Floyd and I have never actually met, I’ve always pictured him as the type of guy who lives in his parents’ basement—hair a little too unwashed, social skills a little too awkward, middle a little too mushy from a constant diet of pizza and Cheetos. But if anyone knows how to flush out Maria’s shenanigans, it’ll be him. Floyd is a computer whiz who specializes in financial investigations, and one thing I know for sure is that money almost always leaves a paper trail.
“My bad,” I concede, then steer us on to the reason I called. “As much as I’d love to hear all about your mad PlayStation—”
“Xbox.”
“—your mad Xbox skills, I need you to check on someone’s finances for me.”
“An assignment, huh? I thought you quit.”
“I did.” I search for an explanation, then decide on the truth. “This one’s personal.”
It’s all I needed to say. The background noise plummets into a muted silence, and Floyd’s tone makes a drastic U-turn, from fun and Xbox games to all business. “Give it to me.”
I relate a quick lowdown on Maria, being careful not to reveal any more detail than absolutely necessary. Her name, her moving-on-up lifestyle and very little more. I don’t mention a word about her five minutes of internet fame. If that’s connected to her bank account in any way, I want Floyd to ferret it out by himself.
“You got it,” he says, and I already hear his fingers flying across a keyboard. “I’m kinda slammed, so it might take me a week or two to get to you. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”
“Thanks, Floyd.”
“Oh, and, Abigail?” He pauses, and I can hear his smile. “Welcome back, hon.”
* * *
After I hang up with Floyd, I wander through my house, looking for something to take my mind off Maria. I could unload the dishwasher and mop the kitchen floor. I could finish removing the drain in the bathroom and take out the shower pan. I could sort through the million emails in my inbox. Nothing sounds even remotely appealing. Maria’s images replay on a constant loop through my mind, shooting ice water through my veins, knocking me sideways with that smile, because my gut...my goddamn gut is telling me—three years too late—that I missed something the first time around.
I change into shorts and a T-shirt, shove my feet into my sneakers and bang out the front door to burn off my frustration in a long run through the district, but my feet get tangled up in something unexpected on my welcome mat. A large brown envelope. No address, no postage, no writing or stamps on it anywhere at all. I cut a quick glance up and down my quiet street, which is, of course, ridiculous. Whoever leaves an unmarked, unstamped envelope for a person on their front doorstep doesn’t wait around for that person to find it.
And while we’re at it, why me? This is the kind of thing someone leaves for a journalist, not a washed-up ex-journalist turned health care content curator.
I look up as a car slides by. A neighbor from up the street waves from behind the wheel, and I’m too frozen to wave back. I check up and down the street again, even though I know the effort is futile. Whoever left the envelope is long gone.
I carry the package into the house, hook a finger under the seal and rip it open.
At first, what I find inside doesn’t make any sense. It’s about twenty pages of sworn statements, a written transcript of someone’s testimony. Someone by the name of Corporal Daniel Kochtizky, a surname so uncommon that I recognize it from this past year’s news coverage.
Corporal Kochtizky was the medic for Zach Armstrong’s platoon.
I return to the papers, skimming the testimony. The first few pages contain a lot of back and forth on details like name, rank, title, then moving on to dates, locations, logistics of the battle. Pretty standard fare, and nothing I haven’t read before and in a million places.
I skim the testimony, refresh my mind of the details of the army’s most famous soldier, whose death became its worst nightmare.
Zach’s death was like one of those perfect-storm cases, where one little thing sets off a chain of seemingly innocent events that end in disaster. In his case, it all started with a broken-down valve on an armored vehicle that brought the entire platoon—thirty-five soldiers spread out over eleven vehicles—to a screeching halt. A spare part was summoned, the platoon was split, a battle ensued. Zach Armstrong took three bullets to the head. His brother Nick, crouched a few feet away, was the one to recover his body.
But what nobody seems to be willing to talk about, what the US Army has refused to even discuss, is who shot him. Even more suspicious, the army spent the first few months after Zach’s death touting him all over town as a hero. They awarded him medals and posthumous promotions in elaborate, nationally televised ceremonies. They built memorials and slapped his name on bridges and highways. They created scholarships and grants in his name. Meanwhile, nobody else was reported killed or wounded in that battle, not even the enemy.
Jean Armstrong called foul, and she demanded answers in the form of a congressional investigation into not just who pulled the trigger of the weapon that killed her son, but also the army’s subsequent handling of his death. General Rathburn—we’re not technically related, but he is my godfather—is one of the three-star generals being investigated. The other is General Tom Wolff. My father.
I’ve just flipped to the fifth or sixth page when it occurs to me.
This document has not been censored. There are no dark stripes of marker, no blacked-out names or classified details. Every single letter is there on the page, lit up like strobe lights.
I rush through the living room to my office and my computer. After a bit of poking around on the internet, I find the censored version of the same document on the Department of Defense’s website and hit Print.
As it’s rolling out of my machine, I nab a pink highlighter from the drawer and lay the pages side by side, highlighting the blacked-out words on the DOD’s version in pink on my gifted copy. The name of the investigating officer. Others in the chain of command. Comments that could be construed as opinion, the medic’s version of what happened, hearsay and accusations. And then, on page seven, I highlight a name I’ve never seen before.
Ricky Hernandez.
According to the medic, Ricky was present on the scene when Zach was killed, and he was one of the thirty-six eyewitnesses briefed back at the base. Thirty-six. My pulse explodes like a bottle rocket.
So why does every single transcript the army ever released, every news magazine article ever printed and every evening news report ever broadcast maintain there were thirty-five soldiers on the field the day Zach was killed? And now there are thirty-six?
Thirty-six.
The word travels through me like electricity, rushing through my veins at the speed of light. I stare at the pink-striped papers fanned across the surface of my desk, feeling my scalp grow hot, then cold, then hot again with the realization that I’m looking at classified information. Whoever sent it to me is someone with inside knowledge of the operation—a soldier? an army investigator?—and wants me to know the truth. They want me to know about Ricky.
I turn back to my computer, fingers flying across the keyboard. A few hours
