Four Blind Mice

Chapter Sixty-One

Sharp, steep cliffs of granite overlooked the Hudson River at West Point. Starkey knew the area well. Later that night he drove down the main drag in Highland Falls, passing cheesy-looking motels, pizza shops, souvenir stands. He went through Thayer Gate with its turreted sentry tower and stone-faced MP on guard. Murder at West Point, he thought. Man oh man.

Starkey put the job out of his mind for another few moments. He let impressions of West Point wash over him. Impressions and memories. Starkey had been a cadet here, been a first-year plebe like the two youngsters he saw jogging back to barracks now. In his day he'd shouted the cadet motto' Always the hard way, sirl'over a thousand times if he'd shouted it once.

God, he loved it here: the attitude, the discipline, the whole physical plant.

The Cadet Chapel stood high on a hillside overlooking the Plains. A cross between a medieval cathedral and a fortress, it still dominated the entire landscape. The campus was filled with mammoth gray-stone buildings and emphasized the fortress effect. An overwhelming sense of solidarity and permanence. Soon to be shaken badly.

Harris and Griffin were waiting for him on the grounds. For the next hour, they took turns watching the Bennett house on Bartlett Loop, an area of West Point reserved for officers and their families. The house was redbrick with white trim and plenty of ivy creeping the walls. Smoke curled lazily from the stone chimney. It was a four-bedroom, two-bath unit. On the housing map it was designated as Quarters 130.

Around nine-thirty the three killers reconnoitered on the seventeenth fairway of the West Point golf course. They didn't see anyone on the hilly course that formed one of the boundaries of the military academy. Route 9-W was just to the west.

“This might be easier than we thought, ”Warren Griffin said. “They're both home. Relaxing. Guard down.”

Starkey looked at Griffin disapprovingly. “I don't think so. There's a saying here, ”Always the hard way, sir“. Don't forget it. And don't forget that Robert Bennett was Special Forces. This isn't some big city architect having a sleep-over on the Appalachian Trail.”

Griffin snapped to attention. “Sorry, sir. Won't happen again.”

Just before ten o'clock, the three of them made their way through the bramble and woods that bordered the backyard of Quarters 130. Starkey pushed back a stubborn branch of a pine tree and saw the house.

Then he spotted Colonel Robert Bennett in the kitchen. War-hero, father of five, husband for twenty-six years, former Special Forces in Vietnam.

Bennett was holding a goblet of red wine and seemed to be supervising the preparation of a meal. Barbara Bennett stepped into view. She was doing the real work. Now she too took a sip of his wine. Robert Bennett kissed the back of her neck. They seemed loving for a couple married well over twenty years. That's too bad, Starkey thought, but kept it to himself.

“Let's do it,”he said. “The last piece in the puzzle.”

And it truly was a puzzle even to the killers.