by Hart Rivers
“But she does love you, Gregg.” JD’s voice was quiet, thoughtful. Gregg half expected him to pull out a box of tissues and start taking notes, like he was the therapist sympathizing with the wreck on the couch. “She even told me she didn’t deserve you. Maybe that’s why she thinks I deserve a chance with her. I probably don’t. Actually, I’m quite positive that I don’t. But even guys like me need something good every now and then, something to remind us that certain things in life are worth living for. Whether we deserve it or not.”
Even Hitler liked to paint and Fish liked to write when he wasn’t eating kids. Everyone needs some form of sanctuary, Gregg.
As if the echo of Izzy’s observation had summoned him, there he was, stumbling half-asleep to the coffee pot and scratching his nuts en route.
“If you look in the refrigerator there’s some stuff mom would send; baloney, good cheese, grapes, and some fresh bread on the counter. Maybe you’ll share with Gregg?”
Izzy spun around to their corner of the room, blinking furiously behind his horn rimmed frames.
“You scared the crap out of me! Where did you come from?”
“Hell?”
JD laughed like the devil that Gregg really wanted him to be. It would make things so much easier to keep him consigned to a neat little box marked with a big fat X. But no, it wasn’t that easy and such complications weren’t helping him keep all the snakes and worms slithering out of the gray matter lately.
“Actually, Gregg and I have been discussing Rick’s opinion that our little morgue visit came compliments of the Chinese doing a psyops overachiever thing—you know, because those short guys have to compensate somehow, Napoleon complex or whatever you call it. But if it’s not them, and we’re dealing instead with some whacko of our own—”
“I’d say more like an entire lock down unit from what we saw.” Gregg was glad to pick up the thread and switch from personal to professional dealings. “Izzy and I did consider the possibility of a cult or religious sect being the perpetrators but discounted that theory as being the least likely in this particular scenario.”
Izzy schlepped to the table with his coffee and a hastily prepared tray of eats.
“Thanks for the food, JD. That was thoughtful.”
“I have no idea what came over me.”
Izzy put together a sandwich and handed it to Gregg. JD waved away a similar offering and got down to business.
“Okay, let’s hear your theories. Izzy, you start. Educate me.”
“Very well.” Izzy touched his temple with his forefinger, reminding Gregg of the Scarecrow launching into the Pythagorean Theorem upon receiving his brain. “As you probably know from your own training, profiling has been in order for a long time, at least since the days of Jack the Ripper in the 1880s, when the good doctors George Phillips and Thomas Bond used the crime scene evidence to make predictions about who the killer might be. The whole process about assembling crime scene evidence from victims or witnesses and survivors then results in a description or profile like age, race, sex, and physical traits such as being big or small, strong, left handed, right handed. Then there is the method and manner of killing, frequency, body mutilation or not, or staging the victims’ bodies and so forth, and so Gregg and I put together something that also indicates a certain kind of personality and pathology.”
“Like the Matesky case,” added Gregg.
“Exactly,” Izzy said. “Matesky, also known as the Mad Bomber of New York, was profiled by Dr. James Brussel, then New York’s Assistant Commissioner of Mental Hygiene. He created a description that said the bomber would be a male in his 50s living in Connecticut, unmarried, foreign, self-educated, and paranoid and that he would have had a vendetta against Con Ed, the initial target in over thirty bombings between 1940 and 1956. Using that profile, the police found him. So, basically, the idea is to create a description of our killer. Personally I like Gregg’s perspective over anything classical theory can come up with.”
“Gregg?” JD prompted, looking at them both a little differently.
Gregg’s inner dragon was responding to the sandwich. He wasn’t typically one to show off, but if JD wanted theories and classroom pontifications, Gregg didn’t mind unloading both barrels.
