Four Blind Mice

They thought this was so humorous too. They never buried the bodies, just left them for the loved ones to find.
    “I found my family with their faces painted blue. Their
ghost shadows
have been haunting me since that day.”
    I had to stop him for a moment. “Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you go to the army when this was happening?”
    He looked straight into my eyes. “I did, Detective. I went to Owen Handler, my first CO. I told him what was happening in An Lao. He already knew. His CO knew. They all knew. Several teams had gotten out of control. So he had the assassins sent in to clean up the mess.”
    “And what about all the innocent victims here? What about the women Starkey and his crew murdered in order to set up Cooper and the others?”
    “Ah, your army had a term for that: ‘collateral damage.’”
    “One more question,” I said to Luu while everything he’d told me was boiling inside my head.
    “Ask. Then I want you to leave me alone. I don’t want you to come back.”
    “You didn’t kill Colonel Handler, did you?”
    “No. Why should I put him out of his misery? I wanted Colonel Handler to live with his cowardice and shame. Now go. We are finished.”
    “Who killed Handler?”
    “Who knows? Perhaps there is a fourth blind mouse.”
    I got up to leave, and the guards came into the cell. I could see that they were afraid of Luu, and I wondered what he had done in his time here. He was a scary and complicated man, a Ghost Shadow. He had plotted several murders of revenge.
    “There’s something else,” he finally said. Then he smiled. The smile was horrible — a grimace — no joy or mirth in it. “Kyle Craig says hello. The two of us talk. We even talk about you sometimes. Kyle says that you should stop us while you can. He says that you should put us both down.” Luu laughed as he was led from the cell. “You
should
stop us, Detective.”
    “Be careful of Kyle,” I said, offering some advice. “He isn’t anybody’s friend.”
    “Nor am I,” said Tran Van Luu.

Chapter 108
    AS SOON AS Luu was taken away, Kyle Craig was brought into the interview room on death row in the isolation unit. I was waiting for him.
With bells on.
    “I expected you’d stop by to visit, Alex,” he said as he was escorted inside by three armed guards. “You don’t disappoint. Never, ever.”
    “Always one step ahead, isn’t that right, Kyle?” I asked.
    He laughed, but without a trace of mirth as he looked around at the cell, the guards. “Apparently not. Not anymore.”
    Kyle sat across from me. He was so incredibly gaunt and seemed to have lost even more weight since I’d seen him last. I sensed that his mind was going a mile a minute inside that bony skull.
    “You were caught because you wanted to be caught,” I said. “That’s obvious.”
    “Oh Christ, spare me the psychobabble. If you’ve come as Dr. Cross the psychologist, you can turn around and leave right now. You’ll bore me to tears.”
    “I was talking as a homicide detective,” I said.
    “That’s a little better, I suppose. I can stomach you as a sanctimonious cop. You’re not much of a shrink, but then again it’s not much of a profession. Never did anything for me. I have my own philosophy: Kill them all, let God sort’m out. Analyze that.”
    I didn’t say anything. Kyle had always liked to hear himself talk. If he asked questions, he often wanted to ridicule whatever you said in response. He lived to bait and taunt. I doubted that anything had changed with him.
    Finally, he smiled. “Oh, Alex, you are the clever one, aren’t you? Sometimes I have the terrifying thought that you’re the one who’s always a step ahead.”
    I didn’t take my eyes away from his.
    “I don’t think so, Kyle.”
    “But you’re persistent as an attack dog from hell. Relentless. Isn’t that right?”
    “I don’t think about it much. If you say so, I probably am.”
    His eyes narrowed. “Now you’re being condescending. I don’t like that.”
    “Who cares what you like anymore?”
    “Hmmm. Point taken. I must remember that.”
    “I asked before if you could help me with Tran Van Luu, the murders he’s involved in. Have you changed your mind? I suspect there’s still one murderer out there.”
    Kyle shook his head. His eyes narrowed. “I’m not Foot Soldier. I’m not the one trying to help you. Some mysteries just never get solved. Don’t you know that yet?”
    I shook my head. “You’re right,” I