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...
She gives her squad a good, hard, determined look.
“You get used to it.”
Chapter 62
Staff Sergeant Caleb Jefferson is lying awake on his bunk sometime after midnight when a shadow passes by outside in the dim light, and Chief Kane appears in front of the barred door to his cell. Across the corridor Specialist Paulie Ruiz is doing what he does best when he’s sleeping: snoring.
“You have a visitor,” Kane says.
“Pretty late.”
“Don’t care,” he says.
“Well, I’m your guest at this fine facility, and I care.” Ruiz’s snoring goes on, and in the darkness, Jefferson smiles. Some would hate the noise, but after months of serving with the specialist, Jefferson finds it comforting, soothing, something that’s part of his life.
“Don’t matter,” the chief says. “Your visitor wants to see you. Now.”
Jefferson crosses his legs. “Sorry. It’s after visiting hours and I’m pretty damn comfortable where I am.”
Kane says, “Okay, Sergeant Jefferson, I—”
“Staff Sergeant.”
“All right, Staff Sergeant Jefferson, you’re a badass. I know that and you know that. Nothing to prove. But if you don’t get up and prep for a visit, I’ll call in my two brothers-in-law. They always wanted to be police but were too dumb to pass the test. But they’ll come in if I call them, and then I’ll open this cell door, pepper-spray you hard. And then my two idiot brothers-in-law will Taser you until you wet your pants. Then I’ll put you in restraints, and then you’ll make your visit, and at the end, you’ll still be a badass, and we’ll all know you’re a badass.”
Jefferson laughs, swings off the bunk, and comes over to the cell door. “Chief, that’s pretty good. Okay.”
Kane moves around and there’s a rattling noise, and something is slid underneath the door. Jefferson bends over, picks up a wide leather belt with manacles and chains, two long enough to reach his ankles.
“What’s this?” he asks.
“Your visitor knows you’re a badass, too,” Kane says. “Just taking precautions.”
A few minutes later, as Jefferson shuffles along the corridor with his ankles shackled, his cuffed wrists secured by chains to the wide leather belt, Kane opens the interview door, and Jefferson shuffles in.
Sitting across the table is Sullivan County sheriff Emma Williams. She’s in civvy clothes, blue jeans and a black T-shirt, but her hard face and sharp eyes remind Jefferson of a Pashtun woman he once saw who had her burqa accidentally torn off when it got caught in a bus door. The look on her face toward the US soldiers standing around her was the same as he sees here from the sheriff: a raging anger barely held under control, a face failing to hide the thoughts of revenge, sharp knives, and flesh being carved out.
“Sit down,” she says, and he gives her that victory, sitting a bit clumsily with all the shackles fixed to his waist, ankles, and wrists.
“Good to see you, too,” he says.
The stone-cold angry look on her face doesn’t change. “We had an arrangement, a deal, an agreement.”
“We did,” Jefferson says. “An arrangement with me and my three Rangers. Now there’s only two other Rangers. The circumstances have changed. The deal has changed.”
Williams says, “No, it hasn’t.”
“Well, so says you,” Jefferson says. “But right now there’s signed paperwork with your district attorney, witnessed by an Army lawyer, that says otherwise.”
“The district attorney, he works for me,” Williams says. “You won’t get away with it.”
He smiles. “Give it your best, Sheriff. But it won’t work. Guarantee it.”
She moves her chair over so she’s closer to him, lowers her voice. “You signed those papers, you signed the obituary for you and your Rangers. This is my county, my land, and I make the rules. Remember that.”
Jefferson scrapes his chair closer, too. “Here’s a story for you, Sheriff. Non-PC, so I apologize in advance.”
“I don’t have time for your tales,” she says.
He says, “Oh, you’ll love this story. Once upon a time an Air Force plane was flying over a remote part of New Guinea when it crashed in a storm. There were three survivors: an Air Force airman, a Navy seaman, and an Army Ranger. They were captured by a tribe of headhunters — see, I told you it wasn’t PC — and the chief said that they were trespassers on his sacred soil and that they were all sentenced to death. But the method of their deaths was up to them. The chief said if they each committed suicide, their skins would be tanned and turned into sacred canoes, and their spirits would live forever among the tribe. If not, then they’d suffer weeks of torture before dying anyway. On a wooden table were a number of weapons. Faced with this horrible choice, the airman picked up a poison capsule, took it, and said, ‘Hurray for the Air Force.’ The seaman saw a rusty revolver with one round in it, and before shooting himself in the head, said, ‘Hurray for the Navy.’”
Jefferson grins at seeing the sheriff hanging on his every word. “Then it came to the Army Ranger. He saw the table full of weapons and then went to another table, which had kitchen utensils, picked up a long two-tined fork and started stabbing himself furiously, up and down his arms, legs, even his chest and abdomen, punching it in, and soon he was bleeding from dozens of wounds. Just before he passed out from blood loss, the tribal chief said, ‘Why did you pick such a painful way to die?’ And the Army guy looked up and said, ‘I’m an Army Ranger. Fuck you and your sacred canoe.’”
Jefferson stands up, heads to the door, where he will hammer on the door and ask to go back to his cell.
“Same to you, Sheriff,” he says.
Chapter 63
Special Agent Connie York spots the correct street number on the mailbox marking the home of Peggy Reese of the Sullivan County Times, and she parks the Ford sedan a few yards up the road. They are in a small housing development of double-wide trailers with carports.
After Cook’s orders hours back, Sanchez spent some time under both vehicles, searching the undercarriages with a flashlight, and said, “Looks clean. I don’t think they’re tracking us in our rentals.” As she switches off the engine and hands the keys over to Sanchez, she thinks this was at least one bit of good news before they all started this early Wednesday morning.
“I’ve got my phone, and I’ve got my service weapon,” Connie says.
“I still don’t like it,” Sanchez says. “For all we know, that woman is a cousin of the sheriff and is ready to take a wrench to your head. You know how everybody down here is always somebody’s uncle, aunt, second or third cousin.”
York opens the door. “Well, if that’s true, let’s hope she’s estranged.”
She walks up the asphalt and then along the driveway. A dog is barking somewhere, and up ahead, a light is on over the front door. Flying insects are making a moving halo around the globe.
One knock on the door is all it takes, and a slim woman with cotton-white hair opens the door. “Right on time,” Peggy Reese says, smiling. “I like you already, Agent York. If that’s who you are.”
Connie digs out her wallet and badge, shows the identification. “This is who I am.”
“Then come right in.”
The inside of the home is clean and orderly, with two couches forming an angle, a kitchen off to the left, bookcases filled with hardcovers and paperbacks, and a coffee table with newspapers on top — Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Peggy is wearing black slacks and a yellow-and-blue Walmart smock, which she tugs off and tosses to the floor. Underneath she has on an old Allman Brothers concert T-shirt, and two large black-and-white cats come tumbling into the living room, hitting each other with their paws.