Sampson nodded. “See? Kyle's no dummy. Sick, twisted bastard, but not dumb.”
“So, if I like the hunt so much, who's going to settle down first? You or me?”
“No contest. My role models on families are bad ones. You know that. Father left when I was three. Maybe he had his reasons. My mother was never around much. Too busy hooking, shooting up. They both knocked me around. Beat up on each other, too. My father broke my mother's nose three times.”
“Afraid you'll be a bad father?” I asked. “Is that why you never settled down?”
He thought about it. “Not really. I like kids fine. Especially when they're yours. I like women, too. Maybe that's the problem I like women too much,” Sampson said, and laughed. “And women seem to like me.”
“Sounds like you know who you are anyway.”
“Good deal. Self-knowledge is a start,” Sampson said, and grinned broadly. “What do I owe you, Dr. Cross?”
“Don't worry about it. I'll put it on your tab.”
I saw a road sign up ahead: Harpers Ferry, two miles. A man was being held there for murder.
A former Army colonel with no past record.
And currently a Baptist minister.
I wondered if anyone had seen three suspicious-looking men in the area of the murder? And if one of them had been filming what happened?
Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice
Chapter Forty-Seven
Sampson and I met with Reverend Reece Tate in a tiny room inside the modest jailhouse in Harpers Ferry. Tate was a slight, balding man with shaped sideburns down to the bottoms of his earlobes; he didn't look much like a former soldier. He had retired from the Army in 1993 and now headed a Baptist congregation in Cowpens, South Carolina.
“Reverend Tate, can you tell us what happened to you yesterday on the Appalachian Trail?” I asked him after identifying who we were. Tell us everything you can. We're here to listen to your story."
Tate's suspicious eyes darted from Sampson to me. I doubt he was even aware of it, but he kept scratching his head and face as he looked around the small room. He also looked terribly confused. He was obviously nervous and scared and I couldn't blame him for that, especially if he'd been set up and framed for a double murder he didn't commit.
“Maybe you can answer a few of my questions first,” he managed. “What are homicide detectives from Washington DC doing here in Virginia? I don't understand that. Or anything else that's happened in the last two days.”
Sampson looked at me. He wanted me to explain. I began to tell Tate about our connection to Ellis Cooper and the murders that had taken place near Fort Bragg.
“You actually believe that Sergeant Cooper is innocent?” he asked when I was finished.
I nodded. “Yes, we do. We think he was framed, set up. But we don't know the reason yet. We don't know why and we don't know who.”
Sampson had a question. “You and Ellis Cooper ever meet while you were in the Army?”
Tate shook his head. “I was never stationed at Bragg. I don't remember a Sergeant Cooper from ”Nam. No, I don't think so."
I tried to remain low key. Reece Tate was an uptight, buttoned-down and formal man, so I kept our conversation as non-threatening as I possibly could.
“Reverend Tate, we've answered your questions. Why don't you answer a few of ours? If you're innocent of these murders, we're here to help you out of this mess. We'll listen, and we'll keep an open mind.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment before he spoke. “Sergeant Cooper, he was judged guilty, I assume. Is he in prison? I'd like to talk with him.”
I looked at Sampson, then back at Reece Tate. “Sergeant Cooper was executed in North Carolina recently. He's dead.”
Tate shook his head in a soft, low arc. “My God, my God in heaven. I was just taking a week off, giving myself a break. I love to camp and hike. It's a carryover from my days in the Army, but I always loved it. I was a Boy Scout, an Eagle Scout in Greensboro. Sounds kind of ridiculous, under the circumstances.”
I let him talk. The Eagle Scout in him wanted to, needed to get this out.
“I've been divorced for four years. Camping is my only decent escape, my release. I take off a couple of weeks a year, plus a few weekends when I can grab them.”
“Did anybody know you were planning this trip?”
“Everyone at our church knew. A couple of friends and neighbors. It wasn't any big secret. Why should it be?”
