Her concern was relieved somewhat when he dipped his head toward the sausages she had on her plate.She rolled her eyes and handed him the sausages.One of the four links might have touched the ground before he devoured it, but he didn’t think so.
“Lovely.Now he’s going to stink up the room,” Michael complained.
“You think you don’t fart?”Faith retorted.
Michael adopted an injured expression, but before he could respond to her accusation, she said, “I have an idea where to go with the case.”
Michael perked up, dog farts and nightmares forgotten.“What is it?”
“We need someone who could have interacted with both victims.Aside from high-ranking members of the brass touring the front lines—which is unlikely and even less likely to result in meaningful contact with the victims—there’s only one job description that fits that bill.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense.What is it?”
“Medical officers.”
Michael raised an eyebrow.“I thought each branch had their own combat medics.”
“They do, but for injuries that require help more extensive than can be provided at a front-line unit, soldiers get sent to a triage center.The same is true for battlefield deaths.When bodies are recovered, they’re sent to the triage center, processed, and shipped back home.This isn’t true in all cases, but it’s the most likely reason why someone would have interacted with both of our victims.”
“Either they provided medical care to the victims or watched them mourn the loss of their fallen comrades,” Michael summarized.
“Or both,” Faith agreed.“So we should look at medical personnel who could have interacted with our victims.”
“How do we figure that out?”
“We find out where our victims were deployed when they lost their unit,” Faith replied.“Then we figure out where the casualties from those events would have been sent.We determine who was on staff at those triage centers and we look for anyone at both places.”
Michael frowned.“Sounds tedious.”
“At least it’s tedious work with a definite payoff,” Faith replied.
“Unless we find out no one was at both places.”
Faith glared at him, and he lifted his hands.“Right.Sorry.Positive thinking.”
The two of them cleared their plates and returned to their room.Faith stopped for more sausages and let Turk eat them while she and Michael got to work.Once more, she looked into Kevin Barnes.His unit had been lost while they moved from Kabul to a forward operating base two hundred miles west.
As Michael had predicted, it was tedious work slogging through military records to figure out where the bodies of Barnes’s unit had been sent and where Barnes himself had gone for treatment of his own injuries.Faith’s memory of the Marine Corps was that their records were very complete and very well organized—just not in any way that made any damned sense.
The Army was even worse.Faith had to talk to four different people before finally getting the answers she needed.Michael had a similarly difficult time with the Air Force, but finally, they were able to gather the pertinent facts.
Paul Martinez’s unit had been ambushed six months prior to the destruction of Barnes’s unit.Paul had sustained multiple gunshot wounds and was transported to the USSComfortfor treatment and eventual evacuation.
Barnes suffered superficial injuries but insisted on accompanying his unit to their final resting place.For some reason, his superiors agreed, probably to give themselves time to process the paperwork that eventually cut his tour short and got him sent home on mental health leave.His unit was sent to the Navy’s 53rdSurface Warfare Medical Squadron, at the time deployed to the expeditionary force’s headquarters campus outside of Kabul.
Both Navy units, which was common.The Navy had the greatest number of fully qualified medical personnel and the most resources to handle the bulk of the armed forces’ medical needs.
Unfortunately, it seemed that with only a few exceptions, the entirety of the 53rdSurface Warfare Medical Squadron had been deployed aboard the USSComfortat the time Paul Martinez underwent treatment.That left them with thirty-four different medical personnel to investigate.
“I think our tedious work just got more tedious,” Michael said unhelpfully.
“We need to narrow it down more,” Faith replied.“Let’s prioritize people who suffered mental health problems after their time serving with the medical squadron.”
“Can we get that information?”Michael asked.“HIPAA should prevent us from accessing that, shouldn’t it?”
Faith frowned.“We’ll have to hope we can convince people to break some rules.”Michael’s brow furrowed, and Faith said, “We’re running out of options, Michael, and someone out there is running out of time.We need to figure out who’s doing this.I know you don’t like bending rules, but I don’t want to keep skirting around the answer until we find another dead body in a shallow grave.”
He sighed.“Yeah, I know.You’re right.I just… Well, it is what it is.Let’s start making some calls.”
