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and were temporarily assigned to the Long Lines Signal Battalion in Seoul. Camp Ames in Taejon is tiny, and I had a minuscule report. No one AWOL, no one on temporary duty, and only one guy on in-country leave. He had a Korean name and a very specific leave address in Seoul—31 bon-ji, 15 ho, Mugyo-dong—which meant that he was visiting family and therefore he was Korean-American, what’s known in 8th Army as a “Kimchee G.I.” I scratched him off my list.
    The guys on temporary duty traveled in groups, doing repair or installation work on Signal Corps or aviation equipment. The likelihood that one of them would commit a rape, slip off the train in Anyang, and then not be reported AWOL was slim to none. I didn’t scratch them off my list, but relegated them to the lowest priority. That meant that I would start by investigating the three guys from Hialeah Compound who were on in-country leave.
    Riley logged me in for an AUTOVON call. After getting through to the 8th Army operator, I read her the authorization number and within minutes was patched through to someone named Specialist Holder, the company clerk at Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Hialeah Compound in Pusan. I identified myself, and Holder seemed impressed that the CID from Seoul would be calling all the way down to their sleepy little unit. I read the list of names to him.
    “All on in-country leave,” he told me. “What happened? Somebody get into some shit?”
    I didn’t answer but just asked him to tell me about the three men.
    He knew all of them. Personally. One of the men was black, so I scratched him off my list. The other two were odd birds, according to Specialist Holder.
    “In what way?” I asked.
    “Both of them turned down mid-tour leave,” he replied. “Didn’t want to go back to the States.”
    I’d turned down mid-tour leave myself, but I didn’t tell Holder that. Turning down your mid-tour is like admitting that you have nothing to go back to in the States. As an orphan most of my life, I fit that category, but that was nobody’s business but my own. I asked, as casually as I could, “So, where are they now?”
    “Weyworth is probably shacked up with his yobo, in her hooch right outside the main gate. They have their marriage paperwork in.”
    The process of an American G.I. marrying a Korean woman involves piles of paperwork—both on the ROK side and the US side—and usually takes six to eight months. Still, having his paperwork in didn’t preclude Weyworth from taking a trip on the Blue Train.
    “Do you have his address?”
    “No. But it’s easy to find. Down one of the alleys behind the Kit Kat Club.”
    “How about the other guy?”
    “Pruchert? He’s stranger still. No telling where he is.”
    “What’s strange about him?”
    “He likes to go to all those Buddhist temples and stuff. He’s even studying the language, training himself to be some sort of monk.”
    “Do you have an address for him?”
    “No way. He put down ‘Pusan’ on his leave orders, but he could be anywhere.”
    Holder gave me more particulars on both Weyworth and Pruchert, including when they were expected to report back to their units. Both of them had plenty of leave built up and wouldn’t be returning to duty for two weeks in one case and three in the other.
    Ernie still hadn’t made his appearance at the CID office, so I went to the snack bar and drank more hot coffee and filled my complaining stomach with a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. I kept thinking of the frightened look on the face of Mrs. Oh when I’d first seen her cowering next to her children on the Blue Train. The cruelty that people can inflict on one another is unfathomable to me. I finished my sandwich and returned to the big silver urn on the serving line to refill my cup. I sat back down and thumbed listlessly through today’s edition of the Pacific Stars and Stripes . International news, comics, sports, but nothing on crime. They have a policy against