A Bob Lee Swagger eBook Boxed Set: I, Sniper, Night of Thunder, 47th Samurai

by Stephen Hunter

  I’ll count my money, see what to do with that nice bonus check. I’ll read a book or a gun magazine. I’ll think about building a tactical rifle in something weirdly off-center and interesting like .260 Remington, 6.5 Creedmoor, or Grendel or XC. I’ll hit the Dillon for a day and crank out a thousand .45 ACP 200-grainers. Then I’ll count my money again and be nice to my wife, whom I don’t deserve, and maybe help my younger daughter with her homework, though it’s rapidly reaching a level I don’t understand, because Miko has turned out to be sublimely smart and even at seven is attracting attention, not only for her unbelievable test scores but for her medal-winning riding ability. Then I’ll call my daughter Nikki and see how she likes that big paper where she now works.

  You couldn’t have a better life. Did anyone? Land, daughters, love, guns, a little money, a sense of having done what you could to bring boys home alive, settle old business, stand for something even when the lead or the blades were flying. That was okay, that was a life, it was the best but—

  But he couldn’t leave it alone.

  It wasn’t enough to wait for that big joker Ron Fields and that girl they called Starling and that Walter Jacobs and even Nick himself to figure it out and bring it off. It wasn’t that he was better than they were, or smarter, it was just … what? Vanity, craziness, old-guy bullshit, he just thought he should be there, doing what had to be done, contributing.

  Leave it alone.

  I can’t.

  Subversive thoughts kept churning up from his unconscious. There was a ramification, exiled almost purposefully from the FBI’s perspective. The FBI would not impose meanings; it would follow clues. They had new clues, new persons of interest, and they would methodically follow that course, letting meanings emerge. They had the resources for such an approach.

  He, Swagger, had no resources. Thus such a broad-front approach was ruled out. He had to rely on intuition and strike in terms of specific interpretations. He had to have a working theory and had therefore to examine, test, or abandon that working theory.

  Thus he was where he was, stuck with a buzz in his head that would not go away. And that was: if Carl Hitchcock’s irrational motive was not behind the killings, if Carl was in fact the setup with the phony motive, then the motive was rational. It meant to get something: money, revenge, threat elimination, satisfaction, something real. Therefore the killings were coldly plotted and executed by extremely high-end operators, based on a brilliant conception, brought off with near-perfection. No amateurs had been involved; it was elite-unit, state-level craft.

  If that were so, then there was but one starting point: the target could not have been Joan Flanders, movie star and radical and ex-wife to T. T. Constable. Joan’s point in the proceedings was to unleash, as a function of her complex and well-chronicled life, her litany of “interesting” husbands, a chafe of covering information. Her murder would automatically flood the investigation with possibility, too much possibility, too much attention, too much information, all of which would hopelessly bog, clot, and overwhelm any investigation while at the same time pressurizing it for fast solution.

  Therefore, sitting in the Dulles terminal in the middle of sunny Virginia, Swagger committed to his first principle: this is not about Joan Flanders. She is camouflage. This is about one of the others. It is about Jack Strong and Mitzi Reilly or it is about Mitch Greene, and from what he knew, it was probably not about Mitch Greene, who was, after all, a comedian. So he committed to his second principle: it was about Jack Strong and Mitzi Reilly.

  But even that was a daunting task. They too, though on a smaller scale, had lived extraordinary lives, much chronicled, much documented. Political lives, social lives, intellectual lives, professional lives, writing lives, teaching lives (endless students, twenty-five years’ worth of students alone!). How on earth could anyone investigate them—that is, anyone short of an FBI task force with its nearly unlimited manpower?

  He had to limit it. Limit it. How do you limit it? How do you find one thing to focus on, the right thing to focus on? What’s your principle of operation?

