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“He said he thought the guy was nuts or maybe on drugs.”
“Or maybe speaking a foreign language.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Maybe they’re running another Guantanamo up here in North Dakota.”
Jamison slumped back in her seat. “Another Gitmo, here?”
“You wouldn’t want to transfer a bunch of enemy combatants or terrorists to New York City or another really populated area. And if this facility is redundant, it would be the perfect place.”
“Right. And then Vector is brought in to handle security.”
Decker nodded. “They show up here and the Air Force people get kicked out, leaving Sumter as the sole remaining flag bearer to give it a modicum of respect. I think Vector was brought in to watch over the people they’re keeping there. And maybe interrogating them to the point of their being injured.”
“But that’s not allowed anymore.”
“Says who?” replied Decker sharply.
Jamison started to reply but then seemed to think better of it. He eased forward in his chair. “It would also explain why Robie is on the scene.”
“But they told us why. It was because of what happened to Irene Cramer’s mother.”
Decker shook his head. “Robie’s boss struck me as one real heavyweight. And Robie, too. Maybe they’re upset that Cramer got killed after what happened to her mother under their watch, but feeling guilty isn’t a reason to bring those kind of assets up here. There’s something else, another reason why they’re here.”
Jamison snapped her fingers. “Robie’s boss said that some big players may already be on the scene here. And that clearly was a problem.”
“If they’re running a secret prison engaging in illegal interrogation, I think that would qualify as something people would kill to keep quiet about.” He tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair. “The only problem is that theory doesn’t square with why Cramer came here in the first place. Daniels told her something about that facility. But that was from a long time ago, long before Vector or any potential prisoners showed up there.”
“So you mean there has to be somethingelsegoing on? Namely, whatever Daniels told Cramer that compelled her to move here?”
Decker nodded. “But if Cramer came up here to find out something about that facility based on what Daniels told her, and then stumbled onto what they’re doingnow?”
“That’s a motive to kill her. But why slice open her stomach and intestines?”
“Her mother was a spy. Maybe she taught her kid to swallow secrets, or she saw her mother do it before. The people who killed Cramer might have somehow known this and cut her open to get it back. Then they tried to hide that by performing a postmortem on her and also blackmailing Walt Southern.”
“But why leave the body out there like that? I mean, they could have buried it somewhere. No one would have found her and we’d never have been called in.”
“Well, one explanation is that they didn’t know about her past. Local murder, local cops working on it, not the FBI. If it came out she was a prostitute the local cops would have chalked it up to that. And if they had blackmailed Southern to mess with the postmortems, the cops probably wouldn’t have even focused on the stomach and intestines. I had to read that report three times to find a reference to it.”
“I’m surprised he even referred to it at all.”
“Guy was covering his ass in case this all came out. He could say, hey, it’s right there, even if I didn’t highlight it or take photos of that specific region. I checked for contraband and found none. And the livor mortis miscue? He could chalk that up to not being a full-time pathologist. No, he was hedging his bets all right.”
“So they would have found her body, done the post, conducted the investigation, and come up with zip.”
“Which is better for them than no one finding her, and the cops keep digging and maybe call in other resources to try to find her. The fact that she was a prostitute, or at least holding herself out as one, would make for an easy answer for the cops. It’s a high-risk profession. Women like that get murdered all the time and their bodies get dumped. Cops poke around and then move on to the next case.”
“That does make sense.”
“Well, that’s something, since nothing else in this damn case makes the least bit of sense,” growled Decker.
ROBIE PARKED THE SCOOTERoutside the same abandoned apartment building where he had taken Decker and Jamison to meet Blue Man. His boss wasn’t here, but Robie had secure communications inside the building to contact him. And Robie had also made this derelict place his home base for now.
The sound reached his ears a few seconds before it would have been picked up by anyone not as well trained as he was.
Seconds of warning meant he got to live another day.
