Hit the Road Jack

by Diane Capri

  “Weston denies involvement,” Otto said, “and no connection was established.”

  The ceremony was opened by a chaplain, who began with an invocation. Those in the audience with the physical ability stood and bowed their heads. Many closed their eyes. Immediate, eerie quiet reigned.

  Kimball whispered. “The Army’s cop got it right at the outset.”

  “Reacher?”

  A woman nearby raised her head and glared toward them. Otto held her remaining questions until the brief invocation concluded and the audience returned as one to their seats.

  Normal squirming set a low, baseline volume beneath which Kimball replied. “Weston’s family was murdered because of Weston. He’s got their blood on his hands. Doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger and killed them in their beds.”

  “You’re the reason the Westons brought a lawyer here today, huh?” Gaspar asked.

  Kimball shook her head with a sour smile. “More likely the divorce Samantha’s lawyer filed yesterday the second they set foot on U.S. soil,” she said. “Either way, the Westons have more than me to be worried about.”

  “Why do you say that?” Otto asked.

  “You wouldn’t be here without an agenda.” Kimball tilted her head toward the entrance where the two agents waited. “More of your tribe over there. I’m guessing it’s not an FBI picnic. Weston’s about to get his. Finally. You can be sure I’m here to get photos.”

  Silence settled over the crowd again, except for a few members who were quietly crying. Occasionally, a brain-injured veteran would speak inappropriately. There were too many brain-injured veterans after the long war. They’d become a part of normal civilian life for military families. Another burden for the stalwart to bear with dignity. Everyone ignored the interruptions.

  Still at the side of the stage, Otto, Gaspar, and Kimball were the only people standing. Drawing too much of the wrong attention.

  Kimball handed Gaspar her card.

  “Call me later. I’ll fill you in,” she whispered and slipped away to join the other reporters seated near the opposite side of the stage. She was well within her equipment’s visual and audio range and beyond the reach of FBI interrogation while the memorial service continued.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The audience had expanded while Gaspar had been preoccupied by Weston and then Kimball. Seating was now filled to capacity and additional attendees stood blocking the aisles and the exits. His sightline to the official vehicles behind the stage was obscured, but he could see enough to confirm they remained in place. He couldn’t see whether Weston’s limo and bodyguards were still present, but they probably were.

  On the stage, all the chairs were occupied now. Both Westons and the chaplain were seated to the right of the podium. The base commander wasn’t present, but the resident Army Military Intelligence unit was represented by a one-star Brigadier General Gaspar didn’t know seated to the left of the podium with two civilians. Enlarged photos of the individuals—and, in Weston’s case, the family—being remembered today rested on easels blocking Gaspar’s sightline to the area behind the seated dignitaries. No one else on Gaspar’s side of the stage could see back there now, even if they’d been looking.

  Which they probably weren’t, because the enlarged photographs magnetized attention like flames drew bugs. The portrait that interested Gaspar declared a near-perfect American family. Five Westons gathered around Dad and Christmas tree, dressed in matching holiday plaids. Meredith Weston perched on the chair’s arm, her husband’s arm around her waist. She looked maybe thirty-five, blonde and tan with typically perfect American teeth suggesting she’d been a well-loved child once. Three children. All resembled their mother. You could tell the teenaged daughter, covered with freckles and hiding braces, would grow into her mother’s beauty. Twin boys sporting fresh haircuts and suits that matched dad’s were already little men. Fortunately, the boys looked like mom, too. Even back then, Colonel Weston wasn’t handsome.

  The photos reminded Gaspar of his own family. Four daughters, and his wife very pregnant with his first son. Gaspar loved his family like crazy. He refused to try to imagine life without them.

  Weston’s family had ended up dead. How could any father possibly do that? Gaspar had never understood it, even as he knew fathers killed their families every day.

  An intent-looking uniformed man was moving toward them along the edge of the audience, his gaze scanning the crowd, but returning to Gaspar and Otto. This would be their contact, an Air Force Office of Special Investigations officer assigned to assist the FBI agents in Weston’s arrest after the memorial service ended. Otto spotted him, too, and the three of them stepped away at a safe enough distance from the crowd to talk while maintaining a clear view of the parade ground, as well as the stage and surrounding elements.