“In a nutshell, how the persona behaves before, during and after the crime event are kinds of behaviors, and behaviors are what a personality does, just as crime scenes and victims show us those behaviors. If this is just a person, not a foreign psyops team effort, then what we are seeing is someone who is able to accomplish on their own what would normally take a team of efficient killers. He would have to be extremely, extremely efficient and organized and methodical and very strong and fast and skilled. He would be a ruthless killing machine acting in a controlled, tactically organized, frenzy. Just think about that.”
Gregg paused for effect. “He hunts and stalks these victims who themselves are hunter stalkers on the highest order. He methodically kills them, mutilates them in various creative ways which, in his mind at least, approaches an art form. He looks to have a huge ego about who he is and what he is capable of doing to even attempt this kind of event, and from your initial information to the evidence Rick provided, he seems to be escalating the challenge in his hunts and also escalating the level of carnage, shock, and terror inflicted. However, I personally do not see one person remotely capable of sustaining all of this, so ‘he’ is most likely ‘they.’”
“Really?” JD tapped his chin, clearly intrigued. “‘They’ as in you think the killer has an accomplice?”
“It is not entirely unheard of for a killer like this to have an accomplice or partner, but if you are looking for a psychotic killer who could be one of our own, with an accomplice scenario you would then be looking for two psychotic killers working in tandem and living in close enough proximity to plan, then execute their strategy of murdering a targeted patrol without raising suspicion. Repeatedly. What are the chances of all these factors coming together to support such a theory?” Gregg pinched his thumb and forefinger together. “About this much, if you ask me.”
“Or me,” Izzy agreed. “Therefore, the most logical explanation has already been offered by Rick, that this has to be a team. And this team is almost certainly a Chinese or Russian organized psyops operation that is utilizing a highly trained band of killers for a mission that it is succeeding magnificently well.”
“Which also indicates that the best and most logical course of action would be for a team of highly trained experts like Rick to go after the opposing team of assailants that the evidence presented points to,” Gregg concluded.
“I concur with Doctor Kelly.” Izzy whipped off his glasses. “If this is one guy it is Superman. If it’s one guy with an accomplice, it’s Batman and Robin. And, as we all know, outside a comic book, they simply do not exist.”
Chapter 19
An impressive entry gate with a sweeping arch overhead announced in English and Vietnamese: Peace Mission Hospital. The turquoise Chevy convertible glided beneath the arch and continued along a long, curving drive with JD in the driver’s seat, Nikki and Robert David squeezed into the front with him, Margie sandwiched between Gregg and Izzy in the back. All in all a very handsome group en route to a party and dressed for the occasion.
The aloha shirts with vibrant flowers that Gregg had scored for him and Izzy matched everyone’s moods. Maybe especially his and Izzy’s moods, Gregg thought, since JD had not challenged their “Ghost Soldier” analysis that got the ball out of their court and into the one where it really belonged: JD’s and Rick’s and any other higher powers that snagged a piece of the action for covert psyops missions. Two just graduated shrinks from California and New York were more than happy to pitch in with the analysis end of things, contribute what brains and skills they possessed to extinguish a group of monsters that were going after their own guys in uniform. But—and this was a very big BUT—such assistance did not extend to further examining dismembered, decomposing remain
s and/or praying they made it back to the 99KO alive before getting bit by a deadly snake or witnessing a murder outside the wire.
The relief was so enormous that Gregg had not only slept through the night, he slept so peacefully and deep that he hadn’t even heard his alarm.
And now, as they swept past the lawns and flowered grounds of an old French country estate, he felt not only rested but delivered from a living nightmare into a waking dream. The red tiled roofs, light blue shutters, and white stucco exteriors could have been anywhere in the South of France with the mission house proper, Matisse’s home. Around the old bright red painted door were huge pots of geraniums in brilliant whites and reds. Bougainvillea plants climbed up the walls creating an effect like something out of a nineteenth-century watercolor painting.
“It’s beautiful!” Margie exclaimed, leaning even closer to Izzy and looking as sunny as her pale, yellow dress while they all piled out from JD’s magic carpet ride.
