30

Davie had only been gone from the Pacific squad room for a day, but it felt as if it had been forever. It was good to sit at her desk again. Giordano wasn’t there and when she checked the log sheet, she saw that he and Detective Montes had been called out on a drive-by shooting, which meant they wouldn’t be back for hours.

While Vaughn called Quintero to update him on what had happened in Newport Beach, Davie printed a color copy of Van Kuris’s employee photo she’d received from Guardian’s CFO. She was typing up her notes on the Newport interview when her phone rang. It was the front-desk officer letting her know Dag Lunds was in the lobby. She grabbed her notebook and found him leaning against the wall by the front door, staring at the ATM machine on the walkway outside. He must have sensed her approach because he turned to face her.

She was shocked by his appearance. His eyes looked red-rimmed and hollow, as if he hadn’t slept for days. His skin was pale and gaunt. She recognized the signs of stress and lack of sleep.

Lunds flashed a rare smile. “You look dryer than the last time I saw you.”

She smiled back and motioned for him to follow her into the squad room. “No more white water rafting for a while. How’s the canoe coming along?”

“I haven’t been back to the cabin. I’ll probably head that way in the next day or so to put it back in storage.”

She wondered if giving up on the restoration of his father’s canoe was a sign of depression. “Maybe on the weekends—”

He cut her off. “It’s a retirement project. I’m not there yet.”

She wondered how he could continue his employment with TidePool after what had happened to Zeke and the others, but maybe he loved the work or needed the money. Davie led Lunds into the detective’s inner sanctum, where she found an empty interview room and gestured for him to sit. Vaughn lurked just outside the door but made no attempt to question Lunds.

The room was small. The table and chairs were mismatched and scarred. It was a good place to interrogate suspects because you didn’t want them to be comfortable. Witnesses like Lunds just had to suffer through the indignities of the city’s budget shortfalls. She reached out to close the door but he held up his hand to stop her.

“Don’t … please.”

She noticed a film of sweat on his forehead and remembered how trapped she’d felt driving up the garage ramp at LAX. “Claustrophobia?”

He didn’t answer, just looked away.

Christina had told them that Lunds came back from the Gulf War with PTSD. Davie wondered if he still had issues and if he was getting help for the symptoms. A wave of compassion washed over her as she thought about what he must have gone through. She’d met a lot of good people in her day, and she had a feeling Dag Lunds would be added to that list when this investigation was over.

She slid into a chair, opened her notebook, and placed the color photo of Van Kuris on the table in front of him. “Have you ever seen this man before? Maybe on one of those assignments you all worked together for TidePool?”

Lunds picked up the photo and studied it for a long time before returning it to the table. “I’m not sure. Who is he?”

“His name is Van Kuris. He’s Guardian’s Director of Security. As I mentioned before, when Zeke was in Hong Kong, a witness saw a nonverbal confrontation with Kuris in the lobby of the hotel. It might not mean anything, but we’re following every possible lead.”

“As I told you before, Zeke and I never worked together in Asia. He could have run into Kuris anywhere and at anytime. They might have had a history with each other, but it didn’t involve me.”

“Except somebody targeted all four of you. If it wasn’t Kuris, who could it be?”

He paused a moment and then shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Look again. Forget about his hair and clothes. He may have changed since you saw him last. Concentrate on his facial features.”

Lunds picked up the photo again, studying it carefully. A moment later, he looked up at her. His facial muscles were taut with tension. “Do you have a computer I can use?”

“Why? Do you know him?”

“I’m not sure.”

Davie got up. “Follow me.”

She led him to her desk and pulled up a second chair for Lunds. Vaughn followed. Once she’d logged on to her computer and opened the Internet browser, she slid the keyboard toward him and watched as he accessed a website dedicated to Vietnam-era MIAs. He typed the name John Latham and waited. A photograph of a young soldier appeared on the screen. A caption identified him as a man who’d gone missing toward the end of the war.

Lunds looked gaunt and haunted as he rolled his chair back to give Davie a better look. She held the photo of Kuris next to the screen and allowed her focus to dart from one image to the other. There was no doubt the young soldier bore a strong resemblance to Kuris. They couldn’t be father and son because the two men would be around the same age.

“Are you saying Van Kuris is really an MIA named John Latham?”

“No wonder Zeke was upset,” Lunds said. “He was staring at a ghost.”

Kuris wasn’t part of the talks, but when Zeke saw him standing in the lobby of the hotel, he must have realized the guy looked familiar. The Guardian CFO believed Kuris had had cosmetic surgery. If so, his attempt to look younger might have made him easier for Zeke to recognize.

Davie’s mind churned with all the unlikely scenarios that included several farfetched assumptions: that Zeke had known Latham in the US Army, that he knew he was MIA, that he ran into him in Hong Kong after almost fifty years, and that he recognized him despite all that time and the cosmetic surgeries.

“All of you knew Latham from the war?”

Lunds bolted to his feet, his breathing shallow. “I’ve got to get some air.”

Davie wanted answers but knew they would come to her faster if she gave Lunds some space, so she led him outside to the picnic table on the parking lot median. Vaughn followed but hung back in the shade of a tree, watching.

Lunds didn’t sit at first, just paced, obviously under duress. She waited patiently as he worked out whatever was troubling him. A moment later, he sat on the bench and rested his head in his hands.

She reached out to him but pulled back at the last second. It was unlike her to touch a witness, because she never knew how they might react. “Are you okay?”

“Not really.”

“Tell me what happened.”

