Golden were to be believed, the government's dilemma regarding our case wasn't an evidence shortfall but a swamp so vast and murky that an army of attorneys could barely slog through it.
By midnight, drool was spilling out my lips. I stretched and mumbled, "I've got to get some sleep."
Katrina's beaded nose was stuffed in a big folder. The girl had endurance, having been in the office at six that morning and she was still going like a choo-choo eighteen hours later, while my gas gauge bounced off empty.
In my bedroom I slipped out of my clothes and was asleep almost immediately. I'm a light sleeper, however. The problem with old Army quarters is creaky stairs, as well as a complete absence of modern insulation and noise abatement buffers. At three-thirty, I heard her footsteps on the stairs. I alternately cursed and prayed she'd move her skinny ass a little faster and then rush through her ablutions and let me get on with my sleep.
Then I swore I heard cabinets opening and shutting downstairs. I quietly slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the door. I paused to briefly consider my quandary. Definitely there were at least two different sets of noises out there, possibly three. I needed to see why, althoughsneaking quietly down those stairs was out of the question.
I chose the other way and plunged down so fast that I nearly tripped over my own feet. And at the base of the stairs, that was exactly what happened. Sort of. I flew through the air and crashed face first into a wall. Except I hadn't tripped. Something had shoved my back and helped me along.
I recovered my senses and spun around just in time to get a hard, booted kick in the center of my chest. I made a loud "ooof" sound and sank to my ass on the floor. The lights were out but I saw a large figure looming over me.
Oddly enough, the next thing I saw was the face of a young female medic waving one of those smelly things under my nose, saying, "He's coming to."
I heard Imelda say, "That nose look broken."
I heard the medic reply, "Yes, I think you're right."
I noticed that the back of my head seemed to have a big dent in it, and my face hurt, and my chest ached.
The medic squeezed my nose and looked at me with tender eyes. "There, there, Major . . . you're going to be fine. Just a few bruises, a little blood, and maybe a broken nose."
I replied, "Ouch, damn it. Let go of my nose."
Which she did. And that made me happy. I wedged my way up the wall and got unsteadily to my feet. A stretcher rested by the door, where two more medics were waiting to load me aboard. They looked terrifically relieved to see me standing. Lazy bastards.
"What the hell happened?" I asked.
Imelda adjusted her glasses on her nose and said, "We came down when you got knocked 'round. Heard the door slam and saw two men runnin' away, only nobody got a good look at them. They was dressed in black and wore hoods."
"Was anything taken?"
"Didn't check yet," Imelda admitted, suddenly sheepish that she'd been so busy attending to me that she'd failed to see what might have been stolen. It wasn't like her to commit such a breach of duty.
After fibbing to the medics that I'd eventually come over to the dispensary and let a real doctor check me out, I helped Imelda and her two assistants look around. To the best I could tell, nothing had been touched--no open drawers, no ransacked boxes, no sign of burglary at all. Very strange. We all ended up in the living room. I asked, "Did anybody see anything missing?" and instantly felt like an idiot--how do you see something that's missing?
Heads were shaking all around when I felt this odd flip-flop in my stomach. "Katrina, the tapes. Where are they?"
I had blurted out the question, and the enormity of the possibility hit us simultaneously.
She rushed upstairs and I hobbled after her. She hurried to her purse and flung it open on the bed. Among assorted other female debris, the tape recorder and two tapes spilled out. A common sigh of relief escaped from both of our throats. And, in fact, I was starting to walk out of the room when Katrina said, "Wait."
She picked up a tape, stuck it in the recorder, and pushed the play button. Nothing. Not