“Could this be mob guys?”
“Could be, but I don’t think so.”
“Why do you say that?”
“They positioned his body to look like he was sitting at the table when the shot went off. Lockhart was probably bound with a rope to keep his arm and hand upright in the chair. His finger was probably positioned on the trigger to fire the weapon. From the stronger print impression on the trigger, I think someone else pulled his finger down over the trigger.
“Mob guys typically want to send a message by their killings. They don’t care about the mess they make. This hit was done by people who cared about how the scene would look afterward. They went out of their way to try to point evidence in a certain direction — to divert attention. To me this looks more like a black ops job done by a professional hit squad, perhaps foreign intelligence. I believe the men in this squad all wore gloves. We found a few flakes of latex powder on his flannel shirt, the kind of latex gloves used in hospitals and laboratories.”
“Can you guess who might be behind it?”
Gabe thought about the question, but didn’t answer it directly. He continued giving Wade his opinion of what had happened. Gabe demonstrated how Lockhart was tied, emphasizing the angle of his own arm and hand.
“There was no evidence of drugs or alcohol in the room, but preliminary reports of Lockhart’s stomach contents show evidence of alcohol. He might have been given the first drug with some booze. We’re now waiting for more detailed test results of the stomach contents. Lockhart was a known drinker; he’d been arrested several times off base for public drunkenness, fighting, and disorderly conduct. And while the first drug was probably administered with a shot of alcohol, I think the second drug was administered with a slightly-larger needle. They tried to conceal the second injection by putting it into a tattoo on the back of his neck.”
“That’s amazing detective work,” replied Wade.
“I figured that Lockhart’s contact must have met him and paid him cash. Then they had a drink to celebrate. The hotel operator on duty that night vaguely remembers a black van parked across the street from the hotel, but he didn’t get any identifying information.
“After Lockhart was out from the first drug, my hunch is the hit squad was called in to do the rest of the job. This group was all pros.”
“You seem to have this all worked out except for who did the murder.”
“You’re correct — except most of what I’m telling you is pure conjecture on my part. We’re a long way from proving any of this. We’ll need a lot more evidence to make it stick.”
“Is there anything I can do at this point?”
“I’m very interested in this CID guy, Mashburn, who is now conveniently out of the country on a special classified covert assignment. It would be helpful if you could provide any information about who he reports to and where he’s located.”
“I’ll get right on that.”
“I would appreciate that.”
His mind still was trying to grasp the facts when Wade posed another question. “Will you be able to obtain the foot impressions taken by the forensics team at Fort Benning? I’d still like to know if Lockhart was our shooter.”
“That’s a good question. If I’ve led you to believe this will be a fight to the death over jurisdiction regarding Lockhart’s body, I misspoke. Aside from this squabble, I happen to have an excellent relationship with Fort Benning. Most of the forensics people at the base trained with or know my forensics people. In fact, I can pursue some of this off-line, just between my forensics folks and theirs.”
“Secondly, the base and I usually end up cooperating on almost all investigations. In the long run, negative publicity doesn’t work well for the base, and ongoing disputes with local police don’t buy them good press. From your story and what I know of the Fort Benning staff, I don’t believe they were part of the actual Lockhart murder. I think they may have gotten caught up in the cover-up story somehow. That usually comes from orders coming from higher up, outside the base. Your question about your Agency’s involvement may not be unfounded.”
Before he replied, Wade reflected back on his interrogation after the incident, which they’d called a “debriefing.”
“Your explanation makes perfect sense to me. During my debriefing, I didn’t get the sense that Colonel Miller had a clue about Lockhart’s true identity. At least that was my take on it at the time. Of course they may be really good actors who fooled me, but I doubt it.”
Gabe swallowed a sip of water. “We know from his prior arrests that Lockhart was mentally unstable and carried a grudge about a lot of things. It’s also possible that he might have had some information that certain parties didn’t want revealed. Perhaps it was something he knew about Army operations in Vietnam, and he demanded to be paid to keep his mouth shut. It’s also possible that he discovered Mashburn was a CID plant in his group and felt threatened. He might have thought you guys were somehow involved in that CID operation — and that could have pushed him into taking the sniper action.”
Wade was in deep thought, absently tapping his fingers on the table. “That may be true, but why would the Army allow someone who was already disturbed to take a course in preparation for another Vietnam tour? I don’t understand that kind of thinking. He was a loose cannon.”
Gabe nodded. “You’re absolutely right, but your story just gave me another angle to pursue. What if back in Vietnam, Lockhart discovered something that had gone wrong — with bad intelligence or a senior ranking Army officer — that got his men killed? He might have thought the intelligence community was going to take him out because of what he knew. For example, what if he discovered a cover-up over a botched job by an intelligence officer in ‘Nam? Lockhart was supposed to be in the group the day that his platoon was killed. Why wasn’t he in that group?”
Wade shrugged. “That’s a very good question. I’m speculating here, and I may be way off base, but Lockhart survived three tours of recon missions in Vietnam. If Lockhart had proof that someone on our side was a bad guy, he could have tried blackmailing the government or someone in the government to get a big payoff. He might have assumed he would be safe in the U.S. Then when Lockhart felt threatened, something snapped, and he went on his own misguided black ops mission. He obviously didn’t realize or believe the U.S. would turn their own black ops team on him.”
“That’s an interesting angle. Let me do some digging around, and see if I can find out who the CIA intelligence officer in Vietnam was and learn some more about his platoon.”
“That might not solve our local murder case, but it could help explain a lot about why Lockhart was taken out.”
After a pause, Gabe continued. “Another thing still bothering me here is that we’ve found no money trail — at least not that we’ve discovered so far. In most murder cases of this type, you follow the money. You know, I have a hunch the Vietnam connection might have a money component to it, but that’s just a hunch on my part.”
Wade jotted a note and set down his pen. “I’ll look into that angle as well.”
“Can you get me the names and contact information of the others in your Red Team training group? I may want to have some private discussions with them to confirm some of the facts we’ve been discussing here.”
“I happen to have their contact information right here.” Wade pulled out a folded document from his pocket and handed it to Gabe.