EXCERPT FROM 'THE LADY IN THE BOXCAR' (UNPUBLISHED)

Chapter 1
Fort Fremont, California, February
 
Pelted by a cold morning rain, a freight train slowly backed into a siding before slamming to a stop beside a half-sheltered platform fronting an enormous warehouse. A bulky man in a knee-length, olive-colored raincoat appeared. On his white hard hat was a decal with the chevrons of a sergeant first class. From his pockets came a small walkie-talkie and a key ring. His breath a white cloud, he spoke into the radio; a few seconds passed before the train lurched forward to stop ten feet at a spot where two boxcars could be entered safely from the platform.
 
Selecting keys from the ring, the sergeant unlocked and tugged open two boxcar doors in turn, then turned to yell something into the warehouse. Forty young men in civilian clothes and closely cropped hair shuffled onto the platform.
 
The sergeant waited in the rain until all the men had crowded onto the platform’s roofed portion. “Listen up,” he bellowed. “Form two ranks, one behind the other.”
 
The men jostled one another, trying to stay dry until the sergeant was satisfied. “I’m Sergeant First Class Mentone,” he growled. “You in the front rank: Raise your left hand.”
 
Nineteen men raised their left hands. One raised his right.
 
“You! In the blue shirt,” Mentone yelled.
 
A plump young man in the first row glanced down at his shirt.
 
“Yes, you, Einstein. Your left hand. No, your other left hand.”
 
As the others laughed, the blushing youngster dropped his right and raised his left hand.
 
“You men are to enter the boxcar on the left--your left—single file, and you are each to carry one box at a time—just one—into the warehouse. Sergeant Edwards will show you where to stack the boxes. He’s the tall, skinny man in a hard hat like mine.
 
“You men in the second rank will unload the car on your right. You will carry one box at a time, and Specialist Mendoza will show you where to stack those boxes. Mendoza is the shorter one, with a mustache and a hard hat.
 
“You will unload all the boxes on each car. When you finish, I’ll give you a break, and we’ll try to have hot coffee and sweet rolls here for you.
 
“Any questions?”
 
In the second row, a muscular teen with acne marring his handsome face raised a hand.
 
“What if we could carry two boxes? Wouldn’t that be faster?”
 
Mentone frowned. “Listen closely, peckerhead. If you learn nothing else while you’re here for basic training, get this into your thick skull. There are many ways to do things. There is the right way, lots of wrong ways, and there is the Army way. The Army way is what your sergeant or officer tells you. I don’t give a rabid rodent’s rectum how many boxes you think you can carry—today you will carry just one at a time.
 
“Anything else?”
 
Silence.
 
“Get to it.”
 
                                                                          ***
 
The boxes in the left car held a dozen pairs of combat boots each. By his second round trip, Will Spaulding understood Mentone’s reason for limiting each man to one box: The aisle between pallets of boxes stacked to the roof was too narrow to allow two men to pass each other if one of them carried more than one box.
 
 By Spaulding’s sixth trip, the boxcar was a third empty, and he was soaking wet. Then he saw the body—only a bare foot and a few inches of the ankle were visible in the gap between a row of boxes and the wall, but he knew it was a dead woman before he set his box down and knelt to encircle her ankle with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.
 
He scrambled to his feet, and oblivious to the complaints of those behind him, he blocked further entry to the car. “Turn around and go find that sergeant,” he said, his voice ringing with authority. Then he turned to the men carrying boxes. “Put 'em down and go back into the warehouse,” he said and stood aside.
 
Mentone returned to find an athletic young man of average height with a stubble of light brown hair, a receding hairline, and a sunburned but otherwise unremarkable face framing piercing blue eyes. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the sergeant bellowed.
 
Will spread his hands in a calming gesture. “There’s a dead woman in there, Sergeant.”
 
“A dead what?”
 
“A woman. Please call the police.”
 
“Stand aside, Private,” he said and strode into the dim interior, Will at his heels.
 
“There,” he said, pointing.
 
Mentone bent to see. “What the hell?”
 
Mentone straightened up, then pointed to the boxes surrounding the foot. “Get those boxes out of there, Recruit, so I can see what we’ve got here.”
 
