Chương 2
The recorder had not been visible.
She had found it because one corner of the lining felt thicker than the others.
“I felt it,” she said.
Ward looked at the pack again. “Did anyone see you remove it?”
“My mother.”
Evelyn shook her head. “Not remove it. I was in the bathroom. When I came out, she had it in her hand.”
“You didn’t hear any of the recording before now?” Ward asked.
Nora hesitated.
That was enough.
Hale’s gaze sharpened.
“You played it,” he said.
“I heard the first sentence.”
“And then decided to stage this in front of two hundred mourners.”
“I decided you shouldn’t get a private room.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
The church doors stopped moving before they fully closed. One remained open by several inches, letting in a thin column of white afternoon light.
Major Ward told Pell to call the Army Criminal Investigation Division and the local police. Pell walked away while already speaking into his phone.
Hale removed his cap and held it against his side. Without it he looked older, though not weaker. “Evelyn, I am sorry.”
Nora’s mother flinched at the use of her first name.
“Don’t talk to her,” Nora said.
“Nora,” Evelyn whispered.
Hale kept his eyes on Evelyn. “Daniel had been under extraordinary strain.”
“My husband is dead.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Hale’s mouth opened, then closed.
Evelyn released Nora’s arm. She stepped toward the coffin until the front of her coat touched the flag. For one panicked second, Nora thought her mother might pick up the recorder. Instead, Evelyn placed both hands on the polished wood.
She had not touched the coffin before.
“Was that his voice?” she asked Hale.
Hale looked at the blinking red light.
“I cannot responsibly answer that.”
She nodded once. It was the small nod she used when a cashier gave her the wrong change and she had decided whether the error was worth correcting.
“That means yes,” she said.
The first police officer arrived eleven minutes later. By then the funeral guests had begun slipping out through the south entrance in groups of five. Nobody obeyed the request to keep phones put away. Nora saw screens glowing between black coats and uniformed shoulders. One man stood beneath a carved stone saint and whispered into his phone that the dead colonel had left a confession. Another insisted it was a suicide recording. A woman Nora had never met hugged her before leaving and said, “Your father was brave,” with the confidence of someone who had learned everything she needed from a ten-second clip.
The recorder remained on the coffin.
The police officer, a broad woman named Sergeant Morales, listened to Major Ward, then to Nora, then to Hale. She did not seem impressed by medals.
“Did you touch the device?” she asked Hale.
“No.”
“You attempted to?”
“I reached toward an object placed improperly on a burial flag.”
“That sounds like a yes.”
“It is an explanation.”
“I asked for an answer.”
Hale looked at her badge. “No. I did not touch it.”
Morales wrote something in a small notebook.
Army investigators arrived in plain clothes. They photographed the recorder, the coffin, the backpack, Nora’s hands, the church floor, and the space between Hale and Major Ward. One investigator asked the organist whether music had been playing when the recording began. The organist stared at him as if he had asked whether God had signed the guest book.
Nora refused to surrender the backpack until an attorney was present.
“You cannot obstruct an evidence seizure,” one investigator told her.
“You haven’t shown me a warrant.”
“We are asking for voluntary cooperation.”
“Then I am voluntarily saying no.”
Her father would have hated the sarcasm. Daniel Mercer believed sarcasm was what people used when they lacked the discipline to make a direct argument. Nora used it anyway, often around him.
Major Ward stood several feet away, now wearing fresh gloves. “She is entitled to counsel.”
The investigator turned. “Major, are you representing her?”
“No.”
“Then let me do my job.”
“I am.”
It was the second time Ward’s composure slipped, and the second time she corrected it almost immediately.
Nora noticed.
So did Hale.
The general had not left. Two uniformed officers stood near him, not touching him, not calling him detained, and not permitting him to wander farther than the first pew. He had placed his cap beside him. His gloves lay folded across it.
Evelyn sat alone in the front pew. The funeral program trembled between her fingers.
Nora went to her.
“You should have told me,” Evelyn said.
“I found it this morning.”
“You should have told me this morning.”
“I didn’t know who to trust.”
“I’m your mother.”
Nora looked toward Hale.
Evelyn followed her eyes. “Don’t.”
“He knew your name.”
“Of course he knows my name.”
“You looked at him like—”
“Like what?”
Nora stopped.
Evelyn folded the program along an existing crease, then again, reducing her husband’s photograph to a narrow strip of paper. “Say it.”
“Like you weren’t surprised he might have done something.”
Her mother’s fingers went still.
A photographer’s flash went off outside the church doors.
Evelyn put the folded program into her purse. “Your father had been afraid of him.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“It is possible when a man lies to his wife.”
“Dad didn’t lie.”
“Daniel lied every time he said he was fine.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No. It was more exhausting.”
Nora sat beside her. The wood of the pew was hard beneath her dress, and the heat from the candles had made the front of the church too warm. Someone had spilled lily water near the altar. The wet green smell mixed with old stone and furniture polish.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Nora asked.
“I just did.”
May you like
“You waited until his voice came out of a recorder at his funeral.”
“I spent four months asking your father what was wrong. He told me the same three things. Bad sleep. Too much coffee. Classified.”
