The Perfect Soldier

by B D Grant

  “It is.”

  “Then forget I asked. I’ll email you when I find more out more on the hospital bombers and this church.”

  “Alright,” he says, not wanting to push the issue. She knows how many lives are at stake in this case, and she’s never let information slip before. “Don’t let your guard down. We haven’t figured out the endgame here.”

  “Ditto,” she replies before hanging up.

  Doherty slips his phone back in his pocket. “Never the one to say bye,” he says out loud.

  On his way out of the office, he stops by Ash’s desk. He’s pulled the chair over from the desk next to his to prop his long legs on while he reads the papers from the top folder.

  “Tomorrow, you’ll be here by eight with the coffee made,” he tells him.

  Ash sets the papers down. “What?”

  “You heard me. You’re going to be here bright and early to tell whoever you told about McBride’s plans to move the patients that the entire plan has been nixed.”

  “But you were just talking to her…”

  “So you told Susan? Since when did you two start speaking outside of this office?”

  Ash picks the papers back up. “Don’t act so surprised. She called me to ask me if I was doing ‘her job’ to her standards. Before I had the chance to hang up on her, she asked about everyone in the hospital.”

  Doherty crosses his arms over his chest. “It’s sad that I should be surprised when my two best agents have a civil conversation.”

  Ash frowns, looking down at the spot on the page where he stopped reading. “I wouldn’t describe it as civil.”

  Doherty shakes his head in disappointment. “Get some sleep,” he says on his way out.

  Lane scans the report for a total of three seconds before setting it down.

  Well, that was too quick for an experienced detective, Susan thinks as she watches Detective Lane. Any report, no matter the triviality, could be the key to solving a case, and this guy doesn’t even take the time to read them. Susan picks the report up without a word to Lane. She knows that if she were to open her mouth, a very condescending speech would spill out; it’s too early in the day for her to put in the effort to teach basic detective skills to a grown man.

  Susan steps away and hears Lane ask, “What happens now?”

  She cuts her eyes at Bill as she passes him. He’s in the midst of picking up the various evidence bags containing pieces of the bag used to carry the grenades into the hospital along with scrubs cut off of one of the nurses who had fought the bombers that he had laid out on his desk for review. Taking notice of her sideways glance, he speaks up first.

  “Simple,” he says as he tosses an evidence bag full of shrapnel on top of the pile in the evidence box on his desk. “We follow the next lead.”

  Lane gives Bill a downcast stare. “Good Faith Fellowship?”

  Bill shoots a finger gun in Lane’s direction with a loud click of his tongue. “That’s right. We’re going to church.”

  Lane gestures to the evidence bags and reports that are covering everyone’s working space. “Who’s going to take care of all of this?”

  Susan, already typing out an email on her phone, answers. “Doherty will see to it that everything is brought back to headquarters. The station will house the evidence boxes until transit can be set up.”

  Lane’s voice is quieter now aware that there are plenty around the station listening to their chatter. “Do we really trust them to take care of our case’s evidence?”

  “Come now,” Bill says, transferring the remaining pile of bags from his desk into one of the empty boxes on the floor. He bends down slightly to drop two bags into one of the boxes and Susan catches sight of a bald spot forming on the top of Bill’s head.

  “They’re great! They’ve helped us the whole time we’ve been here. I have a Seattle story that will make you want to hug everyone before we leave.”

  “Speak for yourself. They only helped me into a jail cell,” Lane grumbles.

  Susan can’t help but smile as an officer walks by, giving Lane a very pointed glare, then looks over at her and winks.

  “Ah,” Bill says, nodding his head knowingly at the young detective. “That’s because you need to work on your people skills.”

  Susan snorts, and Lane shoots her an accusatory glare. She leans down into one of her drawers, obscuring her face. Face still in the drawer, she asks, “What are the chances we find the person responsible for the Texas attack at the church?”

  The first two hospital attacks had been almost identical in tactic and follow-through. Both hospitals had two attackers, loaded with grenades, who managed an impressive amount of damage at both hospitals where Seraphim were being housed.

  On the other hand, the Texas attack had been on a much, much smaller scale. From what Doherty has sent, there only seems to be one perpetrator. Evidence collected at the scene suggests that there were two pipe bombs placed in close proximity of each other. The assailant took off before detonation, so no suicides like the previous attacks.

  In total, four people died. Two were hospital employees; the other two victims were elderly patients, sharing the room where the bombs were placed. The eldest of the two patients was their Seraphim.

  Once Susan, Bill, and Lane had settled into their seats on the train to Good Faith Fellowship, Bill pulled out some of his files on the hospital bombing to brief the team. They put their belongings on the nearby chairs, keeping the area obnoxiously clear of strangers, but still Susan couldn’t help nervously glancing around every minute or two.

  Despite Susan’s initial hesitations, she couldn’t dispute the likelihood that it was a Seraphim-related attack as the team reviewed the case details. The non-Seraphim patient had been living in that room for weeks before the attack, but it wasn’t until the Seraphim had been transported there from his nursing home and placed in that room that the assailant struck. One of the bombs was below the Seraphim’s bed. The second was set just inside the entrance to the room; that one had killed the nurse and nursing assistant, who were in the hallway when the bombs detonated.

