Blood On The Bridge Page 7

  “Yes. I think a majority of the soldiers that come through the program have a shot. But the applications they submit can’t test for heart. After that first day of class I can usually pick out who will make it. Specialist Carlson would have made it.”

  That made it worse. Jennifer would have excelled where most men failed.

  “The more information I get about her, the more I admire her. Why in the world would someone want to hurt a person like that?”

  Riley watched Colonel Wright’s calm eyes and features, searching for a hint of betrayal to his collected composure. Nothing.

  “I wish I knew.”

  He probably knew about some hazing going on in his training classes, but he would never admit they caused anyone serious harm or death.

  “Well, you’ve definitely given me something to work with. I really appreciate your help, sir,” Riley said and stood up.

  Colonel Wright got to his feet. “Are you sure there’s nothing else I can help you with?”

  “I think I’ve got everything I need, sir.”

  He grabbed a card from his desk.

  “This is my direct number and my email if you think of any other questions you need answered,” he said.

  Riley took the card and shook his hand.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  On the way home, Riley thought about the aging man she had just left. He didn’t register as a killer to her. Just a man who wouldn’t know how to function once he left the military, or was forced out. No one like that left willingly.

  Then Riley felt stupid. Of course he was a killer. Anyone assigned to a Special Forces unit for longer than a few years had to be. And Colonel Wright had been with one for almost twenty years.

  Chapter 11

  Lee watched the cold day slip away through the open blinds of his bedroom window. There was a calmness outside. Like Mother Nature was letting him enjoy the smallest amount of peace before the shit storm that was going to hit that night. No help. He had been stuck in bed most of the morning, a perpetual feeling of uneasiness wedged in the pit of his stomach. The feeling you get when you know you did something wrong and you are about to get caught. Caught by a madman like Buck Miller.

  He called in sick to work, not something he did often—or ever, to his recollection. He needed the day to collect his thoughts. Johnson had called earlier in the day. He wanted to make sure Lee knew where he needed to be and at what time.

  Lee told him he would be at the races at seven sharp, then hung up on Johnson. It felt good. He knew he had leverage with Johnson and Conn. He had planned it that way from the moment Conn asked if he would be an informant. It was always a good idea to have a backup plan, especially with cops, he thought.

  People had used and abused Lee for as long as he could remember. Until he got caught by Johnson, he’d been in control of his life for a few years. Now, everything was wrong. It wasn’t just Johnson he was being used by. His job constantly had him picking up shifts for other people, stating that a good employee shouldn’t have a problem helping the team out. And Lee did feel like part of the team at work. Then there was the college. Departments like the bursar’s office were what kept him floating between feelings of stress and rage.

  With that final round of self-inflicted mental abuse, Lee forced himself out of bed, went to the closet, and threw on some basketball shorts and a gray hoodie. He grabbed his keys and headed out. Strolling along the sidewalk into downtown Clarksville, he concentrated on taking deep breaths. The breathing technique helped more often than not. He walked a bit faster after a cold gust of wind swept by. The October weather was taking a turn for the worst.

  He rounded the corner onto the square, a mash-up of old and new restaurants, coffee shops, and antique stores, and slipped into Coffee Break, a hole-in-the-wall spot for students to study. The entrance opened up to a slim path in the middle of a slim store. Three small tables flanked each side, running vertically up to the register. Twenty-four chairs total. Every one of them filled. Low music and loud conversation filled the space. Heat sank into Lee’s cold bones when the door banged shut behind him. No one looked up.

  Being so close to the local university meant the coffee shop stayed busy. It was like that at most small coffee shops near campuses. Lee walked down the path and stopped at the counter, where a plump man with a bald head, beard, and gauged ears cleaned off the steamer nozzle of an espresso machine. He looked more like a biker from a Hells Angels gang, not a master of the bean.

