Blood On The Bridge

by Zack Klika

  The voices didn’t bother him anymore. There was no stopping them. Been there since he could remember. He just had to ignore them. Buck came back a few minutes later with another beer and a new friend. The guy he was with looked terrifying. Like something out of a scary movie. A nightmarish version of Ray Liotta from Field of Dreams. Neither of them acknowledged Danny.

  Buck lifted the tarp on the back of the truck, revealing four long, low crates. Whatever words had been stenciled atop the boxes were scratched off and indistinguishable. Danny wondered what they had said. Buck never talked about where he got all the ammunition and weapons he sold off. But there was always a resupply waiting in the warehouse behind the speedway Buck owned.

  “Fifty thousand rounds,” said Buck, his grin gone.

  “I won’t need a resupply for years with that much brass,” the man said as he pulled a thick envelope from his pocket.

  Buck took the envelope and nodded Danny’s way.

  This was the part that always bothered Danny. Once the money changed hands, anything could happen. The FBI could pop out of the tree line. A helicopter’s search light could shoot down on them as a SWAT team rappelled in on them.

  That would never happen, though. Buck was smart.

  Danny pulled the truck keys from his pocket, tossed them to the man, and slid his hands back into his jacket pockets. He stood there for an awkward moment as the man drove off. Buck gave him a clap on the shoulder.

  “No hard feelings about today, okay?” Buck said.

  “Of course not,” said Danny.

  Fucking coward. That was all Danny.

  Chapter 8

  Thomas’s barracks room had all the standard-issue furniture a soldier would need during a four-year stint in the Army. Twin bed. Three-drawer dresser. And a chair that looked like it belonged to a desk set. But there was no desk. To a civilian it would seem depressing as all hell. To a soldier it was the best home imaginable.

  Riley sat at the edge of the bed in her pants and bra, pulling her undershirt over her head, thinking about just how much she missed her barracks room. Thomas walked into the doorway wearing nothing but a black pair of boxer briefs. Riley glanced at him and wished she didn’t have somewhere else to be. The second round was always better than the first. There was a big red torii tattooed on the right side of his rib cage. He had an athletic build thanks to the physical requirements of his infantry unit. A buzz cut rounded out the assembly-line look. He chucked her a pill bottle, which she snatched out of the air and slid into her pocket. The clock by his bed read 11:15. She laced up her boots and threw her top on.

  “That should last you a few weeks,” Thomas said, grinning.

  Riley ignored him and zipped up her top.

  “When are you gonna let me take you out to dinner?” asked Thomas.

  Not a word.

  “What’s your favorite kind of food?” he continued as he took a step forward.

  She folded her collar down as she got up and headed for the door.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing her wrist.

  Like lightning, Riley snatched his balls and held tight. Thomas froze.

  “That’s not how this works,” she said, steering him to the side and out of her way.

  “You’re right, you’re right. That’s my fault,” he said, a pitch in his voice that he obviously did not recognize.

  Riley released her viselike grip and left him there all alone and pissed off. Thomas wasn’t that bad, but he could be clingy. She did not want clingy. As she walked down the brightly lit hallway, passing a “FRESH PAINT” sign on the tan cinder block wall, she wondered if grabbing him like that was really necessary. He would forgive her eventually. When she emerged into the cool night, a sense of purpose filled her. Or nerves. She could not exactly tell. A small light above the exit cast her in a cone of soft yellow light. The barracks were like a ghost town around this time, never more than a few people smoking out front.

  As she crossed a grassy knoll, a four-story red brick building came into view, its grid of small windows filled with scattered light. It looked identical to the building she had just left. Heavy metal trickled from one of the windows around the middle of the building, probably the second floor, Riley surmised. A few soldiers were hanging out in the front with a thirty-pack of Keystone Light and a handle of Captain Morgan, a soldier’s most trusted officer.

