Not a humble garbage truck: it was a two-year-old, forty-cubic-yard McNeilus Front Loader painted bright green, and it took some skill to operate.
At six o’clock in the dawn’s early light, Nagi maneuvered through Applejack’s empty parking lot, picked up the dumpster, and when the load dumped in the cargo box, he heard a loud bang as something large and metallic hit the bottom.
He said, “Aaa . . . shit,” in his best Joisey Shore accent, because he knew what it probably was: a piece of obsolete office equipment, like a printer. It had probably been thrown in the dumpster because the owner didn’t want to dispose of it in an environmentally responsible way.
That also meant that if Nagi tried to unload it at the landfill without reporting it and got caught, he’d get stuck with both a fine and the printer.
Nagi went on with his route, had the first full load ready to go by nine o’clock. At the landfill, he told the supervisor at the gate that he probably had a big printer in his load, and the supervisor pointed him to a specific dump area, a laborer following him with a Kabota Front End Loader.
Nagi dumped the load, waited for the wave from the laborer. Instead, he got the white-faced laborer running down the side of the truck, calling, “You better get out here.”
The printer was there, at the top of the load of foul-smelling garbage. Right next to a partially exposed leg, an expensive Salomon hiking boot still on the foot.
Nagi crossed himself, although he was a Muslim, because that’s what you did if you were raised in New Jersey. To the laborer, he said, “This ain’t good. Go get the boss.”
* * *
—
THE COPS CAME, and the medical examiner, and over the span of two hours the body was exposed, photographed, and re-covered. The top of the torso was still wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag, which was packed away for a further forensic examination. The lack of fingertips was recorded, and the detective team working the scene noted that the body had probably been fingerprinted at some point and that the killer knew it. The crime scene crew checked the clothing for any kind of identification but found nothing.
When the cops were satisfied that they’d done everything possible at the scene, the body was moved to the Medical Examiner’s Office. There, the clothing was removed and bagged for forensics, the body examined: it bore two tattoos. One was a generic American flag, but the other was Special Forces, with the designation ODA 331.
That information, with a photograph of the dead man’s face, was sent to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, which, in the Army’s idiosyncratic way, was abbreviated “CID,” since “CIC” was reserved for the “Commander in Chief.”
Two hours later, the CID came back with the information that the body was almost certainly that of former master sergeant James Harold Ritter, who had been subsequently identified by two of his former teammates. He had been honorably discharged from the Army a few years earlier.
The cops found a Virginia driver’s license for Ritter, matched the photos, and went to his address in Arlington, where the apartment manager told them that the apartment had just been searched by federal marshals.
The cops eventually found Russell Forte, told him about Ritter, asked him about the search. Forte said, “I’ll call the marshal in charge of the search and have him get back to you.”
By that time, an autopsy was under way at the Medical Examiner’s Office.
Nagi had pointed the Alexandria cops to the Applejack’s parking lot, though he couldn’t tell them for sure where the body had come from. Applejack’s was a good guess, but it could have come from either of his next two stops as well.
The cops checked all three places but found no evidence of a murder in any of the dumpsters.
* * *
—
THE COPS FOUND FORTE more quickly than they might otherwise have because he had put in a request for all available information on Ritter. A history of being murdered was definitely information.
Forte called Lucas two minutes after he finished talking to the cops.
“Bad news, man,” Forte said when Lucas picked up.
“What is it?” Lucas asked. He, Bob, and Rae were ambling along M Street in Georgetown because they didn’t know of a more interesting place to go.
“Somebody murdered James Harold Ritter and threw his body in a dumpster. The body was found by chance. At a landfill. There’s an autopsy going on right now, but the cops say he was shot twice, in the chest. Best guess right now is, he was killed last night.”
“Oh, no. Ah, man.” Bob and Rae stopped when they heard Lucas’s tone. He turned to them, and said, “Somebody killed Ritter.”
“The killer cut off Ritter’s fingertips to prevent printing, but he was identified by a tattoo from his Special Forces group and then by matching photos with his license,” Forte said. “There’s not a hell of a lot more unless the autopsy comes up with something. That looks like a long shot.”
“We better get over there—we’ll need an address for wherever the autopsy is.”
“Got that for you,” Forte said. “And the cops want to talk to you.”
“Listen, call the cops back and ask them to stay quiet about the murder . . . a couple of days. Ask for cooperation. It’d be best if this didn’t make it in the papers until we’ve figured out what to do.”
“I can do that,” Forte said.
* * *
—
“WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM?” Rae asked.
“Somebody shot him to death,” Lucas said. He told them the rest of it, and they stood there, shaking their heads, as they heard the story.
When Lucas was done, Bob looked at Rae, and said, “Heavy-duty, girlie.”
The three of them had been waiting for something to happen; they’d talked about pushing things harder but decided in the end to wait until they had the lab results from West Virginia, which were due any minute. They had spent the previous afternoon and that morning reading everything the FBI, the Marshals Service, and the Army could produce on Ritter, Parrish, and other employees of Heracles.
As they walked out to Lucas’s Evoque, Forte messaged the address where the autopsy was going on.
“Manassas,” Lucas said. “I don’t know where that is.”
“Over in Virginia,” Bob said. “I think there was a big Civil War battle around there.”
Rae: “I thought it was something white people kept in a jar, in the refrigerator.”
* * *
—
THE DRIVE TO MANASSAS took an hour. The Medical Examiner’s facility looked like an elementary school, and a detective named Roger Clark from the Frederick County Sheriff’s Department met them at the front entrance. He said that the autopsy was nearly over.
“Whoever did it probably didn’t know about the tattoo, because that got us an ID faster than fingerprints would have,” he said.
“Do you know the time of death yet?” Lucas asked.
“Not yet, but we should know in the next few minutes. If you have the time, there’s a conference room down the hall. I’d like to get a statement from you guys to put in my report.”
“Sure,” Lucas said. “We’d like to know the details of the discovery. In a landfill? Any idea where the truck came from?”
Clark filled them in on what they’d learned and asked to record Lucas’s statement. Lucas agreed, and started with the accident that had killed Whitehead, and nearly killed Smalls, on through to the attack on Weather and the murder of Douglas Last. He also described Ritter’s background and involvement with Heracles.
“Wow. You think that Ritter was in on it all?” Clark asked.
Lucas nodded. “This killing confirms it, as far as I’m concerned. The people who set this up knew we were getting close to him and couldn’t take the chance that he might roll over on them.”
“You have suspects . . .”
“Yes. A number of people associated with Heracles. They are professionals, and I doubt you’d get much from them, but I can give you names if you want to go talk to them.”
* * *
—