Comes the War by Ed Ruggero

Author:Ed Ruggero
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

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Harkins spent a frustrating day chasing down one uncooperative lead after another. He wasted nearly three hours at the headquarters of the Judge Advocate General, pinballing from office to office and lawyer to lawyer, posing hypothetical scenarios in which someone who was not a lawyer, not the accused’s commander, or even a witness might derail an ill-advised court-martial. No one offered him an approach. He cooled his heels for another hour outside the office of Professor Reed, Batcheller’s boss, before being turned away by some flunky. Harkins wondered if Reed had been warned by Major Sinnott not to discuss Batcheller’s work with the cop.

It was seventeen hundred hours by the time he decided that it would be better for his mental health to look for his brother.

“When did you last see your brother, sir?” Lowell asked as they drove east toward the oldest part of this old city and Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

“Last summer,” Harkins said. “In Sicily. His unit jumped in ahead of the invasion. That was July. We spent some time together over a few days in August.”

They’d been together shortly after they learned that their younger brother, Michael, was lost at sea. Then Patrick left Sicily to prepare for the next campaign, leaving Eddie Harkins to stew in his anger at the navy, at the Japanese, at the war, at himself.

In September Patrick’s regiment made another combat jump onto the Italian mainland. Harkins did not hear from him for five weeks, plenty of time to imagine all the things that could have gone wrong. Finally, a letter from his sister saying that Patrick had written to the family; he had come through safely.

“Are you two close?” Lowell asked.

Patrick Harkins had left home at eighteen for seminary. Eddie Harkins, then sixteen, felt abandoned, as if he’d been competing with the Church for his brother’s attention—and lost. He’d said something to that effect to his mother, who told him, “You can’t lose to Jesus.” That didn’t make him feel any better, and he didn’t bring up the subject again.

“Yeah, we were close,” Harkins said. “He was my first boxing coach, and we used to go to the gym together all the time. He was a good fighter.”

Lowell glanced at Harkins in the rearview mirror.

“Though he kept his fights inside the ring.”

“And you?” she asked, smiling.

“I spread myself around.”

“Your family must have been proud of him,” Lowell said. “A son who is a priest. That’s very important to a Catholic family, isn’t it?”

“It’s a big deal, yeah.”

Harkins remembered Patrick’s ordination, their mother beaming like a shined penny, all faith and happiness. He didn’t know if it was because Mary Theresa Harkins felt all her prayers had paid off—her eldest now a respected man of the cloth—or because she felt secure that Patrick’s soul was saved.

A bomb-cleared lot by the river offered a parking place for the sedan.

“May I come along, sir?” Lowell asked.

“Can I stop you?” Harkins said.

The two of them got out of the car and walked toward the iconic dome.

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