Page 159 of The Fourth Option
“This was Chris Walker. No doubt in my mind.”
“You share that with Bates yet?”
“I called him on the way here and filled him in. It was time.”
“IEDs, more dead bangers, and a missing cop. We have a pattern,” J.J. said quietly.
They moved closer to the minivan.
“Look at these head wounds,” Stanton said. “He took out the guys in the truck with a shotgun, goes dry when approaching the minivan, and transitions to a pistol. Confirms they are all dead with security rounds. And that smell; these were fertilizer-based IEDs.”
“Why would Walker be meeting foreign nationals on the pier of Dorado Freight? And why was a detective from NOPD here? The GPS on his vehicle puts him on this pier about the time of the incident and then he just disappears?”
Stanton looked to the end of the pier where the NOPD dive team was surveying the conditions.
“He didn’t just disappear,” Stanton said.
“You think Walker put him in the drink?”
“We’ll know soon enough.”
J.J. flipped through her notes. “NOPD says the GPS in Gormley’s cruiser pinged by the office. Last location was the end of the pier.”
Stanton looked back over the destruction.
“Are we sure one guy did all this?” J.J. asked. “It would take serious skills to pull this off.”
“The kind of skills they teach in the SEAL Teams and in the CIA,” Stanton said.
She glanced at her damp notebook. “According to what I’ve been able to put together, Walker was a philosophy major at NYU, working on a doctorate. This doesn’t seem like the work of a philosopher.”
“My CIA contact said he was unstable. Manic depressive. Possibly schizophrenic, maybe on the spectrum. He was drummed out of the CIA for reasons that remain classified.”
“That’s a big piece of this puzzle.”
“It is.”
“A theory,” she said. “Walker was working for the cartel. They somehow burned him or failed to pay him, so he ambushes them with these IEDs and takes off with the dough?”
“How does Detective Gormley fit in? Dirty cop? There’s more to it.”
They turned to see Lieutenant Cornelius Bates making his way down the pier, umbrella in hand, his stretch-fabric shirt immaculate despite the weather. Four uniformed officers followed, boots splashing through puddles.
“What a fucking mess,” he said as he shook both agents’ hands. “Let me ask you, respectfully, to stay out of our way on this one.”
“We’ve got IEDs and possible transnational narco-terrorists, Bates. This is federal,” Stanton said firmly.
“I’ve got two dead cops and two missing cops. We’ve got a serial killer targeting my unit.”
“Why would someone do that?” Stanton asked.
“Who fucking knows? You share that you have a person of interest in the cases and that he just so happens to be a Navy SEAL. Now we have bombs going off and bodies stacking up in New Orleans. I’d say we’ve found our guy.”
“The question is why. Why is he doing this? We answer that, we find him.”
“He’s obviously a crackpot who’s working for the cartels.”
“Then why is he killing them?”
