The Summer House

by James Patterson

  I look at Connie, whose hands are firmly gripping the steering wheel.

  “Sir, I’m getting some thoughts here, and I hate to bring them up.”

  “Speak, Connie. Don’t hold back.”

  “You’ve got a Ranger squad that raises hell in the States. Other platoon members and Rangers in their company don’t like them. They think this squad gets away with everything. Even their CO won’t back them up…That’s what he said, right, when we met him?”

  “You’re right, Connie,” I say. “Go on.”

  She passes a Walmart tractor-trailer truck and keeps on speeding.

  “Then the rumors start, the stories, the tales,” she says. “Other Rangers get drunk at local pubs and roadhouses, swap tales about what they heard the staff sergeant and his squad did in Afghanistan. ‘Can you believe it?’ they say. ‘Jefferson and his Ninjas got away with it again.’”

  I keep my mouth shut. When an investigator who works for you starts talking, you let them talk. You don’t want to disturb whatever slender thread their mind and gut have come up with.

  “There’s resentment,” she says. “Anger. They know what happened in Afghanistan. They think the Ninjas got away with it. All right, a couple of them think. Let’s set them up here in the States. Do something that can’t be overlooked, can’t be ignored.”

  I say, “So another squad of Rangers committed the murders?”

  “That’s right,” she says.

  “A hell of a stretch,” I say. “There’s a lot of evidence pointing to this squad. The fingerprints. The woman with her dog. The shell casings matching Jefferson’s pistol. The surveillance video from the store. One of the men in the house being the drug dealer for Staff Sergeant Jefferson’s stepdaughter. Jefferson telling Dr. Huang he knew what The Summer House looked like. The younger Ranger, Tyler, expressing guilt to Huang.”

  Connie nods. “But the fact they were accused of exactly the same crime in Afghanistan, Major…there has to be a connection. Something.”

  My phone rings and I pick it up, seeing the ID marking AGENT M SANCHEZ.

  “Cook,” I say. “What do you have, Sanchez?”

  His voice is clear and right to the point. “Nothing, Major,” he says. “Wendy Gabriel is gone from her house. And so’s her dog.”

  I close my eyes for a brief second. “Anything else?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Her car is still there. I gained access to the interior of the house and didn’t find any blood spatter or signs of a struggle or any evidence something bad happened. She and her dog…they’re gone.”

  “All right,” I say. “Agent York and I are en route to Briggs Brothers Funeral Home. Meet us there.”

  “Yes, sir,” he says, and we both disconnect, and Connie gives me a quick glance.

  She says, “Sir?”

  “Still here.”

  “We’ve just found out that the Rangers were accused of a war crime in Afghanistan, something similar to what happened here in Sullivan County. I think we should be trying to find out more about what happened over there. See if we can talk to those few Rangers who haven’t deployed. Ask Captain O’Connell to revisit his sources. I don’t see why we’re still going to look at those bodies in the funeral home.”

  I move my leg, and miracle of miracles, there’s no harsh spasm of pain.

  “We’re going there because that’s our job.”

  Chapter 36

  ONE OF THE REASONS Special Agent Sanchez likes working for Major Cook is because deep down he’s still an NYPD detective, and once Cook got the news about the missing witness, he didn’t waste precious minutes grilling Sanchez on what happened and where Sanchez thought Wendy Gabriel could have gone. There are other matters to address, and now he and the major and Connie York are in the cool basement of Briggs Brothers Funeral Home.

  With them is the owner, Ferguson Briggs, who’s also the duly elected coroner for Sullivan County. He’s a slim, gaunt man with a thick head of black hair combed back and basset-hound eyes and jowls. He’s wearing a white knee-length smock over his black pants, white shirt, and black necktie, and for the fifth time this grim day, he says, “Have you folks seen enough?”

  Sanchez certainly has, but he’s not going to say a word. Before him and Agent York and Major Cook are the fifth and sixth victims of the shooting at the civilian house, and Sanchez sees that York is having trouble keeping it together.

