A Deeper Darkness (28 page)

Sam heard the pain in his voice and, without thinking, reached her hand out and touched his shoulder. He didn’t move, and didn’t shove her hand away, but kept talking in a soft monotone.

“There are always eyes on every battle. The video you saw, hell, it could have been us, I have no idea. Powers that be hushed it all up, didn’t want King’s wife to know. Covering up friendly fire happens more than you could ever imagine. If Karen suspected a cover-up, decided to start making a stink, filed a lawsuit to get the records and videos, hell, it could go all the way to a wrongful-death suit, and the Army couldn’t have another case make the evening news. Plus the mission was a sensitive one, and if word got out—well, sometimes they don’t think these things through. Too many variables, too many repercussions. We all got asked to shut up about it. And we all agreed.”

“I see,” Sam said.

“No, you don’t see. When we debriefed, it didn’t make sense. How King could have gotten so far off track. It was almost like someone contacted him and told him to go in a different direction, to charge east instead of west, effectively cutting back in front of us. But I was the last person who talked to him, and I certainly didn’t give that order.

“Once they triangulated everything, wrapped up the story, it was pretty clear Doc was the one who’d shot him. They did an autopsy and pulled the slugs from his head, saw they were from an M249. That’s a light machine gun—it’s what Doc favored so he could have a medical kit with him, too. He was the only one of us carrying that weapon. Brass said it was pretty damn straightforward. They confirmed that he’d shot King.”

Sam realized she was wringing her hands.
One Mississippi, Two Mississippi. Three
… This time, it was Donovan’s pain she was trying to wash away. Donovan’s, and Xander’s.

“Donovan must have been crushed.”

“Yeah. Doc was torn up. Ripped. He shut down harder than I’ve ever seen, wouldn’t talk to anyone. They sent him to Germany, got him talked to. He came back, but he’d changed. He wanted out as soon as possible. When our rotation was up, he made it clear he wasn’t going to stick around. Without him, none of us really wanted to stay, either.

“But the sequence from that night, it didn’t feel right to me. I couldn’t get it out of my head. So a few weeks ago, I went to Orange and requested the video. I wanted to see for myself, see how we messed up. He told me to let it go. Doc was the shooter, it wasn’t my fault, or my responsibility. But that’s not how we work. We were a team. A good one. We didn’t fuck up. And getting King killed, that was as big a fuckup as can happen.”

Sam was sitting forward now, completely caught up in Xander’s story.

“But you thought that wasn’t the case?”

He shook his head.

“I started digging around the files, the briefings, to see what I could see. I still have friends in the Pentagon. What I found was damning, at best. The video they’d shown us wasn’t our video. It was date and time stamped on the disc, like they all are, but it had been altered. It was from the year before. Some other friendly fire incident.

“I went straight to Doc. We sat down and had a long talk. Mapped everything out, I’m talking down to the fraction of an inch. As best we could figure, the shots that killed King came twenty degrees from my left. Doc was on my right. So someone else was up there, either trying to engage the Tallies, or…”

“Trying to kill King.”

“Yeah. I was convinced Doc didn’t do this, and it wasn’t right for him to have to carry that burden. I went to Taranto, started some quiet inquiries. And then everything went to hell. Doc, Jackal and Shakes were dead. Maggie showed up here and finally told me the whole truth about what happened back when we left Kaf. She’d given me most of the story, but not all.”

Xander got quiet again. Sam waited him out. A frog started up, singing in the rushes down toward the river. Finally, Xander cleared his throat and told her the rest of it.

“The night it all started, back at the Kaf, Maggie and King were supposed to hook up, their usual spot, but he didn’t show. He’d gotten sent out on patrol, didn’t have time to warn her. She didn’t know that, though. She was really upset. But someone else made an appearance. Turns out the five of us weren’t the only ones who knew about their affair. This guy told her he’d get her tossed out if she didn’t have sex with him. She turned him down flat, so he raped her.”

Sam sucked in a breath.
Oh, my God.

“Rape isn’t the most uncommon thing in the military, unfortunately. You look at the studies, four out of every ten women in the service say they’ve been raped or assaulted. Forty percent. It’s one of the reasons we fight against having them side by side on a combat mission—there’s serious naked aggression that goes into what we do. We have to temper ourselves, or else we tip over the edge, and that’s when massacres occur. Some men get a release from forcing women, even though we’re over there telling them it’s not right to rape their own women… .

“Anyway, she wouldn’t tell me who raped her. Didn’t tell me who it was until she showed up three days ago. But she did tell King. They had a huge fight about it, and she broke it off with him. Said she couldn’t face being with an honorable man after what had happened. He blamed himself, of course. If he hadn’t been sent off to the line, if he’d made their date…”

“Please tell me it wasn’t—?”

“It was Orange,” he said bitterly. “We fucking trusted him, and this is what kind of man he was all along. He assigned King that tour. He wanted to get at Maggie himself.”

“Xander, who is Orange?”

It hit her then.
Orange
. She suddenly knew exactly who it was. He was so named because there was a city near Orange, Virginia, called…

“Culpepper.”

