Once Stalked

“My colleagues and I are very sorry for your loss. We don’t want to disturb you right now, just after the ceremony. But if any of you has any information that might help us, we hope that you’ll talk to us.”

Then the platoon was allowed to disperse. Riley, Bill, and Lucy broke up and wandered among them, hoping to draw somebody out. Pretty soon two recruits, a young man and a young woman, approached Riley. They introduced themselves as Privates Elena Ludekens and Maxwell Wilber.

They seemed to be uneasy and reluctant. Riley thought she understood why. Informing on a fellow recruit couldn’t be easy.

Riley said, “Look, I get the feeling that Worthing wasn’t the most popular drill sergeant at Fort Mowat.”

The two recruits nodded and mumbled in agreement.

Riley continued, “But we’re looking for someone whose animosity was out of the ordinary. If you know anyone like that, please tell me.”

Ludekens and Wilber looked at each other.

The young woman said, “The sarge really rode one of us especially hard.”

“His name’s Stanley Pope,” the young man added.

“Tell me about him,” Riley said.

The young man said, “He’s got a real mouth and a bad attitude. The sarge busted him for it.”

Riley felt a surge of interest.

“Busted him?” she said. “Explain that to me.”

The young woman said, “Almost all of us in the platoon are PV1 – private E-1. Just ‘fuzzies,’ they call us, because of this.”

She pointed to a blank Velcro patch on her shoulder.

The young man said, “When we get through basic training, we’ll get our ‘mosquito wings’ – chevrons – to show that we’ve become second-class privates. But Pope had his mosquito wings already when he came to Fort Mowat.”

“How?” Riley asked.

The young man shrugged.

“You can come in as a second-class private if you have an associate’s degree. Or if you’ve got a Boy Scout Eagle badge. That’s how Pope got his.”

“But he talked back to the sarge once too often,” the young woman said. “So the sarge busted him, took away his chevron, demoted him to PV1 – a fuzzy just like the rest of us. He didn’t take it too well.”

Riley’s curiosity was rising by the second.

“Where can I find him?” she asked.

Private Wilber pointed to the gravesite.

“He’s right over there,” he said.

A young man was standing alone beside the grave, looking down at the casket with his arms on his hips.

Riley thanked Privates Ludekens and Wilber, who wandered off. Riley saw that Bill and Lucy had each found some recruits to talk to.

Riley walked toward the private who was standing beside the grave. He was a lanky young man with an intense, brooding expression on his face.

What’s on his mind? she wondered.

She planned to find out.

CHAPTER TWELVE

As Riley approached Private Pope, she decided not to let on that that she knew anything about him – certainly not that he’d been demoted by Sergeant Worthing. She thought it would be best to see what the young soldier would be willing to reveal.

She stepped right beside him, but he didn’t seem to notice her presence. His bitter expression remained unchanged and his eyes stayed fixed on the grave.

Finally, she asked, “Taking the sarge’s death kind of hard?”

He turned his head and looked at her and then his expression shifted for a moment. He regarded her with obvious distaste, but he didn’t reply to her question. Then he turned and stared down into the grave again, brooding as before.

“Not everyone seemed to like him,” Riley said. “Did you?”

Private Pope still said nothing.

Riley said, “It’s probably a hard thing to talk about. But I think maybe I understand. I lost my dad recently – and he was a Marine, a captain who served in Vietnam. Folks didn’t like him much either.”

Then she added with a lie …

“Still, I miss him.”

Pope didn’t look up from the grave.

“You don’t know anything about it,” Pope said. “How could you? You’re not one of us.”

His resentment of Riley was practically radiating off of him.

“I might surprise you,” Riley said. “I know a thing or two about comradeship. There’s a deep bond among FBI agents. And I’ve lost colleagues in the line of work. I know it’s hard.”

He didn’t reply at all.

“Come on,” Riley said. “Let’s take a little walk.”