Джеймс Паттерсон - The Summer House

I get up from the chair, blanket and sheet still over me, wanting to get back to my room before one of the reporters decides to see who this odd man is. Once inside, I plan to stay awake.

As for Sheriff Williams and myself, we don’t have a crime to solve but a mystery.

And I hate mysteries.

Chapter 10

IN HIS CELL at the Ralston town jail, Staff Sergeant Caleb Jefferson is awake, sitting up against the concrete wall, legs stretched out, listening to one of his squad mates snore. It sounds like Specialist Ruiz, originally from El Paso and a good man to have at your side in a foxhole. Ruiz is a great shot and a great scrounger on post, and he has the amazing ability to fall asleep at any place or time, whether in a cold, ice-crusted trench high up in the mountains or in an FOB shelter with mortar rounds dropping in.

A groan and Corporal Barnes seems to come awake. He whispers, “Ah, crap, not again, Ruiz. Hey, Ruiz, knock it off.” The snoring increases, and Barnes kicks the barred door to his cell, making it rattle. “Ruiz, wake up! Or roll over! Christ…”

Jefferson keeps an eye on the situation. The jail here consists of six cells, built back when black-and-white television was still the rage. Old-fashioned bars and locks, concrete beds with thin foam mattresses, single wool blankets, foam pillows with a case thin enough to see through. Stainless-steel commodes and sinks. His orange uniform is starched, smelling of detergent.

“Sergeant, you awake over there?” Barnes asks.

“I am.”

Another voice comes out of the darkness. “Me too. Jesus, when Ruiz starts sawing wood…”

The fourth and youngest member of his squad, Specialist Vinny Tyler, is from Idaho. Skinny but, by God, can that kid hump the gear when need be, especially climbing those rock escarpments that seemed to rise klick after klick, right up into the clouds.

A cough and a hack. Ruiz—originally from personnel recovery—snorts and wakes up. His cell is across the corridor from the other three. “Hey, what’s going on?” he says. “What did I miss?”

Barnes says, “Nothing much. Miss Sullivan County trotted through here in a see-through nightie, handing out coffee and doughnuts.”

Ruiz yawns loudly. “Fine by me. I hate doughnuts.”

Jefferson smiles as there’s low laughter from his men, and he thinks, Hey, cops out there surveilling us with hidden cameras, try to figure that mood out . It’s a good fire team, handpicked by him, one of the best, roughest, and finest in the company. He knows their strengths, their weaknesses, and, most important—right now—their family status. None are married, none have kids, and that’s a good thing not to have in the back of one’s mind when chasing the Taliban through ravines.

Or facing serious trouble stateside.

Save for him. His wife died two years back from ovarian cancer, and her daughter—his stepdaughter, Carol—is under the care of an aunt in Savannah and is mending at a treatment center in Hilton Head.

His team is lean and mean, just the way he wants it.

Tyler calls out, “Staff Sergeant Jefferson?”

“Right here,” he says.

“Everything…everything’s gonna be fine, right? You’re sure, right?”

Jefferson thinks of that old house with the filth inside and the yells and shouts, and he knows Tyler is scared. It’s one thing to fly hot into an LZ or to take fire from a tree line or to make a dynamic entry into some rock-and-dirt farmhouse over there in Afghanistan.

But this is here, this is CONUS, this is the blessed safety zone.

“Everything is going to be fine,” he says. “Don’t you worry none.”

Ruiz says, “Hey, Specialist?”

Tyler says, “Yeah, Ruiz, what is it?”

Ruiz swears in Spanish. “You second-guess the sergeant one more time, the first chance I get, I break your freakin’ nose.”

Chapter 11

SPECIAL AGENT MANUEL SANCHEZ is sitting next to Special Agent Connie York as she drives the rental Ford sedan down a bumpy dirt road, and Manuel is holding on to the door handle, trying very hard not to upchuck his morning breakfast of greasy sausage, eggs over easy, and grits. Grits! He has yet to figure out the attraction of grits—just a fancy name for mush. And beans for breakfast? Not here, not in this place.

At the entrance to this dirt road was a wrought-iron metal pole—pockmarked with rust—and dangling to the side was a very worn wooden sign with painted carved letters saying THE SUMMER HOUSE 1911.

In the rear of the sedan, Major Cook—sitting so his injured left leg is stretched out—says, “Connie, you can slow it down.”

“Sir, we’re running up against the clock. I think we’re almost—yep, there it is.”

Manuel knows what Connie means about the clock, because he’s been here in Georgia less than six hours, and after the rushed briefing before breakfast, he already feels like he and the rest of the squad are a day behind. Four Rangers in jail, seven civvies dead—including a two-year-old baby girl!—and pretty soon reporters will be dogging their every step.

Connie brakes the Ford to a halt and dust rises, then they all get out, Major Cook struggling for a few seconds with his cane. Connie and he pretend not to notice, though he enjoys noticing Connie. In the morning heat she’s discarded her black jacket, and the slacks are pretty tight around her curvy bottom, and the white blouse is clinging nicely to her torso.

But Manuel knows better than to look too much at his fellow special agent, because he’s still deeply in love with his wife, Conchita, back home in East LA with their three girls, a sweet little home in a relatively quiet neighborhood.

Besides, Connie is wearing her Army-issue SIG Sauer in a waist holster and is a better shot than he is.

As he and Connie wait for the major to join them, Manuel examines the old two-story house. At one time it was probably a destination to be proud of, a place to unwind from the city. Two wooden pillars at the front, black roof and black shutters, wide wooden door in the center. But the paint is faded, shingles are missing from the roof, and the pillars are cracked and sagging. There’s yellow-and-black crime-scene tape fluttering across the door, along with an official sheriff’s department adhesive seal pressed against the doorjamb.

Two pickup trucks are parked nearby, along with a Sentra whose trunk is being held closed by a length of frayed clothesline. A light-blue Volvo sedan with a Delta Air Lines parking sticker on the windshield is set some meters away, like the driver was concerned the run-down vehicles here would somehow infect it.

In every direction, except the dirt road they just came down, there’s nothing save brush and tall pine trees, though through the brush at the far end of the lot there looks to be a body of water. Manuel frowns. Too much emptiness, too many trees. He grew up in a crowded LA neighborhood, joined the Police Academy, and went over to the Army when the police department was shedding personnel to balance its budget, plus the Army at the time was promising a hefty enlistment bonus.

“Looks damn empty and quiet, Major,” he says.

“True,” Cook says. “Connie?”

She glances down the dirt road. “Odd. Only one real entry in and out. You come in for a hit, and you leave yourself open for trouble if a UPS truck or some lost soul comes down the road. It could block you, get people curious why you’re here.”

In the distance a dog barks.

“Let’s take a look around,” Cook says, and he leads the way, leaning heavily on his cane. Manuel and Connie follow.

It doesn’t take long. The perimeter is trashy, with discarded tires, rusty fifty-five-gallon drums, piles of lumber and chicken-coop wire, and sodden pizza boxes. Manuel wonders if the ghosts of the rich folks who built this place mourn the once-perfect yard. On the far side of the house one of the windows is open, and from another window a rusting air-conditioning unit is sagging on supporting two-by-fours, looking like it could fall at any moment.