  Another soldier leaned against the wall making a ghillie suit, a type of camouflage that was assembled piece by piece with different types of foliage. He didn’t seem too thrilled about it. Riley knew why. High-quality ghillie suits could take months to finish. Any sniper worth his salt made his own. You would be laughed right out of a sniper unit if you were caught with a store-bought one. Riley could not tell the difference between store-bought and handmade suits, so she figured having snipers make their own was just part of some old tradition that instilled discipline and patience in the soldier. After all, being a sniper meant you could be waiting around for quite a while during missions.

  Mr. Ghillie seemed wrapped up in his own little world, so Riley spoke to the soldiers drinking.

  “Excuse me,” she said. Her tone friendly. Her posture relaxed. Just one of the guys.

  Both soldiers stopped talking at the sound of a woman’s voice and got a little giddy. One of them had a dark tan and was built like an ox. The other one probably went through a bottle of sunscreen a day and ran the risk of disappearing if he turned sideways. Both had short hair, cut close on the sides and back. The ox noticed the rank of sergeant on Riley’s chest first. His smile disappeared faster than it had arrived. They tried to stand up to show her rank the respect it deserved, but Riley waved them back down.

  “Sit down. You’re fine,” she said.

  “Thanks, Sergeant,” the ox said, his words not completely slurred.

  Riley thought he looked Samoan.

  “I’m looking for Jennifer Carlson’s room. Either of you know where that is?” she asked, a slight smile creeping up at the edge of her mouth.

  “Everyone around here knows where it is after what happened. Second floor. Can’t miss it, Sergeant.”

  Riley glanced to the other soldier, who looked on edge.

  “You mind if I ask you a few questions about her?” Riley asked the thin one.

  The ox said, “Go for it. Never met her, though, Sergeant.”

  “I’m talking to him,” said Riley, never looking away from the other soldier but still maintaining a friendly demeanor.

  The nervous soldier looked at his friend, then back to Riley.

  “I gotta use the restroom, Sergeant,” he said, bolting up and kicking an empty can into one of the narrow strips of grass that lined the sidewalk as he hurried into the barracks.

  “Is he okay?” Riley asked after he had gone.

  “He’ll be fine, Sergeant,” the ox said. “He’s just a little shook up. Some soldiers came around earlier tonight while I was in the latrine. They started asking him questions about Jennifer, and things got a little physical when he told them he didn’t even know who she was. They probably wouldn’t have bothered him if they knew I was with him. When I came back outside, I had to step in and show the fuckers what’s up.”

  “What kind of soldiers? MPs?”

  “Not military police. Tried to act all tough and shit. Said they were with Special Forces, but I could tell they were wannabes. It ain’t hard to spot a pretender, Sergeant.”

  A rush of adrenaline hit Riley. Bravo group.

  Riley asked him, “When were they here?”

  “About three hours ago.”

  “How many guys?”

  “Two,” said the ox.

  “Do you know what kind of questions they were asking him?”

  “He said they wanted to know if she was hanging out with anyone around the barracks the past few days. Anyone new.”

  Riley waited for more. Nothing.

  “Well, was she?” Riley asked.

  The soldier shrugged and said, “Honest
ly, I’ve been in these barracks for two years and I’ve only seen her once or twice, but I’m also not in her unit. I’m an infantry scout with Charlie company, so the only people I see from the support company are truck drivers taking us to field exercises and cooks bringing us food during field exercises. Most of the units don’t really mingle, ya know, Sergeant?”

  Riley knew. Every unit was in their own bubble in the military. Had their own traditions, sayings, insignias, missions.

  Riley asked, “So how’d you hear about Jennifer then?”

  She wondered why she was using the dead soldier’s first name. Soldiers went by last names. Always.

  “Only reason anyone around here knows about her is because of the article in the Clarksville Times, Sergeant.”

  “You hear anything besides what was in the article?” Riley asked.

  “Nah,” he said, and after a moment added, “Sergeant.”

  Riley glanced at the soldier making the ghillie suit and realized he’d had headphones in the whole time. Focused on his task.

  “Do you remember what these guys looked like?”

