Trophies

  Trophies

  by

  J. Gunnar Grey

  Smashwords Edition

  Dingbat Publishing

  Humble, Texas

  Trophies

  Copyright 2011 by J. Gunnar Grey

  Published by Dingbat Publishing

  Humble, Texas

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  This one is for you, my readers. Without you, there's no point in writing. Thanks for giving me purpose.

  Oh, and I suppose I'd better mention my family while I'm at it.

  *waves*

  Cast of Recurring Characters

  (in no particular order)

  Captain Charles "Robbie" Ellandun, U.S. Army, on indefinite loan to the NATO Rapid Response intelligence team, an honest thief trying to make his way with a Mauser sniper's rifle and a bad case of PTSD

  Dr. Caren Gallardo, a psychiatrist and Charles' occasional lady love, who prefers a frying pan to sedatives

  the Ellandun family, fighters to the bone

  William Ellandun, Sr., Charles' father, the well-known barrister who admits he's made the occasional mistake

  Charlene Ellandun, his mother, who wasn't pleased to pick Charles up at school

  William Ellandun, Jr., his brother, who wants to protect the family name

  Linda Ellandun, William Jr.'s wife, a tawny lioness guarding her two cubs, namely

  William "Trés" Ellandun III, 17, an artist of many talents

  Lindsay Ellandun, 15, the second born

  Preston Ellandun, Charles' uncle, a clergyman who doesn't back down from a fight

  Viola Ellandun, Preston's wife and the family rose

  (their four adult children)

  Miriam and Ralph Ellandun, the glamorous twins

  Patricia Ellandun, the mouse with curves

  Jacob Ellandun, who was left behind by aliens or something

  Edith Ellandun Hunter, Charles' aunt, who sponsored art shows, hosted afternoon teas, and unexpectedly found herself murdered

  Hubert Hunter, her husband, of the loving and adventuresome heart

  the NATO Rapid Response intelligence team, affectionately or otherwise known as the gang

  General Hugo, der Graf von Bisnon, Luftwaffe, commander and genius

  Colonel Robert "Sherlock" Holmes, Jr., U.S. Army, a field commander people just know they can depend upon

  Wing Commander Jonathan Cadal, Royal Air Force, who's likely still waiting for that email

  Major Theresa Evans, U.S. Army, a neurotic who likes to make things go boom in the night

  Captain James MacElsa, U.S. Army, who didn't get the assignment

  Captain Kelly "Bonnie" Bonham, U.S. Army, who will make sure you live to regret it should you poke a gun in her side

  Captain Kenneth "Kenny" Rutland, U.S. Army, who radioed for the medics during the war

  Lieutenant Shane Mason, Royal Marine Commandos

  Sergeant Patrick Ballard, Royal Air Force

  with the Boston P.D.

  Detective Stover Wingate, a/k/a Brother Perfect, an elegant cop

  at the Carr Gallery

  Priscilla "Prissy" Carr, the owner and femme fatale, sort of

  Danny Vasquez, an artist with a primary problem

  Sharon Righetti, alias Sidnë, an artist with attitude and talent, but one's definitely bigger than the other

  Chapter One

  current time

  Three neat entry wounds drilled through the silk of Aunt Edith's blouse, stiffened and blackened by crusted blood. The underlying color was unrecognizable. I only knew it was supposed to be green because she wore it during our unfriendly dinner the previous evening and I remembered. Lying on the sidewalk with her legs crumpled beneath her, she seemed even tinier than normal, like a toy that had been roughly played with and then pitched aside.

  I dropped to my knees beside her. Her eyes were wide, staring at the dawn breaking beyond the storefronts, and her mouth gaped. She was such a private person, so contained, elegant, brilliant as gold beside the base metals of the rest of us. Death seemed an exposure, a stripping of her secrets. A humiliation.

