“We
“Yes sir, I meant no disrespect, I’m just covering all the bases in my dull, straight-ahead fashion. In the meantime, I’m going to take a cab ride over and just pass by the house a couple of times.”
So next, while the various authorities moved their teams into place, Ron and Jean Chandler glided along Peacock Lane for the third time, with a Jacksonville cop in civies over body armor behind the wheel. The feds played elementary security games, maybe overkill, but coming from a second-guess culture bar none, they took no chances: first time they were in coat and tie and a formal blouse, the second in polo shirts and glasses under ball caps, and this time they had switched sunglasses and ball caps.
Each time, they’d seen nothing, though as they worked it, only one of them, in the off side, actually observed the house. The closer agent sat still, eyes dead ahead, utterly uninterested; it was his partner, leaning back just a bit, head cocked just a bit, who scanned for intelligence.
“Give me your read,” said Ron.
“Nothing,” she said. “It looks empty. The grass is trim, though it’s been a while since the last cutting. The garden has been weeded, the lawn watered, nothing is lying around. It just looks dead. No sign of habitation, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing spontaneous or unexplainable, just the house of a neat older retiree who lives alone but is still spry enough to do his gardening. He’s been gone a week, maybe two, but there’s no sign of decay or instability. It’ll run down in time, but not yet. It’s still neat as a button. The car looks dusty but the dust covers a clean vehicle. It’s been washed but not driven and it’s sat for a week.” That was Carl’s Chrysler 300 with the North Carolina rear plate SNIPR-1.
Chandler’s assessment did not deviate from Ron’s; in fact, it confirmed Ron’s in every detail.
Finally, at 4:09 p.m., Ron got the call he had been waiting for from Nick.
“All right, Ron, Justice has signed off on the legal and the judge down there has okayed the warrant. You can go. You get back to me soonest.”
“Roger,” he said, and turned to the gathering of officers. “It’s a go. Agent Chandler and I will approach. I will have my mike open. Any sounds of shots or scuffles, you guys get there fast.”
Nods all around.
“Okay, cowboy up.”
The SWAT people climbed into their armored vehicles and turned the engines on. Ron and Jean put on body armor, then their coats. They hung their IDs on their chests by a chain necklace. A last quick checkoff with the district attorney, the federal attorney, the police executives, the medical people, and so on made it clear that the moment was indeed here.
The two agents got into the black sedan, drove two blocks, and pulled into Carl Hitchcock’s driveway.
Discreetly, the SWAT teams, locked and loaded, moved to holding points just out of line of sight of the house. All earphones were open to the same channel.
Ron and Jean exited the vehicle, took a look around, then Ron led the way to the front door. Both agents had unsnapped the safety strap on the holsters of their Glock.40s, which they now carried hot. Ron knocked, waited, knocked again, to no answer.
They edged their way around to each door, knocking. They peered through windows and saw nothing. Finally, circumnavigating the house and narrating their progress over the radio, they again reached the front door. Ron pushed it; it popped open, unlocked.
“Sergeant Hitchcock,” he yelled. “My name is Ronald C. Fields, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. I am here to serve a search warrant and to take you in for questioning. I have a marine JAG officer nearby if you wish to talk to him first. Please come out with hands raised. This is not an arrest; it’s an interview and search. You will have ample time to acquire legal representation if necessary.”
There was silence.
Finally Ron said, “Okay, we’re going in.” He withdrew his Glock. “Muzzle down. You do not fire unless you absolutely positively see a weapon or are physically assaulted, do you understand, Chandler?”
“Got it,” said Chandler.
“You do not shoot Special Agent Fields in the ass, no matter how big a jerk he is, all right?”
“Ten-four that,” said Chandler.
They entered, stepping into a living room.
It took a second to adjust to the darkness.
“Sergeant Hitchcock, FBI, please identify yourself.”
Silence.
The living room was dominated by a wall of glory narrating a marine career, pictures from Lejeune and Pendleton and half the ships at sea, Rome, Paris, the war in Vietnam, a batch of magazine covers and a book cover all rendered into picture frames, medals in an oak display case, trophies boasting little golden shooters, all of it neat, all of it framed, all of it speaking of a man proud of his accomplishments and in control of his faculties.
They moved onward, Ron advancing, Jean covering, down the hall through a laundry room to a small but neat kitchen. Beyond was a bedroom, bed made, sheet tight as per barracks style (you could bounce a dime off the covers), nothing flung or discarded.
Finally there was only a last bedroom, closed.
In fact, locked from the outside, with a padlock screwed between door and frame.
“Kick it in,” said Ron. “We’ll pay for it later.”
Jean Chandler gave it a kick and her foot bounced off.
“More time in the gym for Agent Jeannie,” said Fields, with a snort.
