by P J Parrish
Jesse sighed. “I told you, man, we already talked to these assholes.”
“You didn’t show them the card. Maybe they know something.”
“Trust me, they’re a bunch of burn-outs. They don’t know what year it is.”
“I thought you’d be glad to get away from the damn case files for a while.”
Jesse reached for his thermos. “Oh yeah, like this isn’t a waste of time.”
They continued up Highway 33 in stony silence. Louis resisted his urge to lay into Jesse. He had rousted him out of bed with a phone call at five that morning, telling him they had to be on the road by six. It was an hour’s drive to Lake Orion, and who knew how long it would take after that to find the veterans’ camp?
Louis glanced down at the directions Ollie had scribbled on a scrap of paper. Ollie had warned him the place was tough to find. He had also filled Louis in on what happened the first time the vets were questioned. The day after Pryce’s murder, Gibralter had ordered a sweep of all “organized local weirdos.” It had netted some local members of the Michigan Militia Corps, two broken-down renegades from the Aryan Nation, a handful of vegetarian survivalists stockpiling canned goods in anticipation of a nuclear holocaust, and a local nut who once used a sledgehammer to bash all the parking meters along Main Street.
It had also turned up seven veterans who were living on a tract of land sixty miles north of Loon Lake. The vets were brought into the station and “questioned extensively,” Ollie said. Gibralter had been unable to get a search warrant for the camp. But, Ollie told Louis, Gibralter remained suspicious that Pryce’s killer was among the seven men living in the woods.
Louis gazed out at the dense forest they were about to enter. The road seemed to be narrowing into a tunnel of gray clouds and hulking pines. He had a sinking feeling about this whole thing, that there was no way these men would talk. But after what Phillip Lawrence had told him yesterday about the emblems, he had to try.
“Turn here,” Louis said, spotting a small side road.
“Where?” Jesse asked.
“Stop! Right here. See the road?”
“Road? What fucking road?” Jesse shook his head. “We’ll never get up there without chains.
“Try,” Louis said.
The cruiser’s wheels spun on the unplowed road, making slow progress through the thick trees. About two miles in, they came to a gate that ran across the road. There was a large sign that said NO TRESPASSING. PRIVATE PROPERTY.
“Now what?” Jesse asked.
“Now we walk,” Louis said, getting out of the car.
The road wended its way through the thick pines for another half mile. Finally, they could see the dark outlines of a building ahead. As they drew closer, the details of the compound came into focus. There were at least four well-constructed but spartan buildings, each with its own large generator. One sported a huge satellite dish on its roof. There was a shed with two Jeeps parked in front. The smell of a fire hung in the damp air.
The quiet was broken by the sharp barking of dogs.
“Jesus, those fuckers better be chained,” Jesse said, his hand going to his holster.
They heard a door slam. A dark figure came out of the nearest building. He stood looking out at them. Louis could see the slender outline of a rifle slung across the man’s back.
“Let me do the talking,” Louis said quietly as they walked toward the man.
“Better keep it to two syllables or less,” Jesse muttered.
The man had not moved. The dogs were in a pen, two German shepherds and something that looked like a Rottweiler with a bushy tail. They were barking insanely, bouncing against the chain-link fence like pinballs. The man shifted his M-16 down off his shoulder, letting it dangle at his side. He was wearing a down vest over a heavy navy sweater, fatigue pants and heavy black boots caked with mud. He was tall and burly. His face was hidden on top by a cap emblazoned with the Oakland Raiders logo and below by a thick red beard.
“Stop right there,” he said slowly.
Louis and Jesse came to a halt about ten yards away. The cacophany of barking was ear splitting.
“Quiet!” the man shouted suddenly.
The dogs stopped. They circled each other in agitation and then sat, ears pricked forward, snarling at Louis and Jesse.
“This is private property,” the man said.
“We know,” Louis said. “We just want to talk to you.”
Louis became aware of movement from the corner of his eye. He turned slightly to his left. Two men had materialized out of the woods. Both wore the same hybrid outfits of military garb and outdoor clothing. He heard a sound behind him and sensed the presence of others at his back.
