Highest Law: A Gripping Psychological Thriller

by R. J. Pineiro

  As I drop my second magazine and reload, the van finally swerves to the right, smashing into the sides of two parked cars, bounces off, and crashes head-on into a third vehicle, a Ford F150 pick-up truck, like mine.

  That does the trick.

  The impact kills the van’s forward momentum while almost turning it sideways to the street. Coolant hisses through the cracked front grill.

  We reach the vehicle, which I now recognize as a Ford Aerostar van, and Murph focuses on the side door while I approach the driver’s door.

  By then, the Marines have decided to join in the fray and assist the SEALs. They’re running toward us, weapons also drawn.

  “NCIS!” Mia shouts.

  “CID!” Adanna shouts.

  Seriously?

  I aim the Sig through the shattered driver’s side window but there’s not much left of the man above the neck. My repeated rounds apparently splattered most of the head on the windshield and dashboard.

  I know. Disgusting. But I didn’t start this.

  So, I join Murph, who’s already reaching for the silver handle on the sliding door that the shooter had closed less than twenty seconds ago.

  “You’re surrounded!” I shout, before he pulls it open and slides it back just as Mia and Adanna catch up to us.

  We aim our pistols at what turns out to be just an empty cargo area and a second sliding door, also fully opened, revealing the other side of the street.

  “Dammit!” I shout, realizing the trick. “The shooter rushed straight through!”

  “What?” ask Mia and Adanna in unison.

  I ignore them as Murph and I run back to the spot where we last saw him.

  “See anything?” I ask, scanning up and down the street, but the place is deserted, except for the few neighbors that are venturing past their front doors to take a look at the commotion. And I also hear sirens now in the distance.

  “No,” he replies, as Adanna catches up to us while Mia holsters her weapon and dials the phone, probably calling MCRT to come work the scene. “He’s gone.”

  “Who’s gone?” Adanna asks, breathing heavily.

  “The shooter,” I reply, holstering my weapon. “Bastard’s a goddamned ghost.”

  “What ghost?”

  I turn to face Mia, who’s ending a call on her phone, putting it away, and producing a pair of blue nitrile gloves, which she proceeds to slip on. Adanna follows her lead and also dons a pair of gloves while Murph and I look on because we have neither the gloves nor the training to work a crime scene.

  “The one who got away,” I tell her. “Call me crazy, but he looks awfully close to one of the Russians I saw with Jones on that mountain.”

  Murph looks at me for a moment and his eyes broaden a bit. “Shit. Yeah,” he finally says. “Maybe.”

  “We need an ID on that driver ASAP,” I say. “He could be Russian.”

  “Yeah… about that,” Mia says, peeking through the window before frowning. “Law, you blew his goddamned head off. What were you thinking?”

  I’m not sure how to reply to that.

  “And with hollow point forty-fives?” she shakes her head. “So, let’s see, facial recognition’s definitely out. That leaves fingerprints and DNA—if he’s in the system—and maybe dental records if you left him any damned teeth.”

  “I was trying to stop them from—”

  “I know what you were trying to do, and I told you just an hour ago that you’re not in country anymore. And this wasn’t a goddamned CQB scenario with a shooter taking down a hospital. Finesse, Law. Fucking finesse.”

  I blink at this woman trying to talk to me about grace and elegance.

  “We needed to do anything we can to catch these bastards alive so we can question them—or at a minimum leave something for Harry to work on. Comprende?”

  “Fine,” I say. “I get it.”

  “That’s what you said an hour ago, and yet…” She extends a hand toward the headless driver. “Now go sit somewhere and think about what you did.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. Go. I need to deal with this shit show,” she says as the first police cruiser turns the corner and accelerates toward us.

  Mia and Adanna raise their badges high in the air and point to the curb to guide the cops. Within ten minutes, four more police cruisers, two ambulances, and even a Humvee packed with MAs make the scene along with two TV news vans. Even NCIS Special Agent Anthony Rossi arrives since he is actually in charge of the Portsmouth area.

