Once Stalked

CHAPTER NINE

The laughter subsided, and Larson was still looking at Riley, Bill, and Lucy. Her expression was penetrating and powerful, as if she were assessing them somehow. Riley wondered if the CID commander was about to make some dire announcement.

Instead, Larson asked, “Have any of you had breakfast?”

They all said no.

“Well, that situation is unacceptable,” Larson said with a chuckle. “Let’s fix it before you waste away. Come with me, and I’ll show you some Fort Mowat hospitality.”

Larson then left her team behind and proceeded to guide the three FBI agents into the officers’ club. Riley could see right away that the colonel wasn’t kidding about hospitality. The dining facility was like an upscale restaurant, and Larson wouldn’t let them pay for their own meals.

Over a delicious breakfast, they discussed the case. Riley realized that she had definitely needed coffee. The meal was welcome too.

Col. Larson gave them her take on the case. “The most salient features of these murders are the method of killing and the ranks of the victims. Rolsky, Fraser, and Worthing were all drill sergeants. They were all shot from a long distance with a high-powered rifle. And the victims were all shot at night.”

Bill asked, “What else did they have in common?”

“Not much. Two were white and one was black, so it isn’t a racial issue. They were in command of separate units, so they had no recruits in common.”

Riley added, “You’ve probably already pulled the files of soldiers reprimanded for disciplinary or psychological issues. AWOLs? Dishonorable discharges?”

“We have,” Larson replied. “It’s a very long list and we have been through it. But I’ll send it to you and you can see what you think.”

“I’d like to talk to the men in each unit.”

Larson nodded. “Of course. You can catch some of them after the funeral today, and I’ll set up any additional meetings that you want.”

Riley noticed that Lucy was taking notes. She nodded to the young agent to ask her own questions.

Lucy asked, “What caliber were the bullets?”

“NATO-caliber,” Col. Larson said. “7.62 millimeter.”

Lucy looked at Col. Larson with interest. She said, “It sounds like the weapon might be an M110 sniper rifle. Or possibly a Heckler and Koch G28.”

Col. Larson smiled a little, obviously impressed by Lucy’s knowledge.

“Due to the range, we’re guessing the M110,” Larson said. “The bullets all seem to have been from the same weapon.”

Riley was pleased to see that Lucy was so fully engaged. Riley liked to think of Lucy as her protégé, and she knew that Lucy thought of her as a mentor.

She’s learning fast, Riley thought proudly.

Riley glanced at Bill. She could tell by his expression that he was pleased with Lucy as well.

Riley had questions of her own, but she decided not to interrupt.

Lucy said to Larson, “You’re guessing someone with military training, I assume. A soldier on the base?”

“Possibly,” Larson said. “Or an ex-soldier. Someone with excellent training, at any rate. Not just an average shooter.”

Lucy drummed her pencil eraser against the table.

She suggested, “Someone who has it in for authority figures? Drill sergeants especially?”

Larson scratched her chin thoughtfully.

“I’ve been considering it,” she said.

Lucy said, “I’m sure you’re also considering Islamic terrorism.”

Larson nodded.

“These days, that simply has to be our default theory.”

“A lone wolf?” Lucy asked.

“Maybe,” Larson said. “But it could be that he’s acting on behalf of some group – either a small cell near here, or something international, like ISIS or Al-Qaeda.”

Lucy thought for a moment.

“How many Muslim recruits have you currently got at Fort Mowat?” Lucy asked.

“Right now, three hundred forty-three. That’s obviously a very small percentage of our recruits. But we’ve got to be careful about profiling. In general, our Muslim recruits have been exceptionally dedicated. We’ve never had any problems with extremism – if that’s what this is.”

Larson looked at Riley and Bill and smiled.

“But you two are being very quiet. How would you like to proceed?”

Riley glanced at Bill. As usual, she could tell that he was thinking the same thing as she was.

“Let’s go have a look at the murder scenes,” Bill said.

A few minutes later, Col. Larson was driving Riley, Bill, and Lucy through Fort Mowat.

“Which of the locations do you want to see first?” Larson asked.

“Let’s see them in the order they happened,” Riley said.

As Larson drove, Riley noticed soldiers drilling, running obstacle courses, and practicing marksmanship with various weapons. She could see that it was rigorous, demanding work.

Riley asked Larson, “How far along in their training is this round of recruits?”

“The second phase – the White Phase,” Larson said. “We’ve got three phases – red, white, and blue. The first two, red and white, are three weeks each, and these recruits are in their fifth week overall. Their last four weeks will be the Blue Phase. That’s about as tough as tough can get. That’s when the recruits find out if they’ve got what it takes to be an Army soldier.”

