Four Blind Mice

Chapter Seventy-Nine

I had three names now three men who had been dispatched to the An Lao Valley to stop the murder of civilians there. I needed to be extremely careful with the information, and it took Sampson and I another week to track the men down and find out as much as we could about them.

The final confirmation that I needed came from Ron Burns at the FBI. He told me that the Bureau had suspected these men of doing two other professional hits: one a politician in Cincinnati, the second a union leader's wife in Santa Barbara, California.

The names were:

Thomas Starkey.

Brownley Harris.

Warren Griffin.

The Three Blind Mice.

The following weekend, Sampson and I went to Rocky Mount, North Carolina. We were chasing men who had played a part in mysterious violence in the An Lao Valley thirty years before. What in hell had really happened there? Why were people still dying now?

Less than five miles outside the city limits of Rocky Mount, tracts of farmland and crossroad county grocers still dominated the landscape. Sampson and I drove out into the country, then back to town again, passing the Rocky Mount-Wilson Airport and Nash General Hospital, as well as Heckler and Koch where Starkey, Harris and Griffin worked as the sales team for several military bases, including Fort Bragg.

Sampson and I entered Heels, a local sports bar, at around six o'clock. Race-car drivers as well as a few basketball players from the Charlotte Hornets frequented the place, so it was racially mixed. We were able to fit into the crowd, which was noisy and active. At least a dozen TVs blared from raised platforms.

The sports bar was less than a mile from Heckler and Koch US, where some of these men and women worked. Other than the thriving high-tech business community, Heckler and Koch (pronounced "Coke') was one of the largest places of employment in town, just behind Abbott Laboratories and Consolidated Diesel. I wondered if the gun company might have some connection to the murders. Probably not, but maybe.

I struck up a conversation with a plant supervisor from H and K at the bar. We talked about the plight of the Carolina Panthers, and then I worked in the subject of the gun manufacturer. He was positive about his company, which he referred to as' like a family and definitely one of the best places to work in North Carolina, which is a good state to work in'. Then we talked about guns, the MP5 submachine gun in particular. He told me the MP5 was used by the Navy SEALS and elite SWAT teams, but it had also found its way into inner-city gangs. I already knew that about the MP5.

I mentioned Starkey, Harris and Griffin, casually.

“I'm surprised Tom and Brownie aren't here already. They usually stop in on a Friday. How do you know those boys?” he asked, but didn't seem surprised that I did.

“We served together a long time ago,” said Sampson. “Back in sixty-nine and seventy.”

The supervisor nodded. “You Rangers too?” he asked.

“No, just regular Army,”said Sampson. “Just foot soldiers.”

We talked to some other H and K employees, and they spoke positively about the company. The guys we talked to knew Starkey, Harris and Griffin, and everybody knew they'd been Rangers. I got the impression that the three men were popular and might even be local heroes.

Around quarter past seven, Sampson leaned in close and whispered into my ear. “Front door. Look who just blew in,” he said. “Three business suits. Don't much look like killers.”

I turned slowly and looked. No, they didn't look like killers.

“But that's what they are,” I said to Sampson. Army assassins who look like the nicest guys in the bar, maybe in all of North Carolina."

We watched the three of them for the rest of the night -just watched the trio of hit men.