Lethal Authority (Wade Hanna Series Book 2)

by Joseph D'Antoni

  Megan laughed, thinking this was one of Wade’s country jokes. “What do you do with the squirrels if you get any?”

  “Eat them, of course. Haven’t you had squirrel sauce pecan? It’s a great delicacy in the South.”

  “It doesn’t sound like something I would order at a restaurant.”

  “You can’t order squirrel in a restaurant. I’ll fix it for you the next time we’re together.”

  “I can’t wait.” She sounded upbeat when she hung up the phone.

  Chapter 12

  Manchester, Georgia

  Wade got an early start on his three-hour drive Friday morning. The only traffic seemed to be big rigs and the few cars darting out from between large tractor-trailer bodies.

  The quiet drive allowed Wade to refresh his memory. He turned down the radio, and details of the Fort Benning experience began replaying in his mind.

  The sound of a silenced M-21 sniper rifle he had shot hundreds of times on the range was the first thing that ran through his mind. Next he remembered the convex lines he had drawn in the dirt before he and Max started their crawl to outflank the sniper. He remembered the silence being broken by the sound of leaves and twigs rustling as they inched closer to the shooter.

  His mind bounced back to the first confrontation with Lockhart on the loading dock as everyone assembled for class. Remembering the exact words Lockhart had used in that first confrontation somehow seemed important. He practiced similar phrases, trying to recall the right words. “Someone said we have intelligence spooks taking the class with us.” Wade thought he had closely approximated the words, but wasn’t sure they were exact. In thinking about Lockhart’s statement, he started wondering, Who told Lockhart that intelligence personnel were taking the class?

  Raindrops hit the windshield, followed by a short shower typical of this time of year. At least I’ll show up in a clean car.

  After two hours of driving, Wade passed several small towns. He stopped at a Gulf station in one of those towns for gas and picked up a soda and a snack. Another hour’s drive. He was enjoying the silence and the time to think.

  Wade arrived early for his meeting. After finding the restaurant, he parked a block away under the shade of a large oak tree at a public park, to make some notes. Traffic on this quiet main street was so light that it didn’t warrant a stoplight, and none was in evidence.

  After jotting down a few thoughts, Wade noticed a dark blue car pull up in front of the café, from which a middle-aged gentleman got out with a folder under his arm. He was wearing a suit and fedora hat. Wade assumed this might be Gabe Morrison. His car seemed happy in the cool shade under the tree, so he left it there and walked the block to the café.

  The man he’d seen get out of the car was speaking with a woman at the back of the restaurant. Perhaps that was the owner Morrison had referred to on the phone. Wade was looking around at the sparsely-filled restaurant when the gentleman in the hat waved him over.

  When Wade approached, the man extended his hand. “Hi, I’m Gabe Morrison. This is Karen Strubs. She and her husband own this fine establishment.”

  “I’m Wade Hanna - nice to meet you both.”

  After turning to Karen, Gabe asked. “May we take up one of your fine tables?”

  “Any one you’d like for as long as you’d like. The place is yours.”

  “That’s very kind of you.” Pointing to one of the tables, Gabe continued. “The one in the corner over there away from everyone will be fine.”

  Wade and Gabe took seats across from each other, each laying out notes on the table. The waitress came over and filled both water glasses. Turning to the waitress, Gabe spoke in a soft tone. “Please give us a little quiet time here. We may want to order a little later.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Morrison.”

  Turning to Wade, a wide grin spread across Gabe’s face. “If you get hungry, their collard greens and ham hocks are absolutely the best in Georgia.”

  “That’s one of my favorites. I’ll have to try it later.”

  The two men chatted a little while about Wade’s trip out, but soon got down to the business at hand.

  “So, you’re an intelligence officer with the CIA?”

  “As of just recently. I’ve been in training for the last four years.”

  “Why don’t you just start with your story – and if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a few notes. My memory’s not what it used to be.”

  “That’s fine. I just want to make sure everything we talk about remains confidential.”

  “Assuming that you were not involved in Mr. Lockhart’s death, everything will remain confidential.”

  “No, I wasn’t involved in Lockhart’s death.”

  Gabe pulled out a blank pad and pen and pushed his hat across the table before asking Wade a question. “If you don’t mind my asking, why you are so concerned about confidentiality?”

  “I’m an intelligence officer with the government and carry a secret clearance. I don’t know what disclosures I might have to make that would fall under that secret designation and naturally don’t want to have the government coming after me.”

  “That’s a fair concern. I’m only interested in the facts as you remember them and won’t need any secret information. If at any time you feel you’re getting into a secrecy area, I don’t want you to continue.”

  “That sounds fair.”

  “Why don’t you start by telling me your story from the beginning?”

  Referring to his notes, Wade walked Gabe through the details of the Lockhart story from the time he arrived on base until he departed, including the debriefing he’d had before leaving for the airport. He left in as many details as possible.

