Four Blind Mice

spent extra hours at home with the kids before I did overtime in my office in the attic. A colonel named Daniel Boudreau at the Pentagon was cooperating somewhat. He’d sent me army records from the Vietnam War. Lots of paperwork that appeared not to have been looked at in years. He also suggested I contact the Vietnamese embassy. They had records too.
    I read through the old files until I couldn’t stay awake any longer and my head was throbbing severely. I was searching for anything that might link Ellis Cooper, Reece Tate, Laurence Houston, James Etra, Robert Bennett, or even Tran Van Luu to the string of murders.
    I found no connection, nothing remotely promising. Was that possible?
    None of the men had ever served together in Asia.
    Late that night I got another e-mail from Foot Soldier. Jesus Christ. Obviously, he wasn’t Owen Handler. So who was sending the messages? Kyle Craig? Was he still trying to play with my head? How could he get the messages out of a supermax prison?
    Somebody was sending them, and I didn’t like it. I also didn’t trust the information I was getting. Was I being set up too?

    Detective Cross,
    I am a little disappointed in your progress. You get on a good track, then you get off it. Look back at where you’ve been already. The answers are all in the past. Isn’t that always the way it works out?

    The note was signed,
Foot Soldier
.
    But there was something else at the bottom of the page. A very disturbing icon — a straw doll. Just like the ones we’d found.
    After work on Wednesday of that week, I visited the Vietnamese embassy on Twentieth Street in Northwest. The FBI had made a call for me. I arrived a little before six and went up to the fourth floor. I was met there by a translator named Thi Nguyen. At her desk were four large boxes of old records kept by the government of her country.
    I sat in her small office, and Thi Nguyen read passages to me. She didn’t want to be doing this, I could tell. I supposed she’d been ordered to work late. On a wall behind her was a sign: EMBASSY OF THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM . Also a portrait of Ho Chi Minh.
    “There’s nothing here, Detective. Nothing new,” she complained as she went through dusty files that were more than thirty years old. I told her to please stay with it. She would sigh loudly, adjust her odd, black-rimmed glasses, and sullenly dig into another file. This pouty ritual went on for hours. I found her incredibly unpleasant.
    At about nine o’clock, she looked up in surprise. “There’s something here,” she said. “Maybe this is what you’re looking for.”
    “Tell me. Don’t edit, please. Tell me exactly what you’re reading.”
    “That’s what I’ve been doing, Detective. According to these records, there were unauthorized attacks on small villages in the An Lao Valley. Civilians seem to have been killed. This happened
half a dozen times
. Somebody must have known about it. Maybe even your Military Assistance Command.”
    “Tell me everything that’s in there,” I repeated. “Please don’t leave anything out. Read from the text.”
    The boredom and exasperation she had shown before were gone. Suddenly the translator was attentive, and she also seemed a little frightened. What she was reading now was disturbing her.
    “There are always unfortunate incidents during a war,” she lectured me. “But this is a new pattern in the An Lao Valley. The killings seem to have been organized and methodical. Almost like your serial killers here in America.”
    “There are serial killers in Asia too,” I said.
    Ms. Nguyen bristled at my comment. “Let me see. There were formal complaints made to your government and the U.S. Army by officers in the ARVN. Did you know that? There are also repeated complaints from what was then called Saigon. This was a murder case according to the ARVN.
Murder,
not war. The murder of innocent civilians, including children.”
    She frowned and shook her head. “There’s more about the precise pattern of the murders. Men, women, and children; innocent villagers were killed. Often the bodies were painted.”
    “Red, white, blue,” I said. “The painting was a calling card left by the killers.”
    Ms. Nguyen looked up in alarm. “How did you know? Did you already know about these horrible murders? What is your role in all this?”
    “I’ll tell you when we’re finished. Don’t stop now. Please. This could be what I’ve been looking for.”
    About twenty