Blood Lines

51

›› Intensive Care Unit

›› Las Palmas Medical Center

›› El Paso, Texas

›› 0721 Hours (Central Time Zone)

In the wake of his daddy’s confirmation that he’d killed Dennis Hinton, Shel took a moment to gather his thoughts. Then he asked the question that he most feared to get an answer to.

“Why?”

Tyrel lay back and stared at the ceiling. He licked his lips. “You really want to get into this, Shelton?”

“I don’t have a choice, Daddy.” Shel knew his voice sounded cold and distant. It was the only way he could speak at the moment.

“Might be easier if you had someone else asking these questions.”

“Yes, sir. It might. But I don’t think, after all these years, that you should be looking for the easy way out of this.”

Tyrel snorted. “There ain’t no way out of this. If there was, don’t you think I’d have found it by now?”

Shel didn’t answer, but he had to wonder if he was going to be strong enough to deal with everything he was about to learn.

“And it ain’t me I’m worried about making it easier on,” Tyrel concluded.

“Not like you to be worried about me.”

Tyrel nodded. “I guess I got that coming.”

Shel didn’t say anything, though he was sorely tempted.

“This might be something your brother is more suited for. I bet a lot of people have come to him and told on themselves. He’s probably used to it.”

“I bet Don ain’t heard as many confessions to murders as I have,” Shel said, intentionally being harsh about the situation.

A wan smile pulled at Tyrel’s face. “Well, sir, I’d have to say you got me there. I bet he ain’t.” He looked around. “They got any water somewhere? I’m getting dry.”

Shel poured water from the carafe beside the bed into a plastic cup and added a flexible straw. Tyrel tried to hold the cup, but he was shaking so badly that he couldn’t do it. In the end Shel had to hold it for him.

Tyrel drank for a moment, then nodded. “That’s good. Thank you.”

Unable to speak, Shel put the cup to one side. He sat in the straight-backed chair and listened. He wished that Max were there with him instead of off with Don. This wasn’t something he wanted to be alone to deal with.

“I knew Dennis Hinton pretty good,” Tyrel said. “We was friends. That was back during the days of the PBRs out of Qui Nhon. You familiar with that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“They called it the Brown Water Navy. And them boys that worked them boats was some of the bravest men I ever knew. Charlie wanted Qui Nhon and those supply routes along Highway 19 shut down. They worked hard to get it done. A lotta men got killed over there.”

“How’d you know Dennis Hinton?” Shel asked.

“Just from around Qui Nhon. He was outgoing and obnoxious. Didn’t have a shy bone in his body. They said he was a killer out in the jungle, a good shot and cold enough to get it done. But he didn’t glory in it like some did. He was just taking care of his country.”

Shel felt a little more saddened. It would have been better if Hinton had been like Victor Gant, a bad man in a bad place. But if Hinton was a good soldier, his loss was even harder to take. And his murder less understandable.

“Hinton wasn’t in your unit?” Shel asked.

“No sir. Just a guy I knew from the bars and the football games.” Tyrel looked at Shel. “We played a lot of football over there. A lot of us played in high school before we joined up.”

Shel was surprised. He didn’t know his daddy had played high school sports. No one had ever talked about it.

“I played quarterback,” Tyrel said. “In high school. I had an arm. Still had it over there. Denny-that’s what everybody called him that knew him-had played wide receiver. They didn’t like us playing together. He could get loose, and I could find him.”

“You were friends?”

Tyrel paused, then nodded. “Yeah.”

“Then why did you kill him?”

Tyrel took a breath and let it out. He licked his lips. “Lemme tell it the way I need to. You got any questions after that, you ask ’em. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Over in Qui Nhon, we didn’t think too much about the future,” Tyrel said. “It didn’t pay much to do it, because every day you’d see guys evac’d out of the jungle. Sometimes they were wounded, but most of the time they were dead. Kinda reminded us all we might be on short time.”

Shel knew what his daddy was talking about. Things hadn’t been as severe in the places he’d served, but the losses that had occurred made everyone sit up and take notice.

“So we did what young soldiers do when they’re away from home and facing death on a daily basis,” Tyrel said. “We went numb to it. We told ourselves that it wouldn’t happen to us. We kept our heads low during firefights and worked to keep our butts together. You know what that’s like.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just took things one breath at a time when we were in the field. But back in Qui Nhon, it was different. Soldiers drank, and they spent time with the working girls. I didn’t have nothing to do with the women. Your mom and I were exchanging letters, and I guess I knew I had something waiting on me when I got back home even though we hadn’t talked about it.”