  Lee ordered an Americano and made his way to the front of the shop, where a chair facing the window had just opened up. He sat down and warmed his hands around the hot coffee cup, still aware of what he had to do that night but somewhat lost in the flurry of orange and red and yellow leaves that swept by his line of sight. He needed a gun. Needed, he thought. The realization hit him like a wrecking ball. He hated guns. Not for any political reasons. He knew that if someone wanted to kill someone, they could do it without a gun. He hated guns because, at the tender age of six, he watched his mother blow a hole through his father’s head.

  After it happened, his mother went to a jail and Lee went to live with his uncle, on his father’s side, two blocks down the street. In court, his mother claimed his father was having an affair. Lee only ever knew his mother as being prone to fits of delusion. Something in her head faltered soon after he was ever born.

  Her accusations were proven false. Six coworkers testified that Lee’s father had stayed late at work that night to pick up a few extra hours. His mother’s court-appointed lawyer entered a plea of insanity, but with no recorded history of mental illness available, the judge found her guilty and sentenced her to life in prison. He hadn’t heard from her since.

  Lee grabbed a refill and made his way home, much quicker than he’d arrived. He took a shower and dressed a bit warmer for his second outing. Jeans and an insulted coat over his hoodie. The drive to his friend’s club only took ten minutes. You could get to most places in Clarksville in about that time.

  The bar was located along the barbed wire fence that ran along the front of Fort Campbell. The proximity of the base was good for business. Most of the soldiers without wives hung out there. They didn’t mind the civilians who attended the club because most of them were women looking for a soldier to call their own.

  Metal bars lined the windows of the tattered brick building, which looked more like a border patrol holding cell than a club. Lee parked on the gravel lot in front of the club. Above the entrance, in bright red paint, there was a sign: “Poured Up.”

  Lee shut his car door and headed for the entrance. No bouncer present. He stopped on the cement slab, glanced to the security camera he had installed for the owner, and pushed the door in at the sound of a buzz.

  It took a few seconds for Lee’s eyes to adjust to the dim lighting inside. There were no tables or chairs present. Hard rap permeated through the speakers set up in each of the four corners of the club. But the place was empty. All of the windows boarded up so no one inside would ever really know if it were night or day outside. A large open floor plan provided more than enough room for people who wanted to dance. Running the length of the back wall was a heavily stocked bar.

  A red velvet curtain hung below a VIP sign off to the right of the bar. A large Dominican man stepped through it.

  Lee smiled and walked over to him. “What up, big man?”

  The Dominican man gave him a “what’s up” nod and pulled back the curtain.

  The VIP room was brighter than the main floor, but it was because the light came from red bulbs, something Lee had convinced the owner to do. He assured his friend that everyone looked better in red light. The music was softer in VIP as well. Lee strolled to the purple velvet booth in the back, where an athletic-looking man sat with a pretty cocktail waitress on his lap in a heated tongue discussion.

  Lee cleared his throat, standing about two feet away from the man. Jarvis stopped what he was doing and looked at Lee like he hadn’t seen him in ages
. Lee had actually been by a week ago to fix one of the motion sensors on the outside of the club. But a week could feel like a lifetime to someone who smoked as much as Jarvis did.

  “Motha-fuckin’ LP,” Jarvis said.

  “And you know I brought the moves.”

  Lee did a three-sixty spin that Jarvis couldn’t stop laughing at.

  “I told your ass not to be dancin’ like Prince in my club.”

  Lee slid into the booth opposite the cocktail waitress.

  “What you drinkin’?” asked Jarvis.

  “Crown and Coke is cool,” Lee said, smiling at the waitress.

  She winked at him and headed to the bar.

  “Where the fuck you been?” Jarvis asked as the waitress disappeared through the velvet curtain.

  He proceeded to tell Jarvis about his current predicament. From the dead soldier, to being blackmailed, to taking part in spying on Buck’s underground fights. He was on his second drink when he finished telling Jarvis everything.

  “Damn,” Jarvis said. “Cops can’t help but fuck with people like you and me, man. We make two moves out the hood and they wanna send us back three spaces.”

