The Colonel chose an adjoining chair. "I really didn't know your husband at all," he began gently. "He was working with Dr. DeMille over in USAMRIID-that's the U. S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. It houses the largest bio-containment lab in the U. S.," he said with a tinge of pride, as if Stacy had no understanding of Max's work. "I understood that your husband was a wonderful, dedicated scientist." He paused before heading into uncertain, potentially dangerous terrain. "I guess sometimes a high-powered mind like his can possess a strange mix of both brilliance and tortured emotions." His voice was slick and cold: Vaseline on ice.
"I'm sorry, what?" Stacy asked, her chin coming up, thrusting forward.
"What I meant was, a genius as complex and gifted as your husband probably found it difficult to live with both his huge intellect and his complicated inner thoughts."
"I thought you just said you didn't know him," Stacy challenged.
"Well, I didn't. I… what I meant was, often this is the case. With superior intellect there is sometimes also emotional instability."
"Well, if you didn't know him, Colonel, why don't you keep those opinions to yourself. Max was very squared-away. He was not some geek scientist, lost in the intellectual ozone."
"All I meant…" He stopped and nodded. "I'm sorry, I take your point."
He was now obviously humoring her. Stacy Richardson was beginning to take a giant dislike to Colonel Laurence Chittick.
They all sat looking at each other, searching for the right thing to say next. Stacy had an uncontrollable urge to get away. "We're here to make arrangements to take Max's body back to California," she said.
Colonel Chittick subtly replaced his expression of gentle concern with a look of mild consternation.
"Is that a problem?" Stacy asked.
"Well, no… It's just… you mean his remains, I think?"
"I mean his body," she corrected.
"You know, of course, he was cremated?"
"He was what?" She looked at Colonel Chittick, her mouth slightly ajar, staring in abject disbelief.
"He was cremated yesterday."
"Who gave you permission to cremate him?" Her voice was ringing against the white walls in the large office.
"He did."
"He did?"
"It was in his medical folder, under 'death requests.' Everybody stationed here, both civilian as well as military personnel, fills one out."
"Colonel, he did not want to be cremated. I know, because we discussed it. He bought several plots next to his mom and dad at Forest Lawn when they both died. He wanted the whole family to be buried there, with them."
"He must have changed his mind."
"What the hell's going on here?" she suddenly said, rising off the sofa.
"Maybe you need to tell me, Mrs. Richardson."
Stacy turned to Joanne, who was sitting up straight, her knees tight together, hands folded in her lap like a good girl waiting outside the principal's office. "Joanne, did your brother want to be cremated?"
"No. Like you said, we bought all the graves side by side, next to Mom and Dad. There's six of them."
Colonel Chittick got up from the occasional chair and moved around to his desk, opened a folder, rummaged in it for a second, found a sheet of paper, and handed it to Stacy. "Here's his death request sheet."
"It's not signed, Colonel," she said, looking at it.
"It wasn't the last page of the medical form. I have that here, with his signature." He again rummaged around for a paper and found it, holding it out to her.
Stacy didn't take it. She was reading the death request sheet. "Under 'Religion' you list seven denominations, and there's just a check next to Catholic. 'Have you had any of the following diseases?' Check, check, check. These are just check marks. Anybody could have filled this out, put this sheet in there."
"And now you're making some sort of accusation?" Colonel Chittick no longer looked like Ward Baxter. Now his skin was stretched tight across his jaw, his eyes were piercing and dangerous.
"Colonel Chittick, my husband did not commit suicide. He had no suicidal tendencies."
"I don't know that you're in a position to judge that, Mrs. Richardson."
"And you are? Some guy with a buncha fruit salad on his coat, who never even met him?"
Colonel Chittick moved away from his desk and stood directly before her. Although he towered over Stacy, she held her ground. "You are forcing me to take this into areas I would rather not go."
"Help yourself. If you've got something, let's hear it!"
"Your husband seemed to some of the people he was working with here to have an overly volatile personality. He was subject to huge mood swings."
"That's absurd."
Chittick moved back to the desk, pulled a few official forms out of the folder, and handed them to her. "These are, for want of a better term, colleague complaints, filed by his co-workers here. There were even some suggestions that Max was a possible substance abuser."
"Go fuck yourself!" Stacy said.
Colonel Chittick was unprepared for this. Finally, he recovered and said, "That would seem to bring this interview to a close."
"Substance abuse? Of course we'll never know, because you burned up his body!"
"We complied with your husband's stated requests."
"I don't know what happened here, Colonel, but my husband didn't commit suicide. He didn't use drugs! He wasn't depressed, and he never asked you to cremate him! I think this is some kind of giant cover-up, and I'm gonna find out why!"
"Of course, you're welcome to pursue any legal avenue of redress you find worthwhile. And now… I have his ashes, if you'd like to take them, or we can send them to any address you leave with my secretary."
Joanne started crying softly on the sofa. Stacy became aware of her sobbing and turned to her. "It's okay, honey. Let's just get out of here." She helped her sister-in-law off the sofa, and they moved to the door.
"Mrs. Richardson," Colonel Chittick said.
Stacy turned and glowered at him.
"It is very hard to lose a loved one." The recruiting poster guy was back. "Anger is the shadow that always follows death, and it is not uncommon for people to have an urge to strike back."
"Colonel, you haven't seen anything yet," she promised.
Chapter 3
They were standing in front of Building 810 with their luggage, a cold wind whipping the hems of their dresses. Joanne was still sobbing and Stacy still burning mad.
"That fucking guy… who does he think he is?" she said. "A drug user? Max with mood swings? He was the steadiest guy on the planet. He ran the microbiology program at USC. He got that job because he was calm and organized, as well as brilliant. He wasn't some X-over-Y geek head case."
Joanne continued to cry and made no response. Her shoulders were down, her chin on her chest.
"Honey," Stacy said firmly, "I know you're torn up. So am I. But these people are lying. They're lying about Max, and if they're lying, the next question is 'Why?' And why did they burn his body? Were they trying to destroy evidence? What the hell happened here?"
Joanne looked up, tears still wet on her cheeks. Stacy reached into her purse, pulled a fresh tissue out of a travel pack, and handed it to her sister-in-law. "I want to find out what's going on, and I may need your help, but you can't help me if you don't pull yourself together."
Joanne wiped her eyes, sniffed, then blew. "How are you going to find out what went on? They're not going to tell you anything," she said.
"I don't know how Army docs are, but I know how civilian medical people think. It's standard procedure on a suicide to do an autopsy. I suppose the same holds true on a military base. If I ask Colonel Chittick for a copy of the autopsy, I'll probably just get ten pages of creative writing. So, I'm going to get Max's autopsy report myself."