by John Dibble
He suddenly fell to his knees, still sobbing, and placed his face in his hands. He stayed that way for several minutes until he finally stood up, using the sleeve of the T-shirt to wipe his eyes. He started moving up Difficult Run, not running this time, but walking slowly, his head still bent.
M.J. made her way carefully down the Ridge Trail and waited until he was once again about a hundred yards ahead of her position. He was still walking and she did the same. There were a few other people on Difficult Run and she noticed that when he passed them he straightened himself and seemed to be avoiding any kind of eye contact.
He kept walking until he reached the parking lot, where he went over to a late model Dodge Charger, opened the door and got in. M.J. went to a car directly opposite, placed her foot on its bumper and pretended to be doing stretches while she memorized his North Carolina license plate number.
After the car left the parking lot, M.J. called Jake on her cell phone and gave him the plate information.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BY THE TIME M.J. GOT TO ANACOSTIA STATION, Jake had run the license number and had left a copy of the report on her desk. She briefly looked at it and walked over to his desk.
“So what gives?” he asked.
She explained how she had followed the man in the park, his physical description, and his strange actions near the murder scene. Jake nodded his head and said, “Definitely sounds like something worth pursuing.”
The plate had come back as registered to a Franklin C. Cody with an address in Jacksonville, North Carolina, a town just outside Camp Lejeune. The plate had not been registered with any of the local jurisdictions, but M.J. found a matching telephone listing in Springfield, Virginia. She waited a hour and called it. A man answered the phone.
“Is this Mr. Cody?” M.J. asked.
“Yes, this is Sergeant Cody. What can I do for you?” he replied.
“Sergeant, this is Detective Powers of the United States Park Police. I was wondering if we might set up a time to meet and ask you a few questions.”
“What kind of questions?” he asked.
“Well, we’re conducting an investigation and we thought you might be able to help us,” she said.
“I don’t understand. Am I in some kind of trouble?” he asked.
“No, Sergeant. We would just like to meet and ask you some questions. It’s completely voluntary on your part, but we would really appreciate it,” M.J. said.
“Where is it you want to meet?” he asked.
“We’re located in the Park Police station in Anacostia Park. Do you know where that is?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure. I’ve gone running there a few times,” he said.
“Is there sometime tomorrow that might work for you?” M.J. asked.
“Well, I’m temporarily assigned to the Marine Corps Barracks which is just across the river from you. I could come by when I get off duty at four,” he said.
“That would be great. We’ll look for you around four thirty, if that’s OK,” M.J. said.
“Sure, I’ll see you then. By the way, do I need to bring a lawyer or anything?” he asked.
“You can if you want, but we just want to ask you some questions,” M.J. responded.
“OK, I’ll be there,” he replied.
M.J. turned to Jake, who had been listening on the other line. “This should be interesting,” she said.
Sergeant Cody arrived promptly at four thirty, without an attorney, and was escorted to the conference room on the first floor where M.J. and Jake were waiting. He looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties, but his eyes had a vacant stare that made him appear much older. He was wearing the Marine Corps uniform consisting of a short-sleeve khaki shirt and drab green trousers. His hat was tucked tightly under his arm.
His shoulders and arms were as massive as M.J. remembered from the trail, and his chest, which she had not seen, was equally well developed. She surmised that he had to have his shirts tailored to fit his physique.
His shirt was adorned with three rows of medals and M.J. recognized a Silver Star and what she thought was a Bronze Star. He towered over both her and Jake.
“Please have a seat Sergeant,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”
“Yes Ma’am. What is this about?” he asked.
“Well, as I said on the phone, we just want to ask you a few questions,” she replied. “I guess the first question is whether you have you ever been to Great Falls Park?”
“Yes Ma’am, yesterday, as a matter of fact,” he replied.
“Is that the first time you’d been there?” she asked.
“Yes Ma’am,” he replied.
“And why did you go there?” she asked.
“A friend of mine told me it was a good place to run, so I thought I’d try it out,” he responded.
“You ran down a trail to a place called Difficult Run and stopped and looked around. Why did you do that?” M.J. asked.
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“I was behind you on the trail,” M.J. responded.
“What’s wrong with stopping and looking around?” he asked.
“Nothing. But then you started to cry, sob really,” M.J. said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said with some irritation.
“Sergeant, I was right behind you on the trail and I saw you start crying and then fall to your knees with your face in your hands,” M.J. said.
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Why are you asking me these questions anyway?”
“OK, Sergeant. There were two murders committed very near the place where I saw you stop and start sobbing and we’d like to know what you know about them,” M.J. said. “Just tell us why you stopped there and started crying.”
Cody looked down at the floor. He seemed to be composing himself. When he looked up he asked, “Are you going to tell my C.O. about this?”
“Not based on anything we’ve heard so far,” M.J. replied.
