Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

by Patterson, James

Chapter One Hundred and One

  In the early evening, Nana and I took a ride out to Virginia in the old Porsche. She'd asked if we could take the drive, just the two of us. Aunt Tia was home with the kids.

  “Remember when you first got this car? We used to take a ride just about every Sunday. I looked forward to it all week,” she said once we were out of Washington and on the highway.

  “Car's almost fifteen years old now,” I said.

  “Still runs pretty good, though,” Nana said. She patted the dash. “I like old things that work. Long, long time ago, I used to go for a car ride every Sunday with Charles. This was before you came to live with me, Alex. You remember your grandfather?”

  I shook my head. “Not as much as I'd like to. Just from the photographs around the, house I know the two of you came to visit in North Carolina when I was little. He was bald and used to wear red suspenders.”

  “Oh, those awful, awful suspenders of his. He had a couple dozen pairs. All red.”

  She nodded, then Nana seemed to go inside herself for a moment or two. She didn't talk about my grandfather very often. He had died when he was just forty-four. He'd been a teacher, just like Nana, though he taught Math, and she was English. They had met while working at the same school in Southeast.

  “Your grandfather was an excellent man, Alex. Loved to dress up and wear a nice hat. I still have most of his hats. You go through the Depression, things we saw, you like to dress up sometimes. Gives you a nice feeling about yourself.”

  She looked over at me. “I made a mistake, though, Alex.”

  I glanced over at her. “You made a mistake? This is a great shock. I'd better pull over to the side of the road.”

  She cackled. “Just one that I can recall. See, I knew how good it could be to fall in love. I really loved Charles. After he died, though, I never tried to find love again. I think I was afraid of failing. Isn't that pathetic, Alex? I was too afraid to go after the best thing I ever found in this life.”

  I reached over and patted her shoulder. “Don't talk like you're leaving us.”

  “Oh, I'm not. I have a lot of confidence in Doc Kayla. She would tell me if it was time for me to start collecting on all my old debts. Which I plan to do, by the way.”

  “So, this is a parable, a lesson?”

  Nana shook her head. “Not really. Just an anecdote while we're taking this nice ride in your car. Drive on, young man. Drive on. I'm enjoying this immensely. We should do it more often. How about every Sunday?”

  The whole ride out to Virginia and back, we never once talked about Nana's procedure in the hospital the next morning. She obviously didn't want to, and I respected that. But the operation, at her age, scared me as much as any murder case could. No, actually it scared me more.

  When we got back to the house I went upstairs and called Jamilla. She was at work but we talked for nearly an hour anyway.

  Then I sat down at my computer. For the first time in over a week I pulled up my notes on the Three Blind Mice. There was still one big question I needed to answer if I could. Big if.

  Who was behind the three of them?

  Who was the real killer?

  Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

  Chapter One Hundred and Two

  I fell asleep at my work desk, woke up around three in the morning. I went down to my bedroom for a couple of hours. The alarm sounded at five.

  Nana was scheduled to be at St. Anthony's Hospital at six-thirty. Dr. Coles wanted her to be one of the first operations of the day, while everybody on the staff was fresh and alert. Aunt Tia stayed at the house with little Alex, but I brought Damon and Jannie with me to the hospital.

  We sat in the typically antiseptic-looking waiting room, which really started to fill up with people around seven-thirty. Everybody in there looked nervous and concerned and fidgety, but I think we were probably right up there with the worst of the lot.

  “How long does the operation take?” Damon wanted to know.

  “Not long. Nana might not have gone in first, though. It all depends. It's a simple procedure, Damon. Electrical energy is delivered to the AV node. The electricity is a little like the heat in a microwave. It disconnects the pathway between the atria and the ventricles and will stop the extra impulses causing Nana's irregular heartbeat. Got all that? Don't hold me to it, but that's fairly close to what's happening.”

  “Is Nana wide awake while it's happening?” Jannie wanted to know.

