Дэвид Балдаччи - No Man's Land

Quentin took another drag on his joint. “Well, it’ll be nice not to have her looking over my shoulder the whole time.”

“Just don’t screw up.”

Quentin put an arm around Davis’s bare shoulders and feigned a hurt expression. “Hey, babe, I know what I’m doing, okay?”

“I gotta go.”

She rose and quickly dressed.

A minute later Rogers heard her heels clicking down the steps.

When he turned back to look into the bedroom, Quentin had finished his joint and lay stretched out on the bed. A few moments later the snores reached Rogers.

I could go in and kill him right now. But what would be the point? I need to know more. So he’s more valuable to me alive than dead.

This is truly your lucky day, Josh. You got laid and you get to live.

He waited until he heard the car start up outside and then made his way back down the stairs and out the rear door. A few minutes later he was sitting in his van and staring down at the photos he’d taken.

Suzanne Davis.

He put that name in a search and added Chris Ballard to it.

He got many hits on Ballard, but nothing on anyone named Suzanne Davis who seemed to have a connection to him.

He next searched Josh Quentin. Lots of hits came up, but none that he wanted.

For a guy on the fast track, there was nothing about him out there.

But he would find Claire Jericho.

For Rogers, there was no Plan B.

“I’M NOT SURE what to make of that.”

Knox looked over at Puller, who was staring out the windshield of his Malibu.

They were still parked in Vincent DiRenzo’s driveway.

“Did you hear me, Puller?”

“I heard you.”

“The guy basically said he was stonewalled on looking into the serial murders in Williamsburg.”

Puller stayed quiet.

“Do you think he was telling the truth?”

Puller slid the car into gear. “I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to check into it, have I?”

He pulled out of the driveway and pointed them on a route that would take them back to eastern Virginia.

“Why does it seem like this case is getting muddier the more we step into it?” said Knox.

“Maybe it was designed that way.”

She shot him a glance. “Designed? What do you mean by that?”

Puller just stared out the window.

She glared at him. “Are you officially shutting down on me? Do I have to talk to myself all the way back?”

“You can do what you want, Knox. No one’s stopping you. You always do what you want, right?”

She gazed at him stonily before saying, “You just keep piling on the insinuations, don’t you?”

“Is that what you call them?”

“What do you call them?”

“I don’t have to call them anything. I’ve got a case to investigate.”

“You really do like to dance in circles, don’t you?”

He kept his gaze on the road. Finally he said, “What would you do?”

She started to say something but then seemed to catch herself. “Talk to the Williamsburg cops who worked the case.”

“We’ve seen the files.”

“But we tracked down DiRenzo, and look what he delivered up that was not covered in the files. Maybe the Williamsburg cops will do the same.”

“We need to find out who they are.”

“I already did that. The two lead detectives are still on the force.”

“From thirty years ago?”

“They were young when they worked it. They’re close to retirement, but not quite there. I set up a meeting with them for later this afternoon.”

“Without telling me?”

“I’m telling you now , Puller.”

“And you wonder why I can’t trust you?”

She stared at him for a moment and then broke it off and kept her gaze pointed out the window the whole ride back.

* * *

Always concrete walls, thought Puller.

Unlike on TV shows with all the glitzy bells and whistles, real cops lived on frugal department budgets that tacked far closer to painted cinderblock and dented gunmetal gray desks.

Puller was sitting opposite homicide detectives Jim Lorne and his partner Leo Peckham in a precinct building in Williamsburg.

They were both tall, thin, balding men in their sixties. Their faces carried the strain of having a job that required them to witness the dead bodies of the brutally murdered and then find out who had done it.

Lorne was twirling a pen between his long fingers.

Peckham gazed directly at Puller and Knox. He said, “We got your call, Agent Knox. And we know you requisitioned the files. You explained a little but not a lot. I’m afraid we’re going to need to hear the whole story before we can jump into this again.”

Lorne looked up from his pen-twirling. “And what’s the Army’s connection?”

Puller answered, “We’re trying to see if your serial killer might have abducted someone from Fort Monroe about thirty years ago.”

“He killed. He didn’t abduct.”

“And he might have killed this woman too, but her body wasn’t found,” noted Knox.

Peckham shook his head. “Don’t think so. Way the bodies were disposed of, the guy wanted them to be found.”

“So you’re sure it was a man?” asked Knox.

“Four women murdered? Pretty sure it was a guy.”

“The women weren’t sexually assaulted,” pointed out Knox.

Lorne shook his head. “But they were beaten to death, or strangled, or their throats were cut. Now, granted, a woman could have cut a throat, but the beating and strangling, that’s a guy’s fingerprint.”

Puller nodded in agreement. “We were curious why the investigation at Fort Monroe didn’t connect up with yours back then. There were parallels and the two spots are barely a half hour apart.”

Lorne shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. I never even heard about the case you’re talking about at Fort Monroe. No one from CID ever called us about it. And we had our hands full back then. Me and Leo were just young detectives at the time, but the force had had some attrition and we were the senior homicide guys. So we got the case. We busted our asses, spent every waking hour on it. Got to be an obsession if you really want to know.”

“And we still didn’t solve it,” added Peckham. “And not that it matters, but our career path took a big hit. Promotions were slow in coming after that. But those poor dead women suffered far worse. The fact we never brought their killer to justice? I’ll never get over that. No matter what else I did in my career, I was a failure.”

Knox said, “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Sometimes the bad guys get lucky and get away with it. I’m sure you did everything you could.”

Puller added, “The file didn’t have many clues. No real forensics.”

Peckham nodded. “The guy didn’t leave any DNA behind. And there was no sexual assault. And he apparently wore gloves.”

“But no defensive wounds? Nothing under the victims’ nails? If he strangled them there would have been a struggle, unless they were bound first. People don’t just die without a fight.”

Peckham glanced at Lorne and said, “They weren’t bound. At least there was no evidence of that.”

Lorne shifted in his seat. “You looked at the file photos?”

Puller nodded.

“Well, pictures couldn’t really convey the actual damage. When I said strangled, that was probably not entirely correct.”

“What would be more correct?” asked Knox quickly.

“That their throats, their windpipes, were completely crushed.”

Puller stared at him. “Crushed?”

“Flattened would be a better description.” Lorne shivered slightly as he said this. “I’d never seen anything like it and neither had the ME, and he’d been doing this work for forty years. And I’ve never seen anything like it since, thank God.”