A Knife Edge (21 page)

It didn't feel like good-bye. It felt more like fuck you.

Heading back to OSI, I was pissed enough to consider an eleven-hour drive straight to Bragg. I could be a sore loser, especially when the players just up and leave the board before the game's over.
Then I thought about it some more and decided chasing Butler was a bad idea. The Brit might only be spending a short time at Bragg—it might merely be the staging place for a mission elsewhere. I might get there and find them gone, jumped off to another destination. If that happened, I might feel like a moron.

My problem was that, in all probability, I had a murder case on my hands, only I had no real evidence and only hearsay to hand over to JAG. Evidentiary facts and maybe the odd reliable eyewitness or two—the only things that counted in a court-martial—were thin on the ground.

I picked up the recorder and hit play.

My voice:
Take a seat.

Butler:
Ta.

If I had a moment when Butler would be caught off guard, it was this. Last to be interviewed, he'd have asked his men where my line of questioning had gone, but he wouldn't know for certain whether one or none of his men had departed from the party line. My intention was to come out swinging.

My voice:
So… why did you kill Sergeant Wright?

Butler:
Wright killed himself.
I thought I'd get angry denials, maybe a little outrage. Butler, though, was cool and self-assured. It was the reaction you'd expect from a man used to high-pressure situations.

My voice:
Maybe it was an accident. You didn't mean to kill him.

Butler:
Guv, I was just as shocked as any of the lads to find Wright dead.

My voice:
What happened to your flashlight?

It got broken.

How?

Gear gets broken. A knock here, a bump there.

Take off your shirt.

I'd seen Butler without his shirt on back at the hacienda, but there had been a towel draped around his shoulders at the time that masked any injuries. Now he knew for certain someone had talked.

Through the small speaker, I heard the sound I knew to be that
of his chair creaking as he stood, the slap of his webbing slipping its buckle, the faint rustle of fabric as he opened his buttons and removed his shirt. I'd seen bodies in a similar condition to Butler's, but mostly they were in a morgue. His torso carried numerous ugly scars, two of which I recognized as the entry scars made by bullets. He'd also been badly burned at some point. The skin at the base of his neck and around across his left shoulder was red and purple like boiled rhubarb. His left nipple had been completely sliced off by shrapnel—an old wound. Beneath the skin under his right arm was the yellow, purple, and black puddle of a deep bruise on the mend—the specific injury I was hoping to find.

My voice:
How many ribs you got broken, Staff?

Butler:
Two.

I was impressed. Butler moved easily, each movement economical and fluid, like he was in peak condition. This was one tough hombre.

My voice:
Been to the hospital for an X ray?

Butler:
What, and get sidelined?

You want to tell me about how you got it?

I know what you're thinking.

What am I thinking?

You reckon I plowed into Wright intentionally, and cut through his harness.

Is that what happened?

I'm not sure I know what happened. We all jumped together, but we all didn't walk away together. I didn't kill Wright. I reckon he knocked himself off.

Take me through the jump.

Will it help?

That depends.

On what?

On whether you're convincing.

The recorder picked up the sound of Butler putting his shirt back on.
A night HALO drop. We were high—twenty thousand feet. A clear night, free of cloud, but black as a black cat's crotch. We planned to make the drop in close formation, which meant coming out the back of the
C-130 in a packet. The formation was to be arrowhead, with myself at the lowest point and Wright at the highest so he could keep our reflective strips in sight and check that the formation was tight and right. Anyway, that was the plan. Coming out of the plane, Wright tripped. Looking back, he might have done it on purpose. In regaining his footing, he pushed a couple of the guys off the ramp. No big deal—we're all wearing parachutes. The rest of us tumbled out to try to make something of the drop anyway. When I looked down, I could only see two of the reflective strips. The formation was a lost cause—I had no idea where the other guys were. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I got rammed in midair. I'd been hit by one of my own people—and hard, hard enough to break ribs. And then I saw it was Wright. I recognized him right away—he was a lot bigger than any of the lads. I also saw he had his knife in his hand. As we dropped side by side, I watched him hack through his own thigh strap, saw him pull his rip cord. I was watching when he went one way and his chute bag and harness went the other. There was nothing I could do.