  “Probably. You know your Nana. They gave her a mild sedative and then local anesthesia.”

  “Won't touch her,” Jannie said.

  So we talked and waited, and fretted and worried, and it took longer than I thought it should take. I tried not to let my mind wander to bad places. I wanted to stay in touch with the moment.

  I conjured up good memories of Nana, and they were a little like prayers. I thought about how much she meant to me, and also to the kids. None of us would be where we were without Nana's unconditional love, her confidence in us, and even her needling irritating as it could be sometimes.

  “When is she coming out?” Jannie looked at me. Her beautiful brown eyes were full of uncertainty and fear. It struck me that Nana had really been a mother to all of us. Nana Mama was more mama than nana.

  “Is she all right?” Damon asked. “Something's wrong, isn't it? Don't you think this is taking too long?”

  Unfortunately, I did. “She's just fine,” I said to the children.

  More time passed. Slowly. Finally, I looked up and saw Dr. Coles coming into the waiting room. I took a quick breath and tried not to let the kids see how anxious and nervous I really was.

  Then Kayla Coles smiled. What a beautiful, glorious smile that was, the very best I've seen in a long while.

  “She's all right?”I asked.

  “Aces,”she said. “Your nana is a tough lady. She's asking for you already.”

  Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

  Chapter One Hundred and Three

  We visited with Nana in the recovery room for an hour, then we were asked to leave. She needed to rest up.

  I dropped the kids off at school around eleven that morning. Then I went home to do a little more scud work in my office.

  I was looking into something for Ron Burns, a strange but intriguing case involving convicted sex-offenders. In return he'd gotten me some US Army records that I wanted to check out. Some of it had come off AC IRS and RISS, but most had come straight from the Pentagon. One of the subjects was the Three Blind Mice.

  Who was the real killer? Who gave orders to Thomas Starkey? Who sanctioned the murders?

  I kept thinking about Nana, and how tough she was, and how much I would have missed her if something had gone wrong that morning. The terrible, guilt-ridden fantasy kept running through my head that I was going to get a call from Kayla Coles and she would say, I'm sorry, Nana passed away. We don't know what went wrong. I'm so sorry.

  The call didn't come, and I threw myself into the work. Nana would be home tomorrow. I needed to stop worrying about her and put my mind to better use.

  The Army records were interesting, but also about as depressing as an IRS audit. Obviously there had been rogue activity in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The Army, at least officially, seemed to turn away and not look too closely at what had happened. There weren't civilian review boards, of course, like the police departments had to investigate misconduct. The press had no way to judge what was going on either. They rarely interviewed victims' families in the small villages. Plus, few of the American reporters spoke much Vietnamese. The good and the bad of it was that the Army had sometimes fought fire with fire. Maybe it was the only way to effectively fight a guerrilla war. But I still didn't know what had happened over there to inspire the murders stateside during the past few years.

  I spent several grueling hours looking through more records of Colonel Thomas Starkey, Captain Brownley Harris and Sergeant Warren Griffin. I saw that their Army careers were exemplary, at least in wri
tten form. I went back as far as Vietnam and the pattern continued. Starkey was a highly decorated officer; Harris and Griffin were good soldiers. There was nothing in the records about assassinations in Vietnam committed by the trio. Not a single word.

  I wanted to know when they had met and where they had served together. I kept leafing through records,

  hoping, but not finding the connect point. I knew they'd fought together in Vietnam and Cambodia. I went through every page a second time.

  But there was nothing in any of the records to indicate they'd worked together in Southeast Asia. Not a goddamn word.

  I sat back and stared out onto Fifth Street, letting my eyes glaze over. There was only one conclusion I could come up with, and I didn't like it.

  The Army records had been doctored.

  But why? And by whom?

  Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

  Chapter One Hundred and Four

  It wasn't over yet. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach, and I hated the queasy feeling, the uncertainty, the lack of closure. Or maybe I just couldn't let go. All those unsolved murders. Who was the real killer? Who was behind the strange murders?

