The Artifact Read online

  Now it was Sammy’s turn to hesitate. “Did the MPs inspect caskets?”

  Stubbs looked up with an expression of disdain. “Of course not.”

  Sammy extracted his clipping of the Advocate News from the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt. “Test your memory, if I may, Top. The April casualty report listed seven KIAs in Mitchell’s platoon, three missing. Those are heavy casualties.”

  Stubbs moved from the spot he had occupied in front of his doorway since they had begun their conversation more than ten minutes ago. He stood on the edge of the stairs leading down to the flagstone walk below, looking out over his prize lawn and picket fence to the ranch house opposite, seeing none of it. “I handled those reports for the whole battalion. So many didn’t come back that first month.”

  “All accounted for, bodies, dog tags, signed transport receipts, internment by family?”

  “By the book.”

  Sam started to refold the sheet of paper, then on a whim read off the four Second Platoon names listed in the obituary.

  Stubbs head jerked around as though he’d been jabbed in the kidneys. “Conté wasn’t killed.”

  Sammy glanced up from the article frowning. Then held it out for Stubbs to see the highlighted names. “I copied this from The Fort Bragg Advocate.”

  The ex-airborne Sergeant didn’t look at the paper. “Conté went section eight during one of their last patrols. PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Used to call it shell shock. Sent him right home. Handled the paperwork myself. Supposed to get processed at the main VA hospital in Atlanta, psychiatric unit. He damned sure didn’t get killed in action.”

  “Sergeant Conté’s alive?”

  “Least he was last April. Brains a little scrambled, maybe, but an MP report listed the man walked up the ramp into a transport in handcuffs, calm as you please, probably sedated to the gills.”

  Sammy clutched the creased sheet of paper in both hands, glancing from it to Stubbs in a mixture of disbelief and elation.

  “The VA hospital in Atlanta,” Sam repeated.

  “Last I heard,” Stubbs said. “May be long gone now. Cured, released, transferred.”

  Andrea’s disposition had not improved one centimeter during the three days since coming home from the hospital. When Sam arrived at her condo straight from the airport, she was seated on her sofa, the wheelchair within reach, as she sipped from a tall glass of vodka on ice. She insisted on his comprehensive report on the Stubbs interview following a gruff greeting, even before he had a chance to take off his coat. Sammy deftly parried her impatience with small talk about his flight as he retrieved a bottle of club soda from the refrigerator.

  “If Conté is wacko,” Sam said, “whatever he has to say could be meaningless.”

  “Maybe Stubbs was mistaken.”

  “That pinched-anus man with all his info and power?” Sam argued. “Doesn’t sound like a guy who makes mistakes.”

  The Thomas collar was still in place, and Andrea moved her head with caution. “If Conte’s alive, my gut tells me he’s one of the perps, pretending insanity and will tell us nothing. If he really is dead, we’d need to dig him up to prove it, which no one would allow.”

  “Maybe I can find him,” Sam said.

  “What about patient confidentiality?” Andrea asked.

  Sammy smiled, moved across the room to the laptop on the scriptorium, perched on the edge of the delicate matching chair and turned on the computer. During the next fifteen minutes, Sammy hacked into current patient records, admissions and transfers made in the Atlanta psych section during the past year and a half.

  He paused to look at Andy. “No record of Conté in Atlanta or anywhere else.”

  Disappointment registered on Andy’s face as she shrugged and sipped from her glass, staring pensively at the opposite wall. “If they’re playing switcheroo, maybe they admitted him under some other name.”

  Sammy laid the Second Platoon casualty list next to the computer and began typing names, reading them off aloud as he did so. “Alvarez, Hector J., Sergeant, MOS 2663455--negative.”

  “Palagi, Peter M., Private, MOS 3833452--negative.”

  “Gerlach, Walter C., Corporal, MOS 2856436--negative.”

  Sammy turned toward her again, obviously frustrated. “Damn. Now what?”

  Andrea thought for a moment. “Try Mitchell.”

  Sam frowned, but entered the name in the search box. “Mitchell, George B., Lieutenant, MOS 453678—positive!”