  I reached out to stroke the drifting black and silver tendrils of her hair into place. But a hand snatched my wrist and twisted it aside. I jerked my head up—

  —the picture window of the Carr Gallery, just overhead, was splattered with something dark. More of it sprayed the polished maple door, the brass railing and handle and mail slot. A small hole in the door, at waist level, had been marked with chalk—

  —more dark stains, lit obliquely by the dawn light, trickled down the red brick, dripped from one concrete step to the next, painted the sidewalk. I suddenly realized I could smell it—

  —I ignored the background crump of artillery fire and panned the rifle's scope along the enemy emplacement, atop the ridge overlooking our sandbagged trench. Beneath the camouflage netting and wilting tree branches I made out one big field gun with its muzzle recoiling, another, a third—

  —the enemy spotter stood contemptuously in full view, binoculars to his eyes, gazing off to my left but sweeping this way. The rangefinder showed the distance at eight hundred meters. I set the elevation turret and aligned the sight's upper chevron on his center of mass, drifting aside by one hash mark to compensate for the gentle flow of air across my right cheek. Binocular lenses flashed sunsparks. His lips moved as I took up the initial pressure on the trigger—

  —flashback with visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory hallucinations. Hadn't happened in months. It was impossible to prevent it, stop it, tone it down, or predict its arrival. But we were intimate enemies, my flashback and I, and I knew its script. I clenched every muscle I possessed, including my eyes, and froze in place, ignoring it all. It's how I'd taught myself to respond when the city street morphed into a battlefield without warning, and so far it had prevented anyone from locking me up. I was even able to fool most acquaintances into thinking I was still sane.

  But nothing blocked the sights, sounds, or other manifestations. Machine gun fire hammered into the nonexistent sandbags, thuds echoing in my bones, and the dust and acrid gunpowder caught at the back of my throat. Someone screamed, a long shrill sound that climbed higher in pitch and volume, scraping across my nerves. The enemy guns chattered again and a fire of agony spurted across my back. Wavery, sick-feeling blackness rushed in behind the pain. I refused to wobble. I ignored the war zone and the adrenaline tearing me apart, and waited for the screaming in my damaged memory to stop. For several more seconds it dragged on, a horrible rising shriek, but finally it cut out in its usual abrupt manner, as if someone hit a neurological mute button.

  The flashback lost. It couldn't control my actions nor force me to betray my internal damage to the civilians. I wanted to collapse with relief. I refused to do that, too.

  Ambient city noises resumed. There were lots of voices around, both live ones and the scratchy overlay of radio transmissions, and in the distance someone called my name. Even with my eyes squeezed tight, popping emergency lights strobed across my retinas. I still smelled the blood.

  I failed Aunt Edith. Everything inside me wrenched. I failed her and now she's dead. That particular fear, of failing someone important, always followed the flashback. Knowing it was coming never prevented the reaction. I wouldn't show that, either.

  Only when I knew I was back in r
eal time did I open my eyes.

  Dawn and Boston had returned. The battlefield was gone, replaced by the street of upscale shops, converted from historic red-brick row houses. Picture windows with discreet painted logos and black wrought-iron bars alternated with concrete steps rising to entries, each landing decorated with trees or flowers in wooden barrels. Blood painted the steps and façade of the Carr Gallery, Aunt Edith lay dead and hidden beside the entryway stairs, and there on her other side was a doughy face like something a baker played with before rolling it out. Its expression was outraged and the hand attached to the equally doughy body still gripped my wrist, our arms crossing above Aunt Edith's neck.

  "Don't muck up my crime scene, man," he said in pure Brooklynese.

  Ice clogged my veins. My field of vision constricted until all I could see was his face before me. I could control my physical behavior during the flashback and even my awareness, once I realized its game was on; I couldn't chain the emotions, nor the adrenaline. The muscles I'd released tautened again. Flight wasn't an option, but pounding something was. "She's not a crime scene."

  He glanced down, as if only then realizing Aunt Edith was, or had been, human. "She is now."

