Abandoned: MIA in Vietnam (3 page)

The walk on Inverness led back to Copperhead and then to his house. The morning paper lay in the driveway behind the van conversion. Four more morning papers lay on the bricked front porch where a neighbor had thrown them. Having not seen Wolfe for several days, the neighbor assumed Wolfe was out of town and had worried about rain ruining the papers. Wolfe gathered the newspapers, two already yellowing, as Kayla unlocked the front door.

“More articles to clip,” she said. “Don’t become a hoarder, Dad. This place is only 1600 square feet.”

“Might find my next hobby in one of these,” Wolfe said. He pulled the clear plastic cover off the oldest paper and spread it before him. Kayla removed wet clothing from the washing machine and tossed it into the dryer. Once the dryer started up she returned to the great room and found her father engrossed in the paper.

“Dad,” she said quietly, then again louder when he didn’t respond.

“Oh, sorry, dear,” Wolfe said. “Aircraft carrier did in my ears, as you well know.”

“Find something interesting in the paper?” she asked. “I’ve got to get back to the dorm. I have things to do and a date tonight. Can’t waste my short time off.”

Wolfe stood and put his arm around his daughter. “Well, it was good to see you, Kayla. I love you. Drive carefully,” he said.

“Dad. You have to drive me back to Flagler. A friend dropped me off. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” Wolfe said. “I was distracted by the paper.”

“What about the paper?”

“On the front page of today’s paper, there’s a story about an attempted murder at Flagler Hospital. Someone pushed a bolus of potassium into a dead man, and then left a note:
This is for Jimmy Byrnes
. I knew a Jimmy Byrnes in the navy. He was a yellowshirt on the
Oriskany
hangar deck crew when I got to Vietnam. Probably a coincidence. Why would someone push potassium into a dead man? Makes no sense.”

CHAPTER 3

Wolfe drove the large van conversion into the parking lot between the Anastasia Bookstore and the Villa Zorayda Museum, setting the brake. He reached to his right and grabbed Kayla’s hand before she jumped out. “Study hard, KayLan,” he said, using his pet name for her, an abbreviated form of Kayla Anne. He left the engine running and the air conditioner blowing cold air. Seconds after shutting either one down the van’s interior temperature would shoot to a hundred degrees or more.

“As always, Pops,” she said. Remembering what else was nearby, besides Flagler College, she asked, “Don’t you go to Price’s for haircuts?” She eyed his shaggy mop of hair. “How long has it been?”

Running his hand through his graying mane, Wolfe thought for a second. “Two months, I guess. Don’t need haircuts as often, since it’s thinning.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” she said. “It looks pretty bad, especially that hairy neck. And you can wander through the bookstore when you’re done. Might find something to do in the hobby section. We’ve got to work on your depression.”

“I told you. Something will grab me. I’m easily infatuated,” Wolfe said, staring at three barely dressed co-eds walking through the parking lot.

“I don’t expect Mom wants you to take up girl watching, Dad. Did you ever have a crush on a girl?” Kayla leaned back in the captain’s chair and explored her father’s countenance. His expression went from gloomy to bright. A smile crossed his lips.

“Only with every girl I ever met,” he said. “Your mother knew that about me. She kept me out of circulation after the twins’ mother died, until I had convinced myself she was my next wife.”

“Explain that, the crush on everyone,” Kayla said. “I’ve had similar feelings about boys. Men, I guess.”

Wolfe stared at the ceiling for a long minute, then tried to frame an answer. “Well, it seems I have a hard time differentiating between casual flirting, or a woman being nice to me, or commiserating with me, and telling the difference between that and being interested in me. Should one of those women who walked through the parking lot just now wave to me, my heart would have done flip-flops.”

“That ever get you in trouble?” Kayla asked.

“All the time. I believe I’ve had more first dates with no second dates than all my male high school and college classmates put together.” Wolfe said and laughed. “I dated a college student after Lisa died, not really a date. She volunteered in my clinic for several weeks. I took her to dinner, as a reward, her last night in the clinic. After dinner we walked back to my car. I grabbed her hand. She pulled her hand from mine and turned to face me with tears in her eyes. ‘You’re like a father figure to me,’ she said. ‘Why would you do that?’ I said I would like to get to know her better. She said, ‘You’re so
old
.’ Mind you, I was forty-two. She was twenty-two. Only six years younger than your mom. Anyway, I immediately came to my senses and apologized for misinterpreting her kindness and interest. But she never spoke to me again.”