  Andy clapped her hands, yelling, “Gotcha!”

  Sammy frowned, shaking her head at some thought swirling around in his brain. “Why use his name, maybe the leader of the GI perps?”

  “Mitchell’s KIA, remember, a man nobody should be looking for.”

  Sammy acknowledged her answer as he printed the data on Mitchell’s admission to the Atlanta psych ward in July, 2003, and the details on his transfer to Arizona six weeks ago. “A week after your broadcast,” he observed.

  “So, instead of KIA as Callaghan’s mouthpiece Captain Brooks claimed,” Andy said, “Mitchell—or Conté, is actually stashed away in a VA psych ward in Albuquerque.”

  “Seven KIA’s reported in the Web stats, four obituaries run in the Advocate; three troopers lost in the shuffle.”

  “Collusion,” Andrea corrected. “A scheme to make up to seven soldiers disappear, the MIAs, too.”

  “What about Conté?” Sam wondered. “He’s the one who’s supposed to be nuts.”

  “How could they do that?”

  “Easy,” Sammy admitted. “A company clerk compiles statistics, obituaries.”

  Andrea drained her glass and placed it on the table beside her. “A clerk wouldn’t initiate that kind of scam, though.”

  “How many others and which ones,” Sam pointed to the sheet of paper he was still holding, “are alive and sane, secreting a priceless treasure in Alaska or some New York high-rise?”

  “Three, four KIA’s,” Andy replied, “and a couple of missing.”

  “How do we find them?”

  “You found Mitchell.”

  “They won’t let reporters walk in off the street to interview a mental patient,” Sammy reminded her.

  Andy swished the ice in her empty glass. “A wife, siblings might get in.”

  “We’d need photos of both Mitchell and Conté to make sure who we’re talking to.”

  “Mitchell could have committed himself,” Sammy suggested, “he’s the leader and that’s his hideout.”

  Andrea picked up her cigarette pack, shook one out and lit up, exhaling her words with the smoke. “We’ll never know until we talk to him.”

  “Which may involve circumventing the system. The law.”

  Andy adopted that thousand mile stare common to people considering momentous options. “Or drop it. My once-in-a-lifetime chance to leave a huge mark, go out in a blaze of historic, reportorial glory.”

  “When’s your next appointment with Dr. Lawton?” Sammy asked her.

  “Ah, some time next week.”

  “May I see the card?”

  Andrea feigned outrage. “You may not!”

  He sat back and crossed his legs giving her a level stare. “Then get yourself to Albuquerque on your own.”

  “You are not my keeper, Sam! I resent your intrusion in my personal life. Patient confidentiality, remember?”

  “I am not going to New Mexico or anywhere else until you fill me in on your medical status.”

  “Bastard!”

  “Where’s the appointment card?”

  Her answer was reluctant. On my dresser.”

  “May I?”

  “Oh, go ahead.”

  “Ohooo, you almost missed it,” Sam announced as he reentered the living room. “Dr. Lawton, 4:15 tomorrow afternoon.”

  Andrea grimaced, then drained the diluted liquid in her glass.

  Sammy pretended relief. “Whew, that was close.”

  “Why are both legs weaker now?” Andrea complained.
/>   She was seated in the original wheelchair she had been reluctant to accept upon discharge form the hospital following surgery on her neck, still unwilling to use the motorized replacement that would reflect her continued deterioration, Sammy in a wooden armchair in front of Dr. Lawton’s desk.

  “I can’t answer that,” the physician said. “In medical science, sometimes the diagnosis is the most difficult phase of the treatment. My best guess at this point, however, is that the occipital bone we fused last week has not completely rejuvenated yet.”

  “The downside, Doc. Worst case. I demand to know! I can hardly stand up!”

  Sammy reached out and put his hand on her arm. “Let it go, Andy. One thing at a time.”

  She shook his hand off without looking at him. “When you’re through eliminating all the other possibilities, what’s the worst thing this could be?”

  “I am far from convinced that our final diagnosis will come to any worst case conclusion.”

  Andrea blew a stream of breath in frustration. “Doc, level with me. I’ve looked up some of my symptoms on the Internet--MS, Intermittent Claudication, Guillain-Barré syndrome....”

