Patterson, James - Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

“Mrs. Hodge,” I asked,“ what do you think about the story Ronald told us in there?”

“Oh, I believe him. At least I believe he thinks he saw what he said. Maybe it was shadows or something, but Ronald definitely believes he saw three men. And one of them with a movie camera of some kind. He's been consistent on that from the first. Spooky. Like that old Hitchcock movie.”

“Rear Window,” I said. “James Stewart thinks he sees a murder outside his window. He's laid up with a broken leg at the time.” I looked over at Sampson. I wanted to make sure he was comfortable with me asking the questions this time. He nodded that it was okay.

“What happened after the Fayetteville detectives talked to Ronald? Did they come back? Did any other policemen come? Anyone from Fort Bragg? Mrs. Hodge, why wasn't Ronald's testimony part of the trial?”

She shook her head. “Same questions I had my ex-husband and I both. A captain from CID did come a few days later. Captain Jacobs. He talked to Ronald some. That was the end of it, though. No one ever came about any trial.”

After we finished our iced teas, we decided to call it a night. It was past eight and we thought we'd made some progress. Back at the Holiday Inn Bordeaux, I called Nana and the kids. Everything was fine and dandy on the home front. They had taken up the cry that I was on' Daddy last case', and they liked the sound of that. Maybe I did, too. Sampson and I had dinner and a couple of beers at Bowties inside the hotel, then we turned in for the night.

I tried Jamilla in California. It was around seven her time, so I called her work number first.

“Inspector Hughes,”she answered curtly. “Homicide.”

“I want to report a missing person,” I said.

“Hey, Alex,” she said. I could feel her smile over the phone. “You caught me at work again. Busted. You're the missing person. Where are you? You don't write, you don't call. Not even a crummy e-mail in the last few days.”

I apologized, then I told Jam about Sergeant Cooper and what had happened so far. I described what Ronald Hodge had seen from his bedroom window. Then I broached the subject that had prompted my call. “I miss you, Jam. I'd like to see you,” I said. “Any place, any time. Why don't you come East for a change? Or I could go out there if you'd rather. You tell me.”

Jamilla hesitated, and I found that I was holding my breath. Maybe she didn't want to see me. Then she said, “I can get off work for a few days. I'd love to see you. Sure, I'll come to Washington. I've never been there. Always wanted to when I was a kid.”

“Not so long ago,” I said.

“That's good. Cute,” she laughed.

My heart fluttered a little as the two of us made a date. Sure, I'll come to Washington. I played that line of Jamilla's over and over in my head for the rest of the night. It had just rolled off her tongue, almost like she couldn't wait to say it.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Fifteen

Early the next morning I got a call from a friend of mine at Quantico. I had asked Abby DiGarbo to check on rental-car companies in the area and to look for any irregularities that took place during the week of the murders. I'd told her it was urgent. Abby had already found one.

It seemed that Hertz had been stiffed on the rental of a Ford Explorer. Abby had dug deeper and discovered an interesting paper trail. She told me that scamming a rental-car company wasn't all that easy, which was good news for us. The scam required a fake credit card and a driver's license on which everything matched, including the description of the driver renting the car.

Someone had hacked into SEC files that are maintained as a public record. The fake identity used on the card was obtained and the information submitted to a company in Brampton, Ontario, where the card was made. A fake driver's license to match was then obtained from a web-site, Photoidcards.com. A photograph had been submitted, and I was staring at a copy of it right now.

White, male, nothing memorable about the face, which possibly had been changed with makeup and costume props anyway.

The FBI was still checking to see what else they could find. It was a start, though. Somebody had gone to some trouble to rent a car in Fayetteville. We had somebody's picture, thanks to Abby DiGarbo.

On the way over to Sergeant Cooper's house I told Sampson about the rent-a-car scam. Sampson was drinking steaming hot coffee and eating an eclair from Dunkin' Donuts, but I could tell he was appreciative in his own way. “That's why I asked you in on this,” he said.

Cooper lived in a small, two-bedroom apartment in Spring Lake, north of Fort Bragg. He had one side of a redbrick duplex. I saw a sign: Caution, Attack Cat!

“He has a sense of humor,” Sampson said. “At least he did.”

We had been given a key to open the front door. Sampson and I stepped inside. The house still smelled like cat after all this time.

“It's good not having anybody in the way for a change,” I said to John. “No other police, no FBI.”

“Killer's been caught,” Sampson said. “Case is closed. Nobody cares but us now. And Cooper sitting there on death row. The clock's ticking.”

Apparently, nobody had figured out what to do about the apartment yet. Ellis Cooper had felt secure enough in his posting that he'd bought the place a few years back.

When he retired, he'd planned to stay in Spring Lake.

The table in the front hallway contained photos of Cooper posing with friends in several locations: what looked like Hawaii, the south of France, maybe the Caribbean. There was also a more recent photo of Cooper hugging a woman who was probably his girlfriend, Marcia. The furniture in the apartment was comfortable-looking, not expensive, and appeared to have been bought at stores like Target and Pier One.

Sampson called me over to one of the windows. “It's been shimmied. The place was broken into. Could be how somebody got Cooper's knife, then returned it. If that's what happened. Coop said he left it in the closet of his bedroom. The police say the knife was in the attic.”

We went into the bedroom next. The walls were covered with more photographs, mostly from places where Cooper had been posted: Vietnam, Panama, Bosnia. A Yukon Mighty Weightlifting Bench was lined up near one wall. Near the closet was an ironing board. We searched through the closet. The clothes were mostly military but there were civilian threads, too.

“What do you make of this stuff?” I asked Sampson. I pointed to a table with a grouping of odd knickknacks that looked like they came from Southeast Asia.

I picked up a straw doll that looked strangely menacing, even evil. Then a small crossbow with what looked like a claw for its trigger. A silver amulet in the shape of a watchful, lidless eye. What was this?

Sampson took a careful look at the creepy straw doll, then the eye. "I've seen the evil eye before. Maybe in

Cambodia or Saigon. Don't remember exactly. I've seen the straw dolls, too. Think they have something to do with avenging evil spirits. I've seen the dolls atViet funerals."

The creepy artifacts notwithstanding, the sense I got from the apartment was that Ellis Cooper had been a lonely man without much of a life besides the Army. I didn't see a single photograph of what might be called family.

We were still in Cooper's bedroom when we heard a door open inside the apartment. Then came the sound of heavy footsteps approaching.

The bedroom door was thrown open and banged hard against the wall. Soldiers with drawn pistols stood in the doorway.

“Put your hands up! Military Police. Hands up now!” one of them yelled.

Sampson and I slowly raised our arms.

“We're homicide detectives. We have permission to be here,” Sampson told them. “Check with Captain Jacobs at CID.”