by Diane Capri
“What’s going on out there now?”
I knew most of the answer. While I’d waited for him, I’d opened the heavy drapes and watched some of the show. I’d seen the arrival and departure of several medical trucks, Highway Patrol and local police vehicles from New Haven and the county. Uniformed officers were now posted at the entrance to The Lucky Bar. Crime scene processing had already begun and the familiar yellow tape was slashed across the doorway.
Through everything, water in various stages of freezing continued to fall. Temperatures must have fallen slightly since I left the scene because the ground was now dusted with white. Snow over ice is among the most treacherous possible driving conditions. Processing tonight’s crime scene and handling the victims would be more complicated and difficult until the weather cleared.
Clifton ran a flat palm across his face, which was showing a day’s growth of beard. He replied in the formal way he might report to a superior officer. “All of the injured civilians have been transported to the hospital. I have MPs on the scene to assist Sheriff Taylor. We located no additional injured Army personnel. The homicides will be processed by civilian law enforcement. Sherriff Taylor is a good cop. He’ll do what needs to be done.”
He stopped pacing a moment and turned to face me. “The case isn’t my jurisdiction, so I have no choice in any event.”
I nodded. “What about the bartender and the bouncer? I assume they were arrested for opening fire on the shooter, just to keep track of them until things get sorted out if nothing else.”
“Taylor sent Junior to the local jail. But Alvin required medical attention, probably surgery to that shoulder, so he was arrested and then transported to the hospital.” He turned his head again to watch events across the road.
“Did you interview them before Taylor got ahold of them?”
“A little bit. I’ve been the XO at Bird for about a year, so I’ve had dealings with both of them before. Alvin is a decent guy who’s had a tough life. The Lucky Bar is all he has to support himself and his family. He’ll reopen as soon as possible.”
In my experience, places like The Lucky Bar operated on a thin line barely inside the law. On any given night, there were plenty of chances for trouble of one kind or another. Judging from the response to that gunman tonight, Alvin and Junior expected trouble and were prepared to handle it.
“Seems like Alvin was pretty lucky to me.”
“How so?”
“Neither he nor his son are dead. The gunshot wound to his shoulder will give him some problems, but it appeared treatable. Lots of folks, including at least four soldiers from your base who were trying to do the right thing, weren’t that lucky tonight.”
Clifton squared his shoulders and leaned his back against the window. “I could have made the place off-limits to enlisted men. I’ve threatened to do it more than once. I could’ve confined them to the base tonight because of the weather, and I thought about it.”
“But you didn’t do any of that.”
“You drove here from Bird. How many five-star restaurants and symphony halls did you see along the way?” He paused and raised his cup again. “The Army’s not an easy gig. We train hard. We expect fewer soldiers to do a lot more. The discipline is tough. People need an outlet and we can’t provide everything on the base, as much as I wish we could.”
I understood his point. Compromises had to be made. Enlisted personnel were entitled to free time. They were going to spend it somewhere.
The Lucky Bar was reasonably close and somewhat manageable for the MPs. Maybe everything in the place wasn’t strictly legal, but there were worse places they could go.
And, until tonight, when four of Bird’s personnel were killed, worse things could have happened when soldiers went farther afield.
I asked, “Do you know anything about the shooter yet? Or the dancer?”
“Shooter had a Tennessee driver’s license in his wallet and a few credit cards. A little bit of cash on him, not much. His name was Jeffrey Mayne. Mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Alvin doesn’t keep the best records on his employees, so we’re not sure about her yet. She grew up here in New Haven, but she’d been gone for ten years. She told Alvin her name was Gloria Bedazzle, which he simply accepted because he didn’t remember her at first. Said she was looking to escape an abuser. It was probably instinct that brought her back where Alvin could at least try to look out for her. Alvin has always been a sucker for those stories.”
He again rubbed a palm over his face. “Alvin should know better. He’s been in the business long enough. He knew the ex would come looking for her and the outcome would be ugly.”
