A Knife Edge

EIGHTEEN

Early the following morning, I found myself beside an area the size of a basketball court outlined with yellow crime-scene tape. Colonel Selwyn didn't end up making the trip. Her son had come down with something, and so company was limited to a map and a hand held GPS. It was reasonably open ground peppered here and there with scrub and low trees, surrounded on three sides with thick pine forest and a cleared hill on the fourth. The air was thick with the smell of pine sap, wet grass, and decaying peat. It might once have been a dump but nature was doing a reasonable job of reclaiming it. I put on the sterile over-boots so that I could walk around the scene without introducing anything new to it, though my caution was probably unnecessary; in the open air, new material was being brought into the site and taken away constantly by the wind and insects. Proving my point, a couple of squirrels scampered about, picking up bits of foliage.

I ducked under the tape. I had no idea what I was looking for. Maybe the missing knife. Or maybe it was just to let Ruben's ghost know that I was on the case. This was not a Road Runner cartoon and so there was no depression in the ground where my former squadron buddy had come to rest, although there was a white spray-painted outline on the grass around a small bush that had been flattened, its thin green trunk snapped off at ground level. Presumably it had done its best to break Wrong Way's fall. Its best hadn't been near good enough.

Two hours later, I'd found nothing inside the tape, but I did firm on my theory that if the knife had come down here, it wouldn't have been just lying around waiting to be picked up. The earth was soft and loamy. The knife would certainly have kept going, burying itself well over the hilt and pulling the dirt in behind it. The sun was out, but the air was cool and still smelled of rain. I had no pressing engagements so I began to walk the area outside the tape. I needed the exercise. I hadn't been able to do my usual morning run for over a week. And also, the walk gave me time to think. Colonel Selwyn was right, there really was only one possible theory that fit the facts we had: Wright had been cut out of his chute. It couldn't have happened in the plane on the climb to the drop zone. It would have happened on the way down. Special Forces, especially SAS and CCTs, do a lot of aerial work — they are highly adept parachutists. The sort of maneuver required in midair of the assailant would have been difficult, but not impossible. The unanswered question was whether it was murder or an unfortunate accident. Perhaps there'd been a collision. It had been a night jump. Maybe Wrong Way had just been plain unlucky. But if that's what had happened, why would the men who jumped with him hide the truth?

More than a hundred and fifty feet from the taped area, I scuffed my shoe over a tuft of grass and something caught my attention. It caught my attention on account of it was red where everything else around it was green. I pulled an evidence bag from my pocket and used it as a glove to remove the object. It was a sliver of plastic. If this was a supermarket parking lot, I'd have said it was possibly part of the remains of some housewife's brake light. Maybe it was nothing, but, this close to a crime scene, maybe it was something. A tearing sound, far overhead, distracted me. I knew that sound.

I stood and used my hand as a glare visor, squinting upward. The source of the noise took a moment or two to locate. And then I saw them. They were dropping fast, small black fleas against the blue. I counted five. At a height of perhaps fifteen hundred feet, black parachutes opened. A second or two followed before I heard the distant, familiar cracks, like the sound of a baseball bat smacking into a heavy punching bag. I watched the parachutes fly in a descending corkscrew pattern. The way they came down reminded me of the double helix. That prompted me to wonder how Bradley Chalmers was getting along with the Natusima's cook in Guam. I sure hoped he was getting absolutely nothing from the trip besides a tan. Actually, I hoped it was overcast.

The fleas landed on the far side of the open, marshy ground that separated us. Watching them flare their chutes and touch down safely, gently, made me wonder how Wrong Way had come down. Had he panicked or had he resigned himself to his fate? What thoughts had gone through his mind just before his boots did? A Humvee pickup appeared from the scrub between the parachutists and the crime scene. It splashed across the marsh, heading toward the soldiers as they gathered their chutes under their arms.

After making the collection, the vehicle headed back to the point where it had appeared. But then it did a sudden ninety-degree detour in my direction. I stood my ground and it stopped. Its rear door swung open. Two guys hopped out as three others jumped down from the rear. They were all wearing Disruptive Pattern, Material camouflage — different from our “woodland pattern” battle-dress uniforms, or BDUs. In other words, they were visitors. I gave them a quick once-over. They appeared to be fully kitted up with ammunition pouches and various stores attached to webbing points. They were minus their chute bags, Kevlar helmets, and weapons, all of which were piled in the back of the Humvee. The driver stayed behind the wheel, keeping the motor running.

The men facing me had their faces painted with camouflage. I was wondering what they wanted, when the guy in front said, “Well, if it isn't Mr. Plod…”

And then I saw the blond tips and it clicked. “What did you say?” I asked.

He shrugged, hands on hips. “You're a copper. Back home, Mr. Plod is what we call coppers. Term of endearment, an' all.”

“You're a long way from home, Mack. And here you can call me Special Agent Cooper.” Once I'd established that he wasn't endearing himself to me, I said, “And you are…?” I already knew, of course, but I didn't want the guy knowing that I'd already attached his name and face to the death of Sergeant Wright.

“Staff Sergeant Chris Butler, Her Britannic Majesty's Special Air Service Regiment. I heard a rumor there was going to be a new investigator appointed. If that's you, then you'd know I was with Sergeant Wright when he bought the farm. And please accept my humble apology, Special Agent. No disrespect intended.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“So, are you? Taking over the investigation?”

Asking questions was my job, not his. “What are you doing here, Staff?” I repeated.

“That's our drop zone,” he said, indicating back over his shoulder. “We were in the vicinity, so the lads and I thought we'd come over and pay our respects to the late sergeant's ghost.”

I didn't buy that. Most probably on his way down Butler had seen the beacon that was my Hawaiian shirt loitering around the taped-off area and was just being nosy.

“Are you and your men around later today?” I inquired.

“I've got nothing planned. Lads?” He turned to get a consensus from his men. They gave a collective shrug.

I gathered they'd be around, too.

“You know where we're staying?” Butler asked.

“I'll find you. Expect me at sixteen hundred hours.”

“We'll put on a brew,” he said.

Something irregular caught my attention. “You've lost your flashlight, Staff.” A flashlight was part of a para's inventory, just like a knife, and, as Clare Selwyn had said, Special Forces soldiers were fanatical about their gear. It was usually attached to the webbing on the chest.

“Oh, hadn't noticed. Must have left it back at the hacienda,” he said, padding down the front of his webbing.

In my pocket was, I believed, a fragment from a low-light red lens, the type commonly found on a typical military flashlight. Maybe the fragment had come from Butler's. If so, what was it doing here? How had it come to be smashed? And if it had come from his flashlight, why lie about it? Maybe I'd found a genuine clue here. Or maybe the fragment belonged to one of those squirrels.

“Anything else we can help you with?” Butler asked.

“Not just at the moment,” I replied.

“Well, we'll catch you later, then, eh?” Butler climbed back into the Humvee, all smiles. The others climbed up after him, all except one. Unlike the rest, this guy wasn't smiling. He also had an anxious look on his face like he'd just passed a monkey wrench. I wanted to know why.