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"You're not," she said, startling Valentine a little. "Afraid of a little honesty? You're not that earnest young lieutenant anymore. You used to look at me. It gave me-kind of a tickle. Now you stare through me. Through that ridge, as a matter of fact."
"I'm here because your name came up in something we're looking into. A test that you-and your sister-took involving a blood draw."
"That's it?" she asked.
Valentine nodded.
"This has nothing to do with Graf?"
"Should I be asking you about him?"
"He's a good man. Was a good man. Guard duty was his world. When that went away he had nothing."
"He had you and a child."
"A prison camp's not much of a place for either. Don't you want to know about the boob test?"
Valentine wasn't so sure any more. "Why do you call it that?"
"That's what we called it in Wisconsin. They gave all the girls the same thing at about thirteen or fourteen. Just when you got your boobs so we called it the boob test."
"How do you know it's the same?" Valentine asked.
Molly twisted a piece of straw around her finger. "They did the same thing both times. Line up all the girls-well, it was all the women in Pine Bluff, I suppose, since they were just getting us organized. Usual health check with a tongue depressor and thermometer and listening to your heart and lungs."
"Okay."
"At the end they took a little wooden stick, smaller than a knitting needle, and scratched you with the end. Some gals got a big welt from it. To get released from the exam you had to show your arm. Most of us got a red mark, on some it raised a welt-it didn't on me or my sister-then, for those who didn't react, the nurse drew some blood and dropped it in a test tube."
"I don't suppose you asked-"
"Both times. They said it checked for infection."
"What happened when they put the blood in the test tube?"
"Nothing. It just dissolved."
"Do you remember if there was anyone who had it do anything else?"
Molly's face scrunched up. "Not in Wisconsin, but they only checked about eight of us. They plucked out some women from the group in Pine Bluff, I recall. A bunch of others kind of kicked up at that, and the women taken were yelling out messages to friends, but the soldiers said something like, 'They've got it made, they're going to Memphis priority style,' or something like that. Maybe it was just to calm everyone down."
"Memphis?" Valentine said.
"Yes, I'm sure about Memphis. Memphis in style."
"Wait here a moment, okay?"
"Sure."
Valentine trotted up to his pack and extracted Post's flyer. He returned to Molly and showed her the picture.
"Did you see her there?"
"That wasn't the woman I saw taken away. She was sorta black." She looked more closely at the picture. "She's pretty."
"She's my friend's wife. He wants to know what happened to her."
She yanked some more straw out of the bale and tossed it piece by piece into the breeze. "When they take you away it's never good. Never. That guard was just talking for the sake of talk."
