Murder in the Choir (The Jazz Phillips Mystery Series)

by Joel B Reed

“We would like you to work with us. McKee was impressed with your grasp of the general situation and would like to talk with you.”

  “All right, I’m interested, but I’m in the middle of a case at the moment. I’m not sure just when we will be done.”

  “We’d be willing to offer any help we can,” Dill said. “What we have to offer is access to information.”

  I thought about that for a moment. The offer was tempting.Yet, accepting help might mean giving McKee a personal marker in his mind. “All right,” I told him, “but only as a gesture of good will. There can’t be any strings attached. No markers.”

  Dill laughed. “Fair enough. We’re not above using that kind of leverage, but not with our own people. What do you need to know?”

  I mentioned the trouble I was having getting Edward Posey’s military file, and Dill’s smile faded. “Yes, Sam told me you wanted to know about him. The official word is that he’s dead. We haven’t been able to get details just yet, but we will. When we do, we’ll pass them along.”

  I noticed the way he said that. “All right,” I answered. “So what’s your unofficial take on it?”

  Dill sighed. “I know Eddie Posey. I trained him, and he was one of the best, though I had to get on his case about that. He was always hanging back at show time, letting other people come in first and second when he was best qualified. When I heard he was killed in action, I had trouble believing it, and when he turned up on the missing in action list, I wondered. As far as I know, he never made it back from Southeast Asia.”

  “You mean, he’s dead? Or still a prisoner?”

  “No, although I have no hard information.” He gave me a stern look. “What I’m about to tell you is highly classified information. It goes no further.”

  I thought about that. “I can’t promise that if it bears on the case.”

  It was Dill’s turn to think. “It doesn’t have any direct bearing, but I’ll trust your discretion. Please don’t make me regret it.” He paused. “The Cadre is what the consortium I’ve been telling you about calls itself. Like the Mafia, they have no hesitation about using violence, and one of the things we do is keep track of their enforcers. When we get a chance, we bring them in or take them out trying. We stay within the law as much as we can.”

  He paused again. “One of the things we find useful is to keep profiles of the enforcers. We pay particular attention to their method of operation, just like the police do with common criminals. Unfortunately, we often don’t have a name to go with the profile, and one of my jobs is to identify those people. One of those people we haven’t been able to identify fits what I know of Edward Posey. So to answer your question, I think that Edward Posey bailed out of the Special Forces in Vietnam and set himself up as a professional killer. I think he operates out of Southeast Asia, but he shows up all over the world. I have no evidence, but that’s what I think.”

  “That would fit,” I told him. “My first impression was that it looked like a professional setup.” I described the shooter’s nest and the details of the case as they stood. I also told him about Luther Adams.

  When I was done, Dill nodded. “That sounds like Posey, particularly with the way Adams was killed. He’s always very careful to take out any witnesses.”

  Several things came together suddenly, and I felt a chill go down my back. If I was right, Robert McNutt had seen Edward Posey on two occasions. I told Dill my thoughts, and his response was immediate. “We need to get that child under guard. Tonight.” He pulled to the side of the road and whipped out a cell phone like Kruger’s. When the other end picked up, he spoke to whoever answered in hushed, urgent terms.

  When he was done, Dill turned the car around and sped back toward Oak Grove. “A team is on the way from Washington,” he told me. “They’ll be in sometime tomorrow morning.”

  “What about tonight?” I asked. “I can’t call in protection without telling DiRado something.”

  “Tonight will be up to James Mason and me,” Dill said grimly. “I almost hope Posey shows up. I’ve been after him a long time.” He made another call, then relaxed a bit. “James is in place. He has Robert in sight. He’s sticking close by him.”

  “He’s not armed,” I said. Dill gave me a strange look and I told him about our promise to the pastor.

  “What the pastor didn’t know won’t hurt him,” Dill answered with a chilly smile. “We are always armed, Jazz. We have to be. The Cadre knows who we are. I’m pretty high on their list.”