  The physician sighed, and seemed to slump inside his white lab coat, but looked her in the eye. “Multiple sclerosis is a progressive, degenerative disease of the central nervous system. Its symptoms are the muscular weakness you are experiencing. But you do not have the associated

  tremors, speech disturbances and visual impairment. MS is treatable, but incurable. The prognosis

  for MS varies from peaks and valleys of these manifestations to total incapacitation and death.”

  Sammy said, “Andy, don’t do this.”

  She ignored his advice. “Go on, Doctor.”

  Lawton now seemed determined to fulfill his patient’s request for full disclosure as quickly as possible. “Intermittent Claudication is characterized by severe pain and weakness in calves, buttocks or thighs resulting from decreased blood flow. We have already ruled that out.”

  Sammy reached for her hand again and squeezed it. This time she didn’t pull away.

  “Guillian-Barré,” the physician continued, “often begins with pins and needles in the feet, paralysis of the legs that works its way up to the diaphragm, when a ventilator is required. The symptoms usually peak in couple of weeks. About half of the victims see total recovery, a third continue to have muscle weakness, fifteen percent experience serious, long-term disabilities. The disease is fatal for roughly five percent.

  “Most are terminal to some degree or other,” Andrea said.

  “You picked them out,” Lawton reminded her.

  She wrapped her arms around her body as though she was cold and her eyes became moist. “It’s just that I keep wondering, imagining the most awful things....”

  Sammy put his arm around her shoulder. “Put it away, Princess. Concentrate on your story. Start filling your mind with specific horror scenarios and you’ll blow it.”

  Andrea turned her head to frown at his rugged countenance, on which his concern was clearly evident. He had apparently gotten through to her. Finally.

  “Those diseases are highly unlikely,” Lawton interrupted. “Please do not tear yourself apart worrying about them.”

  “Don’t try to humor me, Doc. I need to know the implications of how bad it could be.

  Now it was Lawton’s turn to sigh.

  Sammy frowned, speaking directly to the physician for the first time since he had greeted him a quarter of an hour ago. “Shouldn’t she be hospitalized for intensive observation and more tests?”

  “Forget that!” Andrea said. “I have work to do.”

  Sammy placed his hand on her forearm. “This doesn’t sound like anything to fool around with, Andy. There’ll be more stories, but there’s only one Andrea Madigan.”

  She smiled at him, pulling her arm free of his grasp. “Some people would applaud that, Sam. Every reporter dreams and waits her whole life for the big story—Bay of Pigs, Watergate, Iran Contra. This is the news story of my life and I’ll follow it till I drop, if I have to.”

  Dr. Lawton cleared his throat. “There’s a team of specialists at the Leahy Clinic outside Boston I want to evaluate your condition, plus the results of the tests we’ve conducted. When is a good time to spend a few days up there?”

  “Geeze, Doc, a couple of days? I don’t know when....”

  “Anytime next week, Doctor,” Sammy said. “I’ll guarantee she makes it. If I hear any more senseless arguments about a lousy news story being more important than her health, she’ll be sitting at home alone by the telephone.” Sam had been speaking to Lawton, whose countenance broke into a pleased grin. Then Sammy turned to address Andrea: “Do you catch my drift, Princess?”

  They had called ahead to order pizza and stopped to pick it up on the way home. By the time the taxi double-parked in front of Andrea’s condo and Sammy settled her in the wheelchair on the sidewalk, the fall evening cast deep shadows outside her building, where the lone streetlight was out of order.

  Just as he turned from paying the driver, two men in black ski masks jumped out of a parked car and jogged toward Andy. Sammy squeezed through the narrow space separating two vehicles at the curb as one thug grabbed the wheelchair handles, the other advancing at Sammy with a two-foot length of pipe in hand.

