Chasing the Ghost

by Bob Mayer

  “The night after his team left, the VC came into that village.” Thorne turned slightly in his seat. His eyes were staring at the wall, not at any particular spot, but seeing memories. “Every person that had been inoculated-- man, woman, child-- had the arm that received the shot cut off. Those who had dental work-- every single tooth was smashed out of their mouth. Everything Rivers’ team medics had done was undone and then made ten times worse. The VC dumped the bodies of those they killed outright-- the headman and his entire family-- into the well, contaminating it. Needless to say, those that survived didn’t sign up for our civil defense program.

  “We didn’t quit though. And we were still able to recruit from other villages. Then, after years in the Highlands, we were ordered to pull out. To abandon the Montagnards. Because the President in Saigon was worried more about their potential for revolt than beating the VC and NVA. We were ordered not only to pull out, but to get back all the weapons we’d given them. Leave them defenseless between the VC and the South Vietnamese army, both of whom wanted to slaughter them.

  “Damn near had a revolt in the Special Forces. You don’t know what that was like. We’d lived and bled with these people for years, and because some politician in Washington wanted to appease those fat, corrupt pigs in Saigon, we abandoned them. Most of us left the weapons. The Group Commander’s career was trashed over it, but he considered it a small price to pay.

  “Hell, Chase, a lot of us would have volunteered to stay with our Yards’. But orders were orders and we were young enough to think obeying orders was more important than anything else.” He was twisting the cigar in his hand, end over end. “I send twenty percent of my profits from Merck to an organization in North Carolina that brings Montagnards to the States and gets them jobs and a new life. They might be second or third generation but we owe those people and it’s the honorable thing to do.”

  Thorne puffed on his cigar. Chase could still hear the pit bulls heavy breathing behind him, probably hoping their owner would feed the visitor to them.

  Thorne finally spoke again. “Rivers last tour was in Afghanistan. He stayed in way too long. Should have got out when I did, or at least when he had his twenty. Even his thirty. He kept thinking he could do the right thing in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. Afghanistan did him in.”

  Chase wasn’t sure why Thorne was telling him this. “Why does Rivers support the Patriots? Is he with that splinter cell?”

  Thorne’s eyes refocused. “Maybe it’s not so much that he supports them. Maybe he’s using them or after them for his own goals.”

  “And what would those be?”

  “I wouldn’t presume to speak for the man. I knew him a long time ago, but I don’t think I know him anymore.”

  “He served and bled for our country,” Chase said. “I can’t see him associated with cop killers. Is he in Wyoming? Can you put me in contact with him?”

  “The Patriots, that splinter cell, killed the cop, not him. Maybe it’s that he loves our country, but he hates our government. Maybe he’s angrier than I am. Maybe he’s braver than I am.” Thorne abruptly stood. “I have an editorial meeting. You know the way out.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The pickup truck in front of Chase had no taillights. He had to just guess by the guy’s head movements if he was going to change lanes and estimate if and when he was going to brake. Traffic was heavy for this time of the evening and Chase’s mood was going from bad to the 'I want to kill a small living thing' mode. After leaving Thorne’s office, he had his afternoon wasted at the courthouse waiting to be called to testify on an earlier case. The lawyers had dicked around, sniveling about piddly stuff and he'd never gotten on the stand. What a waste. He did manage to confirm that CNN had reported the truck being found, the authorities had ‘closed off’ the Medicine Bow Mountain area, as if they could really bottle those guys up, Chase thought, and beyond that nothing much was going on in Wyoming.

  There was a quirky twist that was news to Chase. CNN had uncovered the reason the Deputy pulled the Blazer over. Someone had called 911 from a payphone in Boulder to report a red Blazer driving erratically on Route 287. The deputy had probably figured he was dealing with a DUI. The story told Chase either the deputy or the Patriots had been set up, most likely the latter.

