Free The Midnight House by Alex Berenson Page B

silencer meant a professional, or at least a semiprofessional, killer.
    “Same gun in both shootings? ” Shafer said.
    “Yes. Same as the one that got Karp, by the way.”
    “Who were they? ”
    “Wyly was a sergeant, a Ranger. Good guy, by all accounts.” He looked like a good guy to Wells. Tall, blue-eyed, big square jaw. He belonged on a recruiting poster. At least in the before shot. The after wasn’t so nice. He lay sprawled across a bare wooden floor, eyes dull, his hands covered with his own blood. Four shots in his torso, two in the abdomen, two up high in the chest. The shooter had wanted to be sure.
    “Where was this? ” Wells said.
    “His house, the San Fernando Valley. He’d just gotten divorced. The cops talked to his ex, but she has an alibi. Given the pattern of the shootings, there’s no reason to believe she’s involved.”
    Wells handed the photos of Wyly to Shafer. He looked at Fisher, who was bald and offered a smile that revealed prominent canines. Wells hadn’t remembered the name, but the face was familiar.
    “Rat Tooth,” Wells said. “I kind of liked him, but that was a minority view.”
    “Rat Tooth? You knew him? ”
    “He was an instructor at the Farm when I was a trainee. Even back then he was bald. Specialized in what he liked to call ‘tactical physical arts.’ Eye gouging, finger breaking. Halfway through, he disappeared. There were rumors he’d, quote/unquote, engaged in inappropriate physical contact with a trainee.”
    “Bingo,” Duto said. “After that, we put him on the road where he belonged. He was in Colombia in the late nineties, the Philippines for a couple of years after nine-eleven. The places you could run without a lot of eyes on you. He liked it messy.”
    Messy. The second photograph of Fisher was messy. He was slumped against a driver’s seat, head torn open by a close-range pistol shot. His jaw was open, and Wells couldn’t help but notice his teeth, long and sharp and nearly vampiric.
    “Fisher had a reputation, I can’t deny it,” Duto said. “But he had his uses.”
    He was as much as telling Wells and Shafer that Fisher had been the squad’s designated torturer. Though the United States didn’t torture, Wells reminded himself. Torture was wrong. And illegal. So whatever Fisher had or hadn’t done for 673, he hadn’t tortured. QED.
    “You put all this together yesterday? ”
    “The San Francisco police got the call on Fisher in the morning, two days ago. Once they figured out who he was, they got in touch with the FBI, which reached out to us. We didn’t know if his murder was connected to Karp, but we figured we’d better check on the other members of 673. We called Wyly’s house yesterday morning. An LAPD detective answered the phone.”
    “What about the other three guys, the rest of the squad?” Wells said.
    “All safe. Murphy, the number two, still works for us. He’s at CTC now”—the Counterterrorist Center. “Terreri, the colonel, he’s in Afghanistan serving at Bagram. The last guy, Hank Poteat, is an army communications specialist. He’s at Camp Henry in South Korea now. None of them have noticed anything off.”
    “Is Murphy under guard? ”
    “Yes.”
    “The FBI is leading the investigation? ” Shafer asked.
    “Correct. They’ve classified the murders as a possible terrorist attack. They’re putting together a task force. We’re assisting, and so’s the army. But the Feebs have jurisdiction. No different than the Kansi shootings.” In 1993, Mir Amal Kansi, a Pakistani graduate student, killed two agency employees near the main entrance to Langley. The FBI had led the investigation, capturing Kansi in Pakistan in 1997. He was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed in Virginia in 2002.
    “And the local police departments are cooperating,” Shafer said.
    “Of course.”
    “So, John and me,” Shafer said. “Help us out here, Vinny. Where do we fit in? Since we’re not part of the task force, and