  So, reluctantly—and grudgingly—I do what I was told: go sit somewhere on the stained concrete driveway of the late Captain Jonathan Kerns while on some sort of Mia time-out.

  And watch the shit show.

  Chapter 16

  Two hours later, Mia and I are back in Yanez’s frigid domain while Murph is driving Adanna to Virginia Beach. Because the shootings took place in Portsmouth, it was determined that NCIS would have jurisdiction—much to Adanna’s discontent. But all of the information would be shared with its sister agency in the USMC. However, there was no dispute about the place to perform the autopsies because Yanez’s Tidewater District ME Office rules this corner of the state of Virginia.

  But answers from the van or its headless driver that could help us solve our eight-month-old mystery may be slow coming thanks to my handiwork. The Norfolk MCRT team and Agent Rossi are still scrubbing the crime scene while Yanez works his magic on the driver, whose prints, unfortunately, were not in the FBI’s NGI. The Bureau’s New Generation Identification system contains the fingerprints of close to 100 million people in the United States, including those of known criminals and suspected terrorists. And that meant we were basically in a holding pattern waiting to hear from international databases as well as from a DNA test and perhaps dental records if MCRT can locate any of the man’s teeth. But Yanez did point out one thing before Purplehair moved the driver from a gurney into a body cooler: a hasty attempt to erase an old tattoo on his shoulder. Using some quick ME black magic that included some special dye, the forensic guru was able to resurface the image of a skeleton wearing a beret with a star and clutching a large knife, poised for combat.

  A tattoo I’ve seen before.

  So at least I was able to point out to Mia that Mr. Nohead was likely Spetznas, Russian special forces, confirming my suspicion that it was probably Casper the not-so-friendly-ghost doing the sniper honors.

  And if that’s the case, what is a Russian operative—assuming he’s also Spetznas like his headless comrade—doing on American soil firing on a retired USAF captain?

  And why would the CIA be working with these guys, and in Afghanistan of all places, and now here?

  What are they so desperately trying to cover up?

  Plus, there’s something else that’s been bugging me since Germany: the timing of Uncle D. showing up just hours after Jones and Linebacker made their cameo appearance at the hospital. But, like Granite, my beloved uncle claimed he was just helping me move on.

  Jimmy told me to tell you that you needed to get the fuck over it and rejoin the real war out there.

  Well, Uncle D., it now looks as if I was fighting a very real war all along by going after the bastards who barbecued us on that mountain.

  And so, on the way back to Yanez’s world, I placed calls in to Granite and Uncle D.

  The first call resulted in the colonel’s latest Pentagon aide taking my name and number—just as had been the case each time I tried to contact Granite since our one Skype call last December. Though this time, I also had the aide write down the fact that the same Russki I saw on that mountain just killed the pilot of the gunship who was operating under orders from the CIA and sanctioned by no other than General Baker.

  I’m betting I get a call back this time.

  The second call resulted in an answering service, where I dec
ided to leave my uncle, who has been mysteriously and conveniently missing since my return, a more elaborate, and quite colorful message of my recent discoveries.

  But for now, all of that is on temporary hold because Mia and I are back to where we left off this morning. Apparently, while Captain Kerns was enlightening us on the finer points of a CIA black ops sortie, the good pathologist claims to have made progress on Corporal Dawson’s mystery murder.

  Yanez stands to one side of a large flat screen on the wall next to the body coolers holding a remote control. Mia and I flank the other side of the high-definition screen. Purplehair is in the back sitting behind a computer and wearing a set of headphones, hopefully doing something more productive than vegging out on social media or video games.

  Yanez starts by showing us the results from the analysis of the blood of Corporal Dawson, the hospital file thief whose body is still on the same pedestal table but now covered with a blue blanket.

  In addition, we notice a second body under a blanket on the adjacent pedestal table, and a third on the next one.

