The Summer House Page 5

  A groan and Corporal Barnes seems to come awake. He whispers, “Ah, crap, not again, Ruiz. Hey, Ruiz, knock it off.” The snoring increases, and Barnes kicks the barred door to his cell, making it rattle. “Ruiz, wake up! Or roll over! Christ…”

  Jefferson keeps an eye on the situation. The jail here consists of six cells, built back when black-and-white television was still the rage. Old-fashioned bars and locks, concrete beds with thin foam mattresses, single wool blankets, foam pillows with a case thin enough to see through. Stainless-steel commodes and sinks. His orange uniform is starched, smelling of detergent.

  “Sergeant, you awake over there?” Barnes asks.

  “I am.”

  Another voice comes out of the darkness. “Me too. Jesus, when Ruiz starts sawing wood…”

  The fourth and youngest member of his squad, Specialist Vinny Tyler, is from Idaho. Skinny but, by God, can that kid hump the gear when need be, especially climbing those rock escarpments that seemed to rise klick after klick, right up into the clouds.

  A cough and a hack. Ruiz—originally from personnel recovery—snorts and wakes up. His cell is across the corridor from the other three. “Hey, what’s going on?” he says. “What did I miss?”

  Barnes says, “Nothing much. Miss Sullivan County trotted through here in a see-through nightie, handing out coffee and doughnuts.”

  Ruiz yawns loudly. “Fine by me. I hate doughnuts.”

  Jefferson smiles as there’s low laughter from his men, and he thinks, Hey, cops out there surveilling us with hidden cameras, try to figure that mood out. It’s a good fire team, handpicked by him, one of the best, roughest, and finest in the company. He knows their strengths, their weaknesses, and, most important—right now—their family status. None are married, none have kids, and that’s a good thing not to have in the back of one’s mind when chasing the Taliban through ravines.

  Or facing serious trouble stateside.

  Save for him. His wife died two years back from ovarian cancer, and her daughter—his stepdaughter, Carol—is under the care of an aunt in Savannah and is mending at a treatment center in Hilton Head.

  His team is lean and mean, just the way he wants it.

  Tyler calls out, “Staff Sergeant Jefferson?”

  “Right here,” he says.

  “Everything…everything’s gonna be fine, right? You’re sure, right?”

  Jefferson thinks of that old house with the filth inside and the yells and shouts, and he knows Tyler is scared. It’s one thing to fly hot into an LZ or to take fire from a tree line or to make a dynamic entry into some rock-and-dirt farmhouse over there in Afghanistan.

  But this is here, this is CONUS, this is the blessed safety zone.

  “Everything is going to be fine,” he says. “Don’t you worry none.”

  Ruiz says, “Hey, Specialist?”

  Tyler says, “Yeah, Ruiz, what is it?”

  Ruiz swears in Spanish. “You second-guess the sergeant one more time, the first chance I get, I break your freakin’ nose.”

  Chapter 11

  SPECIAL AGENT MANUEL SANCHEZ is sitting next to Special Agent Connie York as she drives the rental Ford sedan down a bumpy dirt road, and Manuel is holding on to the door handle, trying very hard not to upchuck his morning breakfast of greasy sausage, eggs over easy, and grits. Grits! He has yet to figure out the attraction of grits—just a fancy name for mush. And beans for breakfast? Not here, not in this place.

  At the entrance to this dirt road was a wrought-iron metal pole—pockmarked with rust—and dangling to the side was a very worn wooden sign with painted carved letters saying THE SUMMER HOUSE 1911.

  In the rear of the sedan, Major Cook—sitting so his injured left leg is stretched out—says, “Connie, you can slow it down.”

  “Sir, we’re running up against the clock. I think we’re almost—yep, there it is.”

  Manuel knows what Connie means about the clock, because he’s been here in Georgia less than six hours, and after the rushed briefing before breakfast, he already feels like he and the rest of the squad are a day behind. Four Rangers in jail, seven civvies dead—including a two-year-old baby girl!—and pretty soon reporters will be dogging their every step.