  “I‘m available, too,” I told him. “My gun’s in the car.”

  Dill took a moment answering. “I appreciate your offer, Jazz. However, I think this may be outside your set of skills. James and I are trained to do this kind of thing. You might put someone else in danger.”

  “You could put me inside the house with the McNutts,” I said. “A shotgun covers a lot of ground.”

  “That would mean alerting them to what’s going on,” Dill said. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. We don’t know for sure Posey will try anything.”

  “You’re sure enough to call in a team,” I said. “They need to know Robert is in danger.”

  Dill shook his head. “What if they panic and try to take Robert away from here? That could put him in even greater danger. Here we can protect him.”

  We went back and fourth about it, but I eventually gave way. I didn’t like it, but there was not much choice. Dill had taken charge, and I was just as glad he had. From what he told me, I had to admit that Edward Posey was out of my league. Dill did agree to my telling Dee what was happening. When I asked about Kruger, he asked me to wait until the next morning if I could. “The last thing we need is the Bureau involved,” Dill added. “With the connections the Cadre has, they’ll know every move we’re making.”

  “This isn’t their affair,” I reminded Dill. “Assuming Posey is our shooter, this is a personal thing with him.”

  “Yes, but I think we have to assume he’s in touch with them,” Dill replied “He’s one of their best contractors, and it’s in their interest to at least try to warn him off if they’re aware of something. I hope he makes his move tonight. If he does, we’ll have him.”

  “We don’t have any evidence against him,” I said.

  “Not in the murder, no, but we have lots of other things on him,” Dill said. “There’s desertion for openers, assuming we bring him to trial.” He saw the look of shock on my face and added, “No, we’re not going to take him out and shoot him, Jazz. We don’t do things that way. But we can hold him a long time. I’m sure he has a lot of information we could use.” I must have still looked doubtful because he added, “No, we don’t use thumb screws, either. We break them down, but we don’t use physical torture.” The haunted look in his eyes told me thumb screws might be kinder than some of the things they did, but I reminded myself this was not my business.

  As I drove back to Nashville that evening, I was plagued with questions. I was ninety-nine percent sure Posey was our killer, but some things still didn’t fit. Why did he wait so long to kill Smiley? Did Luther Adams see him do it? Then why did Luther tell us, “Luther done it!” Did he mistake Edward for Slide? Was Posey the man in the vest scouting out the terrain? What about the other evidence…the wax on the porch and the powder smudge on the outhouse? Did they have anything to do with the case? What about the bullet Weaver retrieved from the store front? Where did the bullets that killed Smiley go?

  I told myself some of those were questions that might never be answered and to concentrate on the ones that might. Where did the bullets go? That went to the top of my list, and I decided to check it out the next day. That would be a good excuse to go back to Oak Grove, and it would provide an opportunity to keep Robert close to me. I wondered if there were a casual way I could get him into a bulletproof vest, then decided I was being too jumpy. The best protection Robert could have was Willie Dill and a man he trained.

  I called Dee when I got in. I greeted his sister when she answered
the phone and asked if he was available. She laughed and told me he would have to call me back. “You caught him in the shower,” she told me, but from the way she said it, I knew he was otherwise occupied.

  “You caught me in the confessional,” Dee told me when he called back.

  I asked how he was, and he told me he was going crazy sitting at a desk all day. With nothing else to do, he started searching the Internet for references to anything he could think of related to the case. “Do you know how many hits I got on Smiley Jones?” he asked.

  “You’re getting hits on both words,” I told him. “Try limiting your search to sites with both words together.”

  “To hell with it,” he growled. “I’m just keeping myself busy. What’s up?”

  I told him Dill’s theory about Posey, leaving out what he told me about the Cadre and Agency operations or about James Mason. I also told him my concern for Robert McNutt and about the measures Dill was taking. “Sounds like they have it in hand,” he told me. “I’d feel better if it wasn’t just Dill out there by himself tonight.”