  He doesn’t blame her. This slide-out metal drawer has the young mother—Gina Zachary—and her two-year-old daughter, Polly. Like the other victims, the dead woman has been stripped of her clothing and her body has been washed. Her body is slightly bloated, and her skin is a dead gray-white color. A white sheet is pulled up to her shoulders.

  Thankfully, her little girl is under a smaller sheet, completely covered.

  But Cook surprises him.

  “No, not yet,” he says. “Let’s see the little girl. Polly.”

  It’s like the room has chilled down another ten degrees. Briggs looks surprised, and York says, “Sir, are you sure?”

  “Yes,” he says. “We’re here to find justice. No matter how grim. Mr. Briggs?”

  The funeral home director stiffly walks over, pulls down the sheet. The little girl’s head is turned, thank God. There’s a wound in the center of her little chest, and someone has dressed her in fresh white little-girl panties.

  His eyes tear up, thinking of his own little girls. All that innocence, sweetness, pure little-girl joy…snatched away with a brief, harsh moment of violence.

  The passing seconds hammer hard, and Sanchez waits, hoping to hear something from the major, until thankfully he says, “All right. Pull the sheet back up.”

  Thank God for small favors.

  Briggs steps forward, pulls the sheet back over the dead girl, and slides the drawer back into the opening, closes the door. The basement is tile and steel and has the heavy smell of formaldehyde and other chemicals. There are two metal examining tables in the center of the room, with drains underneath, and cabinets and shelves on the other side. The room is well lit.

  “Now,” Briggs says, “here’s the last of ’em. Stuart Pike. He’s the gent who was renting The Summer House and who was found in his bed up on the second floor. That girl Gina and her poor little girl, they were both on the floor near the bed. Too bad about that place…all that fine history that happened there and now it’s only gonna be known for all these killings.”

  Sanchez looks at the body and then over to Connie. Her face is almost the color of the dead young man in front of them, probably still in shock at having seen the dead little girl. Sanchez doesn’t think Connie has had much experience with homicide victims, having worked most of her police career with the Virginia State Police. He thinks she probably saw a fair amount of traffic accident victims, but there’s a hell of a lot of difference between looking at someone who was killed in an accident—a tire blowing out at a high rate of speed, for instance—and someone like this guy, shot right in the forehead by someone intent on killing.

  Cook says, “And are the county investigators finished with their examination?”

  “That they are,” Briggs says. “We’ve heard from all the families, and with the investigation complete, we expect we’ll be releasing to them shortly. The poor folks.”

  Sanchez says, “No offense, but the bodies haven’t really been autopsied, now, have they?”

  Briggs shakes his head. “What, you want me to cut them all open and check their stomach contents? Or saw off the top of their heads, take out their brains and weigh them? What the hell would that prove? You’ve seen it with your own eyes how these poor folks died. What else do you want?”

  Sanchez thinks, A complete autopsy and investigation, that’s what we want, and Cook is staring at something. Sanchez tries to see what.

  The sheet has fallen off the left side of the drawer, exposing Pike’s right arm.

  “Excuse me,” Cook says. “I want to look at this.”

  The major limps o
ver and leans his cane against the metal tray. He peers down at the right arm, and Sanchez steps in next to him. Connie stands on the other side of the major.

  Sanchez sees a slight lump on the man’s forearm. Cook gently picks up the arm and runs his fingers up and down the cold gray skin. He says, “Do you see it?”

  Connie says, “No,” but Sanchez thinks he knows what the major has learned.

  “Let me try, sir,” Sanchez says, and like handing off some dreadful prize, Cook holds out the arm to Sanchez. The skin is cold indeed, but there’s something wrong with the wrist. He can actually move it from a midpoint down the length of the forearm.

  “It’s broken,” Sanchez says. “Midway down.”

  Cook limps around the body of the dead man and goes to his left arm. As before, he lifts up the arm, running his fingers across the forearm.

  “Same here,” the major says. “Broken.” He looks at the funeral director. “Were his lower wrists bandaged in any way?”

  Bragg rubs at his chin. “I remember so. Both wrists were wrapped up tight with those brown ACE bandages, you know? But no hard cast.”

