Murder in Times Square by William Baer

Author:William Baer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General

FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths

FICTION / Thrillers / Crime
Publisher: Able Muse Press
Published: 2023-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

16. West Point

I was standing next to the statue of George C. Patton, waiting for my “date.”

In the twilight.

I’d arrived at the Point a few hours earlier so I could have some time to roam around campus before slipping into my dress and fixing myself up at Callum Hall, which was across the street. Given the past few days, I much enjoyed my peaceful meanderings, checking out the monuments, stopping at the Gothic chapel, and visiting Trophy Point above the Hudson. It’s hard to believe that this beautiful, bucolic, isolated campus, fifty miles north of New York City, had once been the most important fort in North America, and that a man like Benedict Arnold, whom Washington had trusted implicitly, would have attempted to turn it over to the British in 1780.

But he did.

And failed.

It was humbling to walk the same grounds once walked by the great Revolutionary generals: Washington, Wayne, Greene, Von Steuben, etc. And the place where later academy graduates had prepared for greatness: Grant, Pershing, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Patton, and Schwarzkopf.

But I was visiting the Point for something far less ground-shaking: Flag Day Hop at the famous Thayer Hotel. I’m not much of a dancer, but I love formal affairs, and I love the fact that the cadets still call their dances “hops.” Even though the annual Flag Day Hop takes place in the middle of the summer, most of the cadets are still in the area at Camp Buckner, either undergoing field training or, if upperclassmen, serving as camp instructors. Flag Day is the perfect excuse to take some time off from the rigors of training, dress up, and go to a dance. In this case, the very same dance that Third-Class Cadet Matthew Carlyle had been planning to attend with his girlfriend before a Ruger GP100 had fired a .38 slug into his brain at the top of Times Square One.

Despite the Times Square tragedy, despite the astonishing assassination of Senator Carlyle yesterday afternoon, the Flag Day Hop committee had decided to proceed with tonight’s formal. West Point, of all places, was familiar with soldiering on after tragedy and death. The Long Gray Line had lost 256 graduates in the Civil War alone, and it had a long history of surviving disasters.

The dance would go on.

I’d chosen to meet my date at this particular spot, next to Doubleday Field, because my great-grandfather, whom I never met, served in the “unstoppable” Third Army under George Patton, class of 1909. As a result, I’d grown up admiring Old Blood and Guts, and I’ve always loved this particular West Point statue of the General, as he stares intently ahead, most likely over some battlefield somewhere, probably North Africa, holding field binoculars.

Suddenly a sleek black BMW pulled up to the curb, and Third-Class Cadet John (Jack) Barclay from Bay City, Michigan, got out of his car. He was tall, handsome, and rather rugged looking. He was also, in the late-evening moonlight, perfectly resplendent in his West Point dress uniform.

Earlier this

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