Four Blind Mice

minutes later, Ms. Nguyen came upon something that I asked her to read a second time. “A team of Army Rangers was sent into the An Lao Valley. It’s unclear, but it seems they were dispatched to the area to investigate the murders. I’m sorry, Detective. It’s also unclear here whether they succeeded or not.”
    “Do you have any names?” I asked. “Who was on this team?” I could feel the adrenaline ripping through my body now.
    Ms. Nguyen sighed and shook her head. Finally, she rose from her desk.
    “There are more boxes on the fifth floor. Come with me, Detective. You say that people are still being killed?”
    I nodded, then followed Thi Nguyen upstairs. There was an entire wall of boxes, and I helped her carry several of them down to her office.
    The two of us worked late on Wednesday, then again on Thursday night, and we even got together during her lunch hour on Friday. She was hooked now too. We learned that some of the Rangers sent to the An Lao Valley were military assassins. Unfortunately, none of the paperwork had been organized according to dates. It had just been thrown into boxes and left to collect dust, never to be read by anyone again.
    About two-fifteen on Friday we opened another few boxes crammed with papers pertaining to the investigation in the An Lao Valley.
    Thi Nguyen looked up at me. “I have
names
for the assassins,” she said. “And I think I have a code name for the operation. I believe it was called Three Blind Mice.”

Chapter 79
    I HAD THREE names now — three men who had been dispatched to the An Lao Valley to stop the murder of civilians there. I needed to be extremely careful with the information, and it took Sampson and me another week to track the men down and find out as much as we could about them.
    The final confirmation that I needed came from Ron Burns at the FBI. He told me that the Bureau had been suspicious of these men for two other professional hits: one a politician in Cincinnati, the second a union leader’s wife in Santa Barbara, California.
    The names were:

    Thomas Starkey
    Brownley Harris
    Warren Griffin
    The Three Blind Mice

    That Friday after work, Sampson and I went to Rocky Mount, North Carolina. We were chasing men who had played a part in mysterious violence in the An Lao Valley thirty years before. What in hell had really happened there? Why were people still dying now?
    Less than five miles outside the city limits of Rocky Mount, tracts of farmland and crossroad country groceries still dominated the landscape. Sampson and I drove out into the country, then back to town again, passing the Rocky Mount–Wilson Airport and Nash General Hospital, as well as the offices of Heckler & Koch, where Starkey, Harris, and Griffin worked as the sales team for several military bases, including Fort Bragg.
    Sampson and I entered Heels, a local sports bar, at about six o’clock. Race-car drivers as well as a few basketball players from the Charlotte Hornets frequented the place, so it was racially mixed. We were able to fit in with the crowd, which was noisy and active. At least a dozen TVs blared from raised platforms.
    The sports bar was less than a mile from Heckler & Koch U.S., where some of these men and women worked. Other than the thriving high-tech business community, Heckler & Koch (pronounced “coke”) was one of the largest employers in town, just behind Abbott Laboratories and Consolidated Diesel. I wondered if the gun company might have some connection to the murders. Probably not, but maybe.
    I struck up a conversation with a plant supervisor from H&K at the bar. We talked about the plight of the Carolina Panthers, and then I worked in the subject of the gun manufacturer. He was positive about his company, which he referred to as “like a family” and “definitely one of the best places to work in North Carolina, which is a good state to work in.” Then we talked about guns, the MP5 submachine gun in particular. He told me the MP5 was used by the Navy SEALs and elite SWAT teams, but it had also found its way into inner-city gangs. I already knew that about the MP5.
    I mentioned Starkey, Harris, and Griffin, casually.
    “I’m surprised Tom and Brownie aren’t here already. They usually stop in on a Friday. How do you know those boys?” he asked, but didn’t seem surprised that I did.
    “We served together long time ago,” said Sampson. “Back in ’sixty-nine and ’seventy.”
    The supervisor nodded. “You Rangers too?” he