Sampson asked, “Did your ex-wife know?”
Tate thought about it, then he shook his head. “We don't communicate very much. I might as well tell you, I beat Helene up before we divorced. She may have driven me to it, but I hit her. It's on me, my fault. No excuse for a man to ever strike a woman.”
“Can you tell us about the day of the murders. Go through as much of what you did as you can remember,”I said.
It took Tate about ten minutes to take us through the day in detail. He said he woke up at about seven and saw that the morning was fogged in. He was in no hurry to get on the trail and so he had. breakfast at camp. He started hiking by eight-thirty and covered a lot of ground that day. He passed two families and an elderly couple along the way. The day before, he'd seen a mother and her two daughters and hoped to catch up with them, but it didn't happen. Finally he made camp at around six.
“Why did you want to catch up with the three women?” Sampson asked.
Tate shrugged. “Just crazy daydreams. The mother was attractive, early forties. Obviously, they all liked to hike. I thought maybe we could hike together for a while. That's pretty common on the AT.”
“Anybody else you saw that day?” Sampson asked.
“I don't remember anybody unusual. I'll keep thinking. I have the time in here. And the motivation.”
All right, so there were the families, the elderly couple, the mother and her two daughters. Any other groups you saw on the trail? Males hiking together? Any single hikers?"
He shook his head. “No, I don't remember seeing anybody suspicious. Didn't hear any unusual noises during the night. I slept well. That's one benefit of hiking. Got up the next morning, hit the road by seven-thirty. It was a beautiful day, clear as a bell and you could see for miles. The police came and arrested me around noon.”
Reverend Tate looked at me. His small eyes were pleading, searching for understanding. “I swear, I'm innocent. I didn't hurt anybody in those woods. I don't know how I got blood on some of my clothes. I didn't even wear those clothes the day those poor people were murdered. I didn't kill anybody. Somebody has to believe me.”
His words chilled me through and through. Sergeant Ellis Cooper had said virtually the same thing.
Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice
Chapter Forty-Eight
My last case as a homicide detective. A real tricky one. I'd been thinking about it pretty much non-stop for the past few days and it weighed on my mind during the numbing ride home from Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
I still hadn't given notice at work. Why not? I continued to take on homicide cases in DC, though most weren't challenging. A small-time drug dealer had been killed in the projects, but nobody cared. A twenty-year-old woman had killed her abusive husband, but it was clearly in self-defense. At least to me it was. Ellis Cooper was dead. And now a man named Reece Tate was accused of murders that he probably didn't commit.
That weekend I used air miles and took a flight out to Tempe, Arizona. I'd scheduled a meeting with Susan Etra, whose husband had been convicted of murdering two gay enlisted men. Mrs. Etra was suing the Army for wrongful death. She believed her husband was innocent, and that she had enough evidence to prove it. I needed to find out if Lieutenant Colonel James Etra might have been framed for murder, too. How many victims were there?
Mrs. Etra answered her front door and seemed very uptight and nervous. I was surprised to see a poker-faced man waiting in the living room. She explained that she had requested her lawyer be present. Great.
The lawy
er was darkly tan, with slicked-back white hair, an expensive-looking charcoal-gray suit and black cowboy boots. He introduced himself as Stuart Fischer from Los Angeles. “In the interest of possibly getting to the truth about her husband's wrongful arrest and conviction, Mrs. Etra has consented to talk with you, Detective. I'm here to protect Mrs. Etra.”
“I understand,” I said. “Were you Lieutenant Colonel Etra's lawyer at his trial?” I asked.
Fischer kept his game face. “No, I wasn't. I'm an entertainment attorney. I do have experience with homicide cases, though. I started in the DA's office in Laguna Beach. Six years down there.”
Fischer went on to explain that Mrs. Etra had recently sold her husband's story to Hollywood. Now I was the one who had to be careful.