  Chase pulled into the garage of the A-1 cab company and parked. He was hoping somebody would come out of the little office and tell him to move his Jeep just so he could jump in their stuff, but no one did. Chase took a few deep breaths to compose himself and then got out of the Jeep.

  The dispatcher was a little old lady who spoke very slowly. "Can I help you?"

  Chase flipped his badge. "Detective Chase. Boulder PD." She was the first person he'd met on this case so far who seemed impressed by that. That made him feel a bit better.

  "What can I do for you, detective?"

  "I called earlier and talked to a Mister Jackson about a run one of your cabs did last week on Wednesday night. He said he'd have the driver down here at eight to talk to me." Chase looked pointedly at the clock on the wall. The big hand had about a fraction of an inch before hitting the big twelve.

  The woman blinked and then reached down to sort through a bunch of notes on her desk. "Well, Mister Jackson left about thirty minutes ago and he didn't say anything to me." She pulled small slip of paper out. "Oh-my-gosh! I'm terribly sorry, officer. Here it is right here. It's my fault. I should have looked through this earlier. I was supposed to call Terry in. I'm real sorry."

  She was looking at Chase with big old eyes that he expected to see tears pouring out of any second. He felt his anger drain away. "That's OK, Ma'am. If you could just call the driver in now, I can wait."

  She got on the radio and called Terry's cab, ordering the driver to report in. Chase grabbed a newspaper and accepted the cup of coffee she offered. He knew she felt better when he took it even though the coffee was terrible.

  He waited fifteen minutes. Terry was a petite, dark haired woman who appeared to be around thirty. She wasn't happy about being called in. Chase guessed she got paid by the mile and not by the hour.

  "What's up?"

  The old lady pointed at Chase. "Mister Jackson wants you to talk to the detective there."

  Terry gave Chase an appraising look. Chase stood and offered his hand. "Detective Chase. Boulder PD."

  She took the hand and then a seat. "What's up, Detective Chase, Boulder PD?"

  Chase sat across from her. "I'm investigating a murder that occurred Wednesday night. We think the victim was abducted from the CU campus around ten or slightly after. I got a tip that a cab was in the vicinity of the victim's car around that time and I did some checking. Your supervisor says you logged in a drop-off at CU around that time."

  She didn't have to think long about it. "Yeah. I dropped someone off Wednesday night at CU."

  Chase wondered why she remembered it so easily. "Do you recollect anything about the person you dropped off?"

  She nodded. "Yeah. A woman. In her thirties. Real classy. Dark hair. She was kind of neat."

  Chase rummaged through his notebook and pulled out Rachel's picture. "Was this the woman?"

  "Yep."

  "What time did you drop her off?"

  "Hold on." Terry got up and went over the file cabinets that lined one wall. She rummaged through and then came back with a folder. "All right. Let's see. OK. Pick up at nine-forty-three. Drop off at ten-oh-eight."

  "Where did you pick her up at?"

  She checked the log. "Broomfield. Hemlock and 2nd Avenue."

  Broomfield was along Route 36, the major link between Boulder and Denver. It was more a suburb of Denver than anything else. "Do you know what she was doing there?"

  Terry shook her head. "She was standing on the corner. I don't exactly remember what was there."

  "When you dropped her off did you see where she went?"

  "Nope. I had another call near Pearl Street."

  "Did you see anyone hang
ing around or people in a car? Anything?"

  "Not that I remember."

  "Did she have anything with her? A book bag or purse?"

  "She had a bag—like a large workout bag. Black."

  They hadn’t found that with the clothes. Chase went back to her original statement. "You said she was a neat lady. What was neat about her?"

  "She talked to me. I can't remember exactly what all we talked about, but she had her shit together. I remember she did tell me that she thought it was pretty cool that I was driving a cab and that I wasn't married." Terry paused. “She the dead woman I read about?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fuck.” Terry seemed genuinely sorry. More than Chase could say about Patsy Watkins.

  Chase pumped Terry for every drop of information, but there wasn't much more. She was probably the last friendly person Rachel had seen, Chase thought. At least she thought well of her.

