Chapter 6: Ring
"You said in there that you and Shana are getting married," Alex said as she turned a sharp left at the next light. "I've seen the two of you together too much, too often, to think that either of you are going to change your mind about that. So I wanted to give you guys a present a little early."
Present?
"We're going to pick out your wedding rings."
He became aware after a couple of moments that his mouth was open, and closed it.
Her eyes flashed mischievously over her broad smile. "Liv told me that would be your reaction." She turned right at the next light, then said, "I found this store down here that specializes in custom-made jewelry. Considering yours and Shana's lifestyles, a traditional wedding ring isn't going to be practical—I already saw her have to take off the engagement ring you bought her in order to practice with her swords. And Cam's got that skinny little gold band Charlie bought her when they got married on the reservation and even that's already accumulated scratches and nicks and dents. So a traditional gold band isn't going to work for you two."
He hadn't even thought about that.
"I know you didn't. Guys rarely ever do. The ring you gave Shana is absolutely lovely and fits her personality, but it's not practical for both your lifestyles."
So what do you recommend?
"This jeweler's we're going to is actually a blacksmith—the old-fashioned type, heating and hammering steel. He makes unique items from all kinds of metal and one of the things he's known for is Damascus steel wedding bands."
Damascus steel? Snake Eyes pondered that as Alex drove. He'd always loved Damascus steel swords; the process of taking a bar of steel, hammering it thin, then folding it, hammering it thin again, and folding it again left ripples of the lighter steel edges in a solid steel blade; aesthetically pleasing, yes, but the swords were also durable and strong and held an edge better than anything he'd had. Shana appreciated them for the same reason, though he was willing to bet she appreciated their beauty more than he did; she'd bought the first Damascus blade for the dojo. He'd scoffed at the 'beauty' but had been pleased with the edge and the weight—Damascus swords were a bit heavier than the average stainless steel blades currently on the wall in the dojo, but if made with a hilt that balanced the weight of the blade, they were unmatched perfection. He always used one when he and Shana put on shows for the new recruits or when they just wanted to show off for the Joes.
They were very expensive, however, and there were only two in the dojo's collection. Shana had talked rather wistfully about getting a matched pair for their shows, but unless they had them specially made it seemed unlikely that they would ever have a matched pair, and they were so expensive that he couldn't even begin to guess how much two specially made swords would cost.
Alex pulled up in front of a modest little storefront practically hidden behind a much larger sub shop; the smells reminded him that he hadn't eaten, and he promised himself a quick trip in when they were done so he could grab dinner for himself and Shana—she'd been eating dinner at base but would welcome the supplement to her meal; she was constantly hungry lately and was starting to look less like the starved waif she'd appeared to be when she'd first woken up.
The interior of the shop was well-lit, and more spacious inside than he would have thought from looking at the outside. There was no hodgepodge of clutter, like he'd seen in other martial arts supply stores; counters were set back against the walls, and there was a large mat on the center of the floor (though with walking space around it.) A practice dummy sat next to a barrel of wooden practice swords, and the dummy showed signs of use.
Alex led him toward a small counter in the back of the dojo/shop and he looked down sat the glass case. The mellow gleam of fine rippled steel looked back at him from beds of fine black velvet that held thin bands of varying sizes; he forgot everything and just stared. Yes, these would be perfect; a little weight so he could never forget that it was there, durable enough to handle his and Shana's lifestyles and careers, and beautiful enough to put on her finger.
They're perfect, he signed.
The shop owner, a small Asian man with horn-rimmed glasses, bowed respectfully as Alex translated. "Thank you," he said. "This is a hobby for me, I usually make swords but wedding rings are a sideline for me." He looked at Snake eyes closely. "You are one of the soldiers involved in the trafficking trial, right?" Alex looked up, startled, but the man just smiled. "The reporters were quite thorough about getting camera shots of the group going into the courthouse today. And the scars are quite distinctive."
For just a moment self-consciousness almost made Snake Eyes duck his head in embarrassment, and then he thought about what he was doing. It was a comment. It wasn't negative, wasn't a criticism of him and who he was. And even if it was, what did it really matter? He was here to pick out wedding rings for the only woman he had ever loved and would ever love, and beside that everything else was inconsequential. Nothing mattered but her. So he straightened his shoulders, lifted his head, looked the man in the eye. Yes. The woman on whose finger I want to put this ring was one of the victims.
"My congratulations," the man said softly. "It can't have been easy knowing that and being courageous enough and loving her enough to face that road to recovery with her. There aren't many that could…or would." He gestured to the case. "Let me know if you see something you like."