“Ew,” Kayla said. “Twenty years. And now you’re almost seventy and Mom is fifty-five.”

“Sixty-nine.”

“Whatever. I don’t think I could date someone twice as old as I am.”

“Better start looking now. Gets harder as you get older,” Wolfe agreed, smile on his face. “By the time you are fifty, eligible bachelors who are one hundred years-old are rare.” He started to laugh, quietly at first, then louder as his daughter joined in.

Wolfe turned the ignition key off and opened his door. “Where are you going, Dad?” Kayla asked jumping down from the passenger seat. They met behind the van.

He put his arm around her shoulder. “I suppose I’ll get a trim while I’m here. Can you lend me twenty bucks? Price’s won’t take my credit card.”

Kayla opened her purse. “I think –”

“Just kidding, honey. I’ve got money.” Wolfe scanned the parking lot. “Maybe I will hit the bookstore afterwards and check out the hobby section. Worse thing that could happen is I might find a good book.”

Kayla squeezed her father around his waist. He seemed a lot more vigorous than he had earlier in the morning. “And I didn’t even have to threaten to call Mom! Are you still going to let me bring the Prius to school in the fall, so I don’t have to beg for rides?”

“As long as you can find a safe, cheap place to park it,” Wolfe said.

“I was thinking about leaving the dorm and sharing an apartment with some girls senior year.”

Wolfe’s face clouded briefly. “We’ll talk about it,” he said, using a tone Kayla knew usually meant
no way in hell
.

Not wanting to dwell on his negative thoughts, she gave him a peck on his cheek. “Okay, Pops. Call me if you want me to come home and cook you a real meal for supper. Love you.” And she was gone, across King Street and into the Flagler campus.

Wolfe brushed away a tear and turned to walk around the building to the entrance of Price’s barbershop. Mike gave him a quick trim and told him several jokes, but still couldn’t fix the bald spot in the back.

***

Wolfe ran his hand through his short haircut,
just long enough to comb a part.
He mulled over the fact that his wife would be upset.
If she were home.
She liked longer hair on him, although with his thinning gray hair, he thought every possible longer hairstyle looked like a comb-over. Sweating in a hot Florida summer made the look worse. He detested comb-overs and would rather have his tanned scalp show through the gray locks.
Nice contrast.

None of the books in the hobby section of the bookstore excited his interest. Those on remote-controlled aircraft and drones attracted him momentarily until he read how the FAA had gotten involved in the sport.

Someone left that day’s
St. Augustine Record
in one of the cushioned chairs scattered around the bookstore. Picking up the paper, he scanned the headline he had seen at home,
Attempted Murder at Flagler
. Settling into the comfortable chair, Wolfe read the entire article.

The night before, a retired navy chief had succumbed from his maladies on the medical ward. No attempt had been made to resuscitate him. Apparently he and his family had decided against extreme life saving measures, although the article didn’t mention why.
Probably HIPAA
, Wolfe thought.
In the old days, there would have been a paragraph or two on the man’s congestive heart failure, liver disease, or failed kidney transplant.

The nurse noted his passing in her log, but left the body in the bed for the morgue crew to process for the funeral home. When she returned to the room with the orderly from the morgue, they found a needle on a syringe, later noted to contain a concentrated solution of potassium, sticking into one of the patient’s intravenous ports. Attached to the pole holding the bag of intravenous solution was the note:
This is for Jimmy Byrnes.
A review of the security video showed a man slipping into and out of the dead man’s room, after his death. Police were searching for a
person of interest
. No name given. No picture of the person in the paper.

Wolfe turned to the obituaries in the back of the first section. The family hadn’t put a death notice in, yet. The article mentioned the dead man had been in his late seventies, so his career in the navy could have overlapped Wolfe’s brief sojourn on the high seas. That would also have made it contemporary with the Jimmy Byrnes that Wolfe had known on the
Oriskany
.

No one would be able to tell he had sat in the chair and read the paper. Wolfe folded it neatly and laid it in the chair. When he read the funnies as a boy, his father had been insistent that he return newspapers to their original folded, neat order. That way the next reader, usually his father, could find the sections he wanted. The habit had followed Wolfe for a lifetime. His insistence that Jennifer, Kayla’s mother, follow the same routine was but one more irritant in their marriage.

Empty-handed, Wolfe left the bookstore. When he returned to the van a light bulb went off in his head:
The Chief would know about Jimmy Byrnes.