  Blood had to be taken from what remained of the Seraphim to positively identify him. At Susan’s suggestion, they go through his nursing home records, but there’s nothing useful there. The staff who cared for him only commented that he was a chatty man who liked to talk about old movies. None of the nursing records showed that he had ever had any visitors. Susan imagines him and his roommate debating the best John Wayne movie as the pipe bomb laid silently beneath him.

  All three of them agree it’s quite likely that one of the men, if not both, saw the person responsible for their deaths. Both of the bombs had been concealed in such a manner that neither man would have seen the bombs, though, unless they had been able to get out of bed.

  Bill offers his interpretation of the crime scene breakdown: The bombs were placed after the doctor’s rounds had been made to decrease the chance of discovery.

  “So when were they set off?” Lane asks, his voice a raspy whisper.

  “We know phone shrapnel was found inside both bombs. Probably from a single phone call, but if not they were at least the same caller, right?” Susan and Lane nod. “So I figure they were ignited with some time to spare before the next rounds were to begin. This place didn’t have as many cameras as the other two hospitals, so we can’t really know—”

  “Isn’t it the biggest of the three?” Lane interrupts. “Why would it have fewer cameras?”

  “Fewer working security cameras.” Bill says. “Half the place is filled with fakes. There’s a decent monitoring system for the main entrances and emergency waiting room, but our guys were in a pretty new building away from the main entrance. Have you guys seen the security footage we have?”

  “It’s not usable,” Lane says.

  “He’s right,” Susan agrees. “I’ve been through all the footage. All I’ve seen are poorly angled cameras that show the tops of peoples’ heads.”

&nb
sp; “Well, that’s about all we’ve got,” Bill says, combing his fingers through his hair to better cover the thin spot on top.

  Reports had shown that the camera pointed in perfect view of the employee entrance was a dummy camera, initially giving Susan a good feeling that they found the entrance that their suspect most likely had used.

  Lane reiterates the suspicion a few more times through their discussion, complaining again about the tapes. Susan hadn’t particularly enjoyed milling over hours of footage during their train ride that crossed several states offering much more enjoyable views, but she wasn’t dumb enough to make it so glaringly obvious. Yes, their suspect could have used the employee entrance, but a code was required outside the door in order to gain access, and when asked, every employee working that day denied letting a stranger inside. Susan had made sure Lane heard their denials since he is the only Veritatis on her tiny team. Their theory could still be correct, but that relies heavily on the assumption that either the nurse or the nurse’s assistant who died in the explosion had let the killer inside. Susan didn’t like to dwell on that possibility and how astronomically unlucky the victim would have been that day.

  “Maybe the bomber knew the code,” Lane brings up after they’ve gone over the employee entrance door yet again.

  “That would mean our profile’s totally wrong, then,” Bill says. “None of the other attackers did any sort of work like that. They just burst in, found the new patients, and then boom.”

  “It could still be possible,” Lane says.

  If this suspect didn’t fit any of their previous profiles, it would mean this attack very likely had nothing to do with the others. Susan fantasizes about this possibility briefly, but it doesn’t last. “No. The bomb placements beneath the bed show that the perpetrator intended to kill the Seraphim victim. The other guy and the hospital staff were just bystanders. The Texas perpetrator is definitely not like the others, but it has to all be related.” If not, Susan thinks to herself, than that would mean that there’s more than just one group out there targeting Seraphim and none of them want to dwell on that possibility.

  It takes a day for the team to arrive at Good Faith Fellowship’s door. The train’s sleeping accommodations had been decent enough to give the three the rest needed to kick off the next stretch of their investigation. Besides needing a good dry shampoo to freshen up her hair from the sleep she got the night before, Susan felt ready to tackle the reconnaissance on the church.

  “Remember,” she tells Lane when they’re a block from the church, “leg work, even the boring, going-cross-eyed-over-surveillance stuff, is part of our job.” His inexperience has her worried. Once they had gotten off of the train, Lane had tossed out the idea that maybe they shouldn’t sit on the church today and instead go straight into questioning people around town. It had once again made her wonder if Ash would’ve been a better fit. At least he excelled at the tougher parts of the job.

  The church, from the street front, is a classic brick chapel. It could have been a standalone structure erected over a hundred years ago with its steeply-pitched roof and tall, narrow windows. The overly large, carved front door stands out from the building being made of a dark-looking wood. The stained glassed windows which run down the sides of the chapel depict Jesus at various ages. In the rear, the classic chapel butts up to a modern, metal extension that juts out several hundred feet to no doubt cater to a growing congregation.

  They spend Saturday examining the church for all points of entry. Most of the cameras, it seems, aren’t functional. Doherty wouldn’t mind a minor breaking and entering as long as it turned out useful information and so long as they didn’t get caught. After getting some rest, they decide to attend Sunday’s early service before making their presence known to the church staff As they listen to the Pastor O’Leary speak about loss and trusting in the Lord, Susan prepares her questions quietly in the back row.