For a half-hour or so, Susan Etra told me what she knew. Her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Etra, had never been in any trouble before. As far as she knew he'd never been intolerant of gays, men or women. And yet he had supposedly gone to the home of two gay enlisted men and shot them dead in bed. At the murder trial, it was alleged that he was hopelessly in love with the younger of the two men.
“The murder weapon was an Army service revolver. It was found in your home? It belonged to your husband?” I asked.
“Jim had noticed the revolver was missing a couple of days before the murder. He was very organized and meticulous, especially when it came to his guns. Then, suddenly, the gun was conveniently back in our house for the police to find.”
Lawyer Fischer apparently decided I was harmless enough and he left before I did. After he was gone, I asked Mrs. Etra if I could take a look at her husband's belongings.
Mrs. Etra said, “You're lucky that Jim's things are even here. I can't tell you how many times I've thought about bringing his clothes to a local charity group like Goodwill. I moved them into a spare bedroom. Far as I've gotten.”
I followed her down the hall to a spare room. Then she left me alone. Everything was neat and in its place, and I had the impression that this was how Susan and James Etra had lived before murder and chaos destroyed their lives. The furniture was an odd mix of blond wood and darker antiques. A war table against one wall was covered with collectible pewter models of cannons, tanks and soldiers from various wars. Next to the models was a selection of guns in a locked display case. They were all labeled.
2860 Colt Army revolver,.44 caliber, 8-inch barrel.
Springfield Trapdoor rifle, cartridge, used in the US Indian Wars. Has original bayonet and leather sling.
Marlin rifle, circa 1893, black powder only.
I opened the closet next. Lt. Colonel Etra's clothes were divided between his civvies and Army uniforms. I moved on, checking the various cabinets.
I was rummaging through the drawers of a highboy when I came upon the straw doll.
My stomach tightened. The creepy doll was the same kind I'd found at Ellis Cooper's place outside Fort Bragg. Exactly the same as if they'd been bought at the same place. By the same person? The killer?
Then I found the watchful, lidless eye in another drawer. It seemed to be watching me. Vigilant, keeping its own nasty secrets.
I took a deep breath, then I went outside and asked Mrs. Etra to come to the spare room. I showed her the straw doll and the all-seeing eye. She shook her head and swore she'd never seen either before. Her eyes revealed her confusion, and fear.
“Who was in my house? I'm sure that doll wasn't here when I moved Jim's things,” she insisted. “I'm positive. How could they have gotten here? Who put those dreadful things in my house, Detective Cross?”
She let me take the doll and the eye. She didn't want them around, and I couldn't blame her.
Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice
Chapter Forty-Nine
Meanwhile, the murder investigation continued on another front. John Sampson turned his black Mercury Cougar off Route 35 in Mantoloking on the Jersey Shore and headed in the general direction of the ocean. Point Pleasant, Bay Head and Mantoloking were connecting beach communities and, since it was October, they were fairly deserted.
He parked on East Avenue and decided to stretch his legs after the drive up from Washington.
“Jesus, what a beach,” he muttered under his breath as he walked up a public access stairway and reached the crest of the dunes. The ocean was right there, less than forty yards away, if that.
The day was just about perfect. Low seventies, sunny, cloudless blue sky, the air unbelievably clear and clean. Actually, he thought, it was a better beach day than people got for most of the summer, when all these shore towns were probably jammed full of beachgoers and their transportation.
He liked the scene stretching out before him a lot. The quiet, pretty beach town made him feel relaxed. Hard to explain, but recently his days on the job in DC seemed tougher and more gruesome than usual. He was obsessing about Ellis Cooper's death, his murder. His head was in a real bad place lately. That wasn't true here, and it had happened instantly. He felt that he could hear and see things with unusual clarity.
He figured he better get to work, though. It was almost three-thirty, and he had promised to meet Billie Houston at her house at that time. Mrs. Houston's husband had allegedly killed another soldier at nearby Fort Monmouth. The victim's face had been painted white and blue.