So it was Wright who rammed you?

That's right, mate.

Do you think this was intentional, or an accident?

Dunno.

I remembered wondering as Butler told me this whether Wright really had rammed into him intentionally, whether he wanted the SAS sergeant to see him cut his own thigh strap. This thought was strengthened as I listened to Butler again. But what would Wright's motive be for doing that? What would he hope to gain? Did he want Butler to witness his suicide, if that's what really happened? And, if so, why would he want Butler to watch?

Wright had made thousands of jumps under extreme conditions. This was a calm night, a training jump, a low-stress walk in the park for a man with Wright's experience. I found it hard to believe that he would just fly into Butler. Unless he had a damn good reason for doing so. And, of course, Butler could be making all this up to hide the truth that he killed Wright.

My voice:
So what are you thinking as you land?

Butler:
Well, I know Wright's dead. Cutting his harness like that?
He might as well have sucked off his Beretta. I counted the lads as I flared. All present except one. At this stage they had no idea what had happened.

You didn't raise the alarm. Why not?

I knew Wright had bought the farm and I knew how. I also knew I had broken ribs. Put these things together and it looked bad for me.

Yeah, it did then. And, as far as I was concerned, it still did.

When Wright didn't show, the lads got nervous. They started checking around with their flashlights, looking for him. I was going to do the same, only I discovered my flashlight was broken.

Were you and Wright's girlfriend, Amy, having an affair?

An affair? Who told you that?

Is that a yes?

That's a definite no.
Again, Butler had been cool and calm, his face giving away no clues as to what he might be thinking.

The recorder picked up the knock on the door—Mortensen's untimely entrance. I clicked off the recorder, took a left turn, and slotted the SUV between a pair of white lines painted on the blacktop outside the OSI building. I killed the ignition and listened to the engine ticking. The thing with Amy McDonough was more than a little interesting. Wignall said Butler was having an affair, Butler said he wasn't.

Wignall said Butler tripped into the stick on the C-130's ramp the moment before the jump, but Butler said it was Wright who'd done the stumbling. Either Wright or Butler broke up the formation, but which one?

There was no doubt, however, that a midair collision between Butler and Wright had occurred. Whether intentional or not, the impact of them crashing into each other as they dropped through the thin, high-altitude air at over a hundred miles per hour was substantial enough to crack Butler's ribs and shatter his flashlight, a piece of which dropped out and tumbled to earth.

*   *   *

“Here's the details of that vehicle registration you asked for.” Lyne wandered in with a large Post-it note hanging off the tip of
his forefinger. “The phone company said they'd fax through the details of those calls.”

I said thanks and stuck the Post-it in my notebook.

The paperwork of Ruben Wright's recent life was spread out on the table and across the linoleum floor, a little like the way the man himself ended up. Wright had been reasonably good with record keeping, saving receipts for things he bought—mostly for warranty purposes. There were quarterly reports from his bank, and he'd also made some pretty good investments in a couple of funds over the years. I was envious. The only thing I'd made over the last few years were bets—most of them bad. He had a couple hundred thousand dollars sloshing around in various accounts. The money was unusual—there weren't a lot of rich sergeants in the armed forces. If I hadn't known about the inheritance, I might have wondered where the zeros had come from.

I rubbed my chin and then scratched my head. Wrong Way had turned into a gadget man, and, according to the dates on the receipts, the conversion had been a reasonably recent event. Over the past two months, he'd acquired a new sound system, a new iPod and cell phone, a new digital camera, home gym equipment, a massage chair, a Harley-Davidson, new cutlery and dinner set, a new iron, new furniture, new clothes, and so on.

“You need anything else?” Lyne asked.