Riley heard a note of pride in Larson’s voice – the same pride she’d often heard in her father’s voice when he talked about his military service.

She loves what she does, Riley thought.

She also had no doubt that Col. Larson was excellent at what she did.

Larson parked near a footpath that led through the camp. They got out of the car, and Larson led them to a spot on the path. It was in an open area, free of trees that might block a view.

“Sergeant Rolsky was killed right here,” Larson said. “Nobody saw or heard it happen. We couldn’t tell from the wound or the position of his body where the shot came from – except that it must have been a considerable distance.”

Riley looked all around her, studying the scene.

“What time was Rolsky killed?” she asked.

“At about twenty-two hundred hours,” Larson said.

Riley mentally converted that to civilian time – 10:00 p.m.

She imagined what this place would look like at that time of night. There were a couple of lamps standing within thirty feet of the spot. Even so, the light here would have been pretty dim. The shooter must have used a night scope.

She turned slowly around, trying to guess where the shot came from.

There were buildings to the south and north. It was unlikely a sniper would have the opportunity to fire from within any of those places.

To the west, she could see across camp to the Pacific Ocean, faint in a hazy distance.

There were rough hills to the east.

Riley pointed to the hills and said, “My guess is that the shooter positioned himself somewhere up there.”

“That’s a good guess,” Larson said, pointing to another spot on the ground. “We found the bullet right here, so that indicates the shot must have come from somewhere up in those hills. Judging from the wound, the shot was fired from between two hundred fifty and three hundred feet. We’ve scoured the area, but he didn’t leave any evidence behind.”

Riley thought for a moment.

Then she asked Larson, “Is hunting allowed on Fort Mowat grounds?”

“In season, with permits,” Larson replied. “Right now it’s wild turkey season. Shooting crows by day is also allowed.”

Of course, Riley knew that these deaths were anything but hunting accidents. As the daughter of a man who had been both a Marine and a hunter, she knew that no one would use a sniper rifle to kill crows and turkeys and such. A shotgun was the more likely hunting weapon of choice around Fort Mowat at this time of year.

She asked Larson to take them to the next location. The colonel drove them up into some low hills at the edge of a hiking trail. When they all got out of their vehicle again, Larson pointed to the spot on a trail that wound its way uphill.

“Sergeant Fraser was killed right here,” she said. “He was taking an after-hours hike. The shot seems to have been about the same distance as before. Again, no one heard or saw it happen. But our best guess is that he was killed at about twenty-three hundred hours.”

Eleven o’clock at night, Riley thought.

Pointing to another spot, Larson added, “We found the bullet over here.”

Riley then looked in the opposite direction, toward where the shooter must have been. She saw more scrubby hills – and countless places where a shooter might have hidden. She was sure that Larson and her team had combed the area thoroughly.

Finally they drove down to the area where the recruits’ living quarters were. Larson took them behind one of the barracks. The first thing Riley saw was an enormous dark splotch on the wall near the back door.

Larson said, “This is where Sergeant Worthing was killed. He seems to have come out here for a cigarette before his platoon’s morning formation. The shot was so clean that the cigarette never fell from his lips.”

Riley’s interest quickened. This scene was different from the others – and much more informative. She examined the blotch and the smear that spread down below it.

She said, “It looks like he was leaning against the wall when the bullet hit him. You must have been able to get a much better idea of the bullet’s trajectory than you could for the others.”

“Much better,” Larson agreed. “But not the precise location.”

Larson pointed across the field behind the barracks to where hills began to rise.

“The shooter must have positioned himself somewhere between those two valley oaks,” she said. “But he cleaned up very carefully afterward. We couldn’t find a trace of him in any likely location.”

Riley saw that the distance between the small trees was about twenty feet. Larson and her team had done good work narrowing the area down that much.

“What kind of weather was it?” Riley asked.

“Very clear,” Larson said. “There was a three-quarter moon out almost until dawn.”

Riley felt a tingle down her back. It was a familiar feeling that she got when she was about to really connect with a crime scene.

“I’d like to go out and have a look for myself,” she said.

“Certainly,” Larson said. “I’ll take you there.”

Riley didn’t know how to tell her that she wanted to go by herself.

Fortunately, Bill spoke up for her.

“Let’s let Agent Paige go alone. It’s kind of her thing.”

Larson nodded appreciatively

Riley strode out across the field. With every step, that tingling grew stronger.

Finally, she found herself between the two trees. She could see why Larson’s team hadn’t been able to find the exact spot. The ground was highly irregular with lots of smaller bushes. Just in that area, there were at least a half dozen excellent places to squat or lie and fire a clean shot toward the barracks.

