Patterson, James - Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

“Yes. I need to understand as much as I can. It's what drives me.”

“The phrase was, If it moves, it's VC.”

“Not all our soldiers did that.”

“Not many actually, but some. They came into villages in the out country. They would kill everyone they found. If it moves... They wanted to frighten the Viet Cong, and they did. They left calling cards like the straw dolls, Detective. In village after village. They destroyed an entire country, a culture.”

Luu paused for a moment, possibly to let me think about what I had heard so far. "They liked to paint the faces and bodies of the dead. The favorite colors were red, white and blue. They thought this was so humorous. They never buried the bodies, just left them for their loved ones to find.

“I found my family with their faces painted blue. Their ghost shadows have been haunting me since that day.”

I had to stop him for a moment. “Why didn't you tell anyone? Why didn't you go to the Army when this was happening?”

He looked straight into my eyes. “I did, Detective. I went to Owen Handler, my first CO. I told him what was happening in An Lao. He already knew. His CO knew. They all knew. Several teams had gotten out of control. So had the assassins sent in to clear up the mess.”

“One more question,” I said to Luu while everything he'd told me was boiling inside my head.

Ask. Then I want you to leave me alone. I don't want you to come back."

“You didn't kill Colonel Handler, did you?”

“No. Why should I put him out of his misery? I wanted Colonel Handler to live with his cowardice and shame. Now go. We are finished.”

“Who killed Handler?”

“Who knows? Perhaps there is a fourth blind mouse.”

I got up to leave and the guards came into the cell. I could see they were afraid of Luu, and I wondered what he had done in his time here. He was a scary and complicated man, a Ghost Shadow. He had plotted several murders of revenge.

“There's something else,” he finally said. Then he smiled. The smile was horrible a grimace no joy or mirth in it. “Kyle Craig says hello. The two of us talk. We even talk about you sometimes. Kyle says that you should stop us while you can. He says that you should put us both down.” Luu laughed as he was led from the cell. “You should stop us, Detective.”

“Be careful of Kyle,” I offered some advice. “He isn't anybody's friend.”

“Nor am I,” saidTranVan Luu.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter One Hundred and Eight

As soon as Luu was taken away, Kyle Craig was brought into the interview room in the isolation unit on death row. I was waiting for him. With bells on.

“I expected you'd stop by and visit, Alex,” he said as he was escorted inside by three armed guards. “You don't disappoint. Never, ever.”

“Always one step ahead, isn't that right, Kyle?”I asked.

He laughed, but without a trace of mirth as he looked around at the cell, the guards. “Apparently not. Not anymore.”

Kyle sat across from me. He was so incredibly gaunt and seemed to have lost even more weight since I'd seen him last. I sensed that his mind was going a mile a minute inside that bony skull.

“You were caught because you wanted to be caught,” I said. “That's obvious.”

“Oh Christ, spare me the psycho-babble. If you've come as Dr. Cross, the psychologist, you can rum around and leave right now. You'll bore me to tears.”

“I was talking as a homicide detective,” I said.

“That's a little better, I suppose. I can stomach you as a sanctimonious cop. You're not much of a shrink, but then again it's not much of a profession. Never did anything for me. I have my own philosophy: Kill them all, let God sort'm out. Analyze that.”

I didn't say anything. Kyle had always liked to hear himself talk. If he asked questions, he often wanted to ridicule whatever you said in response. He lived to bait and taunt. I doubted that anything had changed with him.

Finally, he smiled. “Oh, Alex, you are the clever one, aren't you? Sometimes I have the terrifying thought that you're the one who's always a step ahead.”

I didn't take my eyes away from his.

“I don't think so, Kyle.”

“But you're persistent as an attack dog from hell. Relentless. Isn't that right?”

“I don't think about it much. If you say so, I probably am.”

His eyes narrowed. “Now you're being condescending. I don't like that.”

“Who cares what you like anymore?”

“Hmmm. Point taken. I must remember that.”

“I asked before if you could help me with Tran Van Luu, the murders he's involved in. Have you changed your mind? I suspect there's still one murderer out there.”

Kyle shook his head. His eyes narrowed. “I'm not the Foot Soldier. I'm not the one trying to help you. Some mysteries just never get solved. Don't you know that yet?”

I shook my head. “You're right,” I said. “I am relentless. I'm going to try to solve this one, too.”

Then Kyle slowly clapped his hands, making a hollow popping sound. “That's our boy. You're just perfect, Alex. What a fool you are. Go find your murderer.”

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter One Hundred and Nine

Sampson was recuperating on the Jersey shore with Billie Houston, his own private nurse. I called him just about every day, but I didn't tell John what I'd heard about Sergeant Ellis Cooper and the others.

I also called Jamilla every day, sometimes a couple of times a day, or she'd call or e-mail me. The distance separating us was becoming more and more of an issue. Neither of us had a good solution for now. Could I ever move the family to California? Could Jamilla move to Washington? We needed to talk about it face to face, and pretty soon.

After I returned from Colorado I spent a couple of days working in Washington. I knew that I had one more important trip to make, but I needed some more preparation first. Measure twice, cut once. Nana had always preached that to me.

I spent countless hours on Lexis, but also the military databases, AC IRS and RISS. I made a visit to the Pentagon and talked to a Colonel Peyser about violence against civilians committed by American soldiers in Southeast Asia. When I brought up the An Lao Valley, Peyser abruptly cut off the interview, and then he refused to see me again.

In a strange way, that was a very good sign. I was close to something, wasn't I?

I talked to a few friends who had served in Vietnam. The phrase, “If it moves, it's VC was familiar to most of them. Those who knew about it justified it, since violent outrages were constantly being committed by the North Vietnamese. One Army vet told this story: He'd overheard other soldiers talk about a Vietnamese man, in his mid-eighties, who'd been shot down. ”Got to hand it to him,“ a gunnery sergeant had joked, 'man his age and he volunteers for the Viet Cong.”

And one name kept coming up whenever I talked about the An Lao Valley.

In the records.

Everywhere I looked.

One name that was a link to so much that had happened there, and here.

The fourth of the blind mice?

I had to find that out now.

Early on Thursday morning I left for West Point. It would be about a five-hour drive. I was in no particular hurry. The person I wanted to see there wasn't going anywhere. He didn't think he had any reason to run and hide.

I loaded up the CD player with the blues mostly, but also the new Bob Dylan which I wanted to hear at least once. I brought along a thermos of coffee as well as sandwiches for the road. I told Nana that I would try to be home tonight, to which she curtly replied, “Try harder. Try more often.”

The drive gave me time to think. I needed to be sure that I was doing the right thing by going to West Point again. I asked myself a lot of tough but necessary questions. When I was satisfied with the answers, I gave some more thought to taking a job with the FBI. Director Ron Burns had done a good job showing me the kind of resources I'd have at Quantico. The message was clear, and it was also clever: I would be better at what I did working with the FBI.