Four Blind Mice

Chapter Forty-Six

Sampson and I were riding on 1-95 again, heading toward Harpers Ferry, Virginia. There had been a brutal double murder on the Appalachian Trail near there. So far, it didn't make sense to the FBI or the local police. But it made perfect sense to us. The three killers had been there.

We hadn't had this much time to talk in a long while. For the first hour we were cops discussing the murder victims, two hikers on the AT, and any possible connection to Ellis Cooper or the victims in Arizona and New Jersey. We had read the investigating detective's notes. The descriptions were bleak and horrific. A young couple in their twenties, a graphic artist and an architect, had had their throats slit. Innocents. No rhyme or reason for the murders. Both of the bodies had been marked with red paint, which was why I got the call from the FBI.

“Let's take a break from the mayhem for a while,” Sampson finally said. We had reached the halfway point of our ride south.

“Good idea. I need a break, too. We'll be knee-deep in the shit soon enough. What else is going on? You seeing anybody these days?” I asked him. “Anybody serious? Anybody fun?”

“Tabitha,” he said. “Cara, Natalie, LaTasha. You know Natalie. She's the lawyer with HUD. I hear your new girlfriend from San Francisco came to visit last weekend. Inspector Jamilla Hughes, Homicide.”

I laughed. “Who told you about that?”

John furrowed his brow. “Let's see. Nana told me. And Damon. And Jannie. Little Alex might have said something. You thinking about settling down again? I hear this Jamilla is something else. Is she too hot for you to handle?”

I continued to laugh. “Lot of pressure, John. Everybody wants me to get hooked up again. Get over my unlucky recent past. Settle down to a nice life.”

“You're good at it. Good daddy, good husband. That's how people see you.”

“And you? What do you see?”

“I see all that good stuff. But I see the dark side, too. See, part of you wants to be old Cliff Huxtable. But another part is this big, bad, lone wolf. You talk about leaving the police department, maybe you will. But you like the hunt, Alex.”

I looked over at Sampson. “Kyle Craig told me the same thing. Almost the same words.”

Sampson nodded. “See? Kyle's no dummy. Sick, twisted bastard, but not dumb.”

“So, if I like the hunt so much, who's going to settle down first? You or me?”

“No contest. My role models on families are bad ones. You know that. Father left when I was three. Maybe he had his reasons. My mother was never around much. Too busy hooking, shooting up. They both knocked me around. Beat up on each other, too. My father broke my mother's nose three times.”

“Afraid you'll be a bad father?” I asked. “Is that why you never settled down?”

He thought about it. “Not really. I like kids fine. Especially when they're yours. I like women, too. Maybe that's the problem I like women too much,” Sampson said, and laughed. “And women seem to like me.”

“Sounds like you know who you are anyway.”

“Good deal. Self-knowledge is a start,” Sampson said, and grinned broadly. “What do I owe you, Dr. Cross?”

“Don't worry about it. I'll put it on your tab.”

I saw a road sign up ahead: Harpers Ferry, two miles. A man was being held there for murder.

A former Army colonel with no past record.

And currently a Baptist minister.

I wondered if anyone had seen three suspicious-looking men in the area of the murder? And if one of them had been filming what happened?