All the Wrong Moves

by Lovelace, Merline

  “Ugh! What’s that stink? And what is this?”

  Before I could stop him, he swiped a finger over EEEK’s foot pedal.

  “It looks like . . . Oh, God! Is this . . . ? Is this . . . ?”

  “ ’Fraid so.”

  His face went dead white. His eyes rolled back in his head. Next thing I knew, his three hundred plus pounds were stretched out at my feet.

  IT took a while to get down to business after that somewhat inauspicious start. Plus, I refused point blank to review or release any data until I’d showered and changed into a clean uniform.

  Mitchell was waiting with a cup of the herbal tea Pen badgered us all into drinking instead of coffee. His expression was so carefully neutral that I had to laugh.

  “Gawdawful, isn’t it?”

  He glanced around, saw Pen wasn’t within earshot, and grinned. “And then some.”

  Whoa! Someone should tell the man to smile more often. That simple rearrangement of facial features softened the hard line of his jaw and crinkled the squint lines at the corners of his eyes.

  Charlie! Remember Charlie!

  It was my personal call to arms. My own version of Remember the Alamo. I chanted it whenever I needed a reminder of the last time I let my hormones get the better of me. I repeated the mantra again, dragged in a deep breath and assembled my team.

  “Agent Mitchell wants to . . .”

  “Mitch,” he corrected.

  There it was again. That crooked grin. Dammit all to hell.

  Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!

  “Mitch,” I informed my team, “wants to review the signals and imagery EEEK transmitted last night.”

  Our software guru, O’Reilly, whistled through his teeth. “We’re talking twenty or thirty million gigabytes. It’ll take all day to download it.”

  “Even longer to interpret,” Rocky added. “Our data synthesizer employs a simplified digital filter with sigma-delta quantized tap coefficients,” he explained earnestly, “but it’s a simple off-chip loop filter.”

  Mitchell looked at me. I looked at the ceiling.

  “I’m only interested in sequences captured immediately before and after Lieutenant Spade’s encounter with the victims.”

  O’Reilly’s frown evaporated. “No problemo. I know just where to look. I inserted a marker when she radioed in, screaming about how she’d tripped over some dead bodies.”

  “I may have been a tad excited,” I conceded, “but I didn’t scream.”

  “Ha!”

  O’Reilly snorted, Cassidy huffed, Rocky twitched, and Pen let loose with a high-pitched neigh that caused Mitchell to blink and hunch his shoulders.

  “You screeched like a ’69 Impala in urgent need of a ring job,” O’Reilly announced. “My ears still hurt.”

  “About that data . . .” I said pointedly.

  Thus adjured, my team got to work. Even with the marker, however, it took hours to download and synthesize the data EEEK had transmitted.

  We then listened to an electronic chorus that included the owls, the mockingbird, the yipping coyotes, a squeaky cry that sounded like kil-dee, kil-dee. Pen identified it as emanating from a Killdeer. That’s a bird, she informed me when I looked at her blankly. I didn’t ask how a bird could kill a deer. I’d had enough gore for one night.

  We also listened to me. I won’t bore you with a repeat of my transmissions right after I stumbled across the victims. I’ve already admitted those weren’t my finest moments.

  Although . . .

  A couple of my more colorful expletives did produce another grin from Mitch. This one was so wicked I completely forgot my ex’s name.

  I remembered it right about the time Mitchell’s cell phone pinged. He flipped it open and identified himself. I thought I recognized the feminine voice on the other end as belonging to Agent Garcia.

  My guess proved correct when Mitchell hunched his shoulder to anchor the phone. Digging into his pocket, he produced a pen and notepad.

  “Okay, Tess, shoot.”

  He didn’t like what he heard. His speckled green eyes grew stormy and his jaw went all square.

  “Where and when?” he barked. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there. Just hold the fort.”

  The cell phone flipped shut. Mitchell stuffed the pad and pen back in his pocket and threw me a disgusted look.

  “That was Agent Garcia. Agents from the El Paso FBI office and Fort Bliss’s CID detachment are converging on the scene as we speak. They want to compare notes with Sheriff Alexander and me. We’re meeting at Pancho’s.”