Meaning that Alvin’s response to the gunman was premeditated, at least. Racine said Alvin didn’t allow guns in The Lucky Bar, but he’d let Jeffrey Mayne bring one inside. And both Alvin and Junior were only too willing to shoot back.
“So you think this was a personal problem between the star-crossed lovers that got out of hand. Straight homicidal mania?”
“Seems like it now. When our guys rushed Mayne, they might have made the situation worse.” Dark circles marked his eyes and deeper lines ran toward his mouth. Gone was the sexy dude I’d first met back at Bird. This guy was grim and exhausted. “It’s hard to say until we have more facts from the witnesses. And from the medical examiner.”
My gut said Tony was probably right. The final report would contain final conclusions, but right now there was no evidence to suggest anything other than a domestic argument gone wrong. Any cop on any beat in any jurisdiction will tell you that there’s nothing more dangerous than responding to a domestic disturbance.
And if this was ruled a domestic disturbance, the case would be handled appropriately and had absolutely nothing to do with me or my assignment. Which meant that none of it—Alvin and Junior and the shoot-out at The Lucky Bar—was my concern.
So I moved on to something that was my business. “Junior told me that Alvin’s bad knee was the result of a fight with Jack Reacher. You know anything about that?”
Clifton’s left eyebrow lifted, but he didn’t respond.
“What about Colonel Summer?” I pressed. “She was there. She’s got to know all about it, doesn’t she?”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you privately. To deliver the rest of the bad news.” He paused a moment, maybe looking for a way to soften harsh words. Finding none, he simply reported the facts. “Fifty minutes before you arrived at Fort Bird this morning, Colonel Summer’s car was crushed between two semi-trucks. A chain reaction collision. On the highway. Mile marker #224, between here and the Fort Bird exit. Experience says Colonel Summer was dead in less than half a second.”
“Experience?” I held my expression steady, but the news jolted my stomach. Of all the things I’d expected him to say, “Summer’s dead” was nowhere on my list. Dead in a vehicle crash less than an hour before she was supposed to spill everything she knew to the FBI? Way too convenient.
Whatever Summer had learned about Reacher back then, whatever she knew about his life after he left the Army, might have died with her. More than a million active and inactive co-workers became instant suspects in her death, but my money was betting on her connection to one particular big, bad MP being at the center.
CHAPTER 13
Tony shared the remaining facts. How Summer had been on the way to meet me from her office in Rock Creek, Virginia. Driving like a bat out of hell, as was her well-known habit. How she’d rear-ended the tanker going 80 per and then the long-haul driver behind her had nowhere else to go except over the side to the deep valley floor below. The driver said he considered going off the road, but concluded his suicide wouldn’t help the small woman in the already crushed sports car. He’d have been right.
The details of the crash weren’t really that important. About ninety people die in car crashes every day in the United States, give or take, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Not as com
mon as fatal heart attacks, but common enough that news outlets don’t report vehicular fatalities unless somebody famous was drunk, high, or dead.
Summer wasn’t a celebrity of any kind. Tony had brought her personnel file with him, along with the rest of the already fattening file on the crash that had killed her. She’d left no children or parents or ex-spouses. She had a passel of siblings and cousins scattered about, as relatives usually are. She was a serious, dedicated Military Police Officer, one of the best the U.S. Army had produced in the past twenty-five years, based on that file. Her death wouldn’t rate a two-sentence mention anywhere except in the military press and her church bulletin.
Not that honoring or mourning her would make a difference to my assignment. Colonel Eunice Summer was dead. Not even the Boss could bring her back to life.
Several things clicked into place in my head. Like why the Boss didn’t give me the JAG report before my scheduled interview with Summer. He’d certainly possessed it before she died. He could have provided the redacted version to me earlier if he’d wanted to so I could’ve been farther along on my Reacher file by now.
