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white and I wondered if the jail had other holding cells, and if they were
segregated, too.
Some of the men seemed to know each other from previous nights they had spent
here. It was a civil enough group. Nobody wanted to mess with Sampson, or even
me. A guard walked by on checks twice an hour. I knew the basic drill. The
prisoners were in charge the other fifty-eight minutes an hour.
"Cigarette?" a guy to my right asked. He was sitting on the floor with his
back against a pitted concrete wall.
"Don't smoke," I said to him.
"You're the detective, right?" he asked after a couple of minutes.
I nodded and looked at him more closely. I didn't think I'd met him, but it
was a small town. We had shown our faces around. By this time a lot of people
in Fayetteville knew who we were.
"Strange shit going down," the man said. He took out a pack of Camels.
Grinned. Tapped one out. Today's Army, man. "An army of one." What kind of
bullshit is that?"
"You Army?"I asked," I thought they took you guys to the stockade at Fort
Bragg."
He smiled at me. "Ain't no stockade at Bragg, man. Tell you something else. I
was in here when they brought. Sergeant Cooper in. He was nuts that night.
They printed him down here, then took him upstairs. Man was a psycho killer
for sure that night."
I just listened. I was trying to figure out who the man was, and why he was
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talking to me about Ellis Cooper.
"I'm going to tell you something for your own good. Everybody around here
knows he did those women. He was a well-known freak."
The man blew out concentrated rings of smoke, then he pushed himself off the
floor and shuffled away. I wondered what in hell was going on. Had somebody
arranged the fight at the bar? The whole thing tonight? Who was the guy who
had come over to talk to me? To give me advice for my own good?
A short while later, a guard came and took him away. He glanced my way as he
was leaving. Then Sampson and I got to spend the night in the crowded,
foul-smelling holding cell. We took turns sleeping.
In the morning, I heard someone call our names.
"Cross. Sampson." One of the guards had opened the door to the holding cell.
He was trying to wave away the stink. "Cross. Sampson."
Sampson and I pushed ourselves stiffly up off the floor. "Right here. Where
you left us last night," I said.
We were led back upstairs and taken to the front lobby, where we got the day's
very first surprise. Captain Jacobs from CID was waiting there. "You all sleep
well? "he asked.
"That was a setup," I said to him. "The fight, the arrest. Did you know about
it beforehand?"
"You can go now," he said. That's what you should do. Get your stuff and go
home, Detectives. Do yourselves a big favor while you still can. You're
wasting time on a dead man's errands."
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The awful strangeness and frustration continued the day I got back to
Washington. If anything, it got even worse. An e-mail was waiting for me in my
office at home. The message was from someone who identified himself as Toot
Soldier'. Everything about it was troubling and impossible for me to
comprehend at this point.
It began: For Detective Alex Cross,
Your general interest: The Pentagon is currently taking steps to prevent some
of the more than one thousand deaths each year in the 'peacetime Army'. The
deaths come from car crashes, suicides and murders. In each of the past three
years, at least eighty Army soldiers have been murdered.
Specifics to think about, Detective: An Army pilot named Thomas Hoff stationed
at Fort Drum near Watertown, New York, was convicted of the slaying of a
homosexual enlisted man on post. The convicted man claimed his innocence right
up until the moment of his execution. In his defense, Hoff wasn't actually
stationed at Drum until three months after the murder was committed. He had
visited a friend at Hood prior to the murder, however. His prints were found
at the murder scene. Hoffs service record was clean before his conviction for
murder. He had been a 'model soldier' until the supposed murder.
Another case for your consideration, Detective. An Army barber, known by his
friends as "Bangs', was convicted of murdering three prostitutes -outside Fort
Campbell in Kentucky. Santo Marinacci had no criminal record before the
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killings. His pregnant wife testified that he was home with her on the night
of the murders. Marinacci was convicted because of fingerprints and DNA found
at the murder scene, and also because the murder weapon, a survival knife, was
discovered in his garage. Marinacci swore the knife was planted there. "For
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