Cody hesitated and took a deep breath. “Three years ago,” he said, looking at the floor again, “a squad I was leading was ambushed by the Taliban on a trail by a stream in eastern Afghanistan. The place looked just like the place where I stopped when I was running yesterday. Three of my men were killed in that ambush and two more seriously wounded. I guess when I saw that place in the park I had some kind of a flashback. It just came out of nowhere and completely overwhelmed me. I’ve had some other problems like this, but they didn’t bring me down this hard.”
M.J. gave him a few moments before speaking.
“One last question Sergeant, she said. “Where were you on April 4 of this year?”
“That’s easy to answer Ma’am,” he replied. “I was in Helmand Province in Afghanistan with the 2nd Battalion of the 8th Marines.”
M.J. and Jake looked at each other in stunned silence.
When she finally spoke, M.J. said “Thank you for meeting with us.” She hesitated and then said, “And thank you for your service.”
After Cody had left, M.J. turned to Jake and said, “I need a drink.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SHE WENT RUNNING THE NEXT MORNING. As usual, Lola was ready with her leash and Doc was ready with a cup of coffee.
“How are things going?” Doc asked.
“OK, I guess,” M.J. replied. “Thought I had a good suspect yesterday, a guy that matched the description we’re looking for and was acting strangely. It turned out to be a Marine with PTSD and an iron-clad alibi—he was in Afghanistan when the murders occurred.”
“Well, I know about Marines and I know about PTSD,” Doc said. “Those kids fighting in these wars now, they’re all coming back with PTSD, not to mention those that come back with limbs missing, their brains scrambled . . . or their bodies come back in a box. At least now they know what PTSD is and hopefully they can treat it. Didn’t know anything about it when I came back from Vietnam; didn’t even give it a name.”
&
nbsp; “Did you have PTSD Doc?” she asked.
“Oh, sure,” he replied. “I was a Navy corpsman assigned to a Marine unit. It would’ve been hard not to have it. Problem is, none of us knew what it was and didn’t understand what the effects were. It took all of us a long time to realize that a lot of the things we were feeling and doing were caused by it. A lot of guys from that era still suffer from the effects and still don’t even know it. I was lucky. While I was hospitalized, I got the chance to talk to other vets and we kind of did some informal group therapy. If it hadn’t been for that, I would have been more screwed up than I am. I still drank too much for twenty years, but I realized one day that that was no way to live so I started going to AA meetings and haven’t had a drink since. Of course”—he laughed—“I am living in the woods with a dog.
“But enough about all that. Is this Marine doing OK?” he asked.
“Well, I hope so,” M.J. replied. “He’s having flashbacks and drew my attention out there on the trail because he completely broke down and started sobbing.”
“I’ll bet he wanted to make sure you wouldn’t tell his commanding officer about it, didn’t he?” Doc asked.
“Actually, he did,” she said. “What was that about?”
“Real simple, M.J. Marines don’t cry, or at least they don’t want anybody to know that they do. It’s part of the creed,” Doc explained.
“Well, I feel sorry for him,” she said. “Hell, I feel bad about even questioning him, but that’s my job.”
“Don’t worry about it, M.J. It had to be done,” Doc said.
She and Lola left on their run and came back about an hour later.
“I may not see you guys for a few days,” M.J. said when they returned. “We’re coming up on the Fourth of July and I imagine I’ll pull some duty down on the Mall.”
“Well, we’ll see you whenever. Be careful,” Doc said.
M.J. scratched Lola behind the ears and, at the dog’s insistence, gave her another treat.
She drove back to Anacostia Station where the assignments for the Fourth of July were just being posted. As she anticipated, she and Jake had been assigned to security on the National Mall beginning the next day and continuing through the following Monday, the Fourth.
They dressed like tourists and spent a lot of time sitting on benches watching for suspicious characters. By the weekend, the Mall was already filling up with people and by Monday the crowd was estimated at well over six hundred thousand. By the time the fireworks display ended and the crowds had dispersed, it was approaching midnight. They were both exhausted.
They picked up a bottle of wine and some take-out at a late-night deli and went back to M.J.’s apartment. After they ate, they both collapsed on her bed and fell sound asleep.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
M.J. GOT TO ANACOSTIA STATION at about 7:00 a.m. with the idea of finishing some paper work before she went to Great Falls Park. Around 8:30 a.m., her phone rang. It was Dispatch. A call had come in on the TipLine at 8:27 a.m..
M.J. went to the communications room and asked one of the dispatchers to play the recorded message. It was a man with no discernible accent:
If you want to know about the boys’ killing, look to the Bible and read Deuteronomy 21:1-8.
There was nothing else. M.J. had the dispatcher make a CD of the recording. Although they didn’t advertise it, the TipLine also had caller ID and she wrote down the number.
