“I can’t wait.” She sounded upbeat when she hung up the phone.
Chapter 12
Wade got an early start on his three-hour drive Friday morning. The only traffic seemed to be big rigs and the few cars darting out from between large tractor-trailer bodies.
The quiet drive allowed Wade to refresh his memory. He turned down the radio, and details of the Fort Benning experience began replaying in his mind.
The sound of a silenced M-21 sniper rifle he had shot hundreds of times on the range was the first thing that ran through his mind. Next he remembered the convex lines he had drawn in the dirt before he and Max started their crawl to outflank the sniper. He remembered the silence being broken by the sound of leaves and twigs rustling as they inched closer to the shooter.
His mind bounced back to the first confrontation with Lockhart on the loading dock as everyone assembled for class. Remembering the exact words Lockhart had used in that first confrontation somehow seemed important. He practiced similar phrases, trying to recall the right words. “Someone said we have intelligence spooks taking the class with us.” Wade thought he had closely approximated the words, but wasn’t sure they were exact. In thinking about Lockhart’s statement, he started wondering, Who told Lockhart that intelligence personnel were taking the class?
Raindrops hit the windshield, followed by a short shower typical of this time of year. At least I’ll show up in a clean car.
After two hours of driving, Wade passed several small towns. He stopped at a Gulf station in one of those towns for gas and picked up a soda and a snack. Another hour’s drive. He was enjoying the silence and the time to think.
Wade arrived early for his meeting. After finding the restaurant, he parked a block away under the shade of a large oak tree at a public park, to make some notes. Traffic on this quiet main street was so light that it didn’t warrant a stoplight, and none was in evidence.
After jotting down a few thoughts, Wade noticed a dark blue car pull up in front of the café, from which a middle-aged gentleman got out with a folder under his arm. He was wearing a suit and fedora hat. Wade assumed this might be Gabe Morrison. His car seemed happy in the cool shade under the tree, so he left it there and walked the block to the café.
The man he’d seen get out of the car was speaking with a woman at the back of the restaurant. Perhaps that was the owner Morrison had referred to on the phone. Wade was looking around at the sparsely-filled restaurant when the gentleman in the hat waved him over.
When Wade approached, the man extended his hand. “Hi, I’m Gabe Morrison. This is Karen Strubs. She and her husband own this fine establishment.”
“I’m Wade Hanna — nice to meet you both.”
After turning to Karen, Gabe asked. “May we take up one of your fine tables?”
“Any one you’d like for as long as you’d like. The place is yours.”
“That’s very kind of you.” Pointing to one of the tables, Gabe continued. “The one in the corner over there away from everyone will be fine.”
Wade and Gabe took seats across from each other, each laying out notes on the table. The waitress came over and filled both water glasses. Turning to the waitress, Gabe spoke in a soft tone. “Please give us a little quiet time here. We may want to order a little later.”
“Certainly, Mr. Morrison.”
Turning to Wade, a wide grin spread across Gabe’s face. “If you get hungry, their collard greens and ham hocks are absolutely the best in Georgia.”
“That’s one of my favorites. I’ll have to try it later.”
The two men chatted a little while about Wade’s trip out, but soon got down to the business at hand.
“So, you’re an intelligence officer with the CIA?”
“As of just recently. I’ve been in training for the last four years.”
“Why don’t you just start with your story — and if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a few notes. My memory’s not what it used to be.”
“That’s fine. I just want to make sure everything we talk about remains confidential.”
“Assuming that you were not involved in Mr. Lockhart’s death, everything will remain confidential.”
“No, I wasn’t involved in Lockhart’s death.”
Gabe pulled out a blank pad and pen and pushed his hat across the table before asking Wade a question. “If you don’t mind my asking, why you are so concerned about confidentiality?”
“I’m an intelligence officer with the government and carry a secret clearance. I don’t know what disclosures I might have to make that would fall under that secret designation and naturally don’t want to have the government coming after me.”
“That’s a fair concern. I’m only interested in the facts as you remember them and won’t need any secret information. If at any time you feel you’re getting into a secrecy area, I don’t want you to continue.”
“That sounds fair.”
“Why don’t you start by telling me your story from the beginning?”
Referring to his notes, Wade walked Gabe through the details of the Lockhart story from the time he arrived on base until he departed, including the debriefing he’d had before leaving for the airport. He left in as many details as possible.
Gabe seemed intently interested in the story, taking lots of notes but asking very few questions. When Wade concluded his story, Gabe commented, “That’s a very interesting piece of this investigation. It contains important information leading up to Lockhart’s disappearance. Did you at any time have any suspicions about who did the shooting that evening?”
“No.”
“You don’t know if it was Lockhart or somebody else?”
“No. It could have been someone from Blue Team or anyone else.”
“Has the base given you any information on the results of their forensic investigation?”
“No.”
Gabe looked up from his notes. “Let me tell you what we know from our investigation thus far.” For a moment Gabe stared above Wade’s head, putting together details before he spoke.
“The state police initially received the call from the hotel operator that a dead body had been discovered in Room 112. I was called by my department to handle the investigation and got to the scene about an hour after the state police had arrived. We estimate now that this was about three hours after Lockhart’s actual time of death.”
“The county sheriff had already presumed it was a suicide. The state police were good enough to leave the scene untouched until my forensic team arrived. I immediately observed several things that caused me to think it might not have been a suicide.”
“I’ve done hundreds of murder and suicide cases over my career, and you get a feel for putting a scene back together again in your mind. This scene had several problems that I didn’t like. It looked too clean, for one thing, almost staged — not like most suicide scenes. The placement of the body didn’t look right to me. The position and angle of Lockhart’s arm wasn’t natural.”
“I was suspicious within two minutes after being on the scene. I had my forensic team take precise measurements and photographs of everything from several different angles. I wanted to preserve as much evidence as we could. I knew from the beginning there would be lots of questions about this one.”
Wade’s interest was piqued as he visualized the scene. “Did you have an ID on the body at that time?”
“No. Nothing more than the ‘Lockhart’ label on his fatigues. The normal ID you typically find in a suicide case lying around wasn’t there. That also made me suspicious.”