Chapter Fifty-Four

Savage River
Detective Darren Fletcher

The darkness cut across the sky like a heavy blanket. Fletcher regretted his choice to ride in one of the four-wheel-drive Jeeps the forest rangers used. He regretted insisting they set off in the dark. He regretted not waiting until morning and letting a helicopter fly him up the mountain, instead of this jolting, thumping canter up the tiny switchback roads. Each bump felt like a hot poker was being shoved into his arm, over and over and over, and his head was aching in time. Sweat had broken out on his forehead, and he felt a bit like vomiting.

But he wasn’t about to admit he was wrong, so he gritted his teeth and sucked it up.

They’d been on the road for an hour. Before they decided which camp to take, Fletcher had practically knocked the teeth out of the forest ranger, making him give his best guess as to where Sam would be. He had the distinct impression the kid knew, and he threatened and cajoled until the boy chose the site they were headed to.

He could only hope his instincts were right. Whitfield had to have friends in these hills, people who would do him a favor or two, like distract a tactical team trying to find his place. Someone young and idealistic, maybe. Someone like a young forest ranger.

Fletcher’s phone rang, and he fished it out of his pocket, thankful he’d remembered to charge it back at the lodge, and that he had a signal. It was Roosevelt. “Tell me you have good news.”

“I do. We found Susan Donovan. Poor thing’s pretty beat up, but she’s alive. Guess where we found her?”

“I have no idea,” Fletcher said.

“Tied to a chair in Allan Culpepper’s living room. He wanted the journal pages. Smart girl, she told them they’d been stolen, that no one knew where they were, and he believed her. But she had them in her back pocket and didn’t give them up.”

“Wait a minute. Culpepper is in Iraq. I saw the billet. Are you sure it wasn’t Rod Deter? That bastard was lying to me,” Fletcher said.

“No, not Deter, and Culpepper isn’t in Iraq. He’s definitely in the U.S. I’m thinking probably up there running around the woods someplace close to you.”

“Fuck. Son of a bitch played me.”

“Apparently so. DOD gave us the info we needed at last. His passport hasn’t been stamped in the past month. He’s been in the States the whole time.”

Fletcher resisted the urge to smack his forehead. The documents he’d seen were forgeries, and damn good ones, at that.

“Why lie, though? He gave me a big song and dance about hitching a ride with the sultan of… Just… Fuck.”

“Yep, again. We got confirmation that he’s your dude. Crime scene found a cigarette butt at the Croswell crime scene, in the garden behind the house. Matches the brand we found in his condo. DNA tests are under way, expedited, but it will be a couple of days at least.”

Fletcher slapped the dash with his open hand.

“Son of a bitch.”

“You could say that. There are weapons galore at his place. No telling if one of them will match the hole in Taranto, or you, or Hart.”

“Or William Everett’s mother. Jesus, how could I be so stupid. Bastard lied to my face and I took it like a man, believed every honeyed drop from his lips.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. You know now. Problem is, he’s off the radar. We got a BOLO out on his car. The Garrett County folks are looking hard at anything that closely resembles him. Highway patrol’s been alerted, too.”

“You think he’s up here?”

“All the last pieces of the puzzle are in those woods. That’s where I’d go.”

“Good to know you can still think like a criminal, Cap.”

Roosevelt laughed. “If you only knew. Now, go get him, tiger. And by the way, Hart’s been upgraded to stable. He’s gonna be just fine. We got a guard on him just in case. Thought you’d want to know.”

“Got it. Appreciate that. Now I’m going hunting.”

“Fletcher. Be careful. This guy doesn’t have anything to lose anymore.”

Fletcher hung up the cell and turned to the kid driving, used his most frightening voice. It was the one that always worked on Tad when he was lying.

“It’s time to tell me the truth. You know Alexander Whitfield, correct?”

“Sir?”

“Listen, kid. He’s no longer a suspect. He’s now the target. We’ve got a grade-A assassin somewhere nearby who’s gunning for Whitfield. If you know which camp is his, now’s the time to be honest with me. Because if you don’t tell me, you could be responsible for his death—you feel me?”

The kid gulped. “We’re heading to the right one. Xander just wanted a delay. He wanted you up there. Just not before daylight. You kind of messed with the plan.”

Suckered again. “What the hell’s the plan?”

“I don’t know that, sir. I just do what I’m told.”

Fletcher did his best not to clock the kid, and braced himself.

“Then step on it. Because we don’t have all night anymore.”

Chapter Fifty-Five

Savage River
Dr. Samantha Owens

“But Culpepper was in Iraq when Donovan got killed. Fletcher told me.”

“Culpepper lies. Colonel Orange is a master manipulator. He even managed to talk Doc into going to work for him at Raptor. Got Jackal in there, too, and Shakes. But they weren’t able to hack it. Jackal was majorly fucked up, saw too much. He had some of the worst PTSD I’ve ever seen. And Shakes, well, he drank like a fish. Always did. Hard to show up for a job when you’re passed out in the gutter. But Doc, man, he found a way to make it work.”

