After Midnight Read Free Page A

Jess’s job forced the sheriff and the unwanted memories he evoked into a separate, compartmentalized corner of her mind. There they remained during the busy daylight hours, emerging only at night to push Jess into marathon sessions of old movies and a final, frenetic flurry of unpacking.
    By the time Friday morning rolled around, she’d hung all her pictures, put her closets in order, and disposed of a mound of cardboard boxes. Feeling tired but satisfied with her progress, she showered and slipped into tailored, dark blue uniform slacks and a crisply ironed light blue blouse. The embroidered silver oak leaves denoting her lieutenant colonel’s rank glittered on the blouse’s navy blue epaulets.
    Normally, she wore boots and battle fatigues to work, as did most of the military personnel on base. Today, however, she had a meeting with inspectors from the regional EPA office. They were bird-dogging clean-up of the solvents that had cost Jess’s predecessor his command and weren’t real happy about the slip-shod procedures that had led to the dump in the first place. Neither was Jess, for that matter.
    A soft breeze tugged at the hair she’d tamed into a French braid as she backed her Mustang convertible out of the garage. Giving in to impulse, Jess put the top down. The slap of the cool dawn air was worth an occasional snatch at the flight cap down she tugged down square on her forehead.
    Five minutes later she drove onto the Mid-Bay Bridge. From seven a.m. on, a steady stream of vehicles rumbled across the soaring arch of concrete. But this early, with the sun little more than a faint haze on the eastern horizon and the bay still a hazy pewter instead of its usual electric blue, she could make it from her condo to Eglin Air Force Base’s back gate in just under twenty minutes.
    In the weeks since she’d arrived in Florida, Jess had come to love the early morning drive across the twelve-mile bridge. At this merging of sea and sky, of dark and light, she put the night behind her. With one hand on the wheel and the other poised to grab her hat if necessary, she relaxed and reviewed the day ahead.
    It would be a hectic one. Seven-thirty, stand-up with her deputy and division chiefs. Nine, the Wing commander’s staff meeting. The EPA inspectors at one-thirty. At three…
    Her mouth thinned. At three, she’d perform one of the less pleasant duties that came with command – administering punishment under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. She didn’t look forward to busting a fourteen-year veteran who’d served with distinction in the Gulf War. Particularly since taking the man’s stripe was the final punitive act before processing him for discharge under other than honorable conditions.
    She hadn’t met Technical Sergeant Ed Babcock -- he’d been unavailable the few times she toured or stopped by the Fuels Management Flight -- but the First Sergeant had briefed Jess on the man’s deteriorating duty performance and off-duty conduct over the past year. Turns out his supervisor had been covering up the sergeant’s repeated absences in a well-meaning if misguided effort to salvage a highly qualified fuels specialist. Only after Babcock plowed his car into a tree did Bill Petrie reveal the scope of the problem.
    A serious lapse in judgement on the supervisor’s part, Jess thought grimly. Instead of trying to hide the matter, he should have sent Babcock for help. After the DUI, Jess’s predecessor had finally directed the NCO into a forty-day rehab program at the base hospital.
    From all reports, Babcock had stayed sober after the rehab program until two nights ago, when he’d tied on the mother of all drunks and almost destroyed the casual bar at the NCO Club. To add insult to injury, he’d cold-cocked two of the cops who’d tried to subdue him. The First Sergeant had bailed him out of jail yesterday morning and begun the inexorable paper process that would lead to his discharge.
    Well, with more