  Gabe seemed intently interested in the story, taking lots of notes but asking very few questions. When Wade concluded his story, Gabe commented, “That’s a very interesting piece of this investigation. It contains important information leading up to Lockhart’s disappearance. Did you at any time have any suspicions about who did the shooting that evening?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know if it was Lockhart or somebody else?”

  “No. It could have been someone from Blue Team or anyone else.”

  “Has the base given you any information on the results of their forensic investigation?”

  “No.”

  Gabe looked up from his notes. “Let me tell you what we know from our investigation thus far.” For a moment Gabe stared above Wade’s head, putting together details before he spoke.

  “The state police initially received the call from the hotel operator that a dead body had been discovered in Room 112. I was called by my department to handle the investigation and got to the scene about an hour after the state police had arrived. We estimate now that this was about three hours after Lockhart’s actual time of death.”

  “The county sheriff had already presumed it was a suicide. The state police were good enough to leave the scene untouched until my forensic team arrived. I immediately observed several things that caused me to think it might not have been a suicide.”

  “I’ve done hundreds of murder and suicide cases over my career, and you get a feel for putting a scene back together again in your mind. This scene had several problems that I didn’t like. It looked too clean, for one thing, almost staged – not like most suicide scenes. The placement of the body didn’t look right to me. The position and angle of Lockhart’s arm wasn’t natural.”

  “I was suspicious within two minutes after being on the scene. I had my forensic team take precise measurements and photographs of everything from several different angles. I wanted to preserve as much evidence as we could. I knew from the beginning there would be lots of questions about this one.”

  Wade’s interest was piqued as he visualized the scene. “Did you have an ID on the body at that time?”

  “No. Nothing more than the ‘Lockhart’ label on his fatigues. The normal ID you typically find in a suicide case lying around wa
sn’t there. That also made me suspicious.”

  “What was gone that you thought should be there?”

  “He was in fatigues, but his dog tags were gone. He looked military, and his tattoos suggested military. We searched his truck, but there were no other signs of military gear.”

  “Did you contact Fort Benning?”

  “Not until the next day when we ran fingerprints and got a positive ID.”

  Gabe reached for a worn manila folder with crumpled edges. He opened the folder and passed several pictures over to Wade. They were gruesome photos taken at the scene, some with Lockhart’s brains spread all over his face. There was another photo taken in the morgue after he had been cleaned up.

  “Is this the person whom you knew as Lockhart?”

  “Yeah. That’s Lockhart.”

  “We took our time with forensics at the site. I had the team take blood samples. We took power burn residue samples. I wanted Lockhart’s exact position documented, particularly the angle of his arm. I had his clothes in the room wrapped so they could be later tested at the lab. I had detailed photos taken of the blood splatter patterns. I even had a close-up shot taken of his pupils.”

  After a brief pause Gabe continued his explanation. “Lockhart had a strange look on his face. I’ve never seen that look in a suicide case before. It may not prove to be anything important, but it was certainly noteworthy.”

  “What look do you mean?”

  “It was an expression like he was trying to say something, or scream, but couldn’t. I can’t describe it any better than that.”

  “When we got the body back to the lab, the blood tests started showing small traces of a narcotic type substance that we couldn’t identify. We’re still working on that angle. The traces were so small they couldn’t be used in court.”

  “More extensive autopsy tests might allow us to better understand the substance. We started getting push-back from Fort Benning as soon as we recommended further testing. I felt their position claiming jurisdiction of the body was weak from the beginning.”

  Gabe paused and took out another file with some notes that he reviewed before continuing his explanation.

  “We’ve had our differences before with the base on other matters. Once I heard this matter was going to go to a court hearing, I knew something was amiss. I made the decision at that time to bend the rules a little and take a chance.”

  Wade frowned in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  “In the first preliminary motion, the court ruled that the body had to remain in its current condition until the matter was heard. I became suspicious of Benning’s desire not to want any testing done, so I made a quick decision that I might live to regret. Fort Benning had gotten the jump on me with that restraining order on an autopsy until the hearing. Actually, it’s fairly common to have a stay when a dispute like this arises. But my instincts told me I couldn’t lose more time, so I ordered my coroner to take a liver biopsy.”

  “Wouldn’t that have been a violation of the stay order?”

  “Technically, it might have been. We were dancing between raindrops on that decision because a biopsy for reasonable cause does not technically constitute an autopsy.”

  As Wade was trying to comprehend the difference between an autopsy and biopsy, Gabe continued.

  “The liver biopsy is what found the traces of the narcotic substance. In fact, the biopsy actually found traces of two different drugs. Those results gave me enough data to confirm my own suspicions and support the motion for a more extensive autopsy.”

  “When you refer to these traces of drugs, what do you mean?”

  “These drugs were not run-of-the-mill prescription drugs or street narcotics. According to my toxicologist, they fall in the category of ‘exotics.’ They’re made up of a weird combination of natural and man-made compounds. The other thing the toxicologist found strange about the drugs is that the concentration of the drugs in the body seemed to be naturally dissipating. He describes it as a drug that quickly breaks down so that, in time, there’s no evidence it was ever present. If we’d waited another few days, there would have been nothing to find.”

