Maybe Ernie was right. Maybe I was mooning over her a little. But what was wrong with that? Until we found her, she’d be the object of all my affection.
Ernie swerved past an ox-drawn cart laden with frozen hay. I shoved the photo back into the folder and pulled out a copy of the letter attached to the congressional inquiry cover sheet. It was from Jill Matthewson’s mother, to her congressman in the district that includes Terre Haute, Indiana. The handwriting was childish. The ink was smeared and some of the letters were difficult to read. Still, it was legible. Jill had grown up in a trailer park, her mother wrote, and her mother had struggled to get by, working nights in a convenience store. Jill’s father never paid his child support and never, not once, came to visit Jill. In fact, the only thing he’d ever done for his daughter was send her a birthday card on her fifth birthday. Jill treasured it. Kept it wrapped in plastic and took the card with her when, at the age of eighteen, she enlisted in the army and shipped out to boot camp. Her mother asked that we check for the card amongst Jill’s personal effects. If it was gone, if Jill had taken it, then her mother would know that she was still alive. If, on the other hand, the card was still there, her mother would know she was dead.
Maybe. As a cop, I couldn’t assume any such thing. Still, I’d search for the card. Immediately.
The letter also explained why Jill had joined the army. To buy her mother a car. After years of interminable waits at bus stops- lugging torn bags of groceries home from the supermarket and baskets of damp clothing back from the Laundromat-Jill had sworn, even as a little girl, that someday she’d buy her mother a car. After six months in the army, Jill kept her promise and managed to buy her mom a used Toyota Corolla. It didn’t run anymore, according to Jill’s mom, but she was grateful for the months that she’d been able to drive it. And then the letter trailed off in smeared ink as Jill’s mother said that Jill was her only child and she pleaded with the congressman to find her daughter and send her home. The congressman, as far as I could tell from the paperwork enclosed in the congressional inquiry packet, hadn’t answered. Yet.
I would. As soon as I had more information. You could bet on it.
A convoy of ROK Army two-and-a-half-ton trucks passed us rolling south. Attached to the front bumpers were white placards splashed with red lettering in hangul, the indigenous Korean script: UIHOM! POKPAL MUL. Danger! High Explosives.
A twenty-foot-high statue of a military policeman stood in front of the 2nd Infantry Division Provost Marshal’s Office. The huge MP wore a black helmet emblazoned with the letters MP and was clad in a dark green fatigue uniform and black boots laced with fake white strings. One hand rested on his hip, just above a holstered. 45. His face was bright pink and his eyes a glassy blue, with an expression about as mindless as some flesh-and-blood MPs that I knew.
The PMO building was, like most buildings here on Camp Casey, a series of Quonset huts connected by mazes of corridors made of plywood and glass, topped with corrugated tin. The entire edifice was then spray painted in a camouflage pattern of various shades of puke green.
GI elegance.
We pushed through the front door at the end of the main Quonset hut into a reception area lined with wooden benches. At a high counter in front, a mustachioed black sergeant glowered at us. His shoulders were bulky-hunched-as if expecting the worse. The embroidered name tag on his fatigue blouse said OTIS. Five black stripes were pinned to his lapeclass="underline" sergeant first class.
When we approached him, he said, “Why you dressed like that?”
He was referring to our civilian coats and ties.
Ernie didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he brushed melting flakes of snow off his shoulders and then pulled out his identification. With a flourish, he flipped open the leather case. The desk sergeant peered at the Criminal Investigation badge and then aimed his red-rimmed eyes at me. I performed the same ritual.
“You here about Druwood.”
It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact. Ernie didn’t correct him; he just waited. Sergeant First Class Otis shook his head slowly. “Shame. Young trooper like him.”
Lost in thought for a moment, Otis seemed to realize that we were still waiting. He looked up at us and as he did so he understood, probably from the blank expressions on our faces, that we’d never heard about anybody named Druwood. He sat up straight, thrust back his shoulders, and cleared his throat. This time his voice was even gruffer than before.
“Who you want to see?”
“Bufford,” Ernie replied.
“MPI?”
Ernie nodded.
“Then it’s ‘Mister’ Bufford to you,” the desk sergeant said. “You in Division now. You call a warrant officer by his proper title.”
Ernie squinted at the desk sergeant, unable to fathom whether or not he was serious. Kowtowing to a wobbly-one military police investigator? At 8th Army headquarters in Seoul, there’s so much brass wandering the hallways that warrant officers empty the trash. Sergeant Otis grabbed the black phone in front of him and started dialing. I took the opportunity to pull Ernie aside.
“Remember,” I told him. “We’re in Division now.”
Ernie mumbled something obscene.
Cradling the phone against his beefy shoulder, Otis scribbled in his logbook and told us to spell our names. Then someone apparently picked up on the other end of the line; the desk sergeant whispered discreetly into the receiver and, after listening for a few seconds, hung up.
“Room 137,” he said, pointing to his right. “Down the hall, take a left at the water cooler, then follow the signs.”
As our highly spit-shined footgear clattered down the hallway, MPs and clerical staff in fatigues stopped what they were doing and stared at us from their cramped cubicles. The suits gave us away. They knew we had to be from Seoul and they knew we had to be from the Criminal Investigation Division. It all has to do with the way the military mind works. The honchos at 8th Army are smart enough to realize that for criminal investigators to be effective they have to blend in with the general populace. To do that, they have to wear civilian clothes. However, being military men, they didn’t want us to gain an advantage over them by not having to wear a military uniform during duty hours. Therefore, they dictated that, while on duty, the civilian clothes we were required to wear would be white shirts, ties, and jackets. But this is the seventies! Nobody wears a coat and tie unless they’re getting married, attending a funeral, or having an audience with the Pope. So the whole purpose of allowing us to wear civilian clothes-to blend in with the general populace-was defeated. Whenever anyone-Korean or American-saw a young American male with a short haircut wearing a coat and tie, they automatically assumed that he was an agent for the Criminal Investigation Division.
So much for sneaking up on the bad guys.
Mumbles followed us down the hallway: “REMFs.” The acronym for Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers.
If the coddled staff at 8th Army headquarters looked down their snooty noses at the 2nd Infantry Division, the combat soldiers up here at Division returned the animosity tenfold. Anybody stationed in Seoul, they believed, lived in the lap of luxury and would be no more useful in a firefight than a hand grenade with a soldered pin.
“So far,” Ernie said, “we’re receiving a warm reception.”
In addition to the epithets, I also heard the name Druwood spoken a few times, in hushed tones. At the water cooler we hung a left, wandered down the meandering hallway until we spotted the signs, and this time turned right. Finally, after two more turns, we stood in front of a placard that read: ROOM 137, MILITARY POLICE INVESTIGATION.