by Hart Rivers
“Maybe that’s what this meeting is about. CID knows it wasn’t JD.”
Gregg had to admit JD’s decision to get arrested so Rick would think he was momentarily out of the picture was not a bad move. JD explained he had strong suspicions at that point about Rick, but it was mostly based on a private conversation with the Mnong Headman who had some misgivings about Rick he couldn’t substantiate beyond “a bad feeling” and other circumstantial evidence—unfortunately, some of it tampered with—and JD thought the killer might be lured out if only given a small window of time to strike.
The problem was getting Kate out of there just in case, not to mention everyone else possibly being put in jeopardy. JD even had some suspicion that Rick may have murdered Nikki and was hastily working with Colonel Johnson on getting enough evidence to make an arrest at the mission, which would effectively take Rick away from the field on the pretext of another crime, even if further investigation proved he hadn’t committed it. But at least it would temporarily keep him under lock and key while conclusively determining whether or not the highly decorated Captain Richard Galt was responsible for the murders of their men in the field. Further complicating the arrest of an extremely valuable Special Ops trainer was that if he was not the one doing the killing, then the field was exactly where they needed to keep him so he could help track down and eliminate the true culprit or culprits.
JD checked himself out of the slammer early when he made a connection between the matches from San Antonio and an MP who had come in from Fort Sam Houston, murdered just next door at Camp McDermott. This coincided with a little time off Rick decided to take right after they left the Highland’s firebase morgue.
He should have used a different chopper. The pilot of Crystal Blue confirmed that he no sooner dropped them off than Rick radioed in a request for a pick up and drop off next door and it sort of irked the pilot he had to make two trips back to back that didn’t include some action—and he wasn’t talking about the kind of action that had Rick wearing a pair of Converse.
As Gregg and Izzy neared HQ, Gregg recalled, “The last time we were summoned over here Peck was responsible.”
“He sure seemed to get over Nikki quick. What I don’t understand is why he gets to waltz around whistling like he’s going on vacation and we get called into headquarters.”
“Guess we’re about to find out. Wow, check out the car.”
A black Cadillac limousine with dark windows was parked in the shadows near the building, about where Derek had pushed past them before getting his M16 to blow the hell out of Top.
“I still need a haircut,” Gregg said thoughtfully. He ran a hand through his beachcomber blond hair as they entered HQ and approached Top’s old desk. “Hey, Terry, how you doing?”
“242 and a wake-up,” Terry muttered. He was already out of his seat. “I’m to escort you to the conference room immediately. You’ll notice a couple of Green Berets standing guard at the door.”
“Who’s in there?” Izzy whispered.
Terry kept his own voice low. “Colonel Kellogg, Colonel Johnson, General Claymore from MACV headquarters in Saigon, and a very important looking gentleman in a suit who was not introduced to me.”
Terry escorted them past the Green Berets standing at attention in their nylon combat boots, and there was Colonel Kellogg looking as if he was screwed into his chair at one end of the conference table, with Colonel Johnson beside him. At the other end a much decorated General paced near a man of obvious stature who stood in the shadows of the room.
The General turned his gaze on Kellogg.
“You are excused now. Remember what I told you.”
Izzy watched Kellogg leave with his head down, looking at no one. The guards followed him out. General Claymore then deferred to the man in the suit, who stood in the furthest corner as if seeking privacy in the shadows.
His hair was thick and silvery. When he spoke his voice was refined, perfectly matching his attire and aristocratic bearing as he flipped open an engraved pocket watch.
“Let’s get to it, Glen.” The man in the suit tapped his foot.
Maybe it was because of all the combat boots Izzy was accustomed to seeing but he noticed the tapping foot was wearing really shiny shoes.
“Have a seat, Doctors,” the general instructed, indicating the chairs across from him in the glare of what looked and felt like interrogation lights. “Relax. This is just a briefing. According to JD, you both deserve medals for what you’ve been through, but of course you won’t get any because none of this ever happened. Now did it?”
