Dog Tags

CHAPTER 52

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.”