Snake eyes looked through all the offerings. They were all beautiful, symbolic of the strength of commitment he and Shana had for each other and practical as well, but the only one he saw that he really liked was a Claddagh ring, the traditional Irish ring with two hands curled around a heart. He picked it up with regret, turning it over in his hands. It would be fitting for an Irish girl, and he had always liked the design, but the other features, the small gaps between hands and the crown at the top of the ring, would pose a problem. If the ring got turned around on the wearer's finger, the edges of the design could catch in the sageo—the wrappings—on a sword hilt, snagging it. It could be a nuisance, at the least; dangerous, at the worst.
The shopkeeper looked disappointed when he put the ring down, and he hoped the regret on his face would convince the man that it wasn't that he didn't like it, it just wasn't suitable for their lifestyles. Alex's grasp of sign language was nowhere near as complete as he would have liked it to be, and he was thinking rather desperately of trying to write what he was trying to say—as inefficient as that was—when the man's face suddenly cleared, lightened. "Ah. It is not the goods, but the design. The edges of the ring can get caught in sageo." Snake eyes nodded, looking relieved.
"What about a slightly raised design on a flat band? Or the design etched into a flat band. No edges to catch, and the advantage to Damascus steel bands is that I can make it very thin and flat but not compromise the strength."
It was the perfect idea, and Snake Eyes knew instinctively Shana would love it. He just had no idea how much it would cost to have the ring custom made. If a whole Damascus steel sword could cost so much, how much would custom rings be? But the man was shaking his head. "Do not worry about cost. Here," and he selected two flat bands with rounded, finished edges. "I can etch the design onto any of the bands here. It will cost you only the price of the ring itself as you see it here. It's the least I can do for members of our military who serve well and honorably and who have such courage. It would be an honor."
There was nothing Snake Eyes could say to that.
As the shopkeeper wrote up the receipt, he looked around the walls at the various swords on display. Many of them were in carbonized steel and colored steel, though Damascus steel predominated, and in all sizes and types; katanas, ninjas, wakizashis, daitos, tantos, tachis. There were bladed staffs, and a couple of the twin-blade batons that Cam favored. He was about to ask if he could see them when something else caught his eye.
Two Damascus steel katanas…but they were like nothing Snake Eyes had ever seen. Both in blackened steel, but on one, an extra chemical had been added to the steel bar to give the edges of the blank a red hue; with subsequent folding of the metal, the Damascene folds had added red lines to the blade. All Snake Eyes could think about when he saw that was how strands of Shana's red hair next to her black body armor resembled the fold lines in that blade. Both hilts were wrapped in red rayskin with black and red silk sageo wound around it and the saya, right under them, were polished lengths of black wood.
The shopkeeper noticed what he was looking at, and reached up wordlessly for the sword, laying it carefully down on the counter. Snake eyes picked it up, marveling at the perfect balance. A master's sword, he knew that right away; the kind of sword a master swordsmith made only a few times in a lifetime, and that every swordsman always dreamed of having. This was the kind of matched sword that Shana would have loved but Snake Eyes knew they would never be able to afford.
He still couldn't resist; at the shopkeeper's nod, he stepped away from the counter, stepped on the mat in the middle of the floor, and tried an abbreviated sword drill. The sword moved like an extension of his arm, as if it were alive and waiting for him to tell it what to do, and at that moment he'd never wanted a sword so badly in his life as he wanted these two swords.
But he was here for rings, not for swords, and he carefully (if reluctantly) handed the sword back to the shopkeeper. I'll have to come back, he said, and the man nodded with a little smile and put the sword back in its cradle on the wall.
He was still thinking about them later as he ordered dinner (Alex suggested it; she was hungry, said that Liv had to be, too, and so Alex ended up buying dinner for Liv, Clayton and Ettienne, and Snake Eyes bought for Shana, Charlie and Cam. Though still weak, Cam's strength was slowly coming back, she didn't really need the wheelchair to get to court, but Alex and Abbie both insisted it would be good for the trial so Cam was patient with it. Back at base, she and Shana had started working out; no sword drills for Cam, yet, but Shana was working on stretching exercises and yoga to try and stretch Cam's skin a little, to get some mobility back in joints warped by scar tissue. And Snake Eyes suspected that she and Cam were also working on psych issues as well. But Shana's nightmares had stopped waking her in the middle of the night screaming, and Charlie had said that Cam's nightmares weren't as bad either, and both men understood that their girls were helping each other.
Court the next day started with the same 'honor guard' type display they'd shown the day before; while a couple of the faces were different due to some having duties they couldn't duck out of or exchange, they'd been replaced by others. And Shana had a gun on her hip, worn courtesy of her FBI connections. Snake Eyes also noticed a sniper on the roof of the building watching the crowd below, and although he didn't turn his head around to look at neighboring rooftops (if anyone really was out to get Cam and Shana, this would have been a dead giveaway to a would-be hitman that the Feds had anticipated the move) he knew that there had to be snipers on those rooftops as well.
