Four Blind Mice

  “This how it’s going to be from here on?” he asked. “Breaking and entering in broad daylight?”

  “They probably know who we are,” I said, “know we’re here for them.”

  “Probably. Rangers are the premier light-infantry unit in the army. Most are good guys too. ‘Rangers lead the way.’ That’s been their motto since Omaha Beach, D-Day. Tip of the spear.”

  “How about in Vietnam?” I asked.

  “Lots of Rangers over there. They performed the heavy recon missions. Seventy-fifth Infantry. Exemplary soldiers, the best. Most of them. Probably had the best military assassins too.”

  It took me less than a minute to get inside the side door of the Starkey house, which led into a small laundry room that reeked of bleach and detergent. We didn’t hear any alarm going off, but that didn’t mean we hadn’t tripped one coming inside.

  “Could the three of them still be in the army? Special assignment?” I asked.

  “The thought has crossed my mind. I hope this isn’t about something the army is trying to hide.”

  “But you think it might be?”

  “Like I said — I hope it’s not. I do like the army, sugar. Hoo-rah!”

  The house was only a few years old, and it was immaculate and strikingly orderly inside. Two fieldstone fireplaces on the first floor, vaulted ceilings, a game room with a wet bar and a pool table. I figured the house was probably around five thousand square feet and cost maybe four hundred thousand. Thomas Starkey lived pretty well for a salesman. So did Griffin and Harris, from the look of their new houses.

  Everything was neat and clean; even the kids’ toys were stacked and arranged on shelves. Starkey and his wife sure ran a tight ship.

  The kitchen was high-tech with a big Sub-Zero refrigerator. Shiny, stainless-steel All-Clad pots and pans hung above the workstation. A giant cast-iron skillet had a place of pride on the right back burner of the stove.

  Off the master bedroom was a small room that turned out to be Starkey’s den. Lots of army souvenirs and pictures. I looked at the photographs on the walls, saw Harris and Griffin in several. But none of the men whom they had set up. I didn’t really expect to see Ellis Cooper in a picture on Thomas Starkey’s wall, but that didn’t stop me from hoping.

  Sampson was opening desk drawers and examining the contents of several cabinets built into the wall. He came to a closet with a padlock on it. He looked over at me.

  I shrugged. “Go for it. That’s what we’re here for.”

  “No turning back now.”

  He took out his Glock and smashed down with the butt. The padlock held, but he had snapped the hinge off the wall. Obviously, the lock was just to keep out Starkey’s kids, and maybe his wife.

  “Dirty pictures,” Sampson said as he rummaged around inside. “Skin magazines, some nasty bondage. One with really young girls. Here the women are shaved. Lots of Asian girls. Fancy that. Maybe they did those girls in New York.”

  Sampson checked the closet for false sides. “Nothing. Just the sleazy porn collection. He’s not the husband and daddy of the year, but I guess we knew that already.”

  I kept looking, but I didn’t think I’d find anything incriminating. “He must keep the good stuff somewhere else. I guess we should go. Leave everything the way it is. I want Starkey to know we were here.”

  “Might get Tom in some trouble with the missus,” Sampson said, winking.

  “Good deal. He should be in trouble with somebody.”

  Sampson and I walked back through the house and out the side door again. Birds were chirping in the trees. How sweet. The sun was a brilliant white-gold orb in blue skies. Nice town, Rocky Mount.

  A blue GMC Suburban was parked out front. Starkey, Harris, and Griffin were waiting for us.

  Three Blind Mice.

  Also three against two.

  Chapter 84

  NO POINT IN being subtle. Sampson and I took out our guns. We held them with the barrels down, not pointed at anyone. The three of them didn’t appear to be armed. Just a friendly little game, right?

  “Nothing’s going to happen here,” Starkey called to us. “This is where my wife and children live. It’s a good neighborhood. Decent people in all these houses up and down the street.”

  “And it’s also where you keep your porn collection,” I said. “S and M, bondage. Memories of your sweethearts from the war.”