He wouldn’t have sent me to Colonel Summer in the first place unless he knew she could fill in a few blanks. But when she no-showed, he hunted her down and found out why. When he learned that she’d died and could never reveal what she knew about Reacher, he intended me to go after the Intel another way. He meant me to use the JAG file instead of whatever he’d expected Summer to tell me. Like Summer was another chess piece removed from his board and nothing more.
That didn’t sit right with me. Not at all.
“You’re sure that’s how it happened? She was driving too fast on the slick pavement and rear-ended a tanker? Going eighty miles an hour? And you’re sure it’s her?”
“That’s why you couldn’t reach me when you called tonight. I was at the crash site. I saw the car.” He paused. “I saw the body. You can pull up news footage on the Internet. It’s been on all the stations tonight.”
“You feel confident that’s all there was to her death, then?”
He raised both eyebrows this time instead of one. “What else would it be?”
“Dunno.” I shook my head. “Maybe she was impaired. Was she a drinker? Drugs?”
“If she was impaired, the autopsy would discover that, but she wasn’t, and it won’t. So what’s next?” His eyes widened. “Are you imagining that Summer would have committed suicide by slamming into that tanker just to avoid telling you ancient history about Jack Reacher? That’s a bit absurd, don’t you think?”
Actually, no. The Reacher investigation had proved to be bizarre and unpredictable. I’d already seen crazier things than a staged accident happen where Reacher was involved. I shrugged. “I’m going to need to see those reports.”
“The FBI has access to anything and everything these days. More access than I have.” His voice was stiff, offended, which I found curious. “But you’ll have to wait. The coroner’s going to be a little busy for the next few days.”
Now he sounded full-on pissed.
“Look,” I said. “I’m not trying to sully the stellar reputation of an Army hero here.”
“That’s how I heard it.” He’d stuffed his hands into his pockets and his entire body seemed to close up tight.
Yep. Totally miffed. Read that one right.
“I was really looking forward to meeting Colonel Summer and I’m so sorry for your loss.” I drained the last of my coffee and placed the empty cup on the floor, which was the only flat surface available besides my bed and the bathroom vanity. “But put your professional hat on here and not your personal one.”
“Meaning?” He sounded petulant like a child saying Oh, yeah? Well, make me!
“Three unusual things happened here within the past fifteen hours. Two were extraordinary things. Terrible things. The third—which was really the first of them—might have been just an interesting coincidence.” I kept my voice level, reasonable. “You’re a cop. Don’t tell me you believe in coincidence.”
He shook his head and his quills seemed to settle into place a little. “I am not following you. Sorry.”
“Unusual event number one: that bloodbath across the street. The Lucky Bar has been operating for decades in exactly the same location and exactly the same way.” I’d lay it out, one element at a time, watching his prickly reactions to be sure he followed the logic. “You told me that Alvin has always been a sucker for domestic abuse victims. Which means that angry exes of all types, some with homicidal intent, have no doubt come stalking in the past. Alvin has handled them. He’s never had a mass shooting in the bar before. True?”
“Yes.” Clipped. Unfriendly. But not quite as hostile.
I moved on. “Number two: Colonel Summer’s death on that mountain road. Think about it. Colonel Summer was posted at Fort Bird for five years, and she told me she was now investigating a corruption case at Bird, too. So she had driven that highway dozens if not hundreds of times, in all types of weather. According to her personnel file, Colonel Summer was known to be an excellent driver though her speeding habit was as well documented as her expertise. Everyone who knew her was aware of both her driving skill and her penchant for speed.”
He shrugged his assent, but his steady gaze never wavered. No epiphany related to the identity of the third item lightened his scowl.
You can lead a cop to water, but you can’t make him think. I applied patience and waited for him to make the connections himself.
He was a smart guy. He’d been in the business long enough. He had seen every kind of crime there was and all of his suspects were trained killers. Nobody built a resume like that by accepting coincidence as any kind of answer to anything.
