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So, why would someone do that?

She glanced at Gabe. He was frowning. She thought he was not convinced of Donnie's innocence.

But although she thought Donnie was a sadist of note, she did believe he'd been here all night, thanks to the state of his car.

So she lowered her gun.

"Get the hell out of here," she said. "And if your girlfriend has any sense, she'll never allow you back in."

She kicked the keys over to him. He bent and picked them up from the dirt. Then he ran for the Jeep, and a moment later, he was gone, gravel spraying from under his tires as he accelerated out of the parking lot.

Cora walked over to Gabe.

"You think we should have let him go?" he asked doubtfully.

"Yeah," she said. She slipped an arm around him, held him close for a moment. "I took a look at the car. To me, with those frosted windows, it seemed like it had been there all night. But he's given us something to think about."

"What's that?"

Cora tried to explain the creeping sense she was having that they were all out of options. They’d identified the two main people who were known for being involved in hazing. Both of them had alibis. And the other recruits, the ones who had been hazed, were weak people.

They were taking their share of punishment from people on the base, and everyone knew it. Cora wasn’t seeing, now, why anyone on base would see the need to kill them. Why had a murderer suddenly started to do that?

Now that she was thinking about it, there was another possible explanation that made more sense.

"I'm wondering if we're looking along the wrong lines. Maybe it wasn't anyone on base. Maybe someone is sneaking back to base and doing these killings because they want to take revenge on weak recruits. When he said that, I felt some things slot into place in my mind."

Now, Gabe gave a slow nod of understanding.

"If someone was treated badly, if they were kicked out for being weak and couldn't take it, maybe they're trying to punish others. Like a weird kind of logic that if he couldn't be there, nor could they?"

Cora nodded. "Exactly. I was starting to think about why a murderer would suddenly have done this. And maybe the answer is that it’s someone who recently left. Who was discharged from the Army. We need to start talking to people who were kicked out or who left because they couldn't handle it. That makes it more likely that they would have had a trigger point, a reason to start these killings."

"And it would be someone who still lives near here. Who'd have had access to the base and been able to sneak in and out," Gabe said. Now, Cora could see he was warming to her theory. So was she.

"So we could start with the most recent discharges and narrow it down from there?" he asked.

Cora nodded. "Discharges from the Army are not a secret. That information should be available. I have contacts who can help. It might take a while, but they should be able to get information on who left this base in the past few months. They might even be able to find out why."

"Honorable or dishonorable discharge?" Gabe asked.

"Exactly," Cora said. "Dishonorable, to me, would be the bigger red flag. We need to make some urgent calls now, and find out what the hell this is about."

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Cora made the calls while Gabe got the coffee. Not only coffee. He also brought back two bowls of fruit salad.

Fruit salad? That was unexpected, and it touched her heart. It was actually healthy. She remembered the conversation they’d had over the pizza, that junk food had its place but wasn’t for every day. She felt pleased that he’d remembered it, too.

"Thank you," she said.

"Pleasure." He set everything down and got into the chair next to hers.

"Okay, so I talked to a friend who works in the Army records department," Cora said, taking a sip of her coffee. "She said that there were four discharges from this base in the past six months. Two of them were honorable, just old timers moving on who’d done their time. One was general, and one was dishonorable. I don’t think we need to go back beyond that." She checked her scrawled notes again. “In fact, the two general and dishonorable discharges are more recent. They were in the past two months.”

"So the general and dishonorable discharges are probably where we need to focus?" Gabe asked.

"Yes. I would think so," Cora said.

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