  He smiled thinly, nodded. “That too. You’re detectives, right? D.C.? Friends of Sergeant Ellis Cooper. Seems to me that you’re a long ways from home. Why don’t you go back to Washington. It’s safer there than here in Rocky Mount. Believe it or not.”

  “We know what you’ve done,” I told him. “Most of it anyway. We don’t know why yet. That’ll come. We’re getting close. The An Lao Valley in Vietnam? What happened there, Colonel Starkey? It was real bad, right? Things got out of control. Why are Three Blind Mice still in operation?”

  Starkey didn’t deny the murders or anything else I said. “There’s nothing you can do to us. Like I said, I think you should go home now. Consider this a friendly warning. We’re not bad guys. We’re just doing our job.”

  “What if we don’t go?” Sampson asked. “What if we continue the investigation here in Rocky Mount? You killed a friend of mine.”

  Starkey clasped his hands together, then he looked at Harris and Griffin. I could tell they weren’t into friendly warnings.

  “Don’t come near any of our houses again,” Starkey said. His eyes were cold and hard. The assassin. We’re not bad guys. We’re a whole lot worse than that.

  Brownley Harris pushed himself away from the hood of the Suburban. “You hear what the man said? You two niggers listening? You oughtta be. Now clear the fuck out of here and don’t ever come back. You don’t come to a man’s house with this shit. Not the way it’s done, you hear? You fucking hear me?”

  I smiled. “You’re the hothead. That’s good to know. Starkey is the leader. So what does that make you, Griffin? You just muscle?”

  Warren Griffin laughed out loud. “That’s right. I’m just muscle. And artillery. I’m the one who eats guys like you for breakfast.”

  I didn’t move a muscle. Neither did Sampson. We continued to stare at the three of them. “I am curious about one thing, Starkey. How do you know about us? Who told you?”

  His answer shook me to the core.

  “Foot Soldier,” he said. Then Colonel Thomas Starkey smiled and tipped his ball cap.

  Chapter 85

  SAMPSON AND I rode the Interstate back to Washington late that afternoon. I was really starting to dislike, or at least tire of, I-95 and its thundering herd of slip-sliding, exhaust-spewing tractor-trailers.

  “The circumstances could be better, but it’s good spending all this time with you,” I said as we tooled along in the passing lane. “You’re too quiet, though. What’s up? Something’s bothering you.”

  He looked my way. “You remember a time — we were about eleven — I came over? Spent a couple of weeks with you and Nana?”

  “I remember a lot of times like that,” I told him. “Nana used to say we were brothers, just not flesh-and-blood ones. You were always at the house.”

  “This time was different, sugar. I even know why you don’t remember. Let me tell it.”

  “All right.”

  “See, I never used to go home after school. Reason being, nobody was there most of the time. That night I got home around nine, nine-thirty. Made myself corned beef hash for dinner. Sat down to watch some tube. I used to like Mission: Impossible back then, wait for it all week. There was a knock at the door.

  “I went to see who was there, and it was Nana. She gave me a big hug, just like she still does when she sees me. Asked me if I had some corned beef hash for her too. Said she liked hers with eggs on top. Then she cackled her cackle, you know.”

  “I don’t remember any of this. Why was she at your house so late at night?”

  Sampson continued with his story. “My fath
er was in prison that year. Nothing unusual. That afternoon my mother was convicted for possession of heroin, with intent to sell. She’d been sentenced. Social Services came by, but I was out. Somebody called Nana Mama.

  “So Nana came over, and she actually ate a little of the hash I’d cooked. Told me it was pretty good. Maybe I would be a famous chef one day. Then she said I was coming over to your house for a while. She told me why. She had done some of her magic with Child Welfare. That was the first time that Nana saved me. The first of many times.”

  I nodded. Listened. Sampson wasn’t finished with his story.

  “She was the one who helped get me into the army after high school. Then into the police academy when I got out of the service. She’s your grandmother, but she’s more a mother to me than my own flesh. And I never had a father, not really. Neither of us did. I always thought that held us together in the beginning.”