  Cook places Pike’s left arm back onto the metal tray, pulls the sheet over.

  Connie says, “Both arms broken.”

  “Like someone was sending a message,” Cook says.

  Sanchez looks at the single bullet hole in Pike’s forehead. “This guy was on the second floor, in bed. Now we know why he didn’t get out of bed when the door blew open and the gunfire started. He probably couldn’t move quick enough.”

  Sanchez follows the major’s lead, replacing the dead right limb back under the sheet. “Breaking both arms…I can see that, boss. You want to hurt someone for hurting your daughter.”

  Connie cuts in. “That’s a fair message, for an Army Ranger who’s going after the drug dealer who hurt his stepdaughter. But killing everyone in the house…what kind of message is that?”

  Cook limps back, retrieves his cane, leans on it, and then nods to the funeral director. “All right,” he says. “Now we’re done.”

  Chapter 37

  AT THE RALSTON town jail, Police Chief Richard Kane isn’t having a good day, and Dr. John Huang really doesn’t give a crap. The two are in Kane’s office—both standing, since the chief didn’t take a chair and Huang wasn’t about to do so and have this beefy cop with a thick moustache stand over him—and Kane says, “The hell do you think you’re doing, coming in here again, wanting to see one of them Rangers?”

  Huang says, “My job—what else?”

  Kane says, “You embarrassed me by coming in yesterday and foolin’ one of my jail attendants. You think you can come back here today and do the same thing?”

  “Not at all,” Huang says.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “To interview Specialist Tyler,” he says.

  “Why should I let you do that?” Kane says, his voice louder. “Why should I show you that courtesy when you faked your way in here on Sunday?”

  “Because I already did it once.”

  Kane shakes his head. “Don’t mean I have to let you do it again.”

  Huang says, “Your choice, of course. But I’m here as part of an official Army investigation as to what happened over in Sullivan, and you’ve got the four suspects in custody. How do you like all the news media attention, Chief? There’s about a half dozen reporters camped out in your parking lot, all wanting to talk to you and find out how the Rangers are being treated.”

  Kane crosses his thick arms over his dark-blue uniform shirt. “I can handle them.”

  “I’m sure you can now,” Huang says. “But what do you think would happen if I were to go out there and tell those reporters that the Ralston police chief is now blocking an official Army investigation? And that the day before, his staff allowed me to do my job but now he isn’t? What do you think those reporters are going to think? I’ll tell you what they’ll think. One of the nastiest words a politician or police official never wants to hear: cover-up. You think there are a lot of reporters out there now, wait until I go out and have a press conference, accusing you and your jail staff of blocking the Army’s investigation.”

  Kane looks like he’s about to gnaw on his moustache in his anger.

  Huang goes on and says, “Or you let me see Specialist Tyler, like I did yesterday, and when I’m through, I’ll go out and have a quick press conference with the news media, tell them that Chief Richard Kane is treating his prisoners perfectly and that you are bending over backward to cooperate with the Army. How does that sound?”

  Kane’s eyes are still glaring at Huang, but he says, “You’re a goddamn slippery one, aren’t you?”

  “Only if I’m coming out of a pool.”

  Kane says, “You think you’re so smart, then? Huh? Like all those Asians, all you do is study twenty-four/seven, don’t have a dating life, don’t do anything outside of schoolwork and books. Couldn’t even change a car tire if you had to.”

  With a smile, Huang says, “I started dating girls when I was fourteen, I run marathons four times a year, and I can cook the best cheeseburger you’ll ever taste. Chief Kane, may I see Specialist Tyler?”

  The chief still looks like he’s having a crappy day, and then he grins and says, “Damn, you’re the first Chinese fella I’ve ever met. Glad you’re an American and on our side. Come along, get your ass to the interview room. You already know where it is. I’ll get him out to you presently.”

