Mr. Kill

by Martin Limon

  Also, his nose wasn’t big enough to justify the huge proboscises that had been drawn in the witness sketches. Besides, there were probably other trainers at the end of this tunnel.

  The tunnel seemed endless. I remembered that the shack was sitting alone, far from any obvious place to come back up to the surface. We kept crawling.

  How sure was I that this guy, Sergeant First Class Walker R. Amos, was actually the Blue Train rapist? Fairly sure. We’d meticulously eliminated every other American G.I. who could have been on the two trains involved. If this Amos guy had carte blanche to take the ration-control cards to Seoul, he’d be able to travel on the Blue Train pretty much at will. I had to assume that he could be dangerous. Very dangerous.

  The tunnel closed in on me. Was it getting narrower, or was it just my imagination? No, it was definitely narrower. I had to pull my shoulder in and constrict my chest, making it more difficult to breathe. For a second, I considered turning around, until I realized that was impossible. I had to go forward wherever it led, which maybe was the point of this training.

  Finally, Ernie’s boots kicked back strongly and then I realized that his body was twisting upward. Ahead of him light glimmered. Then he was gone. I breathed fresh air, and strong hands were pulling me up to freedom. I inhaled deeply, enjoying the rich oxygen, my eyes squinting at the bright lights of the fluorescent bulbs overhead. We were in some sort of aid station. One G.I. lay on a cot, a blue-smocked medic hovering about him. A much larger group of G.I.s sat at two picnic tables pushed together, munching on crackers and sipping cool drinks and staring back at us, smirking.

  Amidst this calm scene, Ernie was wrestling with someone.

  The man went down on the floor with a thump and others started shouting, and then we had all gathered around the two wrestling men. Ernie sprang to his feet, triumphant.

  “Got him,” he said.

  The man lying on the ground, his eyes wide, was Caucasian, about six feet tall, and his hands were trussed firmly behind his back. The name tag on his field jacket said Amos. Medics started to shove Ernie, but I jumped in front of them and pulled out my badge.

  “CID,” I said. “Back off. Or you’ll be interfering with an arrest.”

  “Arrest?”

  Everyone was incredulous.

  Ernie pulled the handcuffed man to his feet.

  “Good to meet you at last,” I said.

  “Meet me? We’ve never met before.”

  “But I know of you,” I said. “I’ve been studying your movements on the Blue Train.”

  Then the light of understanding entered the man’s eyes. “You mean this,” he said, looking down at his field jacket. “The name tag.”

  Ernie kept a tight hold on his arm.

  “You think I’m Amos,” he said finally.

  We waited.

  “This isn’t my field jacket. It’s cold in here so I just borrowed it from Sergeant Amos. He left it here when he changed into the Warsaw Pact uniform.”

  “He’s one of the two guys at the other end of the tunnel?” I asked.

  “Right. But he couldn’t have done anything to be arrested for. He’s a fine man.”

  “Never mind that,” Ernie said. “Which one is he? The white one or the black one?”

  “The black one,” the guy said. “He’s the preacher who conducts our nondenominational services every Sunday.”

  Colonel Laurel was livid. But I was pretty angry too. So was Ernie. Neither one of us really cared about whether we got court-martialed for insubordination, and we let him have it.

  “The Blue Train rapist could strike again at any moment,” I shouted. “More women could be hurt. More children scarred for life. But instead, all you can think about is the insult to your integrity. I need to know where everyone has been for every minute of the last few weeks. Once I know that, I either find the Blue Train rapist or I eliminate all of your men and we go on our way.”

  Colonel Laurel’s mangled jaw was clamped shut. His eyes shot blue lasers of hatred. After word spread about what we’d done, training had halted and a gaggle of Green Berets, led by Sergeant Warnocki, had escorted us to Colonel Laurel’s Quonset hut.

  “Damn you!” he shouted. He paced around his office, in front of the flags of the United States, the Republic of Korea, and the United Nations. For a moment, I thought he was going to smack us. Instead, he stopped pacing and spoke.