  He got Terry to rummage through the files. What they found was interesting. Every Wednesday night that Rachel had missed class, she had used an A-1 cab to pick her up in the parking lot at CU at around six-forty-five and drive her to the same corner in Broomfield. She was picked up a little more than three hours later.

  Chase knew where his next stop would be. He thanked Terry and gave her his card in case she remembered anything else. She offered to buy Chase a beer after she got off. He tactfully declined, telling her that he would be working most of the night.

  * * * * *

  Chase drove Foothills Parkway south until it linked up with 36. He took that toward Denver and got off at the first Broomfield exit. Hemlock and 2nd was only about five minutes from there.

  It was a residential neighborhood. Upper middle class. Older homes for this area, which had a lot of new development. What had Rachel been doing here? Where had she gone for three hours? What had been in the black gym bag? Chase walked around, several blocks in each direction. A few local grocery stores. Had Rachel bought something in one of the stores and that was what had been in the bag? An elementary school. A Catholic church that was locked up. Chase guessed criminals didn't respect God.

  In a sad sort of way, finding out where Rachel had been all those evenings still didn't matter. She'd gotten out of that cab at ten-oh-eight at CU alive. She'd been dead around ten-thirty, maybe plus a half hour. Someone had gotten her between the cab and her car.

  Chase drove back to Boulder and into the lot where they'd found her car. He located the spot Terry had dropped Rachel off at from her description and then went through his notes and located where the BMW had been parked. A couple of hundred feet across asphalt. What had happened to Rachel Stevens during that walk?

  Then he noticed something else. The library was not on line with a walk direct from the cab drop-off spot to BMW. The three made a triangle. Where had Rachel been heading if not her car? The library to do some research?

  Everyone had said she was smart. Real smart. But that didn't mean she had a lot of common sense. She might have been sucked in too close to an open door on a car or van. Then hit on the back of the head. Dragged inside. They raped her. Most likely in the vehicle. Someone cut her throat. They drove to the park and dumped the naked body. They remembered the clothes on the way out and threw them in the garbage can at the car wash. But the bag hadn’t been with the clothes.

  It all sounded very logical. Chase drove from the lot to where it all had started that first day. It took Chase nine minutes. With the cover of night, he could see why the killers had used this spot to dump her. It was quiet out here. No houses. There was only the one road in and one out and you could see headlights coming either way for warning.

  Chase got out of his Jeep and sat on the hood. It was a clear, cool night. He could see the stars clearly overhead. A slight breeze was blowing from the mountains. In the moonlight, the rocks and meadows looked beautiful. He wondered where along that nine-minute drive Rachel Stevens had died.

  It was logical, but it was wrong. There were still a few pieces that didn't fit. Donnelly would want Chase and Porter to jam them in whether they did or not. Chase knew that wasn't Porter’s style. His partner needed to be sure before he brought a case in to the DA. They have the electric chair in Colorado for murder one and Porter would never want to have the slightest doubt when it came to the possibility of someone getting fried; not that a jury in Boulder would sentence someone to fry. Now Colorado Springs-- anywhere else in Colorado for that matter, except maybe Aspen and Vail-- the jury would want to string a killer up themselves.

  The timing bugged Chase. If four scuzzes had snatched Rachel at ten after ten for a good time, they sure had been quick about it. Even going with the far side of Hanson's estimate of time of death that left them only fifty-two minutes to snatch her, rape her, and kill her.

  Chase remembered that Hanson had also said that she had stood up sometime after having had sex. That didn't fit either. Unless they were in a van or some sort of truck. Or they'd let her out here and then killed her.

  Shit. Hanson couldn’t guarantee she was raped. Chase trusted the Doc. If he doubted rape, then Chase doubted it too. And a jury would doubt it too, because that's the way Hanson would testify unless he found something to change his mind. Which meant Porter wouldn’t go for it either.