  “Agents Otto and Gaspar?”

  They nodded.

  “Did you get what you came for from Weston? We might manage another few minutes before the arrest if you need it.”

  “Actually—” Otto replied, looking for his name plate.

  “Call me Danimal. Everybody does.”

  “Danimal,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  Otto shrugged. “OK, Danimal. I’d like more than just another few minutes with the guy. Two days in a room alone with him, maybe. He knows a lot more than he’s telling.”

  “Sorry. Can’t happen,” he said. “Happy to spill whatever I know, though. Not that there’s much to spill. Reacher was a good cop and he did a good job on the case. He had a good close record on his cases, but he couldn’t make it stick against Weston. Everything’s in the file. I’ve read it. We can’t release the file, but my boss promised yours that I could answer your questions.”

  “Not a lot of Army here on base back then, right?” Otto asked. “How was this case Reacher’s jurisdiction, anyway?”

  “Strictly speaking, it probably wasn’t. Weston was on base for a few months on a special assignment. Reacher came down after the murders.”

  Gaspar asked, “So Reacher wasn’t assigned to duty here?”

  “No need for Army military police like Reacher. Base security handles everything. In appropriate cases, we coordinate with Tampa P.D. and the local FBI. Sometimes other jurisdictions.”

  “Weston was Army. What was his assignment?”

  “Classified,” Danimal said, as if no further comment was necessary.

  “Weston lived off base. Why was base security involved in the case?”

  “All MacDill security teams have good relationships with local law enforcement. We work together when our personnel are involved.”

  Otto said, “Reacher disregarded all the standard procedures, I gather.”

  He nodded. “Murder of an Army officer’s family is not the sort of thing we’d keep our noses out of just because it happened off base.”

  “Weston and Reacher had a history,” Gaspar said. “That have anything to do with Reacher’s interest?”

  Danimal shrugged. “Weston had a history with everybody who crossed his path. He’s not an easy guy. You must have noticed.”

  Gaspar said, “Wife and three kids shot in the head with a .38 while they slept in their own civilian beds around midnight on a Wednesday. Ballistics on the gunshots?”

  “It was the wife’s gun. First responders found it on the bed still loosely gripped in her hand. Army wives learn to shoot for self-protection and she was damn good at it. In this case, looks like she didn’t get the chance to fire.”

  “Reacher concluded there’d been no intruder?”

  “House was in a good, safe South Tampa neighborhood, but shit happens sometimes.”

  “Not in this case?” Otto asked.

  “Right.” He nodded. “No forced entry, no identifiable evidence of a break-in. Front door locked and alarm system activated. Family dog asleep in the kitchen.”

  “The dog slept through the whole thing?” Gaspar asked.

  Danimal nodded. “That’s what
it looked like.”

  Gaspar had to agree. Dogs don’t sleep through break-ins. Not unless they’re drugged, or deaf. Or they know the killer. And sometimes, not even then.

  “Say Reacher was right. No intruder,” Otto said. “Normal conclusion would be murder suicide. Yet the locals ruled that out and Reacher agreed. Why?”

  “No motive, for starters.”

  Gaspar nodded. Women usually need a reason to kill, even if it’s a crazy reason.

  “By all accounts, she was a wonderful mother, decent wife to a difficult guy. Kids were great, too. Good students. Lots of friends. No substance abuse.”

  “All-American family, huh?” Otto asked, glancing again at the photographs on the stage.

  Danimal shrugged. “Zero reported difficulties.”

  Which was not the same thing as no problems, exactly. Gaspar was forming a clearer picture of Reacher’s analysis of the crimes. “Suspects?”

  “No.”

  “She have any enemies?”

  “None anyone could find.”

  “How hard did Reacher look?”

  Danimal shrugged again. “Not too hard, probably. He knew Weston. We all did. Guy had plenty of enemies. We didn’t need to spin our wheels looking for hers.”