For a moment, Izzy couldn’t find his voice. He wasn’t sure how they were supposed to relax when a very clear threat had been issued in the question that wasn’t really a question but an order.
“No, sir,” Izzy answered.
“It never happened,” Gregg repeated.
“Good. Then we also understand each other that you never saw what I’m about to show you. Correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
He shoved a folder across the desk, directly in front of them. “Open it.”
Izzy wasn’t sure what he or Gregg were expecting but there was a picture of Rick Galt attached to some official looking military papers, then beneath those were a stack of typed pages that looked like journal entries. He was drawn to pull those out while Gregg studied the remainder of the file.
“The guy in the picture was here in 64. Jerry Prince was his name. Same deal, though. Started doing his own guys. No proof but clearly a nut job. They sent him back home to the Madigan General Psych Unit, the locked ward, then to the special unit for the criminally insane where he suddenly disappeared with his records in December of 66.”
“When you say disappeared, do you mean in the conventional sense?” asked Izzy, eyeing the top page that read: KILLERS.
“Walked away. Do not ask how. ‘His’ body was found later, horribly burned, beyond recognition—but, with some Jerry Prince ID conveniently left intact. We just recently tracked it down with the picture.”
“And when did Rick Galt arrive?” asked Gregg.
“June, 67.”
“His file here says ROTC.”
Colonel Johnson jumped in. “Yeah, well, apparently the real guy has been missing since that winter. Went on a ski trip. His parents thought he took off to Canada to get out of Nam after he graduated from Washington State. Instead he moved up quickly in the ranks. Great soldier, Richard Galt.”
“You mean Prince actually returned here after escaping the psych unit?” Izzy couldn’t keep the incredulity from his voice. Or, his eyes from racing over the headers of the typed pages he flipped through:
DARKNESS
KITTENS
CLEANSING
CUT
And then he came to the last one. It read:
NOTES FROM HELL
“As Rick Galt, he did well. Highly decorated. Volunteers for all the shit. Teaches hand to hand. Highly proficient and skilled. Dedicated and deadly.” Johnson snorted. “Should be on a poster.”
“If you think about it, a war is a perfect place for a psychopathic killer.” Gregg, pointing out what had become all too obvious.
Izzy moved the journal pages closer, so Gregg could get a look at them too.
“Absofuckinglutely,” Johnson agreed. “We could use more of them if there was a way to keep them from crossing the wrong line.”
“True.” For the first time Shiny Shoes spoke to Izzy and Gregg. “So what can you tell us, doctors, to help us better understand how a mind like this works? The information may be useful.”
Gregg looked up at Izzy and shook his head, then continued to turn from one trauma and horror filled page to the next. This firsthand account of the ongoing brutalization and twisting of a child’s psyche and humanity, the systematic eroding of any sense of empathy or compassion, was so disturbing that Izzy was relieved to transfer his attention to clinical theory.
“It’s a mental illness,”
he explained. “The obsession, the fantasy, the victim, the shock, the fear, the thrill he gets from doing it in his own private, precise, and unique way. Close, from behind, feeling it. Nothing else provides the release. Only this serves him and he only serves it.”
“What else?”
“He’s a hunter. He loves the hunt and he loves the kill. It’s actually what gets him off. The adrenaline rush is like a big drug hit.” Izzy shivered, remembering the look of ecstasy on Rick’s face as he impaled Professor Nguyen.
“But why our own guys?” General Claymore persisted.
“He wants to hunt the best. In a sick, twisted way he’s like a bull fighter who raises and trains the best bulls in the world to be killers and then he kills them. It makes him the best. The very best killer in the world. A monster. He really is the Boogeyman.”
Gregg held up a hand. “Just give me a minute here.”
They all went quiet; even Shiny Shoes stopped his toe tapping.