Let's do it, he told himself as he opened a slatted gate and walked toward a large, brown-shingled house on a path strewn with seashells. The beach house and the setting seemed too good to be true. He even liked the sign: Paradise Found.
Mrs. Houston must have been watching for him from inside the beach house. As soon as his foot touched down on the stairs, the screen door swung open and she stepped outside to meet him.
She was a small African-American woman, and more attractive than he'd expected. Not movie-star beautiful, but there was something about her that drew his attention and held it. She was wearing baggy khaki shorts with a black tee-shirt, and was bare-footed.
“Well, you certainly picked a nice day for a visit,” she said, and smiled. Nice smile, too. She was tiny, though, probably only five feet tall, and he doubted that she weighed much more than a hundred pounds.
“Oh, it isn't like this every day?” Sampson asked, and managed a smile himself. He was still recovering from his surprise at Mrs. Houston as he mounted her creaking, wooden porch steps.
“Actually,” she said, 'there are a lot of days like this one here. I'm Billie Houston. But of course you knew that." She put out her hand. It was warm and soft in his, and so small.
He held her hand a little longer than he'd meant to. Now why had he done that? He supposed it was partly because of what she'd been through. Mrs. Houston's husband had been executed nearly two years earlier, and she'd proclaimed his innocence loudly and clearly until the end, and then some. The story felt familiar. Or maybe it was because there was something about the woman's ready smile that made him feel comfortable. She impressed him about as much as the town and the fine weather had. He liked her immediately. Nothing not to like. Not so far anyway.
“Why don't we walk and talk on the beach,” she suggested. “You might want to take off your shoes and socks first. You're a city boy, right?”
Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice
Chapter Fifty
Sampson did as he was told. No reason the murder investigation, this interview anyway, couldn't have a few nice perks. The sand felt warm and good against his bare feet as he followed her down the length of the big house, then up and over a tall, broad dune covered with white sand and waving beach grass.
“Your house is sure something else,” he said. “Beautiful doesn't begin to do it justice.”
“I think so,” she said, and turned to look back at him with a smile. “Of course, this isn't my house. My place is a couple of blocks inland. One of the small beach bungalows you passed driving in. I house-sit for the O'Briens while Robert and Kathy are in Fort Lauderdale for the winter.”
“That's not such bad duty,” he said. Actually, it
sounded like a great deal to him.
“No, it's not bad at all.” She quickly changed the subject. “You wanted to talk to me about my late husband, Detective. Do you want to tell me why you're here? I've been on pins and needles since you called. Why did you want to see me? What do you know about my husband's case?”
“Pins and needles?” Sampson asked. “Who says pins and needles anymore?”
She laughed. “I guess I do. It just came out. Dates and locates me, right? I grew up on a sharecropper's farm in Alabama, outside Montgomery. Not giving you the date. So why are you here, Detective?”
They had started down a sandy hill sloping toward the ocean which was all rich blues and greens and creamy foam. It was unbelievable hardly a soul either way he looked up or down the shoreline. All of these gorgeous houses, practically mansions, and nobody around but the seagulls.
As they walked north he told Mrs. Houston about his friend Ellis Cooper, and what had happened at Fort Bragg. He decided not to tell her about the other murders of military men.
“He must have been a very good friend, ”she said when Sampson had finished talking. “You're obviously not giving up easily.”
“I can't give up. He was one of the best friends I ever had. We spent three years in Vietnam together. He was the first older male in my life who wasn't just out for himself. You know, the father I never had.”
She nodded, but she didn't pry. Sampson liked that. He still couldn't get over how petite she was. He had the thought that he could have carried her around under his arm.
“The other thing is, Mrs. Houston, I am totally convinced that Ellis Cooper was innocent of those murders. Call it sixth sense, or whatever, but I'm sure of it. He told me so just before they executed him. I can't get past that. I just can't.”
She sighed, and he could see the pain in her face. He could tell she hadn't gotten over her husband's death and how it had happened, but she still hadn't intruded on his story. That was interesting. She was obviously very considerate.
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