Collateral Damage

by Austin S. Camacho

  “God, I hope not,” Hannibal said. “Because they’ve been sleeping together since before Joan was of legal age. And when she did reach legal age, they were married. Mark, meet Joan’s first husband. You aren’t blood relatives, are you?” This last question Hannibal addressed to Langford.

  “You’re treading on dangerous territory,” Langford said, slipping to his feet. “We’re not blood and, even if we maintained our privacy, there was nothing illegal or even illicit about our marriage.”

  “Well, you’ve always seen the morality thing in shades of gray, haven’t you, Langford?” Hannibal asked. “Before you met Joan, you were sleeping with the wife of your good friend Gil Donner.”

  Langford reddened. “I never sneaked behind his back. Gil and Carla had an open relationship.”

  “That appears to be true,” Hannibal said. “They even had a little love nest apartment where they met their outside interests. Funny, you’d have expected Carla to be a better sport. About sharing, I mean.”

  “Okay, I’m lost,” Mark said, standing up. “What has all this to do with a murder?”

  Hannibal looked at Joan, giving her a chance to speak. She shook her head and remained silent, so Hannibal continued. “As it turns out, Langford here reached the rank of Brigadier General in the Army over there in Berlin. Having an underage girlfriend would have derailed that career for sure, but he had a safe place to take her. Gil Donner’s little love nest. The way I see it, Carla must have caught you two up there, doing the nasty. I don’t understand how she could justify being jealous, but I don’t think she reacted well. Otherwise, Langford wouldn’t have killed her.”

  All eyes turned to Langford. His eyes cast toward the carpet. “It was an accident.”

  “Maybe,” Hannibal said. “But if she was planning to leave Gil for you, she’d have been a terrible security risk after she found out you liked them younger. In any case, she ended up dead, and again a connection to you would have ended your precious career. So you set her up to look like a suicide. Then you convinced your subordinate, Gil Donner, the provost marshal, to limit the investigation.”

  “She was already dead,” Langford said, taking a step toward Hannibal. “There was nothing to be gained by exposing my mistake.”

  “Yes, and Donner was in no hurry to expose his lifestyle. The two of you decided nothing you did would hurt her anymore, but you didn’t seem to notice or care about ruining the life of a good MP named Foster Peters. No biggie, right? One thing you learned in your early career in Vietnam was, every enemy action creates a certain amount of acceptable collateral damage.”

  Mark stepped closer to Joan, hands held wide. “Is this true, baby? You saw him kill a woman? And then you, you married him?” Joan nodded slowly, but could not produce any words.

  “Well they wanted to stay together, but now they had no place to go,” Hannibal said. “And I think maybe old Langford here was really in love with her. So he took her in, and made up the dead brother story to make it acceptable for her to be in his home. Then, to tie her to him better, he married her. I don’t think he knew at the time that Foster Peters’ son, Oscar, was one of her young admirers. Did you let it slip that Carla Donner’s death was suspicious, Joan?”

  “I thought he knew,” Joan said, shaking her head. “After all, his father was the investigating officer. I guess I did say too much before I realized he was ignorant.”

  Hannibal continued, watching Langford’s eyes, seeing trouble in them. “Pretty soon after that you moved back to the States, right? I’m guessing now, but I figure the general here got posted to the Pentagon for his last assignment. Were you already looking for a younger man then, Joan?”

  Langford stepped forward, moving on his feet more lightly than one would expect for a man his age. “Joan would never consider leaving me,” He said in a low, deep voice.

  Hannibal chuckled. “Please. The age difference and your overwhelming control of her were tearing her apart. You put her in therapy with Dr. Roberts. But it didn’t do what you wanted it to, did it? He encouraged her to find someone nearer her own age. Then she met Grant Edwards and got the hots for him.”

  “He tried to steal my Joan!” Langford bellowed. The women gasped loudly as he pulled a large knife from under his jacket. He flipped into a reverse grip, the point toward his elbow, edge out. Hannibal recognized it as a Ka-bar, the fighting blade favored by Marines since World War II.