  A week after the shootings in Georgia, I sat in Ronald Burns's office on the fifth floor of FBI headquarters in Washington. Burns's assistant, a crew-cut male in his mid-twenties, had just brought us coffee in beautiful china cups. There were also fresh mini-pastries on a silver tray.

  “Pulling out all the stops?” I asked the director. “Hot coffee and Danish.”

  “You got it,” he said, 'shameless manipulation. Go with it."

  I'd known him for years, but it was only during the past few months that I'd worked closely with Burns. What I'd seen so far, I liked, but I'd been fooled before.

  “How's Kyle Craig doing?” I asked him.

  “We're trying to make it as uncomfortable as possible for him out in Colorado,” Burns said. He allowed himself a smile. “We have to keep him in solitary most of the day. For his own protection, of course. He hates being by himself. Drives him crazier. No one to show off to.”

  “No psychiatrists in there trying to figure him out?”

  Burns shook his head. “No, no. Not a good idea. That would be too dangerous for them.”

  “Besides, Kyle would like the attention. He craves it. He's a junkie for it.”

  “Exactly.”

  We smiled at the image of Kyle locked away in seclusion, hopefully for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, I knew he had made contact with others in the max security unit -particularly Tran Van Luu.

  “You don't think Kyle had anything to do with these killings?” Burns finally asked.

  “I checked that out as much as I could. There's no evidence he knew Luu before he was assigned to Florence.”

  “I know he visited out there, Alex, when he was still with the Bureau. He was definitely on the max security unit as well as death row. He could have met Luu. It's possible. I'm afraid you never know with Kyle.”

  I almost didn't want to think about the possibility that Kyle might be behind the diabolical murder scheme somehow. But it was possible. Still, it seemed so unlikely that I didn't give it much credence.

  “You had any time to think about my offer? ”Burns asked.

  “I still don't have an answer for you. I'm sorry. This is a big decision for me and my family. If it's any consolation, once I land I don't jump around.”

  “Okay, that's fine with me. You understand I can't leave the offer on the table indefinitely?”

  I nodded. “I appreciate the way you're handling this. You always this patient?”

  “Whenever I can be,” Burns said, and left it at that. He picked up a couple of manila folders from the coffee table between our chairs and slid them my way.

  “I have something for you, Alex. Take a look.”

  Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

  Chapter One Hundred and Five

  More of the Bureau's resources that you want me to I see,"

  I said, and smiled at Burns.

  “You'll like this. It's real good stuff. I hope it's helpful. I want to see you get some closure on this Army case. We're interested in this one, too.”

  I reached into one of the folders and pulled out what looked like a faded patch off of a jacket. I held it up to examine the cloth more closely. The patch was green khaki with what looked like a crossbow sewn into the fabric. There was also a straw doll on the patch. An eerie, awful straw doll. The same kind I'd first seen in Ellis Cooper's house.

  “The patch came from the jacket of a sixteen-year-old gang member in New York City. The gang he belonged to is named Ghost Shadows. They use different coffee shops on Canal Street in New York as headquarters. It's called roving turf,” Burns said.

  “A task force we ran with the NYPD brought the gang banger in. He decided to trade some information he thought might be valuable to them. It wasn't. But it could be valuable to you.”

  “How so?”I asked.

  “He says he's sent you several e-mails during the past month, Alex. He used computers at a technical high school in New York.”

  “He's Foot Soldier?” I asked, and shook my head in amazement.

  "No. But he may be a messenger for Foot Soldier. He's Vietnamese. The symbol of the crossbow is from a popular folktale. In the story, the crossbow could kill ten thousand men every time it was fired. The Ghost Shadows think of themselves as very powerful. They're big into symbols, myth, magic.