  His head ached. He really wanted that drink. And who did he think he was? The feds in time would get to Jack and Mitzi, and they’d do their usual thorough, patient, professional examination, and if there was something to be found, they would find it. Maybe not this week or this year or …

  What was different about Jack and Mitzi? Really, from a technical point of view, only one thing: Joan and Mitch had been killed in public. Their deaths became immediately the property of dozens of witnesses, then the law enforcement staffs, and then the maggots of the press. They were immediately public deaths.

  But Jack and Mitzi had been slain in an alley and lay undisturbed for almost an hour. Well, there were easy explanations: they were, in fact, vulnerable and accessible in that moment when they were pulling out of their garage and the shooting team, in that van in the next block with only a bit of door opening, was itself well protected and generally impervious to discovery. Hmm, on the other hand, Hyde Park was notoriously well policed by a more than capable University of Chicago police force, and the lack of street traffic, the lack of public hubbub, could itself turn quickly enough into a deficit; there’d be no crowd cover for the escape route. It was, or rather it could be seen as a somewhat fragile operation, a chancy enough thing, the greatest dare of the operation. That put it out of the modus operandi to a significant degree. So it was … provocative.

  What would be the meaning of that kind of kill? What did it permit? What advantages would it generate and to what ends, and why would those ends be worth what might easily become a risk?

  He sat crunched in concentration. He didn’t notice that they’d called the Boise flight. He didn’t even hear his name being called by the gate attendant. He was a lanky man in jeans, a polo shirt, an outdoorsy coat, and a Razorbacks baseball hat, sitting there, his scuffed Nocona boots announcing to the world he was a cowboy of sorts, but his face taut and distant.

  He missed the plane.

  He felt he had something, almost.

  He could feel it there, and even as he struggled to articulate it, it went away.

  And then he had it.

  Another problem: over the last years, he’d used the personnel department of the United States Marine Corps as his private intelligence agency. When he’d needed a contact or an expert, he’d called an old colleague and they’d dug up, quickly, a name for him that always fit a specific category. They got him in the game fast.

  But that was changing. His generation was all but gone; new men came and took things over and they had no living memory of Bob the Nailer and were not by nature inclined to help him. So he had to do some thinking and some calling before he was finally able to set up the right linkage: a retired NCO in Personnel who was friendly with a current NCO in Personnel who would do the favor for the friend of the friend.

  But finally, close to six, he got a name, a number, the sufficient in-between calls had been made, and he was talking to his man.

  “First Sergeant Jackson.”

  “First Sergeant, I’m Swagger, Gunnery Sergeant retired, I think Bill Martens may have—”

  “Sure, sure, Gunny. After I got Bill’s e-mail, I ran you, and you were some marine, I’ll say. You were the best. Before my time, but the best.”

  “Son, I was before everyone’s time.”

  First Sergeant Jackson laughed.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “It’s this. I’m looking into Carl Hitchcock’s last week and death—”

  “Gunny, this ain’t some crazy T. T. Constable did it thing like I’m seeing on the Internet, is it?”

  “No, and I don’t think aliens took over Carl’s brain neither. No, I’m just trying to get a grip on it.”

  “I’d love it if Carl turned out to be innocent. So would all of us. But I don’t see how.”

  “I don’t see how either, but I told some folks I’d give it my best shot. Semper Fi, gung ho, ding how, and
all that good shit. So here’s where I am: I’m thinking a lot of our people go into law enforcement after they retire. It’s a natural progression. So I’m guessing there’s a guy for real like the one I’ve imagined in my head. He would be ex-marine, now working Chicago police, maybe even homicide. He was part of the team that investigated the Strong-Reilly shooting. He was there, he was noticing, he had ideas, he heard what the other cops said. All that before the FBI took over as lead agency and concluded Carl was the boy. Once that happens, it’s all different, because they’re all looking at it only in the way it links to Carl. I want to hear what this guy might have to say about what he noticed before the news on Carl arrived. Can you help find me such a guy, if he exists?”

  “I will make a big try. Can I reach you on this number?”