“I can do it,” Jean said, this time setting herself more correctly, aiming higher to bring more stress on the joinery of the screws to the wood of door and frame. She kicked, the door flew open, and they stepped in.
“Jesus Christ,” said Ron.
4
A few hours later, in the press briefing auditorium of the FBI headquarters building in Washington DC, Nick stepped to the podium, almost blinded by the lights. He could sense the seething crowd in the darkness. He went to the lectern, cleared his voice, tested the microphone. Then he stood by to be introduced by Phil Price, the Bureau’s public affairs officer, as “Nick Memphis, Special Agent in Charge of Task Force Sniper, with, as we said, important new information.”
Nick leaned to the microphone.
“Thank you all for coming. Are we ready? Jimmy, hand out the circulars and the release; make sure everyone gets one. All right, as Phil said, I have information. I am here to announce that we have just obtained an arrest warrant in the deaths of Joan Flanders, Mitch Greene, Jack Strong, and Mitzi Reilly.”
A wave of excitement radiated from the gathered reporters, as all squirmed forward on their seats.
“The warrant names Carl R. Hitchcock, sixty-seven, of Jacksonville, North Carolina, as prime suspect in the felonies. I should add that Hitchcock, a highly trained, experienced, and decorated marine sniper with a lot of combat experience, is to be approached with extreme caution, and I say this to law enforcement too. He is an exceedingly dangerous man, possibly the most dangerous man the Bureau has sought since Baby Face Nelson in 1934. He was credited with ninety-three kills in Vietnam in a 1969-1970 tour of duty and was one of the most accomplished of the marine snipers in that war. Here’s his picture.”
Nick stepped aside, and behind him, where the seal of the FBI had been projected, the image of a man swam into focus. It was a hard, lean face, dominated by hawklike eyes furious in their concentration, completely Scots-Irish, Appalachian-bred, from a hardscrabble farm or vertical plantation. In older days, the cruel word “hillbilly” would have applied to such concentration knitting the brow, the bricklike chin, the eyes so close together. Nowadays, the snarky of the world would apply the word “redneck” or even “trailer trash.” The planes of the face were all vertical slashes; the eyebrows thick, the nose meaty, the mouth a grim cipher. He wore the dress uniform of the United States Marine Corps with the saucer cap squared away atop his white sidewall, the brow low to his dark eyes. The tunic was immaculate, the chest festooned with medals and awards.
“This was taken in 1974, the week he retired as a master sergeant. He’d served the Corps for twenty-three years, did three tours in Vietnam, the last as a sniper and platoon sergeant with Scout/Sniper Company, Second Battalion, Third Marines near Huu Toc, just off the DMZ. He was in combat nearly every day for thirteen months. He was shot at a lot. In his other tours he was a military policeman and the platoon sergeant of a line infantry company. He has three Purple Hearts as well as the Silver Star, which was awarded him for removing men from a burning tracked vehicle at considerable risk and in considerable pain, as he had sustained forty percent first-degree burns. You can see that his service record is impeccable, the stuff of heroism and sacrifice at its highest level. That is why no one here is anything but saddened by this development.”
A new face appeared. It was clearly the same, though the discipline had eased, the eyes were merry, there was more flesh. From the angle it was clear he’d been snuggling with someone, a wife probably, and the old warrior was happy.
“This is our most recent picture of Sergeant Hitchcock. It was taken three years ago before the death of his wife, Mavis. We’ve cropped her out of the picture. But this is the man we’re hunting today.”
“Can you outline the case?” came a call from the darkness.
“Briefly. Based on intelligence derived from a canvass of sniper and SWAT and other long-range shooting communities, we quickly obtained information that Sergeant Hitchcock had been depressed of late and hadn’t been seen in two weeks. We obtained a search warrant, and at four this afternoon, a Bureau team with the help of local and state law enforcement agencies in Jacksonville, North Carolina, served it in his domicile. We found a room with photos on the wall of several of the victims as well as others in the antiwar movement of forty years ago. We found the number ninety-seven drawn on walls, pads of paper, on the photos themselves, all over the room. We found computer records suggesting a great deal of research into the lives and whereabouts of various antiwar movement figures, particularly Joan Flanders, but also Strong and Reilly. There was less on Mitch Greene, but he was included. We found gun oil, cleaning rods, ammunition cases, and a case of.308 Federal Match 168-grain hollow point boat tail cartridges, of the sort our forensics people have ID’d as used in the four shootings. Four boxes, eighty rounds, were missing. We found the paperwork for a Treasury Department stamp tax of two hundred dollars for a class III device, approved by ATF, called a suppressor, which you would call a silencer. We found packaging for that device from its manufacturer, SureFire Inc., as well as an invoice for the costs to thread the muzzle of a new Krieger
