The Big Blast Read online

  “He’s the one I’m worried about.”

  She nodded and thought about it.

  I looked back over at Lauren. She looked very tired.

  Erwin, Tommy’s partner of twenty years, arrived and joined Tommy behind the bar. The two men kissed affectionately, comfortably, companionably, the way Lauren and I do now, the way I hoped we would still be doing on our final day together—however close or far away that might be.

  “Mama has information for you. You want it, you?”

  “I want it, I.”

  “The word on the road is Betsy had a single john for a while, a wealthy older man who paid for exclusivity—something, it turns out, Betsy was not suited for. From what Mama hear he was most displeased. Perhaps he did something about it.”

  “That’s very interesting,” I said. “Thank you for that. Any idea who the man is?”

  “Mama is working on a name for you,” she said. “They were both very discreet, as you can imagine.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

  “Mama trust you to do the right thing,” she said. “Now, what was it you needed to consult with Mama about?”

  “Sabotage,” I said, and told her what Henry Folsom had told me.

  “Is a good plan,” she said. “Too much beach for spotters and patrols to cover. I will keep my eyes open and ears to the ground. We will stop them. You’ll see, you.”

  Dinner was over and Lauren and I were dancing to one of our favorite songs, the song that, while we were apart, had been our song. Now that we were back together it resonated even more.

  She was weak and I had to help hold her up, which with one arm was a challenge—a welcomed one I was grateful for. It was a grace to hold her, to dance together again—something neither of us thought we’d ever get to do.

  I’ll be seeing you

  In all the old familiar places

  That this heart of mine embraces

  “People think we’re silly,” she said.

  “They wouldn’t if they knew.”

  In that small cafe

  The park across the way

  “What we’ve been through?” she asked. “What it has cost us to be together?”

  “What it’s like to have what we have and lose it,” I said, “and then get it back.”

  She nodded. “That’s exactly it,” she said. “Think about how people would live, if they lost their lives, then got to come back and live them again.”

  “And it’s not just us,” I said, nodding toward the two other couples on the floor.

  Clip and Miki were dancing every bit as intimately as we were. Tommy and Erwin even more so.

  She turned to look.

  Seeing Tommy and Erwin reminded me of Jeff Bennett and Kay Hudson and all those who for whatever reason couldn’t or wouldn’t express their love.

  “We need to express our love for all those who can’t or won’t or don’t dare to,” I said.

  “We certainly do.”

  I’ll be seeing you

  In every lovely summer’s day

  In everything that’s light and gay

  “That’s us,” Tommy said.

  “Light in our loafers,” Erwin said. “And gay as a picnic basket.”

  Everyone in the bar not dancing clapped and cheered for them.

  I’ll find you in the morning sun

  And when the night is new

  I’ll be looking at the moon

  But I’ll be seeing you

  “Take me to our home, put me in our bed, make love to me, then hold me while I sleep,” Lauren said.

  Without wasting any time, I did exactly that.

  And we fell asleep entangled in each other beneath a waning moon as our song, one of our songs anyway, spun atop the phonograph.

  And when the night is new

  I’ll be looking at the moon

  But I’ll be seeing you

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “The things I’m seeing . . .” Dr. Robert Foster said. “The outer wounds—the bullet wounds, shrapnel, even missing limbs—” he glanced at my missing right— “are nothing compared to the mental, emotional, and psychological trauma they’re dealing with. And nobody much is addressing those ailments at all.”

  Bob Foster was a physician in town who had a lot of GIs and other returning servicemen as patients. He was a thin middle-aged man of average height, with thick salt-and-pepper hair and an ill-advised bushy mustache above his thin lips.

  We were having breakfast together at the Lighthouse Cafe, a milk bottle–looking joint located on the lower end of Harrison.

  It was early—right in the heart of the morning rush, and Foster spoke softly because of the number of men in uniform close by.

  I had left Lauren in bed, but carried her scent on my skin and our song in my head.

  “You gotta remember we’re fighting this war with essentially a civil army,” he said. “These citizen soldiers aren’t prepared for, equipped, or trained to deal with the horror, brutality, and inhumanity they’re faced with over there—not that anyone ever really can be. But at least the professional soldiers undergo more extensive training—not to mention they have a certain disposition to begin with that a lot of the lads being drafted or even volunteering because of Pearl Harbor don’t.”

  “The friend I mentioned to you is the least likely combatant you’re likely to meet. He’s kind and sensitive and quiet and—”

  “Oh God,” he said. “The worst. You couldn’t design a better candidate for shell shock if you tried. How’s he eating and sleeping?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Does he seem keyed up, overstimulated? But also depressed and self-destructive? Is he more negative or hostile in general? Does he seem to find the world a more dangerous place—even in those places or times when it’s not? Do certain things set him off, cause him to act in violent or aggressive ways?”

  “I’d say yes to all, but haven’t been around him much yet,” I said. “I’ll keep an eye out for those things.”

  “Find out what’s in his nightmares,” he said. “What here at home reminds him of what happened over there.”