Riley began to walk back and forth between the trees. She knew that she wasn’t looking for anything that the shooter might have left behind – not even footprints. Larson and her team wouldn’t have missed anything like that.

She took some slow breaths and imagined herself here in the very early hours in the morning. The stars were just starting to disappear, and the moon still cast shadows all around.

The feeling grew stronger by the second – a sense of the killer’s presence.

Riley took a few more deep breaths and prepared to enter the killer’s mind.

CHAPTER TEN

Riley began to imagine the killer. What had he felt, thought, and observed when he came here looking for the perfect spot to shoot from? She wanted to become the killer, as nearly as she could, in order to track him down. And she could do that. It was her gift.

First, she knew, he had to find that spot.

She searched about, just as he must have searched.

As she moved around, she felt a mysterious, almost magnetic pull.

She was drawn to a red willow bush. To one side of the bush, there was a space between its branches and the ground. There was a slightly hollow place in the ground at that very spot.

Riley stooped down and looked carefully at the ground.

The soil in that hollow place was neat and smooth.

Too neat, Riley thought. Too smooth.

The rest of the soil in this area was rougher, more irregular.

Riley smiled.

The killer had gone to such lengths to tidy up after himself that he’d betrayed his exact position.

Imagining the scene by moonlight, Riley gazed down the slope and across the field toward the back of the barracks.

She pictured what the killer saw from this place – the distant figure of Sergeant Worthing stepping out of the back door.

Riley felt a smile form on the killer’s face.

She could hear him think …

“Right on schedule!”

And just as the killer had expected, the sergeant lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall.

It was time to act – and it had to be quick.

The sky was starting to brighten where the sun would soon rise.

As the killer must have done, Riley stretched out prone in the hollow place on the ground. Yes, it was the perfect place, the perfect shape for wielding a high-powered weapon.

But how did the weapon feel in the killer’s hands?

Riley had never actually handled an M110 sniper rifle. But some years ago she had trained a little with the weapon’s predecessor, the M24. Fully loaded and assembled, the M24 had weighed about sixteen pounds, and Riley had read that the M110 was scarcely any lighter.

But the night scope added to that weight, making it a little top heavy.

Riley imagined the view through the night scope. The image of Sergeant Worthing was mottled and grainy.

That wasn’t a problem for true marksmanship. For a skilled sniper, the shot would be easy. Even so, Riley sensed that the killer felt vaguely unsatisfied.

What was it that bothered him?

What was he thinking?

Then his thought came to her …

“I wish I could see the look on his face.”

Riley felt a jolt of understanding.

This killing was deeply personal – an act of hatred, or at the very least contempt.

But he wasn’t going to put it off on account of his dissatisfaction. He could do this just fine without seeing his prey’s expression.

She felt the resistance from the trigger as she pulled it, then the sharp recoil from the rifle as the bullet was fired.

The noise of the shot wasn’t very loud. The sound suppressor and the flash hider had muffled the noise and the burst of flame.

Even so, did the killer worry that someone had heard it?

Only for a moment, Riley felt sure. He had shot two other men from much the same distance, and no one seemed to have heard the shots. Or if they had heard them, no one had thought them extraordinary.

But what did the killer do now that he’d fired the shot?

He kept looking through the scope, Riley realized.

He followed the body in its slouch against the wall toward an awkward squat.

And again the killer thought …

“I wish I could see the look on his face.”

As the killer must have done, Riley got to her feet. She imagined the killer taking a wide brush to the soil to smooth it over, then leaving the way he’d come.

Riley breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Her attempt to link with the killer’s mind had revealed more than she’d hoped for.

Or at least she had a hunch that it had.

She remembered something that Col. Larson had said earlier about whether the killings were acts of Islamic terrorism …

“These days, that simply has to be our default theory.”

Riley’s gut told her that that theory was probably wrong. But she wasn’t ready to say so to her colleagues. Under the circumstances, she knew that Larson was right to pursue the possibility of terrorism. It was simply good procedure. Meanwhile, it was best for Riley to keep her hunch to herself – at least until she could back it up with evidence.

Riley looked at her watch. She realized that she and the others were due at a funeral.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

As Riley watched the six uniformed men carry Sergeant Worthing’s flag-draped casket to the gravesite, she admired the solemn cadence and precision of their actions.

She was also struck by an eerie contrast between this ceremony and his actual death. The murder of Sergeant Worthing had been abrupt and brutal.

His funeral was elegance itself.

The military cemetery was in a lovely place, high on a hill in a remote part of Fort Nash Mowat. Riley could see the Pacific Ocean in the distance.

