Chapter 3 - The Label
In the morning, Erin called in sick. She had never done it before, and her commander's admin assistant sounded almost more concerned about that than about the reason. Erin said she had a migraine. She did have a headache, so it wasn't a lie.
She drove to the Dover Port Mortuary instead.
It was a Wednesday and the base was cold and wet. She parked in a visitors' lot and showed her ID at the gate and asked for the honor guard office. The woman at the desk was young and pleasant and had never heard of Miriam Holt.
"She's at McGuire," Erin said.
"Then I don't know what to tell you," the woman said. "We rotate honor guard officers out of Dover every ninety days. If she served here, it was probably five or six years ago."
Erin sat in the visitors' lot for an hour, thinking. Then she called Miriam.
"Where are you?" Miriam asked.
"Dover."
There was a pause on the line.
"Don't go inside again," Miriam said. "I'll meet you. There's a diner off Route 13. Twenty minutes."
Miriam arrived in civilian clothes, a gray coat and a black scarf, and she looked different without the uniform — smaller, more tired, more real. She sat down across from Erin and ordered coffee and did not touch it.
"You got a call," she said.
"Three-eleven this morning."
"What did it say?"
"Ask Holt about the Dover ceremony."
Miriam looked out the window. A truck went by on the highway. The waitress refilled Erin's cup and went away again.
"I was at Dover for two years," Miriam said. "Four years ago. I was a flight commander for the honor guard there. We did arrivals."
"Arrivals."
"Return of remains." Miriam's voice was flat. "When a service member is recovered — from a crash, from an accident, from a combat zone — they come through Dover. The flag you're carrying is the kind we fold for the families at the memorial ceremony. The label inside it is a case label that gets attached to the transfer case, not the flag."
"Then why was it in Michael's flag?"
Miriam met her eyes. "Because someone put it there."
"For me to find."
"Or for someone else to find and destroy." Miriam set her cup down. "Erin. Your brother was declared a deserter three years ago. Is that right?"
"Yes."
"And he has been presumed dead since then."
"Yes."
"Then a return-of-remains case should not exist." Miriam leaned forward. "And if one does exist, someone opened it after the deserter finding. Someone opened it recently."
Erin's hands had gone cold.
"What does the date on the label say?" Miriam asked.
"Fourteen months ago."
Miriam closed her eyes.
"Fourteen months ago I was still at Dover," she said. "There was a ceremony. Sealed case. No press, no family notification through normal channels. We were told it was a training arrival for a unit that was rehearsing the procedures. We folded a flag. We played taps. There was a casket."
"Was there a body in it?"
"I don't know. Nobody opens a transfer case at a rehearsal. But the ceremony was on a Saturday, and I remember because the flight chief was angry about working a weekend." Miriam looked at Erin. "And I remember something else. There was a man in a casualty liaison uniform standing at the back of the hangar. He didn't belong to the honor guard. He didn't belong to the mortuary. But he was there the entire time, and he watched the whole ceremony, and he left before it was over."
"What did he look like?"
"Younger than he is now. Dark hair. Arrogant."
"Kessler."
"Probably."
Erin put her coffee down. She was shaking.
"So Michael is alive."
May you like
Miriam did not answer immediately.
"I don't know that," she said. "But I know that the flag you're carrying was used in a ceremony that shouldn't have happened, at a facility that doesn't perform unauthorized ceremonies, by a man who is currently throwing that flag into trash cans on a different base." She met Erin's eyes. "That is not a closed story."