  Connie brakes the Ford to a halt and dust rises, then they all get out, Major Cook struggling for a few seconds with his cane. Connie and he pretend not to notice, though he enjoys noticing Connie. In the morning heat she’s discarded her black jacket, and the slacks are pretty tight around her curvy bottom, and the white blouse is clinging nicely to her torso.

  But Manuel knows better than to look too much at his fellow special agent, because he’s still deeply in love with his wife, Conchita, back home in East LA with their three girls, a sweet little home in a relatively quiet neighborhood.

  Besides, Connie is wearing her Army-issue SIG Sauer in a waist holster and is a better shot than he is.

  As he and Connie wait for the major to join them, Manuel examines the old two-story house. At one time it was probably a destination to be proud of, a place to unwind from the city. Two wooden pillars at the front, black roof and black shutters, wide wooden door in the center. But the paint is faded, shingles are missing from the roof, and the pillars are cracked and sagging. There’s yellow-and-black crime-scene tape fluttering across the door, along with an official sheriff’s department adhesive seal pressed against the doorjamb.

  Two pickup trucks are parked nearby, along with a Sentra whose trunk is being held closed by a length of frayed clothesline. A light-blue Volvo sedan with a Delta Air Lines parking sticker on the windshield is set some meters away, like the driver was concerned the run-down vehicles here would somehow infect it.

  In every direction, except the dirt road they just came down, there’s nothing save brush and tall pine trees, though through the brush at the far end of the lot there looks to be a body of water. Manuel frowns. Too much emptiness, too many trees. He grew up in a crowded LA neighborhood, joined the Police Academy, and went over to the Army when the police department was shedding personnel to balance its budget, plus the Army at the time was promising a hefty enlistment bonus.

  “Looks damn empty and quiet, Major,” he says.

  “True,” Cook says. “Connie?”

  She glances down the dirt road. “Odd. Only one real entry in and out. You come in for a hit, and you leave yourself open for trouble if a UPS truck or some lost soul comes down the road. It could block you, get people curious why you’re here.”

  In the distance a dog barks.

  “Let’s take a look around,” Cook says, and he leads the way, leaning heavily on his cane. Manuel and Connie follow.

  It doesn’t take long. The perimeter is trashy, with discarded tires, rusty fifty-five-gallon drums, piles of lumber and chicken-coop wire, and sodden pizza boxes. Manuel wonders if the ghosts of the rich folks who built this place mourn the once-perfect yard. On the far side of the house one of the windows is open, and from another window a rusting air-conditioning unit is sagging on supporting two-by-fours, looking like it could fall at any moment.

  One and then two helicopters roar overhead.

  The other two windows on that side are closed, and so are the ground-floor windows on both sides. One of the windows is covered with plastic.

  After returning to the front, Manuel says, “I don’t like that single door, Major.”

  “Tell us why.”

  He says, “Like the dirt road. Only one way in or out. With a dynamic entry, rolling in, you’d think they’d use a ladder, smash one of the first-floor windows, come in through both the door and the windows.”

  Cook says, “This is Georgia. Lots of firearms in private hands. Maybe they thought rolling in through the windows exposed them more. That door looks like it was breached by explosive charges. You do that, folks in tight quarters like this, in a small house like this, they might run to the rear when the door blows open. That means you’re funneling your targets into one area.”

  “Maybe,” C
onnie says, and Manuel knows she’s looking at the scene with the same cop eyes he is, though her earlier time was with the Virginia State Police—not as difficult or as tough as the LAPD. “I wish the sheriff hadn’t been such a bitch. I’d love to go inside.”

  Manuel turns at the sound of a loud car engine, getting louder, and roaring down the dirt road is a brown-and-white Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department cruiser, bouncing up and down in the dust, and Cook says, “Well, let’s see what happens if we talk nice to the sheriff.”

  The cruiser skids to a halt, and Manuel sees a woman in her fifties jump out, face red with anger, wearing jeans and a black polo shirt, and she yells out, “Damn it, Major, I told you I wasn’t going to let you into the goddamn crime scene! What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

  Cook looks pretty damn calm, and he says, “You told us we couldn’t go inside. We’re not. We’re outside, looking in.”

