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The woman’s head shot back. “I don’t talk to cops,” she said, and turned away. “Mind your own business.”
I looked at Sampson, then spoke in a lowered voice. “If it’s the same killer, he’s not being too careful.”
“Or the same three killers,” he said.
Someone elbowed me hard in the back. I whirled around and saw a heavyset, well-muscled blond man in a checkered sport shirt and khakis. He had a “high and tight.” Definitely military.
“Time you two got the hell out of Dodge,” he said. Two other men stood behind him. Three of them. They were dressed up in civilian clothes, but they sure looked like army. “Time you stopped causing trouble. You hear me?”
“We’re talking here. Don’t interrupt us again,” Sampson said. “You hear me?”
“You’re a big load, aren’t you? Think you’re a real tough guy?” the front man asked.
Sampson broke into a slow smile that I’d seen before. “Yeah, I do. He’s a tough guy too.”
The muscular blonde tried to shove Sampson off his stool. John didn’t budge. One of the blonde’s buddies came at me. I moved quickly, and he swung and missed. I hit him hard in the gut, and he went down on all fours.
Suddenly, all three men were on us. “Your asshole friend’s a killer,” the blonde yelled. “He killed women!”
Sampson hit him on the chin, and he sank down on one knee. Unfortunately, these guys didn’t stay down once they were hit. Another bruiser joined in, making it four against two.
A shrill whistle sounded inside the bar. I whirled around and looked toward the door. The military police had arrived. So had a couple of eager-looking deputies from the Fayetteville police. They all had batons at the ready. I wondered how they’d gotten here so fast.
They waded in and arrested everybody involved in the bar fight, including Sampson and me. They weren’t interested in who’d started it. Our heads bowed, we were escorted out to a black-and-white in handcuffs. We were shoved down into a squad car.
“First time for everything,” Sampson said.
Chapter 26
WE DIDN’T NEED this crap — especially not now. We were taken to the Cumberland County jail in a small blue bus that sat ten. Apparently there were only a couple of cells at the jail in Fayetteville. At no ti
me were we offered any professional courtesy because we were homicide detectives from Washington, who just happened to be working on behalf of Sergeant Ellis Cooper.
In case you’re ever looking for it, the booking facility at the county jail is located in the basement. It took about half an hour for the local police to do our paperwork, fingerprint us, and take our photographs. We were given a cold shower, then “put in the pumpkin patch.” That was the guards’ clever way of describing the orange jumpsuit and slippers that prisoners were made to wear.
I asked what had happened to the four soldiers who’d attacked us, and was told that it was none of my goddamn business but that they’d been transported to the stockade at Bragg.
Sampson and I were put in a misdemeanor block in a dormitory cell, which was also in the basement. It was built for maybe a dozen prisoners, but there were close to twenty of us crowded in there that night. None of the prisoners were white, and I wondered if the county jail had other holding cells and if they were segregated too.
Some of the men seemed to know one another from other nights they had spent here. It was a civil enough group. Nobody wanted to mess with Sampson, or even me. A guard walked by on checks twice an hour. I knew the basic drill. The prisoners were in charge the other fifty-eight minutes an hour.
“Cigarette?” a guy to my right asked. He was sitting on the floor with his back up against a pitted concrete wall.
“Don’t smoke,” I said to him.
“You’re the detective, right?” he asked after a couple of minutes.
I nodded and looked at him more closely. I didn’t think I’d met him, but it was a small town. We had shown our faces around. By this time a lot of people in Fayetteville knew who we were.
“Strange shit going down,” the man said. He took out a pack of Camels. Grinned. Tapped out one. “Today’s army, man. ‘An army of one.’ What kind of bullshit is that?”
“You army?” I asked. “I thought they took you guys to the stockade at Fort Bragg.”
He smiled at me. “Ain’t no stockade at Bragg, man. Tell you something else. I was in here when they brought Sergeant Cooper in. He was nuts that night. They printed him down here, then brought him upstairs. Man was a psycho killer for sure that night.”
I just listened. I was trying to figure out who the man was, and why he was talking to me about Ellis Cooper.
“I’m going to tell you something for your own good. Everybody around here knows he did those women. He was a well-known freak.”