“We don’t like cops here,” the man with the beard said.
Louis nodded. “Fair enough.”
Another man came out of the nearest building. He was shorter than the others, wiry, black. He stared at Louis. Louis held his eyes for a moment then his gaze dropped to the empty left sleeve of the man’s jacket. He looked back to the bearded man.
“We’re from Loon Lake. We’re investigating a murder,” Louis said.
“Two murders now,” the man said.
Louis stared at him. “Yes, two murders. Two police officers.” He waited, but the bearded man said nothing. “We think the killer had a connection to the military. We think — ”
“You think,” the man interrupted, “that your killer is a wacko vet. And here we are, a whole camp of loonie-tunes right under your nose.” He smiled and hoisted the rifle up over his shoulder. “Now that’s one nifty piece of investigating there, Kojak.”
“Look, I just want to show you something,” Louis said, reaching into his pocket to pull out the plastic evidence bag. He came closer, holding it up. “You ever seen a card like this?”
The man ignored it. “Look, we don’t have to put up with your shit this time. We’re not in your fucking jail now. We’re on my land. My land, officer. And unless you got some search warrant you’ve got no business here.”
Louis sensed the men behind him moving closer. His eyes flitted up to the black soldier. He was staring at the card. Suddenly, he turned and walked off into the trees. It started to snow.
“Louis, let’s get out of here,” Jesse said tightly.
“I’d take your partner’s advice, friend,” the man said.
Louis hesitated. This was going nowhere. He stuffed the bag back in his pocket and brushed the snow from his face. Jesse was right. He wasn’t going to get anything out of these head cases.
He turned and started back toward the cruiser. Jesse followed quickly.
“I told you,” Jesse said when they were out of earshot.
“Shut up, Jess.”
“Christ, look at this shit,” Jesse said, gesturing at the snow. “We’re never gonna get the cruiser back up that hill. We’re gonna get stuck up here and — ”
Jesse froze. Louis looked up.
The black soldier was standing a few yards in front of the cruiser. He was holding a large gun of some kind.
“Oh, great,” Jesse said through clenched teeth. “If that motherfucker — ”
“Shut up!” Louis hissed. He approached the soldier, his eyes going to the gun. With a twist in his gut he realized it was an AK-47. How in the hell did he fire it with one arm?
From the lines in his face, the soldier looked to be in his forties. He gave off an aura of harnessed energy, his sinewy body a coiled spring, his black eyes snapping. Louis looked at the faded name on his worn jacket. CLOVERDALE. He recognized two patches from Phillip Lawrence’s souvenirs: a sergeant’s strips and a CIB, a combat infantry badge. “If you ever see a man wearing a CIB, he’s worthy of your respect,” Phillip had told him.
“You’re lucky Randall didn’t blow your head off,” the soldier said.
Jesse stepped forward. “Listen, asshole — ”
The soldier tensed. Louis’s arm shot up against Jesse’s chest. He turned his back to Cloverdale and g
lared at Jesse.
“Goddamn it, Jess,” he whispered tightly, “we need this man’s help. He knows something.”
Jesse’s eyes darted over Louis’s shoulder to Cloverdale and back to Louis’s face. Jesse’s neck was red, the flush creeping up into his face.
“Go wait in the cruiser,” Louis said. “Please.”
Jesse hesitated, glared again at the soldier then stomped off toward the cruiser. Louis waited until he heard the slam of the door and the start of the motor then turned to face Cloverdale. He pulled out the card and held it up.
“You know about this?” he asked.
Cloverdale’s eyes didn’t leave Louis’s face. “Why should I talk to you?”
“Because I need help,” Louis said.
The man gave a low bitter laugh. “Help? Well, ain’t that ironic.”
Louis thrust the bag forward. “You know what this card means. And I think you want to tell me about it.”
“Why? Because you’re black? You think we got some kind of special brother thing going here?” Cloverdale laughed again. “Let me tell you something, bro. The only brothers I got are those six white guys back there.”
