by Scott Blade
“Agent Marksy was the special agent in charge of a task force about a year ago.”
He looked at my face, watched my eyes and my features, like he looked for some sign of recognition in them. There was none.
“Do you know what I’m talking about?”
I said, “I know what a task force is. I used to work in the military, which I’m sure that you know by now.”
Pawn nodded and said, “She was in charge of a task force to catch AWOL.”
I lounged in the chair, remained still. Didn’t move. Didn’t adjust.
Pawn stared at me.
Marksy stared at me for the first time. She had gray-blue eyes, deep-set blue like two cloudy sapphires.
There was hate laced in her eyes. I could see that she had an intense hatred for me or for whoever she thought I was.
There was something else there too. There was confusion. I thought.
Pawn said, “No reaction, Mr. Widow?”
I said, “Should there be?”
“You’ve heard of AWOL?”
He was saying it like a proper name or a nickname.
I said, “I know what it means. I was in the Navy, as I’m sure you know.”
“AWOL isn’t a what.”
I stared at him, blankly.
“You really are going to play this game with us?”
I stayed quiet.
Pawn walked forward and slammed his knuckles down on the other end of the conference table. He leaned on them like a gorilla. He stared into me, like a practiced interrogation move.
I kept his gaze, said nothing.
Marksy shifted behind him like she wanted a go at me.
“Look, guys. I really don’t know what the hell is going on.”
Pawn stood up straight and stared beyond me at Kelvin and Talbern, I presumed.
He said, “Agent Kelvin, would you get the lights please. Just that first switch.”
I didn’t turn to look, but I could feel Kelvin’s heavy footsteps as he turned and walked away from the wall behind me and over to the light switch, near the door.
He flicked the first one on the panel and half the lights in the conference room died away to black. Particularly, the lights over the wall behind Pawn and Marksy faded into darkness.
Pawn stepped out of the dark and over halfway between me and the dark wall.
He scooped up a small, black object. It was a remote to a projector that hung from the ceiling.
He clicked a button and the small machine hummed and whirred to life.
He stayed in the middle of the room.
Marksy didn’t move from where she was. She was at the edge of the shadows, near the back wall and the northeast corner of the conference table.
“Watch and see if you recognize any of your work, Mr. Widow.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but I didn’t protest. I just waited and watched.
Pawn clicked through a short series of introduction screens and clicked on a file marked “AWOL.”
The first image that popped up was a photo of a young woman, dressed in her Army uniform from graduation. An American flag was behind her right shoulder. She faced the photographer, didn’t smile.
“Take a good look, Widow.”
I looked.
“Recognize her?”
“No. Sorry.”
Pawn kept his face squared toward the screen and clicked the next slide.
A new photo popped up. This was a different woman, but same scenario. It was a black woman. She was young and attractive. An American flag behind her right shoulder. It was another graduation photo. She also wore her Army dress uniform.
I didn’t wait for Pawn to ask.
I said, “I don’t recognize her either.
Pawn clicked to the next photo.
“And this one?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
“You don’t recognize any of these women?”
“I already told you no. I have never seen them before in my life.”
“You’re sure?”
I nodded.
He clicked again and went to a photo of a man. Shaved head. No uniform. Not an Army graduation photo. This was a photo of a man in an orange jumpsuit. It was taken from the cover of a newspaper—The USA Today. I could still see some of the title letters cut off at the bottom.
The man had been front page news, whoever he was.
The print that remained in view about him was too small on the image to read.
“Recognize him?”
“Never seen him before.”
Marksy finally spoke. She stepped forward and said, “You’ve never seen him?”
“I told you. No. I’ve never seen him before. I’ve never seen any of them before.”
Pawn asked, “You’ve never heard of AWOL?”
I didn’t answer. I felt that I had already answered that.
Pawn clicked ahead two slides. The images blurred past in a flash like a blink of the eye. I couldn’t make them out.
The new photo made me forget about them—quickly, because it portrayed a gruesome scene.
The photo showed a dead, naked woman. She was stark naked and white as a sheet of paper.
There was no blood, but I was sure that it had been there.
I knew that she was a woman because there were two breasts, plain as day and severed from the body just as plain. The skin looked like it had been hacked off in a violent rage.
Two craters, black and void, remained behind. The edges hacksawed and jagged stuck out to me.
The breasts were set aside on a steel slab at the woman’s feet. She was on a morgue table, I presumed. The photo was well lit and had that sterile quality to it, like a doctor’s operating table.
The body hadn’t been autopsied yet, but I assumed this was just before that step.
She had one long leg—still attached. The other was there, but it was also detached from her body. It had been placed inches from where it should’ve been on the lower end of the table.
The photographer had gotten most of it in frame. The tip of the foot of the missing leg was slightly out of frame.
The woman’s face was there, but unrecognizable because it had been beaten to a pulp. Mashed eyes, crushed cheekbones, and a wrecked nose were all the features I could make out.
