I picked up a straw doll that looked strangely menacing, even evil. Then a small crossbow with what looked like a claw for its trigger. A silver amulet in the shape of a watchful, lidless eye. What was this?

Sampson took a careful look at the creepy straw doll, then the eye. "I've seen the evil eye before. Maybe in

Cambodia or Saigon. Don't remember exactly. I've seen the straw dolls, too. Think they have something to do with avenging evil spirits. I've seen the dolls atViet funerals."

The creepy artifacts notwithstanding, the sense I got from the apartment was that Ellis Cooper had been a lonely man without much of a life besides the Army. I didn't see a single photograph of what might be called family.

We were still in Cooper's bedroom when we heard a door open inside the apartment. Then came the sound of heavy footsteps approaching.

The bedroom door was thrown open and banged hard against the wall. Soldiers with drawn pistols stood in the doorway.

“Put your hands up! Military Police. Hands up now!” one of them yelled.

Sampson and I slowly raised our arms.

“We're homicide detectives. We have permission to be here,” Sampson told them. “Check with Captain Jacobs at CID.”

“Just keep those hands up. High!” the MP in charge barked.

Sampson spoke calmly to the leader of the three MPs who now crowded into the bedroom with their guns leveled at us.

“I'm a friend of Sergeant Cooper's,” Sampson told them.

“He's a convicted murderer,” snarled one MP out of the side of his mouth. “Lives on death row these days. But not for much longer.”

Sampson kept his hands high, but told them there was a note from Cooper in his shirt pocket and the house key we'd been given. The head MP took the note and read:

To whom it may concern, John Sampson is a friend, and the only person I know who's working on my behalf. He and Detective Cross are welcome in my house, but the rest of you bastards aren't. Get the hell out. You're trespassing!

Sergeant Ellis Cooper.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Sixteen

I woke the next morning with the phrase 'dead man walking' repeating itself in my head. I couldn't get back to sleep. I kept seeing Ellis Cooper in the bright orange death row jumpsuit.

Early in the morning, before it got too hot, Sampson and I took a run around Bragg. We entered the base on Bragg Boulevard, then turned onto a narrower street called Honeycutt. Then came a maze of similar side streets, and finally Longstreet Road. Bragg was immaculate. Not a speck of trash anywhere. A lot of soldiers were already up running

FT.

As we jogged side by side, we planned out our day. We had a lot to do in a relatively short time. Then we needed to get back to Washington.

“Tell you what's bothering me the most so far,” Sampson said as we toured the military base on foot.