  The gym bag and the misdirection in the parking lot also bothered Chase although it was possible his witness in the dorm had been mistaken about the latter detail.

  Chase took a deep breath and looked about. He remembered the strange feeling he had the first morning he’d been here. The lack of tracks to the body. The way her throat had been cut.

  Screw Donnelly and the media. Chase made his decision. Porter could handle the street angle. Chase was going to have to backtrack a little and take a long hard look at who Rachel Stevens had been and find out what the hell she had been doing that night for two hours and forty-five minutes. The first step was to go back tomorrow morning and see Doc Hanson. Chase headed for his apartment.

  * * * * *

  Chase was a block away from home when his beeper went off. His black one. He pulled over and checked the small LED screen. The code was for an immediate Boulder SWAT Team alert. It gave an address. North Boulder.

  As he squealed the tires pulling a U-turn, he wondered if it was a drill. They had them every once in a while. His second thought was to wonder if it was a set-up. If Fortin would be waiting there for him. Damn, he was getting paranoid.

  Chase cocked his head and heard sirens. All heading in the same direction he was, paralleling his route over on Broadway while he shot up 9th. This was no drill.

  The large black van that was both SWAT headquarters and held the team’s special gear was pulling up next to two black and whites as Chase arrived. The cops from those two were behind their cars, shotguns pointed at a large house on the other side of the street. It was backed against Open Space, which meant there was nothing man-made behind it as the land rose up to the foothills.

  Chase scuttled out of his Jeep, careful not to expose himself to the house, and got over to the van. The shift sergeant was present, as it was his duty to get the van to the alert site from the station. He had it parked front toward the house and slid between the seats, opening the back doors. Chase joined him.

  “What do you have?” Chase asked as he pulled his vest off the wall and slipped it on.

  “Shots fired. Neighbors called it in.”

  “And?” Chase pulled his keys out and unlocked the weapons bin. He grabbed an MP-5 sub-machinegun.

  “That’s it so far.”

  Another SWAT member raced up. Doug Pederson, a detective. He was a good man, but in Chase’s opinion, Boulder SWAT was about as good as army MPs when it came to door busting. Pederson slipped his vest on and grabbed another MP-5. Chase longed for a set of night vision goggles. That way he could get the power cut, then move up on the house in the dark-- odds were whoever had fired off rounds inside didn’t have NVGs and Chase would have the advantage.

  Of course, they did
n’t have NVGs in the van. Chase supposed he should be grateful Boulder had sprung for the MP-5s. The idiot who let the contract had allowed the salesman to talk him into buying the flashlight that clipped onto the bottom of the barrel-- a poor man’s way of seeing in the dark. Chase wasn’t a big fan of walking around with a light on his gun-- sort of like saying, hey, here I am and please shoot me!

  “How many shots?” Chase asked the shift sergeant.

  “A couple, then a burst of automatic weapon firing.”

  Shit, why hadn’t he told me that in the first place? Chase bit his tongue to keep from saying anything. New ballgame. More black and whites were arriving. Hell, the entire evening shift was showing up.i

  “Any of the neighbors say who lives there?”

  “A young couple and their baby.”

  Chase was getting ready to hit the shift sergeant-- he didn’t have a clue how pissed Chase was. All that good West Point training kept it bottled deep inside because it would only screw up this already fucked up situation.

  “Move those other cars out of here,” Chase ordered the shift sergeant. “Clear the houses on either side through the garage doors-- they should be covered there. Then clear every house across the street through the back doors.” Chase knew there were probably idiots looking out their windows, just waiting to catch a stray round in the head. “Then shut the street down. No one but SWAT members come through. Got it?”

  The shift sergeant nodded, happy to have marching orders. He scurried off to do as he’d been told. Chase looked at Pederson, who appeared none too happy. As far as Chase knew, no one other than Chase on the SWAT team had ever fired shots for real-- real being when someone was shooting back.

  Chase reached out and stopped Pederson as he was pulling an MP-5 out of the bin. “I need you on the long gun.”