Patterson, James - Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

“Hooray, it's you. I just got home to an empty house,” I said. “Nana and the kids deserted me.”

“Could be worse, Alex. I'm at work. Caught a bad one on Friday. Irish tourist got killed in the Tenderloin district. So tell me, what was a fifty-one-year-old priest from Dublin doing in one of the seediest parts of San Francisco at two in the morning? How did he get strangled with a pair of extra-large pantyhose? My job to find out.”

“Sounds like you're enjoying yourself anyway.” I found myself smiling. Not at the murder, but at Jamilla's enthusiasm for the Job.

Jamilla was still laughing. "Well, I do enjoy a good mystery. How's your case going? Now that sucker is nasty. I've been thinking about it in my free moments.

Somebody “murdering” Army officers by framing them for crimes they didn't commit."

I brought her up to speed, detective to detective, then we talked about more pleasant subjects, like our time together in Arizona. Finally, she said she had to run, to get back to her case. I thought about Jam after I hung up the phone. She loved police work, and she said so. I did too, but the demons were getting to me.

I grabbed another beer out of the fridge, then I headed upstairs. I was still ruminating about Jamilla. Nice thoughts. Nothing but blue skies...

I opened the bedroom door, then I just stood there, shaking my head back and forth.

Sitting on my bed were two large glass jars. Pretty ones. Maybe antiques. They were filled with what looked to be hundreds of cat's-eye marbles.

I went over to the bed. Took one out.

I rolled the marble between my thumb and forefinger. I had to admit that it felt precious.

The Saturdays I still had left.

How did I plan to use them?

Maybe that was the biggest mystery of all.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Seventy-Eight

I had the feeling that I was being followed around in Washington during the next few days. Watched. But I couldn't seem to catch them at it. They were either very good, or I was completely losing it.

On Monday I was back at work. All that week I put in my time at the precinct, on the Job. I made sure I spent extra hours at home with the kids before I did overtime in my office in the attic. A colonel named Daniel Boudreau at the Pentagon was cooperating somewhat. He'd sent me Army records from the Vietnam War. Lots of paperwork that appeared not to have been looked at in years. He also suggested I contact the Vietnamese Embassy. They had records, too.

I read through the old files until I couldn't stay awake any longer and my head was throbbing severely. I was searching for anything that might link Ellis Cooper, Reece Tate, Laurence Houston, James Etra, Robert Bennett, or even Tran Van Luu to the string of murders.

I found no connection, nothing remotely promising. Was that possible?

None of the men had ever served together in Asia.

Late that night I got another e-mail from the Foot Soldier. Jesus Christ. Obviously, he wasn't Owen Handler. So who was sending the messages? Kyle Craig? Was he still trying to play with my head? How could he get the messages out of a super max prison?

Somebody was sending them and I didn't like it. I also didn't trust the information I was getting. Was I being set up, too?

Detective Cross,

lama little disappointed in your progress. You get on a good track, then you get off it. Look back at where you've been already. The answers are all in the past. Isn't that always the way it works out?

The note was signed Foot Soldier.

But there was something else at the bottom of the page. A very disturbing icon a straw doll. Just like the ones we'd found.

After work on Wednesday of that week I visited the Vietnamese Embassy on Twentieth Street in Northeast. The FBI had made a call for me. I arrived at a little before six and went up to the fourth floor. I was met there by a translator named Thi Nguyen. At her desk were four large boxes of old records kept by the government of her country.

I sat in her small office and Thi Nguyen read passages to me. She didn't want to be doing this, I could tell. I supposed she'd been ordered to work late. On a wall behind her was a sign: Embassy Of The Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Also a portrait of Ho Chi Minh.

“There's nothing here, Detective. Nothing new,” she complained as she went through dusty files that were over thirty years old. I told her to please stay with it. She would sigh loudly, adjust her odd, black-rimmed glasses, and sullenly dig into another file. This pouty ritual went on for hours. I found her incredibly unpleasant.

At around nine o'clock, she looked up in surprise. “There's something here,” she said. “Maybe this is what you're looking for.”

Tell me. Don't edit, please. Tell me exactly what you're reading."

“That's what I've been doing, Detective. According to these records, there were unauthorized attacks on small villages in the An Lao Valley. Civilians seem to have been killed. This happened half a dozen times. Somebody must have known about it. Maybe even your Military Advisory Council.”

Tell me everything that's in there,“ I repeated. ”Please don't leave anything out. Read from the texts."

The boredom and exasperation she had shown before were gone. Suddenly the translator was attentive, and also seemed a little frightened. What she was reading now was disturbing her.

“There are always unfortunate incidents during a war,” she lectured me. “But this is a new pattern in the An Lao Valley. The killings seem to have been organized and methodical. Almost like your serial killers here in America.”

“There are serial killers in Asia, too,” I said.

Ms Nguyen bristled at my comment. “Let me see. There were formal complaints made to your government and the US Army by officers in the ARVN. Did you know that? There are also repeated complaints from what was then called Saigon. This was a murder case, according to the ARVN. Murder, not war. The murder of innocent civilians, including children.” She frowned and shook her head. “There's more about the precise pattern of the murders. Men, women and children, innocent villagers were killed. Often the bodies were painted.”

“Red, white, blue,” I said. “The painting was a calling card left by the killers.”

Ms Nguyen looked up in alarm. “How did you know? Did you already know about these horrible murders? What is your role in all this?”

“I'll tell you when we're finished. Don't stop now. Please. This could be what I've been looking for.”

About twenty minutes later, Ms Nguyen came upon something that I asked her to read a second time. “A team of Army Rangers was sent into the An Lao Valley. It's unclear, but it seems they were dispatched to the area to investigate the murders. I'm sorry, Detective. It's also unclear here whether they succeeded or not.”

“Do you have any names?” I asked. “Who was on this team?” I could feel the adrenalin ripping through my body now.

Ms Nguyen sighed and shook her head. Finally, she rose from her desk. “There are more boxes on the fifth floor. Come with me, Detective. You say that people are still being killed?”

I nodded, then I followed Thi Nguyen upstairs. There was an entire wall of boxes and I helped her carry several of them down to her office.

The two of us worked late on Wednesday, then again on Thursday night, and we even got together during her lunch hour on Friday. She was hooked now, too. We learned that the Rangers sent to the An Lao Valley were military assassins. Unfortunately, none of the paperwork had been organized according to dates. It had just been thrown into boxes and left to collect dust, never to be read by anyone again.

Around two-fifteen on Friday we opened another few boxes crammed with papers pertaining to the investigation in the An Lao Valley.