Shame

a New Year’s countdown, thought Elizabeth. The only things missing were the champagne and party favors, though the Navy League was handing out complimentary coffee and doughnuts. The navy band added to the festivities. John Philip Sousa was big on their playlist.
    Before coming on base, Elizabeth had made a call to NAS North Island’s Public Relations Office. She had made up a story about using the homecoming as “flavor” in a forthcoming book, and the PR people had offered to roll out the red carpet.
    Thousands of San Diegans were on hand to greet the aircraft carrier. Maybe Caleb had been to a homecoming before and had known what kind of a zoo the naval base would be today, thought Elizabeth. But if Caleb had wanted anonymity, why hadn’t he picked a public spot like the zoo or Sea World? She thought itstrange that a wanted man would place himself in potential jeopardy. That is, if he was here. She looked around again. Still no sign of him.
    An officious master chief had met her outside the base. She had followed his car through the huge complex, and he had seen to it that she got a VIP parking spot. The chief had introduced her to several officers with lots of gold braid and probably would have stayed at her side had Elizabeth not requested some “quiet time to take in impressions.” She had last seen the chief hovering around the camera crews from the local television stations.
    Though she had a media pass, Elizabeth stayed among the crowds at the mobbed landing area. She expected that Caleb would be in the waiting crowd if he was here, but still, he would have to single her out among so many. Several tugs were bringing the
Constellation
into the pier, making the crowd grow ever more vocal. The aircraft carrier dwarfed the much smaller vessels. Something that large, Elizabeth thought, shouldn’t be able to float. She had vacationed on islands that were smaller. She scanned the PR packet that had been given to her, and found the dimensions of the ship. The
Constellation
was 1,046 by 265 by 37 feet. More than three football fields long. So large that 5,500 personnel called it home for months at a time. From a distance she could see the sailors and officers stretched along the ship’s railing and deck, long lines of white.
    The docking was a laborious process, the proper positioning of the leviathan no quick matter. Elizabeth spent some of her wait sketching the outlying area in her pad. San Diego Bay was calm, although a few sailboats were finding enough of a breeze to push them along. To the right, she could see the expanse of Coronado Bridge. The
Constellation
was blocking her view of San Diego’s downtown, but she’d had peeks of it across the water. This was her first visit to San Diego, and so far the weather was as good as everyone had always said it was. It had been seventy degreeswhen she arrived, was seventy degrees today, and the weather forecast was for seventy degrees tomorrow. For three hundred days of San Diego’s year, that’s where the mercury hovered, give or take two degrees. The natives took the weather for granted. Elizabeth had seen T-shirts with the writing, “Another Boring Day in Paradise.”
    Murder in Short Sleeves,
thought Elizabeth, thinking of a potential title for her book. She took in the physical sights around her not so much for her own pleasure as for how they would play out as a scene. More and more often, that was how she looked at the world, and less and less often did she recognize or regret it.
    Another announcement came over the PA. Mothers with new babies that the fathers had never seen were directed to go to the VIP tent. Another announcement came after that. All pregnant women to go to a different VIP tent. There were plenty of those. The
Constellation
had been deployed at sea for more than six months. A long line of pregnant young women stepped forward, all about seven months into term.
    Gray had said she probably wouldn’t have any children. Bastard. Too many of his predictions had come true. Like him, she’d spent most of her adult life going from place to place. For all practical purposes, her home was a PO Box. A friend had once given her an embroidered sampler that read, “Home Is Where Your Laptop Is.” She’d yet to settle in one place long enough to hang it.
    Nearby, a balloon popped. The sound was getting all too common. That, and the crying of little children whose balloons had escaped their hands.
    Mooring lines had now secured