She figured there weren’t many Bibles in the building, so she went back to her desk and looked up the passage online. There were several different versions, but the English Standard translation appeared under the heading “Atonement for Unsolved Murders”:
If in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess someone is found slain, lying in the open country, and it is not known who killed him, then your elders and your judges shall come out, and they shall measure the distance to the surrounding cities. And the elders of the city that is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer that has never been worked and that has not pulled in a yoke. And the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer's neck there in the valley. Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for the Lord your God has chosen them to minister to him and to bless in the name of the Lord, and by their word every dispute and every assault shall be settled. And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, and they shall testify, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it shed. Accept atonement, O Lord, for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not set the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel, so that their blood guilt be atoned for.’
Creepy, she thought, but the phrase bring the heifer down to a valley with running water . . . and . . . break the heifer's neck there in the valley certainly caught her attention. It sounded a lot like Difficult Run, not to mention the reference to neck breaking.
She did a reverse number lookup from the caller ID. It came back as a pay phone at a convenience store in Sterling, Virginia. She went to her car and started driving.
The voice on the TipLine could be that of the killer, she thought, and the biblical reference could be the motive she had been looking for. Perhaps this was a psychopath who felt his actions were directed by God. Worse yet, it could be some kind of religious cult that performed ritual killings. Of course, it could also just be some religious nut.
The pay phone at the convenience store was outside and there was no security camera in view. There was one inside, however, and she persuaded the manager to let her replay the tape from earlier that morning. She watched the customers from thirty minutes before the call until thirty minutes after. There were lots of Hispanic landscape workers, a few harried commuters grabbing coffee or cigarettes, but no one who came even close to the description of the killer. She asked the two clerks who had been behind the counter during that time period if they had seen anyone acting strangely, particularly a tall person with bulging muscles. They said they had been very busy during that time but didn’t remember anyone like that.
M.J. went back to her car. She looked at the biblical quotation again: . . . someone is found slain . . . and it is not known who killed him. In other words, she thought, an unsolved murder. She took out her cell phone and called Fairfax County Police Headquarters. She was put through to Ted Sommers, a detective she had worked with in the past.
“Hello, Ted, this is M.J. Powers from the Park Police. Are you going to be around long enough for me to stop by, say in thirty minutes?” she asked.
“No sweat, M.J.,” he said. “See you when you get here.”
She drove to the Judicial Center in Fairfax and parked outside Police Headquarters. Ted met her in the lobby. He was short with a smiling face and wore his hair in a badly designed comb-over to hide his baldness. He was also developing a paunch, probably from sitting at his desk or riding in cars all day.
“C’mon, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” he said, and led her across a courtyard to a cafeteria. They went through the line and then sat down at a table near a window.
“So what’s up?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you since we worked that assault case, maybe a year ago.”
“Well, I’m working on the investigation involving the murder of those two boys in Great Falls Park,” she said.
“How’s that coming?” he asked.
“Slowly, very slowly,” she replied, “but we got an anonymous call on our TipLine this morning from a guy who said we should look at a passage in the Bible. I checked it out and it refers to atoning for unsolved murders. Thing that’s interesting, though, is that the passage refers to a scene that’s really similar to the location of the murders and also refers to the way the boys were killed. We’ve been withholding that information and it struck me as worth following up. How many unsolved murders do you guys have, anyway?”
“Recent history, probably 30; ancient history, another 70 or so,” he said. “By the way, we obviously withhold information in cases too, but it’s surprising how fast a lot of it becomes public knowledge. I think it’s the Internet and all the social networks that are popping up. I’d be willing to bet there’s stuff on Facebook about your case.”
“I haven’t checked, but you’re probably right,” M.J. said. “What I’m looking for is an unsolved murder that might qualify for retribution.”
“You know, the stuff about a biblical passage rings a bell,” he said. “Let’s go back to the office and talk to Dee Jessee. She works a lot of homicide cases and I remember her saying something about some information like that coming in on our tip line.”
Dee was sitting at her desk and Ted pulled over two chairs after introducing her to M.J., who briefed her on the call.
“Let me guess,” Dee said, “the message started with ‘If you want to know about the murders, look to the Bible and read this passage.’”
“Pretty close,” M.J. said.
“Sounds like the same guy we hear from all the time. Did the call come from a pay phone in Sterling?” Dee asked.
“Sure did,” M.J. replied.
“Yeah, probably the same guy,” Dee said. “He calls in the same message with different biblical references on most of our homicide cases, although he also seems to chime in on deviant sexual behavior too. We got one reference to the Book of Romans involving a guy who was flashing his privates to young boys. The passage said something about ‘pederasty’ and I had to look that one up.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Ted asked.
“It means sex between men and boys,” Dee replied with a mischievous smile on her face.
Ted grimaced.
“So, do you have any idea who this guy is?” M.J. asked.
“We think he’s a retired minister with a lot of time on his hands,” Dee said. “He lives in Sterling, not far from the pay phone. We thought about going after him for filing false police reports but decided that’s pretty hard to do when all he’s making us do is read the Bible.”