“Yeah. I don't see a copy of his will anywhere here. I also want access to his effects.” I stretched, arching, pushing my hands into the small of my back. A couple of vertebrae gave way with a crack.

“Here's the will.” A thick envelope landed on the desk beside my elbow with a heavy slap. “And no problem getting his effects. Which ones do you want? As you can see, there's a truck-load of stuff.”

“I'll make a list,” I said, opening the envelope. It contained documents for various investment funds and life insurance. The will itself was straightforward. To start with, the date made it a couple of years old. I was surprised it wasn't a little more recent. According to the document, he had the standard airman's Servicemen's
Group Life Insurance Policy with a $400,000 payout, another policy obtained through American Express with a $300,000 payout. He also had around $750,000 under management. I scanned both policies—neither payout was affected if the policyholder committed suicide. So the guy was worth way more than a million. The amount surprised me. According to the will, there were two beneficiaries—the relative in Gainesville, though what was coming to him looked to be nothing but family memorabilia. Everything else went to Amy McDonough.

I gave the Post-it that Lyne had passed me a closer look:
Amy McDonough, 42 West Lincoln, Pensacola.
Lyne was catching on fast—there was an employment address, too:
Elmer's Sports Store.
That name rang a bell. I checked the receipts from Ruben's gym equipment. It had all come from Elmer's, where Ms. McDonough worked. I wondered what sort of discount she'd given him.

Pensacola was a long drive, roughly seventy miles, from Laguna Beach where I'd seen her last night. A long way to drive for a margarita, no matter how big they made it. I remembered the conversation she was having with Butler, like they were having a lovers' tiff.

“Here are those calls,” said Lyne, placing a couple of sheets of paper on the desk, pulling me out of the daydream. I put my feet on the desk and looked them up and down. The animal growling in my stomach told me it was feeding time. Dinner. I'd run out of pencils and my mouth tasted of number two lead. I tried not to think about food and concentrated on the list of calls instead. Wright didn't use his cell much. Over a period of two and a half weeks he made just eighteen calls. There was nothing in the cell's SMS in-tray or out-tray. Most of the calls were made to McDonough, the balance to phone numbers in Pensacola. One of the numbers looked familiar. I picked up the will again. It was drafted on letterhead from a law firm in Pensacola called Demelian and Partners, and there it was—the familiar phone number. The call he'd made was a brief one: fourteen seconds—long enough to listen to an answering machine, perhaps. So maybe Ruben had called his lawyer, and the guy wasn't in. I checked the receivedcalls
folder in the cell's memory against the phone company's records. Most had come from McDonough, her home phone or cell. Ruben's lawyer had called back twice, and there was a call from a number with an area code that placed it in Atlanta. It was after eight p.m.—too late to get anything other than a recorded message, but I thought, what the hell, and phoned anyway. Thirty minutes later I was more puzzled than when I started.

“I said, are you taking calls, Vin?”

“What…?” I snapped out of it. Lyne's head was craned around the door.

“Calls,” he repeated. “Are you taking any?”

“Is it my ex, her lawyer, or her new husband?”

“It's Colonel Selwyn.”

“Then sure.”

“Line three.”

I pressed the button.

“Agent Cooper?” said Clare Selwyn.

“Ma'am, how you doing? What's up?”

“Oh, you know… blood, guts—the usual. Actually, it's pretty quiet here, for a change. How're you doing?”

“Good. Nice climate, holiday atmosphere, a little murder…”

I heard a feminine snort. “Those lab results came through. But getting them out of me is going to cost you dinner.”

“I thought the results were going to take a week?”

“Seems the lab's not too busy. It's coming up on New Year's… Maybe all the local killers are on vacation.”

“So where do you want to meet for this dinner I owe you?”

“You know The Funkster, the place I told you about in Destin?”

“Yeah. Friendly tourist crowd.”

“There's a restaurant two doors down called Salty's.”

“Sounds bad for the arteries.”

“Actually, for seafood it's the pick of the bunch around here. They do these amazing soft-shelled crabs. Just do me one favor?”