  “Average height,” he said. “Both white. Short hair.”

  “You just described half the soldiers on base,” Riley said, suppressing a laugh.

  The soldier smiled and crunched a finished beer can under his boot. He looked at Riley like he was about to offer her a cold one but thought better of it.

  “Did they leave in a car?” she asked.

  “They showed up on foot and left the same way, Sergeant.”

  Riley racked her brain for any other questions she should ask. Her military training had mostly been about how to use photographs to document war and a soldier’s way of life. The only journalism training she had came from Tim’s guidance over the past four years and a few military e-learning courses on the fundamentals of writing for print and the web.

  “Did either of the soldiers have any distinguishing features?” she asked. “Anything at all.”

  “One of them looked pretty beat up,” he said. “Some cuts and a black eye on the left side of his face. A few bruised ribs on his right side. That’s really all I remember, though.”

  “How do you know he has bruised ribs?” she asked, intrigued by the extent of his details.

  “He had a lean, and he winced whenever he put too much weight on his right foot,” he said defensively.

  “You’ve got a pretty good eye,” Riley said, trying to smooth things out with a compliment.

  “I’m a scout. Details are what I do. And I’ve been in a fight or two, so I know what an ass-whoopin’ looks like.”

  A connection between Jennifer’s bruises and this wounded soldier seemed plausible to Riley.

  “Thanks for the help,” she said, heading past him towards the barracks. “And make sure you clean those beer cans up when you’re done.”

  “You got it, Sergeant,” he said and cracked open another beer.

  The inside of the barracks was identical to the other she had just left, except the paint on the walls was showing its age through cracks and chips. Fort Campbell was well stocked with soldiers, so Jennifer almost certainly had a roommate. Each barracks unit had two bedrooms. The roommate had probably moved to a different room after what had happened to Jennifer. At least Riley hoped that was the case.

  She opened the stairwell door with the weight of her body and took the steps two at a time. She was still wondering why two soldiers were snooping around and asking questions about Jennifer. The only reason she could think of was that they were looking for the killer too.

  The killer is still loose. She shivered at the thought, her situational awareness rising a few notches.

  When she stepped through the second-floor entrance, she saw the yellow police tape two doors to her right. Jennifer’s room. She knew it. Anyone who walked by the door knew it too. The second floor looked just like the first floor. No decorations of any kind hung on the walls. The linoleum floors shined from a fresh coat of wax that had probably been applied by some soldier on desk duty.

  Riley walked to the door with the yellow tape and looked around to make sure she was alone. Not a soul. She picked the lock with her ID card and ducked in. She had lost count of the number of times she locked herself out of her own barracks bedroom her first three years on base. A learning experience.

  Inside the unit, directly to the right, was a door to one of the two bedrooms. There was a small kitchen area past that. Across from the kitchen was the bathroom. And at the end of the short walkway was another door with more yellow tape. Jennifer’s bedroom.

  The door was locked as well and took a bit more time to open. Riley had come to the room to look for anything that might tell her more about Jennifer Carlson. Photos with friends. Letters. Anything really. All Riley knew about Jennifer was that she was a female soldier making waves in a profession dominated by men.

  Is that why you were killed? She couldn’t shake the thought of hazing from her mind.

  When she made it into the room, she was surprised by the lack of personal effects, or anything at all for that matter. It was a given that forensics had already combed over the room and taken anything that was relevant to the case, but they wouldn’t have packed up the entire room. There was the standard-issue bed, dresser, and chair. There were some uniforms hanging in the closet. An Army field manual on the dresser. Some undergarments were in one of the dresser drawers. It looked like Jennifer would have had a hard time getting by without doing laundry every other day. There just wasn’t anything there.

  Riley sat on the bed and looked around the room that Jennifer had called home for the better part of a year. Her gaze fell onto the Army field manual that sat on the dresser. The thin booklet went over the importance of duty, honor, and country. And there was a section on best practices for weapon maintenance. That was about the only section a soldier read. The manuals were put in every barracks room just like Bibles were put in every hotel room.