“Y’all are the best to let me tag along.” Nikki impulsively gave JD, Izzy, and Robert David a kiss on the cheek, then a big hug to Gregg.
“Better not let Rick see you doing that,” he teased Nikki. “That is one hombre I would not want to make jealous.”
“I do like him,” Nikki admitted. “He treated me so nice and said such nice things in his letter it makes me wish I could see him again sooner than… well, I take it he’s not sure since he’s training some new troops and doing some kind of scouting, but he said he’s working on it. That’s probably for the best since I’m working on a few things myself. At any rate, thanks for delivering his letter, Gregg.”
“My pleasure, ma’am, my pleasure.” Gregg pretended to tip his hat as he emulated Rick’s initial attempt to impress her. Nikki laughed and gave him a wink. It made Gregg wonder yet again what kind of torturous childhood had twisted someone with so much going for them to get involved with anyone who didn’t treat them nice. Nikki made “nice” sound special, like it was something earned rather than an intrinsic right to have.
The French doors fronting the mission opened and Kate rushed out to greet them, followed by a dapper looking middle-aged man Gregg presumed to be the mission’s director Dr. Donnelly, the head surgeon who had overseen the mission for nearly two decades, and a very attractive much younger thirty-something woman who had to be Shirley, his new wife.
Gregg didn’t know a lot about them, but Kate had said she deeply respected Donnelly and adored Shirley, so Gregg was really looking forward to meeting them both.
He just hadn’t expected Shirley to be so young and vivacious and extraordinarily pretty. She was already taken, of course, but it was something of a relief to Gregg to have another woman command his attention for a change while Kate was in the same vicinity.
Introductions made and the guests warmly received, Shirley insisted, “While all of you make yourselves at home and see the grounds, I’ll prepare some refreshments—let’s say gin and tonics all around with appetizers on the veranda, in an hour?”
Upon their hearty collective approval of that, Shirley disappeared while Dr. Donnelly clapped his hands. “It is nice to have an ordered universe, isn’t it? Now let’s have the mandatory tour with the boring old man, along with Kate who we all know is anything but boring.”
Their little troop followed Donnelly through a winding garden path. When Kate brought up the rear with whispers exchanged between her and JD, Gregg could feel his heart literally sinking while he pretended not to notice as they approached the first of the hospital’s wards. Each of the smaller buildings were separate wards in clean white stucco buildings with blue shutters and more flowers and screen doors to allow the natural flow of air. One unit was for surgery and surgical recovery, one for pediatrics, and another for obstetrics and maternity, which was where they started.
“Kate it is your show,” said Dr. Donnelly, “take over the tour here, please.”
Kate led them into a bright airy space and for the first time Gregg wondered if, at least professionally, she had made the right decision to come here. It was hard to believe she could be happier anywhere else in the world as she introduced the Vietnamese nursing staff and walked their visiting entourage through the maternity ward. From there she tour-guided them to the next white stucco building, where it seemed they had entered another world.
Displayed on one wall were childish paintings, many disturbing; while on another wall was a mural with rainbows, flowers, birds, and children flying through a bright sky with clouds shaped like bears and tigers and elephants.
Izzy stopped at the foot of a small bed where a boy smiled and lifted two stumps that had once been his arms. The little girl in the bed next to him had only one arm and only half of her face left. The other side was covered with burns.
Gregg walked right into the back of Izzy, deliberately bumping him. The little girl laughed.
“Oh no,” Gregg said playfully, while inside he could only think, oh god no.
“Oh no!” The little girl repeated back to him. “Oh no!” And she laughed again.
Gregg walked into Izzy again and lightly bonked their heads, exclaiming, “Oh no!”
Now, both the kids were laughing. Izzy caught on to the game and walked ahead two steps then suddenly stopped again so Gregg bumped right into him. “Oh, no!” said Izzy this time, and both the kids were joined with the voices of two other little girls, laughing, their arms waving, no legs.