I heard Talbern make an audible sound, indicating her shock.
At the same time, I heard Kelvin shift his weight like he was looking away from the horror on the wall.
I stayed quiet. It was a horrible sight, but I had seen worse. However, I could see Marksy measuring my reaction like they expected me to be disgusted.
Pawn said nothing, clicked the button again and the next slide shuttered up on the wall. It was another dead woman—same as before.
Same cold, sterile look. Same metal table. Same morgue-looking backdrop.
Breasts lopped off. Right leg sawed off, just beneath the hip. And the face was bashed in and hammered to rubble.
There was a difference in this dead woman from the last. She was black.
I asked, “These are the women from the photos from before?”
Pawn said, “You already know that they are. Don’t you?”
“What the hell is this?”
Pawn didn’t answer. He clicked the slide show over to a third woman. Same scenario as the previous two.
Then he clicked the slide show back several frames to the photo of the guy in the orange jumpsuit on the cover of the newspaper.
He didn’t speak, just studied my expression as I gazed upon the cold face of the guy in the photo.
Pawn asked, “You still going to act like you don’t recognize him, Widow?”
“No clue.”
Marksy stepped forward and said, “This is the guy we arrested. Know what for?”
“Killing those women?”
“Tell us about him?” Marksy said.
“I told you. I’ve never seen him before.”
Pawn said, “This is AWOL.”
Again,
they both stared at me, waiting for a whiff of recognition on my face.
“AWOL is a serial murderer who killed three women last year. The three occurred eight weeks apart. Each of the victims was Army personnel. Each was roughly the same age. Each was similar build. Similarly, they were all very attractive.”
Pawn paused a long beat.
I shrugged, not that I didn’t care, but more like case closed, what does this have to do with me?
Pawn said, “The guy in the photograph is called Dayard.”
This time, they got a reaction from me. I had heard that name before.
Marksy stepped forward and slammed her palms on the table, harder than Pawn had.
She said, “You know him!”
I said, “I’ve heard that name before. But I don’t know him.”
“You’re lying!”
Pawn said, “The reason why he’s called AWOL is because each of his victims had more in common than just the fact that they were all young, beautiful women in the army. Each of them had abandoned her post at the end of her Army career. All three women had gone AWOL and all three had been caught. They had all done their time in prison and they had all been released, sequentially.”
Marksy said, “That wasn’t enough for AWOL. So, he tracked them down and murdered them.”
I stopped for a moment. Breathed in and breathed out.
I said, “So, this psycho killed three women. Their connection is that they all were former soldiers who went AWOL?”
Pawn said, “That’s right.”
I said, “So, Marksy was in charge of the task force that was supposed to catch him?”
Pawn nodded.
“And this guy was killing his victims inside of every eight weeks?”
This time both Pawn and Marksy nodded.
“Sounds to me like good police work. So, what the hell does this have to do with me?”
Pawn said, “That’s what is bothering us, Mr. Widow.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The name AWOL isn’t a name that Dayard picked for himself. It was given to him by the media.”
I nodded.
“The thing about choosing his victims because they all went AWOL is only part of it. There’s one detail that no one knows. No one but the agents on Marksy’s task force.”
I waited for him to tell me.
“AWOL did more than abduct and beat these women to death.”
I stayed looking him in the eyes.
“This guy really hated these women. The bodies are bad. Truly the worst I’ve seen in a twenty-three-year career.”
Silence. He studied my face, my eyes, as did Marksy. I felt her staring at me hard like there was a map of the world on my face and she had seen it before.
Pawn said, “The killer etched their names off their dog tags. Erasing them like they never existed.”
I stayed quiet.
Marksy spoke like she was trying to correct me.
She said, “Like the one that you brought to us.”
“I brought it after I found it.”
“Where did you find it?”
“You already know that. I told Hamilton everything, already, back at Graham.”
Pawn nodded, said, “You just happened to find it in the sand on the beach?”
I nodded.
“That’s a hell of a coincidence, Widow.”
I shrugged, said, “Life is full of coincidences. Get used to it. It doesn’t mean anything.”
They stared at me.
I asked, “Look, I’m sorry about the dead women. Truly, that’s an awful fate. But you have the guy. You already told me that. So, what they hell does it have to do with me?”
Marksy broke eye contact with me and looked at Pawn.
He stepped forward, halfway down the length of the table. The slide remote in his left hand. He clicked the button a couple of times. The slides flashed in the opposite direction, across the wall until the image stopped on the face of the man they had arrested for the AWOL murders.
Pawn said, “The thing is Widow that Dayard swears his innocence. In fact, he swears it to this day. Even though his trial came and went ten months ago. Do you know where he is now?”
I said, “Prison?”
“Not just prison; he’s sitting on death row. You see one of the girls that was found, she was found on the coast of Portland. She was the first girl found. They’re going to execute him, Widow.”
I stayed quiet.