  “And you killed him with a knife very much like this one,” Hannibal said, holding his hands wide and backing away slowly. “When you found out about him and Joan, you started following her. You heard them arguing. As soon as she left, you went to the door. He let you in but he didn’t know why you were there. Did he turn his back to you or did you slip around behind him to drive the knife into his throat?”

  “He didn’t deserve her,” Langford said. “He couldn’t fight for her.”

  “Yeah well we don’t need to either,” Hannibal said, reaching for his holster before he remembered that the police took his pistol back at Donner’s hotel room.

  “No gun?” Langford asked. “Well, I guess you can’t stop me. And anyway, Edwards was an adulterer who deserved to die.”

  Hannibal stepped back in front of the door. “Maybe. But I think he was waiting for his wife to try to work it out that night. That’s why he and Joan argued. She showed up soon after you left and found him dead. Did she deserve to spend a decade in jail? Did her son deserve to have his brain warped by the experience? More collateral damage, general. I can’t let you leave.”

  “Then stop me.” Langford swung his blade forward, slashing at Hannibal’s stomach. Hannibal slammed backward against the door to avoid the attack. There seemed no space for him to dodge a second lunge without moving from the door. Fire in Langford Kitteridge’s eyes said he was prepared to kill again to escape.

  Mark Norton seemed to awaken from a trance. He stepped forward, shouting. “You crazy old man. No wonder she wanted to get away from you.” He lifted a barstool above his head, preparing to swing it like a club at Langford.

  “No!” Joan shouted. “Don’t hurt him.”

  Langford spun toward Mark. “You tried to steal her too.”

  “You moron, he never suspected you had her,” Hannibal said. “Just as you never suspected she went to Las Vegas last summer to get a divorce from you.”

  While Mark held Langford’s focus, Hannibal reached out for his right hand but the older man spun back around faster than anyone in the room thought possible. Hannibal hissed as the heavy blade slashed through his jacket. He felt a burning flash of pain as he leaped aside. Joan screamed, and Langford darted through the door. Mark dropped the barstool and rushed to Hannibal’s side.

  “Are you all right?” Mark asked.

  “Barely touched me,” Hannibal replied. “Hurts like hell but I’m not really injured. Got to get after him.”

  Joan started for the door, but Mark grabbed her arm. “That’s why you went to Vegas?” Mark asked. His face showed the kind of hurt little boys reflect when disappointed. “You didn’t want me to know you’d ever been married to that old coot, so you lied to me and sneaked down there.”

  Hannibal shouldered past the couple into the hallway. Langford was nowhere in sight, but his options were limited. As he ran to the stairs, Hannibal wondered what kind of connections the old general had around the Beltway. With money and connections it was just possible he could disappear, maybe even get out of the country before anyone tracked him down. That thought drove him down the two flights of stairs, his side pulsing where the tip of a fighting knife had opened him over his right ribs.

  Bursting through the lobby door, Hannibal almost allowed himself a smile. Langford was running toward his car but he had put the big knife away. A midnight blue Crown Victoria pulled into the parking lot, subtly blocking anyone from driving out. It was certainly an unmarked police car. But then, without breaking stride, Langford Kitteridge ran right past his own car.

  “Damn,” H
annibal muttered between clenched teeth. Leaning forward, he sprinted with all he had. By closing his mind to the pain in his side, he closed the distance in seconds. A clumsy tackle brought Langford down under him.

  A voice in the distance said, “Hey, what the hell? Leave that old man alone.” Hannibal knew it had to be a cop, reacting to the present scene with no knowledge of the history. Not so crazy, he thought. Wasn’t that why the most recent murder had nearly gone unsolved?

  “Give it up,” Hannibal said into the old man’s ear. “I don’t really want to hurt you.”

  Then shock overwhelmed Hannibal’s mind. A solid punch into his injured ribs all but paralyzed him. Another rocked his head. With startling strength, Langford managed to roll Hannibal over. The knife looked bigger raised above his head, but Hannibal raised a hand to grasp Langford’s wrist. The steady downward pressure seemed augmented by the power in Langford’s eyes.

  “A warrior doesn’t ever give up, soldier,” Langford said.