He sighed. “You think the bar shooting and the crash happened today because FBI Special Agent Kim Otto came to Fort Bird to interview Colonel Eunice Summer.” The defensive tension lines in his face slowly faded and his shoulders relaxed. If he hadn’t been so totally undone by the events of his day, he might even have smiled. “You’re good at your job, Otto. I checked before we allowed you on base. But your conclusions seem a bit grandiose to me.”
When he put it that way, he missed the point by a mile. I shook my head. “Not exactly.”
“What, then? Exactly.”
My orders were to stay off the books and under the radar. I wouldn’t tell him anything more. He’d figure it out, or he wouldn’t. Either way, he was on his own.
“Anything else going on across the road over there?” I asked.
When he turned his head toward the window to check, I pushed off the bed, stood and stretched and pulled an antacid out of my pocket and popped it into my mouth. Nothing worse than coffee on an empty stomach after a bottle of cheap red wine and twelve gallons of adrenaline to get my stomach snake thrashing.
I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket for the third time since Clifton had arrived.
“Looks like they’ve removed all the civilians from the parking lot and secured the area,” he reported. “Crime scene will be there for a while.” He dropped his cup into my trashcan and walked to the door. “I have to get back.”
“Thanks for the coffee,” I said as he turned the doorknob and stepped into the corridor. “I’m very sorry about Colonel Summer, Tony. I was really looking forward to meeting her.”
He’d turned, but his demeanor felt almost as frosty as the snow falling outside. He nodded again, then walked toward the elevator without a backward glance. The door snugged closed behind him.
He would figure out that Reacher’s old case was at the center of everything. He was that kind of guy. The kind who would investigate whether he believed my theories or not.
And when he caught up with the facts and the logic, he would call. He might even have something useful to add. Until then, Gaspar and I were on our own.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I’d received three text messages while Clifton was here. One from Gaspar and two from the Boss.
&nbs
p; Gaspar’s had come first. “American #7392. Nashville. 1115. I’ll get a car.” That last bit made me grin. Of course, Gaspar would get a car. Which translated into a big old boat of a vehicle. He’d walk before he’d be caught dead driving a little SUV like the one I’d rented in Charlotte. He was number two and number two always drove and the driver needed to be comfortable, he said.
Next were two texts from the Boss. The first said: “Confirmed. Delta #846. Departs Charlotte 0945. Secure files available.”
I replied, “OK.”
The Boss’s second text confirmed my earlier suspicion that he couldn’t actually see inside this hotel room, and he couldn’t hear my conversations here, either. He texted: “Summer. Deceased.”
He’d known about Colonel Summer’s death hours ago and he hadn’t told me. When I called Major Clifton about the shooting at The Lucky Bar, the Boss knew I’d find out about Summer. So he’d sent the second text after Major Clifton had delivered the news instead of before.
Which confirmed, again, that Gaspar was right. The Boss wasn’t God and he didn’t know everything.
It also confirmed that he was only reliable when he felt like it.
My reply to the Boss’s text was, as the Brits say, cheeky. “Suspicious circumstances. Please collect reports.”
I checked my Seiko for the time. It was already five o’clock. The drive from here to the Charlotte airport was 126 miles. It would take more than two hours in this weather, according to the GPS.
Which meant Gaspar’s flight would be on the ground in Nashville for at least half an hour before I could get there.
I quickly connected to the secure satellite and downloaded the new files to read on the plane. I watched the news footage of Summer’s crash and downloaded that, too. Then I collected the few items I’d brought with me, stuffed them into my bags, and tossed my room key onto the bed on my way out.
I was already on the road when I remembered two things I should not have missed. First, Tony Clifton didn’t answer my question. I’d asked, “You feel confident her death was an accident, then?” He’d replied, “What else would it be?” Not a lie, exactly. But a diversion. He knew something more and I should have followed up. The Boss would know. I made a mental note to ask him if I couldn’t find the answer another way.