  It wasn’t like Sampson to go on and open up like this. I still didn’t speak. I had no idea where he was headed, but I let him go as much as he wanted to.

  “I always knew I didn’t have it in me to be a father or a good husband. It was just something I felt inside. You?”

  “I had some fears before I met Maria,” I said. “Then they just went away. Most of them anyway. I knew Maria and I would be good together. First time I held Damon, the rest of the fears pretty much disappeared for good.”

  Sampson began to smile, then he was laughing. “I met somebody, Alex. It’s strange, but she makes me happy and I trust her with my secrets. Look at me, I’m grinnin’ like a goddamn Halloween pumpkin.”

  Both of us were laughing now. Why not? It was the first time I had seen Sampson in love, and we’d been friends for a long time.

  “I’ll mess it up somehow,” he said. But he was still laughing. We joked and laughed most of the rest of the way home. Jesus, John Sampson had a girlfriend.

  Billie.

  Chapter 86

  NANA MAMA ALWAYS used to say, “Laugh before breakfast, cry before dinner.” If you’ve raised a family, you know there’s some truth to that, crazy as it sounds.

  When I got back to Fifth Street that night, there was a red-and-white EMS truck sitting in front of our house.

  I shut down the Porsche and bounded out of it.

  It was raining, and the bracing wind and water whipped at my face. Partially blinded by the rain, I hurtled up the front steps and entered the house. My heart was hammering and a voice inside whispered, No, no, no.

  I heard voices coming from the living room and rushed in there, expecting the worst.

  Nana Mama and the kids were sitting on the old sofa. They were all holding hands.

  Across from them sat a woman in a white lab coat. I recognized Dr. Kayla Coles from the night with Damon’s sick friend, Ramon.

  “You missed all the excitement,” Nana said as she saw me enter the room.

  “Imagine that, Daddy,” said Jannie. “You missed the excitement.”

  I looked toward the doctor sitting in the easy chair. “Hello, Doctor.”

  She had a good smile. “Nice to see you again.”

  I turned to Nana. “Exactly what excitement did I miss? For starters, what’s the EMS truck doing outside?”

  She shrugged. “I thought I had a heart attack, Alex. Turns out, it was just a fainting spell.”

  Dr. Coles spoke. “Nana doesn’t remember passing out. I was down the street at the time. I work with a group that brings health care into the neighborhoods of Southeast. Makes it easier for some people to get good care. More personal, and definitely more affordable.”

  I interrupted. “Nana passed out. What happened to her?”

  “Damon saw the EMS truck, and he came and got me. Nana was already up on her feet. She had an irregular heartbeat. Rapid, threading. The pulse in her wrist wasn’t as fast as the actual heart rate, so there could be some diminished circulation. We took her over to St. Anthony’s for a few tests.”

  Nana shrugged the whole thing off. “I fell down, went boom, in the kitchen. Always hoped it would be there. Damon and Jannie were just great, Alex. About time they started taking care of me for a change.”

  She laughed, and so did Dr. Coles. I was glad they both saw the humor in the situation.

  “You’re still here. It’s past nine,” I said to the doctor.

  She smiled. Good bedside manner, or whatever this was. “We were having so much fun, I decided to stay for a while. I still have one more stop, but Mr. Bryant doesn’t get off work until ten.”

  “And,” I said, “you were waiting for me to get home.”

  “Yes, I thought that would be the best idea. Nana says you work late a lot of nights. Could we talk for a minute?”

  Chapter 87

  THE TWO OF us stepped out onto the front porch. Heavy rain was pelting down on the overhang, and the air was damp and cool. The good doctor pulled a gray car sweater around herself.

  “I’ve already had this chat with your grandmother,” she said. “Nana asked that I talk to you, answer all your questions. I would never go behind her back, or condescend to her in any way.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said. “I think you’d find that she’s awfully hard to condescend to.”

  Kayla suddenly laughed. “Oh, I know. I had Mrs. Regina Hope Cross in eighth grade. She’s still probably the most inspirational teacher I’ve had. That includes undergraduate at Brandeis and medical school at Tufts. Thought I would flash my résumé by you.”