As he listened to his daddy, Shel couldn’t help realizing that the Tyrel McHenry he was hearing about was a different man, a twenty-one-year-old who’d never been far from Fort Davis. He hadn’t been worldly, and he hadn’t seen the horrors of war. Shel remembered what his own loss of innocence had been like, and that wasn’t as bad as Vietnam.

“That night I killed Denny, I was with Victor Gant and his team,” Tyrel said.

“I can’t see you and him together.”

Tyrel laughed hollowly. “That’s ’cause you only know Victor Gant as a bad man. But back then in Vietnam, Victor Gant was everything we wanted to be. Soldiers told stories about him. The brass deferred to him during military action. He knew Charlie like nobody knew Charlie. They said if you got signed onto Victor Gant’s penetration team and went hunting targets out in the brush, he could keep you from getting killed. The way they talked, you’d have thought bullets bounced off of him.”

Shel listened to his daddy speak and knew that he wasn’t in that hospital room anymore. Tyrel was back in Vietnam.

“We all wanted to be with him,” Tyrel said. “Because we all wanted to go back home. They said he was the man that could get you there.”

›› Atwater Apartment Building

›› Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

›› 0833 Hours

“Victor Gant was the most evil man I ever knew over there. There was nothin’ he wouldn’t do. Nobody he wouldn’t kill.” Richard McGovern took a drag on his cigarette, then blew smoke at the stained ceiling.

Maggie watched McGovern and locked into the man’s body language. The wheelchair threw some things off, but there were always tells she could read as a profiler-the eyes, the shoulders, and what he did with his hands.

Remy lounged at the window behind McGovern, just out of the man’s sight. Maggie knew Remy had chosen the position on purpose. No matter what he did, McGovern would know Remy was there just out of sight, and he’d have to wonder what he was doing. McGovern also had to wonder how Remy took everything he said.

“For somebody that didn’t like him much, seems you sure stayed around him a long time,” Remy said.

McGovern tried to look back over his shoulder but couldn’t. That frustrated him-Maggie read that in his eyes.

“There was nobody like Victor Gant in the jungle,” McGovern said. “The man could keep you alive, that’s for sure. We’d be in firefights, nobody knowing who was who, and Victor Gant could keep things straight. Like he had radar in his head or something. Never seen anything like it before. Never since, either.” He gave up trying to look over his shoulder and concentrated on Maggie. “I wasn’t hooked up with Victor Gant ’cause I liked the dude. I was just looking out for my own self.”

“Nobody can blame you for that,” Maggie agreed.

“That’s what I’m talking about.” McGovern nodded and took another hit off the cigarette.

“Do you think you owe Victor Gant anything?”

“You mean, would I lie to protect him?”

“Yes,” Maggie replied.

“No.” McGovern shook his head. “I haven’t seen him in thirty years. Not since I come back with no legs. That day I went down in the jungle, Victor didn’t even come after me. If it hadn’t been for the PJs, I wouldn’t have come back at all.”

PJs were pararescue jumpers, Maggie knew, specially trained military forces who went in behind enemy lines or in battle zones to rescue wounded.

“I owe anybody anything, it was them,” McGovern said.

“Do you still keep in touch with the men who rescued you?”

McGovern hesitated. “No. I was so hurt, I don’t even know who they were. Never found out.”

Which means you don’t really feel like you owe anybody anything, Maggie thought. It was an interesting insight, but she didn’t let anything show on her face.

“How did you know Dennis Hinton?” she asked.

“Man was just around, you know? I played football against him. Pickup games we had during downtime in Qui Nhon. Man had magic. There was another guy we played football with. A skinny country kid with a bad accent and a bad temper. He could throw that pigskin now, I’m telling you. But Country-that’s what we called him-he’s the one that killed Dennis Hinton.”

“‘Country’?”

McGovern nodded. “Don’t remember his name. We just called him Country on account of the way he talked.”

Maggie reached into her file and pulled out a six-pack of pictures she’d prepared. She’d put Tyrel McHenry’s service picture in with five other similar headshots.

“Is he one of these men?” she asked as she handed the six-pack over.

McGovern took the card, then twisted in his wheelchair so the light from the window behind him could hit it. He studied the faces for a minute. “You know, it’s been a long time. Over forty years. You’re not even old enough to remember back that far.”

Maggie sat quietly and waited. McGovern was just putting on a show and she knew it.

“But I still remember,” McGovern said. “It was this man right here. Top row. Third man from the left. That’s Country.” He tapped his finger on the image to confirm it. “That’s the man that killed Dennis Hinton.”

Maggie knew without checking that McGovern had just identified Tyrel McHenry.