  I went for him. But strong arms hauled me back and away.

  One of the live voices sniggered in my ear. "What a circus."

  No sense fighting. It wasn't the policemen restraining me nor the crime scene technician I wanted to pound. I wanted the spotter, the one that got away during the war. If I could find the murderer who'd dossed down my Aunt Edith, he'd do, as well.

  "Charles!"

  That was my cousin Patricia's voice, piercing the enshrouding mental fog. I ignored the hands gripping me and peered over my shoulder. She stood alone, makeup smeared and lipstick chewed off, in the midst of the curious bystanders behind a strip of yellow tape. Flimsy as it looked, that tape represented the boundaries of the permissible and therefore was sufficient to stop her. Had they put that up behind me? I couldn't remember seeing it, much less ducking beneath it.

  Patty seemed safe, so I turned back to Aunt Edith and eased from the policemen's holds. But a man stepped between the crime scene technician and me — between Aunt Edith and me. "Mr. Ellandun?"

  I looked around him and didn't bother being subtle about it. Aunt Edith stared back, the heavy emptiness of the dead replacing her usual honest and level gaze, neither judgmental nor compassionate, with something blank. One of her pumps had fallen off and a chalk circle had been drawn around it. A bit of trash; the most amazing woman I'd ever met, and she'd been tossed aside like a bit of trash. It was beyond wrong. It was obscene.

  "It's captain, actually," I said. "Captain Charles Ellandun."

  He kept speaking, but as usual, Aunt Edith dominated the scene without trying. Only now it wasn't her elegant vivacity accomplishing that feat, but its absence. She had been the Rock of Gibraltar in my life since I'd been eleven and meeting her had been the watershed moment of my watershed year. She'd always been vital, compelling, more alive than the city itself. It was impossible for her to be dead.

  Her skirt was the same as last night, as well, woven wool in the Hunter tartan plaid, the one she'd worn the day I first met her. Likely she'd returned to the art gallery directly after dinner, then. She still wore her wedding ring, as usual her only jewelry. There was no sign of her purse.

  "Captain?" It was the man who'd stepped between us, a plainclothes detective in a button-down shirt and dark slacks.

  Pounding him wouldn't help, either. I forced myself to look at him. I even remembered his question, although I was too distracted to focus. "Yes, I own several handguns."

  "And were you in the war?" His voice was professional, beautifully modulated, and easy to listen to, even at that moment.

  Even if he was an irritant.

  "Yes." Was I ever.

  The long, drawn-out skrip of a closing zipper demolished all my good intentions. The doughy crime scene technician slowly sealed the body bag. The shadow of the canvas flaps fluttered across her blank eyes. Then she vanished inside.

  The air left my lungs as if I no longer needed oxygen, either. Again tunnel vision narrowed my field of focus, this time to the gurney as it rumbled past. The technician's hand rested atop the lumpy canvas.

  I yearned to go for him again and fought the flashback-induced impulse. Although the battlefield had vanished into the scattered recesses of my mind, the subconscious, primal scream of combat still goaded me. Then I caught up with what the irritant standing beside me had just said in his elegant tenor.

  Where were you last night.

  I stared at him while the implications of that question soaked into the corners of my damaged brain. How long that took, while we locked eyes and assessed each other, I don't know; accurately measuring time has never been one of my finer accomplishments. But the details of his perfect face — expensively styled bronze-toned hair rippling above his ears, brown eyes steady and suspicious, smooth tan that had nothing to do with working outside, not a trace of stubble on the square jaw — left an after-image on my retinas like the strobing emergency lights. How could he stand being so damned perfect? It didn't matter whether pounding him would help or not. I went for him instead.

  Again hands hauled me back. And suddenly cousin Patricia was between us, grabbing handfuls of my sport shirt and shaking me, or at least it. "Charles, for God's sake, what is wrong with you?"

