When the Dead Speak

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

By the next morning, the identification of the body in concrete had made the front page of every major newspaper, and the one living relative had been notified.

"Are you sure I can't get you any coffee?" Carl Underer asked.

The elderly woman lifted her eyeglasses to wipe her eyes. She looked well preserved for her seventy years.

She smiled through her tears. "He was such a bright boy, Harvey was. And always smiling." Her face lit up as she spoke of her brother. "That's why we nicknamed him Happy, Hap for short." Her bottom lip trembled, the tears fell freely.

Carl walked around his desk and wrapped a consoling arm around Matilda Banks' shoulder. She patted his hand as though he were the one who needed consoling. Mattie had worked for the FBI for thirty years in their Housekeeping Department. She had outlived her husband. Her one and only child, a daughter, had died of leukemia at the age of two. Other than memories, all she had left of Hap was in the shoe box sitting in her lap.

Carl propped himself against the edge of his desk next to Mattie. The morning sun sliced through the blinds, spraying lines of striped sunlight across Mattie's face.

"Do you need help with the funeral arrangements? I'm not sure when they will release the body."

She shook her head no. "I would never ask you for anything, Mister Underer. I know you are a busy man. But..." She started to cry again. The shoe box fell off her lap spilling its contents on the dark blue carpeting.

Carl picked up the letters, all with the same handwriting, all with an APO return address. Mattie motioned with her hand for him to keep them.

"I want you to read them," Mattie said. "I never believed the Army when they said he deserted. The Army was his life." Her eyes pleaded, her hand gripped his wrist. Holding back sobs, she cried, "Would you help me? Find out what happened to my brother."

The files from storage sat on the FBI security director's desk. Carl pulled off his horn-rimmed glasses, ran his hand through his thinning gray hair, and rubbed his eyes.

Chasen Heights was a long way from D.C. But if his memory served him correctly... He found the file he was looking for and picked up the phone. When his assistant answered, Carl said, "Book me on a late afternoon flight to Chicago. Reserve a car at the airport and a hotel suite in Chasen Heights."

Carl hung up the phone and opened the file folder. The name on the folder read Jake Mitchell.