Free The Night Crew by Brian Haig Page B

not.”
    I asked, “What about footprints around the car, fingerprints on or inside the car, skin under the Major’s fingernails? Maybe the killer signed the note?”
    Cops also love being second-guessed by pushy wiseass attorneys, and his expression turned a little agitated. But obviously the answer was none-of-the-above, because he replied, evasively, “A CID forensics team from Fort Gillem flew up this afternoon.”
    I should mention here that CID agents are arguably the best-trained flatfoots in the world. Unlike most civilian detective units where everybody specializes—homicide, burglary, financial crimes, and so forth—the CID initial investigating officer is a jack-of-all-vices, and ordinarily, is expected to work whatever case lands in his lap from start-to-end, from the initial forensics work-up, through tracking leads, through tying the final knots that lead to a conviction. But in those rare instances where a case is particularly complex, politically significant, or socially alarming, the army also maintains a forensics center just outside Atlanta that can dispatch a squad of specialists on short notice to assist the local team.
    From what I’d just heard, this case didn’t sound all that complex. The method of killing and MO, for instance, were fairly innocuous and aboveboard: a cutthroat. So by process of elimination, it was probably because this particular case assumed some great significance. I mean, as a potential target I thought the decision was brilliant; this was the most important case in the world.
    Anyway, O’Reilly was looking at me. “You’ve worked with them before. Am I right? So you know these people. If we missed something, they’ll find it.”
    “Assuming there’s anything to find.”
    “They’ll at least be able to tell us the type of knife the killer used.”
    He chuckled to show this was a joke. Aside from learning the taste in weaponry of somebody who wanted to kill me, as legal professionals we all three were aware that identifying the brand of knife was nearly always useless.
    In any event, from the depth of the cut, we already knew what we were dealing with here: what technical experts call a BFB—a big fucking blade.
    He commented, “Maybe we’ll know more tomorrow.” But from his tone it sounded more like maybe not.
    I looked at Katherine again. It struck me that at no point in this discussion had Katherine flinched, or seemed upset, or surprised, or even mildly annoyed, by news that was so clearly alarming. As females go, Katherine is fairly unemotional and I certainly wouldn’t expect her to flee from the room, pulling on her hair and screaming her lungs out. But to learn that she might be on a hitlist, or a shitlist, belonging to a cold-blooded killer, and remain so blasé—did I mention that Katherine was now absently studying her fingernails?—was a little cold-blooded, even for her.
    And further, it struck me that Major General Fister, Chief of the JAG Corps, had to be high on the initial notification list for army lawyers that had just become corpses. Considering that CID had been notified about the body early that morning, and Katherine had met with Fister regarding my reassignment sometime that afternoon, maybe her surprising lack of surprise wasn’t all that surprising after all.
    This was neither the time nor place to have this conversation. But I needed to get on the record early, so I turned to her and said, “I owe you.” I then asked O’Reilly, “Are you part of the crime scene investigating team?”
    As I suspected he might, he replied, “Nope. I visited the site but only in connection with my actual duties.”
    “Go on.”
    “I work in the Pentagon. Office of Protective Services.”
    “And are you now assigned to protect us?”
    He gave me a terse smile. “I’m your designated guardian angel. Effective 2100 hours, all defense attorneys for the Al Basari case will be under constant surveillance and guard. We don’t want another dead