  “Roger.”

  “Okay, and I’m guessing time counts.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The call came at eleven, long after he’d checked into the motel in Alexandria, long after he’d had a chat with his wife, explaining that no, he wasn’t on his way home, he had a few things to check out first, that was all. Her silence expressed her mood. She believed he had a crusade pathology and was always looking for excuses to veer off on strange, violent adventures; she finally accepted it, but at the same time, her silence made it clear that she still hated it. But he repeated that this was nothing, this was just some low-level inquiries, and there was no danger whatsoever involved. Still, he told her, don’t tell anyone about this call. If anyone asks, I’m on my way home.

  When the call came, he picked up the cell and said, “Swagger.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Swagger, retired, USMC sniper, all that, number two in Vietnam?”

  “Yes, that’s me. Except it was number three.”

  “Gunny, I got a call from my ex–battalion commander, who evidently got a bunch of calls, the long and the short of it being you wanted to talk to a Chicago detective who’d been on the Strong-Reilly crime scene.”

  “I’m very glad you called.”

  “My name’s Dennis Washington, I was an infantry officer, USMC, from ’88 through ’94, loved the Corps. Did the Gulf, got hurt a little, and had to give it up. Went to Illinois State Police, then came to Chicago. I’m a detective sergeant, Nineteenth Precinct, the Woodlawn area of Chicago. I do murder. It’s usually some gang boy popping another gang boy, sometimes a kid gets in the way, or it’s a Korean in a market, or a cabbie. It ain’t no CSI kind of thing. I’m not a master detective, if you think I am, Gunny, sorry to say. I’m a little reluctant here. I’ve never done nothing like this and I know I’m in violation of policy.”

  “This ain’t official, Sergeant Washington. But I know you want to hear this, so I’ll say it. I ain’t asking for no violation of ethics on your part; I sure ain’t part of the press; I ain’t a Net crazy who thinks Tom killed Joan because she slept with Warren or any shit like that. I ain’t publishing, I ain’t talking, I ain’t telling. If you ask around about me, you’ll see that most folks think I’m a stand-up guy. What this is about is my hope for Carl’s innocence, and since I know a guy in the FBI, I got to go through the Bureau’s case.”

  “It’s solid, I hear.”

  Bob didn’t feel like explaining.

  “Well, we’ll see about that. Maybe there’s a little thing or two off.”

  “I hate to see it come down on an old marine, especially a guy who gave as much as Hitchcock.”

  “Roger that.”

  “So, I’ll try to help you. I don’t have a lot. The FBI took over within a few hours, and although they made a good attempt to keep us in the loop, once they got the call on lead agency it became totally their investigation. If you’ve seen their stuff, you may know more than I do.”

  “It’s not their findings I’m strictly interested in. I know enough to know that findings are usually what people want to find. That’s the nature of the damn animal. See, I’m looking for stuff that wasn’t in no findings, wasn’t in no report, something that you, an experienced homicide detective might have felt, even if you didn’t know you felt it at the time. You might call it hunch or buzz or vibe, some soft, unofficial word like that. I have a specific idea on this but I ain’t going to give it to you because it’ll tarnish your thinking. So I guess what I’m asking—sorry it ain’t more specific—is, did you get any funny feelings? Was anything wrong? Did anything unusual happen?”

  “I’d have to have an actual imagination to answer that, Gunny.”

  “Well, do your best.”

  “I went over my notebook, trying to recreate it carefully. No, there wasn’t much there, except a thing so tiny I’m kind of embarrassed to mention it. It ain’t the sort of thing that’s admissible in court. It ain’t evidence, it ain’t forensics, it ain’t factual. Like you say, a funny feeling.”

  “Detective, I am so ready to hear this.”

  “You know what a homicide dick is? I mean, really is? Forget all the CSI TV bullshit. From a practical point of view, he’s what you call a professional interrupter.”

  “I ain’t reading.”

