“How about the bus station in Pusan?” I asked.
“We have some good men there,” Inspector Kill assured me. “Also at the train station.”
“Good. I should be in Pusan before sunrise.”
Colonel Laurel, with the help of the haenyo, had already hired a car.
When I walked into his ward in the Hialeah Compound Dispensary, Ernie was sitting up in his hospital bed.
“Did you see the jaws on that nurse?” he asked.
“Jaws?”
“Hips. I’m tired of skinny Korean girls.”
I poured myself some water from a jug sitting on Ernie’s nightstand. “Not all Korean girls are skinny.”
“Show me a fat one.”
I decided to change the subject. “You ready to get back to work?”
“Yeah.” Ernie threw back the covers and kicked his legs off the edge of the bed. “Where are my shoes?”
“Over there. In the closet.”
Ernie padded barefoot across the room, stripped off his hospital gown, and started putting on his clothes.
“I don’t remember nothing,” Ernie said, “from when you jumped at Parkwood until I woke up with the KNPs shining a flashlight in my eyes. I was still in that boat, on a beach somewhere.”
“Shinji Island.”
“Wherever. They helped me into the backseat of their patrol car and later, from the roof of their police station, I was airlifted back here.”
“You didn’t hear Parkwood say anything?”
“No. He was gone when I came to.”
I sipped on the water. Ernie finished tying his shoelaces.
“He could’ve killed you,” I said.
“Yeah. Good for me he didn’t.”
“But why not?”
“Why not? You think maybe he should have?”
“He’s killed two people that we know of so far. Mrs. Hyon and Specialist Vance.”
“Maybe I’m not his type.” Ernie slipped on his jacket, checking to make sure that his CID badge was still in the inner coat pocket.
“Maybe he’s through with killing.”
“Don’t count on it,” Ernie said.
As we walked out of the clinic, nobody tried to stop us. The front door opened automatically to a late morning of swirling ocean mist.
“Maybe we should check out some weapons,” Ernie said, “from the MP arms room.”
“Maybe we should,” I said.
Riley was in his room at Hialeah Billeting, drunk again.
“Where you guys been?” he growled.
“Goofing off,” I said.
He nodded his head knowingly. “I thought so. The Provost Marshal is pissed that you took this guy, Parkwood, into custody and then you let him go.”
“Actually, we never had him in custody.”
“That’s even worse. If you’re alleging that he’s the Blue Train rapist, they want him interrogated to see if it’s true or not.”
“It’s true,” I replied. “Eighth Army is just looking for a way to weasel out of this.”
“They’re not trying to weasel out of nothing. They want him in custody and they want him interrogated and they want it to happen now.”
Riley’s eyes rolled and his head lolled on his neck. He reached across the footlocker and grabbed a bottle of Old Overwart and poured himself a shot glass full of amber fluid. Sticking out his thin lips, he sipped carefully.
“What happened to the Country Western All Stars?” I asked.
“You just missed them. They left for Seoul about an hour ago, including Casey.”
“Casey?”
“Yeah. Marnie’s daughter.”
“She’s here in Korea?”
“Yeah. Marnie didn’t want to tell you, but she told me.” Riley thrust his thumb toward the center of his narrow chest. “They’re not supposed to bring relatives on USO tours. No. They’re not supposed to. But Marnie paid for an airplane ticket for her mom and Casey. They stayed in that hotel in Seoul, keeping out of the way, hiding from the USO honchos and Eighth Army and everybody, and then when she found Freddy Ray, she had Casey sent down here.”
“Her mom was here in Korea too?”
“Yeah. The whole time.”
“But now she’s stayed behind in Seoul?”
“Yeah. She has emphysema and can’t get around too well.”
Ernie had purchased two beers out of the vending machine down the hall, one for him and one for me, and he was listening as he popped them open.
“That damn Marnie,” Ernie said. “Always full of surprises.”
“That’s her,” Riley replied.
“She confided in you, did she?” Ernie asked.
“Damn right. She knows a good man when she sees one.” Riley took another swig of his bourbon.
“So Casey was sent down here,” I said, “and she and Marnie and Freddy Ray had a family reunion. Is that what happened?”
“Exactly. A family reunion that turned into a brawl.”
“So they didn’t get along,” Ernie said.
“No,” Riley replied. “Thanks to you.”
“They argued about me?”
“What else?”
“So the Country Western All Stars are in the van now, heading back to Seoul. How long ago did they leave?”
“About an hour. But they’re not all in the van.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Freddy Ray had to return to his unit. And Casey gets carsick easy. So Marnie and her are taking the train back.”
“The train? You mean the Blue Train?”
“What else? The one that left Pusan Station ten minutes ago.”
“Marnie and Casey are alone?” I asked. “The others are in the van? Driving?”
Riley looked peeved. “What did I just say?”
Ernie and I looked at each other. Without discussing it, we put down our beers.
As we walked down the hallway, Riley shouted after us, “Hey! Where’re you guys going?”
Inspector Kill met us at the Pusan Train Station.
The young KNP detective there, Mr. Ho, read from his notebook and gave us a complete rundown of what he’d observed. A tall blonde woman with a small child had boarded the Blue Train about ten minutes before its departure. There were five other foreigners, none of whom matched the description of Parkwood. However, Mr. Ho admitted, Parkwood’s description matched a lot of Caucasian males and could have been easily altered, by something as simple as wearing eyeglasses, for instance.
I checked with the Pusan Rail Train Office, and the G.I. who worked behind the counter handed me the manifest. Parkwood wasn’t on it, but he could’ve been using a stolen ID. I described him to the clerk. The guy shrugged. He didn’t look at his customers much. He hated them, he told me, after doing this job for almost a year, and didn’t bother looking at them.
“They’re always whining about their seating or about how long they have to wait for their ticket or something else that nobody can do anything about. Besides, I’m a short-timer,” he said. “Too short to care.”
Under normal circumstances, Ernie might’ve slapped the guy. As it was, we didn’t have time. Inspector Kill had already arranged for a helicopter to fly us north. On the drive to the airfield, he said, “Parkwood could board that train at the East Taegu station or even up in Taejon.”
“Yes,” I replied. “He’s had enough time to get up there from Kuangju. But he wouldn’t know that Marnie is on the train.”
Ernie pulled a photograph out of his pocket and showed it to us. It was of a blondish woman in her early to mid-thirties, wearing a tight skirt, a tight vest, and a pillbox hat with a half-veil. Next to her stood a young boy in shorts and bow tie and jacket and, on the other side, tugging on the hem of her skirt, a little girl in a flowery dress with curly brown hair sticking out from beneath a straw bonnet with a long ribbon.
“Where’d you get this?” I asked Ernie.
“At the bottom of Parkwood’s wall locker, up at the Mount Halla commo site. I guess he dropped it there when he was packing.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”