When he finally spoke his voice was low and stripped of emotion. “The four of us were on patrol in the jungle, looking for the Viet Cong unit that was ambushing our troops. We heard small arms fire in the distance—a lot of it. We thought it was the enemy, so we ran toward the sound until we came to a village. The gunfire had stopped by then. We saw bodies. Everywhere. A US soldier was bent over a dead girl who looked about five years old. His eyes were bloodshot like he hadn’t slept for days and he was laughing like a psycho. I could tell he was juiced up on some serious shit.”

“John Latham?”

Lunds nodded. “He was a second lieutenant. He wasn’t wearing his bars, but a lot of officers stripped them off their uniforms in case they got captured by the enemy.”

“Did you find out what happened?”

“They’d just moved into the village. The little girl ran toward them with something in her hand. Everybody had seen things like that before. You couldn’t tell who the enemy was. During our first week in Nam a young kid walked into a bar where some of the guys hung out. He pulled the pin on a grenade and blew up everybody in the place. So, when Latham saw that child, he started shooting. His men started firing, too. They didn’t stop until they’d wiped out the whole village. The body count wasn’t as bad as My Lai but it was bad—fifty people, mostly old men, women, and children.”

Lunds pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. Davie held her breath and waited for him to continue. “I was looking for survivors when I heard someone screaming like a wounded animal. I ran toward the sound and saw Zeke kneeling next to that dead girl. That’s when I noticed what was in her hand—a mango. All those people dead—because of a piece of fruit. Of all the horror we saw in all those wars, Zeke never stopped thinking about that little girl. I think that’s why he was so protective of his own daughter.”

A wave of anger and revulsion washed over Davie as she realized Van Kuris/John Latham was a war criminal. “So, what did you do?”

Lunds broke off a splinter of wood from the table and inspected its sharp point. “Zeke and Juno wrestled Latham to the ground and grabbed his weapon. He was pissed, to say the least. He threatened to shoot us for dereliction of duty, assaulting an officer, and just about anything else he could think to throw at us. He knew when we reported the massacre his life was over.”

Vaughn stepped out of the shadows. “So, what did happen when you reported it? The Army must have investigated.”

“There wasn’t time to report it. We knew the gunfire would draw the enemy, so we left the dead where they lay and led the rest of the unit toward the nearest LZ. About two clicks outside the village, we ran into an ambush. The Viet Cong had us surrounded. We radioed for a gunship but in the chaos, we lost track of Latham. The unit was evacuated. Zeke made the sergeant promise to report the incident to the commanding officer. We assumed he did, but we never followed up. Once everyone was safe, we went back into the jungle to complete our mission. It wasn’t until later that we learned Latham was MIA.”

Vaughn walked over to Lunds and hovered over him. “You expect us to believe Latham sees Zeke in Hong Kong and decides to kill the four of you? What about the sergeant and the other members of his unit? He’d have to wipe out every single witness to be safe.”

The same question was floating through Davie’s mind.

Lunds leaned back as if distancing himself from Vaughn’s aggressive posturing. “You’re assuming they all survived the war. Let’s say they did. I can’t speak for them, but they weren’t innocent. They participated.”

Davie rose to her feet, because she was unsure about Lunds’s emotional state and she wanted to be ready for whatever happened next. “How did he get out of the country?”

“After he disappeared, we assumed he was either captured or killed by the Viet Cong. Now I suspect he used the chaos of the mortar attack to make his way out of the area to safety.”

Vaughn glared at him. “Who is Van Kuris?”

Lunds glared back. “I don’t know. Latham could have pulled a dog tag off a dead soldier and used his identity to avoid capture or he could have just made up the name like he made up his Canadian citizenship. You’re the detective. That’s for you to find out.”

“So,” Vaughn said, “after Latham killed Zeke he cut off one of his dog tags because he considered him a battlefield casualty?”

“All I know is Zeke wore his tags to Hong Kong. I imagine lots of people saw them.”

Davie asked a question to cut the tension. “When Zeke flew back to L.A. he went from the airport to Alden Brink’s office. You think he told Brink that one of Guardian’s employees was an Army deserter and a war criminal?”

“Brink is a lawyer not a decision maker. Zeke was a loyal guy. He’d warn the CEO first, because there’d be fallout from the Army’s investigation. Juno might have seen Latham also, and I believe Zeke tried to tell me when he called the night before he was killed. I just wasn’t there to hear his story.”

“Did Zeke tell you he was planning to retire?”

“No. I brought him into TidePool. He wouldn’t retire without letting me know.”

Again, Davie wondered about the logistics of killing four men but she knew everything was doable if the killer was motivated. Latham/Kuris worked for an international defense contractor and must have had access to weapons and contacts all over the world. He could have killed Zeke and Juno before they left Hong Kong, but the death of two Americans would draw unwanted attention. Better to make the hits in remote parts of the US and hope law enforcement didn’t put two and two together.

“If Guardian had contracts with the US government,” Davie said, “wouldn’t Latham need a security clearance? How could he get one if he was an Army deserter living under an assumed name?”

Lunds bent his head and stared at the ground. “Documents can be forged for a price. They must have accepted whatever he gave them.”

“Can you account for your whereabouts in the past two weeks?” Vaughn said.

The question was so abrupt Davie was thrown off balance. Lunds jerked his head upright. His fists balled. A vein in his forehead pulsed as he shot out of his seat. “You mean do I have an alibi for the time my three closest friends were murdered?”

His angry outburst was so sudden and unexpected that by reflex Davie’s hand covered her weapon. She was still, barely breathing, anticipating what might happen next. “We had to ask.”

“No,” he shouted, pointing to Vaughn. “He had to ask.” Lunds must have sensed the situation was spiraling out of control, because he inhaled deeply to regain his composure. “For the record, Detective, I was in Kabul on assignment for TidePool. Check with the CEO if you want to verify my alibi.”

Vaughn’s hand hovered over his weapon. “Don’t worry. We will.”