Izzy stepped, stepped, stopped one last time and when Gregg bumped into him they both fell down on the floor.
All the kids were on the edge of their beds now as Gregg rolled his eyes and conducted them in a chorus of: “Oh! No!”
“I had no idea I would get two professional circus clowns today,” said Kate, with an emphasis on clowns. But rather than punch a bully out and invite him to do the same, Kate went down the line and named each small patient, from, “Six-year-old Diu and her sister An, and this little guy Trang is five years old…. ”
And on she continued down the row of beds of maimed, burned, and disfigured Vietnamese children. Then up the row on the other side, the same.
Robert David grimaced. “Kate, so many.”
“Yes, so many mines and napalm bombs, so little time.”
JD picked up a ball from the floor that had rolled away from a little boy with a blanket over his legs and spun it like a Harlem Globetrotter on one finger.
He crouched down and held the spinning ball in front of the delighted boy.
Gregg heard JD say something in Vietnamese and the boy held out his arms. JD rolled the ball toward the boy and he rolled it back. Back and forth, back and forth, the game was on and even as the blanket fell away to reveal two stumps the boy’s smile got bigger and bigger.
JD said something else in Vietnamese and the boy nodded, smiling broadly. JD tucked the blanket back around him and patted his head.
“What did you say to him?” Gregg asked. He had hung back, watching, while everyone else followed Kate to the next ward.
“Just that he was my little friend and I would come back to play with him.”
“You actually have a nice way with kids.” Gregg had to grudgingly give him that. He then thought of Kate, of the bastard who got her knocked up during her semester in France, and the consequences of a back room abortion.
“Thanks, Gregg. Plenty around here to adopt.” JD pretended to dribble a ball and toss it into a basketball hoop.
The little girl Gregg had won over giggled and squealed, “Oh no!”
This time Gregg didn’t mind that JD had stolen yet another girl’s affections.
They quickly caught up with the rest of the group, just entering the next bright airy building. Here there were wounded men, mostly amputees, and burn victims. Several were gathered near a middle-aged man on a bed in a corner. Upon seeing the visitors their bodies stiffened and they went silent.
“These men are all doctors and my guests,” Dr. Donnelly hastened to explain, then spoke some Vietnamese that caused the inj
ured men to visibly relax before he made introductions, specifically to their higher colleague holding court.
“I’d like you to all meet my old and dear friend Professor Nguyen. The professor was one of my father’s students and is a colleague in tropical medicine.”
The silver haired professor had eyes of warmth and great intelligence, Gregg thought. He was very evidently a man of stature and strength in his late fifties, looking fit and robust except for the bandages around his chest.
Robert David stepped forward to shake his hand. “It is indeed a great honor to meet you, Professor. I remember well your paper on consciousness and malaria when you were with the Pasteur Institute here. Are you still with the Institute, Sir?”
The professor acknowledged the compliment with a gracious nod of his head.
“My research, I am afraid, has been interrupted of late with…” he gestured around at the beds filled with other Vietnamese patients, “shall we call it extended research and practice in the field? But I am so very flattered that you remember me and it is a great pleasure to meet you, Dr. Thibeaux. And you… and you…”
He shook each of their hands in turn.
Gregg noticed that Kate shifted uncomfortably, glancing at JD with something akin to a silent… plea? The exchange happened so fast Gregg would have thought he imagined it, except for the subtle nod JD gave in return.
“Professor, could you join us for dinner later?” invited Dr. Donnelly.
“Yes, please do,” insisted Robert David, equally oblivious to whatever dynamics were bouncing between Kate and JD.
Gregg darted a glance towards Izzy. He was just as clearly oblivious to everything but Margie in her yellow sun dress, touching his arm.
The professor agreed and Kate suddenly clapped her hands, announcing, “Who’s ready for those nice G and T’s on the veranda that Shirley must have waiting for us?”
That was all the incentive everyone needed to move on and quick, as Kate no doubt intended, with the exception of JD.