Radar was backed into a corner with the first morning light, surrounded by the two captains before their CO could enter the office with questions and feel outrage about them bothering his clerk (indeed, they knew Colonel Potter wasn't going to be until about noon, when he had Post-Op duty). Without his glasses on and his teddy bear in one arm (fighting as if it was a weapon, as always, for its owner), Radar seemed annoyed, and even a little angered, to be bothered at that time in the morning. He even thought it unusual that the two Swampmen were up at the ungodly hours of dawn, especially with the summer heat upon them soon and without their coffee and gin.
"Come on, Radar, this is important," Hawkeye moaned pathetically as Radar fought him and BJ off with his teddy bear and yelled at them about waking him up and records being kept secret again. "Margaret's life and career hang in the balance and she won't be here anymore to boss people around. She could be…what's the word, BJ?"
"Dishonorably discharged?" BJ suggested with a shoulder shrug.
"Is that what they call it these days?" Hawkeye asked him.
"Can you Sirs be serious for once?" Radar inquired rudely, pushing the captains back finally with his teddy bear and some random files he grabbed from the filing cabinet next to him.
"We are serious, Radar," BJ replied desperately. "All we want to do is look through some records –"
"Which you can't do because it's personal and there's nothing in there anyways and –"
"But we need to, Radar. Please. For us. For Margaret." Hawkeye sighed, looking like he was about to give up, like he wanted to cry, BJ thought for a second before realizing that his friend was playacting for the sake of getting his way. "But if you need insisting that we can't look through the records, then we might as well head back to the Swamp. Come on, Beej. Let's go back to our bunks before Radar's radar sense turns back on again and we have to get back to work again."
"If we must be on our merry way elsewhere, then so be it then, Hawk. Let's go."
BJ took Hawkeye's arm when it was offered to him and started to walk towards the double doors. The two continued as such, walking outside into the heat and to the Mess Tent for a cup of what the Army called coffee, before Radar caught up with them (running frantically from behind with nothing but his Army shorts on) and signaled to them that he would talk to them alone in a corner.
Activity was already rising in the camp as the sun started to rise, so Radar was cautious when he spoke to the pair just outside of the Mess Tent (already omitting obnoxious fumes and making some people gag). "If you Sirs think you can be quiet, I think you can look at the old Nurse Curtis file…Sirs…but the Colonel Sir cannot know about it. He's gonna be real mad when he sees you two read it. That file is personal and confidential…I think he said, and he said there wasn't really nothing in there to see anyway."
BJ and Hawkeye looked at each other in surprise (amused with Radar being almost naked as well), their morning assault on Radar a complete success, and unhooked their arms.
"Thank you, Radar," Hawkeye said, his blue eyes shining. "You won't regret it."
"I already am sorry about Major Houlihan," Radar started as he and the two captains turned around and headed back to the office.
"So are we, Radar," BJ replied quietly as he opened the door for Hawkeye and Radar. "So are we."
~00~
An hour later, the two captains were still looking over the file of Winifred Curtis and finding nothing of interest. Radar, standing behind them with his glasses and clothes on finally, said nothing, but stood guard at the door with Klinger (who was just as curious as Hawkeye and BJ and wanted to know what was going on). With a female nurse's outfit on and his guard duty gun at the door (the shock of the previous day's find gone for a while), Klinger waited patiently and sometimes looked over the captains' shoulders, but without much success in seeing what he wanted.
"Come on, Captains. Can you let a gal see what you're reading?" Klinger complained, his skirt riding up his hairy legs as he leaned back against the door to wait again.
"Not now, Klinger," BJ answered, swatting his hand up at an imaginary object. "Can't you see that we're busy?"
"Yeah, busy finding nothing," Hawkeye added, obviously annoyed as he flipped blacked-out pages absentmindedly, BJ trying to read through them too.
"See? I told you that you won't find anything," Radar commented.
"Shh! Can't you see a detective at work?" Hawkeye scanned the pages once more as his partner gave up, letting BJ back away so that he could think more clearly. "Ok, so we find out that Winifred Curtis has a brother and two sisters. She's from Las Vegas, Nevada…"
"What goes in there should stay in there," BJ commented.
"For sure, for sure, my dear Watson," Hawkeye replied. "Now, she comes from our lovely Vegas, born, bred and breathing in there from July 19, 1920 onward. Two of her siblings survive into adulthood and one sister died at age two. We can only guess that she went to nursing school someplace, but the name is blacked out on both sides, so we can't see anything. She joined the Army in 1938 and she volunteered, it says here, and was in Asia during the last war and went to Japan afterward. She never married. She doesn't have children. And, it also says that her parents are dead and her siblings are alive with children. And that last fact was updated over a decade ago. Any questions so far?"
"Yeah," Klinger said, raising his hand, as if mocking a student in a classroom. "How come she's dead and Major Houlihan is the key suspect here?"
"We'll get there, we'll get there, my dear Klinger," Hawkeye reassured him. "Now, she was at Tokyo General from the start of the war onward and was transferred here on May 30, 1952, just a short time ago. Which means…?"
"She's been around the block a time or two," BJ suggested.
"Or three," Klinger added.
"Or four," Radar chimed in, wanting to be included in on everything they did.
"Right," Hawkeye answered, smiling, trying to decipher the code in the file still (he found it difficult with a lot of lines crossed and blacked out). "So, she's in Tokyo General for a few years and gets the boot and comes here. Why though? Why was she transferred here? Why was she kicked out of Japan and sent to Korea and to us?"
"Drunk and disorderly with Sergeant Church?" Klinger suggested lewdly.
"It could be, but not yet, as we've seen." Hawkeye scanned the next page as he organized them and put them back together again. "Ah ha! It says here, my fellow men, that our Nurse Curtis was also working with General MacArthur's aide after the last war, when she was sent to Japan after being on Guam for a while. Everything else has been blacked out." He finally closed the file with finality, some hush in his action, as if the silence in the file could never be enough. "So, do you know what this means?"
"We need to start someplace else?" Klinger asked.
"We need to find out why she was with the general's aide at the time?" Radar shook his head (and his teddy bear in his arms) as he spoke.
"We need to head to Tokyo General and find some answers before something else happens to this camp?" BJ suggested afterward.
"All of you are correct," Hawkeye answered as he sat back, relaxed finally, in his chair. "And I think we all have won the million dollar question today."
"Yes, but the question is, will Colonel Potter let two doctors out of Korea to look for answers to some murder case that could be solved by other people?" BJ asked, skeptical, thinking they were at a dead end once more. "He won't just let us go became of Margaret. Whatever made him silent and not pursue the case further is pretty serious."
"Well, there is some medical conference that the colonel didn't really tell anyone about…" Radar trailed off with a piece of information not yet given to anybody else but Colonel Potter, who had not bothered to tell anyone else yet.
"Why weren't we told of this one, Radar?" BJ shook his own head in amazement, quite astonished that they finally had their excuse ready. "I thought that we were supposed to be informed of all conferences in Tokyo."
"Well, I had to save it for something," Radar replied, smiling.
"And we just got our something." Hawkeye stood up. "Come on, Beej. We've got to get our passes."