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...
“Yeah,” Phillips says. “These aren’t four kids fresh out of Basic Training. Nope, these four are pros.”
“Names?”
“Jefferson, Barnes, Tyler, and Ruiz. Four-man fire team, part of Second Platoon, Alpha Company. Jefferson is a staff sergeant, fire-team leader.”
“Motive?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. And I got a count on the civilian deaths. Seven.”
Seven, I think. Seven civilians, gunned down by four Army Rangers. Jesus Christ on a crutch.
I’m in a race now, to see who’s going to get there first: my investigators and myself or CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and every journalist with a notepad, camera, or video equipment within a thousand-mile radius, ready to try to convict these men in thirty-second sound bites.
“Breakdown?”
He coughs once more. “Three men, three women. All shot at close range.”
I stop taking notes.
“Wait,” I say. “You said there were seven. And you said three men, three women. What’s the correct number?”
His breathing quivers for a long, long second.
“Six adults were shot,” he says. “And a two-year-old baby girl.”
Chapter 4
At Sam’s Inn restaurant on Potomac Avenue in Quantico, Virginia, Special Agent Connie York of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division glances at the dessert menu and quickly drops it on the table.
“Sorry, Pete,” she says, trying to smile at her date, a pudgy gent who owns a landscaping business in nearby Southbridge. “I really don’t have the appetite for dessert.”
Which is a lie, because she’s still hungry and loves sweets, and there’s a chocolate fudge cake on the menu that’s calling to her. But spending one more minute than necessary with Pete Laurion is going to be intolerable. Oh, not that he’s a bad guy, but her condo neighbor Claire hooked her up with him, and since Claire took care of her leaky toilet while Connie was on a recent deployment to Germany, it was a favor she was happy to do.
But just this once.
Pete seems intimidated by the other customers in the restaurant, mostly off-duty Marine and Navy personnel, and his thick fingers end with nails that still have a ridge of dirt under them. His heavy blue eyes flick around the place, like he’s expecting some officer to make him drop to the ground and do fifty push-ups. Yesterday Claire said, Pete’s a bit rough around the edges, hon, but he’s got a good heart. And it’ll be a nice change of pace from those gung-ho guys you always end up with.
Which is true, for along with her ten years of service in the Army have come two failed marriages, both to fellow investigators in the Army’s CID. While she feels she’s good at solving crimes, Connie admits she so far hasn’t puzzled out the secrets of a happy relationship.
Pete smiles with hope in his eyes. “I understand, you wanting to keep your figure and all that. Can I call you later?”
Her iPhone starts chiming, and with a sense of relief, she pulls it out of her purse and sees a familiar name. To Pete she says, “Oh, I don’t think so. But thanks for the brunch.”
With iPhone in one hand and purse in the other, she steps out onto a crowded deck, drops her purse onto the decking, and puts the phone up to one ear while plugging the other ear with a finger. “York,” she answers.
“It’s Cook,” he says. “Call you at a bad time?”
“Actually, Major, it’s a great time,” she says. “I needed the break.”
“I hear people and music in the background. A date?”
She shakes her head. “No, a dull brunch. What do we have?”
The tone of his voice instantly changes. “A red ball case, down in Georgia. Seven civilians killed in a house in the town and county of Sullivan. Four Rangers from Hunter Army Airfield have been arrested and are currently in the custody of the county sheriff.”
“Oh, shit,” she says.
“Get down to Georgia, soon as you can. I’ve called out Pierce, Huang, and Sanchez, but you’ll be the first on the scene.”
“Yes, sir,” she says.
“And once you get there, arrange transport to Sullivan and get us accommodations with an extra room to use as a meeting area. You’re not going to talk to the county sheriff, the State Patrol, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, or any news media.”
“Yes, sir,” she says again, biting off the words. “You want me to set up housekeeping, am I right?”
“Agent York,” he says, his voice just as sharp, “that’s right. And I’m trusting you, as my second-in-command, to do that job to the best of your abilities. Got it, York?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” he says. “And among the civilian dead is a two-year-old girl. So enough with the pushback.”
“Oh, boss,” she says, “that’s horrible.”
“It’s bound to get worse,” he says. “See you in Georgia.”
Chapter 5
It took less than four hours to fly via Delta from Dulles to Savannah and its small, fifteen-gate airport — grandly named Savannah/Hilton Head International — and I was fortunate to have an aisle seat to stretch my leg. The long, brick terminal is topped by a glass atrium. Using a cane and rolling my black carry-on luggage, I walk past a number of potted tropical trees in the few minutes it takes to get outside.
It’s just past 5:00 p.m., with less than two hours of daylight left, and I’m planning to use as much of that time as possible. It’s muggy warm — low eighties, it seems — and I spot among the coach buses and other vehicles trundling through the ground transportation area Special Agent Connie York standing next to a parked silver Ford Fusion, the rental vehicle of choice for government travelers.
She has on a simple black suit-jacket-and-slacks outfit, with a plain white buttoned blouse, and I have a quick, inappropriate observation that I’ve never seen her in a dress. That’s the atavistic, chauvinist part of me, which thankfully is almost always overruled by the competent leadership part of me that recognizes her skills as a CID investigator.
Besides, I’m also plainly dressed in one of my two black suits, and like her, I’m armed with a 9mm SIG Sauer P228 pistol.
Connie pops open the trunk, respectfully allowing me to pick up and toss in my luggage.
“How many history books do you have packed in there, boss?” she asks, slamming the lid shut.
“Just enough,” I say. “Barely.”
She steps to the driver’s door, and as I enter the pleasant, clean, and cool passenger side of the car, I struggle for only a moment, fastening the seat belt without it tangling around my cane.
Connie accelerates from the concrete parking area into a flat landscape dotted with trees and mowed grass, and she says, “How was your flight?”
“On time.”
“And how’s your leg doing?”
“Still connected to my hip, still hurting like a son of bitch,” I say. “What quarters did you get for us?”
We’re out of the airport proper and on I-95, heading south, and Connie says, “The best the town of Sullivan has to offer. The Route 119 Motel and Coffee Shop. Less than an hour out. We have three rooms plus a room to use for work.”
“Good job,” I say. “What else do you know?”
She speeds up the Ford. “You told me to set up the unit’s housekeeping. That’s what I did.”
“And I know you did more,” I say. “Give.”
The traffic on the interstate is moving fast and freely, and suddenly I’m back in my convoy roaring through the desert. Mouth dry, I scan for slow-moving trucks or cars, or clusters of men standing at the side of the road, looking for a particular man who holds a cell phone programmed to trigger a bomb.
I chew my tongue, try to get the saliva working. Georgia, I tell myself. We’re in Georgia. We’re not in bandit country. We’re in the Peach State, so relax already. We’re not in Afghanistan. We’re never going back to Afghanistan.