Chasing a Blond Moon(59)

“Jesus. What did he make at Virginia Tech?”

“One fifteen.”

“Meaning he took a twenty-percent cut to move here?”

“Eighteen percent,” she corrected him.

“Doesn’t that strike you as odd in this day and age?”

“From what we know, the late Harry Pung was a very odd man.”

“Somebody who lives a life of cash is about money,” he said. “Where the hell did he get a hundred and fifty grand for the house if he doesn’t have bank accounts? Did he keep cash in the house?”

“We sure didn’t find any in the house or on his person,” she said.

“Which means robbery could be a motive here.” The words immediately gave him a sinking feeling.

“What about insurance beneficiaries?”

“He had a policy from the university for a hundred thousand. His ex-wife is the sole beneficiary. Are you trying to tell me how to do my job, Service?”

“No way.”

“Well, it feels like it.”

In fact, he was not happy that she hadn’t shared some of this information before now. “I’ll be in Houghton tomorrow around noon. You want to grab some lunch, see where we are?”

“I’ll be at the station,” she said abruptly.

“Tomorrow,” he said, hanging up.

He immediately called Simon. “Nantz is flying us to Crystal tomorrow. We’ll plan to land about eight. Can you pick us up? I need to grab the Yukon.”

“No problem. I’m not on duty until five tomorrow. We can talk then.”

“You got something?”

“No, Toogood seems to have disappeared.”

“See you at nine.”

Service immediately pulled the files on Ollie Toogood and began to read.

The records were old, frail and yellowed, copies made on some sort of ancient mimeograph. They were smeared and dark, hard to read. Obviously nobody had looked at them in a long time. There was a space for Toogood’s photograph on the service record. The space was empty.

Oliver Franklin Toogood was born in Lansing, Michigan, on 4 March 1930, and graduated from Lansing High School in June 1947. He spent two years at Purdue University and in 1949 was accepted into the Air Force Aviation Cadet Program. He was assigned to the 51st Fighter Interceptor Wing in Korea at Base K-14, on 3 December 1951. Or was it K-13? The printing was blurred and dark. Shot down on 12 February 1952 and captured near Hoengsong. This was about six weeks after he arrived.

His medals and decorations included the Distinguished Service Medal, Silver Star, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Air Medals, and the Purple Heart. He was credited with shooting down four MiG-15s, one short of ace. For only being in combat for six weeks, Trapper Jet had made quite a record for himself. Maybe his youth had made him aggressive.

Lt. Toogood was repatriated at Freedom Village, Panmunjom. Was he among the first to be released, or among the later groups? Service wondered.

The second sheet listed citations from his medals. The one for the Distinguished Service Medal was the most informative.

Lt. Toogood was a prisoner first of the North Koreans and later of the Chinese Communists from 12 February 1952 to 21 January 1954. During his 23 months of captivity, Lt. Toogood was held in solitary confinement for 20 of his 23 months. He was tortured throughout captivity and lost a leg as a result of injuries suffered during captivity.

So the injury was from the camps, not from his shoot-down. He was lucky to be alive, given what Service knew of the conditions of camps in those days.

Lt. Toogood devised a communications system for prisoners and as he was moved from camp to camp, he taught the system until most prisoners in Korea were using it. Despite unrelenting torture and privation, Lt. Toogood was cited numerous times by fellow prisoners as setting an example of resistance that others adopted. For intrepid behavior and courage, Lt. Oliver Toogood is awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.

A hard-ass, even then. That fit the Trapper Jet he knew. The signature on the citation was that of General Curtis LeMay. To earn the DSM required genuine heroism—or insanity: sometimes they were too close to distinguish between in combat. In Korea, the next honor after the DSM was the Congressional Medal of Honor—usually awarded posthumously. That’s how it had been in Vietnam too. He had not known about Toogood’s DSM.

Service flipped to the next page. Trapper Jet had been in a hospital in Japan, and then in VA hospitals in the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore areas until May 1956. Twenty-nine months was a long convalescence, a clue as to how severe Toogood’s injuries had been. There was no mention of a medical disability or a mailing address. Were those bits in a separate file? With the military you never knew.