Hutchinson never came over to see Sampson and I. Not a word of condolence or concern.

How goddamn strange, and inconsiderate. It was maddening. The gray wall of silence, I thought, remembering Owen Handler's words. General Mark Hutchinson left the hospital without making contact with us. I wasn't going to forget that.

All the while I was at West Point Hospital, I couldn't get one thought out of my head: There is nothing like an attempt on your life... to get your blood boiling. I was shaken by the attack on Colonel Handler, but I was also angry as hell.

Wasn't that part of the motive behind the massacres at My Lai and others like it? Anger? Fear? The need for retribution? Unthinkable things happened during combat. Tragedies were inevitable. They always had been. What was the Army trying to cover up now? Who had sent the killers after us tonight? Who had murdered Colonel Handler, and why?

Sampson and I spent the night at the Hotel Thayer again. General Hutchinson decided to put MPs on the second floor to protect us. I didn't think it was necessary. If the gunmen had been after us, they wouldn't have driven off and left us alive.

I kept thinking: two men had been in the car that attacked us.

There had been three men involved in the earlier killings.

I couldn't get that fact out of my head either.

Three, not two.

Eventually, I called Jamilla and shared everything that had happened with her. Detective to detective, friend to friend. She didn't like the actions of General Hutchinson and the Army either. Just talking it through with her helped tremendously.

I was thinking about doing it more often, like maybe every night.

Finally, I fell asleep on that thought.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Seventy-One

The following morning the New York papers were filled with a story about the murder of four call girls, a madam and a bouncer on the East Side of Manhattan. The women were Vietnamese and Thai, and because of that I talked to the detective in charge of the investigation in Manhattan. So far, the NYPD was nowhere on the grisly case. I thought about going to New York, but there were other pressing things on my mind.

There was an important lead I hadn't even begun to satisfactorily check out. The Foot Soldier. Who the hell was he? Or she? And why had Foot Soldier contacted me by e-mail? What was the mystery person trying to tell me?

Owen Handler had given me a few names, and once I returned to Washington, I dug around until I tracked a few of them down. The most interesting to me was Tran Van Luu, a former Kit Carson scout who was now living in the United States.

There was a catch, a big one. Tran Van Luu was on death row in Florence, Colorado. He'd been found guilty of murdering nine people in Newark and New York City. I knew a little about the federal prison at Florence and had even been there once. That was the second catch. Kyle Craig was imprisoned there, my old nemesis. Kyle was also on death row.