  “All right, then. You have one hour. Warnocki! Escort these men to the orderly room. Let them examine the morning report, leave records, temporary duty orders, anything that will allow them to trace the whereabouts of the members of this command. But no classified material.

  Understood?”

  “Understood, sir.”

  Warnocki jammed his thumb toward the door.

  Ernie and I saluted Colonel Laurel. He didn’t bother to respond.

  It took me twenty minutes to gather all the information I needed. Warnocki slouched in a vinyl chair. Ernie gazed at me quizzically but I didn’t want to tell him what I’d found. Not yet, not in front of Warnocki.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  As we walked out the door, Warnocki followed.

  “Aren’t you going to report to the Colonel?” he asked.

  “Later. Where will he be this afternoon?”

  “Out with the haenyo. Teaching diving techniques.”

  “They have scuba gear?” Ernie asked.

  “Naw. He teaches ‘natural’ techniques. How to hold your breath, how to gradually increase the depth of your dives, how to use the currents to your advantage, stuff like that. The way the haenyo do it.”

  Ernie and I returned to the Nokko-ri Yoguan and changed out of our muddy clothes.

  The truth of the matter was that I was devastated. All of my theories had been shattered. Sergeant First Class Amos couldn’t be the Blue Train rapist, because all the eyewitness reports had agreed that the culprit was a white man. Amos was black. Since he was such a frequent rider of the Blue Train, I did briefly interview him and ask if he’d noticed anything suspicious. Although he’d heard about the attacks, he’d noticed nothing unusual himself. On the day the Blue Train to Seoul had stopped to allow the funeral procession of the late First Lady to pass, he’d been on an earlier train.

  Once we changed back into our civvies, Ernie said, “Now what?”

  I didn’t know. We walked out of the yoguan and I stared up at the sky. From the peak of Mount Halla, a wisp of smoke trailed lazily up into the endless blue. I thought of the commo site, and flunking an IG inspection, how seriously the army takes those things. Then I remembered something Vance had said, and suddenly I knew.

  “What?” Ernie asked.

  When I didn’t answer, he asked again, more insistent this time. “What?”

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s find a cab.”

  We were three quarters of the way up the mountain, with the same cab driver, Mr. Won, still driving his unrepaired cab and more nervous than ever. He’d made us pay triple fare instead of double. Ernie pointed. “There!”

  Won pulled off at the next bypass. The three of us climbed out to get a better look. Zigzagging down the mountain, we could see him from a mile off. The quarter-ton truck from the communications site.

  “That must be him,” I said. “Let’s roll the cab out here to block his way.”

  Ernie jumped in the driver’s seat and Mr. Won screamed at us to stop. Oblivious, Ernie started the engine, shoved it into gear, and drove the cab across the road so as to block the way of the oncoming truck.

  “He’ll have to come wide around that curve,” Ernie said. “If he doesn’t slam on his brakes, he’ll barrel right into the cab.”

  Keeping the keys so the protesting Mr. Won couldn’t move his vehicle, Ernie and I trotted up the road and hid behind some rocks next to the spot where we figured the truck would have to come to a stop. Or at least slow down.

  Up above, the engine roared louder.

  17

  The quarter-ton
truck rounded the last corner and the driver’s head, small in the distance, was square and dark, almost-black hair cut very short: Ronald T. Parkwood, the ranking NCO and the only other man besides Vance stationed at the Mount Halla commo site. When he saw the taxicab blocking half the road, a moment of surprise suffused his features, but then hairy forearms took over, jerking the steering wheel to the right, rolling the quarter-ton into a skid. Expertly, he twisted the steering wheel back to the left, turning into the skid, straightening out the truck and slamming, with a horrific crash, into the rear of the little Hyundai sedan. Behind me, Mr. Won groaned.

  Ernie and I erupted from our hiding places and sprinted toward the truck, but Parkwood was still in control, rolling forward, shifting gears, finally gunning the engine and making the wheels spin. Laughing, he sped off down the road. An arm reached out of the left cab window, raised in the air, flipping us the bird.

  “Dammit!” Ernie shouted.

  He jumped into the driver’s side of the cab and tried to start the engine. It only whined in protest; no matter how hard he tried, it wouldn’t turn over.

