Four Blind Mice

peasant blouse and tore it off. Barbara gasped and tried to cover herself. The bastard then yanked off her bra. It was for effect, of course, but then the man stared at Barbara’s breasts.
    “Leave her alone! Don’t hurt her!” Bennett yelled, and it sounded like a command, as if he were in a position to give one.
    The man he knew to be Starkey hit him with the butt of his handgun. Bennett went down and thought that his jaw was broken. He almost blacked out, but managed to stay conscious. His cheek was pressed into the cold tile of the kitchen floor. He needed a plan — even a desperate one would do.
    Starkey stood directly over him. And now it got insane. He spoke in Vietnamese.
    Colonel Bennett understood some of the words. He’d done enough interrogations during the war, when he’d run several Kit Carson scouts in Vietnam and Laos.
    Then Starkey spoke in English. “Be afraid, Colonel. You’ll suffer tonight. So will your wife. You have sins to pay for. You know what they are. Tonight your wife will know about your past too.”
    Colonel Bennett pretended to pass out. When one of the gunmen leaned over him, he pushed off the floor and grabbed at his handgun. Getting the gun was the only thought in Bennett’s brain.
He had it!
    But then he was struck viciously on the head. Then on the shoulders and back. He was being screamed at in Vietnamese as the severe beating continued. He saw one of the bastards punch his wife right in the face. For no reason at all.
    “Stop it. Don’t hurt her, for Christ’s sake.”
    “Mày se nhìn cô ay chet,” Starkey yelled in Vietnamese.
    Now you get to watch her die.
    “Trong lúc tao hoi mày.”
    While I interrogate you, pig.
    “Mày thay canh này có quen không, Robert?”
    Does that sound familiar, Robert?
    Starkey then forced his pistol inside Colonel Bennett’s mouth. “Remember this, Colonel? Remember what happens next?”

Chapter 63
    SAMPSON AND I got to West Point a little after five o’clock on Thursday evening. All hell had broken loose there.
    I’d received an urgent heads-up from Ron Burns at the FBI. There’d been a murder-suicide at the Point that had immediately aroused suspicions when the news got to Washington. A highly decorated colonel had supposedly killed his wife, then himself.
    Sampson and I flew into Stewart Airport in Newburgh; then I drove eighteen miles to West Point. We had to park our rented car and walk the last several blocks to the officers’ housing.
    The streets were roped off and closed to through traffic. The press was on hand, but they were being kept away by military police. Even the cadets couldn’t help looking curious and concerned.
    “You’re getting chummy with Burns and the FBI,” Sampson said as we walked to the murder scene on Bartlett Loop. “He’s giving a lot of help.”
    “He has it in his head that I might want to work with them,” I told Sampson.
    “And?
Might
you?”
    I smiled at Sampson, didn’t confirm or deny.
    “I thought you were getting out of police work, sugar. Wasn’t that the big master plan?”
    “I don’t know anything for sure right now. Here I am, though, headed to another completely fucked-up murder scene with you. Same shit, different day.”
    “So, you’re still hooked, Alex. Bad as ever, right?”
    I shook my head. “No, I’m not
hooked
on the case, John. I’m helping you out. Remember how this started? Payback for Ellis Cooper?”
    “Yeah, and you’re also hooked. You can’t figure out this puzzle. That makes you angry. And curious as hell. That’s who you are, Alex. You’re a hunter.”
    “I yam what I yam” — I shook my head and finally smiled — “said Popeye the sailor man.”

Chapter 64
    THE BENNETT HOUSE was roped off and secured. Sampson and I identified ourselves to a nervous-looking MP at the perimeter of the crime scene. I could tell that he’d never seen anything like this before. Unfortunately, I had.
    After we put on disposable paper boots, we were permitted to climb three stone steps that led into the house. Then we went looking for a CID officer named Pat Conte. The army was “cooperating” because of the other cases. They’d also let in a couple of FBI techies to show their good faith.
    I found Captain Conte in the narrow hallway leading from the living room. The murders had apparently taken place in the kitchen. Techies were dusting for fingerprints and photographing the scene from every angle.
    Conte shook hands and then told us what he