Chapter 10 - The Woman at the Border
By noon, I was sitting in General Ward's temporary office with a legal pad in front of me.
My coffee had gone cold.
My phone had been placed face down.
And Nora was standing at the window with her arms crossed.
Ward had arranged for the relevant information to be referred to an authorized investigative office.
He was careful to explain that he could not personally reopen an old criminal investigation simply because he wore three stars.
There were procedures.
Jurisdictions.
Records that might no longer exist.
Witnesses whose memories had faded.
I respected that.
I also hated every minute of it.
"You're telling me we have to wait?" Nora asked.
Ward looked at her.
"I'm telling you we have to make sure anything we find can be used."
"But Evelyn might still be alive."
"She might."
"Then why aren't we looking for her right now?"
"We are exploring the available leads."
Nora shook her head.
"That sounds like an answer somebody gives when they don't want to promise anything."
Ward nodded.
"You're right."
She looked startled.
He continued.
"I don't want to promise something I can't deliver."
I studied him.
The young lieutenant I had lifted out of a ravine had become a man willing to admit what he did not know.
That mattered.
Ward turned toward me.
"Quinn, I need to ask about the 2008 report."
I opened my purse.
Pulled out another envelope.
This one had a return address from a veterans' records service.
Inside was the photocopy I had carried for eighteen years.
The original report appeared to have been written by a humanitarian medical worker in December 1999.
It described an unidentified American woman brought to a temporary clinic near the border.
She had head trauma.
Multiple fractures.
Burns on one arm.
She was confused about her identity.
The report noted that she had repeatedly asked whether someone named Quinn had survived.
The woman's subsequent transfer destination was not included in the photocopy.
Ward read it.
Then read it again.
"Why wasn't this part of the original investigation?"
"I don't know."
"Who sent it?"
I pointed to the service's cover letter.
"They said it came from an archive request."
"Did you follow up?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"The staff member who sent it had left."
Ward looked at Major Price.
"Please include this in the referral."
"Yes, sir."
Nora moved toward the table.
"Could that woman have been Evelyn?"
Ward spoke carefully.
"It's consistent with what your mother has described. It isn't proof."
I nodded.
I had lived with that distinction for years.
Hope was not proof.
Neither was fear.
Major Price entered with a message from the records specialist.
A supplemental folder had been located, but the office was still establishing its provenance and whether it could be released to investigators.
There were indications that at least one survivor transmission had been logged.
But the actual audio had not yet been located.
Ward looked at the message.
Then at me.
"It's something."
I nodded.
"It is."
An hour later, Samuel Mercer called.
He had been contacted by an investigator about Daniel's cassette and was arranging to provide the original.
Then he said he had found something else.
"Amy wants to talk to you."
Daniel's wife.
I stared at the phone.
"She does?"
"Yes."
"After all these years?"
Sam sighed.
"Quinn, she never blamed you."
I closed my eyes.
"I know you said that."
"Then believe me."
He gave me her number.
I stared at it for ten minutes.
Then I called.
Amy answered in a quiet voice.
"Quinn?"
I could barely speak.
"Hi, Amy."
She began crying.
So did I.
We spent the first five minutes trying to say ordinary things.
How are you?
Where do you live?
Do you have children?
Then Amy said, "I watched the ceremony."
I gripped the phone.
"I'm sorry."
"Why are you sorry?"
"Because it brought everything back."
She was quiet.
Then she said, "Quinn, everything never went away."
I shut my eyes.
She told me about the cassette.
About Daniel recording little messages whenever he could.
About how she used to listen to them during the first years after his death.
Then she said something unexpected.
"There's a reason he mailed that band home."
I sat upright.
"What?"
"He wrote me a note."
I held my breath.
"He said Evelyn made the bands for all three of you, and if anything happened, he wanted me to know he had good people beside him."
I began to cry.
Amy continued.
"I kept that note."
"Would you be willing to share a copy with the investigators?"
"Of course."
Then she hesitated.
"Quinn, there's something I never understood."
"What?"
"After Daniel died, a man came to see me."
My stomach tightened.
"Who?"
"He said he was an Army officer."
"Did he give a name?"
"No. I was in bad shape. I barely remember his face."
"What did he want?"
"Daniel's recordings."
I froze.
Amy continued.
"He said there might be operational information on them."
I closed my eyes.
"Did you give them to him?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because Daniel had made them for me."
She paused.
"The man got angry."
I could barely breathe.
"What did he say?"
"That keeping them could interfere with an official investigation."
I pressed my hand against my forehead.
"Then what happened?"
"I called Daniel's brother."
"Sam?"
"Yes."
"He came over. The officer left."
I looked across the room.
Ward was reading a document.
Nora sat beside the window.
"Did the man ever come back?"
"No."
Amy took a breath.
"But somebody called a week later."
"What did they say?"
"That I should be careful about people who claimed they knew what happened."
I swallowed.
"Did they threaten you?"
"Not directly."
A familiar phrase.
A familiar kind of fear.
Then Amy said, "I don't think the caller was the same man."
"Why?"
"Because the voice was a woman's."
I stopped breathing.
Amy continued.
"She sounded frightened."
I gripped the phone.
"Did she give a name?"
"No."
"Did she say anything else?"
"Yes."
I held my breath.
"She said the records were wrong."
I stared at the wall.
Amy's voice shook.
"And she said somebody had been taken away alive."
For a long moment, I couldn't move.
Then I asked the question I had spent almost three decades avoiding.
"Did she say who?"
Amy took a breath.
"No."
My heart sank.
"But she said something strange before she hung up."
I closed my eyes.
"What?"
Amy spoke slowly.
"She said, 'Tell Quinn the third point still holds.'"
I looked down at my wrist.
The triangle on the brass tag.
Three points.
Three people.
Evelyn.
Daniel.
Me.
I began shaking.
"Quinn?" Amy asked.
I couldn't answer.
Because that phrase meant something.
It was not a military expression.
Not a code word from a manual.
Not something a stranger would know.
It came from the afternoon Evelyn made our wristbands.
Daniel had complained that the brass tag looked crooked.
Evelyn held it up and said, "It doesn't have to be pretty. It only has to hold."
Then she scratched the triangle into the metal.
"Three points," she said.
Daniel laughed.
"What happens if one breaks?"
Evelyn grinned.
"Then the other two hold tighter."
I remembered asking what happened if only one remained.
Evelyn had looked directly at me.
"Then the third point still holds."
I sat in Ward's office twenty-seven years later, crying into my phone.
Somebody knew that phrase.
May you like
Somebody had been close enough to hear Evelyn say it.
And if the woman on the telephone was not Evelyn herself, she was someone who knew exactly what had happened to her.