He sobered and looked toward the cruiser, at Jesse sitting sullenly behind the wheel. “That your partner?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Too bad, man.”
Louis wiped the snow from his eyes. It was coming down heavy now. But he couldn’t leave, not yet. This man wanted to talk, he was sure of it.
“Hey, you got a cigarette?” Cloverdale asked.
“Sorry. Don’t smoke.”
Cloverdale hoisted the gun up, holding it against his shoulder. He saw Louis looking at it.
“Yeah, it’s heavy,” he said. He studied Louis’s face. “Go on, ask me,” he said.
“Ask you what?” Louis said.
“How I lost my arm. It’s what you were thinking about.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
Cloverdale smiled. He had beautiful, straight teeth. Movie star teeth. “How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-five,” Louis said.
“I was twenty-four when I joined up,” Cloverdale said. “I grew up in a shithole town in Arkansas…Marked Tree. Man, I would have done anything to get out of the South.”
“Mississippi,” Louis said.
“What?” Cloverdale said, squinting through the snow.
“Black pool, Mississippi, that’s where I was born. Probably makes Marked Tree look like Paris.”
Cloverdale stared at him for a moment then smiled. “You don’t strike me as military,” he said. “You serve?”
Louis shook his head.
The soldier’s smile turned pensive. “I was at Fort Campbell,” he said. “They picked me for Delta Company, second battalion, 501st Infantry, 101st Airborne Division.” He cocked his head. “You ever see that movie The Dirty Dozen?”
Louis nodded.
“We were kind of like that, the leftovers, the guys nobody else wanted. We had guys who liked to steal shit, you know, supplies and equipment. So they started calling us “The Raiders.” We were tight, a really great unit.” Cloverdale’s eyes grew distant.
Louis glanced at the cruiser, hoping Jesse wouldn’t do anything stupid to disrupt the soldier’s reminiscence.
“So how did it happen?” Louis asked, nodding toward the soldier’s missing arm.
Cloverdale blinked, wiping snow from his face. “Firefight near Hue, Valentine’s Day, 1968,” he said matter-of-factly. “We lost six men, eighteen wounded, including the captain. I lost the arm but got a ticket back to Marked Tree.”
The snow had covered Cloverdale’s head, forming a white helmet over his close-cropped hair. He looked suddenly like an old man.
“How did you get here?” Louis asked.
Cloverdale hoisted the gun higher up against his shoulder. “Well, I did my time at the VA hospital, bummed around the country for a couple years. I stuffed all the war shit into a box and tried to build a life.” He paused, smiling. “Hard keeping the lid on that damn box sometimes.” His eyes drifted to the bag in Louis’s hand.
Jesse honked the horn. Louis looked at the cruiser and waved an impatient hand.
“You’re gonna get snowed in here, man,” Cloverdale said.
“Go on,” Louis said. “Please.”
Cloverdale looked up the road toward the collection of houses. “Randall was in my unit. His family’s from around here. They gave him the land and he decided to make a camp for vets. There’s just seven of us now but we’re building houses for more. We look after each other, you know?”
Louis nodded.
Cloverdale’s face hardened. “I don’t like people who feel sorry for themselves. I mean, what’s done is done. But people on the outside, they don’t know. They just don’t know.”
“Why are you talking to me then?” Louis asked.
Cloverdale looked back at him. “Because I want you to know that we’re not murderers. We’re off the grid. But we aren’t murderers.”
Louis nodded slowly. He held out the Ziploc. Cloverdale took it and looked at the drawing.
“Where’d you get this?” he asked.
“This is one of two. They were found by the bodies of the dead officers,” Louis said.
Cloverdale handed it back. He wiped his face. “It’s a message,” he said.
“Message? What kind of message?” Louis asked.
Cloverdale hesitated, his face twisting slightly. “Your man is military.”
Louis waited.
