by Diane Capri
“Why did the tanker in front of Summer stop along here? Anybody would recognize the danger. Semi drivers are pros. They wouldn’t create a potential safety disaster like that.”
“He says he had already slowed due to the weather conditions. When he came around the blind curve, there were two deer crossing the road and he downshifted and braked to slow further. He said he was moving when she hit him, but not fast enough to avoid the collision.”
“Could have happened that way. Any reason to believe otherwise?”
“Not that I’ve heard. Finlay’s photo was snapped pretty quickly and shows no deer on the roadway. But deer are fast and there’s no traffic cam video, either. So the story hasn’t been confirmed or disproved.”
“What happened to the traffic cams?”
Good question. I craned my neck to peer at the top of the utility poles where the traffic cams were perched, as they should have been. “Malfunction, I guess.”
Gaspar snorted. “All of them? Only in this one spot? Unlikely. Another question for the Boss.”
There was no place to pull off the road or move into the median to stop for a closer look at the scene, so Gaspar turned off the flashers and increased speed on the other side of the curve.
Twelve miles farther down the road was the exit for Fort Bird. Gaspar exited the highway, turned left at the end of the ramp, and reentered the highway on the other side.
When we approached the accident scene headed north, we were on the inside traffic lanes, hugging the jagged wall of mountain rock that abutted the far right northbound lane.
The blind curve ahead seemed like driving into empty air from this direction as if we were continuing based on nothing but faith in American highway engineering.
The only additional safety features of the northbound side were the solid mountain on the right and the climbing elevation that slowed traffic.
When we were well past mile marker #224, I unbuckled my seatbelt and crabbed into the back seat to retrieve the Boss’s padded envelope. When I re-settled into the front passenger seat, I ripped open the envelope and powered up the secure cell phone.
“Need a charger?” Gaspar asked.
I gave him my best imitation of a teenagers’ total exasperation with the stupidity of parents. “Oh, please. Seriously? This phone came from the Boss and you think it could possibly be less than ready?”
He grinned. “Right. What was I thinking?”
We drove back to the New Haven exit, left the highway, and did the circuit again. By that time, I’d found the video camera on the secure cell phone and flipped it to record from a mile north of the scene.
I panned the area, documenting everything as well as possible. When we’d traveled a mile past the point of impact, I stopped recording and sent the video to my secure server via satellite. I repeated the process on the way back.
We didn’t speak because we wanted no audio on the recording.
After the second recording was secure, Gaspar said, “Send a text. Tell him the video is on the way and send it to him.”
I’d already started the process. I tossed him a scathing glance. “You think you’re the only one in this vehicle who wants to save our skin, Che?”
“Very often, Helga, that’s precisely what I think.” He only called me Helga when what he meant was that I was as stubborn as any German on the planet. Damn straight.
We continued the rest of the way to the New Haven exit in silence. Instead of turning right toward The Lucky Bar and the Grand Lodge, the GPS directed Gaspar to turn left.
We had traveled five miles before we reached the New Haven Hospital, where Sheriff Taylor had said the local pathologist doubled as the local medical examiner.
Taylor’s empty cruiser was parked near the side entrance. Gaspar parked the Crown Vic next to Taylor’s and we hustled out. I placed the flat of my palm on the hood of Taylor’s cruiser as we passed. He must have arrived only a few minutes before we did because the hood of the cruiser was still warm.
We found him inside the modern autopsy room decorated with easy-to-clean shiny surfaces, talking with a man wearing green hospital scrubs.
“Sheriff Taylor, this is my partner, Agent Carlos Gaspar,” I said as we walked up to the two men standing over a steel shelf that had been pulled out from a refrigerator in the wall.
Taylor nodded to Gaspar and introduced the pathologist, Dr. Smith. The unrecognizably mangled body on the steel shelf had once been Eunice Summer, but the only way I could confirm that was by reading the toe tag. Somehow, her body hadn’t seemed quite so mangled in the photographs I’d already seen.
“You’ve read the autopsy report?” Dr. Smith asked. “Not much more to add, I’m afraid. Cause of death was definitely the gunshot wound to her head though she’d have died on impact with that tanker if she hadn’t been dead already.”
The matter-of-fact delivery style was one I’d encountered from medical examiners before. A coping mechanism or something. No human being charged with caring for the sick could possibly be so lacking in sensitivity otherwise.
“How can you be sure about the gunshot?” Gaspar asked. “There’s not much evidence here to work with.”
“Dumb luck, actually.” Dr. Smith pointed to a sharp skull fragment over Summer’s right ear. The bony fragment was less than an inch wide and maybe half again as long. “See this here? It’s a fragment. But it’s the size and shape a bullet normally makes when it hits this location on the human skull. Nothing else can cause that precise type of hole in that particular bone.”
“If you say so,” I replied. Because the whole body was such a mess that the thing he said was a bullet hole looked like another shard to me.
“I do say so. And I’ll say it under oath on the witness stand if you find the man who shot her, too. It’s murder, pure and simple.” Dr. Smith’s cold delivery had heated up. Turned out he wasn’t as indifferent to murder as he was to death, I guess.