Riley, Lucy, and Bill were standing off to one side of the ceremony. She could see Sergeant Worthing’s widow and family seated on folding chairs beside the grave. She could watch the fifty uniformed young men and women in Worthing’s training platoon standing stiffly at attention.

She also spotted civilians of an unwelcome sort nearby – a small group of reporters and photographers crowded behind a rope barrier.

She stifled a groan of discouragement.

After three murders, there was no longer any way to keep the press away from Fort Mowat. The publicity was certainly going to add to the pressure of solving the case. Riley just hoped that the journalists wouldn’t make too much of a nuisance of themselves.

Probably too much to hope for, she thought.

Once the coffin was in place over the grave, the chaplain began to speak.

“We commend to the almighty God our brother, Sergeant Clifford Jay Worthing, and we commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust …”

Riley was surprised to feel herself choke up at the chaplain’s words.

What was it about this funeral that was getting to her?

Then she realized …

Daddy.

As a Marine captain, her father had been eligible for a funeral with honors like this one.

Had he gotten this kind of funeral? Riley didn’t even know. Not only had she refused to go to his funeral, she’d taken no part in its planning. She’d left all that to her estranged sister, Wendy.

She’d never grieved over her father’s death. Nevertheless, she felt sad at the thought that he might not have been buried with full military honors. But who would have gone to the funeral, aside from Wendy? Riley’s father had died with no real friends as far as she knew. And Riley and Wendy were all he had left of family.

Riley remembered something that one of her father’s former buddies recently told her.

“Riley, your daddy was a good man. But he was a hard man too. He couldn’t help it, ’Nam made him that way.”

Tears welled up in Riley’s eyes.

He’d been a terrible father. But he’d been a good soldier. He’d given everything he had to the Marines – including his humanity, his capacity to love.

As the honor guard lifted the flag and held it taut above the casket, Riley thought …

He deserved this.

Riley thought she should have made sure her father had his full honors funeral, even if no one had been there to witness it except Wendy.

She was jolted out of her sad reverie by the firing of guns. A seven-person squad fired three volleys into the still air. Then the quiet was broken again by the mournful sound of a bugler playing taps.

The honor guard ceremoniously folded the flag, and an officer presented it to Sergeant Worthing’s widow. The officer whispered something to her – doubtless some word of support of support or solace.

Then the officer gave the family a slow-motion salute, and the service was over.

Before Sergeant Worthing’s platoon could leave the cemetery, Col. Dana Larson called them together. She introduced them to Riley, Bill, and Lucy and told them that they were here to investigate the three recent murders.

Riley scanned their faces, looking for some telltale sign of emotion. She detected nothing – certainly not grief.

She guessed that many of the recruits had hated Sergeant Worthing’s guts and weren’t sorry that he was gone.

Riley stepped forward and spoke to the gathered recruits.

“My colleagues and I are very sorry for your loss. We don’t want to disturb you right now, just after the ceremony. But if any of you has any information that might help us, we hope that you’ll talk to us.”

Then the platoon was allowed to disperse. Riley, Bill, and Lucy broke up and wandered among them, hoping to draw somebody out. Pretty soon two recruits, a young man and a young woman, approached Riley. They introduced themselves as Privates Elena Ludekens and Maxwell Wilber.

They seemed to be uneasy and reluctant. Riley thought she understood why. Informing on a fellow recruit couldn’t be easy.

Riley said, “Look, I get the feeling that Worthing wasn’t the most popular drill sergeant at Fort Mowat.”

The two recruits nodded and mumbled in agreement.

Riley continued, “But we’re looking for someone whose animosity was out of the ordinary. If you know anyone like that, please tell me.”

Ludekens and Wilber looked at each other.

The young woman said, “The sarge really rode one of us especially hard.”

“His name’s Stanley Pope,” the young man added.

“Tell me about him,” Riley said.

The young man said, “He’s got a real mouth and a bad attitude. The sarge busted him for it.”

Riley felt a surge of interest.

“Busted him?” she said. “Explain that to me.”

The young woman said, “Almost all of us in the platoon are PV1 – private E-1. Just ‘fuzzies,’ they call us, because of this.”

She pointed to a blank Velcro patch on her shoulder.

The young man said, “When we get through basic training, we’ll get our ‘mosquito wings’ – chevrons – to show that we’ve become second-class privates. But Pope had his mosquito wings already when he came to Fort Mowat.”

“How?” Riley asked.

The young man shrugged.

“You can come in as a second-class private if you have an associate’s degree. Or if you’ve got a Boy Scout Eagle badge. That’s how Pope got his.”

“But he talked back to the sarge once too often,” the young woman said. “So the sarge busted him, took away his chevron, demoted him to PV1 – a fuzzy just like the rest of us. He didn’t take it too well.”