  Another familiar voice said, “Drop the knife.” Langford looked up to see Stan Thompson staring at him behind the front sights of his Glock automatic. “Put it down, old man.”

  Only then did Hannibal see the fear behind the warrior in Langford’s eyes. It was that fear, the fear of aging, the fear of losing his edge that was the seed of this man’s obsession for a girl barely out of junior high school, an obsession that had only grown as they both had aged. He had to own her, but in a very real way she owned him as well. And he had carried that obsession for all these years not even realizing how it was eating him alive from the inside out. The weight of that obsession was all Hannibal could see now, pressing the old man down on him. That was what he saw when he repeated Thompson’s words, but quietly, for only the two of them to hear.

  “General Kitteridge. Put it down.”

  The fight seemed to drain out of Langford’s body and Hannibal heard the knife hit the pavement by his ear, point first, and clatter to the ground. Then the weight was lifted off Hannibal as two uniformed men took Langford’s arms and raised him to his feet. While Thompson put his gun away, Hannibal stood up and dusted himself off. Only then did he notice the video camera fifty yards away. He smiled at Kate, standing beside the cameraman. Her crew had captured it all, and she had the story she deserved. Another debt paid, he thought. Despite the minor wounds he was more relaxed at that minute than he had been in a week. A long nightmare, reaching back a dozen years, seemed to finally be ending.

  “You’re probably wondering what’s going on here.” Hannibal said.

  “We got enough out of that Donner guy back in the hotel to put a lot of it together. Can I take it you’ve got the rest of the story figured out?”

  “I think so,” Hannibal said. “You just need to get...” He stopped mid-sentence, looking around. He zoomed in on the red Corvette just as it was backing out of its parking space. A new burst of adrenaline flooded his system, shoving him across the parking lot. “Stop that car!” He shouted. “She’s in there and she can’t get away.”

  Behind Hannibal, Thompson made subtle hand signals, and another car pulled forward, blocking the Corvette’s motion. When Hannibal reached the car he yanked the driver’s door open, grabbed Joan Kitteridge’s arm and snatched her out of the car. To her credit, she maintained her protective covering of anger and fear.

  “Are you crazy?” Joan said. “You’ve just taken my uncle away, after he tried to kill my husband. Don’t I deserve some peace?”

  Mark got out of the other side of the car but stayed on that side. It told Hannibal all he needed to know about this shaky alliance.

  “I see,” Hannibal said. “You’re going to play innocent. Did you think I forgot all about poor Oscar?”

  “Are you accusing me of a crime?” Joan asked. “Do you think I killed him?”

  Thompson stood behind Hannibal now, examining the girl with new suspicion. “I thought we only had one murderer here.”

  “Oh, she didn’t kill Oscar Peters, but she sure set him up,” Hannibal said. “Of course that was after she used him to cover her trip to Las Vegas for a divorce.” Hannibal raised his eyes to Mark across the car’s roof. “She fooled you both by sending her new employee, Oscar Peters, to Australia. He sent cards to you both, while she kept in touch by e-mail.”

  “He was my friend,” Joan said. “He did me a favor.”

  Hannibal almost laughed. “Let’s be real, Joan. Oscar wasn’t the nice guy everybody thought he was. He did it because it was one more thing he had on you.”

  “Blackmail?” Thompson asked.

  “That’s why his friend Fancy was digging through the company records,” Hannibal said. “And that’s why Fancy got fired. You see, Joan here gave Oscar a job because of what he knew about the first murder, but he couldn’t really prove anything and besides, he thought the killer, her husband, was dead. So he kept quiet at first. Then he got to be friends with Dean. They talked about the fact that they both had known her before their present jobs.”

  Mark walked slowly around the car, but instead of reaching for Joan he stood beside Hannibal, who now addressed Joan. “Poor Dean. If he described his father’s killing, Oscar surely figured out that there was a connection between you and the two murders. The one in Dean’s past and the one in his own.”

  “Sure,” Thompson said, “And the second killing told him this husband of hers was still alive.”

  “Right,” Hannibal said, closing on Joan. “And Oscar used that knowledge to get money out of you, didn’t he?”

