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“Tell me everything that’s in there,” I repeated. “Please don’t leave anything out. Read from the text.”
The boredom and exasperation she had shown before were gone. Suddenly the translator was attentive, and she also seemed a little frightened. What she was reading now was disturbing her.
“There are always unfortunate incidents during a war,” she lectured me. “But this is a new pattern in the An Lao Valley. The killings seem to have been organized and methodical. Almost like your serial killers here in America.”
“There are serial killers in Asia too,” I said.
Ms. Nguyen bristled at my comment. “Let me see. There were formal complaints made to your government and the U.S. Army by officers in the ARVN. Did you know that? There are also repeated complaints from what was then called Saigon. This was a murder case according to the ARVN. Murder, not war. The murder of innocent civilians, including children.”
She frowned and shook her head. “There’s more about the precise pattern of the murders. Men, women, and children; innocent villagers were killed. Often the bodies were painted.”
“Red, white, blue,” I said. “The painting was a calling card left by the killers.”
Ms. Nguyen looked up in alarm. “How did you know? Did you already know about these horrible murders? What is your role in all this?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re finished. Don’t stop now. Please. This could be what I’ve been looking for.”
About twenty minutes later, Ms. Nguyen came upon something that I asked her to read a second time. “A team of Army Rangers was sent into the An Lao Valley. It’s unclear, but it seems they were dispatched to the area to investigate the murders. I’m sorry, Detective. It’s also unclear here whether they succeeded or not.”
“Do you have any names?” I asked. “Who was on this team?” I could feel the adrenaline ripping through my body now.
Ms. Nguyen sighed and shook her head. Finally, she rose from her desk.
“There are more boxes on the fifth floor. Come with me, Detective. You say that people are still being killed?”
I nodded, then followed Thi Nguyen upstairs. There was an entire wall of boxes, and I helped her carry several of them down to her office.
The two of us worked late on Wednesday, then again on Thursday night, and we even got together during her lunch hour on Friday. She was hooked now too. We learned that some of the Rangers sent to the An Lao Valley were military assassins. Unfortunately, none of the paperwork had been organized according to dates. It had just been thrown into boxes and left to collect dust, never to be read by anyone again.
About two-fifteen on Friday we opened another few boxes crammed with papers pertaining to the investigation in the An Lao Valley.
Thi Nguyen looked up at me. “I have names for the assassins,” she said. “And I think I have a code name for the operation. I believe it was called Three Blind Mice.”
Part Four
EXIT WOUNDS
Chapter 79
I HAD THREE names now — three men who had been dispatched to the An Lao Valley to stop the murder of civilians there. I needed to be extremely careful with the information, and it took Sampson and me another week to track the men down and find out as much as we could about them.
The final confirmation that I needed came from Ron Burns at the FBI. He told me that the Bureau had been suspicious of these men for two other professional hits: one a politician in Cincinnati, the second a union leader’s wife in Santa Barbara, California.
The names were:
Thomas Starkey
Brownley Harris
Warren Griffin
The Three Blind Mice
That Friday after work, Sampson and I went to Rocky Mount, North Carolina. We were chasing men who had played a part in mysterious violence in the An Lao Valley thirty years before. What in hell had really happened there? Why were people still dying now?
Less than five miles outside the city limits of Rocky Mount, tracts of farmland and crossroad country groceries still dominated the landscape. Sampson and I drove out into the country, then back to town again, passing the Rocky Mount–Wilson Airport and Nash General Hospital, as well as the offices of Heckler & Koch, where Starkey, Harris, and Griffin worked as the sales team for several military bases, including Fort Bragg.
Sampson and I entered Heels, a local sports bar, at about six o’clock. Race-car drivers as well as a few basketball players from the Charlotte Hornets frequented the place, so it was racially mixed. We were able to fit in with the crowd, which was noisy and active. At least a dozen TVs blared from raised platforms.
