The Summer House
- Автор: Паттерсон Джеймс, Дюбуа Брендан
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: Little, Brown and Company
- ISBN: 978-0-316-53955-5
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Summer House». Краткое содержание книги:
To ensure that justice is done, the Army sends Major Jeremiah Cook, a veteran and former NYPD cop, to investigate. But the major and his elite team arrive in sweltering Georgia with no idea their grim jobs will be made exponentially more challenging by local law enforcement, who resists the Army’s intrusion and stonewall them at every turn.
As Cook and his squad struggle to uncover the truth behind the condemning evidence, the pieces just won’t fit — and forces are rallying to make certain damning secrets die alongside the victims in the murder house. With his own people in the cross-hairs, Cook takes a desperate gamble to find answers — even if it means returning to a hell of his own worst nightmares...
No answer, but once he expertly picks the lock, he still enters the house with his SIG Sauer pistol out in a two-handed grip, just in case.
He blinks his eyes. The stench is burning them.
The voice from the major returns to him:
Find something.
The search is slow, methodical, and sickening.
In the living room thirty-three minutes ago, seeing handwriting on a thick manila envelope hidden underneath two old copies of Glamour magazine, he picked up the envelope and opened it.
Revealing plastic-wrapped stool samples from Toby from a month ago.
That led to a vomiting match out on the porch, soiling his Brooks Brothers jacket, and he has a foul thought of that ice queen, Connie York, being in charge of the unit while the major is in Afghanistan. Sure, according to the records, she is senior to him by about two months, but based on his street experience, he should be running this case, not her.
Now he’s up on the second floor, head light, guts sour, and feeling like he needs an hour-long shower, wishing he could burn his clothes — save for his jacket — when this is done.
But he won’t give up.
Not with the major flying over the Atlantic toward a place so filled with horrors he swore he would never return there.
Sanchez spends just a few minutes in the bathroom, wishing for the light-blue latex gloves he had back in the LAPD, but he finds nothing but old cosmetics and prescription bottles.
From there he goes into the bedroom, follows the same cluttered path leading to the unmade bed, sees two impressions in the stained, crumpled sheet, one smeared with dog hair and what looks to be dog spit. Wonderful.
Sanchez turns, follows a narrower path cleared through the waist-high piles of junk to the bureau at the other end of the room, the top of it clean save for some sheets of paper.
“Idiota,” he whispers. Here, at least, are some things Wendy likes to keep ordered. Recent bills from Georgia Power, Comcast, and AT&T. Envelopes in a neat pile, with handwriting noting, “Pd 8/24, ck #1119.”
One other envelope is apart from the others. Cream-colored and thicker.
The typewritten address is Wendy’s, and the return address is an embossed blue seal and SULLIVAN DISTRICT ATTORNEY.
Sanchez opens the envelope, reads the message on a nice thick piece of office stationery, whereupon one WENDY GABRIEL of Sullivan, in and of Sullivan County, is charged with numerous violations of Georgia Code 16-12-4: Cruelty to animals; said complaint brought to the District Attorney’s Office by...
He quickly folds the sheet of paper, returns it to the envelope, and puts it in his jacket pocket just as his cell phone rings.
Chapter 46
For the last forty seconds Captain Rory O’Connell’s stare at me has been steady and unyielding.
“Lucky you,” he finally whispers, “we do have a C-17 Globemaster taking off within thirty minutes, end destination Bagram, carrying additional equipment, but why in hell should I allow you to get onto that aircraft?”
“I need to get to Afghanistan,” I say.
“Why?”
“I’m convinced there’s evidence over there concerning the Rangers from Alpha Company.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“All right,” O’Connell says. “Do you have orders from your superiors in Quantico?”
“No.”
“Travel authorizations?”
“No.”
“Have you had a recent medical exam and immunization update?”
“No.”
The Fourth Battalion’s rear detachment commander waits another long second. “I don’t see a helmet, body armor, gas mask, or anything else you need for an overseas deployment, Major.”
“I’m hoping you’ll help me out.”
O’Connell shakes his lead, leans back a bit in his chair, and I see him wince from his old injuries. “Major, why in God’s name would I even consider letting you on that aircraft? No orders, no authorization, no equipment. What, you think this is an episode of NCIS, you can just hitch a ride into a combat zone? It’s a career ender for both of us. Now, please... leave me be. Fourth Battalion’s XO is still not available, there’s a missing pallet of equipment that should be in Bagram, and I’ve got a shitload of paperwork to get through. All because someone decided Fourth Battalion needed to be deployed nearly a month ahead of schedule.”
I lean on my cane. “You don’t like the Ninja Squad, do you?”
“Not many around here do.”
“But if you were in an FOB with them, with Taliban coming at you in waves, and they were next to you, and they were running low on ammo, you’d help them out, right? Even if you don’t like them, out there you’d have their backs. And vice versa.”
O’Connell’s face winces once more. “That’s different. That’s over there. Not here, in Georgia.”
I limp toward him. “That’s where you’re wrong, Captain. Something happened to them in Afghanistan. And it’s followed them to Georgia. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Afghanistan has come home here to Georgia, and those guys are low on ammo and need your help.”
I hear a distant whine of jet engines, wonder if that’s the C-17, ready to take off and make the long flight to Afghanistan, the dusty and torn-up country that has sent so many of our finest back home in shiny metal caskets.
O’Connell looks down, picks up a pen, and in one harsh move tosses it across the small office. He gets up.
“Follow me,” he says. “And even with that cane, haul ass.”
Nearly thirty minutes later, I’m practically stumbling across the flight line, leaning heavily on my cane, wearing freshly washed ACUs tagged COOK and carrying one heavy rucksack with a helmet bouncing along against my hip. Helicopters and other aircraft are lined up in neat rows before us.
The engine noise gets louder as we approach the C-17 Globemaster — dark green, squat, fat, and ugly, with four engines slung underneath its large wings — and O’Connell leans close and yells, “It’s about thirteen hours to Ramstein, and from there, another seven or so to Bagram. There’re no first-class or business-class seats aboard, Major, just the fold-down seats along the fuselage. Going to be damn uncomfortable.”
“I’ll make do,” I say, knowing there’s nothing else I can say.
He says, “Not sure where the Fourth Battalion is going to be deployed — orders change all the time — but you’ll want to get transport from Bagram to the village of Pendahar. That’s near where the... event happened with the Ninjas.”
“Got it,” I say.
“It’s the Old West in the Middle East, Indian country out there,” he says. “So watch your ass and do your best to hook up with anybody that’s got heavy firepower. And no offense, that sure as hell ain’t the CID.”
I just nod, knowing that I have nearly twenty hours of flying time ahead of me to think of where I’m going and what I’ll do when I get there.
He grabs my elbow. “You sure you can do this, limping like you do?”
The engine noise is louder. “I’ve got to.”
He says, “That IED... what happened to you over there?”
“Usual story,” I tell him, raising my voice. “Was out on a mission, three-vehicle convoy, we got hit. I was trapped in the wreckage. Took a while for me to get pried out.”
O’Connell tries to smile. “Hope it was an important mission.”
“Sure was,” I say. “I was going out to interview a goat herder whose flock was raided by an airborne unit for a cookout.”
He shakes his head, and I can tell his own pain is really riding him today.
Then he laughs. “Thanks for your service, Major.”