  The sheriff strides forward, fists on her hips. “You like to play games, Major, is that it? Well, tell you what. I got some friends in DC, and I can play games, too, including getting your whole goddamn crew out of my county and back on the first plane to Dulles!”

  Chapter 12

  LIEUTENANT JOHN HUANG of the US Army Medical Corps gets out of the rented Ford sedan, pulled into a narrow parking space in front of the Ralston Police Department. On the small front lawn, memorials listing Ralston’s war dead from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War and all the way up to Vietnam share space with poster-board campaign signs for various offices.

  Captain Allen Pierce joins him on the cracked pavement. It’s not even 8:00 a.m. and the shade of the large oak in the park across the street is not large enough to protect them from what is going to be one hell of a hot day. Down a ways is a Southern Baptist church, and exuberant singing is coming from the building. John shakes his head. Twice in the past five years he’s gone to overcrowded Hong Kong for extended family reunions and thinks the residents there would smile in delight at seeing so much empty and available space.

  “What do you think, Allen?” he asks. Officially Allen outranks him as a captain, but since Allen’s a lawyer and he’s a psychiatrist, they decided months ago they could drop the ranks and the Yes, sir and No, sir while working in the field.

  “Think?” Allen asks, reaching into the car, retrieving his briefcase. Like him, Allen is wearing a two-piece dark-blue suit with black shoes and a white shirt, no necktie. “I think you and I have just increased this town’s diversity by twenty percent. Come on, Doc, let’s see if someone’s awake at the jail.”

  There is a single dark-blue Ralston police cruiser parked in the lot, along with a red Dodge Colt stained with rust and mud. A narrow concrete path takes them to the rear of the brick, two-story building, where RALSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT is painted in gold on a glass door.

  John tries the door. It’s locked.

  “I like the look of that,” Allen says, coming up next to him, reading aloud the paper sheet directing emergency, after-hours, and weekend contact to the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department. “Small town, small crime.”

  “Except for the four Rangers, stuck in there, charged with slaughtering seven civilians,” John says, still not wanting to believe on an emotional level that Rangers could do something so horrid in the States, but also knowing from cold, clinical experience that anything is possible.

  Including the slaughter of civilians.

  “There’s a doorbell,” John says. “Give it a push.”

  Allen pushes it twice, and before his third try a shadow appears behind the door. The door is unlocked and pushed open, and a plump young man wearing black-rimmed glasses, gray trousers, and a blue uniform shirt with no name tag or shield says, “Yeah? You guys lost or something?” He has keys in one hand and a coffee mug in the other, bright red with yellow letters saying OFFICIAL BIKINI INSPECTOR.

  John thinks, Yeah, lost in time, about five decades, and Allen says, “I’m Captain Allen Pierce, United States Army, and this is Lieutenant John Huang. We’re here to see the four Rangers.”

  The door is being held open by the man’s hip, and he takes a sip from his coffee mug before saying, “You guys have an appointment?”

  John says, “No, we don’t.”

  “You’ve spoken to Chief Kane about coming here?”

  Allen says, “No, we haven’t. We got in late last night.”

  The man says, “You got badges or something?”

  John takes out his leather badge case from an inside coat pocket, shows it to the jail attendant, and Allen does the same. The jail attendant rubs his chin with the hand holding his keys and says, “Well…I guess the chief needs to okay this. But he’s not here.”

  Allen smiles, but John sees how his fellow investigator is nearly gritting his teeth. “So where is he? Can you call him?”

  The young man looks surprised, like both he and Allen should know what’s going on. “Fellas, it’s deer-hunting season for muzzle-loaders. The chief is out by Sweeney’s Tract by now…and there ain’t no cell phone coverage out there.”

  Allen’s smile is getting icier, and John says, “Sir, if I may…We’re not here to cause any trouble. We’re here to help those four men. Now, we know they’ve been charged with horrible crimes. We understand that. But the captain here is an Army lawyer, and I’m an Army doctor, and we’ve been ordered to see the men, to talk to them, to send a report back to Washington.”

  John knows what he’s said is 50 percent true, 50 percent bullshit, but he hopes the magic words of Army, ordered, and Washington just might work.

  The jail attendant says, “You’re here to help, then?”