Abbie Carmichael called Dr. Temperance Brennan to the stand, and for the first time they all found out who she was. A highly-skilled expert in the field of forensic anthropology, currently working as a tenured associate for one of the largest museums in America, she and her team usually just curated bones for museum exhibits, but they were respected consultant experts for the FBI, scrutinizing bones and human remains for various federal cases.
"These bones were all female," Dr. Brennan asserted. "Female, between sixteen and twenty-one. Out of the twelve sets of bones recovered from the ocean under the fishing platform, eight were Caucasoid and four were African. However, certain bone structures led us to the conclusion that these Africans also had Caucasian genetics and may have been very light-skinned, perhaps enough to pass for white. I feel perfectly confident in saying that without knowing anything about the facts of the case, I would have suspected they were a serial killer's victims due to genetic similarities."
Dr. Huang took the stand next. "Having been given the facts of the case without knowing the victims or the defendant's names, I constructed a profile. According to that profile, the man who had purchased these women to use as sex slaves and brutally tortured them nearly to the point of death was male, somewhere between thirty and fifty years old, and wealthy. I reached the race conclusion because the remains found in the ocean and identified by Dr. Brennan and her team were all the same gender, about the same height and weight and although the actual age varied, I was reasonably certain that they all could have appeared either older or younger in order to fit into the killer's perception of his ideal victim, a clear sign of a serial killer's attempt at choosing victims that would appeal to him.
"He would be narcissistic, egocentric, in a position of some power where he would have control over a sufficient portion of his own life, his money, and his time. He would most likely be the head of a company or firm, because of his need to control everything around him. He would have been an only child, having never learned any compassion for any other human being, may not have received adequate attention from his parents as a child, would also be likely to seek out attention by manipulating others' perceptions of him as being someone to like or admire. He would be very good at reading people, good at saying exactly what they want to hear, good at lying, good at hiding his true nature. Very good at hiding the fact that he has a god complex, enjoys playing with peoples' lives and money, and as the forensic accounting team learned from looking at his accounts, doesn't care who he ruins. The company he owns now was his father's company—upon taking control he cut off all retirement pensions and funneled the money—the interest from which those pensions would be paid—into his personal account."
"That's a lie," Kennedy hissed. "It's a lie. I never played fast and loose with anyone's money. Those old pensioners were stealing my money, I just took it back. If they weren't working they shouldn't draw a paycheck."
"But the money that you say is yours they worked to bring in. It was as much their money as it was yours—in fact, it was yours only by virtue of your parents having left it to you; if they had left the company in a trust fund, you would never have had the power to do anything like that. One of those old pensioners whose money you cut off was an accountant who had served your father for thirty-six years. I wonder if he lost his job because he noticed that some of your math didn't add up." When Kennedy didn't answer, George continued, "It didn't occur to me that he would use an apparently nonexistent disability—the wheelchair he sits in now—as a ploy to gain sympathy and manipulate others perceptions. As we have so obviously seen, he doesn't need it."
Jurors shifted in their chairs; mutters came from the gallery behind the defense table. Clayton, sneaking a peek across the aisle, saw some of the people looking slightly dubiously at Kennedy. Not so sure now, huh?
Huang left the witness box, and Abbie called Emergency Medical Specialist Edwin Steen to the stand. Lifeline testified, in tight, clipped tones, to how they'd found Shana. Abbie cued up the photo that had been taken by the Naval trooper as Lifeline described how they'd found her.
"The nails had been placed in her arms so carefully that it hadn't nicked any of the blood vessels and muscle groups in her arms. It did touch one of the major nerve groups, so it was decided to cut the head off the nail and lift her arm clear of it. The process of cutting sent vibrations down the nail, jarring against the nerves, and…" he closed his eyes and visibly fought for composure. "It was one of the hardest, most horrific things I'd ever had to witness in my fifteen years as an army medic. Master Sergeant Shana O'Hara is a longtime member of this unit and a very close friend, and seeing her like that was…difficult."
"There's an understatement," someone in the gallery muttered, and to Clayton's surprise, it wasn't from the prosecution's side, it was someone from behind Kennedy's table. Kennedy himself turned and glared behind him, a look of such anger even Clayton was taken aback. He must have recognized the voice that said that, he thought, and even as he did, a man stood up in the far back row and edged surreptitiously from the defense's side of the room to the prosecution's side.
It was a small move, but oh, the look on Kennedy's face…he definitely knew the man.