Chapter 3

“So, what was that all about?” Whitaker asked.

“The general wanted to make sure we realized that Davis was here specifically to interfere with our investigation, probably to keep us from making the Army look bad.”

“That was pretty obvious already though, right?”

“Yeah. He’s been ordered to not interfere with Davis but he offered us any unofficial help we might need.”

“You’re taking him at his word?”

“For now. He seems annoyed with all the people coming in and out of here, and he just wants the black marketeers gone so he can get back to running his base. He seemed on the up and up.”

“Okay, well, I guess we’ll take him up on it when we need to and see what happens.”

“Exactly. So what have you found?”

“Not much yet. I’ve looked into the four murders and as far as I can see, they all look connected to the black market ring. Besides the girlfriend of the supply sergeant, there was one more civilian and two enlisted personnel. The civilian worked accounting at one of the civilian warehouses and was dating a corporal from the MPs. When the third investigation tagged him as a possible leak, he went AWOL. The pair of them were found the next day by locals at her apartment, both dead. The locals had originally tagged it as a murder-suicide thing.”

“Could it have been? Maybe he knew he was caught, did her and then himself?”

“Maybe, but the scene seems too staged and the Army was only asking questions at that point. He hadn’t even been interviewed yet. Seems a little early to panic and off yourself. Guys like this, they usually think they’re smart enough to talk their way out of it, which is actually how we usually catch them. Captain Chenier thought so, at least. His notes are pretty thorough.”

“Okay, so he and his girlfriend were done to shut them up. What about the fourth victim?”

“A private in transport. That one is the weakest. He was definitely murdered, on base this time. They found him in the motor pool. What they can’t do is tie him to anything illegal. Chenier tore through the man’s career and followed all of his movements, and nothing at all stood out. I’m going to go over them again, but assuming he’s right, then it makes you wonder what he was killed for.”

“Is it possible he was murdered for something else?”

“Maybe. Chenier looked into it, but couldn’t find anything there, either. No bad debts, no enemies to speak of, no angry boyfriends. It could have been over something else, something personal here on base, but the captain didn’t make any notes about it.”

“Probably because he didn’t see any need to. On base, there isn’t a lot to murder someone over, and when it does happen, it’s usually in the heat of the moment. It’s loud, in the open, and not well planned out. There’s usually not much to investigate.”

“Which about sums up where Chenier’s investigation ended. What about the stuff that was stolen?”

“I haven’t had a chance to do any research on other thefts on Army bases to get a baseline, but from the captain’s notes, he makes it sound unusual. The thing he had a problem with was the random nature of what was stolen. Some of it’s new, just off the truck, other stuff had been warehoused here for over a year. Sometimes it would be high-dollar items, other times, it would be cheap. Sometimes it would be electrical equipment and sometimes it would be weapons or ammunition. The only pattern he seems to have found was the lack of any pattern to find. It’s one of the things that frustrated the investigation the most. Without a real pattern, they couldn’t even guess what the next thing to be stolen would be, and there’s no way to watch everything on a base like this.”

“So, we’re basically starting from zero?”

“Basically, yeah. The murders give me pause. People who are this careful about covering their tracks on the thefts themselves are just leaving bodies lying around. If you wanted to keep stealing stuff, you’d want a low profile to keep things isolated to just the local commander, right? Leaving bodies lying around is guaranteed to bring in outside investigators and resources to catch you. Once, maybe. Something got out of hand or they couldn’t help it, but four? It just doesn’t fit.”

“So we start with the murders, since they’re the anomaly.”

“Exactly. What about this guy from the DOD, Davis. When your general said he’s going to interfere, what kind of interferences should we expect? I mean, we were sent here by all of their bosses.”

“One, he’s not my general. I met him at the same time you did. As for Davis, who knows? The guys like him I’ve dealt with before, it was all complaints to superiors and paperwork, maybe slowing down resources. The only thing I’m concerned about is if the Pentagon tries to start transferring out witnesses. Beyond that, there’s not much they can do without actively going against the president. Whatever it is, I’m betting it’ll be more of an annoyance than anything else, since we still have the trump card, but who knows.”

“Still, we should keep an eye on him, and our witnesses. Should we ask Joe for some backup maybe? So we have people outside of their chain of command if we need someone sat on?”