  Allen says, “Sir, absolutely.”

  John has a guilty thought that this is probably one of the few times this pudgy young man has ever been called sir.

  He says, “You stay here. I’ll be right back.” With coffee cup still in hand, he steps back in, locks the door, and then disappears from sight.

  Allen says, “Looks like it worked.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me again, how do you do it?” Allen asks. “Me, I’ve got law books and online records to help me puzzle out legal crap, years of precedents, and judges out there to kick me in the nuts if I stray too far. But you?” Allen taps the side of his head. “All between your ears, Doc, trying to figure out what’s going on with some other guy’s brain. Don’t know how you do it.”

  “There are degrees and learning on our end, too,” John says, feeling uncomfortable in the heat.

  “Yeah, but I know enough about psychiatry to know that every ten or so years there’s a big upheaval that turns everything upside down. Lawyers? Man, we’re still working off a document that King John signed more than a thousand years back. How do you do it?”

  Like a PowerPoint presentation, faces of past patients he talked to after joining the Army come to him, men and women, young and old, privates to colonels, all sizes and shapes and colors, but one thing is the same for each of them: their eyes. Each has the same dull, blank look of someone who has gone into the abyss and is trying so desperately to climb out.

  And he, Dr. John Huang of Stanford and the US Army Medical Corps, is lying along the lip of a precipice, reaching a hand out, anxious to rescue his patient down there in the darkness, and also desperately hoping that, listening to the bloody horrors they took part in and witnessed, he won’t also be pulled down.

  John says, “I don’t know. It’s a gift, I guess.”

  The shadow reappears, the door is unlocked, and this time it’s opened only a foot or so.

  The jail attendant stands in the gap, nervous, face pale, no longer holding the kitschy coffee cup.

  “Sorry, fellas, none of them wants to see you,” he says. “You need to leave. Now.”

  Chapter 13

  I WAIT FOR Sheriff Williams to take a breath and I step forward, keeping my voice soft and low. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Sheriff, and with all due respect, I’m not here to play games.” />
  “You got one funny goddamn way of showing it,” she says, nearly spitting out the words.

  I say, “Sheriff, you have to admit you placed us in a box. You told me we couldn’t get access to the crime scene. I respect that. If I didn’t, then I would have had Special Agent Sanchez”—I gesture to him, standing about three meters away—“knock that door down and let us in. I didn’t do that.”

  The sheriff folds her arms. “A goddamn good thing you didn’t or you and yours would be getting processed right now in my county jail.”

  I smile, nod, trying to maintain a reassuring look. “I respect that, and appreciate that, Sheriff. Now, if I may, we’re all here. It’s still early on a Sunday morning. You’ve been active-duty, you’ve been exposed to enemy fire and danger in Iraq. Not many people can say that, now, can they? And you know that out in the field you have to bend sometimes to get your job done.”

  Sheriff Williams lifts an eyebrow. “Like me bending to let you into the crime scene?”

  “Sheriff, my detachment and I are here on official business. We need to get into that house. And I’m just asking you—from one Army vet to another—to allow us in.”

  I wait, then a slight smile appears on her previously hard face, and she lets her arms fall free. “You’re a slippery and smart one, I’ll give you that. All right, we go in, but no photos, nothing taken from the house, you follow my lead.”

  “Absolutely.”

  She nods to me. “And don’t forget, Major, I’m a slippery and smart one, too.”

  I follow her to the wide wooden steps leading to the door of the old home, and she removes the yellow-and-black police tape and gently drapes it on a railing. Up at the door she turns and says, “Years and years ago this was a famous place in our little town. It belonged to a rich fella named Callaghan, owned a shipping company over in Savannah. There’s a little lake nearby, and he and his family and rich friends loved coming here during the summer, ’fore air-conditioning came here.” She shakes her head. “Yeah, a nice little historical place. Poets, writers, politicians—they all made their way here. Including FDR, like I said earlier. And then the Callaghan family got hit hard during the Great Depression, had to give it up and other properties, and from generation to generation, it came to this. Being rented to a bunch of losers by some property management company. Okay, let me give you a bit of a timeline before we go in.”