Without remorse - Tom Clancy [64]
'Okay.'
The surgeon wanted to say more, but couldn't find the right words. He left without any others.
It took Sandy O'Toole and two orderlies to move him, as carefully as they could, onto a standard hospital bed. She cranked up the head portion to relieve the pressure on his injured shoulder.
'I heard,' she told him. It bothered her that his grief wasn't right. He was a tough man, but not a fool. Perhaps he was one of those men who did his weeping alone, but she was sure he hadn't done it yet. And that was necessary, she knew. Tears released poisons from inside, poisons which if not released could be as deadly as the real kind. The nurse sat beside his bed. 'I'm a widow,' she told him.
'Vietnam?'
'Yes, Tim was a captain in the First Cavalry.'
'I'm sorry,' Kelly said without turning his head. 'They saved my butt once.'
'It's hard. I know.'
'Last November I lost Tish, and now -'
'Sarah told me. Mr Kelly -'
'John,' he said softly. He couldn't find it in himself to be gruff to her.
'Thank you, John. My name is Sandy. Bad luck does not make a bad person,' she told him in a voice that meant what it said, though it didn't quite sound that way.
'It wasn't luck. She told me it was a dangerous place and I took her there anyway because I wanted to see for myself.'
'You almost got yourself killed trying to protect her.'
'I didn't protect her, Sandy. I killed her.' Kelly's eyes were wide open now, looking at the ceiling. 'I was careless and stupid and I killed her.'
'Other people killed her, and other people tried to kill you. You're a victim.'
'Not a victim. Just a fool.'
We'll save that for later, Nurse O'Toole told herself. 'What sort of girl was she, John?'
'Unlucky.' Kelly made an effort to look at her face, but that just made it worse. He gave the nurse a brief synopsis of the life of Pamela Starr Madden, deceased.
'So after all the men who hurt her or used her, you gave her something that nobody else did.' O'Toole paused, waiting for a reply and getting none. 'You gave her love, didn't you?'
'Yes.' Kelly's body shuddered for a moment. 'Yes, I did love her.'
'Let it out,' the nurse told him. 'You have to.'
First he closed his eyes. Then he shook his head. 'I can't.'
This would be a difficult patient, she told herself. The cult of manhood was a mystery to her. She'd seen it in her husband, who had served a tour in Vietnam as a lieutenant, then rotated back again as a company commander. He hadn't relished it, hadn't looked forward to it, but he hadn't shrunk from it.. It was part of the job, he'd told her on their wedding night, two months before he'd left. A stupid, wasteful job that had cost her a husband and, she feared, her life. Who really cared what happened in a place so far away? And yet it had been important to Tim. Whatever that force had been, its legacy to her was emptiness, and it had no more real meaning than the grim pain she saw on the face of her patient. O'Toole would have known more about that pain if she'd been able to take her thought one step further.
* * *
'That was really stupid.'
'That's one way of looking at it,' Tucker agreed. 'But I can't have my girls leaving without permission, can I?'
'You ever hear of burying them?'
'Anybody can do that.' The man smiled in the darkness, watching the movie. They were in the back row of a downtown theater, a 1930s film palace that was gradually falling to ruin, and had started running turns at 9 a.m. just to keep up with the painting bill. It was still a good place for a covert meeting with a confidential informant, which was how this meeting would go on the officer's time sheet.
'Sloppy not killing the guy, too.'
'Will he be a problem?' Tucker asked.
'No. He didn't see anything, did he?'
'You tell me, man.'
'I can't get that close to the case, remember?' The man paused for a handful of popcorn and munched away his irritation. 'He's known to the department. Ex-Navy guy, skin diver, lives over on the Eastern Shore somewhere, sort of a rich beach bum from what I gather. The