Chapter 16
"That stack is awful big boss, surely those can't all be for me?!" Woody asked hoping he was right.
"Sorry Hoyt, this year there just seems to be a huge load. We all have the same stack on our desk. These are yours. Get through them as quick as you can, but be through too."
"Alright," he sighed, pulling the top file towards him and starting to read.
Woody was pretty pleased with himself when he got three of the cases taken care of by the end of the day. He thought, 'maybe this years unsolved cases wouldn't be so bad after all!' The next day, however, he drew a new case and didn't even have a chance to look at the old ones still on his desk.
It just must have been that time of the year, because in Falls Church, Virginia Colonel Sarah Mackenzie, along with the rest of the JAG staff, were also being given stacks of old unsolved, still open, cases to go through and review. Mac had been through this before and as much as she hated it, she knew that it had to be done.
The second case in her stack almost brought her to tears. She had called Mrs. Iola Manors, who had reported her Marine husband missing over three decades ago. He was a part of the 7th Marine Company and had called her to say that he and his men had been a part of Operation Swift Play. He was being honorably discharged and was on his way home from Viet Nam, he had never made it. She graciously thanked Mac for the call saying, "It is very sweet of someone to call every year and let me know that my Kelly has not been forgotten, even if he has never been found."
For two days Woody couldn't get back to the old cases, but finally on Thursday he managed another good day at getting through them. He finished five and was almost at the halfway point.
On Friday morning he pulled the case file on the top of the stack and began to read it. A young man, the coroner had guessed to be in his late twenties, had been found naked, badly beaten, and shot. His body had been dumped in an alley. Woody read the file completely and saw there were no witnesses or any new information since it had happened. He put the file aside and reached for the next one.
However, throughout the day, the first case of the morning bothered him. When he went to lunch he took the file with him and read it over again. The man was never identified because then there had been no such thing as a database for fingerprints, blood types, and DNA. He wondered if running those things now would be of any use on a case that old? Looking at the date he realized 1968 would make it a very long shot, but he figured, 'what the hell' it was worth a chance.
That afternoon he spent working on identifying the unfortunate man left in the alley to rot. The tech in the lab told him not to hold his breath, he would be lucky to get an answer by Monday. With a sigh Woody put the case aside to wait and went on to the next in the stack.
Woody woke with a smile. It was Saturday and after what seemed like a longer than usual week he was looking forward to two days off. It would also give him sometime to figure out what was going on with his wife. Jordan had been acting oddly for the last few days. After the scare of someone watching her last week he wanted to make sure it hadn't happened again and that she had broken her promise to tell him about it. A strange smell distracted his thoughts so he got up, threw on a robe, and went to investigate why the apartment that he did all the cooking in, unless they had take out, suddenly smelled like his grandmother's kitchen back in Wisconsin.
The sight that greeted him when he got to the kitchen made him stop in stunned open mouthed amazement. His very pregnant wife, who normally could barely reheat left overs without burning them, was flitting around barefooted, wearing a pair of men's boxers, and a long T-shirt that was stretched tight over her tummy. There was flour everywhere! In her hair, on her cheek, her hands, and belly as well as every counter top and even the floor. It looked like she had been up for hours if the amount of baked good was any indication.
To be continued…