John Puller 02 - The Forgotten

by David Baldacci

  “Back to work?” she asked, looking a little disappointed.

  “Back to work,” he answered.

  CHAPTER 36

  Landry and Puller parted company as Puller answered the phone.

  “Hey, Christine.”

  But it wasn’t Christine. It was a man’s voice. “Agent John Puller?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Colonel Peter Walmsey, that’s who, soldier.” “Yes, sir,” said Puller, automatically snapping to attention even though he was only on the phone. “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “I want to know why you’re calling USACIL to perform work on things unrelated to your duties at CID. That’s what I want to damn well know. Do you view the Army’s premier forensics lab as your personal playpen?”

  Puller licked his lips and pondered how to respond to this. “Would you be referring to my phone call to Ms. Craig?”

  “I would be referring to that, specifically your request that she run down a license plate number for you. And also why a duffel full of investigative equipment owned by this man’s army is on its way to you at Eglin Air Force Base to be used on a matter not involving CID.”

  Shit.

  “I apologize for the misunderstanding, sir.” “So you’re saying it was a misunderstanding? Why don’t you explain that one in a way that doesn’t make me want to prefer official charges against you, Puller?”

  “I observed two men who looked like soldiers following me in Florida, Colonel Walmsey. I requested that Ms. Craig attempt to use reasonable means at her disposal to determine if the men were members of the service. The most expeditious way of doing that seemed to be tracking their vehicle. I acquired the license plate information and communicated that to Ms. Craig.” “Why would Army personnel be following you, Puller?”

  “If I had the answer to that, sir, I would not have involved Ms. Craig.”

  “And the duffel?”

  “Connected to the same matter, sir. I came down here on a family matter. I didn’t bring any equipment with me. If it became necessary for me to initiate an investigation I wanted to be properly outfitted to do so.”

  “When exactly were you going to inform your superior officer of all this?”

  “Once I determined that I had something to report, sir, that involved other military members. But I want to make it clear that I accept full responsibility for this. Ms. Craig was under the impression that I was engaged in authorized work. None of this should reflect on her record, sir.” “You cover for your friends well, Puller, I’ll give you that. But for your information Ms. Craig has been relieved of duty pending completion of an inquiry on this matter.”

  Shit again, thought Puller.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”

  “Not as sorry as she was. Now let’s talk about you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I understand from CID that you’re on authorized leave right now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And that you successfully carried out a commission in West Virginia that saved this country an enormous headache.”

  Puller said nothing.

  “So I’m basically being told that you need to get a pass on this. I don’t like that one bit, Puller. Every soldier should be held to the same standard, don’t you agree?”

  “Yes I do, sir.”

  “And what is that standard?”

  Puller thought he was back in boot camp. “The highest possible standard, sir,” he replied automatically.

  “But that apparently is not how it’s going down in this case. Sounds like bullshit to me, Puller.”

  “Yes, sir, it does.”

  “But you can man up and do something about it. Get your ass up here and take the heat.”

  Puller admired the skill with which the colonel had maneuvered him into a comer.

  “Sir, I would be glad to do that as soon as I have completed my task down here.”

  “What the hell task is that?” said Walmsey, who had apparently not reckoned on this response.

  “My aunt.”

  “Your aunt? What the hell is going on with your aunt?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out, sir.”

  “Can’t you ask her?”

  “I would, sir, but somebody killed her.” “Someone killed your aunt?” Walmsey said skeptically. “Is that why you want your duffel? Is your aunt in the Army?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then I’m apparently not getting through to you, Puller. What you’re planning to do is an unauthorized—”

  It was at this moment that Puller ran out of patience. It was contrary to his nature in speaking with a superior officer, but perhaps his brief time away from the Army had dulled those professional instincts. He would just assume that was the case.

  “Sir, if I may elaborate. My aunt sent my father a letter at the VA hospital where he’s currently staying. The letter stated she was afraid, that things were happening down here that she thought were suspicious. My father asked me to investigate. I came here to do so. I found my aunt dead. Naturally my suspicions were aroused.” When Walmsey next spoke his tone was far less confrontational. “Your father? At the VA hospital?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s not that well, but he’s hanging in there. Even though sometimes he thinks he’s still commanding the ioist.”

  There was a long stretch of silence and then Walmsey said, “Fighting John Puller is your father?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m John Puller Jr.”

  “That was not included in my briefing on this. I can’t imagine why the hell not.”

  Puller could see a certain aide to Colonel Walmsey getting his or her ass reamed over that one.

  “But my father being who he is should not impact this matter at all.”

  “No, it shouldn’t,” said Walmsey in a halting voice.

  “It’s just that my aunt was my father’s only sibling. He took it hard. He was her younger brother. You have siblings, sir?”

  “Two older sisters. Special relationship, big sisters and little brothers.”

  “Yes, sir, so I’ve heard.”

  There was another long pause.