  “Where was Weston at the time of the murders?” Otto asked.

  “Alibi was weak from the start,” Danimal said. “He claimed he was drinking with buddies at a local strip joint until the place closed.”

  “Devoted family man that he was. Alibi didn’t hold up, though?”

  “No confirming surveillance available in those clubs, for obvious reasons. Nobody remembered Weston being there after his buddies left about two a.m.”

  Gaspar said, “Meaning Reacher focused on the most obvious suspect.”

  “Pretty much,” Danimal said. “Reacher wanted Weston to be guilty, sure. But the rest of us agreed. Reacher wasn’t completely wrong.”

  “Roger that,” Gaspar said.

  “What happened next?” Otto asked.

  Danimal looked uncomfortable for the first time. “That’s a little…vague.”

  “Let me guess,” Otto said, sardonically. “Weston was hauled in looking like he’d been run over by a bus, right?”

  Danimal shrugged and said nothing.

  “What persuaded Reacher to abandon charges against Weston?” Gaspar asked.

  Silence again.

  Otto asked, “So what happened after Weston’s arrest?”

  “Case was over, as far as we were concerned. The situation moved up the chain of command, out of Reacher’s purview. He returned to his regular post.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Texas, maybe?” Danimal said.

  “But that wasn’t the end of things, was it?”

  “Pretty quickly, local detectives concluded Weston’s family had been killed by a cheap hit man.”

  “How cheap?” Gaspar asked.

  “Five-hundred dollars, I think, for all four hits.”

  “Anybody could have paid that,” Otto said. “Even on Army wages.”

  Danimal didn’t argue. “They couldn’t tie Weston to the killer, so charges against Weston were dropped. Reacher had no say in the matter. Even if he’d still been on base, the result would have been the same.”

  Gaspar said, “Reacher had to love that.”

  Danimal laughed. “Exactly.”

  Otto tilted her head toward Jess Kimball, who was still sitting with the press off to the opposite side of the stage. “Reporter over there says Weston’s family was killed to send him a message. Any truth to that?”

  “Probably. But that made him a victim, not a suspect. We couldn’t prove anything more,” Danimal replied.

  “How hard did you try?” Gaspar asked.

  “If the evidence was there, Reacher would have found it. He was a good cop and he did a good job on the case.”

  After thinking a bit, Otto said, “After Weston was released, Reacher kept looking for evidence, didn’t he? And he let it be known. He hounded Weston, figuring he’d crack. Or do something else Reacher could charge him for, right?”

  Danimal said nothing.

  Otto said, “A few of your guys maybe helped Reacher out with that project.”

  Danimal still said nothing.

  Weston was a scumbag through and through. Reacher wouldn’t have let that go. Gaspar wouldn’t have, either.

  “How’d it end?” Otto asked.

  “Weston was arrested frequently. Jaywalking. Spitting on the sidewalk. Whatever,” Danimal replied.

  “Didn’t matter as long as Weston was getting hassled and locked up for something and sporting a few bruises, right?” Otto asked.

  He shrugged. “When Weston came up for his next promotion, he got passed over. His CO suggested he’d be better off outside, away from, uh, constant surveillance.”

  “So Weston retired,” Otto said.

  “Yes.”

  “And then what?”

  Danimal replied, “And then he got worse.”

  Gaspar figured Reacher had been counting on that. Reacher had sized Weston up and concluded he was a scumbag. Guys like Weston don’t get better with age.

  While Danimal was briefing them, Gaspar had been preoccupied with Reacher and not watching Weston closely enough. For Gaspar’s assignment, Weston was a source of information and nothing more. After he told them what they needed to know, Weston could stand in front of a firing squad and Gaspar wouldn’t have cared. Because he agreed with Reacher. Weston killed his family, one way or another. Weston was not the victim here.

  Until he was.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The service concluded. The chaplain returned to the microphone and asked everyone to stand and bow their heads. Weston, his wife, and the others on the stage did so, along with the audience. Hushed whispers from the respectful crowd stopped. The only noises Gaspar heard were muffled by distance. The chaplain began his benediction.

