“Hello? Anybody home? Hello?”

No answer.

So much for Major Wenner’s excuse that she called in sick from home this morning.

She walks around the house. Very nice. In-ground pool out back, barbecue, deck, and lawn chairs. Smooth grass lawn. Wood stockade fence at the far end of the yard. A couple of soccer balls, a tangled mess of a croquet set, and a volleyball and its net dumped in a big plastic bin.

The house looks just as fine from the backyard as the front.

Something cold settles along her hands and feet. There’s an ache here, looking at this fine home in a safe neighborhood, the quiet residences marking not only wealth but security. Not the kind of security where you live with bars on the first-floor windows and doors—which she’s experienced—but the security of knowing you can sleep without a rat crawling over your bed, that you can wake up with the lights working, and that the refrigerator will never be empty.

And additional security that you don’t have to learn and relearn and relearn yet again the name of the foster family that has taken you in that month, supposedly out of the goodness of their hearts, but almost always because of the government stipend they get for keeping you alive and breathing.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice calls out. “Hello?”

“Yes, right here,” Rosaria answers.

An older woman joins her in the backyard, smiling with guarded friendliness and welcome. She’s wearing sensible white slacks, white sneakers, and a floral top that seems to billow around her as she approaches. White-rimmed eyeglasses dangle from a chain around her fleshy neck.

The woman says, “I’m sorry, I’m a neighbor of the Cornwalls. Can I help you?”

Rosaria smiles. “I’m looking for Captain Cornwall.”

“Are you a friend?” Her voice is still friendly but there’s a hint of suspicion in those syllables, and an old feeling comes to Rosaria. Is this older woman asking the questions because Rosaria is a trespasser, or because Rosaria is Hispanic? Once again, Rosaria has to struggle to keep a smile on her face while enduring the challenges of having the wrong skin color in the wrong neighborhood.

“No, ma’am, I’m in the Army as well.”

“Really?” she asks, her voice rising up a notch. “But you’re not in uniform.”

Rosaria steps forward, quickly shows the neighbor her Army identification, not bothering with the shield, which sometimes intimidates civilians, cops being cops everywhere to some. “Not all of us have to work in uniform.”

“Oh, okay then,” the older woman says. “My dear husband, he spent decades in the Army…I’ve never seen a soldier like you.”

“Not many have, if they’re lucky,” Rosaria says. “Do you know where Captain Cornwall might be?”

“Ah, well, I think she’s at her base. That’s what she told me.”

Those few words have snapped Rosaria into full investigative mode. “And when did she tell you that, ma’am?”

“Yesterday evening.”

“About what time?”

“Oh…near six p.m., I think.”

“And she told you she was going back to work?”