  “Okay, I’m impressed. So what’s the matter with Nana?”

  Kayla sighed. “She’s getting old, Alex. She admits to eighty-two. The tests we took at St. Anthony’s won’t come back until sometime tomorrow or the next day. The lab boys will call me, then I’ll call Nana myself. My concern? She’s been having palpitations for several weeks. Dizziness, light-headedness, shortness of breath. She tell you?”

  I shook my head. Suddenly I felt more than a little embarrassed. “I had no idea. She told me she was feeling fine. There was a rough morning a couple of weeks back, but no complaints from her since.”

  “She doesn’t want you to worry about her. When she was at St. Anthony’s we did an EKG, an echocardiogram, routine lab work. As I mentioned, her heartbeat is irregular.

  “On the positive side of things, there’s no sign of edema. Her lungs are clear. No evidence that she’s suffered a stroke, even a slight one. Nana has very good general muscle strength for somebody her age, or even younger.”

  “So what happened to her? You have any idea?”

  “We’ll have the test results in a day. Dr. Redd in the lab was in Nana’s class too. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say atrial fibrillation. This involves the two small upper chambers of the heart, the atria. They seem to be quivering rather than beating effectively. There’s some risk of clotting.”

  “I take it she’s okay to be here tonight,” I said. “I don’t want her stubbornness to keep her out of the hospital if she needs to be there. Money isn’t a consideration.”

  Kayla Coles nodded. “Alex, my opinion is that it’s safe for her to be home right now. She said her sister will be coming from Maryland tomorrow. I think that’s a wise precaution. Someone to help with the kids and the house.”

  “I’ll help with the kids,” I said. “And the house.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I believe we’ve already established that you work too hard.”

  I sighed and shut my eyes for a couple of seconds. The news was finally hitting me, sinking in. Now I had to force myself to deal with it. Nana was into her eighties, and she was sick.

  Kayla reached out and lightly patted my arm. “She’s getting up there, but she’s strong, and she wants to be around for a long time. That’s important. Alex, Nana believes that you and the children need her.”

  I finally managed a thin smile. “Well, she’s right about that.”

  “Don’t let her do too much right now.”

  “Hard to keep her down.”

  ?
??Well, tie her if you have to,” Kayla Coles said, and then she laughed.

  I didn’t, couldn’t right then. I knew a fair amount about heart disease from my days at Johns Hopkins. I would definitely keep a closer watch on Nana. “What about you, Dr. Coles. What about your work schedule? Nearly ten o’clock and you still have more house calls.”

  She shrugged, and seemed a little embarrassed by the question. “I’m young, I’m strong, and I believe the people in these neighborhoods need decent, affordable health care. So that’s what I’m providing, trying to. Good night, Alex. Take good care of your grandmother.”

  “Oh, I will. I promise.”

  “The road to hell,” she said.

  “Paved with good intentions.”

  She nodded and walked off the porch. “Say good night to everybody for me.” Dr. Coles headed down Fifth Street to her final appointment of the day.

  Chapter 88

  I DID SOME more background work on the Three Blind Mice the next day, taped notes to my wall in the attic, but I couldn’t get into it, couldn’t concentrate worth a damn. Nana’s lab tests came back in the afternoon, and as Kayla Coles had promised, she called the house. The two of us had a talk on the phone after she spoke to Nana.

  “I just wanted to thank you for your help,” I said as I got on the line. “I’m sorry if I was rude in our living room the other night.”

  “What makes you think you were rude? You were a little frightened is all. I don’t think ‘rude’ is part of your makeup. Anyway, let me tell you about your grandmother. She is suffering from atrial fibrillation, but given the options, that’s not such bad news.”

  “Tell me why I should be happy about it,” I said.

  “Not happy. But the treatment is noninvasive and has a good success rate. I think we can treat her with a catheter ablation. We’ll start there. She’ll be able to go home the next day, and hopefully be her old self in a week.”