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Ryan and I shared a drink on the lanai, Perrier for me, Big Wave Golden Ale for him.
Ryan apologized for Lily’s insolence. She’d resisted making the trip. He’d insisted, gotten no support from Lutetia. He suspected a love interest, perhaps a man from Lily’s drug rehab group. Or, worse, from her past as a user.
I explained that Katy was still dejected over Coop’s death, but that she seemed to be on the mend.
We agreed that our daughters were champs at the use of the sugar-coated dig. And that my sisterhood-bonding therapy did not look promising.
I brought Ryan up to speed on developments at the CIL. The Mongoloid craniofacial traits of 2010-37. Spider Lowery’s Native American ancestry. Luis Alvarez, the maintenance specialist who went down with Spider in ’68. 1968-979, the decomposed body found near Long Binh eight months after the crash. Spider Lowery’s dog tag in 1968-979’s box.
Ryan filled me in on developments in Montreal. And Lumberton. Turned out my suggestion about Beasley, though a good one, was nonproductive. The sheriff was cooperative but, to date, had offered nothing of value.
Listening to Ryan describe his exchange with the sheriff triggered a Ping! moment. A comment of Plato’s during our scrapbook conversation.
“Ryan, listen. Spider’s mother died of kidney failure five years ago. It’s a long shot, but maybe the hospital where she was treated still has some samples on file, you know, a path slide or something. And Spider had a brother who was killed a couple years before that.”
“A long shot is better than no shot at all. I’ll call first thing tomorrow, ask Beasley to poke around.”
Ryan proposed taking Katy and Lily to Pearl Harbor the following day. I wished him luck.
At eleven, we too retired to our separate rooms.
Through my wall, I heard Lily talking on her cell.
THE SUNSHINE SISTERS WERE STILL SLEEPING WHEN I ENTERED the kitchen at eight the following morning. Ryan was lacing on Nikes for a run on the beach. The plan was that he and our daughters would spend the day at Pearl Harbor, visiting the USS Arizona monument and touring the USS Missouri battleship and the USS Bowfin submarine. I wished him luck in dealing with the dim and murky realm of female resentment. Then I was off to the CIL. I thought of the dog tag the whole drive. It just made no sense.
Dimitriadus was on my bumper as I turned in at JPAC. We crossed the lot together. In silence. I wondered how an examiner of unidentified bones could miss a dog tag in a box. Ten feet from the building, he accelerated his pace and shot inside, letting the door slam in my face.
Last night, Lily’s cold shoulder. This morning, Dimitriadus. I was begi
Da
“Dimitriadus is acting like I killed his puppy.”
“Come in.” Da
Puzzled, I did.
“We’re cutting Dimitriadus loose.”
“Jesus. The guy’s been here, what, twelve years? Why?”
“A number of reasons. Most recently, he failed his ABFA exam again.” Da
“The dog tag?”
“The decision was made before that came up, so no.”
“What will he do?”
Da
“That info is for your ears only. So far only Dimitriadus, Merkel, you, and I know.”
I nodded.
A beat passed.
“Today’s good news is that J-2 has Alvarez’s IDPF.”
J-2, the joint command records section, has access to information on deceased perso
“I was just about to walk over and pick it up. Jackson asked about you. Come along, make the man’s day.”
“Corporal Jackson? The guy who convinced everyone the phone lines were scheduled for cleaning by a steam blast, and that all handsets had to be sealed in plastic bags for an hour?”
“It’s Sergeant Jackson now.”
“He’s been here a long time.”
“He’s just been reassigned back, actually.”
“I no longer have clearance to J-2.”
“Follow me, little squaw.”
Little squaw?
Da
At the counter, we chatted a moment with Sergeant Dix Jackson, a black man with mulberry splotches on his face and arms the size of sequoias. Needless to say, no one ever mentioned the splotches.
Jackson and I reminisced, each trying to top the other with recollections of practical jokes from the past. He won with a story involving Da
Feigning a
Jackson read the form. “When you need this, Doc?”
“Yesterday.”
“You got it.”
Da
We started to leave.
“And, Doc?”
We both turned.
“You feel the urge to do your business, relax. We got no fire drills scheduled this month.”
Back in Da
Work space readied, we sat. Da
I swallowed.
Throughout my years consulting to CILHI, the photos always distressed me more than anything else. Alvarez’s lay smack on top.
The old black-and-white showed a Latino-looking man in his army uniform. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and lashes that were wasted on a Y-chromosomer.
A second photo captured nine soldiers, hair sweat-pasted to their temples and brows. All wore fatigues with the sleeves rolled up. One sported a Tilley hat, fishing lure pi
The name Alvarez was scrawled in faded blue ink across the chest of the third man from the right. Third kid from the right.
Alvarez wasn’t big, wasn’t small. Of the group, he alone wasn’t looking at the camera. His face was turned, as though a momentary distraction had caught his attention.
What, I wondered? A bird in flight? A passing dog? Movement in the brush?
Had he been mildly curious? Startled? Afraid for his life?
“¡Ay, caramba!” Da
“That fits our profile for 2010-37. Any medical or dental records?”
Da
Da
“A letter from Fernando Alvarez, Luis’s father,” he said. “You read Spanish?”
I nodded.
Da
The letter was written in a neat, almost feminine hand. No header indicated the recipient’s name. The date was July 29, 1969. The English stopped after “Dear Sir.”
The message was poignant in its simplicity.
I’d read many. Every single solitary one had touched me deeply.
“What’s he say?” Da
“My son was a hero. Find him.”
Next came clippings from a Spanish-language newspaper. One a