  Lee just nodded. Everything Jarvis had learned about life and business came from action movies and playing Monopoly. He was doing pretty well for himself. He owned the club outright and ran a lucrative money-lending service for soldiers. Soldiers always got paid on time, and he knew exactly when those paychecks hit bank accounts.

  “I need a gun in case it goes south tonight,” said Lee.

  “You sure?” Jarvis asked hesitantly.

  Lee just nodded.

  “A’ight. Let’s see what I got.”

  Lee followed Jarvis through a back door, down into a dark stairwell that led to the music-free basement. Jarvis flicked a switch. Bright lights flooded the area. Besides stacked liquor cases and cleaning supplies, there wasn’t much occupying the space between the four cement walls. Jarvis stopped at a small door under the stairwell. He punched in a combination on the electronic keypad, and the lock whirred and clicked. Lee noticed a few deep scratches in the side of Jarvis’s neck.

  “Damn. What happened to your neck?” Lee asked.

  Jarvis grinned and opened the door. “It gets wild in the VIP.”

  The narrow room flickered into view from bright fluorescent lights overhead. Towards the back of the small room where the stairs were higher was a wall covered with weapons. Pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, even some hand grenades. Close to fifty guns. The last time Lee saw the collection was when he helped Jarvis set up the electronic keypad that led to the room. There were only a duffel bag’s worth of guns then. Jarvis had been busy.

  “What you thinkin’?” Jarvis asked.

  “I’m thinking you need to lay off the ’dro.”

  “Imma be ready if anyone wanna party wit’ dis nigga.”

  Jarvis pulled a bare-bones M4 from his wall of toys, raising his eyebrow at Lee. Lee knew he was looking for praise, but he laughed instead.

  “I can’t really roll around looking like Rambo.”

  Jarvis thought on that for a moment, then put the M4 back on the wall.

  “I fuckin’ love that movie.”

  Lee grabbed a simple-looking pistol from the wall and turned it over in his hands, testing its weight and feel. It was the type of gun that could be easily concealed. Nothing like the revolver his mother used on his father. The thought was pushed far away into the recesses of his mind.

  “This one,” Lee said, tucking it into his waistband and pulling his hoodie over it. “Can you hold on to something for me too?”

  Lee pulled an SD card from his pocket.

  “Yeah, I got you,” Jarvis said, putting it in a lockbox below the guns.

  The Crown and Cokes were starting to wear off by the time Lee got back into his car. He pulled the pistol out of his waistband, staring at it for a long time. So much pain in his life came from a gun and now he had one. Am I part of the problem? Too little alcohol brought all his memories back. Too much made them disappear. He popped open the glove box and hid the gun under some old parking tickets.

  As he pulled up to the main road, he looked left, then right. One way would take him back to his apartment. The other, towards the Fork Creek bridge. He put his blinker on and made his decision.

  Chapter 12

  Riley was halfway through her late lunch when she received a call from her unit commander, Captain Warren. He told her to get her ass to his office ASAP. She had known word would eventually get back to him about what she was doing, but not this fast. And his level of anger caught her off guard.

  Thick clouds hid the sun as she pulled up to her unit’s single-story brown brick building. Next to the tempered-glass front door was her unit insignia. A white rectangular outline neatly housed a white feather and lightning bolt crossed like an X with a sword running down the center, set against an ocean-blue background. Written around the insignia were the words “PUBLIC AFFAIRS—UNITED STATES ARMY.”

  The front of the building looked like it had been marked off for plants but filled with gravel instead. Two soldiers picked weeds and cigarette butts from the rocks. Riley walked past them, all too aware of the day-to-day grind that new soldiers lived with.

  The inside of the building was bland. Old furniture gave it an old feel. Old carpet gave it an old smell. To the left of the entrance was a glass case filled with awards and memorabilia and a wooden carving of the unit insignia. Across from the glass case was a CQ desk. Past that was a door that led to an open floor plan where everyone below the rank of first sergeant worked. Every officer had their own office. Riley walked by the soldier on CQ duty. He was napping with his fold-out chair leaned against the wall. Didn’t even know she had entered.