  Sammy bobbed away from the deadly swing, clamping his hand on the man’s wrist as the weapon passed inches beside his head, landing a hard right punch to his assailant’s cheek. Sam grabbed the pipe as the thug staggered from the blow, bashing it against the side of his skull, dropping the mugger to the concrete sidewalk. He sprinted after the accomplice crouched behind Andy’s wheelchair as the masked thug began pushing the chair between the bumpers of two parked cars, poised to roll her out into traffic. Sammy smashed the pipe down on the back of the mugger’s neck and he crumpled to the ground with a weak grunt.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Albuquerque, NM

  October 2004

  In anticipation of the New Mexico weather, she wore a beige short-sleeve blouse with a scoop neck adorned with several gold necklaces, complementing bracelets and a gold chain-link belt buckled loosely about the high waist of a pleated white skirt. Andrea remained in her wheelchair inside the air-conditioned baggage area of the Albuquerque International Terminal out of the dry heat of the day while Sammy retrieved their rental car from the remote parking lot.

  Her face had begun to assume an angry grimace every time she had to be lifted, pushed or assisted in or out of a conveyance and did so now, despite her resolve, as Sammy helped her transfer from the wheelchair into the passenger seat of the Ford Taurus. When he tried to adjust her seatbelt, she slapped his hand away, muttering, “Jesus Christ!”

  They drove out of the ABQ Sunport complex in silence until Sammy found I-25, following the directions to the Albuquerque Veterans Hospital as Andrea read from the MapQuest printout. When they started cruising along the long stretch of highway, Andrea lowered the sheet of paper to her lap, leaning back against the headrest as though reciting the exits and streets had exhausted her. Sammy turned off a secondary road onto a suburban street lined with well-kept duplex homes, an occasional shop, a Catholic church and an old redbrick school.

  Several more turns put them on SE San Pedro Drive, where a wrought iron fence with chipped black paint enclosed a wide stretch of lawn. Patients and staff were sitting on slat-wood benches, strolling along paved walking paths winding among shrubs and trees sloping up to the crest of a slight incline leading to a sprawling three-story building of pale yellow stucco with wide windows that seemed to invite inspection.

  They drove in between the open gates, up the long driveway, commenting on the apparently casual nature of the facility. “Maybe Mitchell is the break we need,” Andy said with more hope than conviction.

  Sammy stopped the car in the circular drive by the handicap ramp that led to the main entrance of the rambling edifice whose oblong sections looked more like intermitt
ent additions to the larger central unit than the original architect’s design. They had begun to achieve a fairly smooth routine for getting Andy out of the car and onto the wheelchair, which did not diminish her frustration as she propelled herself toward the base of the handicap ramp while Sammy parked the car in a visitors lot off to the right.

  Rolling slowly up the incline toward the wide double doors, she noted an aged cement plaque set into the wall engraved with “WPA 1930,” confirming its construction by FDR’s effort to minimize unemployment during the Depression. When Sammy returned from the parking lot, Andy was still waiting on the porch of the main entrance, conversing with a distinguished white-haired old gentleman dressed in a natty hounds-tooth sport jacket over a brown knit cardigan, fading pink button-down shirt, maroon butterfly tie, gray flannels and brown and white saddle shoes, holding a battered gray felt hat casually at his side. Andrea introduced him to Sammy as Dr. Harvey Fredrickson, Chief Psychiatrist of the Albuquerque Veterans facility, of whom she had been fortunate to inquire, since he was just leaving for a meeting in the city.

  “I’m a bit late now,” the elderly man said, pushing up the left sleeve of his sweater to look at his bare wrist for a watch that was absent, then shrugged with a slight smile. “Perhaps if you would be so good as to drive me downtown I could answer your questions about your brother, then cadge a ride back with one of my colleagues.”

  “He’s here then,” Sammy said, as Fredrickson slapped his hat on his head and started briskly down the steps, ignoring Andrea’s slow decent down the handicap ramp.

  “I been praying with George Mitchell since he arrived,” the doctor said, leading Sammy toward the parking lot. “Which one is your auto?”

  Sammy pointed out the blue Taurus and settled Fredrickson into the back seat. “How long has he been here?”

  Fredrickson reclined against the seat cushion and crossed his thin legs. “About a month. Came down for my hot milk around two AM as usual, and there he was in civvies, surrounded by three, four soldiers like he was some deranged killer.”