Dog Tags (24 page)

He looks worried as he says, “For my friend, Danny.”

“Did Danny drive you there that night?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

At that moment, Parker has to decide whether to continue lying or tell the truth. He chooses the truth, probably because he
assumes I already know it and will nail him with it. “He was the designated driver.”

I could press and embarrass him on this for the rest of the day, but I don’t. The jury is smart enough to know when designated
drivers are required, and I don’t want to be seen as badgering him.

I keep Parker on the stand for another twenty minutes, getting him to admit that it was dark down the street, and hard for
him to see. I can’t get him to retract anything that he testified to about the murder itself, mainly because it was all true.

He may have been drunk, but his recollections are accurate. And damaging.

When court ends I head home, have dinner with Laurie, put in a trust session with Milo, and then decide to take Tara for a
walk. I haven’t been doing enough of this lately, because of Milo’s presence.

My walks with Tara are special times for both of us, and I think she’s been missing them as much as I. I’m only a little embarrassed
to say that I talk to her out loud, secure in the belief that she understands me, if not the actual words. I know I understand
her, if not the actual barks.

Our timing is perfect, because we meet a neighbor walking Bernie, a five-year-old golden who lives two blocks away. Tara and
Bernie love each other; their joy every time they meet is obvious and terrific to watch. I’m especially pleased because Willie
and I rescued
Bernie three years ago and placed him in his current home. He’s a great dog.

When we get home, I swear Tara looks at me with gratitude, and with the silent message that we should do this more often.

We should. And we will.

I’
M TRYING TO SOLVE AT LEAST TWENTY-ONE MURDERS AT ONCE.
In addition to Erskine’s murder, for which Billy is on trial, there are the eighteen deaths in the Iraq suicide bombing,
and the likely murders of Tyler Lawson and Donovan Chambers. This doesn’t include Jeremy Iverson, Raymond Santiago, and Jason
Greer, the other discharged soldiers whom we haven’t been able to trace at all yet. Even though we haven’t gotten any information
on them, it’s safe to say that I’m glad I didn’t write their life insurance policies.

I have no doubt that all these murders are connected, and solving one will put me on a path to solving them all. Unfortunately,
all that I know right now is that it all started with the Iraqi oil minister, and that on some level it’s all about money.
Oil and money definitely do mix.

Solving a mass murder in Baghdad is difficult when you’re sitting in a bed at one o’clock in the morning in Paterson, New
Jersey. All I have is the file, so I’m going over it once more, having already prepared for tomorrow’s witnesses.

Laurie is lying next to me, sleeping soundly, which is what I would like to be doing. Tara is lying across my feet, which
for some
reason I find incredibly comforting, and Milo is across the room, curled up asleep on a chair. If the big guy would just wake
up and tell me where the damn envelope is, a lot of this aggravation might be avoided.

As a rule I hate relying on assumptions, but I have a tendency to violate that rule when I have no facts to take their place.
So my basic assumption is that Erskine recruited five of the soldiers in his command to allow the suicide bomber proximity
to the oil minister.

The money that Lawson and Chambers seem to have left behind indicates that they were well paid for their negligence, so much
so that they felt they could disappear and live comfortably after their discharge.

The fact that they and Erskine were murdered obviously means that the people behind the explosion would not tolerate any witnesses
to their efforts. Erskine, Lawson, and Chambers seem to have been murdered to ensure their silence.

In Erskine’s case, there is a possibility that he was blackmailing his employer. Billy believes that Erskine was preparing
to make a trade just before he was killed. If that is so, then his actions may have also precipitated the deaths of Lawson
and Chambers. There is no way to know, but it’s possible that the killer believed they were part of the blackmail as well,
or might commit their own in the future.

One of my concerns is that our investigation into Erskine has so far failed to turn up any substantial sums of money. If the
soldiers enriched themselves by their actions, then the same should be true of Erskine, who as the leader should have made
even more. The jury is going to want evidence, but so far we don’t have it to show them.

I have in the files many of the contemporaneous newspaper stories about the explosion. It was a major news event, despite
the fact that suicide bombings have not exactly been unheard of in Iraq this decade. The critical injury to the oil minister,
who was not expected
to survive at the time, plus the collateral deaths of two American businessmen, elevated this to a higher news status than
most.

Different angles were taken on the story, probably due to the political leanings of the individual reporters. Some of them
were straightforward, reporting on the event and concluding that the oil minister was the target, so as to prevent him from
reforming the corrupt system.

Others focused on the lax security, and the inability of the American and Iraqi military and police to prevent the bombing,
despite the fact that they knew this would be a tempting target for the enemy. Speculation was that heads would roll, particularly
among the American security authorities. That is of course what ultimately happened, though they were low-level heads.

More business-oriented publications focused on the future impact the event would have on the oil industry within Iraq, and
the secondary impact on the world oil market in general. All concluded that the explosion would signal an instability and
a future question of oil supply that would send prices skyrocketing in the short term. That prediction was validated within
twenty-four hours, as oil prices immediately went up 11 percent.