  “Hey, Harry,” Mia says, pointing at the new cadavers. “I thought I had an exclusive with you today.”

  Yanez glances over at them. “I’m going to get to that.” Then pointing at the screen, he says in his forensic monotone voice, “Corporal Dawson had prescriptions for Prozac, Paxil, and Zilopronol-B, and I found traces of all three in his system.”

  I raised my right eyebrow a bit. Those are three of the four meds I’m on.

  “Besides that,” Yanez adds, “the only abnormality was his testosterone level being on the high side. Almost one thousand.”

  “So, Harry,” Mia replies, fidgeting with a new pack of Marlboros she bought at a corner store on the way back to the morgue along with a plastic lighter. Her last pack and the expensive lighter were sprayed with Kerns’ blood, turning them into MCRT crime scene evidence. “You’re telling me I used my silver bullets to learn that the good corporal had no problems getting a woody?”

  “Just the opposite,” Yanez says. “High T-levels result in shrunken testicles, like Dawson’s appear to be, because a lot of the excess testosterone is converted to estrogen, the female—”

  “I know what estrogen is, and I’m also pretty damn sure it’s not what killed him.”

  Instead of replying, Yanez works the remote control, which changes the bloodwork charts on the screen to a scanned image of what looks like a brain, which I presume to be Dawson’s.

  “I did find something peculiar… right here.” Yanez points to a couple of identical almond-shaped spots near the middle of the brain. “These are the amygdalae, the two groups of nuclei responsible for the processing of decision making and emotional responses. They’re part of the body’s limbic system.”

  “Good to know,” Mia says. “So, what about them?”

  Yanez glances at her, then at me, frowns, and says, “Like everything else in the human brain, they’re supposed to be mirror images of each other, one in the right hemisphere and the other in the left. The one in the right has been proven to be associated with negative emotions. Fear, anxiety, sadness, despair, anger—anything unpleasant. In contrast, electrical stimulation of the left amygdala has resulted in mostly pleasant emotions and—”

  “C’mon, Harry, I don’t have all fucking day. Where are you going with—”

  “The right one is larger,” I say, leaner closer to the screen.

  “Very good, Commander,” Yanez compliments with a tilt of the head.

  Mia shifts her gaze between him and me.

  “I had Jerry over there measure them on the computer and it’s precisely eighteen-point-seven percent larger,” the ME adds, giving Purplehair a name. “And so are the blood vessels feeding it.”

  “And that’s abnormal?” Mia asks.

  “Very much so. They’re supposed to be identical. Like I said… mirror images. Now, the brain’s right hemisphere plays a key role in the retention of what we call episodic memory, that’s what allows you to recall your emotional experiences. The right amygdala plays a central role in recalling traumatic events. In PTSD-diagnosed patients, these recollections occur more often and they’re more powerful, more lifelike, like a full body immersion in those virtual-reality games Jerry likes to play. And oftentimes they’re not a conscious recall.”

  “As in nightmares?” I ask, getting a tinge of concern since I’m certainly aboard the PTSD boat right there with Dawson and millions of other vets.

  “Yes, but not always. PTSD patients tend to relive traumatic experiences and most of the time it happens while they’re sleeping. But unconscious recalls can occur in the middle of the day, when an external event, like fireworks or a tire blowing up, transports a soldier right back to the battlefield. PTSD drugs target these areas, in essence numbing them to lessen the effects associated with the recollection of harrowing experiences. Studies have shown a correlation between high testosterone levels and swelled right amygdalae. In the case of Corporal Dawson, the abnormally-large right amygdala could be due to that, but it could also be caused by something else altogether. The larger mass would have likely resulted in increased paranoia and fearfulness, and even aggression, as his episodic memory played a more powerful role in his perception of the world and his decision-making process.”

  I can’t help but think of my own cinematic experience and hope to God that this isn’t also happening to—

  “So, you’re saying Dawson was probably delusional?”