  “Why don’t you carry on down there and we’ll revisit this issue later, Agent Puller.”

  “Yes, sir, thank you, sir. And Ms. Craig?” “Don’t worry about her. I’ll take you at your word that she wasn’t involved in anything that was unauthorized. She’ll be back on duty today.” “Appreciate it, sir.”

  “You tell your father I said hello and convey my best wishes for a speedy recovery.”

  “I will do that, Colonel. Thank you. Uh, any chance on running that license plate down, sir?”

  But the line went dead.

  It didn’t look like the Army was going to be much help with this.

  Puller headed to the Tahoe.

  He needed to get his investigation duffel.

  CHAPTER 37

  The sweat trickled down his neck.

  At eight in the morning he’d already been hard at work for an hour. It was eighty-two degrees with a projected high of nearly a hundred today.

  He was at the same house. He had been told that the grounds here were so extensive that they required a landscaping crew every day. He had taken steps to make sure that he would get the assignment. It had involved payments and promises to people who didn’t give a damn why he wanted to be here. For them it was just an exchange of something for something else. And when you were dealing with folks who had little money, bartering became a way of life. For all they knew he was trying to case the mansion in hopes of robbing it. They did not care about folks stealing from the rich. The rich had everything. They would just print more money.

  He was simply one man working for others. He was paid a wage that could barely keep him alive. And he was one injury away from being homeless.

  As he looked around at the workers next to him, he was actually describing their state of affairs, not his. Money meant nothing to him. He was here for his own purposes and
no other. When he was done he would leave.

  Unless he was dead. Then he would stay in Paradise for eternity.

  He rubbed the sweat from his eyes and commenced clipping a hedge for owners who demanded a precisely trimmed bush. But he also focused on what he had seen the previous night on the beach.

  Those people were lost forever. As soon as they had been taken, it was over. On the boat. On the truck. It didn’t matter. Nothing could break the long chain of ownership, for that’s what it was.

  Chattel.

  The sixteenth century or the twenty-first century, it didn’t really matter. People with power and means would always take advantage of those without them.

  He clipped and thought about his next move.

  He ran his eye along the top of the hedge and at the same time skirted his gaze along the perimeter of the mansion. The same Maserati was parked in the front cobblestone circular drive. He assumed that the young couple had stayed over. Why leave this place if one didn’t have to? He had learned, by asking subtle questions of a house servant who had come out to retrieve the mail, that the interior staff consisted of ten people. These included maids, a chef, someone playing the role of a butler, and various others who worked cheap and were able to live in the servants’ quarters of the grandest home on the Emerald Coast.

  The family who lived here consisted of four people:

  The cash machine husband.

  The pampered second wife.

  The even more pampered son.

  The mother-in-law.

  The cash machine was in his mid-forties, relatively young for having amassed such great wealth. He had not asked the maid how the money had been made.

  He already knew.

  The second wife used to be a runway model, was in her early thirties, and spent most of her time shopping.

  The cash machine’s son—the second wife’s stepson—was seventeen and attended a private boarding school in Connecticut. He had already been accepted at an Ivy League school based more on his father’s largesse to the university than his academic performance. He was now home for the summer playing polo, driving his Porsche, and sowing his wild oats among the available local young women, who were unabashedly competing to one day live in grand houses filled with servants. This he had also found out before coming here.

  The second wife’s mother lived in the lavish guesthouse and was, at least by most accounts, a bitch of massive proportions.

  As he watched, the same woman he had seen by the pool the day before strolled out of the mansion’s rear French doors. She had on a white skirt that showed off her bare, tanned legs, a light blue shirt, and spike backless heels. Her hair fell around her shoulders. Her appearance was quite dressy for this early in the morning. Perhaps she had an appointment.

  He watched as she crossed over to the guesthouse and went inside, perhaps to pay her respects to the resident mother-in-law.

  The rear door to the mansion opened once more and a man stepped out.

  He studied him. About five-eleven, trim, fit, dressed in white shorts that showed off his tanned, muscular calves. He had on leather loafers that looked expensive and no doubt were, and a pale blue patterned long-sleeved Bugatchi shirt. He had left the shirt untucked, no doubt to show that despite his immense wealth he was a casual yet hip man. His hair was brown and wavy with just a touch of gray around the temples.

  The man crossed the grounds and entered the guesthouse.

  He knew who the man was. He was the cash machine. The man owned this estate and everything in it.

  His name was Peter J. Lampert.

  He’d made and lost most of a multibillion- dollar fortune as a hedge fund manager, along with most of the money entrusted to him by his clients. Then he had made another enormous fortune to pay for this place and other assorted toys of the rich. But he had not bothered to recoup his clients’ money.

  That was what bankruptcy was for, he’d responded, when someone asked him if he felt remorse at all for destroying the lives of so many people.

  Lampert, he knew, also had his own private jet, a Dassault Falcon 900LX that was parked at a private airport about thirty minutes from here. Its maximum cabin height was six feet two inches, which meant Lampert could stand up straight inside it, but he couldn’t. Yet he never expected to be on it. Private jets were not meant for the hired help.