“The other thing is that you brought us a dog tag with the name etched out.”
I nodded, said, “We already established that.”
“Widow, we never told anyone about the dog tags.”
I was silent.
Marksy said, “The newspapers were never told about the names missing from the dog tags.”
Pawn intervened and said, “No one knew but us and the killer.”
I stayed quiet.
Pawn said, “Dayard swears he’s innocent.”
I asked, “And? What? I’m his accomplice or something? Just because I found a dog tag that someone scratched the name off?”
Marksy said, “The dog tag that you brought us.”
I looked at her.
“It’s from a soldier who is missing.”
CHAPTER 17
THE LOOK ON MARKSY’S FACE was somewhere between confusion and hatred, all while screaming severe distrust at me.
I got the feeling that she had a major discrepancy with my being here. For her, this was more than professional. It was personal.
Why she felt this way I didn’t know. Not yet, but I was certain that I would find out soon enough.
Before Pawn could say another word, Marksy pounded her fists on the table.
She asked, “Where is she?”
I stared at them, realized what was going on.
“Wait! You think that I had something to do with AWOL?”
“A year ago, we made an arrest. We followed the clues. We caught a guy. But the guy claims to be innocent. Even now. And he’s facing death. No getting out of that now. And here you are. You waltz in three days before he’s to be executed with a story about stumbling upon a new piece of evidence.”
Marksy said, “Evidence that no one would know about except the real killer!”
Pawn said, “Or his accomplice.”
“So what? You think that I’m his accomplice?”
“The girl who’s missing was an officer. By all accounts a good soldier. She went missing from Cocoa Beach. She was last seen by her sister on a Facetime call. She went down there to spend the weekend, surfing the beach. The same beach where you claim to have found her dog tag.”
I stayed quiet.
Pawn asked, “Can you explain that”
I said, “Look, I don’t know anything about a missing soldier. Certainly, I’ve got nothing to do with AWOL.”
No one spoke.
I asked, “Has this woman gone AWOL? That’s what you guys said was the killer’s MO. But you just said she was surfing on a beach on the weekend. I presume that she was off?”
Marksy said, “Her name is Dekker. Karen Dekker.”
I shrugged.
Pawn nodded, said, “The dog tag is exactly the same.”
“So what do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think, Widow. Dekker’s been missing for a couple of weeks. You show up with her dog tag, scratched-off name. I’m thinking she’s going to turn up dead.”
I continued to stare at him.
“There’s another issue.”
I asked, “What’s that?”
“You.”
“How’s that?”
“Who are you?”
Marksy interrupted. She said, “You have a Navy service record with the Department of Defense.”
I nodded, said, “So?”
Pawn said, “So, you have two records.”
I stayed quiet.
Marksy’s face turned to more of curiosity than before, like a switch.
&
nbsp; “Two files with the DOD. Why is that? I’ve never seen that before.”
Marksy said, “I have.”
Pawn looked at her.
“He was a double agent.”
Pawn looked back at me and then at Marksy.
She leaned back from the table, crossed her arms.
She said, “What are you? A Navy SEAL?”
I didn’t respond.
“Would his record be classified if he were a SEAL?”
Marksy said, “It would be, but there’s more to it than that.”
She looked back at me and asked, “Are you undercover?”
Pawn said, “Widow, if you don’t help us, we can’t help you.”
“Help me with what?”
“You’re helping him. Or you worked alone, but right now it looks bad. We’ve got the son of a former Secretary of Defense on death row, who claims to be innocent and now we have a potential break that may clear him.”
Pawn said, “I don’t want to send an innocent man to die. Help us, Widow. Tell us the truth.”
“I told you the truth. I don’t know anything about the AWOL murders.”
“Tell us who you are.”
I thought for a moment and looked from face to face.
I said, “You don’t want to know who I am. You want to know who I was. And you saw some of the information about who I was.”
I paused a beat and said, “I was an undercover cop. That’s why my files are classified beyond classified. I was undercover with the Navy SEALs.”
Kelvin interrupted with an involuntary gasp.
Pawn looked at him, over my shoulder and then back at me.
He said, “How exactly did you do that? Did they pretend you were the cousin of someone in the SEALs?”
“No. I was a SEAL. In the Navy SEALs, you can’t just waltz in and pretend to have been a SEAL that the guys never heard of. I lived a double life.”
Pawn asked, “For sixteen years?”
I shrugged.
Marksy said, “Now what? You just wander around like a hobo?”
I nodded, said, “How long have you been an FBI agent, Marksy?”
She looked at me then over to Pawn.
“A long time.”
“I was in the Navy four years, then I was NCIS for twelve years. When you get off work are you still working?”
“Of course.”
“But you go home to your family? Right?”
She said nothing.
“Not me. I went home to nothing. My team was my family. And I lied to them every day. I lied to them but under the eyes of the law, I was the good guy. Know what it feels like to put your life in your teammates’ hands?”