Four Blind Mice (Alex Cross 8)

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 headed upstairs. I was still ruminating about Jamilla. Nice thoughts. Nothing but blue skies . . .

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

Sitting there on my bed were two large glass jars. Pretty ones. Maybe antiques.

They were filled with what looked to be about twelve hundred 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.

Chapter 78

I HAD THE feeling that I was being followed around Washington during the next few days. Watched. But I couldn’t seem to catch them at it. Either they were 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 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 supermax 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,

I am a 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 Northwest. The FBI had made a call for me. I arrived 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 more than 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 about 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 bee

n killed. This happened half a dozen times. Somebody must have known about it. Maybe even your Military Assistance Command.”