When Gregg laid down the entries, he asked, “How did you get these?”
Claymore answered. “He had some secret notes hidden away that were found after his escape, but most came out as part of his therapy at Madigan and one of the shrinks was studying his writings when the medical records disappeared. Why?”
“Because if you want to have a step-by-step construction plan on how to make a psychopath, these entries of his provide a nice blueprint for creating one: The isolation, the abandonment, the trauma of killing at a young age, a child inured to emotions against the unthinkable, then getting twisted to a point where it feels good to kill, to feel the ultimate power after you’ve been so powerless to defend yourself against others, against the system.”
“But not everyone would turn out the same way under duplicate circumstances,” Shiny Shoes noted.
“Of course not. But don’t ever doubt that everyone has a dark side of the brain and that’s where we can all feel some excitement or pleasure in pain and killing. That’s our big cultural no-no, to admit that violence and even killing is exciting. But just go to a major prize fight in Vegas. Listen to the cheers when the blood flies. And, the more brutal it becomes, the more frenzied the audience gets. Blood lust. It’s in all of us. And it shames us. Well,” Gregg amended, “most of us.”
“Absolutely,” Izzy concurred. “It wasn’t that long ago that burning a witch at the stake or a public beheading was cause for a festival. Free entertainment. Come one, come all, bring the whole family and have a picnic. The fact simply is that civilization and civility is a very lovely and precious, but very thin veneer, over a twisting, brutal savagery within us all.”
“And Richard Galt—or Jerry Prince—has embraced his own inner dark side. Horrifically so. The result?” Gregg tapped the typed pages. “He is a psychopath’s psychopath.”
A clock ticked in the background. Long moments passed before General Claymore suddenly reached over to reclaim the file. Gregg laid a hand on the entries.
“You know, I knew this guy. I even thought he was a friend. Somehow I missed it all, completely, and I would like to understand how I got so blindsided. Is there any chance I could have a copy of these to study? Or, even just the last one since I didn’t read it yet?”
The general looked at the mysterious guy with the shiny shoes. He simply opened his watch again and said, “The request will be considered. Doctors? Until we meet again. Glen, you know what to do.”
He exited the room without speaking to anyone else and Izzy could hear the steady march of combat boots escorting Shiny Shoes out of headquarters.
The general cleared his throat. “I will say simply that you are to have an immediate and permanent case of amnesia regarding your dealings with the individual you were assisting on a case that never existed.”
“You are referring to JD?” Gregg asked.
“Who?” The general shook his head. “Never heard of him. You know nothing that you have learned and you know no one because, well, Doctors, you would like to go home, wouldn’t you? Otherwise I can arrange a nice year’s extension, then maybe another one after that. But if everyone shuts up, everyone goes home on schedule. And once you’re there you still keep your mouth shut or there will be dire consequences. Go home, tell no tales. Am I clear?”
Gregg nodded. Izzy was just as mute. There was an unspoken innuendo in the general’s tone that raised the fine hair on his neck. It reminded him of the creepy, crawly feeling he had at his back when they were bent over Rick and turned around to see JD pointing a gun at them.
The army wanted this whole thing squashed, gone, nonexistent, and the army would get its way. But, Izzy now wondered if they had somehow not gotten their way when the General snapped, “Let me hear you say it, Doctors: Go home, tell no tales.”
“Go home. Tell no tales.”
“Louder.”
“GO HOME. TELL NO TALES.”
There was a long silence. “All right, don’t make me regret this. Are we on the same page?”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
Another long silence. “Dismissed.”
Izzy had never managed such a sharp salute. He got out as fast as he could without running, didn’t even stop to say goodbye to Terry.
Neither did Gregg.
They were both breathing hard when they got outside.
“Holy mother of—” Gregg gasped as soon as they were out of earshot of a living creature. “Did you pick up on the subtext of that shit?”
“Loud and clear. It’s what he didn’t say that said it all.”
