“Did she see him?”
“Ask her.”
By now, Shelly had joined us. She pulled over a stool and sat down. “I saw his back,” she said. “He was wearing an army uniform, the same one everyone else wears around here.”
“Fatigues,” Ernie said.
“Yeah. But I didn’t see his face. Only his back. He was Caucasian, I think, but even that I can’t be sure of.”
“But he could’ve been black,” Marnie said.
Shelly shrugged. “Could’ve been. All I saw was his back and then I pulled the shower curtain shut and knelt down in the corner, trying to make myself small.”
“But he left when you screamed?” I asked.
“Yes,” Shelly replied. “In a hurry.”
“Did he take anything?” Ernie asked.
Shelly rolled her eyes. “It’s embarrassing.”
Marnie spoke for her. “Damn, Shelly. It’s only a bra and panties.”
“Yeah, but they were my bra and panties.”
“What color were they?” Ernie asked, deadpan.
Shelly rolled her eyes. “Red.”
“Lace,” Ernie asked, “or straight cotton?”
Shelly glared at him. “Lace,” she said.
Ernie tipped an imaginary hat. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
After Shelly left, Marnie inhaled deeply on her cigarette, held the smoke in her lungs for a while, and then blew the gray mist out in a steady stream. When it was gone, she seemed out of breath. Her voice came out weak.
“What she’s not telling you is what happened after the guy ran out of the building.”
“Tell us,” I said.
“There’s a phone in the hallway and the emergency number for the Military Police is painted on the wall, so I dialed it and a few minutes later the MPs showed up. They found that poor MP out back, still unconscious, and called an ambulance and took him away. They also found someone else outside. Someone in a jeep.”
Marnie continued to puff on her cigarette.
Finally, Ernie said, “Freddy Ray.”
“How’d you know?” Marnie asked.
“Just a guess. He knew you were playing at Camp Carroll. He hopped in a jeep and drove out there.”
Marnie nodded.
“Did the MPs question him?” I asked.
“They questioned him.”
“Did you have a chance to talk to him?”
Marnie shook her head. “No.”
I finished her thought for her. “And some of the MPs thought that Freddy Ray might be the peeper, the guy who’d stolen Shelly’s bra and panties.”
“That’s what they thought,” she said.
“What do you think?” Ernie asked.
Marnie stubbed out her cigarette. “I don’t know what to think.”
She rose from her chair and strode over to her keyboard and plugged it in.
Camp Henry is a small compound, just five or six hundred yards wide in any direction. We walked the hundred or so yards from the NCO Club to the 19th Support Group headquarters. In the foyer, we read the signs and Ernie followed me down to the 19th Support Group Personnel Service Center (PSC). The door was locked. Ernie rattled it and then turned back to me. “It’s six p.m. The duty day ends at five.”
I went back to the entranceway and checked the sign. The Staff Duty Officer was in room 102. We went back down the hallway, turned left, and spotted a light on and a door open. We stepped inside.
The Duty Officer was a young man with curly brown hair. He sat behind a gray army-issue desk, his chair facing away from us, watching the Armed Forces Korea Network on a black-and-white portable television. He looked almost like a teenager relaxing on his mother’s couch. When he heard us come in, he fumbled with the knob, turned off the set, and swiveled on the chair to face us. His rank was second lieutenant. His name tag said Timmons.
I showed him my badge.
“Lieutenant Timmons,” I said, smiling. “Looks like you caught the duty tonight.”
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“No. I’m Agent Sueno. And this is my partner, Agent Bascom. We’re from the Seoul CID office.”
“All the way down here?”
“All the way down here,” I said.
Ernie took a seat on a padded gray vinyl chair. He usually let me handle bureaucratic transactions, as long as we got what we wanted.
“What can I do for you?” Timmons asked.
“What we’re here about,” I said, spreading my fingers, “is the security of the USO show.”
“The Country Western All Stars,” he said.
“The same. We’re supposed to keep an eye on them, all five musicians, and we understand that there was a problem at Camp Carroll last night.”
“So I heard.”
“I want you to help us find Captain Freddy Ray Embry.”
Timmons’s face darkened. “The accusations they’re making about him, they’re not true. Captain Embry is one of our finest officers.”
“I’m sure he is. Still, we have to talk to him. Where can we find him?”
“I’ll get him on the horn right away.”
Timmons reached for the phone. I stayed his hand.
“No. It’s better if we talk to him in person.”
“Where’s he work?” Ernie asked.
“At the logistics supply depot. He keeps our eighteen-wheelers running up and down the spine of the Korean peninsula.”
“He’s off duty now,” I said, “so where are his quarters?”
“I’m not sure.” Timmons rose to his feet and walked across the room to a large metal cabinet bolted to the wall, fiddled with a combination lock, and finally pulled back the sliding doors. He searched until he found the right key, took it out, relocked the cabinet, and told us to follow him down the hallway. Timmons entered an office with a sign that said Officer Records. He switched on the light, unlocked a filing cabinet, and, after searching for a few minutes, found the personnel folder of Captain Frederick Raymond Embry. He pulled out the billeting assignment sheet and, as he did so, Ernie and I studied the black-andwhite photo of Captain Embry.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, but somehow I was. We all project our stereotypes onto people, and somehow I didn’t expect a female country-western singer from Austin, Texas, to have been married to a black man. And I hadn’t expected a former Texas A amp;M cadet of the Reserve Officer Training Corps to be of African descent. Of course, the color barrier at Texas A amp;M had been broken years ago, but still most of the graduates during the sixties were white.
I studied Ernie’s face. His expression didn’t change. At least this went part of the way toward explaining Marnie’s suggestion that the intruder very well could have been black.
Lieutenant Timmons jotted down Captain Embry’s billeting assignment and handed me the slip of paper.
“Here you are,” he said. “I’m sure Captain Embry will be happy to see his former wife.”
“I’m sure he will,” I replied.
I slipped the paper into my pocket and Ernie and I left the 19th Support Group Headquarters building. The Bachelor Officer Quarters were on the far side of the compound; still, the walk took us less than ten minutes.
“Timmons knew,” Ernie said, “that Captain Embry had been married to one of the Country Western All Stars.”
“G.I. s gossip,” I said.
More than old ladies, I thought, but I left that unsaid.
When Ernie and I reached the BOQ area, we entered Building C. At the door to room C9, Ernie knocked. Nobody answered. Ernie pounded on the door again. Finally, the door creaked open. The room was dark.
Ernie said, “Embry? You in here?”
Nobody answered. Ernie repeated himself. Finally an exasperated voice said, “Who the hell is it?”
Ernie stepped inside.
I swept my hand along the wall, searching for the light switch. I found it and switched it on. Light blazed into the room, blinding me.
Someone shouted, “Turn that damn light off!”
I did. Ernie, meanwhile, had found a window and opened the shades. In the fading afternoon light, a man sat on the edge of an army-issue bunk, his face in his hands.