  “Is it possible he could do things—violent acts, real bad things––and not remember?”

  “Entirely. Absolutely. It’s common, actually.”

  My appetite was gone. I pushed back my wrecked Adam and Eve on a raft and dropped my napkin on it.

  “You need to keep a close eye on him,” he added. “And feel free to bring him to see me. I can help.”

  When I got to my office, Gary Thomas was there with a sweet, soft-spoken brunette named Betty Blackmon.

  Betty was not only Gary and Rita’s neighbor, but a good friend of Rita’s and her coworker at the phone company.

  “You don’t think my wife is cheating on me,” Gary said. “I brought proof.”

  “I never said your wife isn’t cheating on you. I said there’s no evidence that she is so far. And that’s not proof, that’s a person.”

  “I just meant . . . she can tell you since you won’t believe me.”

  “Whatta you have to say for yourself?” I said.

  Her eyes widened and she looked a little frightened. “Sir?” she asked, the hint of alarm in her voice. “I . . . I’m not sure I . . .”

  “He just means tell him what you told me,” Gary said.

  “Rita’s a friend of mine. One of my best, but . . . what she’s doing . . .”

  “And what exactly is that?” I asked.

  “Well, seeing someone.”

  “Who?”

  “I have no idea. She’s very, very discreet. Obviously, they both are.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “She keeps slipping off when we’re out together,” she said. “She keeps lying to me and to Gary. I feel so bad about talking to you about her like this, but the way she’s doing Gary, it’s just . . . He’s such a good husband and they used to be so happy. She’s just come under this new guy’s spell
and I hate it for her.”

  “You’ve tried talking to her?” I asked.

  She nodded. “She can’t be reasoned with. She just says she can’t explain it, but the heart wants what the heart wants.”

  “See?” Gary said. “Now will you please try to find out who she is seeing?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “because we weren’t trying before.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Henry Folsom and David Howell showed up about lunchtime.

  “You boys here to take me to luncheon?”

  “Wish we were,” Folsom said.

  “We got another one,” Howell said.

  “Another what?”

  “Body,” Folsom said.

  “Just like the other,” Howell said. “Same place, same manner of death, same type of girl.”

  “Same killer,” I said.

  “What we hear,” Howell said, “he nearly killed her inside Nick’s earlier in the evening.”

  My throat constricted and I couldn’t speak for a moment.

  Folsom said, “Were you there when he choked Patricia Hightower? Patty?”

  I frowned and nodded, still unable to say anything.

  “Jimmy, I really don’t want it to be him,” Folsom said. “But . . . it certainly looks like it is. You’ve got to see that. You’ve got to see how careful and slow we’re moving on this thing.”

  “Too slow,” Howell said. “Cost another girl her life. If I had arrested him yesterday . . .”

  “Witnesses say he left with you,” Folsom said. “That true? Where’d you go?”

  “I took him home,” I said. “Told his grandmother how bad he was feeling. She said she’d keep an eye on him.”

  They both nodded as if I had just solved their case.

  “Did someone see him back at the bar?” I asked.

  “No, but—” Folsom said.

  “With Patty?”

  “No.”

  Howell added, “She left alone. We think she was jumped somewhere on the sidewalk and dragged into the lot. He was sore at her. Embarrassed. Upset. Out of his mind. He waited for her and when she came out, he got his revenge.”

  “How else can it be?” Folsom asked.

  I shrugged.

  “You wanna ride over with us to pick him up?”

  Orson’s grandmother answered the door in her nightgown.

  “Jimmy? What’s wrong?”

  She squinted at us behind her glasses, the wrinkles on her old face multiplying.

  “We need to talk to your grandson, ma’am,” Folsom said.

  “He’s not here right now,” she said.

  Folsom and Howell looked at each other.

  “What’s this about?” she added.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Out looking for Joan,” she said. “I thought you were helping him.”

  “I am. But I haven’t seen him since I dropped him off with you last night.”

  “What time did he leave again last night?” Howell asked.

  “He didn’t.”

  “But you said—”

  “That he was gone now,” she said. “He just left.”

  “You’re saying he was here all night?”

  She nodded. “I am.”

  “But he could’ve slipped out while you were asleep,” Folsom said. “Right?”

  “Wrong,” she said. “I didn’t sleep.”

  “You didn’t sleep?”

  “Not a wink. Why you think I’m in my bed clothes at this hour? I was just about to lie down when you showed up. I stayed up with Orson all night. I don’t sleep so good anymore anyway, but when Jimmy told me he was upset and to keep an eye on him, that’s exactly what I did.”

  “He was never out of your sight all night?” Howell asked.

  “He was not.”

  “Ma’am, you can get in a lot of trouble for lying to the police,” Folsom said.

  “I’m not. I’m telling the truth. Have nothing to lie about. And I wouldn’t if I did.”

  “Another girl is dead,” Howell said. “If you’re lying more could die. Can you live with that?”

  “Won’t have to. ’Cause my boy’s not a killer and I’m not lying.”