  Joan’s protective coating was proving to be a thin veneer. As it cracked, her face seemed to fall, melting like a wax mask “He took advantage of me. I’m the victim here.”

  “Uh-huh,” Hannibal said. “Poor abused Joan. That’s why you aimed Uncle Langford at him, just like a loaded gun. Too bad it took him so long to realize he was in danger. But he did. That’s why he called Fancy and even tried to get me to protect him. I should have listened.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mark said. “You mean the old man found out she was being blackmailed?”

  “Nope,” Hannibal said. “But she went to Oscar’s house a few times to try to pay him, to threaten him, maybe to just talk him out of taking her dough. Maybe she even tried to seduce him.”

  “No chance with that swish,” Joan muttered. Her fear was slowly transforming into anger.

  “Anyway, you worked hard to make your meetings public knowledge. To old Langford and most of your employees, it looked like you were going out with him. Poor Oscar, unable to resist the ego boost, even told people the two of you were dating. That didn’t bother you, did it? You were counting on Langford to do what he always did when you showed serious interest in a man. And he didn’t let you down.”

  Mark nodded. “I see now why you kept our relationship secret. You were protecting me from him.”

  “Well that does fall together well,” Thompson said. “It would be a snap for the old man to hide the knife in Dean Edward’s apartment. But that makes the motive for the actual murder jealousy. Oscar wasn’t really killed for what he knew at all. Dean Edwards really had nothing whatever to do with that killing.”

  Hannibal shook his head. “Nope. Except that he was an awfully convenient scapegoat. An acceptable sacrifice neither of them was concerned with. Not the target, just collateral damage.”

  -34-

  SUNDAY

  Oronoco Park, on the shores of the Potomac River in Alexandria, was a world away from Hannibal’s backyard in the District. Trees lined the rocky shoreline but not so close together that they obscured his view of the deep blue river or the speedboats bouncing across its mirror surface. Fortunately, their foliage was enough to mute the grating snarl of the boat engines. It was a perfect autumn day, the sun bright enough to warm his bare arms below his golf shirt sleeves, the breeze just strong enough to keep him from reaching the point of perspiration. The breeze also carried the aroma of sizzling barbecue sauce from the bank of portable grills. Hannibal’s mouth be
gan to water in anticipation.

  Hannibal had attended any number of backyard picnics, park side picnics and company picnics at past jobs. However, this was his first catered picnic, and he was enjoying watching the cooks in their aprons and tall white chef’s hats, the scurrying servers and hustling cleanup crew, happy to be left out of the labor force. He was amazed at what Bea Collins had been able to pull together in just five days. He sat on one of the wooden picnic tables standing outside the huge tent-like covering the crew had erected that morning. From his perch, he could see everyone who had attended his own backyard cookout a few days earlier, plus several more folks, all in a party mood. Bea and Dean Edwards sat at the table, hand in hand. A few feet away, Francis Edwards and Harry Irons sat side by side in folding chairs. Harry squeezed Francis’ hand and spoke around a cigarette.

  “That future daughter-in-law of yours sure puts on a spread, don’t she?”

  “It was the least I could do for all the friends and family who helped see me through the last couple of weeks,” Bea said. “And I wanted us to get to know each other a little better before the big ceremony.”

  Hannibal’s gaze wandered beyond Bea to a spot further along the riverside dirt path where Janet Ingersoll sat on a blanket watching Monty and her son Nicky tossing a Frisbee back and forth. Cindy had been talking to her and was just walking away, laughing. She was dressed much as he was, except that her jeans were much tighter. As she approached him and perched on the table, she tilted her face to one side and grinned at him.

  “What’s this? You holding class today?”

  “Oscar wasn’t killed because of what I told him at all,” Dean said.

  “Nope,” Bea said, running a hand through Dean’s hair. “It all had nothing to do with you, baby.”

  Hannibal considered how easy it had been for the old man to destroy this boy’s life and his mother’s. Remembering the Peters, Hannibal knew Langford Kitteridge had managed to destroy two families. But looking at Bea with Dean and his mother, he began to believe that sometimes, broken families can heal.