PW01 - Died On The Vine Read Free

technical writer and primarily write manuals for a set fee, I love all the yakking about criminal editors, brain-dead agents, and slave wage royalties.
    Tonight I just skimmed my e-mail and then posted a note for the group.
    “I’m looking for any information the group might have on Colonel Obadiah ‘Obie’ Winslow,” I wrote. “What’s the story on this guy?”
    Then I logged off, having put powerful wheels in motion. Colonel Winslow isn’t the only one with “sources”!
     
     

 
     
    TWO
    The next morning, I called Nancy Graham to get Chuck’s office number. I felt rather self-conscious calling Nancy out of the blue. Once we had been best friends, living in base housing, having babies in diapers together, driving our husbands home from the Officers Club when they’d had too much to drink. But Jimmy’s death had removed me from that close-knit community. The Grahams had been ordered overseas and our friendship was now memorialized by an annual Christmas card.
    Nancy was predictably surprised to hear from me. “Why, Cissy! For heaven’s sake, how are you, hon?” I couldn’t just ask for Chuck’s number and hang up. We wound up chatting for over half an hour, covering Jack’s retirement and Chuck’s job at the Pentagon and his chances for promotion.
    I described Winslow’s visit and Nancy was scandalized. “That vulture! Just wait until Chuck hears about this!”
    “Actually, Nancy, I wanted to talk to Chuck about it myself. May I have his office number?”
    Nancy gave me the number and we rounded off the conversation with mutual resolutions to
“get together real soon”.
    At Chuck’s office, a protective aide was unwilling to disturb the Admiral who was reported to be “in conference”, but in the quarter-century since I’d left the Navy family, I had lost my awe of rank. Within minutes, I had Chuck on the phone. Even after all these years, I recognized his booming voice immediately.
    “Conference? Hell, Cissy, I was in the can. What can I do for you today?”
    “Chuck, this may sound crazy, but is it possible that Jimmy could have survived that crash?”
    “Survived? Only if Scotty had beamed him out about a microsecond before the plane hit the dirt.”
    That took me back. Every Friday night the Hoopers used to go over to the Grahams to watch Star Trek on their 19-inch color TV. (Yes, children, we had a 12-inch black-and-white in those days.)
    Chuck went on. “Look, Cissy, we had this conversation back in ’69. Jimmy was my best friend and I would have given anything to see him survive that crash, but I saw it with my own eyes and it just isn’t possible. Now, what’s happened to make you start wondering again?”
    I told him about Winslow’s visit. Chuck sighed. “I wish there was something we could do to stop that man, but it’s a free country. Cis, this guy has made a living feeding the impossible hopes of widows and orphans. Every few months, he shows up with some new photo or old bone and starts howling about high-level cover-ups. The conspiracy theorists love him. I don’t know why he’s picking on you, though. Maybe he’s run out of MIA families to con and is moving on the KIAs. Honey, you go on down to the Wall and have a good cry, and then give that husband of yours a big hug. Jimmy’s dead. It’s sad, but true. And I’m going to talk to some folks I know and try to find out why you’ve been targeted by this jerk.”
    Getting off the phone, I grabbed a cup of coffee and went to the office. Time to see how my other sources were coming through for me.
    Signing on to the internet, I found a number of very different answers to the question I posted the night before. The responses were addressed to “Cecil” or “Serpent”. My nom de plume for Usenet is based on an old cartoon about a boy named Beanie and his friend “Cecil The Sea-Sick Sea Serpent” – if you remember it, your age is showing.
    Unlike other cyberspace groups, the writers don’t use aliases as a