  Riley crossed the length of the floor from the bed to the dresser in three short steps and picked up the manual. She flipped through the pages and a small photo fell out, landing by her boot. She picked up the wallet-sized picture and stared at the young male soldier looking back at her.

  He was in uniform, standing at attention for a military headshot. A high-and-tight framed his freshly shaved hard jaw. His eyes were an icy blue. Sometimes you saw a soldier and knew he upheld the Army’s core values. Above his left breast pocket was a tab that read “U.S. ARMY.” Above his right breast pocket was a tab that had his last name on it: “BROWN.” A patch centered between the two breast pockets had the rank of sergeant on it, three chevrons stacked above one another. On his left shoulder was a unit patch with the head of a screaming eagle on it and “AIRBORNE” above it.

  Riley yawned as she turned the photo over. Nothing written on the back. She wasn’t sure it even belonged to Jennifer. The manual it fell out of had probably been in the room for years, cycling through new soldiers like records in a jukebox.

  She tucked the photo in her pocket and decided to head home before she crashed right there.

  Chapter 9

  Friday, 10/13/17

  Conn’s alarm clock read 5:10 a.m. The few hours of sleep she had gotten hadn’t come easy. She had too much on her mind. Conflicting feelings of right and wrong had plagued her thoughts before she eventually passed out the night before. On one hand, she was about to bust an arms dealer’s operation wide-open, which meant she was doing what she left the Army to do: protect people. On the other hand, she felt like she was throwing Lee to the wolves. No matter how many times she reassured Lee he’d be fine at the fight, she still wasn’t convinced herself. And all Johnson wanted was to get Buck in the interrogation room, no matter what.

  “I’d still be worried about him even if I wasn’t sleeping with him,” she told herself.

  Maybe it was true.

  Lying in her queen-size bed, her young son, Dustin, sleeping peacefully next to her, she could th
ink only of the “what-ifs” of the day. She made sure Dustin was tucked in and got out of bed.

  She took purposeful steps to the kitchen and turned the coffee maker on. Its hum filled the noiseless void. Through the kitchen window, she could see the morning paper had already been delivered. The rest of the neighborhood was still asleep as she strolled out of the front door in a thick bathrobe, walked down to the front of the driveway, and picked up the plastic-wrapped paper from its perfectly placed spot in a small puddle of water.

  The early-morning shades of coral spread across the sky and gave her white two-bedroom home a pinkish hue. She thought it looked pretty. But it wasn’t a color she would ever paint her home. A wrap-around porch finished out the house and featured a two-seat swing that swayed in the cool morning breeze. She could see herself spending the rest of her life in the home.

  The coffee was done when she got back inside, the vanilla aroma filling her nostrils and somehow calming her body. She poured a cup and went to the living room, where she sat in her favorite leather recliner for the better part of twenty minutes, thinking about a nightmare she’d had about a dead soldier and waiting for the caffeine to kick in.

  She wished Lane had never showed her the photos of Jennifer Carlson. The beating and bruising pointed to domestic violence. Conn had seen too many female soldiers with similar wounds to think otherwise. None of them looked like they had put up a sliver of the kind of fight Jennifer did, though. Jennifer’s hands were weapons, and whoever she used them on wouldn’t forget it anytime soon. The stab wounds could have resulted from domestic violence as well. A scorned lover gone mad. The slit throat threw a wrench in her analysis. Only two types of killers would make that cut: psychopaths and professionals.

  Conn could feel a connection lingering in the back of her mind, itching to be realized. And then it was gone, disappearing like a drop of water on hot pavement. She glanced down and saw her right foot tapping. The caffeine was flowing.

  Dressed in yoga pants and a sports bra, she headed to her garage, where an old punching bag hung from one of the wooden beams. This was her favorite part of the day. Some people would never know the emotional release you got from hitting something repeatedly when no one was watching. You could let it all out and leave it with the bag, ready for a fresh start to the day. And that’s what Conn did.