“Anybody find the bullet for comparison?” I asked Taylor.
He shook his head. “It may be out there somewhere, but we’d have to close the Interstate for a month to find it. Even then, we’d have to get damn lucky.”
Dr. Smith sighed. “If she hadn’t been dead already, she might have avoided that collision. There’s two lanes at that point and she was a good driver. She might have gone around. She would have slowed down, at the very least. It’s possible she could have survived.”
“What about the second truck, though?” Gaspar asked. “He’d have still hit her car from the rear. She wasn’t likely to have survived the double impact, was she?”
Dr. Smith deflated. “Probably not. But she might have, is the point.”
We stood looking at Summer for a bit longer, but the realities didn’t change.
I asked, “What about the other bodies? The ones from The Lucky Bar?”
“Much more obvious gunshot wounds and cause of death for all of those. I’m still sorting through which guns and which bullets were the fatal ones, but nothing mysterious about any of them.”
Taylor said, “Thanks, Doc. I think we’re done here, aren’t we, Otto?”
“Almost. Dr. Smith, do you have any personal effects from any of these victims?”
“Over here, I think.” He led the group to a steel autopsy table where he’d laid out the personal effects for each of the bodies prior to bagging and marking them as evidence.
On the steel slab were the accumulated possessions of the four soldiers and the dancer and her ex-boyfriend or ex-husband or whatever kind of ex he was.
The soldiers carried wallets and keys and a bit of pocket change. They wore belts and watches. Precious little and nothing worth killing them for that I could see.
The dancer was naked at the time she was killed. Her possessions were four pierced earrings and a diamond-like stud from her naval piercing.
The man who shot them all had no more in his pockets than the others. But around his neck, he’d worn a gold chain. I’d seen the glinting in t
he green strobe lights the night he died. The chain wasn’t among the items in his meager pile of belongings.
I looked at Dr. Smith. “Where’s his neck chain?”
Taylor replied for him. “It’s in another evidence bag. Because of the contents.”
“Contents?” Gaspar said. “Of a neck chain?”
“Not the chain. The pendant. Dr. Smith, can you get that for us, too?”
Dr. Smith walked to another cabinet, unlocked it with a key from his key ring, and returned with a clear plastic evidence bag that had been marked with his initials and sealed. He handed it to me first.
Inside the bag was a heavy serpentine gold chain with a lobster claw clasp. Maybe about eighteen inches long. The kind men wore back in the 1990s.
Dangling from the chain was a crystal vial that looked like a large capsule. It seemed like it would twist apart in the middle to allow the removal of the object inside. Which looked exactly like a shiny gold bullet. A standard nine-millimeter Parabellum, to be exact. Full metal jacket.
I’d seen similar mementos before. For some reason, men mostly seemed to want to hold on to bullets similar to the ones that hit them. Rites of passage or something, I guess. Probably made for some good cocktail party chatter in the right crowds.
I held the evidence bag up to the light for a better view of the bullet. It seemed to have some sort of etching on it. I couldn’t quite make it out inside all the layers of the bag. “Do you have a magnifying glass?”
A look passed between Sheriff Taylor and Dr. Smith that I made no effort to decipher. They’d both seen the neck chain and the bullet. Gaspar and I were playing catch-up.
Dr. Smith pulled a round disk mounted on a swing arm from one side of the steel table. He turned on the light that encircled the disk like a bathroom makeup mirror. I held the bag and the crystal capsule under the lighted magnifier and peered at the etching.
Under magnification, it was easy to read the single word scratched onto the bullet.
Reacher.
CHAPTER 25
I handed the evidence bag to Gaspar and stepped aside to allow him access to the magnifying glass. He examined everything in the same way I had. When he finished, he handed the evidence bag back to Dr. Smith.
“Do we know anything about this guy yet?” I asked Sheriff Taylor.
“His name is Jeffrey Mayne. We ran him through the usual databases, but we found nothing that explains the bullet. He was a veteran. Delta Force. Stationed at Fort Bird back in 1988-90 time frame. Which probably means he knew his way around New Haven and was proficient with weaponry of all sorts.”
“Was he a trained sniper?”
“Maybe,” Taylor said. “We’ve contacted Major Clifton for help and requested Mayne’s records from the Army, but they’re a little slow in producing them.”
No shock there. “What about since the Army? Any intel on anything helpful?”
“Not much. He lived in Nashville, Tennessee. Worked for a defense contractor like a lot of these ex-military guys do.”
The churning that had started in my stomach upon the discovery of Reacher’s name on the bullet that Mayne wore around his neck was now turned up to a constant level of thrashing that was actually painful. I reached into my pocket for an antacid and placed it on my tongue.
“We called his office and spoke with his boss,” Taylor said. “A guy named Thomas O’Connor. He’s on his way here now. Probably arrive in a couple of hours, he said.”
Mayne worked for O’Connor. That bit of news pushed my stomach to the two-antacid level.
“What about the bullet? Any idea what that’s all about? Doesn’t seem like it’s ever been fired.”
Taylor looked at Dr. Smith, who cleared his throat and said, “Right. Looks like it was lodged at one time in his nasal passages.”
“I’m sorry?”