  “Any idea where he is now?”

  She shook her head. “None. Just know he’s out looking for his best friend’s girl. That’s the kind of boy he is.”

  “Okay,” Folsom said. “Have him call me at the station when he shows up.”

  “Jimmy,” she said, “you know what a sweet boy my Orson is. Don’t you let them go settin’ him up for something he didn’t do, something he could never do in a million years.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “I’ve learned a lot about her,” Lauren said. “Far more than I would’ve thought I would. There’s more to her than meets the eye.”

  “Yeah?”

  Earlier in the day I had taken Lauren by Lilium Wynn’s, Joan’s aunt, where she had been allowed to look in Joan’s room and through Joan’s things, and from which she had taken Joan and Ernie’s correspondence.

  Knowing he was coming home soon, Ernie had mailed Joan’s letters back when he was injured, so we had both sides of the ongoing wartime epistolary conversation.

  “I feel guilty,” she said. “Some of it is so intimate. I don’t mean sexually, although there is some of that. Mostly I mean in the way they bare their souls to one another. It was certainly not meant for anyone else to ever see.”

  I nodded.

  It was evening, and I was driving Lauren to the USO for her shift, our car rolling along Grace Avenue very slowly toward downtown.

  “I’ve glanced over his, but the ones of hers I’ve read, I’ve read very carefully.”

  “And?”

  “I feel so bad for her,” she said. “I wish I had known her better, had been able to help her more. She’s a really good person. Restless, like everybody’s been saying. Kinda bored and sick of the small town. But mostly she’s dangerously naive.”

  “That’s never good,” I said.

  “But far worse in some circumstances than others,” she said. “Boyfriend on a foreign battlefield, time on her hands, little to no supervision or even friendships.”

  I glanced over at Lauren. She was so beautiful, so my ideal woman, but she looked tired and frail, and I was glad we were going back to the doctor tomorrow.

  “Don’t forget we’ve got Dr. Reed in the morning,” I said.

  “I won’t.”

  “I want you to be very honest with him about how you’re feeling,” I said. “And very detailed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I know you do. But back to Joan.”

  “Did she do anything besides volunteer at the USO?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “One of the issues we’re facing with the USO—and not just ours, but all of them—is only the well-to-do can work at them. Only we have the money and the time. Some of the women who would like to be able to, who would be very good at it, can’t do it. In fact, many of them are domestics, working in the homes of those who are doing it, enabling them to.”

  A little flash of illumination went off inside my head.

  “That’s why you’ve employed a few maids who never actually come to our house to clean,” I said. “You’re paying them to volunteer at the USO.”

  A small smile played across her lips. “You notice everything, don’t you?”

  “God, I love you,” I said. “And I love what you’re doing with Harry’s money.”

  “It’s not Harry’s money anymore,” she said. “I keep telling you. It’s our money. Yours as much as mine. I wish you would—”

  “What else?”

  “She genuinely cares for Ernie,” she said. “She’s not an Allotment Annie. She really loves him.”

  Allotment Annies were women who married men before they left for war in order to receive the allotments the military deducted from GI’s paychecks. Some of the more unscrupulous Annies married
several soldiers and were paid well for their bigamy. Of course, the big payoff came when their “husbands” were killed in action and they collected the ten grand paid to surviving wives.

  “But?” I said.

  “She loves him, but something changed. I’m not sure exactly when. I haven’t gotten to all the letters—and most of them aren’t dated so I’m having to establish their order by what’s in them. But there’s a definite change—and not too long ago, I’d say. It’s a pretty subtle shift, but it’s there. She doesn’t get cold, but she definitely cools off. You know what it is? It’s not so much that she grows distant as distracted. Something catches her eye, her attention.”

  I thought about it, what it might be, what it could mean.

  “You think The Creeper took her?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Hope to find out tonight.”

  “The thing is . . . if she was taken, abducted, forced somewhere against her will, wouldn’t you expect her letters to remain just the same, then stop abruptly? Doesn’t the fact that she changes mean it’s more likely that she chose to go off somewhere on her own?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. That’s good. Very good. Of course, both could be true. She could've changed and even decided to go off somewhere or do something new, but before she could, she was taken.”

  “True.”

  “I think her being taken or something happening to her is the most likely because she hasn’t contacted her aunt. Wouldn’t the girl in the letters contact her aunt?”

  “Yes, she would,” she said. “She definitely would. So find the creepy bastard and get her back. Just be careful doing it. Make sure you come back to me tonight.”

  “I’ll come back to you every night,” I said. “Can I ask another favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “Mama Cora mentioned Betsy had a single customer for a while—a wealthy, older, jealous john who didn’t want to share her with anyone. She left him—”

  “And you want to make sure he didn’t retaliate,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “And since I’m a woman of means . . .”

  “Thought you might know who to ask—or even that someone might come to mind.”

  “You want it to be Noah Mosley, don’t you?”

  “Sure, but don’t expect to be that lucky.”

  “You never know,” she said. “From what I know of him, he could be the john.”