  She recognized a few faces. She even caught some dirty looks. A friend of hers, Sergeant Hayes, walked up to her. She was short and pudgy with dirty-blonde hair and a cheery attitude, much like Riley’s normal attitude. There was nothing for Riley to be cheery about currently, but she played the part.

  “What’s up, girlie?” Hayes said.

  Riley was surprised to see her.

  “Look at you. I thought you just had a baby.”

  “PT works wonders when you need it to.”

  They both laughed. Hayes looked like she had just remembered the juiciest gossip.

  “Oh my god, can you believe that poor soldier was killed? She was smoking hot.”

  Everyone looked at death differently. Riley had expected to hear some talk about it. Jennifer’s murder was still fresh in the minds of anyone who followed the news even a little bit. A few more towns around Clarksville had picked up the story, but they all said the same thing: Soldier found murdered. No new information. And Riley hadn’t had any luck getting ahold of anyone at the Clarksville PD. She made a mental note to pay the precinct a visit soon, somewhere in between following up with all of the leads she had and not being able to wake up on time.

  “It’s awful,” was all Riley could think to say.

  Hayes changed the subject and squeezed Riley’s shoulder in a friendly way.

  “So what are you doing up here?” Hayes asked.

  “Captain wanted to see me.”

  “Oh,” Hayes said and leaned in a little closer to Riley with a mix of concern and excitement on her face. “Everything okay?”

  Riley feigned a smile. Hayes was a good friend and an even better gossip. “Yeah, everything’s fine. It’s just a little chat about an assignment I’m working on.”

  “I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  Hayes disappeared down a corridor for a few seconds and then came back to the main area.

  “You can head on in,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  Riley’s placement at the Fort Campbell Daily was not normal by any means. The only reason Captain Warren had authorized the paperwork to put Riley there in the first place was because she had blackmailed him. At least that was what he called it. Riley wasn’t
any smarter than the incoming soldiers when she arrived at Fort Campbell, but she didn’t see the point in taking any shit like the rest.

  Captain Warren learned that the hard way. Two weeks into her time on base, he called her into his office. He gave a speech that seemed genuine at the time. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy. Close to six feet tall with a slender build, he had a thick head of brown hair. His line of work in the military didn’t produce the grays that something like an infantry commander placement did. Riley thought he was trying to be a good leader and personally greeting her like he did every other new soldier to his unit.

  A palm to Riley’s right butt cheek at the end of his speech told her otherwise. She didn’t yell or act surprised, a reaction she could tell he had been expecting. She just walked out of the office without a word. A few days had passed and she was still thinking about how she wanted to handle the situation when she overheard some NCOs talking about the public affairs opening at the Fort Campbell Daily. The newspaper always kept at least one soldier on staff. Riley read the bulletin that the NCOs had been talking about and saw that the position was good for at least a few years. Up until that, she had been planning on making a formal complaint directly to the inspector general. After her time at basic training and AIT, she knew there was no point in contacting an equal opportunities advisor first. They were adept in the art of burying a complaint, so much so that by the time they were done taking formal statements, most complaints were dismissed on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

  The next day Riley went into Captain Warren’s office and laid out his options. Either he could assign her to the Fort Campbell Daily—he did have final say-so, after all—or she could make a formal complaint with the inspector general and wrap them both up in an investigation that could take up the better part of ninety days. And she assured him his wife would know what had happened.

  Seeing the wisdom in her offer, he assigned her to the Fort Campbell Daily as a private second class. It was agreed that she would remain there for as long as he was commander of the unit. A handful of the other soldiers in the unit hated her for getting the job. It was an assignment that usually went to an NCO who had proven their worth to the Army. Riley didn’t feel bad for any of them. They probably knew what Captain Warren was all about and kept it to themselves.