“I don’t think Joe can help. His warning was as unofficial as it could get, which is its own message, I think. He knew he couldn’t do any more, so he gave you a heads up. Joe’s a good guy, for a bureaucrat, but he’s not the type to get personally involved unless that’s his only play. If he could have sent help, he would have done that and stayed quiet.”

“Maybe. This place is a shithole, by the way,” she said, looking around the small building they’d been assigned.

The building was an old wooden shed more than a building, painted a dark green, without windows and only one door. It had probably been used for storage until they’d needed a place to put them, when space had been cleared for two desks. It still had stacks of boxes in it that looked to contain clerical supplies pushed to one side of the room. Besides the desks, there were also two cots shoved against one wall, which meant this was probably going to double as their sleeping quarters as well.

“Don’t they have on-base housing?”

“They’ll have officer’s quarters, some visitors’ quarters, and base housing for the soldiers. Even with a unit here training, they’d have some unoccupied.”

“So having us sleep in here is a message.”

“Yep. Hurry up and get out, I think.”

“So maybe your general’s not on our side as much as you think he is.”

“Maybe, but then his warning to me doesn’t make sense. I’m betting he didn’t have a choice. Pettiness from the brass tends to be specific. I’m betting he’s following his orders to the letter, which keeps him out of direct trouble, and only doing that. Of course, someone will be watching, so expect the pettiness to increase as they try and get their message through.”

“This place isn’t going to collapse on us?”

“I don’t think so,” Taylor said, getting up and walking around the small shack, pushing on their wall here, kicking the boards there. “Seems solid enough, if shoddy. I’m sure if we really wanted to, we could get it to come down with a little effort, but it’s not going to fall on its own, at least not while we’re here.”

“It’ll get cold at night. There’s no insulation or anything.”

“No, this isn’t meant for people. Thirty years ago someone decided they needed more storage or something, slapped up four walls and a roof and called it a building. It’ll be fine. I’ll requisition some sleeping bags; we’ll be fine for a few nights. Worse comes to worst, we can go into town; they probably have a motel for visitors to the base itself, at least. So, crime scene?”

“Yeah, let’s check out the crime scene.”

The crime scene was an old, fifties-style tract house, probably built just after the war. The base had gotten several new leases on life, and one had been just after World War Two, when the Army was trying to train for new missions in far-off lands to combat communism.

The crime scene had already been cleaned up, which wasn’t a surprise. The murder may have been the thing to get the president to send Taylor and Caldwell out, but it had taken time to get to that level. There were still traces of the murder though. The carpet, for instance, was a goanna color. Blood would never come out of it and whoever owned it would just have to replace it. There was no saving it. For now, the stain was still there and told a story.

He and Whitaker had already read the file, but even without that, he would have known an artery had been cut. The bloodstain went deep, turning the padding at the base of the carpet almost black. She’d lost a lot of blood, more than possible for just a wound. It had come out thick and fast, which required an artery, pumping it out.

The stain also showed it had been the carotid, since the blood made a vague pattern of her upper body as it pooled around her upper torso. Taylor circled the bloodstain, looking up at the ceiling and walls. That, the cleaners had been able to get rid of, eliminating any traces.

“I have pictures,” the captain said, recognizing what Taylor was looking for. Handing them over, he said, “There was a good deal of splatter, arched through here and clean into the breakfast nook area, floor to ceiling. Forensic guys say the killer pulled her head back, exposing the neck and causing the artery to contract after its cut, which explains the pattern. They also found hair and root pulled loose from the scalp, probably from the guy yanking hard.”

“There weren’t any defensive wounds though, right?” Whitaker asked. “She didn’t put up a fight. He just grabbed and cut.”

“Right. Nothing under her fingernails, no bruising, except on her back and the back of her head, where she hit the ground after she fell.”

“She didn’t drop to her knees?” Taylor asked.

“No. No bruising there. The way I figure, he already had a hold of her hair, and made his cut, so he just pulls back and lets go. She’s stunned, trying to work out what happened, and crashes backward. Bruises on the lower back, shoulder blades and head, bang, bang, bang.”

“Lines up,” Taylor said. “So she was comfortable with him, then. She didn’t see it coming so he was behind her and they were walking this way, right?”

“Probably. Her calendar had her showing houses to a guy she’d written down as Dillon. That’s it, so he must have just started looking. I went and looked at her books and there wasn’t any kind of paperwork with that name.”

“Did she call anyone around the time of her death? Maybe a ‘hey, I’m at the house, where are you’re kind of thing?”