Chief Noble had been an ABH-2 – aviation boatswains mate petty officer second-class – in the V-3 Hangar Deck Division on
Oriskany
when Wolfe had been an airman. During Wolfe’s internship in Jacksonville, he had had to drive his roommate and fellow intern, Iggy Harrison, to the VW dealership to pick up his car one Saturday morning. And who should present Iggy with his bill but retired USN Chief Noble.

It had taken Wolfe a minute to recognize the black ex-sailor, dressed in blue trousers and white shirt with the VW logo on it. Noble wasn’t convinced of who Wolfe was until they had gotten together briefly for a beer later that week. Although they didn’t see much of each other during Wolfe’s internship, they kept in touch more often after Wolfe returned to St. Augustine to work at the
After Hours
urgent cares.

“I’m coming. I’m coming,” Noble’s voice boomed through the glass storm door, over the sound of barking dogs. “Oh, my God, look who has come calling,” Noble said. He pushed the glass door open. The three pit bull mixes wagged their tails and barked, then climbed on Wolfe and tried to lick his face. He entered Noble’s home on Lincoln Street, in the Lincolnville historic section of old St. Augustine.

“Hey, Chief,” Wolfe said, shaking the older man’s right hand with both of his. “I was up the street getting a haircut. Thought I’d drop in for a visit. I would have called first, but my cell phone is at home charging.”

“I hate those things,” Noble said, referring to cell phones. “No one ever drops in unannounced any more. They always call first. When you get to be my age, you’ll like surprises. I do.”

“Surprise!” Wolfe shouted, spreading his hands out wide. The outburst started the dogs barking again. They quickly quieted down.

“Come in. Come in. Have a seat here in the living room. You look good, Doc. Retirement must be going well for you,” Noble said. He ushered Wolfe into the living room, filled by two recliners and a large flat screen television. “Sit in my wife’s chair. She’s over at Bethel Baptist. Women’s meeting, you know. Want a drink? Iced tea? Lemonade?”

Wolfe smiled, remembering a younger Noble as a hard-charging, heavy-drinking man. He teased the retired chief, saying, “That’s it? No liquor. Not even a beer?”

Noble shook his head. “Lord, no,” he said and laughed, shaking his head. “The doctor mentioned once that alcohol wasn’t good for my gout or my liver. Daloris cleaned out the liquor locker that day. I can’t get a drink from any of my neighbors, either. I think she told everyone in Lincolnville. They won’t even let me in any of the bars downtown.”

“She must love you a lot,” Wolfe said. “I’ll take a half lemonade/half iced tea, if the iced tea is sweet. But only if it’s no trouble.”

“No trouble at all,” the older man said, turning to go to the kitchen. He returned with a glass of pale iced tea and handed it to Wolfe. “So what really brings you to Lincolnville?”

“Did you read the paper this morning?” Wolfe asked.

“Well, I read some of the online version. My grandson set it up on the computer for me.”

“See the article about the attempted murder at Flagler Hospital?”

“Don’t believe I did,” Noble said, scratching his unshaved chin.

Wolfe told Noble about the article. He ended his dissertation with, “Could the note be referring to
our
Jimmy Byrnes?”

Noble leaned back in his chair. “You don’t know about Jimmy?”

“Know what?” Wolfe said.

“He’s long dead. Navy said it was suicide.”

“When?”

“Our cruise, yours and mine on
Oriskany
. Last day on the line. He didn’t show up for work. Why don’t you remember this? We mustered the entire crew, many of them on the hangar deck. Counted noses. The marine detail and the chiefs checked every compartment. No trace of him. The last time anyone had seen him was during the fire the night before.”

“Big fire? I wasn’t on the ship then,” Wolfe reminded Noble. “Got a ride in a helo to the
Ranger
. You guys went home. I stayed for another cruise. Remember?”

Noble cocked his head, examining Wolfe carefully. “Maybe. Small electrical fire in a tractor. Anyway, we turned the ship around and went back to where it had been the night before when the tractor caught fire. It’s a huge ocean, Doc. No trace of him there, either. The destroyers stayed for two more days searching. Someone said we even radioed the Russian trawler that tailed us to see if they had found him. Nothing.”

“So the navy gave up and decided he committed suicide by jumping overboard?” Wolfe asked. “No investigation into foul play? You know he didn’t have many friends, especially in the supply divisions. I remember he caught that asshole, Deke Jameson, red-handed stealing dungarees from our laundry. Went to Captain’s Mast and testified against him, too, even though they threatened him. Several other witnesses refused to show up. Got the jerk a month in the brig and the captain busted him from second-class to seaman.”