Tate shook his head. “I was never stationed at Bragg. I don’t remember a Sergeant Cooper from ’Nam. No, I don’t think so.”
I tried to remain low-key. Reece Tate was an uptight, buttoned-down, and formal man, so I kept our conversation as nonthreatening as I possibly could.
“Reverend Tate, we’ve answered your questions. Why don’t you answer a few of ours? If you’re innocent of these murders, we’re here to help you out of this mess. We’ll listen, and we’ll keep an open mind.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment before he spoke. “Sergeant Cooper, he was judged guilty, I assume. Is he in prison? I’d like to talk with him.”
I looked at Sampson, then back at Reece Tate. “Sergeant Cooper was executed in North Carolina recently. He’s dead.”
Tate shook his head in a soft, low arc. “My God, my God in heaven. I was just taking a week off, giving myself a break. I love to camp and hike. It’s a carryover from my days in the army, but I always loved it. I was a Boy Scout, an Eagle Scout in Greensboro. Sounds kind of ridiculous, under the circumstances.” I let him talk. The Eagle Scout in him wanted to — needed to — get this out.
“I’ve been divorced for four years. Camping is my only decent escape, my release. I take off a couple of weeks a year, plus a few days here and there when I can grab them.”
“Did anybody know you were planning the trip to the Appalachian Trail?”
“Everyone at our church knew. A couple of friends and neighbors. It wasn’t any big secret. Why should it be?”
Sampson asked, “Did your ex-wife know?”
Tate thought about it, then shook his head. “We don’t communicate very much. I might as well tell you, I beat Helene up before we divorced. She may have drove me to it, but I hit her. It’s on me, my fault. No excuse for a man ever to strike a woman.”
“Can you tell us about yesterday? Go through as much of what you did as you can remember,” I said.
It took Tate about ten minutes to take us through the day in detail. He said he woke up about seven and saw that the morning was fogged in. He was in no hurry to get on the trail, so he had breakfast at camp. He started hiking by eight-thirty and covered a lot of ground that day. He passed two families and an elderly couple along the way. The day before, he’d seen a mother and her two daughters and hoped to catch up with them, but it didn’t happen. He finally made camp about six.
“Why did you want to catch up with the three women?” Sampson asked.
Tate shrugged. “Just crazy daydreams. The mother was attractive, early forties. Obviously, they all liked to hike. I thought maybe we could hike together for a while. That’s pretty common on the AT.”
“Anybody else you saw that day?” Sampson asked.
“I don’t remember anybody unusual. I’ll keep thinking. I have the time in here. And the motivation.”
“All right, so there were the families, the elderly couple, the mother and her two daughters. Any other groups you saw on the trail? Males hiking together? Any single hikers?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t remember seeing anybody suspicious. Didn’t hear any unusual noises during the night. I slept well. That’s one benefit of hiking. Got up the next morning, hit the road by seven-thirty. It was a beautiful day, clear as a bell, and you could see for miles. The police came and arrested me about noon.”
Reverend Tate looked at me. His small eyes were pleading, searching for understanding. “I swear I’m innocent. I didn’t hurt anybody in those woods. I don’t know how I got blood on some of my clothes. I didn’t even wear those clothes the day those poor people were murdered. I didn’t kill anybody. Somebody has to believe me.”
/> His words chilled me through and through. Sergeant Ellis Cooper had said virtually the same thing.
Chapter 48
MY LAST CASE as a homicide detective. A real tricky one. I’d been thinking about it pretty much nonstop for the past few days and it weighed on my mind during the numbing ride home from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
I still hadn’t given notice at work. Why not? I continued to take on homicide cases in D.C., though most weren’t challenging. A small-time drug dealer had been killed in the projects, but nobody cared. A twenty-year-old woman had killed her abusive husband, but it was clearly in self-defense. At least to me it was clear. Ellis Cooper was dead. And now a man named Reece Tate was accused of murders that he probably didn’t commit.
That weekend I used frequent flier miles to take a flight out to Tempe, Arizona. I’d scheduled a meeting with Susan Etra, whose husband had been convicted of murdering a gay enlisted man. Mrs. Etra was suing the army for wrongful death. She believed that her husband was innocent and that she had enough evidence to prove it. I needed to find out if Lieutenant Colonel James Etra might have been framed for murder too. How many victims were there?
Mrs. Etra answered her front door and seemed very uptight and nervous. I was surprised to see a poker-faced man waiting in the living room. She explained that she had requested her lawyer be present. Great.
The lawyer was darkly tan, with slicked-back white hair, an expensive-looking charcoal-gray suit, black cowboy boots. He introduced himself as Stuart Fischer from Los Angeles. “In the interest of possibly getting to the truth about her husband’s wrongful arrest and conviction, Mrs. Etra has consented to talk with you, Detective. I’m here to protect Mrs. Etra.”
“I understand,” I said. “Were you Lieutenant Colonel Etra’s lawyer at his trial?” I asked.
Fischer kept his game face. “No, I wasn’t. I’m an entertainment attorney. I do have experience with homicide cases, though. I started in the DA’s office in Laguna Beach. Six years down there.”
Fischer went on to explain that Mrs. Etra had recently sold her husband’s story to Hollywood. Now I was the one who had to be careful.