  “They had another agent in the area,” I told him. “Dill was able to get him to help tonight.”

  “Good,” Dee replied. “What are you holding back, Jazz?”

  “I can’t tell you,” I said. “Dill gave me some background I can’t pass along. It doesn’t have anything to do with the case. I can tell you this. We seem to have stumbled into a major national security minefield. Ed Posey seems to be right in the middle of it. We need to be very discrete.”

  I could tell Dee didn’t like it, but he didn’t push. “That explains our elusive Captain Smith,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t mean letting Posey off the hook.”

  “I think he might rather be in our hands than Dill’s,” I told him. “I really can’t say more than that.”I decided to change the subject. “Are there any lab results back yet?”

  “Yeah, I sent them with Kruger,” he told me. “He stopped by here with the cigarette butts and the lottery ticket. One result stood out. The DNA from the blood from the privy was from a black male who is a close blood relative to Jones. I asked Kasey how close, and he told me son or grandson.”

  “So Posey was there!” I said. I felt myself getting excited. I told him about the man I saw in the foyer at the funeral. “So he’s around. What was he doing in the outhouse?”

  Dee laughed. “Besides the obvious? Maybe he thought about using it as a shooting stand.”

  “And gave it up because it involved too much unpredictable traffic,” I said, finishing the thought. “But he must have tried a shot from there when nobody was around. That must be the bullet from the store front.”

  “That bullet is interesting,” Dee told me. “You’ll see it in the report, but it was fired from a weapon I never heard of before. Weaver tells me it comes with an integral two-power scope, and I would guess Posey had it fitted with a silencer.”

  “So he must have been using a subsonic load,” I said. “At least, he must have with his trial shot. That would explain why it didn’t penetrate deeper into the store front.”

  “I would guess he went back to hot loads for the kill,” Dee answered. “The bullets would have lodged in the body if he didn’t.”

  “He’s a clever asshole, isn’t he? He picked his spot and was shooting so the bullets wouldn’t be found. He didn’t want us to know what kind of weapon he used. I bet it’s his signature, using this particular type of weapon.”

  “Only, this time he didn’t want it identified,” Dee murmured. “I wonder why. Any ideas?”

  “Too many to be useful,” I told him and he laughed. “The further we go, the less sense this thing makes. Why did he wait so long? I can understand his wanting to ruin Smiley’s party, but why didn’t Posey take him out years ago? Smiley had been living in Oak Grove a long time.”

  “It could have been the article,” Dee suggested. “That could have set him off, seeing Smiley treated like a saint.”

  I thought about the article. “You know, he may not have wanted the connection known,” I suggested. “He may not have wanted credit for this kill.”

  “Are you suggesting doing a personal hit might ruin his professional reputation?” Dee asked. “All we have is speculation, even with the DNA and the bullet. No prosecutor I know would touch it.”

  “No, I’m not thinking about evidence. Or even about his reputation. It’s more like being tied to this case might give the people he works for an angle to get at him,” I said. “The way I understand these things to work, there’s never any personal contact with the clients. There’s a broker who acts as a cut-out, and payment is made to a numbered account. Being identified by weapon with a particular killing not contracted out would give the broker a potential line to personal information about Posey himself. His best protection is staying anonymous.”

  “Sounds pretty thin,” Dee observed. “On the other hand, we don’t have anything better. Say it is Posey. How are we going to pin it on him?”

  I told him my ideas about finding the bullet, and he agreed it was the most promising line to follow at the moment. He also reminded me to be very careful. “These guys are way out of our class, Jazz. I hate to admit it, but they are. Dill is one of the very best, so let him take point since he’s willing. Let his team take Posey if they can. We can work out who gets first shot at Posey after he’s behind bars. Who knows? Posey might get himself killed and save the state a lot of money for a murder trial.”