  Pancho, whose full name remains a mystery, runs a bar/ cafe/motel/convenience store in Dry Springs. The only bar, cafe, motel or convenience store in Dry Springs.

  Some folks claim Pancho lost the sight in his left eye in a free-for-all following a Mexico City soccer match. Others insist his wife jammed a thumb in the socket after catching him with a younger woman. Wish I’d thought of that. However he’d acquired it, Pancho’s black eye patch and his bar were fixtures in this corner of West Texas.

  Frowning, Mitchell checked his watch. “This could take a while. The FBI is bringing in its own forensics team. I want to see what they turn up. I’ll call you and let you know when I can get back down to the site.”

  “How about I call you when we finish analyzing the data? If we find anything, I can run the results up to Dry Springs.”

  “That’ll work.” He scribbled his cell phone number on a notebook page, added Agent Garcia’s for backup and tore out the sheet. “I’ll make sure one of us is available when and if you call.”

  WE struck pay dirt late that afternoon. Literally and figuratively.

  It didn’t look like much at first. A blurred digital image recorded in that instant before I whipped up my visor to see what the hell had snagged EEEK’s foot pedal. The bodies showed only as greenish lumps, which was fine with me, but Rocky got all twitchy. That’s his way of expressing excitement. That, and an unfortunate tendency to expel gas.

  “We can re-synthesize this,” he exclaimed. “I’ll lighten it to show more detail. Might be something here Mitch can use.”

  I didn’t stick around to watch. I’d already gotten up close and personal with the Gruesome Twosome. I had no desire to repeat the experience. Instead I went into our admin center and used my laptop to Google one Patrick J. Hooker.

  Even with the tabloids’ usual 99.9999999% margin of error, Patrick J. Hooker was one bad dude. A native of Michigan, he’d joined the army at eighteen and shipped out right to Iraq. Didn’t take him long to realize the hired guns working for private contractors like Blackwa ter and Kellogg Brown & Root made mega-bucks compared to the average grunt.

  After his time in uniform, Hooker returned to Iraq as a mercenary but was hustled out of the country after an incident involving a young Iraqi girl. He popped up next in Colombia, where he allegedly brokered a deal with a big-time drug lord for a shipment of stolen arms. A joint U.S.-Colombian Drug Eradication Task Force went in to recover the arms and were ambushed en route. The ensuing shoot-out left three U.S. Marines and six Colombian police officers dead.

  I say allegedly because despite Hooker’s extradition to the States and long months in pre-trial confinement, prosecutors couldn’t prove he was the one who actually delivered the stolen arms. His lawyer subsequently pushed a writ of habeas corpus through the courts and the U.S. government was forced to dismiss all charges for lack of direct evidence. The Colombian government took it from there and were transporting Hooker back to their country for trial when he escaped.

  I was skimming through an article summarizing the complex legal issues in Hooker’s case when a shout summoned me back to the lab.

  “Lieutenant! Take a look at this.”

  “This” was a boot print almost hidden by the bodies, which Rocky had synthesized to nauseating clarity. The print was etched in blood and showed the tread pattern in startling detail.

  “You stepped right on it,” Rock said. “The next sequence shows EEEK’s
pedal coming down, then scrabbling around before it sprang up and left only a smudge in the sand.”

  I remembered that sequence. All too well.

  “Make me several copies of the print. I’ll take them to Agent Mitchell.”

  I stuffed the copies in a manila envelope and left with a final admonition to my team.

  “EEEK’s still outside. Get All Bent to help you clean him up and bed him down for the night.”

  I slammed the door on their instant chorus of protests.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE dirt parking lot at Pancho’s normally sports three or four dusty pickups with dented cattle guards and the occasional bullet hole in the rear window.

  When I chugged up to the sprawling adobe establishment just past six P.M. in my beat-up Bronco, an assortment of government vehicles crowded the pickups. Jeff Mitchell’s 4x4 with the Border Patrol’s eye-popping green stripe was parked alongside Sheriff Alexander’s patrol car. The Fort Bliss Range Patrol was there, as well as several unmarked sedans with government license plates.