He gave a small shrug. “Appears to have been shoved up there pretty hard and then stayed there a while, because the scar tissue was an unmistakable match. He probably had serious breathing problems after that.”
Dr. Smith pushed a couple of buttons and displayed an image on a small screen. This one was an autopsy photo showing Mayne’s deformed nasal passages. He pointed out the scar tissue that, frankly, I’d never have found on my own. But once he showed it to us, the crater where that bullet had lodged was obvious.
“He’d have been a mouth-breather for a long time after that,” Dr. Smith said. “Maybe forever.”
Gaspar nodded.
We snapped a few photos of the bullet and the autopsy photo. When we’d seen everything, Taylor walked out with us. “I’d like to show you something back at my station if you’ve got the time.”
“What is it?” I stretched my neck and shoulders, working at the tension there. What I needed was a swim or a massage or even a few more hours sleep in a decent bed. Unfortunately, the Four Seasons and the Georges V were way out of my price range.
“That’s what I want you to tell me. I’d rather not prejudice your first take on it.”
“Lead the way,” Gaspar said.
CHAPTER 26
We followed Sheriff Taylor to his station, which was a one-story, modern brick construction law enforcement building. The words New Haven Area Law Enforcement Center were prominently displayed on the side facing the main road.
The tax base in New Haven must have been healthier than I’d assumed. The building and everything in it would have been the envy of any municipality in America with fewer than a million residents.
Taylor led us to a conference room equipped with television screens on the walls. He used a remote to pull the four still images onto four of the screens so we could see them simultaneously.
The four were shot from a drone in and around Summer’s murder scene. The big rigs, the crumpled red sports car, mile marker #224. No deer. All of it familiar by now because I’d seen it many times.
Taylor replaced these four images with four more. The second batch was sequential. Same scene, but photos were shot as if the drone was panning from behind the rear bumper of the second truck to beyond the front bumper of the first truck.
“Here is where Summer hit the tanker.” Taylor used a laser to point out the relevant bits as he talked. “Our calculations say she was shot about here, fifty-three feet from the crash.” He pointed to a stretch of the sloping highway just into the curve. “She had her wheels turned toward the curve or she’d have run off the mountain instead.”
Gaspar said, “And if her vehicle had to travel a greater distance after she died, she’d have gone either off the side as she left the curve or she’d have run into oncoming traffic.”
“Or she’d have run into the rock wall if there was no traffic,” I added, moving my head from side-to-side for accurate views. “Which means that the sniper’s window of opportunity was narrow and his aim was damn good.”
Taylor loaded the next batch of photos, which were aerial shots of the crash scene from the valley side of the highway.
From that angle, I might have seen glimpses of Summer’s body inside the wreckage. A couple of hours with an enlarged set of photos and establishing shots to compare the clothing on the woman in the vehicle to Summer’s wardrobe would have confirmed my guesses, perhaps.
“We sent everything up to the FBI in DC. We should have confirmation and a reconstruction video soon.” Taylor loaded the next set of photos and pointed with his laser to a spot of rocky land about 1500 yards away from the crash. “Once they crunch the numbers, we’ll know more. But for now, we think the sniper was set up here.”
The calculations might have taken hours back in the old days. But now, we had computer models that could handle the math swiftly once accurate data points for the conditions were acquired. Distance from the target, speed of the bullet, and speed of the target, bullet fall, and other variables could be determined in a flash.
The day Summer died presented just about the worst possible conditions for a long range sniper, but the closer he was to the target, t
he less things like heavy air would matter. The problem was, unless he had shimmied up a very tall tree, he wasn’t close to the target. Almost a mile from it, if the computer’s calculations were correct. Which proved he was a skilled marksman. More skilled than me.
The fact was, though, computers could only do what computers do and come up with the most likely scenario. A well-informed guess of the sniper’s location, the type of gun and ammo he used, maybe even his probable height and weight.
And of course, he’d be long gone from that location now. Unless he’d left forensic evidence or the computer models could pinpoint identifying irregularities of some kind, none of this mattered. The exercise was intellectually interesting, but that was all.
The other thing was that if he’d shot from that location with an L115A3 rifle—as I suspected but so far could not confirm, so hadn’t mentioned it—he’d have hit Summer harder than a 44 magnum inside her car. Which meant there wouldn’t have been even a fragment of her skull left to reveal evidence of the kill, let alone a possible bullet hole fragment.
So he had to have been even farther away and an even better sniper than Taylor gave him credit for. Using Gaspar’s observation about government record keeping and applying the tedious process of elimination, he could probably be identified. But it would take a while.
Taylor left the photos of the sniper’s location on the screens and turned to me. “Agent Otto, I checked your credentials. Gaspar, I checked yours, too. All three of us have had sniper training and we’re all good with a rifle, but Otto’s the best marksman in this room. What do you think about all of this?”
“We know Colonel Summer was murdered now,” I said. “What we need to know is why there, why then, and why she was targeted.”
He cocked his head as if my answer wasn’t what he’d expected and he wanted to understand me.
“Look, the computers will figure out how this was done. You’ll get as close to exact specs as possible and that will help you convict the sniper once he’s found.”
