with us.
Laurie is just getting up as Kevin and I are ready to leave for Fort Monmouth. She's excited about the news and the possibilities it represents and amazed that so much has happened while she was asleep. I can tell it's killing her that she can't go with us today, but she's forced to leave it up to us.
Fort Monmouth is located on the Jersey Shore and is surrounded by beach communities. We've left early to try to beat the beach traffic, but the only way to really do so would be to leave in February.
It's a phenomenon that has always amazed me. People get in their cars in the height of the summer heat and crawl along for two or three hours, all for the right to spend an afternoon lying in grainy dirt, baking, sweating, and burning under a barrage of cancer-causing rays. Their only escape is to enter the water, which can best be described as a freezing, salty urinal. Then, unless they've endured the day covered with sticky grease, they can spend the two or three hours on the way home watching their skin blister.
As you may have noticed, I'm the type of guy who sees the ocean as half-empty.
We arrive at Fort Monmouth, though the only thing that tips us off to the fact that it's an army post is the "U.S. Army" sign at the main gate. It is basically an office complex of nondescript brick buildings, set in the middle of a residential area. For every soldier we see walking around, there are three or four civilian workers. Kevin, whose mind is filled with obscure knowledge like this, tells me that the fort is mainly involved with electronics and that its chaplain school has recently been moved to Maryland.
We head to the main building, and Captain Reid is there to meet us. He is the personification of the buttoned-down military man and looks as if he had his uniform pressed while he was in it. He openly tells us that the order from Lieutenant Colonel Prentice was quite clear: He is to do whatever is necessary to facilitate our investigation. Which is good, because there is no doubt that this is a guy who follows orders.
Captain Reid assigns four young enlisted men to do our bidding. It gives me a feeling of power; I'm tempted to send them into Guatemala Bay to rescue the otters. But first things first, and we request all military files related to Dorsey and Cahill, as well as a search for any records for a Terry Murdoch, the only stipulation being that he be someone who served during the Vietnam era.
Within moments we are looking at and comparing the military histories of Dorsey and Cahill. The files are quite detailed, listing on an almost daily basis every commendation, every assignment, every communication, even every illness that they had.
There are similarities to be sure. Both were Army Special Forces, both had advanced infantry training and were considered outstanding soldiers, and both served a lengthy hitch in Vietnam. Dorsey's time there started two months after Cahill's, which means they overlapped for a long time.
Unfortunately, there is no obvious connection. The two men came from different parts of the country, went to different schools, trained stateside at different posts, and were assigned to different divisions in Vietnam. There is no evidence, at least none that we can see, that they knew each other. Certainly nothing that should have caused them both to die, their deaths interrelated, all these years later.
Captain Reid comes in with the military records of two men and one woman, all named Terry Murdoch. They all served in Vietnam, but only one of the men was there at the same time as Cahill and Dorsey. He was also Special Forces, advanced infantry, and much decorated, but again has no other obvious connection to the others. Murdoch left the army in 1975, and as with Cahill and Dorsey, that is when the army lost track of him.
"Do you have any idea where we could find him now?" I ask Reid.
"We don't keep those records," he says, "but we have some resources we can call upon when it's absolutely necessary."
He says this cryptically and ominously, and I'm afraid to ask him what he's talking about, since if he tells me, he might have to kill me. Kevin's not the bravest guy either; right now he wouldn't open his mouth if I offered him a raspberry turnover.
"Lieutenant Colonel Prentice indicated