  The Pastor looks to be in his mid-thirties with the beginnings of a belly that Susan’s used to seeing in men of the gospel protruding just enough to be seen in his robe. After the service, they wait for the majority of the congregation to clear out. Bill and Lane speak to the few remaining members of the congregation, as Susan waits. Pastor O’Leary was stopped just off of the podium by some congregants, and Susan doesn’t approach until he’s shaking their hands bye.

  She quickly introduces herself, pulling out her badge. When she hands him the photograph of two of their known suicide bombers, O’Leary stops, his attention no longer on pleasantries. Right away, he tells her that he’s only been at Good Faith for a short time, replacing the normal pastor while he and some of the congregation are out on a mission trip.

  “I’d still like to have a word,” Susan says. “This picture—”

  “Let’s go in the back,” Pastor O’Leary interrupts, nodding. “I think we need some place quiet to talk.” He points toward the annex in the back of the chapel.

  Susan looks around, spotting Lane. He’s speaking to an older couple with matching salt and pepper hair, the woman holding Lane’s picture of the bombers. Bill is nowhere in sight. She waits until Lane is turned toward her, giving a quick wave to catch his attention. She gives him a smile, glad to see that he’s actually interviewing, and makes sure that he can see her follow the pastor across the room and into the church’s back hallway.

  The pastor leads Susan to his office. She notices a small camera pointed at his office from the outside, but once he shuts the door, it appears that they’re alone. She scans the room quickly. No chairs are available in the small space. Even his desk chair is filled with cardboard boxes filled of modest possessions. All of the walls are bare, but one containing framed photographs from various locations where impoverishment is rampant judging by the shacks in the background of the faces smiling for the camera. There are some depicting newly constructed churches and schools of modest size.

  She turns her attention back to Pastor O’Leary as he apologizes, telling her that he’s still picking up Pastor Dave’s things. The truth to the matter, he informs her, is that Pastor Dave had left for what should have been a simple mission trip but hasn’t returned. When O’Leary was finally brought in, he says, there had already been a missing person’s report filed with the police.

  “I’ll give you the same information I gave the last detective on Dave,” he says, pulling a box from the chair with great difficulty.

  Susan goes to the box closest to her and rummages through the top of it containing Christian book titles and more photographs of past mission trips of Pastor Dave’s. When O’Leary gets back up from setting the box on the ground she stops. “This isn’t really about the old pastor. I can follow up with the detective working his missing person’s case. If he has any information I care share with you, I will. But—” she points to the photograph she gave O’Leary in the chapel that he now has on his desk. The bombers’ faces smile up at her. “These two are the ones I want to know about.”

  “She, the detective on Dave’s missing person case was a woman,” the pastor says, joining her to look at the photo. “And like I told her, those two were part of the mission trip with Pastor Dave. I did have a picture that ran in the local newspaper of the entire group. I’d show you, but it disappeared after that last detective looked at it.”

  He tucks his arms in under his robe, a position he must take often. Susan takes her notepad out, sliding the photo into the back of it. She takes her time turning to a blank page, allowing herself to collect her thoughts on Pastor O’Leary, the previous pastor, the known bombers, and the female detective who got here before them, asking about the same individuals.

  When she lifts her head, the pastor has one arm out of his robe. He’s grasping a tiny key that barely juts out from between his fingers in a metal sheen. The office door behind Susan opens unexpectedly. Caught off guard with her pen in hand, she swivels around to face the door, clutching her pen like a dagger.

  A woman pokes her head inside the office, her tall bun e
ntering the room first so that Susan has a second to lower her defensive stance. The woman chirps a breezy, “Excuse me,” exchanging looks with Susan. The woman’s pink eye makeup is excessive, her lip gloss just recently reapplied. Susan doesn’t know whether to stare at her face or at the bun.

  “Yes, June?” O’Leary asks. When Susan turns back, the key’s no longer visible. He moves some of the knickknacks by the computer on his desk into one of the boxes as if he had been picking up this whole time.

  “I, umm…” she looks over at Susan uncertainly.

  “Oh, beg your pardon,” the pastor says as he notices the two women sizing each other up.

  “June, this is Detective Fields. She’s asking about the church’s mission trip.”

  June perks up, giving Susan a toothy smile. “Oh! I hope you have more information than the last lady.”

  Susan returns the smile, perhaps not as convincing. “I’m hoping to get answers to everyone’s questions.”

  “That’s good, ’cause it took a year from this congregation to scrape together the funds for—”

  “June.” O’Leary interrupts. “Did you need me for something?”

  Her features soften when she addresses O’Leary. “Reminding you of your lunch date is all.”

  “Thank you, June. We won’t be much longer.”

  He waits for her to shut the door before pulling out the key again and unlocking a drawer in the desk. He pulls out a stack of materials. “I made copies of everything except that picture I was telling you about before I gave them to that other detective.”

  Susan rifles through the stack. “Does this have the members on that mission trip’s next of kin?”

  “It’s got the names of our members who went, what little information he left behind about the trip, and a list of his contacts. There are some snapshots from inside the church as well.”

  Susan thumbs through the last half of the sheets, stopping before she gets to the end. “No next of kin.”