?”

She looked at me like I'd just stepped on her foot.

“What did Butler say when you told him you were pregnant?”

“He said, ‘Get the little bugger cut out.'“ Her face crumpled as she began to sob. I gave her a moment. I remembered the night down at Laguna Beach, her and Butler across the bar, watching them drink a cocktail of anger, regret, and sadness — the way couples do when they're in a spiral dive with no hope of re covery.

“Did you know Ruben may have been trying to have you removed as a beneficiary of his will?”

“No,” she said, regaining a little composure.

“But you knew you were a beneficiary?”

She grabbed a couple of tissues from the box and loudly blew her nose. “We talked about it. Years ago.”

“So you knew how much Ruben was worth?”

“No.”

“When he told you that you were to be his chief beneficiary, he didn't tell you how much would be coming your way if he died?”

“He tried to. I didn't want to know — like it was bad luck or something. I didn't want to jinx him, us.”

Ironic, I thought, given what had happened to “him, us.” I had to hand it to McDonough; if she was lying, she was a pro.

“Have you had a conversation with Ruben's lawyer about the will yet?”

More shakes of the head. “Never spoken to him, you know, not one on one. But I received a letter from him. There's a reading next week.”

I was just getting into my stride on this Q & A when I heard, “Your ten minutes are up.” It was the minor-impersonating-a-doctor. He pulled the chart at the base of the bed and examined it as a nurse entered the room and began to fuss, herding the patient back under the covers. The sheets billowed as she pulled them over McDonough's legs. The nurse then turned her attention to the curtain beside the bed. She gave it an aggressive tug and it raced around the overhead rail, cutting me off from McDonough. End of interview.

I drove back to Hurlburt Field, putting it together in my head. There were big holes. Butler told me he wasn't having an affair with McDonough, but McDonough hadn't backed him up. She'd just aborted his child. When the issue of paternity could have been settled with a test, it had to be Butler who was lying.

Butler had also said he didn't know where McDonough lived or worked. Was that an attempt to stall me from talking to Amy long enough for her to have the pregnancy terminated? Had he hoped I wouldn't find out about her condition before he went back to England?

As for the pregnancy itself, Amy had apparently learned of it seven weeks ago. Around the time that Ruben made the call to his lawyer to — it was still an assumption — have his will changed. Was the timing of the two events significant? Had to be.

And what about Ruben's MS medications? Where were they? If he'd destroyed them before the fatal jump, what would that say about his death? That he intended to commit suicide? Maybe, but if he was intent on taking his own life, why bother hiding them at all? If Butler took him by surprise that night, wouldn't his drugs have been reasonably easy to find? Hmm… perhaps, perhaps not. I reminded myself the MS was a condition Ruben was intent on keeping a secret from the Air Force. According to Dr. Mooney, he required a cocktail of drugs taken at regular intervals during the day, and that meant having ready access to them. I found myself back at the start: Where did Ruben keep his stash? And, given their relationship, was it really possible McDonough didn't know about his MS?

The weather had changed. The Gulf had become a sheet of blue glass beyond the Pensacola Bay Bridge, rippled here and there by puffs of wind. It was the kind of day that caused me to think hurricanes were a figment of the collective imagination. But I knew that was not the case. The seeds of destruction were buried somewhere out in the Gulf, just waiting for the right conditions to germinate.

As the SUV chewed through the miles, the same thoughts kept going round in my head: Sergeant Ruben Wright, my old CCTs buddy, was not the kind of guy who'd take his own life, but he was most definitely the type who'd take the enemy with him, especially if he thought there was no way out. How would he face up to the challenge of knowing his mind and body were deteriorating and, with it, his career and the relationship to the woman he loved?

Enter Butler — young, fit, and virile, three realities his girlfriend was experiencing firsthand behind his back, and on hers. Learning that Amy was pregnant and Butler was the father would have been hard for Ruben to take. And when he found out, would that have been catalyst enough to change his will? I knew his condition was deteriorating rapidly. What about his mental state? Was that crumbling, too?

It could have gone down exactly as Butler said it did. Ruben was depressed, jealous, and angry. When the SAS unit came out of the C-130 all messed up, it wasn't just one of those things. Ruben made sure it happened that way by stumbling into the other guys and breaking up the formation. He'd then slammed into Butler in midair with the full intention of causing him some significant damage. Then he cut his own thigh strap with his knife and pulled his rip cord. Gravity and Newton's Laws of Motion did the rest, separating him from the chute. The unlikely method of his suicide, coupled with the significant bruising Butler would have suffered in the collision, the smashed flashlight… What investigation wouldn't put those things together in a light that would make Butler look bad? Ruben Wright's sweet revenge. The last desperate act of a desperate man.

Before I was aware of it, I'd driven fifty miles and the sign for Hurlburt Field appeared. I turned into the base, showed the security detail my shield, and drove to OSI. I slotted the Explorer between another SUV and a late-model Harley-Davidson.

My cell rang. I pulled it from my pocket as I passed Agent Lyne. Lyne glanced up from his desk and called, “Vin, there's a—”

With Lyne spinning in my wake, I walked into the room I'd been using as both an office and a warehouse for Ruben Wright's effects. A staff sergeant I didn't know, dressed in immaculate Class As, was standing among the trestle tables. Under one arm was his cap. In the other was an envelope, all official. “Special Agent Vin Cooper?” he asked.

I nodded as I pressed the cell's green button.

“Orders for you, sir.”

In my ear, I heard a familiar voice. “Vin? Arlen.”

I accepted the envelope from the sergeant. “Hey, Arlen. What's—”

He cut me off. “You know that little vacation you've been having down there at Uncle Sugar's expense?”

“What?”

“It's over.”