The Wandering Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page A

stepped back, giving her a chance to breathe. After a moment of silence, I said, “It’s important, Anne. I know you didn’t want to tell those other investigators. But we’re not from Division, we’re from Eighth Army.”
    She snorted. “Same difference.”
    “No. There is a difference. We don’t want to embarrass Jill or harm her in any way. Her privacy is her privacy and if she doesn’t want to be in the army anymore . . .” I waved my hand in a broad circle. “If she doesn’t want to put up with all this, that’s her decision. We’ll honor it. We’ll tell her what to do and who to talk to and how to go about requesting a discharge. It may not be easy and she might be punished for going AWOL, but we’ll tell her straight. And the only reason we’re up here and the only reason we’re looking for her is because she hasn’t contacted her mother. Her mother wrote to her congressman about Jill’s disappearance and started this investigation rolling. At least Eighth Army’s part in it.”
    “Her mother?” Korvacheck asked.
    “Yes. Jill hasn’t contacted her. No letter, no phone call, no nothing.”
    Anne’s brow furrowed and she started to chew on the nail of her thumb.
    “You promised you wouldn’t tell,” I said. “Didn’t you?”
    When she didn’t answer, I took her silence for consent. “But it’s beyond that now,” I continued. “Jill Matthewson could be in danger. She could be hurt. She could be praying that someone finds her.”
    Anne Korvachek let out a deep sigh. “I didn’t want to tell that other guy. What’s his name?”
    “Bufford,” Ernie said again.
    Korvachek nodded. “Yeah, Bufford. He acted like Jill had done something wrong.”
    She had, actually. In the military, not reporting for duty is a crime but I didn’t say that. Instead, I said, “We don’t think she’s a criminal. We think she needs help.”
    She studied Ernie and me again and made her decision. “I don’t know much. While she was on patrol, out in the ville with the other MPs, she came to know some of the girls who work there. Korean girls. You know, strippers and stuff like that. She said they weren’t so bad and some of them were friendly and started talking to her. One of them helped her find a hooch. A cheap place, somewhere in the ville, away from the bar district. I don’t know exactly where ’cos she never invited me to go with her. But it’s quiet, she told me, and there was a nice old mama-san who taught her how to do things. You know, how to get water out of the well, where to hang her laundry, how to change the charcoal, things like that. It was the only place where Jill could get away from all the GIs leering at her and making comments and trying to talk her into taking off her pants.”
    “This friend of hers,” I asked, “this stripper who helped her find the hooch, do you know her name?”
    “No.”
    “Which club does she work at?”
    “I don’t know. More than one, I think. And I don’t know what she looks like. Jill and I weren’t close.”
    Neither Ernie nor I asked why. Instead, we stared at her. When she could no longer bear the silence, Anne Korvacheck said, “Me and Jill, we’re into different things, you know?”
    We knew. According to everyone we’d talked to, Corporal Jill Matthewson didn’t smoke or drink or do drugs and, until she disappeared, the Division chaplain claimed that she’d attended church services every Sunday. Something told me that Anne Korvachek hadn’t attended church services in quite a while. I wanted to hug her and tell her to forget all this military stuff and go home to her family. Instead, I remembered she was a soldier. And I remembered that she might have information important to our investigation.
    “Druwood,” I said.
    “The dead guy?”
    “Yes. Do you know what happened to him?”
    “Jumped off the tower at the obstacle course. That’s what everyone says.”
    “Do you believe it?”
    “In this hellhole? Why wouldn’t