  Specialist Vinny Tyler is sitting up against the concrete wall in his small cell. Across the way is his fellow specialist Paulie Ruiz, and no surprise, Ruiz is on his side, sleeping and gently snoring. Among other things, Ruiz is known in his squad for always complaining about not getting enough sleep, and when there’s downtime—like here in the Ralston jail, for example—he says he’s going to catch up on a year’s worth of sleep and does just that.

  The rest of the cell area is quiet. Corporal Barnes is barely visible over in his cell, reading a paperback, and Staff Sergeant Jefferson can’t be seen.

  That’s a good thing. Staff Sergeant Jefferson is one of the strongest and most powerful men he’s ever known—both physically and mentally—and Tyler knows he won’t be able to do what he has planned with Jefferson staring him down.

  He picks up a single sheet of paper that’s on top of the metal sink-and-toilet combination. The words have been printed out large. With a pencil he writes in the last sentence:

  I’M SO SORRY.

  Then he scrawls his name and rank.

  Having paper and any writing materials is supposedly forbidden here in this small jail, but one of the jail attendants, Marcy, seems to have taken a liking to him, and when he asked for a sheet of paper and a pencil to write something important, she quietly slid them into his cell.

  And last night, when he told her that the pencil needed sharpening and he didn’t want to bother her and could she provide him with one of those little pencil sharpening tools, she had given him that as well.

  The sheet of paper goes back on the metal commode. He takes the pencil sharpener from under his bunk, thinks of the long days ahead of him, the weeks, the months. He trusts Staff Sergeant Jefferson, believes in Staff Sergeant Jefferson, but Tyler is still so very frightened.

  What if the staff sergeant is wrong? And he goes to prison for the rest of his life? And nearly as bad…suppose he’s dumped out of the Army? What then? A life ahead of changing oil in cars, being a greeter at Walmart, going to a grocery store and deciding which of a dozen cereal brands to buy, while some overweight civvy notes his Ranger cap and wants to butt in and say, Thank you for your service? Never again having that pure rush of being out on some rocky ridge, a bud on your left and a bud on your right, all of you firing and shooting and defending one another?

  No longer?

  Tyler sighs, takes the pencil sharpener, and puts it in his mouth, biting down hard, cracking open the plastic.

  He spits out the remains into his hand.

 
Among the broken blue plastic shards is a shiny little razor blade.

  He thinks it will be sharp enough.

  Huang is in the interview room, waiting, legal pad in front of him and pen in hand, thinking of how he’s going to proceed with this morning’s interview. He made progress yesterday morning with the young Ranger, getting him to open up just a bit, and in that brief opening, Huang saw a way forward. Today he will tell Tyler about other soldiers he’s interviewed in the past, about what those soldiers have seen and done, and the guilt and dreams they’ve carried. Huang will tell Tyler that the guilt and dreams will never fully go away but, with Huang’s and others’ help, the burden can be eased.

  And Huang is desperately hoping at some time in the next hour or so Tyler will give him details of what the burden is and how it came about.

  A siren gets his attention.

  Shouts.

  He puts his pen down.

  Hears men or women running by. More shouts.

  Doors being slammed.

  Huang wants to get up and see what’s going on, but he knows better. He’s gotten back into the jail for an interview by spinning a good story with a sprinkling of medical and Army bullshit, and he doesn’t want Chief Kane to start pushing hard—

  The metal interview door opens, banging into the wall.

  Kane is standing there, breathing hard, face red and beads of sweat running down his cheeks.

  “Sorry to tell you, Dr. Huang, but I can’t arrange your interview with Specialist Tyler.”

  It feels like that metal door has also slammed into Huang’s chest, but he needs to ask the question.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Kane says, “That young Army Ranger just done slit his wrists and killed himself.”

  Chapter 38

  IT’S A GRIM MEETING of my investigators when Huang arrives and tells us what’s just happened over at the Ralston jail. He’s followed by Sanchez, giving us an update about his missing witness. Then I ask Connie to brief the others about our funeral home visit—learning one of the victims had broken wrists—followed by a report on our earlier viewing of the convenience store’s surveillance tape, and I take over at the end, passing on that the four Rangers were accused of committing exactly the same type of civilian massacre in Afghanistan during their last deployment.