Dog Tags

CHAPTER 60

MARCUS CALLS AND TELLS LAURIE THAT HE AND SANTIAGO ARE ON THE WAY. I was afraid the man would take one look at Marcus and decide he’d rather be back in the war zone, but that apparently is not the case. It’s not a great early sign; if he’s not afraid of Marcus, it’s unlikely I’ll scare him into submission.

Marcus pulls the car into my garage, and he and Santiago come inside. Santiago’s a big guy, at least six two, 220 pounds, and he has an air of confidence about him that surprises me. It’s hard to reconcile with Laurie’s comment that he had sounded very frightened on the phone; he’s obviously used the intervening time to compose himself.

Santiago and I go into the den, with Laurie and Marcus staying behind. Laurie and I have discussed this, and we think I’ll have a better chance of getting something out of Santiago one-on-one.

Santiago wastes no time on chitchat. “Billy didn’t do Erskine,” he says. “No chance.”

“Do you know who did?” I ask.

He nods. “I don’t know who pulled the trigger, but I know who paid for the gun and the bullets.”

“Who might that be?”

He answers a question with a question; never a good sign. “You find Jason?” he asks.

“Greer?” Jason Greer is one of the two soldiers we’ve learned nothing about in our investigation.

“Yeah. You find him?”

“Not yet,” I say.

“Then I’m your only chance. Because they would have gone after him first.”

“Why?”

“Because they think he’s the only one who knows. But it ain’t true. He told me.”

“Told you what?”

“I want full immunity, and guaranteed entry into the witness protection program.”

“I’m not a government official,” I point out.

“So make it happen.”

“You need to give me something; that’s the only way I can help you. There are some things we know, but—”

He interrupts me midsentence, which is just as well, since I wasn’t sure how to finish it. “You know nothing,” he says. “And you have no interest in helping me. You want to get your client off the hook, and I can do that for you.”

I decide to go at this from a different direction. “Who was the target that day?”

“In Baghdad?”

“Yes. Who was the target of the bomber?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea, and I couldn’t care less.”

“So what was your job?”

“To make sure she got in. Once we made sure of that, whoever she went after was way, way above my pay grade.”

I keep running into walls. “What do you want immunity for?”

“For the eighteen people who died that day. If I talk, the shit is going to hit the fan, and I want to be well out of the way.”

“What about money? Nobody gets rich in witness protection.” Since we know that the other two soldiers left large amounts of cash behind, I’m fishing to find out if Santiago has similarly enriched himself.

“Money’s not a problem; don’t worry about it.”

I nod. “Okay, here are my terms. I’m going to get you protected by the state police; the judge has already ordered it. Once you’re safe, I will try to get you immunity. It’s not going to be easy, because generally a person in your position needs to reveal a part of his future testimony as a sign of good faith.”

I expect him to rebel against the idea of state police protection, but he does not. Maybe he’s not as confident and unafraid as he appears. He accepts my terms, which is not exactly a triumph for me, since those terms have been dramatically scaled back from my original goal. I’ve learned nothing, and according to Santiago I know nothing.

Business as usual.

I call Captain Dessens, who has disliked me for a very long time. We’ve had run-ins on a few cases, and he makes no effort to conceal his disdain for me. Therefore it gives me some pleasure to be able to give him his marching orders in this case, and I tell him that Santiago is ready to be picked up.

It takes Dessens’s officers about twenty minutes to get here, during which time Santiago and I sit in fairly uncomfortable silence. The frustrating part for me is that I believe him when he says he has the answers to my questions, and the logical extension of that is he probably can get Billy acquitted.

That is my primary goal, of course, but this situation has also become intellectually personal for me. If Billy were to get off tomorrow on a technicality, I would stay on this case, trying to find out the truth, for two reasons.

I don’t want whoever killed eighteen people to get away with mass murder.

And I’m sick of being in the dark.