Chương 6
Whitaker sat.
Emily shook her head as if the motion might arrange the facts. “Why did you change your name?”
“My mother remarried when I was thirteen. Ray Lawson adopted me.”
“Uncle Ray wasn’t your uncle.”
“He was my stepbrother. We called him your uncle because explaining family trees at Thanksgiving is a poor use of food.”
The humor failed.
Emily stood and walked to the sink. She turned on the faucet, then off again.
“Did Mercer send you into that valley?”
Daniel did not answer.
Whitaker did. “He approved the route.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Daniel looked down at the table.
“Yes,” he said. “He sent the team.”
“Knowing you were on it.”
“Yes.”
“Did he try to kill you?”
“No.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
“Because Stephen’s weaknesses are vanity and fear. Murder requires commitment.”
Whitaker’s mouth tightened, but Emily did not react.
“Then why erase you?” she asked.
Daniel rubbed the edge of the bracelet. “Because I survived with information that contradicted his report.”
“What information?”
“The extraction aircraft could have reached us earlier.”
Whitaker leaned forward. “You saw it?”
“I heard it.”
“Heard what?”
“Rotors north of the ridge. Twice. Keller heard them too.”
Whitaker’s face changed. “We were told air support had been diverted.”
“It circled.”
“Why wouldn’t it come in?”
“Because someone reported the valley already overrun and ordered the pilot to hold.”
“Mercer.”
“I don’t know.”
Whitaker stood abruptly and walked toward the study. “I can find out.”
Daniel said, “Forty years later?”
Whitaker stopped in the doorway. “There may be flight logs.”
“There may be dust.”
“There may be enough.”
“For what?”
“To correct the record.”
Daniel’s voice hardened. “Whose record?”
“All of ours.”
“Keller won’t care.”
“Keller’s family might.”
“Or they might prefer the grave they’ve already learned to live beside.”
Whitaker turned. “That choice belongs to them.”
“You think truth arrives clean because someone puts it in a folder.”
“No.”
“You think a board meets, people testify, a citation gets rewritten, and suddenly everyone was brave in the correct order.”
“I think a lie was used to bury you.”
“It buried more than me.”
Emily faced Daniel. “What’s in the gray box?”
He glanced toward the driveway as though Walter might already be there.
“Copies,” he said. “Papers. A map. Letters.”
“From Mercer?”
“One.”
“What does it say?”
Daniel scraped the last strip of plastic label from the bottle.
“It says he’s sorry.”
Whitaker stared at him.
Emily asked, “Sorry for what?”
“He didn’t specify.”
The box arrived near sunset in the custody of two local police officers and Walter Price, who had insisted on accompanying it because he did not trust “men with matching haircuts.”
Walter entered the guest residence wearing plaid shorts, an Ohio State sweatshirt, and orthopedic sandals. He was seventy, broad through the middle, and carried the gray metal box under one arm as though it contained plumbing tools.
He looked at Whitaker’s uniform.
“Well,” Walter said. “You must be the fellow who ruined my afternoon.”
Whitaker extended a hand. “Marcus Whitaker.”
Walter shifted the box and shook it. “Walter Price. Retired mail carrier. I’ve been opening government mistakes for forty-two years.”
Daniel took the box.
“You open it?”
“I considered it.”
“Walt.”
“I didn’t. Your back door was already unlocked.”
“It sticks.”
“It is a door, Daniel. It has one job.”
Emily almost smiled. The expression disappeared when Daniel placed the box on the dining room table.
The red tape had faded to pink. A small brass lock secured the front.
Daniel removed a key from behind the leather band on his wrist. Emily watched him work it free from a slit in the underside.
“You wore the key,” she said.
“Didn’t have a better place.”
“All these years?”
“Yes.”
Walter lowered himself into a chair. “I’m going to need someone to explain why the quietest man on Linden Street has a secret box and generals calling him staff sergeant.”
“No,” Daniel said.
Walter nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll listen while you refuse.”
Daniel opened the box.
The hinges gave a dry metallic squeal.
Inside lay a folded field map sealed in cloudy plastic, three photographs, a bundle of letters tied with cotton cord, medical records, an old discharge document, and a black cassette tape in a cracked case. Beneath them was a stained notebook with several pages missing.
Whitaker reached toward the top photograph, then stopped before touching it.
Seven young men stood beside a transport helicopter. Daniel was easy to identify despite the dark hair and unlined face. He leaned against the fuselage with his arms crossed and an expression that suggested the photographer had inconvenienced him. Marcus Whitaker stood two places away, thinner, smiling, one boot untied.
Between them, Paul Keller held both hands behind another soldier’s head like antlers.
Emily picked up the photograph by its edges.
“That’s you.”
Daniel nodded.
“You look mad.”
“The sun was in my eyes.”
Walter leaned over. “You looked mad when the sun was behind you too.”
Daniel ignored him.
Emily studied each face. “Which one is Keller?”
Daniel pointed.
She touched the air above Keller without touching the image.
Whitaker removed his cap and set it beside the box.
“May I?”
Daniel handed him the photograph.
The general sat down slowly. His thumb hovered over the young faces.
“Tom Avery,” he said. “Luis Ortega. Samuel Pike. Me. Daniel. Keller. Ben Rourke.”
“Six you carried out,” Emily said.
Whitaker nodded. “Avery had a broken pelvis. Ortega was unconscious. Pike had shrapnel in his back. I had a fractured ankle and burns. Rourke could walk, but barely. Keller was hit later.”
Emily looked at her father. “How could one man carry six?”
“I didn’t carry them all at once.”
Walter said, “Good. Because that would be ridiculous.”
Whitaker gave a faint laugh that broke into something rougher. He looked down at the picture.
May you like
Daniel untied the letters.
The first several were from military offices responding to his attempts, made under his adopted surname, to correct his status. Each reply used different language to reach the same conclusion: no accessible service record matched the information provided. One suggested he contact a veterans’ organization. Another warned that false claims of military service could carry penalties.