  “As I said, this kid and his fellow gang bangers spend most of their time in the coffee shops. Playing ding lung, drinking Cafe Su Da. The gang moved to New York from Orange County in California. Over one hundred fifty thousand Viet refugees have settled in Orange County since the seventies. The gang in New York favored Vietnamese-style criminal activities. Smuggling illegal aliens called snake heads credit card fraud, software and computer parts heists. That help you?”

  I nodded. “Of course it does.”

  Burns handed me another folder. “This might help too. It's information about the former leader of the Viet gang.”

  TranVan Luu."

  Burns nodded. “I did a tour in sixty-nine and seventy. I was in the Marines. We had our own re-con people. They'd get dropped into hostile territory, just like Starkey and company. Vietnam was a guerrilla war, Alex. Some of our people acted like guerrillas. Their job was to wreak havoc behind enemy lines. They were tough, brave, but more than a few of them got incredibly desensitized. Sometimes they practiced situational ethics.”

  “Wreak havoc?” I said. “You're talking about terrorism, aren't you?”

  “Yeah,” Burns nodded. “That's what I just said.”

  Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

  Chapter One Hundred and Six

  The FBI flew me out to Colorado this time. Ron Bums had made this his case now. He wanted the person or persons behind the long string of murders.

  The isolation unit at Florence seemed as oppressive as it had been on my first visit there. As I entered the Security Housing Unit, guards in khaki uniforms watched me through bulletproof-glass observation posts. The doors were either bright orange or mint green odd. There were cameras every ten feet along the bland, sand-colored walls.

  The cell where Tran Van Luu and I met had a table and two chairs, which were dead-bolted to the floor. Three guards in body armor and thick gloves brought him to me this time around. I wondered if there had been trouble recently. Violence?

  Luu's hands and ankles were cuffed for our meeting. The gray hairs hanging from his chin seemed even longer than at our last visit.

  I took the jacket patch Burns had given me out of the pocket of my coat. “What does this mean? No more bullshit.”

  “Ghost Shadows. You know that already. The crossbar is just folklore. Just a design.”

  “And the straw doll?”

  He was silent for a moment. I noticed that his hands were curled into fists. “I believe I told you that I was a scout for the American Army. Sometimes, we left cal
ling cards in villages. One, I remember, was a skull and crossbones with the words ”When you care enough to send the very best“. The Americans thought that was very funny.”

  “What does the straw doll mean? Is it your calling card? Was it left at all the murder scenes? Or afterwards at the soldiers' homes?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps. You tell me, Detective. I wasn't at the murder scenes.”

  “What would this particular calling card mean? The straw doll?”

  “Many things, Detective. Life is not so simple. Life is not merely sound bites and easy solutions. In my country, popular religion is flexible. Buddhism from both China and India. Taoism. Confucianism. Ancestor worship is the oldest and most indigenous belief throughout Vietnam.”

  I tapped my finger on the jacket patch.

  “Straw dolls are sometimes burnt or floated away on a river as part of rituals honoring the dead. Evil spirits are the ghosts of those who were murdered or who died without proper burial. The straw doll is a threatening message reminding the offending person it is they who should rightfully be in the doll's place.”

  I nodded. Tell me what I need to know. I don't want to have to come back here."

  “Nor should you. I don't have any need for confession. That's more of a Western concept.”

  “You don't feel any guilt about what's happened? Innocent people have died.”

  “And will continue to. What is it that you really want to know? Do you believe I owe you something because of your crackerjack detective work?”

  “You admit that you used me?”

  Luu shrugged. “I don't admit anything. Why should I? I was a guerrilla fighter. I survived in the jungles of An Lao for nearly six years. Then I survived in the jungles of California and New York. I use whatever is provided to me. I try to make the most of the situation. You do the same, I'm sure.”

  “Like at this prison?”

  “Oh, especially in prison. Otherwise, even a reasonably bright man could go mad. You've heard the phrase ”cruel and unusual“. A cell that is seven by twelve feet. Twenty-three hours a day in it. Communication only through a cell slot in the door.”