  “Specialist Vance,” I said. “He’s still up there. And there’s a phone. We can call. Come on.”

  Ernie and I started up the mountain, running when we could, leaning forward and striding when the incline became too steep. Reluctantly, Mr. Won followed.

  We’d chased the Blue Train rapist from Seoul, down the Korean peninsula to its southernmost tip, and then beyond, to this island deep in the heart of the cold Yellow Sea. Now we were truly as far south as it was possible to go and still fall under the purview of the United States Forces Korea. The gate in the chain-link fence surrounding the Mount Halla Communications Center squeaked on its hinges.

  “He left it open,” Ernie said, perspiration pouring off his forehead.

  “Apparently,” I replied, “he doesn’t plan on coming back.”

  The door to the main building had been propped open with an old combat boot.

  “He wanted us to enter,” Ernie said.

  I nodded.

  Behind us, Mr. Won, the cab driver, stood nervously outside the gate, wringing his hands, still staring back down the mountain toward his damaged cab. On the way up, he’d harangued me about how he was a poor man and he couldn’t afford to have the cab repaired—if, in fact, it even could be repaired. I told him to contact the 8th Army Claims Office. He might have to hire an attorney but eventually, they’d make good his loss, not only for repair of the cab but also for lost wages. That’s what I told him. Whether that would come to pass, I couldn’t guarantee.

  Unconsciously, Ernie touched the inner pocket of his jacket. Nothing was there. No .45. But I didn’t think we’d need one. The Blue Train rapist was long gone. What I had to do was find a telephone, contact the Korean National Police, and make sure that Sergeant Ronald T. Parkwood didn’t get off the Island of Cheju.

  The communications room was shattered. Metal boxes had huge dents in them, keyboards and control panels had been smashed, wires—some of them still sparking—stuck out in every direction. Clipboards with maintenance checklists on them had been smashed in two.

  “Christ,” Ernie said. “He must’ve taken a sledgehammer to this stuff.”

  I checked the phones. Dead. So much for calling ahead to the KNPs.

  “Where’s Vance?” I said.

  Ernie hurried toward the back room. I followed. The living quarters had been similarly smashed. Glassware, metal utensils, pots and pans, chunks of roast beef, and sprays of broccoli were splattered everywhere. An expensive stereo set with microphone lay on its side atop a smashed electric guitar. The single cowboy boot I’d seen before lay beneath a pile of dirty clothes that, incongruously, included a red lace bra.

  “Somebody threw a tantrum,” Ernie said.

  “Vance!” I shouted. “You in here?”

  When no one answered, Ernie and I tiptoed through the mess until we reached the small outdoor exercise area. That’s when we saw him. His arms were tied behind him with a sturdy rope. Somehow, Parkwood had managed to hang him over the pull-up bar, about eight feet off the ground. His knees had been hooked over the bar and then his ankles tied by electric cords securely to his thighs.

  “God,” Ernie said. “Must’ve hurt like a bastard.”

  Still, that much torture wasn’t enough for Sergeant Ronald T. Parkwood. He’d then tied a twenty-five-pound barbell to an electric circuit wire and attached the other end of the wire in a loop around Specialist Vance’s neck.

  Slowly, Vance had been strangled to death.

  I could’ve saved him if I’d managed to put it together earlier. On the Blue Train, Runnels the courier had said that the rapist was making his first checkmark on a list of corrective actions. Here at the Mount Halla commo site, Specialist Vance told me they’d failed their IG inspection. The list of deficiencies hanging on clipboards was massive and had to be corrected. If they weren’t corrected—and corrected in a timely fashion—Parkwood would be denied reenlistment.

  To civilians, especially civilians with gainful employment, that may not sound like much. But if you have little or no education, and you’ve been trained by the army to do a job that only the military has a need for, and you only have a few more years until you reach your twenty-year retirement, a bar from reenlistment can seem like death. Parkwood had a choice: correct the long list of deficiencies from the IG inspection, or get out of the army. He decided to get out. But before he left, he set about, for some reason known only to himself, to correct his own list of deficiencies in his life, and in so doing he’d murdered innocent people and destroyed the lives of those who had loved them.

