“You know about this?” he asked.
Cloverdale’s eyes didn’t leave Louis’s face. “Why should I talk to you?”
“Because I need help,” Louis said.
The man gave a low bitter laugh. “Help? Well, ain’t that ironic.”
Louis thrust the bag forward. “You know what this card means. And I think you want to tell me about it.”
“Why? Because you’re black? You think we got some kind of special brother thing going here?” Cloverdale laughed again. “Let me tell you something, bro. The only brothers I got are those six white guys back there.”
He sobered and looked toward the cruiser, at Jesse sitting sullenly behind the wheel. “That your partner?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Too bad, man.”
Louis wiped the snow from his eyes. It was coming down heavy now. But he couldn’t leave, not yet. This man wanted to talk, he was sure of it.
“Hey, you got a cigarette?” Cloverdale asked.
“Sorry. Don’t smoke.”
Cloverdale hoisted the gun up, holding it against his shoulder. He saw Louis looking at it.
“Yeah, it’s heavy,” he said. He studied Louis’s face. “Go on, ask me,” he said.
“Ask you what?” Louis said.
“How I lost my arm. It’s what you were thinking about.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
Cloverdale smiled. He had beautiful, straight teeth. Movie star teeth. “How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-five,” Louis said.
“I was twenty-four when I joined up,” Cloverdale said. “I grew up in a shithole town in Arkansas…Marked Tree. Man, I would have done anything to get out of the South.”
“Mississippi,” Louis said.
“What?” Cloverdale said, squinting through the snow.
“Black pool, Mississippi, that’s where I was born. Probably makes Marked Tree look like Paris.”
Cloverdale stared at him for a moment then smiled. “You don’t strike me as military,” he said. “You serve?”
Louis shook his head.
The soldier’s smile turned pensive. “I was at Fort Campbell,” he said. “They picked me for Delta Company, second battalion, 501st Infantry, 101st Airborne Division.” He cocked his head. “You ever see that movie The Dirty Dozen?”
Louis nodded.
“We were kind of like that, the leftovers, the guys nobody else wanted. We had guys who liked to steal shit, you know, supplies and equipment. So they started calling us “The Raiders.” We were tight, a really great unit.” Cloverdale’s eyes grew distant.
Louis glanced at the cruiser, hoping Jesse wouldn’t do anything stupid to disrupt the soldier’s reminiscence.
“So how did it happen?” Louis asked, nodding toward the soldier’s missing arm.
Cloverdale blinked, wiping snow from his face. “Firefight near Hue, Valentine’s Day, 1968,” he said matter-of-factly. “We lost six men, eighteen wounded, including the captain. I lost the arm but got a ticket back to Marked Tree.”
The snow had covered Cloverdale’s head, forming a white helmet over his close-cropped hair. He looked suddenly like an old man.
“How did you get here?” Louis asked.
Cloverdale hoisted the gun higher up against his shoulder. “Well, I did my time at the VA hospital, bummed around the country for a couple years. I stuffed all the war shit into a box and tried to build a life.” He paused, smiling. “Hard keeping the lid on that damn box sometimes.” His eyes drifted to the bag in Louis’s hand.
Jesse honked the horn. Louis looked at the cruiser and waved an impatient hand.
“You’re gonna get snowed in here, man,” Cloverdale said.
“Go on,” Louis said. “Please.”
Cloverdale looked up the road toward the collection of houses. “Randall was in my unit. His family’s from around here. They gave him the land and he decided to make a camp for vets. There’s just seven of us now but we’re building houses for more. We look after each other, you know?”
Louis nodded.
Cloverdale’s face hardened. “I don’t like people who feel sorry for themselves. I mean, what’s done is done. But people on the outside, they don’t know. They just don’t know.”
“Why are you talking to me then?” Louis asked.
Cloverdale looked back at him. “Because I want you to know that we’re not murderers. We’re off the grid. But we aren’t murderers.”
Louis nodded slowly. He held out the Ziploc. Cloverdale took it and looked at the drawing.
“Where’d you get this?” he asked.
“This is one of two. They were found by the bodies of the dead officers,” Louis said.
Cloverdale handed it back. He wiped his face. “It’s a message,” he said.
“Message? What kind of message?” Louis asked.
Cloverdale hesitated, his face twisting slightly. “Your man is military.”
Louis waited.
“Some companies had their nicknames printed up on cards.” He paused. “I heard about this but never really saw it. A company would go in, wipe out a village of Vietcong and then throw the cards down on the bodies. It was a taunt, a kind of challenge to Charlie, letting them know they were there.”
He looked at Louis. “They called them death cards.”
“Do you recognize this one?” Louis asked, holding out the plastic bag.
Cloverdale wouldn’t take it. “No. The number is probably a company or squadron maybe.”
Louis looked down at the bag then put it back in his pocket. He looked up at Cloverdale’s drawn face.
“Thanks,” he said and started to turn away.
“I know your man,” Cloverdale said.
Louis turned back sharply.
Cloverdale just looked at Louis then he smiled slightly. “I’ve met him, hundreds of times.”
“Look,” Louis said, “don’t jerk me around.”
“I was a counselor afterward,” Cloverdale said. “I worked with a lot of fucked-up men and lot of them who could have done what your killer did, given the wrong circumstances.”
“What are the wrong circumstances?” Louis asked.
“You asking me for a profile?”
“Yeah.”
“It ain’t that easy, officer,” Cloverdale said, shaking his head. “Nothing about ‘Nam was easy or obvious. It was the camouflage war and there’s no hope of ever flushing it out.”
“But you can tell me what kind of man I am looking for,” Louis said.
“Yeah, I can.” Cloverdale shifted the gun off his shoulder and rested the butt on the ground. “Look for a normal man.”
“Normal?” Louis said.
“A guy who tried to be normal and failed.”
Louis frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“He probably enlisted, maybe because his life was shitty up to then and the military makes a lot of big promises about straightening out your life for you.”
“Go on,” Louis said.
“He probably did all right for himself in the military, maybe even had his first taste of success,” Cloverdale said. “But something happened and he felt like he was a failure again. He might have had a drug or alcohol problem and got the quick trip through the VA system.” Cloverdale paused. “Now they have a nice name for it, post-traumatic stress syndrome. Back then, we were all just addicts.”
“What about after the war?” Louis asked.
“After,” Cloverdale said softly. “Well, let’s just say nobody was exactly throwing rose petals at your man’s feet. Your man went to war, did his job, and then everyone at home told him what he had done was a joke. Not great for the self-esteem.”
Louis waited, wishing he had a notebook with him.
“He probably couldn’t find a job,” Cloverdale went on, “or if he did it was in some factory that probably laid him off when the recession hit. ‘Nam vets earned less, were prompted less, and had more turnover.” Cloverdale drew in a breath. “Check homeless shelters, that sort of thing. There’s still about a quarter of a million vets on the street.”
A horn honked. Louis turned to the cruiser. Jesse was motioning for him. Louis looked back to Cloverdale.
“Can you tell me why?” Louis asked.