Only the onset of a terminal disease had prevented Beasely from getting fired outright back to NIS.
Train had been just as direct: NIS had sent Beasely in the first place because, at the time, NIS had been at war with Opnav, as the Navy’s headquarters staff was known. Carpenter had then shared his perspectives on the new political situation.
“Your boss and I have made a deal. NIS and Opnav need to bury the hatchet somewhere besides between our respective shoulder blades. In effect, we’ve signed a peace treatyshared computer network and database systems, much closer coordination between their investigations and our field attorneys. Your assignment is part of this. Your boss promised me a player. You’ll work directly for me. You’ll be stashed in Investigations Review, which is about as bland as we get here in JAG.
Does that square with what you’ve been told?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve been detailed to be your freelancer, with complete access to the top people in NIS.”
“And I see you’ve worked in Naval Intelligence, with a secondment to the FBI. So I can presume you know your way around town?”
“Reasonably well, Admiral. Always learning new and interesting things, though.”
Carpenter had smiled at that response. Any Washington old hand who thought he had seen it all was, by definition, not yet an old hand. This business ‘with the homicide cop was another matter. Commander Lawrence was right: That cop didn’t really appear to want the admiral for the death of Elizabeth Walsh; otherwise, the meeting would have been in a much smaller room with much brighter lights. And yet they obviously felt that the Walsh woman had met with more than just an accident. And that homicide cop was interesting: not what Train would have expected from a county police force, even in the upscale northern Virginia area. He would have pegged Mcnair for an FBI guy, or maybe even Treasury.
He looked at his watch. This was Tuesday. Whole thing would probably blow over by the end of the week, which is when he might, if he was lucky, also be done with admin checkin. And he had thought NIS admin was bad Karen arrived early in Reston, having misjudged the traffic, and parked across the street to wait. The town houses were tastefully done, with sculpted front gardens and mature trees interspersed with faux gaslights. Sitting alone in, the car, of depression watching commuting husbands and wives driving by on their way home, she felt the familiar wave , approaching.
Karen had been born and raised in the Washington, D C., area, moving around the city and its suburbs as her parents’ careers prospered. Her mother had been a special-education teacher who worked in both the private and Oublic school systems. Her father, now drifting peacefully in a Chevy Chase nursing home, had been an attorney with the Federal Power Commission for thirty years, which is how Karen had come to meet J. Franklin Lawrence.
Marriage to Frank had come much later in life than she had ever planned, after she had already spent ten years in the Navy’s JAG corps. She had been thirty-four, Frank ten years older. He, had been divorced for three years ac when they met at a weekend barbecue at her parents’ place in Chevy Chase. Frank had been interesting, funny, wealthy, and desperately lonely, although it had taken some time for him to reveal that. She had just been selected for lieutenant commander and assigned to the Navy headquarters staff at the Pentagon for the first time. She had met several really great guys in the Navy over the years, but by the time she met Frank, she was profoundly aware of what the typical Navy marriage entailed: months of separation, perpetual money problems, and increasingly intense career pressures.
Frank the civilian had been a perfect fit. Her only real disappointment was not having had children, but they had both agreed from the outset that neither their careers nor their respective ages would be very suitable for child rearing. She had been old enough to keep her own counsel on this subject, and she had to admit that their well-to-do lifestyle had assuaged whatever sense of loss she had experienced along the way. Now that Frank was gone, she reluctantly acknowledged an almost guilty sense of relief that she was not facing the prospect of raising teenagers without a father.
She looked at her watch. It read 6:45. She felt somewhat conspicuous sitting alone in her car on a residential street at twilight, flanked by a row of town houses on either side.
She really missed the after-work routine, and she realized how much she had been just going through the motions over this past year. She looked over at the single dark town house, one in from the corner, and thought about Elizabeth Walsh, coming home of a Friday evening, settling into her own routine, resigned perhaps to -living alone but probably missing the dashing, young Admiral Sherman, and then falling down the damn stairs and breaking her neck. What a way to end the week, she thought irreverently. Damn, I’ve been in Washington too long.
She wondered about the new guy from NIS, von Rensel.
Bet he could run an effective interrogation, she mused. All he would have to do would be to stand up and stretch a couple of times and I’d sing like a bird. She checked her watch again. She wasn’t quite sure if von Rensel was supposed to be her partner in this matter or just a backstop. She would have to find out how well he knew his way around town and the Pentagon. Mccarty had mentioned something about his having worked in the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Von Rensel was completely different from Sherman, who was a tall, dark, and handsome type, if ever she had seen one-the picture of a Navy success story. Right. Here he was, in his first year as a flag officer and involved, however tangentially, in a Fairfax County homicide investigation.
Congratulations of! that fine promotion, Admiral, sir; may we have a few minutes of your time?
She looked at, her watch again. Eight more minutes. He would probably drive up at the stroke of seven. She wondered again about Elizabeth Walsh, what she had looked like. And why there was not even a mention of a family in the admiral’s biography. What had he said at the meeting with the police-that he had told her from the start that he did not want to get married? No, he had said “remarry.”
“I did not want to remarry, ever.” So he had been married once. She wondered about all that vehemence. A flare of headlights in her mirror announced his arrival, and she got out of her car.
“Commander,” he said formally.
“Admiral Sherman,” she replied, nodding. She had almost saluted. He locked his car and they went across the street. As they approached the corner town house, its front door opened and a short elderly lady with bright white hair came out and down the stairs. She met Sherman at the sidewalk.
“Tag,” she said emotionally. They embraced for a MOMENT, then stepped apart so that Sherman could make introductions. Mrs. Klein looked over at Karen and nodded a greeting; then she looked back at Sherman with an unspoken question on her lips.
“Commander Lawrence is a Navy lawyer,” he explained.
“She is going to try to find out what the police have found out. I want to go into Elizabeth’s house. I still have a key.
When we’re done, I’d like to come back and talk to youunless you want to come with us?”
“No, Tag,” Mrs. Klein said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to go in there anymore-The police have been there.
They just took down all that awful yellow tape this morning.
This is just so terrible. I can’t believe it happened. I miss her so much.”
“I know, Dottie. I do, too. We won’t be, long. I just had to come see.