Four Blind Mice (Alex Cross 8)

I WAS STARTING to get used to the C-130s and C-141s that were constantly flying overhead. Not to mention the artillery booming on the shooting range near Fort Bragg. I’d begun to think of the artillery as death knells for Ellis Cooper.

After a quick lunch out on Bragg Boulevard, Sampson and I had an appointment with a captain named Jacobs. Donald Jacobs was with CID, the army’s Criminal Investigation Division. He had been assigned to the murder case from the beginning and had been a key, damaging witness at trial.

I kept noticing that the roads inside Fort Bragg were well trafficked by civilian vehicles. Even now, anyone could get in here and not be noticed. I drove to the section of the base where the main administration buildings were located. CID was in a redbrick building that was more modern and sterile-looking than the more attractive structures from the twenties and thirties.

Captain Jacobs met us in his office. He wore a red plaid sport shirt and khakis rather than a uniform. He seemed relaxed and cordial, a large, physically fit man in his late forties. “How can I help?” he asked. “I know that Ellis Cooper has people who believe in him. He helped a lot of guys when he was a DI. I also know that the two of you have good reputations as homicide detectives up in Washington. So where do we go from there?”

“Just tell us what you know about the murders,” Sampson said. We hadn’t talked about it, but I sensed he needed to be the lead detective here on the base.

Captain Jacobs nodded. “All right, I’m going to tape our talk if you don’t mind. I’m afraid I think that he did it, Detectives. I believe that Sergeant Cooper murdered those three women. I don’t pretend to understand why. I especially don’t understand the blue paint that was used on the bodies. Maybe you can figure that one out, Dr. Cross. I also know that most people at Bragg haven’t gotten over the brutality and senselessness of these murders.”

“So we’re causing some problems being here,” Sampson said. “I apologize, Captain.”

“No need,” said Jacobs. “Like I said, Sergeant Cooper has his admirers. In the beginning, even I had a tendency to believe him. The story he told about his whereabouts tracked pretty well. His service record was outstanding.”

“So what changed your mind?” Sampson asked.

“Oh hell, a lot of things, Detective. DNA testing, evidence found at the murder scene and elsewhere. The fact that he was seen at the Jackson house, but he swore he wasn’t there. The survival knife found in his attic, which turned out to be the murder weapon. A few other things.”

“Could you be more specific?” Sampson asked. “What kind of other things?”

Captain Jacobs sighed, got up, and walked over to an olive-green file cabinet. He unlocked the top drawer, took out a folder, and brought it over to us.

“Take a look at these. They might change your mind too.” He spread out half a dozen pages of photographs from the murder scene. I had looked at a lot of photos like these, but it didn’t make it any easier.

“That’s how the three women were actually found. It was kept out of the trial so as not to hurt the families any more than we had to. The DA knew he had more than enough to convict Sergeant Cooper without using these brutal pictures.”

The photographs were right up there with the most grisly and graphic evidence I’d seen. Apparently, the women had all been found in the living room, not where each of them had been killed. The killer had carefully arranged the bodies on a large flowered sofa. He had art-directed the corpses, and that was an element that definitely caught my attention. Tanya Jackson’s face was resting in Barbara Green’s crotch; Mrs. Green’s face was in Maureen Bruno’s crotch. Not just the faces, but the crotches were painted blue.

“Apparently, Cooper thought the three women were lovers. That may have even been the case. At any rate, that’s why he thought Tanya rejected his advances. I guess it drove him to this.”

I finally spoke up. “These crime scene photos, however graphic and obscene, still don’t prove that Ellis Cooper is your murderer.”

Captain Jacobs shook his head. “You don’t seem to understand. These aren’t copies of the crime scene photos taken by the police. These are copies of Polaroids that Cooper took himself. We found them at his place along with the knife.”

Donald Jacobs looked at me, then at Sampson. “Your friend murdered those women. Now you ought to go home, and let the people around here begin to heal.”

Chapter 12

IN SPITE OF Captain Jacobs’s advice, we didn’t leave North Carolina. In fact, we kept talking to anybody who would talk to us. One first sergeant told me something interesting, though not about our case. He said that the recent wave of patriotism that had swept the country since September 11 was barely noticeable at Fort Bragg. “We have always been that way!” he said. I could see that, and I must admit I was impressed with a lot that I saw on the army post.

I woke up early the next morning, about five, with no place to go. At least I had some time to think about the fact that this could be my last case. And what kind of case was it, really? A man convicted of three gruesome murders claiming to be innocent. What murderer didn’t?

And then I thought of Ellis Cooper on death row in Raleigh, and I got to work.

Once I was up, I got online and did as much preliminary research as I could. One of the areas was the blue paint on the victims. I checked into VICAP and got three other cases of murder victims being painted, but none of them seemed a likely connection.

I then ran down a whole lot of information on

the color blue. One that mildly interested me was the Blue Man Group, performance artists who had started a show called Tubes in New York City, then had branched out to Boston, Chicago, and Las Vegas. The show contained elements of music, theater, performance art, even vaudeville. The performers always worked in blue, from head to toe. Maybe it was something, maybe nothing — too early to tell.

I met Sampson for breakfast at the Holiday Inn where we were staying — the Holiday Inn Bordeaux, to be more precise. We ate quickly, then drove over to the off-base military-housing community where the three murders had taken place. The houses were ordinary ranches, each with a small strip of lawn out front. Quite a few of the yards had plastic wading pools. Tricycles and Cozy Coupes were parked up and down the street.

We spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon canvassing the close-knit community where Tanya Jackson had lived. It was a working-class, military neighborhood, and at more than half the stops nobody was home.

I was on the front porch of a brick-and-clapboard house, talking to a woman in her late thirties or early forties, when I saw Sampson come jogging our way. Something was up.

“Alex, come with me!” he called out. “C’mon. I need you right now.”