  Wade looked straight ahead and shook his head in disbelief.

  “After we won at the hearing, we ran an extensive toxicology panel at the autopsy the same day. Once my people knew some of the chemical compounds they were looking for, they searched for traces in other places in the body like fatty tissues and organs not usually covered in a normal autopsy. That’s where we are now – waiting for the results of these more advanced toxicology studies.”

  “That’s unbelievable. What do you see as the next step?”

  “While we wait for the toxicology results, we’re doing extensive testing of the clothing and weapon. We found small fragments of rope fibers on his sleeve. There was a small sofa pillow used between the end of the gun barrel and his jaw to muffle the sound. It’s strange that someone would care about the noise their gun would make if they were committing suicide. The location of that pillow on the floor after the shot also didn’t look right to me. We’re doing trajectory tests to see where that pillow should have landed in the room in relation to his body and the gun discharge position in a true suicide.”

  “Did you determine whether or not he pulled the trigger?”

  “As we’d expect, we found his fingerprints on the trigger of the gun, but not in other places you normally find them. The rest of the gun was clean – too clean, as in wiped clean.”

  Wade could now see the evidence mounting. More questions were coming to mind, but he didn’t want to interrupt Gabe’s train of thought.

  “There was only one bullet in the chamber of his gun when it fired. There was no other ammo around, and the magazine was cleaned of ammo and fingerprints.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “Funny thing is that we didn’t find any ammunition anywhere. There was none on his person, in his belongings, in the room, or in his truck. Strange you would only bring one bullet, even if you were going to commit suicide. We also have his camouflage fatigues and boots that were behind the seat in the cab of his truck.”

  Gabe paused for a moment, recalling Wade’s story.

  “You mentioned that you found footprints in the area of the sniper position the night of your incident?”

  “Yes, I marked several footprints with flags I tore from my t-shirt. Some of the prints were in soft dirt and should make good impressions. The Fort Benning forensics team was pouring impressions when I left.”

  “Interesting… they haven’t mentioned that to me. You can bet I’m going to pursue that angle. I have his boots to compare against those impressions.”

  After a short restroom break and a refill of their water glasses, Wade asked the question uppermost in his mind. .

  “What do you think happened, if it wasn’t a suicide?”

  Gabe thought for a long moment and replied, “If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on a professional hit. Lockhart was a big strong Special Forces guy the size of an NFL linebacker. No one was going to sneak up on him or attack him by surprise.

  “I think he knew the person who killed him. I think this motel was probably a meeting place of some kind – perhaps to exchange something or to pay Lockhart off. My hunch is that someone got close enough to him to administer the first drug, which probably knocked him out. I think at least one other drug was used in some way to keep him alive long enough to stage his suicide.

  “We found a small puncture wound the size of a hypodermic needle on the side of Lockhart’s neck. The angle of penetration was three inches below his left ear, into the muscle in the back of his neck, while he was sitting in an upright position.” Gabe demonstrated the angle of the wound with his finger extended over his own shoulder.

  “I believe the second drug immobilized him. My hunch is he was alive and might even have been awake watching them stage his body for the kill shot. He just couldn’t do anything about it. Even immobilized, Lockhart wa
s too big to be handled by one man. I believe two or more people were involved in this execution and clean-up.”

  “Could this be mob guys?”

  “Could be, but I don’t think so.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “They positioned his body to look like he was sitting at the table when the shot went off. Lockhart was probably bound with a rope to keep his arm and hand upright in the chair. His finger was probably positioned on the trigger to fire the weapon. From the stronger print impression on the trigger, I think someone else pulled his finger down over the trigger.

  “Mob guys typically want to send a message by their killings. They don’t care about the mess they make. This hit was done by people who cared about how the scene would look afterward. They went out of their way to try to point evidence in a certain direction – to divert attention. To me this looks more like a black ops job done by a professional hit squad, perhaps foreign intelligence. I believe the men in this squad all wore gloves. We found a few flakes of latex powder on his flannel shirt, the kind of latex gloves used in hospitals and laboratories.”

  “Can you guess who might be behind it?”

  Gabe thought about the question, but didn’t answer it directly. He continued giving Wade his opinion of what had happened. Gabe demonstrated how Lockhart was tied, emphasizing the angle of his own arm and hand.

  “There was no evidence of drugs or alcohol in the room, but preliminary reports of Lockhart’s stomach contents show evidence of alcohol. He might have been given the first drug with some booze. We’re now waiting for more detailed test results of the stomach contents. Lockhart was a known drinker; he’d been arrested several times off base for public drunkenness, fighting, and disorderly conduct. And while the first drug was probably administered with a shot of alcohol, I think the second drug was administered with a slightly-larger needle. They tried to conceal the second injection by putting it into a tattoo on the back of his neck.”

  “That’s amazing detective work,” replied Wade.