The fire popped and crackled, and Sam burrowed deeper in Xander’s jacket.

“Why didn’t you go work for Culpepper, too?”

Xander waited for a minute, then shrugged. “I had a bad feeling about Orange. As good as he was, I just never fully trusted him. I wanted out, all the way out. Out of the military, out of D.C. and the bullshit there, out of it all.”

“So you built this place and ran away.”

He glanced at her, jaw tightening. She’d offended him again. Would she ever say the right thing to him? But he surprised her by smiling.

“Yep. And it’s been nice and quiet for years, until Doc and Jackal came flying up here two weeks ago, telling me we had some sort of major problem. Someone had sent them each a note saying ‘Do the Right Thing.’”

“Taranto. Taranto sent the notes.”

“Yes, little fuck told me that. If he’d just been straightforward from the beginning, maybe none of this would have happened.”

“So Donovan and Croswell came up here two weeks ago?”

“Fighting like cats and dogs, too. Jackal wanted to have a sit-down with Taranto, Doc was dead set against it. Who could blame him—the official report says it was his weapon that fired the shots that killed King. He doesn’t need that in the media. But those two, they turned on each other, got fighting down in the river, for God’s sake. I had to wade in and pull Jackal off Doc. He had his head under the water, practically drowned him. We’re not supposed to water-board our teammates. Doc came up pissed, madder than a wet hen, pinned Jackal down face-first. Idiots practically killed each other.

“We must have looked like fools. Thor was bounding around barking, thinking we’re playing, I’m screaming at them, trying to remind them that you don’t turn on your friends, that we’d figure out who was behind the notes, everything.”

“The sand in their lungs,” Sam murmured.

“What?”

She took a deep breath, happy to at least have one part of the mystery explained satisfactorily. “Both Donovan and Croswell presented with fresh irritations from inhaling sand into their trachea and lungs. It’s what initially made you the number-one suspect. The sand’s biological makeup traced back to here. The Savage River.”

“Wow. That’s…awful.”

“What about Everett, though? How does his suicide fit into all of this?”

“He wasn’t a suicide. I went down there, I told you that. He wasn’t answering his phone, and after Doc and Jackal, I got worried. That’s how they got the hair they matched to my DNA. I checked the scene thoroughly. They were both dead when I got there, had been for a day or so. Trust me, Shakes wouldn’t kill his mother. He may be a drunk, unable to hold down a job for long, but he loved her. No, I’m betting Culpepper went to see him, make sure he wasn’t going to do any talking to the media. Somehow Mrs. Everett got in the way and was killed.”

His voice caught. “Shakes wasn’t doing too well. He was unstable enough as it was. A push in the right direction—either at gunpoint or through serious intimidation, and he’d cave. If he did cut his own wrists, he was coerced.”

“Jesus,” Sam said. “This just keeps getting worse. So what’s on the pages from Donovan’s journal? Details about the note and y’all getting threatened?”

“You just said ‘y’all.’”

“So? I’m from Nashville. It’s not exactly a stretch.”

He smiled at her. “I liked it, that’s all. No, I think Doc finally realized what his brain wouldn’t let him know. He didn’t kill King. There was no way. But all these years, he’s felt responsible.”

“Culpepper killed King, I take it?”

“That’s what I think. Maggie told him about the rape. I assume King went to Culpepper and demanded retribution. Culpepper isn’t the kind of man who’s easily threatened. He probably swore to do the right thing, then shot King at the first good opportunity. For all I know, he got that firefight started in the first place. There was another unit closer that could have been called in. He set us up.”

She tried to absorb the enormity of what he’d just told her. “God, Xander. All of this. He rapes a woman, murders her boyfriend, then kills three more men to cover his tracks. But why now? He’s had plenty of time. He could have made it look like an accident.”

“No, that wasn’t his way. See, Karen is crazy as a fox. When Shakes spilled the beans to her about the friendly fire incident, and she started digging, she must have found out about Maggie. She went to Orange for confirmation, and God knows what sort of lies he told her.”

“And somewhere along the way, she found out that Jen is King’s daughter.”

“No, she’s not.” Maggie’s voice interrupted them. She came around the fire, her long body casting grotesque shadows across the yard and onto the trees beyond. Sam saw one that was distinctly rectangular. Maggie had a weapon in her hand.

Xander shifted toward her, and Sam heard the confusion in his voice. “What are you talking about, Mags? You told me—”

“Never mind what I told you. I lied. I had to.”

“Xander, she has a gun.” Sam was stuck between the two of them. She saw Xander’s hand go to his waist, hoped the gun wasn’t visible. She couldn’t believe it. All this time, she was utterly convinced Culpepper, Orange, had been the killer. She didn’t think it was Maggie. Didn’t want to think it could be Maggie. She liked the woman, damn it.

But here Maggie was, with her weapon pointed right at Xander’s head.

Xander froze, and Maggie took three steps closer.

“Maggie. You don’t want to do this.”

She laughed, humorlessly.

“Xander, I don’t have a choice.”

And she pulled the trigger.