  I nearly told her, nearly reminded her of my diagnosis, but couldn't see the point even if I was an Ellandun and lived for the fight. The gurney and the moment were gone and the bloody adrenaline finally snapped. I shuddered beneath her clenched fists as the aftereffects kicked in. From the way her already wide green eyes were stretching wider, she felt it, too.

  "Charles?" This time, her voice was less than a whisper and it broke in the middle of my name.

  If I could have stopped the shaking, to protect Patty I would have done it. I'd failed her, too, and again I closed my eyes. Whatever showed in my all-too-transparent face, she didn't need to see it.

  Because I'd tried to tackle a plainclothes police detective, Boston's finest slung me into the back of a squad car to cool down, one of an armload of emergency vehicles scattered about the street. They closed the doors, too, and how the July heat that rapidly built up inside that car was supposed to help me cool down, I cannot imagine. The interior stank from the stale fast-food wrappers littering the floorboards and the stain of something I didn't want to identify on the part of the seat I avoided.

  I'd put up with all of it if I could have Aunt Edith back. She couldn't possibly be dead.

  Outside the patrol car and a few yards away, Patricia and Brother Perfect chatted like old friends, her eyes sliding sideways to check on me every minute or so, his never leaving her damp and smudged face. He'd positioned her so she couldn't see the blood. Her mousy brown hair strained back in a knot that looked painted on, but then so did her jeans, and with her streamlined figure, I'm certain the average male never noticed the hair. To give him credit, Brother Perfect's gaze didn't drop, not even to her green cotton camp shirt, halfway unbuttoned from the bottom and tied in a knot above her belt buckle. Perhaps the stained handkerchief she used to rearrange the sad remnants of her makeup put him off.

  Finally she walked away, ducked beneath the yellow crime-scene tape, and waited outside the perimeter, staring at me in the back of the squad car with her lower lip between her teeth. Brother Perfect watched her until their eyes met for a brief glance, and then he turned, opened the squad car door, and slid into the front passenger seat.

  To give him further credit, he didn't bother scolding me. "You say you have several guns. Tell me about them."

  I rubbed my eyes. "I own an M-16, a Mauser sniper's rifle—"

  "Handguns, Captain. Tell me about your handguns."

  To hell with him. I moved over until I breathed the outside air. "I have a Colt .45, two old Walther nine millimeters and two new ones—"

  "What's the sm
allest bore handgun you own?"

  The question threw me until I realized the holes in Aunt Edith's lungs had been small. "The nine millimeters."

  "No twenty-two?" he asked. "Nothing smaller than a nine?"

  "No," I said.

  He stared at me for a long moment. The shakes had diminished as the adrenaline ebbed away, leaving me taut and intensely aware, and the skeptical curl of his lip made his opinion of my veracity perfectly clear. Again my temper began heating — there was something about him that made that a delightful process — but I swore this time I'd hang onto my self-control.

  "I've kept records," I said. "And my LTC Class A and FID are both in order. You're welcome to check them."

  "Thank you." The tone of his voice left no doubt he'd do so whether I volunteered them or not. "Are you carrying now?"

  "No." But I intended to rectify that as soon as possible.

  "So where were you last night?"

  "At home." I gave him the address of my condo on the waterfront, north of Burroughs Wharf and well away from the tourist congestion at the Aquarium and Rowe's Wharf. He didn't write anything down; perhaps he had a photographic memory. "I had dinner with Aunt Edith around seven, got home around nine thirty or a bit after, and stayed in."

  She had tried to persuade me to be sociable and forgiving, get involved with her latest bloody art show, see the family while everyone was in town as if I had a particle of interest whatsoever in them. The remembrance of how little encouragement I had given her during that, our final conversation, set my insides squirming.

  "Can anyone confirm that?"

  I hadn't even checked email. "No."

  That internal squirming had a distinctly frigid tinge to it now. He'd gun for motive next; wasn't that how they did it on those stupid cop shows?