Murray Hill || A Superhuman Tale - 1

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The woman nodded, her lower lip trembling.

"Good. Where did you get Amy Lascar's credit card?"

"Mm ... my husband brought them here when he was on leave."

"He brought them?" said Camille. "What do you mean by them?"

The tiny woman rushed over to a small wooden desk to Camille's left and recovered a small handful of cards. She returned and gave them to the detective. Camille leafed through them. There were 12, no, 15 cards in various names. Two belonged to Amy.

"He told us they didn't belong to anyone," the little woman continued. "He said they were free."

"You didn't really believe that, did you?" Camille's voice was quiet but stern.

The little woman said nothing, but her face took on a pleading look.

"What else did your husband bring back?"

The woman hesitated.

"Miss, my friend and I are going to go over this apartment with a fine-tooth comb. If we find you've held back anything ...." Camille didn't need to finish. The woman ran back over to the desk and recovered three more credit cards."

"He brought these back last time he was on leave. They don't work anymore." After a brief hesitation, she scooted down a hallway.

Sam followed to ensure she didn't do anything foolish. Before he made it to the hallway, though, the woman reemerged from a bedroom with a small box, which she handed to Camille. Opening it, the detective saw a dozen or so pieces of jewelry, including several rings, earrings, and necklaces.

Sam came close. After a moment, he reached in and touched a small friendship bracelet. "I bought Amy a bracelet just like this not long after we met," he whispered. "Where's your husband, now?"

It was the first time Sam had addressed the little woman, and Camille could tell he was shaking slightly.

The woman gave a slight jump. "He's back on deployment."

"Where?" continued Camille. She wasn't worried what Sam might do, but the level of emotion in the room needed to stay in check. She wanted this woman afraid, but not so terrified that she couldn't speak.

"I don't know," the little woman said earnestly. "He's gone for five or six months, and then he's back for two weeks leave. It's been like that for a couple years. He ain't supposed to talk about what he does."

"What's his phone number?"

"He don't take his phone. He ain't allowed."

Camille insisted that the woman produce her husband's phone, anyway, as well as her own and any other phones, computers, or tablets that were in the house.

"Okay, Mrs. Kissinger, let's let the kids play outside. You and me need to talk."

Over the next two hours, Camille quizzed the little woman up one side and down the other. She went over her story four times, from every angle, until she was satisfied the woman had provided all she knew. While the two chatted, Sam went through the apartment, as promised, with a fine-tooth comb. He also assisted Philly in remotely exploiting the couple's electronic devices.

They discovered very little information that they had not found in their initial questioning of the woman. Staff Sergeant Kissinger was a member of the 133rd Medical Support Company. He and two other soldiers from his unit did regular deployments to who-knows where. They were not allowed to talk about it. The men couldn't even write, e-mail, or engage in any social media while they were gone. She knew nothing else.

But somehow, Kissinger had come into contact with Amy Lascar.

It was early afternoon when Sam and Camille left the Kissinger residence. As they walked back to their vehicle, the two talked about what they should do next.

Camille's instinct was to call local authorities and to report the theft of the cards, but she and Sam both concluded that bigger things were at play. Bringing in local police would only draw attention from federal authorities that they didn't want.

They decided to cross their fingers and to hope that their admonishments to Mrs. Kissinger to keep quiet—and the small woman's own desire to avoid prosecution—would keep their meeting with her secret, at least for a while. As an added incentive, they'd left all the ill-gotten loot, excluding the credit cards and the jewelry.

Mrs. Kissinger had given them some photos of her husband and his two comrades. One of them, Specialist Greg Hammon, was married and lived nearby. The two paid his wife a short visit. There were no signs of the same conspicuous spending at the Hammon abode, but Mrs. Hammon had little to add, except to note that the three soldiers were, "Not really on deployment."

"They're in the states, somewhere," she said. "They let him take his hunting rifle along with him. It's all hush-hush, though ... some creepy special ops thing." That was all she would say, but it was something.

They were torn at first on whether they should try to make official contact and to reach out to the soldiers' commander. But how to go about it without tipping their hand? After chatting about it, they decided to go ahead and do so, with Sam playing the role of an aggrieved motorist who'd been in a fender-bender with Kissinger and his comrades.

It was a waste of time. Getting on post to speak to Kissinger's company commander was out of the question. He refused even to take their calls, and the post public affairs officer stonewalled them. They did speak to the company first sergeant, but she had nothing to provide about Kissinger or any of his comrades. For now, they'd run out of leads in Rollo.

"This isn't right," Sam told Camille over a late lunch. It was some years since he'd been in uniform, but he still had friends and associates in and out of the military. He knew unit leaders usually were eager to help locals iron out disputes with service members. This did not seem kosher to him.

"I think we made a mistake calling the commander," he said finally. They possibly had tipped their hands and had gotten nothing.

"What's done is done," Camille replied. She could be ruthlessly practical. "But I don't necessarily believe that's true. Let's look at what we've learned. This is the first physical evidence that the government is in some way involved in the disappearance of your friend and the others. This idiot Kissinger didn't just find Amy's credit cards and jewelry on the side of the road. It may seem like a loss, but the fact their commander wouldn't talk to us today says everything. Sam, an act of petty pilferage has opened a whole new door to this search."

The man nodded his agreement. "The army definitely has the right people for that kind of cloak and dagger bullshit—intelligence, counterintelligence, special operations. The question is ... what the hell are a couple of medics doing in that scheme, and where are they doing it? We need to figure out where this Kissinger and his buddies are."

"Agreed," she said. "The fact that these three assholes are in complete lockdown during their so-called 'deployments' should tell us something. I have three high school friends and a cousin in the military. They all have easy access to the phone and Internet while deployed abroad. Whatever Kissinger and his pals are involved in, it's more than just operations as usual."

Sam breathed a sigh of relief and candidly admitted that Camille knew how to look at things in ways he and the others did not.

"Let's have your friend Philly track down the owners of those other cards," Camille continued. "Dollars to donuts they're people like you."

"I nearly forgot about those," he said. "And you were really good today, by the way."

"That was nothing. It went easy because that young woman isn't a criminal. She was an otherwise honest woman who did something naughty and got caught. It never goes that easy with real crooks." She thought for another few moments. "I'm still trying to figure out how we can work that fact to our advantage. So far, I'm drawing nada."

They finished lunch and ordered coffee. They would devote the rest of the day to analyzing the facts they'd uncovered and to planning what they might do next, in anticipation of a video conference with Tommy and Philly later that evening.