  “That’s a strong word, but yes, to a degree and under the right external stimuli. And I may know more after I dissect his brain.”

  “But what else besides his high T-levels could have caused that?” Mia asks.

  He shakes his head. “Not sure yet.”

  “What about the PTSD meds?” I ask, trying damn hard to hide my personal concern. “You said they target that area of the brain.”

  “They do, but there has not been any evidence of PTSD medications having such effect. If anything, they tend to subdue the activity in the right amygdala, not enhance it. I pulled up the clinical trials of the most common PTSD medications, and there isn’t anything that remotely suggests swelling of the right amygdala or the vessels supplying it with oxygen. Had there been, that particular drug would have been pulled off the market long ago. Most PTSD meds have been around for quite a while.”

  I nod thoughtfully while feeling a touch of relief.

  “Alright,” Mia says. “So, this anomaly could be a probable explanation for Corporal Dawson’s strange actions. That still doesn’t give me a motive for his crime. I mean, breaking into the records department at the Hampton VA and specifically pulling the files of Marines who committed suicide, doesn’t sound like the work of a delusional individual.”

  “No,” I concur. “Just the opposite. It actually seems quite… focused.”

  “Right,” she says. “And the fact that any electronic copies were erased makes it look even more premeditated.”

  “Assuming he was the one who erased them,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Mia concedes. “Good point. I have my people scrubbing the hospital’s IT department looking for any clues. But so far, nothing. It’s as if the files just vanished, and the video surveillance has not shown anything useful yet. But apparently, the hospital also has an offsite digital archive where they back-up everything, so we’re checking that next.”

  “Again, folks,” Yanez says, once more working the remote. “I just report what I find. It’s up to you to interpret it and to follow up on it. But I may learn more when I dissect it.”

  Mia just bobs her head in obvious disappointment.

  “However,” the pathologist adds, “while I was scanning Dawson’s head, I decided to also process Franklin, the shooter, since—”

  “Did Li’l B not stay away?” Mia interrupts. “I was very specific about you not being—”
/>   “This isn’t on Special Agent Howard,” Yanez cuts in. “I squeezed Franklin in because of the possibility that he and Dawson may have been working together.”

  “Who suggested that to you?” Mia said.

  The chief medical examiner shrugs. “The timing, and maybe because I’ve been hanging around you people for too damn long.”

  Mia tilts her head at him. “Okay, Harry, fine,” she says. “What did you find?”

  Yanez thumbs the remote control and a second brain appears next to Dawson’s, and I don’t need a degree in forensic pathology to tell me what’s wrong. Franklin’s right amygdala is nearly twice the size of his left one.

  “Holy shit,” Mia says, reading my thoughts.

  “I thought you’d say something to that effect,” Yanez replies as I get closer to the screen, before looking at them.

  “So,” I say, “if Dawson’s was eighteen percent bigger and that prompted an increase in paranoia and fear, Franklin’s being twice as large would have—”

  “Made him go bat-shit crazy,” Mia says.

  I blink. Those are the same words Beatriz used to describe the shooter’s actions.

  “What does that tell you, Harry?” Mia asks.

  The chief ME shakes his head. “I need to do more digging and also consult with some colleagues, but I think this could be… well, huge.”

  We stand there in silence for a while.

  “Give me a day or two to cut into their noodles and do a little… brainstorming.” He grins at his own comment.

  Mia rolls her eyes at his attempt at morgue humor, then says, “Alright. What else have you got?”

  The pallid man shifts his gaze between Mia and me before saying, “This is where it gets… pretty weird.”

  “What is?” she asks, her thick eyebrows dancing over her round stare.

  “I analyzed the residue under Corporal Dawson’s fingernails.”

  “And?”

  “And I couldn’t get a match in the military database. Ditto for the civilian database.”

  Mia exhales heavily. “What’s so weird about—”