CHAPTER 58 Sampson
Sampson
I FIND ANNA RIZZO in front of her computer screen, as usual. She sits up and brightens a bit when I walk in. I have to admit I brighten a bit too. She has that effect on me.
“Where have you been, stranger?” she asks.
“On a trip down memory lane.”
“Meaning what?”
I quickly brief Rizzo on my talks with Lisa Phillips and Gina Maine, the two women who seem to know our suspect Aiden Phillips best. “They both say he couldn’t have done it.”
“Well, I say let’s follow the evidence.”
“So what’s going on here?” I ask. “Why did you text me?”
Rizzo picks up a sheaf of papers and shakes it in my direction. “Initial reports from the FBI and ATF forensics teams. Other than the newspaper clippings and the Claymore, the place was totally clean.”
“What do you mean? Didn’t we get a blood match on the broken mirror?”
“Yes, but that just proves Phillips was there, which we already knew. According to the reports, there were no traces of C-4. No traces of fuel or fertilizer. No wires, no fuses, no electronics, nothing. No bomb-making material at all.”
“Are we surprised? That was his crib, not his workshop.”
“I know, I know. But there should have been something there.”
“You mean trace evidence.”
“Exactly. If he’d been working with C-4 or ammonium nitrate, he should have transferred it to the sheets and towels. We took apart the toilet, the sink trap, the shower. But there was nothing.”
“So maybe he wore PPE while he worked. Or showered someplace else.”
Rizzo tosses down the reports. “All we know for sure is that Aiden Phillips was in the room and that he was obsessed with the bombings.”
“And that he planted a Claymore mine in his hideout. It could have taken out the assault team. It could have ended you and me both.”
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” says Rizzo. “What if that loose trip wire wasn’t a mistake? I mean, would a master bomb maker be that careless? What if the Claymore was never meant to go off?”
“That’s a pretty dangerous kind of mind game.”
“I don’t think we’re dealing with a totally rational mind.”
I roll a chair over next to Rizzo’s. “From what Lisa and Gina told me, Aiden Phillips is a very angry man.”
Rizzo nods. “Combat vet with anger issues. Hostile toward authority. Definitely fits the profile. At least, that’s what the experts would say.”
“But you’re not convinced.” I can read it in her face.
Rizzo turns in her chair. She points to the framed bit of charred American flag, the one I’d noticed on my first visit.
She clears her throat. “At one point in my deployment, my unit was responsible for a stretch of highway outside Jalalabad. Our job was to locate IEDs and dig them up or detonate them every morning before the convoys passed through.”
I was on that road myself many times. Pros like Anna Rizzo kept me from being killed more than once. “You were doing God’s work,” I tell her.
“One day,” Rizzo continues, “I just had a feeling. We’d already done one sweep that morning, but I wanted to go out again.
The CO said no. The experts had told him that they’d just reached a truce with a local tribal leader and that the road was safe.
He told me that going back would disrespect the elder, show that we didn’t trust him.
So I shut up and stood down. The next convoy that went out got hit. Multiple KIAs.”
Rizzo taps the frame over the charred scrap of flag. “That came from the lead Humvee. About all that was left. It’s my little reminder: Never trust the experts.”