  I told him about Dill’s suggestion of federal detention. “Then what more do you need, man?” he asked. “That’s win-win as far as I’m concerned. They can leave this case open forever as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I still think we need to gather evidence,” I told him. This was not like Dee to give up so easily.

  “Of course, we do,” he replied. “We need to have it in case they ever give him back to us. I’m just saying I won’t be sorry if they don’t. I’m looking forward to being out of here, and I’d rather not have to testify.”

  We talked a while longer. When we were done, I looked for Kruger, but he wasn’t in his room. Changing into my sweats and walking shoes, I set out to get some exercise and spotted his car at the drive-in. He was sitting by himself with a milkshake and a burger, so I joined him. Seeing the burger reminded me I hadn’t eaten supper, so I ordered the works: a chicken-fried chicken plate with fries and cole slaw. To top it off, I ordered a chocolate shake.

  “You’re going to have to walk extra miles to work that off,” Kruger smiled. He was more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him.

  “That must have been some date,” I replied, and he smiled even more. “Are you ready for an update?”

  “Only if you must,” he answered, but I could see I had his attention.

  I looked around the dining room. There was no one else there. Keeping my voice low, I told him about the funeral and about seeing someone I thought was Posey in the foyer. “I can’t be sure, but I think it was him.”

  He nodded. “That makes sense. The DNA report fits, too. The question is how we build a case.”

  “I think the first thing is to find the bullets that killed Jones. I asked Ben Weaver to see if he could get DNA from the can. That would place Posey in the blacksmith shop.”

  Kruger nodded. “With that particular type of rifle, finding the bullets would really help. Of course, finding the rifle in his possession would be better.” He frowned. “That kind of rifle is pretty unusual for a casual sportsman to own.”

  I thought about what he said for a moment, then told Kruger I had access to information that shed light on this, but that I couldn’t reveal my source. He frowned, but nodded, and I told him the theory about Posey being a professional international assassin.

  “That’s interesting,” he replied. “When I ran the details through our data base on Monday, I came up with a solid hit. There have been several killings by an unknown assassin that carry the same method. The signature is three shots from a .223 at intermediat
e range, and the bullets that were found all came from the same kind of weapon as the bullet Weaver found.” He gave me an odd look. “Your source must either have access to our data base or access to information we don’t have. My guess would be you have been talking to someone with the CIA.”

  I said nothing. I hated lying with my silence, but there was nothing I could do about it. Kruger looked at me and continued. “Since this unknown killer is also responsible for the deaths of several witnesses, I would guess that Adams must have seen something. Assuming we’re talking about the same man. What I find hard to believe is that our international assassin comes from a place like Oak Grove, Arkansas.” He waved off my objection. “I know, they have to come from somewhere.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Did it occur to you that Robert may be in danger? Assuming it’s the same killer.”

  I told him that it had, and protection was in place. “Nothing against John Tanner, but I don’t think rural deputies would stand a chance against this guy,” Kruger replied. He took out his phone. “I better call in some of our people.”

  I stopped him before he could dial. “It’s being covered,” I told him. There was nothing else to do, so I told him a national team was on the way.

  “Who are these people?” Kruger demanded. “They sure as hell don’t have jurisdiction!”

  I gave him the name of McKee’s agency. “Jesus!” he exclaimed. “You don’t mess around, do you? Those guys are as good as the Mossad. What were they doing in Oak Grove?” He put his phone back in his pocket.

  “I don’t know,” I told him truthfully. “They may have picked up on the details of the shooting just like you did. We’ve been running things through the national data base. They hinted there was another operation they were running around here.”

  “Do you remember that white supremacist camp that was wiped out by a rival group in Wyoming a couple of years ago?” I nodded. “That was their work. They didn’t do the killing, but they set it up. It was a massacre. Then they took out the group that won.”

  “How do you know so much about them?” I asked. “I never heard of them before.” Too late I realized I had slipped and I knew Kruger caught it.