After hearing her story, one of the medics grabbed a private who happened by and told him to go find Captain Morgan. The captain arrived a few minutes later, accompanied by two armed sergeants. After I explained what happened, he told me he had to place me under arrest until he could conduct a full investigation. My father arrived right about then, frantic, and things got ugly.
It took me, Mike, Lance, and four soldiers to subdue the old man. After wrestling him to the ground, I told him to calm the hell down and let Morgan do his job. He finally agreed, though he was still fuming with rage. He stayed with Lauren for a few minutes, then left so the medics could treat her injuries.
At 0900, Morgan showed up at the truck with my father. The scent of fried spam, beans, and tortillas drifted to me, making my stomach clench painfully. Morgan dismissed the guards and followed my father inside, then removed my cuffs and sat down across from me. Dad gave me a canteen of water.
“You all right, son?” he asked. I chugged half the canteen, then said, “Doing a lot better now, thanks. That for me?” I pointed at the food.
“Yeah. Eat up.”
I did, then set my plate aside and looked at Morgan. “So what’s going to happen now?”
“We’re still investigating,” he said, “but so far your story holds up.”
“Of course it fucking does,” Dad said heatedly.
Morgan winced as if struck, then said, “Detective Travis Holzman is assisting with the investigation. He’s been a big help.”
“Is that the same detective I beat the hell out of a few days ago?” I said.
“Yes. But he’s been very professional about the whole thing.”
“You’ll have to forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical.”
“I understand your concerns. But believe me, he’s working hard to get to the bottom of what happened. You should have seen him after he interviewed your stepmother. I thought lightning bolts were going to fly out of his eyes.”
It occurred to me then that if Travis really was a good cop, he was probably a lot more concerned about Lauren than he was with me. “Okay. I’ll take your word for it.”
“Listen, I need you to stay here for a while longer,” Morgan said. “Just until Detective Holzman has had time to sort out all the details. Things are kind of tense out there right now. Rumors flying, that sort of thing. I’m worried some of the soldiers might try to retaliate. Sergeant Farrell had a lot of friends.”
Dad said, “Well you better kick those soldiers in the ass and tell them to mind their goddamn manners. Any of them takes a shot at my boy, I’ll put a bullet between their eyes and worry about the consequences later.”
“Mr. Hicks, I understand you’re angry, but-”
“You don’t understand shit!” Dad snarled. “That son of a bitch raped my wife. He deserved to die, and he was one of your men. Your responsibility!” He punctuated the end of the sentence by jamming a hard finger into Morgan’s chest.
Morgan paled, his mouth pinching down to a thin, flat line. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hicks. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. But I have to face reality, okay? And the reality is, this place is a powder keg. So give me some time to defuse it before you go flying off the handle, all right?”
My father’s fists balled up as his sides, muscles straining under the skin of his jaw.
“Dad, please.”
He looked at me, the anger in his eyes a living thing, boiling and writhing and burning to be let loose.
“Dad, please,” I repeated. “You’re not making things any better.” I turned to Morgan. “It’s okay. I’ll stay here for now. Just leave me some water, and let me know what you find out, okay?”
“I can do that.”
“And Dad, just stay at the camp. Or better yet, go be with Lauren.”
It was as if I had stuck a needle in a balloon. The fists unclenched, the eyes closed, the shoulders sagged. He leaned down and put his head in his hands and sighed in helpless frustration. “You’re right. Are you sure you’re okay in here, son?”
“Like I said, just leave me some water.”
They did, and left. Morgan posted another guard, just one this time, and I had the impression he was there to keep people out rather than to keep me in. He was a young private, maybe about my age, with the big round red-cheeked face of a Nebraska farm boy. There were a few attempts on his part to strike up a conversation—a soldier’s go-to method to pass the time on a boring watch—but after a few grunts and monosyllabic answers from me, he gave it up.
I did not feel like talking.
*****
I could see through the exit the sky was overcast, which explained why it didn’t get too hot that day. The weak sun cast pale shadows on the ground outside the truck, slowly moving them from right to left, telling me I was facing south. The shadows began to lengthen until about 1600 when Travis showed up with my father. The guard left, and the two men stepped in.
Once again, Dad brought food. They gave me time to wolf it down before launching into the conversation.
“So what did you find out, Detective?” I asked.
He opened a notebook and said, “I need you to answer some questions first.”
“Okay.”
He asked me to repeat the statement I had given Captain Morgan. Then he asked me to repeat it again. He asked me questions, some of them direct, some of them obviously baited.
One of the classic methods of interrogation is to give someone enough rope to hang them with, then pull the noose tight. My father had taught me a thing or two about it, but I wasn’t worried. There was no need to be. I had the truth on my side.
Half an hour later, Holzman made a final notation in his book, then set it down and looked me in the eye. “Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. After the incident yesterday when two of Sergeant Farrell’s men were killed, Captain Morgan relieved him of command of his squad and put him under armed guard pending arrival in Colorado. He was facing charges for dereliction of duty, among other things. I interviewed his men, as well as your father and those friends of yours who were there. Long story short, things weren’t looking too good for Sergeant Farrell. Compounding this, there was the altercation between Farrell and your father.” He gestured at Dad. “From what I gathered, he blamed Mr. Hicks for the trouble he ran into.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “My father didn’t hold a gun to his head and force him to get his men drunk. Soldiers aren’t allowed to drink on duty for a very good reason. You ask me, they probably botched the job clearing the trailer. Didn’t follow procedure. If they had, those two men would probably still be alive.”
Holzman nodded. “I stand to agree. Farrell struck me as the kind of person who likes to blame all his problems on everyone except the responsible party—himself.”
“You said he was under armed guard,” Dad chimed in. “How did he manage to get away from them?”
Holzman sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “There was only one guard on duty at the time. He tried to say Farrell overpowered him and knocked him unconscious, but the only injury the medics found was a black eye. Now I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never seen someone get knocked out by a punch to the eye. So I braced the kid, and after sweating him for an hour, he finally confessed that Farrell had bribed him into letting him go.”
“Bribed him?” I asked. “With what?”
Holzman let out another sigh, his jaded cop eyes red around the edges. “The location of a case of Jack Daniels whiskey stashed in one of the HEMTTs. Farrell punched the kid in the face to make it look legit, then set his escape plan into motion.”
“He was going to desert,” Dad said.
Holzman nodded. “Somewhere on the way up here through Texas, Farrell found a dirt bike and talked a HEMTT driver into letting him stash it with the other cargo. Near as I can tell, the first thing he did was retrieve the bike, slip past the guards on the western edge of the circle, and then hide it a few hundred yards away, along with a big can of fuel. One of the patrols found it a couple of hours ago. Afterward, he snuck back into the camp, found a can of salt somewhere, and used it to convince Lauren he wanted to trade.”