They looked at each other and knew: Dead men tell no tales.
There had been over 10,000 US troops sent home in body bags in the past year alone. A great many drafted, just like them. What difference would two more casualties make, particularly if they were in on some top secret shenanigans the powers that be had a vested interest in containing?
“Do you…” Izzy swallowed hard, kept his voice hushed. “Do you think, just to be on the safe side, JD was supposed to…?”
“Who?” Gregg said.
“Right,” Izzy agreed. “Well, we seem to be safe for now at least. But, what about everyone else?”
Kate, Shirley, Robert David, Margie, they all knew Rick was the Ghost Soldier now. They all knew JD worked undercover and had vanished as suddenly as he appeared. What they didn’t know were the details, and the devil was in the details when it came to what the two of them knew and no one else did. The others had not seen the body bags, the proof of Rick’s handiwork in the field. They did not know Rick had brutally murdered a Mnong Headman and his wife or an MP from San Antonio and no telling how many others. Or that he had escaped from a military mental ward to make a mockery of the US government’s internal checks and balances or that he had been whisked away to cover it all up, as if he had never existed, but was nowhere near as dead as anyone else thought.
And that was the biggie. That’s what made Izzy and Gregg a potential liability the others were not, whose collective silence had nonetheless been bought through other means:
The directive to Shirley and Kate was to simply go along with the story of the horrible VC massacre, a version in which Shirley’s late husband was a heroic Christian martyr; otherwise, the three of them would be traitors who harbored the enemy like Professor Nguyen and their shared blame for the massacre would ensure they were incarcerated indefinitely and the mission would be closed. As for Margie and Robert David, they had careers to consider and it was clearly up to them to salvage their futures, not to do anything stupid. If anyone squealed, everyone paid. The military held them all as hostage as Rick had when they were bound and pleading at his merciless hands.
And none of their fellow survivors had a fraction of the dirt to spread as the new team players did.
“They don’t have the same tales to tell, Izzy. They didn’t make the team.” Gregg’s still-healing jaw clenched as he added, “Not even Peck. He’s safe, too.”
Chapter 34
It felt like a sugar sweet night ahead, Peck
thought with a smile, as he arrived on his favorite island via a pleasant sunset boat ride on calm seas.
Uncle Sam was expecting him. Because of the whole Nikki fiasco he had waited a respectable time before scoring some action through his favorite source with nieces to spare.
His patience was about to be rewarded and handsomely. The stars were already aligned in his favor. Life at work was so much better now with that pompous Robert David Thibeaux returned stateside, then Margie shipped out just the week before which meant that Jew Moskowitz was moping around.
Best of all, though, a solid two months had passed with Mikel gone. As far as Peck knew, he was rotting away in LBJ, or better yet at cozy Ft. Leavenworth. It would almost be worth a trip to Kansas to see him behind bars. Indeed, that would be a pleasure.
But tonight he had more immediate gratification ahead of him and if that included some uppers and Jack to enhance the evening while he roughed up the girl, inside and out? That was one of the great things really about being in the military, and especially about being in Vietnam, most of the people around him were so simple and unimaginative he could get by with just about anything, and no one would care what he did to a gook.
Uncle Sam met Peck outside the secluded hut on schedule, showed him in, simpering, “Numbah one for you GI. Numbah one, very young, very pretty.”
Uncle Sam immediately bowed out the door and shut it.
Peck heard a noise like ice cubes clinking in a glass. He turned. The room was as he remembered it with a desk, a phonograph, a chair, mattress on the floor surrounded by mosquito netting, a box containing adult toys—but there was an addition he wasn’t expecting.
His heart immediately raced. His breath caught. That didn’t happen often, not even when Nikki died. Normally, it was the elusive high he was always after, but not like this.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Mikel smiled. He stood beside the rattan chair, the same one Peck had urged Nikki to sit on before kneeling at her feet and delivering his Oscar-worthy proposal.