Bitter Sweets

had them seated around the living room.

    “I wouldn’t want to put you out,” Savannah said. Judging from the black bags under his eyes and the sallow cast to his cornplexion, she thought he would be better off lying in a hospital bed, rather than serving guests.

    “It’s already made.” He left the room slowly, his arthritic shuffle far more pronounced than she remembered. Colonel Forrest Neilson seemed to have aged ten years in the past twelve hours.

    While they waited for his return, the threesome took the opportunity to scrutinize the contents of the room. On a small, round table against the far wall was an ornately carved, ebony inlaid box, which was propped at a forty-five-degree angle to better display its contents.

    Leaving her seat, Savannah studied the object through the glass top. “It’s his Congressional Medal of Honor,” she told them, keeping her voice low. “Wonder what he did to get that?”

    “Sacrificed a bit of his soul, I’d say,” was Ryan’s quiet reply. She continued to walk around the room, taking in the other interesting aspects. The most distinctive features were the clocks, dozens of exquisite antique clocks hanging on walls, cluttering every horizontal surface. Three towering grandfather clocks, glass-domed anniversary clocks, Bavarian cuckoo clocks, mantel clocks, music box clocks. All were running and all were set at the precise time.

    “I collect and repair them,” the colonel explained as he arrived with a tray, laden with mugs of strong, black coffee, cream, and sugar. “Normally, I would make corny jokes about having a lot of time on my hands, but I just finished making funeral arrangements for my daughter. I guess I’m not in a joking mood.” Savannah returned to her seat and opened her mouth to say, once again, how sorry she was. But, thankfully, Ryan did it for them all.

    “We can’t express how sorry we are for your loss,” he said in his deep, gracious voice. “And that’s why we’re here today, we’re all working very hard to bring some closure to this tragedy. But we need your help.”

    The colonel sank wearily into a well-worn recliner and leaned back. He shut his eyes briefly, then opened them and said, “What do you want from me?”

    “Information,” Dirk replied, wearing his most “sensitive cop” face. “I understand you and Earl Mallock go back a long ways.”

    The colonel seemed mildly surprised that they would know this. “Yes. That’s true.”

    When he didn’t elaborate, Savannah added, “And we know about what happened in Vietnam.”

    Neilson’s face hardened. “Young lady, I sincerely doubt that you know anything at all of what happened in Vietnam. You couldn’t. You weren’t there.”

    “I was,” Ryan said softly. “Special forces.”

    “Me, too.” Dirk picked up a mug of coffee and took a slurp. “Umm ... infantry,” he added reluctantly, upstaged by Ryan.

    “Then you’ll understand why I’m not inclined to drag up the past right now. God knows, the present is hard enough to handle.”

    “Yes, we do understand, sir,” Ryan said. “But we need to discuss the similarities in the charges that were brought against him then and .. . forgive me...what happened to your daughter.”

    “The similarities are there.” Neilson rubbed his eyes; Savannah could only imagine how much his head must be aching. “Earl committed the atrocities in Vietnam, just like they said he did. I was a fool to defend him. What can I say? It seemed the honorable thing to do at the time.”

    His voice caught in his throat, and Savannah thought he was going to lose the battle with his emotions. But he rallied. “Staff Sergeant Earl Mallock... he was my soldier. He had been on a trip through hell and back, a trip I had sent him on. What he did was horribly wrong, but I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime act, the result of all he’d gone through. How was I to know that, years later, he would wind up doing the same thing to my daughter?”

    “There was no way anyone could know, Colonel,” Savannah said. “You mustn’t blame yourself.”

    “Thank you.” His expression was sincere, his eyes cornpassionate when he added, “You either.”

    “Colonel, you’ve known this guy for years, he was your son-in-law,” Dirk said. “What can you tell us about him that might help us figure out where he’s taken your granddaughter?”

    “If I knew the answer to that, I would have told you long ago.”

    “Does he have any