Page 28 of Cyn
“Have they sent you anywhere else?”
He shook his head. “Got here about six months ago. Supposed to head back to Texas in two months, but I know that’s not a promise.” No, it wasn’t. The Army could make very few promises to the people who served in it, including when—or even if—they’d make it home.
“What about you?” he asked. “I know you’re an archeologist, but what are you studying?”
They spent the rest of the drive down to the stelae talking about archeology and nothing much of consequence. Wanting to first build a rapport with the young man, Cyn didn’t dig for information. When they stopped at the first site, she climbed out of the Jeep, and Joe met her in the field with her equipment bag. She wasn’t all that interested in the stelae, her actual area of interest being populations of people who transitioned from nomads to permanent settlements, but they had to make a show of it.
Cyn directed Joe as they paced out the site, took measurements, and captured it all on camera. In turn, he updated her on what Mac had wanted to talk to him about. Two of his investigators were following up on the computer access they’d discussed the night before, and Mac expected to have a report for them by the time they returned. Cyn was more than curious about what the investigators would find, but there was nothing she could do about it at the moment, so she turned her focus to the site—the sooner they were done, the sooner she could get back in the Jeep, and her conversation with Private Crammer could resume.
After a little over an hour, she and Joe stored the gear in Mac’s Jeep, and they all headed to the second site located thirty minutes farther south. Once they were on their way, Crammer politely peppered her with questions as to what she’d found, or might have found, and his interest made her smile.
He was everything McElroy wasn’t, at least on paper. He was easygoing but focused. Interested in her work and respectful of it. He spoke to her as many of her students did—with curiosity and the beginnings of a grasp on the ancient world in which they lived. By the time they wrapped up at the second site, Cyn was seriously considering whether or not Mac had been wrong about Kelvin Crammer and James McElroy being friends.
“Have you ever thought about taking archeology classes?” she asked Private Crammer as they headed back north toward the base.
He smiled. “Took one in community college, but it wasn’t nearly as interesting as talking to you.”
And that gave her the opening she needed.
“Well, if you don’t re-up at the end of your time and you’re wanting to finish your degree, come find me,” she said, giving him the name of her university. His head whipped around in surprise before he turned his attention back to the road.
“You’ve heard of it?” she asked.
He swallowed, then sighed. “Yeah. A guy on our team went to school there. He was killed a couple of weeks ago.”
Cyn sucked in a breath for show. “James McElroy was on your team? The university ran an article about him.”
Crammer nodded.
“The article was vague on the details, but it sounded like there was some kind of accident during a training exercise.”
Crammer shot her a startled look, but she wasn’t sure if that was because someone halfway around the world had heard of McElroy’s death or if it was because he was concerned that she’d ask him to talk about it.
“Sorry,” she said. “We don’t have to talk about it. I get so used to working with those who have been long dead that I sometimes forget that some of the dead have people who still mourn them.”
Crammer was silent for a long moment before speaking. “I’m not sure I’m mourning him, exactly. I know that makes me sound like I’m a di…like I’m a jerk. I’m sorry he’s dead and all—sorry for his family—but he was kind of a weird dude.”
“Not your friend, I take it?”
Crammer shook his head. “No, he hung out with me and a couple of other guys a lot, but we weren’t really friends. Like I said, there was something…” He paused. “Well, he didn’t quite fit in.”
Cyn let that statement hang between them before she asked, “You don’t think that had anything to do with his death, do you?”
Crammer jerked at the question, then rapidly started shaking his head. “No, no way. It was just us out that day, the team and our trainers. No one would have done that to him, no matter how weird he was.”
“I didn’t mean to imply someone on the team had anything to do with it,” she responded quickly. “I just wondered, if he was weird with you, was he weird with someone else? Someoneoffbase who might have had something to do with it.” She paused, then gave an airy wave. “Never mind me,” she said. “It’s part of my job to dig into people’s lives. But like I said, usually they are long dead, and now I’m being rude.”
As predicted, because Kelvin Crammer was a polite kid, he quickly shook his head. “No, you’re not being rude, and believe me, you’re not asking any questions we haven’t all asked ourselves and each other. I know the investigation didn’t conclude anything, but, dude, we were out in the desert canyons, just the team and the trainers, and one guy gets hit with a thigh shot right in the artery?” he said, more or less repeating what Mac had said the night before. “It wasn’t one of us, and it sure as shit…pardon my language…looked like a hit or something. But that’s crazy, right? Why would someone want to kill McElroy? He wasn’t the most popular guy, and if you ask me, he was a little bit of a racist dick…but you know the kind? The kind who hides it well. There might be people who didn’t really like him but killing him seems extreme.”
“Seems if you’re a racist dick, the Army isn’t exactly the place to be,” Cyn commented. The Army had one of the most diverse groups of employees in the US, at least at the lower levels.
“Yeah, but you know, guns and shit have a special appeal to people like that. And then there’s the idea of the He-Man, alpha soldier that seems to be a big part of that culture.”
Cyn had to smile at that. Not at his words, because they were chilling and true, but because Private Crammer had well and truly let his guard down and was talking to her like she’d hoped he would.
“Do you think that’s why he joined? To learn about weapons? Maybe get some street cred before returning to civilian life and doing whatever it is racists do?”
Kelvin lifted a shoulder. “Hard to tell why he joined, but that wouldn’t surprise me. Look, I grew up in the South. I know what racism looks like up close and personal. Well, notthatpersonal since I’m white and all, but that didn’t mean I didn’t see it every day. The thing is, though, that all those people who go out on their white power marches and drive around with their confederate flags? They’re nothing but bullies. Dangerous ones, I know, but still just bullies—little people with fragile egos who are taking advantage of the current structures to grasp whatever power they can because, at best, they are little more than mediocre. McElroy struck me as similar. Not that we ever got into any deep philosophical discussions on the matter, but he struck me as one of those people who’s so insecure in themselves that brandishing a gun and threatening others is the only way he can feel powerful.”