  “Nobody ever plans on getting murdered. It’s the last thing on everybody’s mind. Even dope dealers with another gang out to get them, they don’t think today’s going to be their last day. They always live life like there’s going to be a lot of tomorrows.”

  “Okay, I’m with you.”

  “As that translates practically, I’m the guy who interrupts. I bust into their life on a day they never in a million years thought would be their last, and I see exactly how they lived, without scrubbing or cleaning or getting ready for company. And here’s what I’ve learned: everyone’s a secret pig.”

  “I know I am. And my daughters! Wow!”

  “Mine too. Those damned girls couldn’t pick up sock one if their mom didn’t yell at them. Anyhow, what this means is you go into a lot of messy homes. Mr. Brown got popped, so you go to the Brown home, and it’s the way it was exactly at the moment Mrs. Brown heard Mr. Brown checked out. She’s in shock. It’s like the house is frozen in Jell-O. Newspapers on the floor, socks on the floor, garbage cans full to overflow, the litter in the cat’s box ain’t been changed, a coupla glasses from last night’s cocktail hour are still out, maybe there’s some plates in the sink, or someone forgot to put the cereal away. You know, that’s how life is lived. To do stuff you have to take stuff out; then you have to put it away. But between the taking out and the putting back, sometimes a lot of time passes, and after having gone into a thousand houses in the past ten years with the worst possible news to deliver and then asking the worst possible questions, I’m here to tell you that most lives are lived, minute by minute and hour by hour and day by day, at some weird place between taking stuff out and putting stuff back. Stuff is everywhere. Daily life is about stuff. You follow me?”

  “Sure do. You’re saying—”

  “If it had been tossed hard and fast, it would have been a mess. You ever see what IRS does to a house when they toss it? Looks like a cyclone hit it. Our guys ain’t much better, and I don’t bet the Bureau’s are much better than that.”

  “Got it. So the Strong house didn’t appear to have been searched.”

  “That’s what you might think. But I’m concentrating here on his office, and what I saw was a room that had been searched and then overcorrected. Do you get what I’m saying? It’s subtle. All the stacks were neat. People don’t stack neat. They just throw things on top of each other. The computer monitor had been dusted, even on that pedestal and on the casing in back of the screen. Nobody dusts the pedestal, but this pedestal was dusted. The books were all neatly shelved, the stacks of—I don’t know, he was a professor, right?—articles, books, whatever research stuff a professor would have, it was all neat on the big table and it was centered on the table. It didn’t have the spontaneity of real life. It looked like a museum display. I noted it, maybe didn’t think much of it, but it was especially weird in retrospect because I went out to his office in the Circle Campus
the next day with one of the Bureau’s people, and his office, well, it wasn’t a mess, but it was an office. It was kind of messy, not wildly messy, not a shit hole, no, but it had the usual human mess in it. The rest of their house: usual human mess. Glasses in the sink, unmade beds, laundry on the floor, not in the basket. No pigsty, but just the random crap of life. But that one room, it had the look of having been freshly tidied, as if a) he knew he’d be murdered in his alley and wanted his investigators to think, ‘My, what a tidy fellow this man was,’ or b) someone tossed it, but tossed it very carefully, and tidied it up so that no one could tell it had been searched. They just overtidied by a tiny degree, and only a guy like me, Mr. Interrupter with Bad News, would pick up on it.”

  “Does the time line work out that someone could have been in the house between the killing and the arrival of the first units? You seem to be implying someone tossed the house, then straightened it out. Was there time enough?”

  “Yeah. I checked, and that’s maybe why I’m glad to hear from you, because my thoughts on this were kind of subversive to the general thrust and momentum of the investigation. But of course once our lab people arrived, the FBI people arrived, the media, that sort of condition of his office was destroyed. I didn’t think to have crime scene photo work it, because it wasn’t the crime scene, the car was the crime scene. My bad. But yeah, in terms of time, it was about ninety minutes as far as we can say.”