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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?”
