Author: Craig Estes

Publisher: Trafford Publishing

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1553693965

From a new author comes a mystery that encompasses four decades of brutal murder and betrayal among a group of neighborhood friends who rise to prominence, wealth and fame, but cannot escape the choice each made about his role in this nation's longest and least understood military campaign. TROOP 1204 On a hot summer California night in 1958, someone brutally slit the throat of a Boy Scout and carved a gruesome murder signature across the twelve year old's forehead. Now, 40 years after that horrific overnight campout, another member of Troop 1204 turns up dead in Arizona with the same latticework pattern of forehead carvings, and the police look to the surviving scouts for their killer. The latest victim, an international film idol, brings worldwide attention to the 1204 troop roster, which includes a policeman, a TV news anchor, a university professor and a doctor, as well as two lawyers and a United States Congressman. The authorities are especially interested in Joshua Hilliard, the only scout known to be in Arizona at the time of the second killing. Hilliard, a Washington, D.C. urban design architect and decorated Vietnam War veteran, sets out to solve the crimes and clear his name. Teaming up with his wife, Carla, a high powered D.C. attorney, he retraces his life and the lives of the other ten surviving scouts, working against time to find the killer before he is indicted for the murders of his childhood friends, the two amateur sleuths confront their past as they fight for their future. In the course of their investigation, they discover how the war has effected their friends' lives and their own feelings toward each other since Joshua's return from Vietnam. As new murders occur and old ones come to light, Josh wages a battle with long dormant memories of his tour in country while Carla comes face to face with her husband's old combat adrenaline rush and her own sexual reawakening as well.