“With respect, Sergeant First Class Mentone, I’m certain that the police would not want you to disturb the scene until they can examine it.”
 
The sergeant took a half step forward until he was almost nose to nose with Spaulding. “My job is to get these boots unloaded. Your job is to do what I tell you, Recruit. Now move it.”
 
“Sergeant Mentone, please listen to me. It will take the police a few hours to investigate this crime scene. They will want to see every box on the car, including the ones we’ve already unloaded. So, this car will not be unloaded until they’re done. Not your fault, not mine, just the way it is.”
 
Mentone’s face contorted into a snarl. “Get off this car and report to Sergeant Edwards. Tell him that I said you should wait in the office until I get there. Now go!”

​***

The rain had slowed to an annoying drizzle when Special Agent Rudy Chelmin knelt next to the body. He played his flashlight beam across it and then leaned in to feel the corpse’s wrist. He rose awkwardly and with effort, leaning against the wall for support, then moved to the boxcar door, where two uniformed Military Police waited. “Get that Quartermaster sergeant back here,” he said and searched his pockets for cigarettes until he remembered that this was the second day of his fourth attempt to quit smoking.
 
 Mentone appeared in the warehouse door.
 
“Couple of questions,” Chelmin said. “Who found the body?”
 
“A recruit in the work detail.”
 
“Where is he now?”
 
“I told him to wait in my office.”
 
“Good thinking, Mentone. I’ll want to see him, but in a minute. Other thing is, what happened to all the boxes that were on this car before I got here?”
 
“They were unloaded and stacked in the warehouse.”
 
“Can you tell me which ones were the closest to the body?”
 
Mentone shrugged. “We just stacked them as they came off the car.”
 
“Should have left them on the car. All of them. Now listen, and this is very important—I’ve got an FBI forensic team coming down from San Francisco. They’ll be here in a couple of hours. The county medical examiner is coming from Salinas, and he’ll be here any time. I’ll get some MPs to guard those boxes. Nobody is to touch them, and I’ll need every man on that work detail back here to be fingerprinted—their prints are all over those boxes.”
 
Mentone shook his head in exasperation. “I should have listened to that recruit. He said you’d want to look at the boxes and to leave them on the train.”
 
This got Chelmin’s attention. “Who said that?”
 
“The recruit. Mouthy kid, the one who found her. But what the hell, he’s a fucking new recruit. Doesn’t even have a uniform yet.”
 
“Get him,” Chelmin said. “I’ll be inside.”

***

​The rain had slowed to an annoying drizzle when Special Agent Rudy Chelmin knelt next to the body. He played his flashlight beam across it and then leaned in to feel the corpse’s wrist. He rose awkwardly and with effort, leaning against the wall for support, then moved to the boxcar door, where two uniformed Military Police waited. “Get that Quartermaster sergeant back here,” he said and searched his pockets for cigarettes until he remembered that this was the second day of his fourth attempt to quit smoking.
 
 Mentone appeared in the warehouse door.
 
“Couple of questions,” Chelmin said. “Who found the body?”
 
“A recruit in the work detail.”
 
“Where is he now?”
 
“I told him to wait in my office.”
 
“Good thinking, Mentone. I’ll want to see him, but in a minute. Other thing is, what happened to all the boxes that were on this car before I got here?”
 
“They were unloaded and stacked in the warehouse.”
 
“Can you tell me which ones were the closest to the body?”
 
Mentone shrugged. “We just stacked them as they came off the car.”
 
“Should have left them on the car. All of them. Now listen, and this is very important—I’ve got an FBI forensic team coming down from San Francisco. They’ll be here in a couple of hours. The county medical examiner is coming from Salinas, and he’ll be here any time. I’ll get some MPs to guard those boxes. Nobody is to touch them, and I’ll need every man on that work detail back here to be fingerprinted—their prints are all over those boxes.”
 
Mentone shook his head in exasperation. “I should have listened to that recruit. He said you’d want to look at the boxes and to leave them on the train.”
 
This got Chelmin’s attention. “Who said that?”
 
“The recruit. Mouthy kid, the one who found her. But what the hell, he’s a fucking new recruit. Doesn’t even have a uniform yet.”
 
“Get him,” Chelmin said. “I’ll be inside.”

© 2018 Marvin J. Wolf