  At the end of the estate’s main dock, one hundred feet out to sea in deep water, sat Lampert’s mega-yacht, named Lady Lucky. Lampert had named that after his second wife, whose name was Lucille, but whom everyone called Lucky, because she apparently had been as the second wife of Peter J. Lampert.

  Lucky was currently away, he had been told by the same maid. A shopping trip to Paris and London. Well, the rich had to spend their money on something.

  As he thought about it, it was quite likely that her mother was traveling with her too. If so there would be no reason for anyone to visit the guesthouse.

  Except perhaps for one.

  He worked his way over to the left side of the structure. There were bushes there that required trimming. He managed to look like he was clipping but actually made no noise with his tool. He edged closer to the window. The drapes were partially up. He heard it before he saw them.

  Moans and groans.

  He looked around for security. They did not seem to be in this sector.

  He grew closer to the window, squatting down, trying to shrink his great height.

  He took a peek through the window.

  The woman was now wearing only her shirt. Her skirt was on the bed along with her spike heels. Her panties were down around her bare feet. On her tiptoes, she gripped one of the bed’s four posters, her body bent forward at a forty- five-degree angle.

  Lampert was behind her. He had not bothered to take off his clothes. Apparently he could only be bothered to slide his zipper down. She arched her neck back and was making suitable noises designed to urge on her lover.

  Lampert pushed into her violently, grunted heavily one last time, and then bent forward, supporting himself on her back, totally spent. Panting, he freed himself from her and zipped up his shorts. She turned and kissed him. He fondled and then slapped her bare buttocks.

  Lampert said something that he couldn’t hear, but the woman laughed. A few moments later Lampert was gone. He apparently had other appointments.

  He watched as the woman lay back on the bed, slipped a pill bottle from her shirt pocket, tongued a capsule, and swallowed it. She took off her shirt, walked naked into the bathroom, and emerged about a minute later, her face looking scrubbed.

  He continued observing as she quickly dressed, smoothing out her shirt and zipping up her skirt before slipping on her heels. When she left the room, he came around the corner of the building, stooped down, and started to weed the lawn.

  She stepped from the guesthouse, looked to the right and saw him there. Her features grew brighter when she saw him. She smiled. The smell of sex was all over her. He wondered if she realized that, despite her freshening up. He wondered what the young man she had driven up with in the Maserati would say if he detected evidence of the morning tryst.

  “Hello,” she said.

  He nodded at her, keeping his gaze partially downcast but still watching her.

  “You were here yesterday. What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Mecho.”

  “Mecho? I’ve never heard that name before.”

  “In my country it means ‘bear.’ I am as big as one, you see. I was a big baby, you see, so my father decided to make it official.” He stopped and smiled shyly.

  His English was much better than that, and he was not by nature a shy man, but he did not want her to know that. Mecho was not his given name, but it had been his nickname, precisely because of his great size.

  “What is your country?” she asked.

  “Far away from here. But I like this place. My country is often too cold.”

  She smiled and waved away a fly with her hand. Her smile
was radiant, her cheeks slightly reddened.

  Sex agreed with her, he thought.

  “It’s always warm in Paradise,” she said.

  “Hey!”

  They both looked over to see a burly security guard heading their way. Mecho hastily stood and moved away from her.

  “Hey!” the guard said again as he came up to Mecho. It was the same guard as yesterday. “You’re really trying my patience, bud.”

  The woman said, “I was talking to him. He was doing his work. I asked him a question.”

  The guard looked at her like she was on drugs. “You asked him a question. Why?”

  “Because I wanted to hear his answer,” she said, scowling. “So you can just leave him alone.” The man was about to say something, but seemed to think better of it. “Right, Ms. Murdoch. I was just making sure everything was okay. Just doing my job.”

  “Everything is very okay,” she said sternly. After the guard retreated Murdoch said, “My name is Christina, Mecho. My friends call me Chrissy. It was nice talking to you.”

  As she walked away he watched her. She glanced back once, saw him, and smiled again, tacking on a little wave.

  In that knowing smile he saw something interesting. He was almost certain that she knew he had been watching Lampert and her have sex. And she didn’t seem concerned by it in the least. In fact, she seemed uplifted by it.

  A singularly remarkable woman of great beauty.

  A part of him hoped he would not have to kill her.

  CHAPTER 38

  The trip to Eglin Air Force Base took about thirty minutes. The duffel was where it was supposed to be and Puller signed the necessary paperwork, loaded it into his rental, and drove back to Paradise. Along the way he passed through Destin and eyed Landry’s high-rise.

  That made him remember he needed a new place to stay.

  He arrived back in Paradise around noon.

  He hadn’t missed it for even a minute.

  He made a stop at Bailey’s Funeral Home, where he needed to see his aunt’s body again.