“It’s not a crime for Hugh Dawson to sell out to Stuart McClellan,” noted Decker. “But to answer your question, I don’t know if there is a connection. Yet.”
“Do you think McClellan is involved in this somehow?”
“If Irene Cramer knew something that was damaging to him, it’s possible. I just don’t know what that might be. But I think the military installation is a more promising suspect. I think that’s why she came up here.”
“There’s clearly something going on over there,” said Jamison. “From what Robie found out and our discussion with his boss.”
“We need to talk to Brad Daniels again.”
“And Robie’s boss seems to think that something is off there. I mean, why have two redundant facilities in North Dakota?”
“So the one here has an ulterior purpose.”
“The guy running away that Robert White saw?” said Decker.
“Yeah?”
“The guy was obviously trying to escape.”
“So you think there’s some sort of prison being operated over there?”
“Maybe.”
“And the ambulances?”
“It seems to be the sort of prison where people suffer injury routinely enough to require medical attention off-site.”
“But if they are operating a prison over there, where would they take the injured prisoners? I mean, if they’re trying to keep it secret, they can’t just drive them to the local hospital.”
“They have a runway. They have choppers coming and going at odd hours.”
Jamison looked at him in alarm. “You think they’re flying these guys out?”
“And maybe they don’t come back.”
“Decker, all of that sounds really illegal. I mean, you can’t hurt prisoners, fly them out, and then they disappear. They have rights.”
“Maybe they’re not ordinary prisoners, Alex.”
She gaped at him. “Meaning what?”
“It’s a military facility. Maybe they’re military prisoners of a sort.”
“But if they are military prisoners, they still have rights.”
“Maybe they’re not members of the military or even American citizens. Remember White said the guy was talking gibberish?”
“He said he thought the guy was nuts or maybe on drugs.”
“Or maybe speaking a foreign language.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Maybe they’re running another Guantanamo up here in North Dakota.”
Jamison slumped back in her seat. “Another Gitmo, here?”
“You wouldn’t want to transfer a bunch of enemy combatants or terrorists to New York City or another really populated area. And if this facility is redundant, it would be the perfect place.”
“Right. And then Vector is brought in to handle security.”
Decker nodded. “They show up here and the Air Force people get kicked out, leaving Sumter as the sole remaining flag bearer to give it a modicum of respect. I think Vector was brought in to watch over the people they’re keeping there. And maybe interrogating them to the point of their being injured.”
“But that’s not allowed anymore.”
“Says who?” replied Decker sharply.
Jamison started to reply but then seemed to think better of it. He eased forward in his chair. “It would also explain why Robie is on the scene.”
“But they told us why. It was because of what happened to Irene Cramer’s mother.”
Decker shook his head. “Robie’s boss struck me as one real heavyweight. And Robie, too. Maybe they’re upset that Cramer got killed after what happened to her mother under their watch, but feeling guilty isn’t a reason to bring those kind of assets up here. There’s something else, another reason why they’re here.”
Jamison snapped her fingers. “Robie’s boss said that some big players may already be on the scene here. And that clearly was a problem.”
“If they’re running a secret prison engaging in illegal interrogation, I think that would qualify as something people would kill to keep quiet about.” He tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair. “The only problem is that theory doesn’t square with why Cramer came here in the first place. Daniels told her something about that facility. But that was from a long time ago, long before Vector or any potential prisoners showed up there.”
“So you mean there has to be something else going on? Namely, whatever Daniels told Cramer that compelled her to move here?”
Decker nodded. “But if Cramer came up here to find out something about that facility based on what Daniels told her, and then stumbled onto what they’re doing now?”
“That’s a motive to kill her. But why slice open her stomach and intestines?”
“Her mother was a spy. Maybe she taught her kid to swallow secrets, or she saw her mother do it before. The people who killed Cramer might have somehow known this and cut her open to get it back. Then they tried to hide that by performing a postmortem on her and also blackmailing Walt Southern.”
“But why leave the body out there like that? I mean, they could have buried it somewhere. No one would have found her and we’d never have been called in.”
“Well, one explanation is that they didn’t know about her past. Local murder, local cops working on it, not the FBI. If it came out she was a prostitute the local cops would have chalked it up to that. And if they had blackmailed Southern to mess with the postmortems, the cops probably wouldn’t have even focused on the stomach and intestines. I had to read that report three times to find a reference to it.”
“I’m surprised he even referred to it at all.”
“Guy was covering his ass in case this all came out. He could say, hey, it’s right there, even if I didn’t highlight it or take photos of that specific region. I checked for contraband and found none. And the livor mortis miscue? He could chalk that up to not being a full-time pathologist. No, he was hedging his bets all right.”
“So they would have found her body, done the post, conducted the investigation, and come up with zip.”
“Which is better for them than no one finding her, and the cops keep digging and maybe call in other resources to try to find her. The fact that she was a prostitute, or at least holding herself out as one, would make for an easy answer for the cops. It’s a high-risk profession. Women like that get murdered all the time and their bodies get dumped. Cops poke around and then move on to the next case.”
“That does make sense.”
“Well, that’s something, since nothing else in this damn case makes the least bit of sense,” growled Decker.
Chapter 48
Robie parked the scooter outside the same abandoned apartment building where he had taken Decker and Jamison to meet Blue Man. His boss wasn’t here, but Robie had secure communications inside the building to contact him. And Robie had also made this derelict place his home base for now.
The sound reached his ears a few seconds before it would have been picked up by anyone not as well trained as he was.
Seconds of warning meant he got to live another day.
Maybe.
He immediately flitted for cover near the building’s front doors and pulled his pistol. There were at least five men that he could see. Where they had come from he couldn’t tell. Most likely they had already been here before he arrived. Which meant his hiding place had been compromised.
In the moonlight he could see that they wore light armor and carried automatic, combat-grade weaponry. They were advancing in a diamond-shaped attack pattern. There was no way he could fire at one without revealing his location. And his cover position could not withstand concentrated counterfire.
This dilemma presented a clear tactical first step. Since his current position was indefensible, he moved. He was through the front doors and up the stairs before any of them could gain a line of sight on him to fire. Any building that Will Robie had ever occupied had been thoroughly researched by him beforehand, and this one was no exception.