Four Blind Mice

before six. Sampson was sitting there, eating eggs and his personal favorite, farina. Nana Mama was across from him at the table. Just like old times.
    They were talking quietly, as if sharing a deep secret that no one else should know.
    “Am I interrupting?” I asked from the doorway.
    “I think we have it sorted out now,” Nana said.
    She motioned for me to sit at the breakfast table. I poured coffee first, popped in four slices of whole wheat toast, and then finally sat down with Nana and Sampson.
    He had a big glass of milk propped in front of him. I couldn’t help remembering back to when we were kids. Two or three mornings a week he’d show up about this time to break bread with Nana and me. Where else could he go? His parents were junkies. In a way, Nana had always been like a mother or grandmother to him too. He and I had been like brothers since we were ten. That’s why the fight the night before was so disturbing.
    “Let me talk, Nana,” he said.
    She nodded and sipped her tea. I’m pretty sure why I chose psychology for a career, and who my original role model was. Nana has always been the best shrink I’ve seen. She’s wise, and compassionate for the most part, but tough enough to insist on the truth. She also knows how to listen.
    “I’m sorry, Alex. I didn’t sleep last night. I feel awful about what happened. I was way over the line,” Sampson said. He was staring into my eyes, forcing himself not to look away.
    Nana watched the two of us as if we were Cain and Abel sitting at her breakfast table.
    “You were over the line all right,” I said. “That’s for sure. You were also crazy last night. How much did you drink before you came over?”
    “John told you he was sorry,” Nana said.
    “Nana.” He turned to her, then back to me. “Ellis Cooper was like a brother to me. I can’t get over the execution, Alex. In a way, I’m sorry I went to see it. He didn’t kill those women. I thought we could save him, so it’s my fault. I expected too much.”
    He stopped talking.
    “So did I,” I said. “I’m sorry we failed. Let me show you something. Come upstairs. This is about payback now. There’s nothing left but payback.”
    I brought Sampson to my office in the attic of the house. I had notes on army murder cases pinned all over the walls. The room looked like the hideout of a madman, one of my obsessive killers. I took him to my desk.
    “I’ve been working on these notes since I met Ellis Cooper. I found two more of these remarkable cases. One in New Jersey, the other in Arizona. The bodies were
painted,
John.”
    I took Sampson through the cases, sharing everything.
    “Along the way,” I told him, “I learned that the Pentagon has been working to prevent over a thousand deaths the peacetime military suffers every year from high-speed car crashes, suicides, and murders. Still, during the past year more than sixty soldiers have been murdered.”
    “Sixty?” Sampson said, and shook his head. “Sixty murders a year?”
    “Most of the violence has to do with sex and hate crimes,” I said. “Rapes and murders. Homosexuals who’ve been beaten or killed. A series of vicious rapes by an army sergeant in Kosovo. He didn’t think he’d get caught because there was so much rape and killing going on there anyway.”
    “Were any other bodies painted?” he wanted to know.
    I shook my head. “Just the two cases I found, New Jersey and Arizona. But that’s enough. It’s a pattern.”
    “So what do we really have?” Sampson shook his head and looked at me.
    “I don’t know yet. It’s hard to get information out of the army. Something very nasty going on. It looks like soldiers may have been framed for murder. The first was in New Jersey; the latest seems to be Ellis Cooper. There are definite similarities, John. Murder weapons found a little too conveniently. Fingerprints and DNA used to convict.
    “All of these men had good service records. In the Arizona murder-case transcripts, there was a mention of ‘two or three men’ seen near the victim’s house before the homicide took place. There’s a possibility that innocent men have been framed and then wrongfully put to death. Framed, then wrongfully executed. And I know something else,” I said.
    “What’s that?”
    “These killers aren’t brilliant like Gary Soneji or Kyle Craig. But they’re every bit as deadly. They’re expert at what they do, and what they do is kill and get away with it.”
    Sampson