At the time the stories were written, the oil minister was in a coma, listed in grave condition. There were rumors that he
was brain-dead, and that the life-support machines could be disconnected at any time. This proved not to be the case; he lingered
for eleven more days before succumbing.

For some reason this fact strikes me differently than it has before, and I look in the army file to see if I can find sketches
that answer the question I am forming. The sketches are there, but they’re confusing to me, and it’s going to be at least
tomorrow until I can find out what I need to know.

But now I’m anxious and frustrated, which prevents me from falling asleep. I start to fake-yawn and stretch, nudging against
Laurie each time, hoping to wake her up without getting blamed for it.

This doesn’t work, so I start to put some voice into the fake yawn, giving off an “aaaahhhhh” each time I do. She doesn’t
wake up, so I do it increasingly louder, until I’m yawning like Luciano Pavarotti. Still nothing.

My next trick is to pull on the covers in various directions and turn the lamp on and off. Still no luck, so I pull, turn,
and yawn all at once. If the Iraqi oil minister were still in a coma and lying next to me right now, even he would wake up.

“Andy, if you wanted to wake me, why couldn’t you gently touch me on the back and say,
Laurie, please wake up, I need to speak to you, sweetheart.
” She says all this without moving a muscle or opening her eyes.

“Oh, sorry,” I say. “Did I wake you?”

“Andy, be careful. I’m licensed to carry a gun under my pillow.”

“Oh. Laurie, please wake up, I need to speak to you, sweetheart.”

For the first time she moves, half sitting up, supported by her elbow. “Okay. Speak.”

“Eighteen people were killed in Iraq that day. Sixteen of them died instantly, and two died days later.”

“So?”

“So one of the two was the oil minister.”

“I know that, Andy. We’ve both known that since day one.”

“It was a powerful explosion, Laurie. If the girl was after the minister, why wasn’t she close enough to him to kill him on
the spot?”

Now she sits all the way up. “That’s a good question. Maybe the girl got confused, and stood in the wrong place. She was sixteen
years old, and she had to be scared.”

I shake my head. “Maybe, but unlikely. Billy said she moved
around for a long time before doing it. That’s why he kept watching her.”

“Then maybe she couldn’t get close, because of the security.”

“The security was set up to give her a free pass. This operation was planned perfectly; why go to all that trouble and then
not give her access?”

“We need to check this out,” she says.

I nod. “That’s for sure. First thing in the morning.”

I turn out the lights and lay my head down. “Good night.”

“Andy, this could be important. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to sleep.”

“Then just try to lie there quietly. I’m exhausted.”

W
ILLIE AND
H
IKE WERE NOT THE PERFECT TRAVELING COMPANIONS.
They were in first class from New York to Miami, which Willie found to be “really, really, cool.” The seats had elaborate
entertainment systems, with a television, DVDs, and video games. The flight attendant seemed happy to quickly bring Willie
pretty much anything he wanted, and in normal circumstances he would have been content if the flight went on much longer than
it did.

That’s if he hadn’t been sitting next to Hike.

Hike thought the cabin was too cold, the chicken stringy, and the bloody Marys watered down. He mentioned all of this to Willie,
who didn’t share his viewpoints and told him so.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Hike. “We’re going to die on the next flight anyway.”

Once they boarded the small plane for the Miami-to-Nassau flight, Hike really kicked it into gear. His we’re-going-to-die
fear became a chant, annoying all the passengers and prompting a warning from the flight attendant.

By the time they landed in Nassau, Willie had decided that he would rather swim back to New York than fly with Hike. They
got
their bags, and then Willie rented a car while Hike covered himself in bug repellent and suntan lotion.

They went to the local headquarters of the Royal Bahamas Police, where they had an appointment with Inspector Brendan Christian.
Christian had investigated Donovan Chambers’s disappearance, and had spoken to Laurie on the phone.

Hike conducted the interview after getting Christian’s permission to turn on his tape recorder. He took him through everything
that Christian knew about the Chambers case, which was little more than he had already told Laurie. During the interview,
Willie showed the sketch of M that Cindy had provided, but Christian had no recollection of seeing him.

When they were finished, they had four and a half hours until their flight, and Willie wondered to himself if he had time
to buy a gun to shoot Hike during the flight back.

“I was just thinking about something,” Willie said. “They say that this guy is a shooter only… that’s how he hits. And Chambers
was a combat soldier, so he could probably handle himself.”

“So?” Hike asked.

“How did he get a gun onto the island? He wouldn’t try getting it through airport security, would he? That would be taking
a chance.”

Christian nodded. “And he wouldn’t have purchased one on the island. That would call attention to himself, and we’d know about
it.”

“Which explains the fact that you haven’t found a body,” Hike said. “He came in by boat, and dropped the body at sea. And
he would have needed a car to get around.”

Christian held up the sketch. “I’ll have this shown at all the rental car agencies and piers where the boat could have docked.
But even if we get an ID, it doesn’t help catch him. He’s long gone.”

“We can use it at trial,” Hike said.

When they were back at the airport, Willie called Andy in New Jersey, while Hike went into the bathroom to wipe off the lotion
and repellent.