a unit they really let their strengths shine. Guys are more macho. Women build a team perspective. And I gotta tell you, even though women were deployed in combat support positions, but technically weren’t supposed to shoot back, they sure as hell did. At least in Gulf One. And Lizzie was one of the best. She was a better soldier than I was, I can tell you that.”
“But she’s no longer in the Army,” said Robie.
“Well, there’s a good reason for that,” replied Siegel.
“You’ve been in touch with her?”
“I have.”
“So what’s the reason she’s no longer in the Army?”
“Cancer. Started in her breasts and then it spread. It’s in her brain, lungs, liver now. She’s terminal, of course. Once that stuff metastasizes, it’s over. They don’t have any magic bullets for that. She’s at a hospice center in Gainesville.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“Went regularly until about a month ago. She was in and out of it. Mostly out. Morphine. I’m not even sure if she’s still alive. I should have kept up, but I guess it was just too hard to see her like that.”
“What’s the name of the place?”
“Central Hospice Care. It’s off of Route 29.”
“Okay.”
Siegel exclaimed, “I’m telling you, it’s all the crap we breathed in over there. Depleted uranium, toxic cocktails from all the artillery blasts. Fires burning all over the damn place, painting the sky black, burning crap we didn’t know what the hell it was. And there we all were, just sucking it in. That could just as easily be me in that bed waiting for the end.”
Robie handed Siegel a card. “Anything else occurs to you, give me a call.”
“What is this really all about? How can somebody from my old squad be involved in all this stuff?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.” Robie paused. “Did your wife give you a heads-up we were coming?”
“She did,” admitted Siegel.
“She worried about something?”
“She’s worried I might lose my job.”
Robie thought back to Julie’s theory of money laundering for terrorists. “Why? Problems here?”
“I haven’t done anything wrong, if that’s what you’re implying. But who comes into banks anymore to do stuff? It’s all online. I’ll be here for about eight hours today and I’ll see maybe two people. How much longer do you think they’re going to pay me to do that? There’s a reason banks have all the money. They’re cheap as hell. Writing’s on the wall. World has changed. And I guess I haven’t changed fast enough. Maybe I will end up carrying a rifle in the desert. What else is there for a guy my age? I can be a fat mercenary. But I’ll die the first day out there.”
“Well, thanks for your help.”
“Yeah,” Siegel said absently.
Robie left him there looking like he’d already received a death sentence.
CHAPTER
83
THEY PULLED INTO the parking lot of Central Hospice Care twenty minutes later. There were about fifteen cars in the parking lot. As they drove through the lot, Robie examined each one to see if they were occupied.
He pulled into a space and looked at Vance. “You want to do this one or should I?”
Julie said, “I want to go in.”
“Why?” asked Robie.
“She fought with him. Maybe she knew something about my dad.”
“She’s probably not in much condition to talk,” said Vance.
“Then why are we even here?” asked Julie.
Robie said, “I’ll take her in with me. You keep watch.”
“You sure?” asked Vance.
“No, but I’m doing it anyway.”
He and Julie walked into the hospice building, a two-story brick structure with lots of windows and a cheery atmosphere inside. It did not look like a place where people would come to see their lives end. Maybe that was the point.
The flash of Robie’s creds got them escorted back to Elizabeth Van Beuren’s room. It was as cheery as the rest of the place, with flowers grouped on tables and on the windowsill. Light streamed in from outside. A nurse was checking on Van Beuren. When she moved away, Robie’s hopes for any personal information from the critically ill woman sank.
She looked like a skeleton and was on a ventilator, the machine inflating her lungs via a tube inserted down her throat, with another tube bleeding off that to carry away toxic carbon dioxide. There was also a feeding tube inserted into her abdomen, and multiple IV lines running to her. Bags of medication hung from an IV stand.
The nurse turned to them. “Can I help you?”
“We just came to ask Ms. Van Beuren some questions,” said Robie. “But it doesn’t