  A split second later, the first gunshot shattered the quiet. Automatically, Gaspar’s gaze jerked toward the sniper nests he’d located—was that a rifle’s glint he saw snugged up against that HVAC unit?—then back to the stage. He counted two more rapid shots. Like a crazy break dance, Weston’s body lurched forward, propelled by the force of each impact from behind, not from any identified nest. Had Gaspar imagined the rifle’s glint?

  After the third shot, Weston crumpled like a marionette whose strings were abruptly severed.

  When Weston fell, he opened a window for the fourth shot, which hit Samantha Weston.

  The fifth bullet struck the chaplain.

  Gaspar and Otto were already rushing the stage with their weapons drawn after the third shot, but their sightline behind the stage was still obscured. They’d left Danimal behind with his own weapon drawn, scanning the crowd for the shooter as he got on his radio.

  Like a brief time delay on live television, the audience began screaming and chaos erupted just as Otto reached the stage with Gaspar half a step behind. As Gaspar followed her around the left side of the stage, he counted five additional, rapid shots originating from the parking lot behind. Followed by no further shooting.

  When they reached the parking lot, two men were down and two more stood over the bodies.

  The chaos became choreographed as moves practiced during countless drills were automatically performed almost simultaneously as Danimal’s base security took charge.

  Weston was approached, triaged, and rushed into one waiting ambulance. Mrs. Weston was rushed to a second ambulance.

  The chaplain’s injuries were either fatal or minor, judging from the medics’ lack of urgency when they reached him.

  More security personnel arrived. Two men were confirmed dead.

  Within minutes the entire base was locked down. The voice came on the speaker advising everyone to “shelter in place.” Meaning hunker down until the situation was secured.

  Otto and Gaspar hung back from the working professionals.

 
; “We should go,” Otto said, her attention focused on the crime scene. “Those two authorized FBI agents will be around somewhere, maybe calling backup. We can’t be caught here.”

  Though Gaspar agreed, he told her to wait there a minute and slipped around the edges to reach Danimal, who was questioning Weston’s bodyguards. The same bodyguards who’d failed to protect their boss. Danimal stepped aside to give Gaspar a brief account of the shooting according to the first witnesses.

  “Looks like a lone shooter. That guy,” he pointed to one of the two dead men. “No ID yet. He approached the back of the stage about halfway through the service as if he was authorized to be there. When Weston stood for the benediction, he pulled his pistol and shot Weston in the left shoulder, and both legs. Mrs. Weston was shot in the right femur. The other victim is one of Weston’s bodyguards. These two guys say the shooter killed their buddy and then they killed him.”

  Gaspar reviewed the crime scene briefly, then nodded. “It could have happened that way,” he said. “Where did they take Weston?”

  “He requested Tampa Southern,” Danimal said. “Call me later and I’ll fill you in. I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “Thanks,” Gaspar said, then approached the two bodies for a closer look.

  The bodyguard lay face down, lifeless, unmoving in a lake of his own blood. Black hair. Bulky guy. Maybe six feet. Maybe 200 pounds of pumped-up shoulders and biceps. Big, but not big enough to stop bullets fired dead on target at close range.

  Less than three feet away, the scrawny shooter was face up on the tarmac, one glassy eye still open and the other covered with a black patch. Like several others attending today’s memorial, grotesque scars from a healed wound gouged his forehead. One cheek was sunken because half the upper jawbone had disappeared some time ago. His Army BDUs were well worn and oversized for the wasted body inside them. Boots polished but old and scuffed as if he’d had trouble lifting his feet to walk. His deformed right hand still gripped the FN Five-seven pistol he’d meant to use to get up close and execute his target.

  Brain injuries manifested in unpredictable ways. It was possible the shooter had been unable to control his homicidal impulses and simply lashed out at the nearest targets, but the whole scene felt darkly, undeniably intentional to Gaspar. Shooting Weston in the back. Shooter knowing he’d die trying to kill. Hitting Weston three times before the two wild shots injured others nearby. A crowd of military families and personnel watching.