“Which she’ll probably shit-can. You say Graniteville? I think that’s a small burg up in the mountains of north Georgia. Black hats, long beards, moonshine country. Not friendly to federal anything. Although now it’s all marijuana: There’s no money in ‘shine anymore. And you say they were talking?”
“Not exactly. More like looking at each other. Carson and the girl, not the woman. The girl was looking at Carson like she’d seen a snake, and then he fell down.”
“Is there any reason for Carson to suspect you’re after him?”
“Don’t think so. I inherited this case very much on the fly.”
“Maybe just plain old nerves: A senior DCIS guy coming in unannounced would make anybody nervous. What’d you tell him about us local hicks?”
“He did ask, now that you mention it. Gave him some BS about this being a headquarters pattern-of-fraud probe. Told him I didn’t want to stir up the locals. That kind of stuff. He seemed to buy it.”
“Okay. If he pulls the string, we’ll be appropriately ignorant. Our normal posture anyway.”
Stafford laughed. “Okay, Ray, I’ll keep you posted, and I’ll try not to rock any boats.” “That’s the ticket,” Sparks said. “Call us if you need anything.”
They both hung up, and Stafford unhooked the computer and restored the hotel’s phone line. He picked up his beer and went back to the window.
What he wanted right now was to go down to one of the fancy bars he had seen in the lobby and get reacquainted with Mr. Tanqueray’s oblivion potiog, but he’d done enough of that after Alice bailed out and the reality of his disability penetrated. Colonel Parsons, a whipcord, buzz-cut retired Army officer ten years his senior, had cured of him of incipient alcoholism as only he could. He’d invited Stafford to join him for lunch one badly hungover day at the colonel’s downtown athletic club. The dining room had turned out to be a boxing ring, where the colonel proceeded to beat the hangover out of him with sixteen-ounce gloves. The colonel had kept it fair by tying his own right hand behind his back. He still had beaten the shit out of Stafford. Parsons then informed him he could start drinking again just as soon as he could defend himself at the skill level of a Girl Scout. From his supine vantage point on the canvas floor, Stafford had decided that, arm or no arm, agreeing.with the six or so colonels swimming in his bloody vision was probably the best course of action. Since then, he had become a workout convert, having discovered that intense physical exercise was an excellent stress-eater, not to mention his only chance to regain a normal set of wings.
He finished his beer and pitched the can left-handed at the trash can.
And missed, as usual. For $169 a night, he thought, they ought to have bigger trash cans.
6
SP4c Latonya Mayfield pushed the calculator to one side of her cluttered desk and rubbed her eyes It was almost lunchtime, and she had been running these numbers for the entire morning. The dreaded destruction inventory match audit. It had to be done on every shipment that went out to the Army’s large-scale destruction facility at Tooele, Utah. It was dreaded because it was a three-way line-byline audit: The entire shipping manifest was compared with the receiving manifest report from Tooele, and then those numbers were compared with the inventory of the surplu sed storage containers.
My own damn fault I got tagged with this, she thought wearily. I just had to bring up the fact that the platoon’s Human Relations Council hadn’t met in over two months. The sergeant reacted with a bland smile, and then this lovely little assignment, a task normally done by a Spec3.
Not that she could make a legitimate gripe: She was, after all, a chemical warfare weapons accountability specialist, wasn’t she?
After three and a half hours, all those rows and columns produced by the high-speed line printer were beginning to run together, and if she didn’t have a number mismatch, she would have filed the whole thing with a “no discrepancies” report. She’d never heard of there ever being a discrepancy in the two years she’d been assigned to the control office.
Movement control and security procedures for chemical weapons materials were just about as tight as they were for nuclear weapons materials.
She rubbed her eyes again, and thought about coffee, and then thought about lunch. The other clerks in the office were already shuffling around as they prepared to break for the chow hall, but she knew there was no way she’d be able to stay awake doing this shit after lunch. And, Houston, baby, we do appear to have us a problem here. She pulled the printouts back to the center of her desk, shuffling back through them to find page one of fifty seven. The mismatch was one number. Just a single error, and she couldn’t find it. The grand totals did not add up, but each of the three various reports did add up.
Something had not been shipped, or had been shipped and not received, or there was one more storage container — lovingly called “coffins” in the CW business — than there were chemical cylinders involved. The thought crossed her mind that the last possibility had better be the answer, or the mother of all flaps was going to erupt right here in Toxic Town.
Hell with it, she decided. I’m going to lunch, and then I’m going to look for the discrepancy one more time, and then I’m going to do what I should have done an hour ago — take it to the staff sergeant. So there.
On Tuesday morning, Carson checked in with Stafford to make sure he had everything he needed. Stafford was sitting at the desk, surrounded by open binders, and making notes on a legal pad.
“Coffee mess is two doors down the hall,” he said. “Feel free to help yourself.”
“Thanks. I did,” Stafford replied. “You feeling better today? No more fainting spells?”
“Much. Still don’t know what the hell that was yesterday.”
Stafford nodded, gave him a thin smile, and went back to his paperwork.
But then, as Carson was turning away, Stafford asked another question.
“Do you have any significant personnel problems here?
Anybody who’s a known trouble maker? Anyone who quit on you with no notice recently?”
Carson stopped in the doorway. First the questions about that weird girl. Now what was this! Lambry, maybe? “Not really,” he said, thinking fast. “There are personnel problems from time to time, of course. But they’re mostly my Monday-morning alcoholics, or people fooling around with time sheets or sick leave, or workmen’s comp stuff. But do I have any real bad actors? I’d have to say no.. Why?”
Stafford shrugged. “Standard procedure when we’re chasing possible fraud. Sudden departures sometimes indicate a bad guy who got antsy. Or if there’ve been calls made to the DOD fraud hot line — malcontents sometimes do that just to cause trouble. We check that out as a matter of routine. Oh, I have the personnel roster. Can I have access to your actual personnel files, please?”
“Sure. See Mrs. Johnson in Human Resources. I’ll tell her to get you anything you need. Anything else?”
“Nope. That ought to do it.” Stafford smiled again. “For now.”
For now, Carson thought as he went back to his office. He wondered if Stafford had learned of Lambry’s disappearance. He’d put the word out Monday that Lambry had quit Friday night after getting mad about something. He’d planned to construct the covering paperwork this week, but after Stafford’s question, he’d have to get something down in writing, and quickly. But then he stopped: Based on what he’d just said, Stafford would probably want to follow that up. Oh, shit, maybe he’d even go out to Lambry’s house, snoop around. Who knew what that idiot might have left in his house? He hurried to his office, placed a quick phone call to personnel, and asked for some termination forms. Fifteen minutes later, Mrs. Johnson, a large black lady, brought the forms and last week’s time sheets into Carson’s office.