  A red tongue lolled out of Vance’s open mouth. His upside-down face was purple, wearing an expression as if screaming in horror. Ernie found a butcher knife among the jumbled kitchen utensils and was about to cut Vance down when Mr. Won pushed through the open door behind us.

  I swiveled in time to see his face: wide-eyed with terror. Then he turned, grabbed his stomach, and barfed up what must’ve been his breakfast: a half-pound of partially digested cabbage kimchee, a little rice.

  Ernie managed to get the cab rolling. Not started, but rolling. When it began gliding downhill, gradually picking up speed, he tried the ignition again. This time it turned over. Still, he kept it in low because the brakes, by now, were totally worthless. I sat up front next to Ernie. A pale-looking Mr. Won sat in back.

  We screeched around corners, taking a couple of them on two wheels. When the road leveled even temporarily, Ernie slowed as much as he could, bouncing the side of the cab against boulders, scraping the bumper against bushes, purposely running the tires through mud or thick gravel. Each time Ernie completed such a maneuver, Mr. Won looked as if he was going to be sick again.

  Finally, we made it in one piece to the base of the mountain and a few minutes later we pulled up in front of the main gate of the Mount Halla Training Facility. When we hopped out of the cab, Mr. Won held on to my sleeve, a pleading look on his face. I reached in my wallet and handed him one of my business cards; when that wasn’t enough, I pulled the small wad of military payment certificates out of the wallet and handed them to him. About forty bucks.

  He held the money with both hands, staring at it forlornly.

  “The Eighth Army Claims Office,” I said, patting him on the shoulder.

  And then I was off.

  Ernie was already arguing with the gate guards; shoving one of them, one of them shoving back. After about two minutes of that, Staff Sergeant Warnocki appeared. He listened to our story, scratching his nearly bald head beneath his beret.

  Finally, he asked, “So, where did this guy go?”

  “That’s what we don’t know,” I replied. “But I have to call the KNPs to make sure that they don’t let him off the island.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Come on.”

  The three of us trotted over to the orderly room. There I placed an AUTOVON call to Pusan. Inspector Kill picked up immediately
. I explained what I knew. He reassured me that he would contact the Korean National Police on Cheju and this man known as Sergeant Ronald T. Parkwood would never leave the island.

  I hung up the phone.

  “So, did anybody see a quarter-ton truck around here?”

  Warnocki shook his head. Then he said, “Wait a minute. This guy, Parkwood, he works at the commo site, right?”

  Ernie and I both nodded.

  “Works out a lot,” he continued. “Sort of buff, for a rear-echelon puke.”

  “That’s him,” I replied.

  “He was into diving.” Ernie and I both stared at him blankly. Warnocki continued. “Between cycles, Colonel Laurel gives water survival courses to anybody who’s interested, using the techniques he’s learned from the haenyo.”

  “Did you go?” Ernie asked.

  “Of course. All the SF personnel did. He’s our commander.”

  “And Parkwood went too?”

  “Yeah. Held back, though. Didn’t mingle with the rest of us.”

  “So if you were trying to get off this island,” Ernie asked, “and you figured that even if you managed to get on the ferry, you’d probably be picked up by the time you landed in Pusan, where would you go?”

  “I’d steal a chopper,” Warnocki said.

  “And if that wasn’t available?”

  “A boat.”

  We started to run, but Warnocki shouted for us to wait. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. Inside a padlocked filing cabinet, he lifted out a pistol belt with a holster and strapped a .45 automatic pistol around his waist. Outside, he slid back the bolt to make sure a round was chambered. The three of us climbed in Warnocki’s jeep.

  * * *

  “Something’s wrong,” Warnocki said.

  The three of us were lying on a sand dune, looking down on the boulder-strewn beach next to the ancient wooden quay where the haenyo launch their craft. Lieutenant Colonel Ambrose Q. Laurel was sitting on a flat rock with his back to us, staring out to sea. Two haenyo, clad in full-body wet suits, were working listlessly on repairing nets.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.