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“Let me talk, Nana,” he said.
She nodded and sipped her tea. I’m pretty sure why I chose psychology for a career, and who my original role model was. Nana has always been the best shrink I’ve seen. She’s wise, and compassionate for the most part, but tough enough to insist on the truth. She also knows how to listen.
“I’m sorry, Alex. I didn’t sleep last night. I feel awful about what happened. I was way over the line,” Sampson said. He was staring into my eyes, forcing himself not to look away.
Nana watched the two of us as if we were Cain and Abel sitting at her breakfast table.
“You were over the line all right,” I said. “That’s for sure. You were also crazy last night. How much did you drink before you came over?”
“John told you he was sorry,” Nana said.
“Nana.” He turned to her, then back to me. “Ellis Cooper was like a brother to me. I can’t get over the execution, Alex. In a way, I’m sorry I went to see it. He didn’t kill those women. I thought we could save him, so it’s my fault. I expected too much.”
He stopped talking.
“So did I,” I said. “I’m sorry we failed. Let me show you something. Come upstairs. This is about payback now. There’s nothing left but payback.”
I brought Sampson to my office in the attic of the house. I had notes on army murder cases pinned all over the walls. The room looked like the hideout of a madman, one of my obsessive killers. I took him to my desk.
“I’ve been working on these notes since I met Ellis Cooper. I found two more of these remarkable cases. One in New Jersey, the other in Arizona. The bodies were painted, John.”
I took Sampson through the cases, sharing everything.
“Along the way,” I told him, “I learned that the Pentagon has been working to prevent over a thousand deaths the peacetime military suffers every year from high-speed car crashes, suicides, and murders. Still, during the past year more than sixty soldiers have been murdered.”
“Sixty?” Sampson said, and shook his head. “Sixty murders a year?”
“Most of the violence has to do with sex and hate crimes,” I said. “Rapes and murders. Homosexuals who’ve been beaten or killed. A series of vicious rapes by an army sergeant in Kosovo. He didn’t think he’d get caught because there was so much rape and killing going on there anyway.”
“Were any other bodies painted?” he wanted to know.
I shook my head. “Just the two cases I found, New Jersey and Arizona. But that’s enough. It’s a pattern.”
“So what do we really have?” Sampson shook his head and looked at me.
“I don’t know yet. It’s hard to get information out of the army. Something very nasty going on. It looks like soldiers may have been framed for murder. The first was in New Jersey; the latest seems to be Ellis Cooper. There are definite similarities, John. Murder weapons found a little too conveniently. Fingerprints and DNA used to convict.
“All of these men had good service records. In the Arizona murder-case transcripts, there was a mention of ‘two or three men’ seen near the victim’s house before the homicide took place. There’s a possibility that innocent men have been framed and then wrongfully put to death. Framed, then wrongfully executed. And I know something else,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“These killers aren’t brilliant like Gary Soneji or Kyle Craig. But they’re every bit as deadly. They’re expert at what they do, and what they do is kill and get away with it.”
Sampson frowned and shook his head. “Not anymore.”
Chapter 41
THOMAS STARKEY HAD been born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and he still loved the area passionately. So did most of his neighbors. He’d been away for long stretches while he was in the army, but now he was back to stay and to raise his family as best as he possibly could. He knew that Rocky Mount was a great place to bring up kids. Hell, he’d been brought up here, hadn’t he?
Starkey was devoted to his family, and he also genuinely liked the families of his two best friends. He also needed to control everything around him.
Just about every Saturday night, Starkey got the three clans together and barbecued. The exception was during football season, when the families usually had a tailgate party on Friday night. Starkey’s son Shane played tailback for the high school. North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Georgia Tech were after Shane, but Starkey wanted him to put in a tour with the army before he attended college. That’s what he had done, and it had worked out for the best. It would work for Shane too.
The three men usually did all the shopping and cooking for the Saturday-night barbecues and the tailgate parties. They bought steaks, ribs, and hot and sweet sausages at the farmers’ market. They selected corn on the cob, squash, tomatoes, asparagus. They even made the salads, usually German potato, cole slaw, macaroni, and, occasionally, Caesar.
That Friday was no exception, and by seven-thirty the men were in their familiar positions beside two Weber grills, staying downwind from the wafting smoke, drinking beer, cooking every meal “to ord
er.” Hell, they even cleaned up and did the dishes. They were proud to deliver the food just right, and to get pretty much the same kind of applause given to their sons on football nights.