“Some companies had their nicknames printed up on cards.” He paused. “I heard about this but never really saw it. A company would go in, wipe out a village of Vietcong and then throw the cards down on the bodies. It was a taunt, a kind of challenge to Charlie, letting them know they were there.”
He looked at Louis. “They called them death cards.”
“Do you recognize this one?” Louis asked, holding out the plastic bag.
Cloverdale wouldn’t take it. “No. The number is probably a company or squadron maybe.”
Louis looked down at the bag then put it back in his pocket. He looked up at Cloverdale’s drawn face.
“Thanks,” he said and started to turn away.
“I know your man,” Cloverdale said.
Louis turned back sharply.
Cloverdale just looked at Louis then he smiled slightly. “I’ve met him, hundreds of times.”
“Look,” Louis said, “don’t jerk me around.”
“I was a counselor afterward,” Cloverdale said. “I worked with a lot of fucked-up men and lot of them who could have done what your killer did, given the wrong circumstances.”
“What are the wrong circumstances?” Louis asked.
“You asking me for a profile?”
“Yeah.”
“It ain’t that easy, officer,” Cloverdale said, shaking his head. “Nothing about ‘Nam was easy or obvious. It was the camouflage war and there’s no hope of ever flushing it out.”
“But you can tell me what kind of man I am looking for,” Louis said.
“Yeah, I can.” Cloverdale shifted the gun off his shoulder and rested the butt on the ground. “Look for a normal man.”
“Normal?” Louis said.
“A guy who tried to be normal and failed.”
Louis frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“He probably enlisted, maybe because his life was shitty up to then and the military makes a lot of big promises about straightening out your life for you.”
“Go on,” Louis said.
“He probably did all right for himself in the military, maybe even had his first taste of success,” Cloverdale said. “But something happened and he felt like he was a failure again. He might have had a drug or alcohol problem and got the quick trip through the VA system.” Cloverdale paused. “Now they have a nice name for it, post-traumatic stress syndrome. Back then, we were all just addicts.”
“What about after the war?” Lou
is asked.
“After,” Cloverdale said softly. “Well, let’s just say nobody was exactly throwing rose petals at your man’s feet. Your man went to war, did his job, and then everyone at home told him what he had done was a joke. Not great for the self-esteem.”
Louis waited, wishing he had a notebook with him.
“He probably couldn’t find a job,” Cloverdale went on, “or if he did it was in some factory that probably laid him off when the recession hit. ‘Nam vets earned less, were prompted less, and had more turnover.” Cloverdale drew in a breath. “Check homeless shelters, that sort of thing. There’s still about a quarter of a million vets on the street.”
A horn honked. Louis turned to the cruiser. Jesse was motioning for him. Louis looked back to Cloverdale.
“Can you tell me why?” Louis asked.
“Why he did it?” Cloverdale said. “Shit, who really knows? He might have a hard-on toward authority figures. You know, projecting his frustrations about his life onto any symbol of the establishment.” He nodded toward Louis’s badge. “Cops would qualify.”
Louis shook his head. “A failure at being normal. It can’t be that simple.”
“Think of it as the blue-collar dream gone gray,” Cloverdale said.
Louis held Cloverdale’s eyes for a second then looked up, blinking into the huge flakes. He let out a long sigh. When he looked back at Cloverdale, he was leaning heavily against his gun. His jacket was soaked dark green from the snow. He looked suddenly very tired.
“Your man isn’t here,” Cloverdale said.
“I know that now.”
Cloverdale looked at the cruiser. “You’d better get going up that hill,” he said.
Louis nodded, hesitated then stuck out his hand. Cloverdale stared at it for a moment then shifted the rifle so he could shake Louis’s hand.
“Thanks for your help.”
“Sure. But don’t come back.” Cloverdale gave him a final smile then started back toward the compound. Louis turned and trudged toward the cruiser.
“Hey, Black Pool!”
Louis turned.
“The South,” Cloverdale called out. “You ever think about it much?”
“I try not to,” Louis said.
Cloverdale gave a low soft laugh. He raised the gun in a salute, turned and was lost in the swirling snow.