  I crammed on my patrol hat and snuck a peek in the rearview mirror. Not to check my lip gloss before sauntering in to join the boys. I’d already applied a coating of Georgia Peach one-handed a mile back. I just needed to make sure my hair didn’t straggle down and—God forbid!—touch my collar. That infraction of the sacred rules could earn me a firing squad at dawn. Or worse, assignment to ice-bound FST-1.

  Grabbing the manila folder containing copies of the digitized boot print, I made for the bar/cafe entrance and plunged from searing sunlight into the perpetual gloom of Pancho’s.

  It’s the kind of place that bombards your senses the instant you walk in. Stale cigarette smoke vied with simmering green chili stew to assault the olfactory nerves. Ropes of fly-specked neon and an astonishing collection of Sports Illustrated bathing suit-issue covers make your eyeballs spin. Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton were belting out a classic on the radio. You don’t want to know what I felt crunching under the soles of my boots.

  “Hola, Lieutenant.” Pancho peered through the gloom with his one good eye. His handlebar mustache lifted into a grin. “Heard you had some fun last night.”

  “Only if you have a really twisted idea of fun.”

  Planting both palms on the bar, I levered up and delivered the kiss on the cheek Pancho expected from all regular female customers under the age of ninety. I dropped back on my heels with the sweet, vanilla taste of Father’s Moustache Wax on my lips.

  Pancho often declared to anyone who would listen—and several of us who tried very hard to shut him out—that Father’s was his favorite brand. I’d looked it up once on the Internet. The wax promised to make any mustache stand up, lay down, roll over, or play dead. Pancho’s fell into the last category.

  “You here to join the pow-wow?” he asked, nodding to the back room euphemistically referred to by everyone in Dry Springs as City Hall.

  In fact the room did host meetings of the town council. Such as it was. Also a Saturday night poker game that had gone on for as long as anyone could remember.

  When I replied in the affirmative, Pancho said he’d bring my usual to the table. I started to shake my head and inform him I was still more or less on duty. But his reminder of my “fun” night made something a little stronger than a soft drink seem not only desirable, but absolutely imperative.

  With the promise of imminent liquid stimulation, I made my way to City Hall. I could tell by the handwritten notes and reports scattered across the table they’d been hard at it. There were crime scene photos, too. All of which a scrawny guy in jeans and severely wrinkled cotton shirt covered up as I approached. He slammed his notebook shut, too, which kinda torqued me off.

  Weren’t we all supposed to be operating in a more enlightened age, with government bureaucracies cooperating in the common goal of kicking the baddies’ butts? Scrawny Guy obviously hadn’t received the memo.

  Tess Garcia smiled a welcome while Agent Mitchell made the intros. “This is Lieutenant Samantha Spade. She found the vics.”

  I nodded to Sheriff Alexander and the civilian from the Fort Bliss Range Patrol.

  “Andrew Hurst,” Scrawny Guy supplied tersely. “CID.”

  For the uninformed, CID is the army’s Criminal Investigation Division. Counterpart to the air force’s Office of Special Investigations and the navy’s Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

  I know the official names, but until now most of my knowledge of military investigations came from watching that John Travolta movie about the kinky general’s daughter. The rest I’ve absorbed while drooling over Hot Buns Mark Harmon in the NCIS TV series.

  This guy Hurst was no Mark Harmon. Rail thin and intense, with eight or nine strands of straw-colored hair stretched across his otherwise bald pate, he wouldn’t qualify for hunk status in anyone’s book. I immediately changed his moniker from Scrawny Guy to Comb-Over while Mitch introduced the next member of the conclave.

  “Paul Donati. El Paso region FBI.”

  Also very trim, but sporting dark, Italian eyes and a full head of wavy black hair. I felt a stir of interest, immediately squelched when I noted his wedding band.

  I shook his hand and hid a grimace when he did the finger-crunch thing. Why some guys feel compelled to exert their masculinity by grinding your bones is one of the mysteries of the universe, right up there with summer sandals hitting department stores in January and winter boots showing up in July.

  Not that I’ve bought many boots lately. You wouldn’t, either, if you had to clump around fourteen hours a day in government issue clod hoppers. These suckers come off, my flip-flops go on. Winter, summer, whenever.

  But I digress. Back to our conclave. I retrieved my hand from Donati just as Pancho appeared with my shot of tequila and another round of beer for the others at the table. Except for tough, macho Agent Mitchell, that is. Pancho placed a dew-streaked can of Diet Dr Pepper in front of him.

  I cast back to my days as a ruffled-pantied cocktail waitress at the Paris Casino in Vegas. I was trying to remember if I’d ever served someone with ropy muscles like Agent Mitchell’s a diet anything when he sent a pointed glance at the manila envelope I’d placed on the scarred tabletop.

  “What have you got for us?”

  Ha! Like I was going to show my stuff after Comb-Over slammed his notebook in my face?

  I let them all wait while I took a lick of salt, slammed back my shot and bit into the lime wedge. The tart, tangy combination jolted through my entire system and went a long way toward compensating for a night spent with coyotes and decaying bodies.

  “You first,” I countered when the jolt subsided. “Tell me what you’ve found out since you left the test site.”

  Mitchell lifted a brow at my arbitrary command but complied. “We ID’ed the second set of remains.”

  “How?” I didn’t really want to know but curiosity got the better of me. “There couldn’t have been enough of him left to run his prints. Unless the guy was carrying an ID . . .”

  “He was carrying several, all fake. But he’d very obligingly marked himself in law enforcement data systems worldwide by tattooing his right ass cheek. The coroner was able to piece together enough skin for us to run him through NCIC and IDENT-IAFIS.”

  “Ident-a-face?” I smirked. “Apropos, wouldn’t you say?”

  “IDENT-I-A-F-I-S,” Mitchell spelled out with exaggerated patience. “The tattoo popped for one Juan Sandoval. He had outstanding warrants for one count each of armed robbery, aggravated assault and attempted murder, with three counts of transporting illegal aliens into the U.S.”

  “Nice guy.”

  “Almost as nice as his traveling companion.”

  I certainly agreed with that after Googling up Dead Guy Number One.

  “We also got a preliminary report on the bullets. Appears they were M118LRs, chambered in a 7.62mm.”

  “Translation?”

  “They’re special rounds manufactured primarily for mil
itary sharpshooters. The markings on one round indicate they might be part of a batch purchased for use by USMC snipers. We won’t know for sure until we get the final ballistic report.”

  Uh-oh! I’m not usually real good at connecting the dots but these were too big and fat even for me to miss. Three U.S. Marines dead in the shoot-out down in Colombia. The prime suspect in that ambush killed by a marine sniper bullet. Hard to stretch that into mere coincidence.

  “There’s a USMC detachment at Fort Bliss,” Comb-Over put in. “They conduct surface-to-air missile training for navy and marine personnel. Stingers and Avengers.”

  I fidgeted a little in my chair but didn’t say anything. No need to advertise the fact that I’d enjoyed a really intense weekend with one of the instructors at the Surface-to-Air Weapons Officer Course. The captain and I parted company soon afterward but the memories lingered—right up until I was jerked back into the present by Mitch’s low murmur.

  “The snipers of the sky.”

  I shot him a curious look. Was he remembering his navy days? Had he been trained to fire one of those shoulder-held Stingers?

  Seeming to retreat inside himself for a moment, he dropped his glance to his Dr Pepper can. My glance followed his down and lingered on his hand. It was strong and weathered like the rest of him. It was also ringless.

  That didn’t mean squat, of course. Lots of married men don’t wear wedding rings. My jerk of an ex, for example. Still, it said a lot for my state of my mind after a close encounter with persons of the dead variety that I hadn’t paid much attention to Agent Mitchell’s bare left hand until this moment.

  “I’ll contact the lieutenant colonel who commands the marine detachment,” Comb-Over said as he angled away from me and wedged his notebook open a minuscule three or four inches to make a note.

  Geesh! This was getting ridiculous. You’d think I was sporting a hammer and sickle on my uniform instead of a subdued, desert-toned Velcro patch that identified me as one of the Good Guys.

  For a moment or two I seriously contemplated handing over the manila envelope with the copies of the digitized boot print and retiring to the bar and Pancho’s more genial company. I might have done just that if I hadn’t caught Mitch’s eye-roll and Sheriff Alexander’s barely smothered grunt. The fact that they didn’t like this smarmy little CID jerk, either, kept me in place.