Джеймс Паттерсон - The Summer House

One and then two helicopters roar overhead.

The other two windows on that side are closed, and so are the ground-floor windows on both sides. One of the windows is covered with plastic.

After returning to the front, Manuel says, “I don’t like that single door, Major.”

“Tell us why.”

He says, “Like the dirt road. Only one way in or out. With a dynamic entry, rolling in, you’d think they’d use a ladder, smash one of the first-floor windows, come in through both the door and the windows.”

Cook says, “This is Georgia. Lots of firearms in private hands. Maybe they thought rolling in through the windows exposed them more. That door looks like it was breached by explosive charges. You do that, folks in tight quarters like this, in a small house like this, they might run to the rear when the door blows open. That means you’re funneling your targets into one area.”

“Maybe,” Connie says, and Manuel knows she’s looking at the scene with the same cop eyes he is, though her earlier time was with the Virginia State Police—not as difficult or as tough as the LAPD. “I wish the sheriff hadn’t been such a bitch. I’d love to go inside.”

Manuel turns at the sound of a loud car engine, getting louder, and roaring down the dirt road is a brown-and-white Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department cruiser, bouncing up and down in the dust, and Cook says, “Well, let’s see what happens if we talk nice to the sheriff.”

The cruiser skids to a halt, and Manuel sees a woman in her fifties jump out, face red with anger, wearing jeans and a black polo shirt, and she yells out, “Damn it, Major, I told you I wasn’t going to let you into the goddamn crime scene! What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

Cook looks pretty damn calm, and he says, “You told us we couldn’t go inside. We’re not. We’re outside, looking in.”

The sheriff strides forward, fists on her hips. “You like to play games, Major, is that it? Well, tell you what. I got some friends in DC, and I can play games, too, including getting your whole goddamn crew out of my county and back on the first plane to Dulles!”

Chapter 12

LIEUTENANT JOHN HUANG of the US Army Medical Corps gets out of the rented Ford sedan, pulled into a narrow parking space in front of the Ralston Police Department. On the small front lawn, memorials listing Ralston’s war dead from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War and all the way up to Vietnam share space with poster-board campaign signs for various offices.

Captain Allen Pierce joins him on the cracked pavement. It’s not even 8:00 a.m. and the shade of the large oak in the park across the street is not large enough to protect them from what is going to be one hell of a hot day. Down a ways is a Southern Baptist church, and exuberant singing is coming from the building. John shakes his head. Twice in the past five years he’s gone to overcrowded Hong Kong for extended family reunions and thinks the residents there would smile in delight at seeing so much empty and available space.

“What do you think, Allen?” he asks. Officially Allen outranks him as a captain, but since Allen’s a lawyer and he’s a psychiatrist, they decided months ago they could drop the ranks and the Yes, sir and No, sir while working in the field.

“Think?” Allen asks, reaching into the car, retrieving his briefcase. Like him, Allen is wearing a two-piece dark-blue suit with black shoes and a white shirt, no necktie. “I think you and I have just increased this town’s diversity by twenty percent. Come on, Doc, let’s see if someone’s awake at the jail.”

There is a single dark-blue Ralston police cruiser parked in the lot, along with a red Dodge Colt stained with rust and mud. A narrow concrete path takes them to the rear of the brick, two-story building, where RALSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT is painted in gold on a glass door.

John tries the door. It’s locked.

“I like the look of that,” Allen says, coming up next to him, reading aloud the paper sheet directing emergency, after-hours, and weekend contact to the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department. “Small town, small crime.”

“Except for the four Rangers, stuck in there, charged with slaughtering seven civilians,” John says, still not wanting to believe on an emotional level that Rangers could do something so horrid in the States, but also knowing from cold, clinical experience that anything is possible.

Including the slaughter of civilians.

“There’s a doorbell,” John says. “Give it a push.”

Allen pushes it twice, and before his third try a shadow appears behind the door. The door is unlocked and pushed open, and a plump young man wearing black-rimmed glasses, gray trousers, and a blue uniform shirt with no name tag or shield says, “Yeah? You guys lost or something?” He has keys in one hand and a coffee mug in the other, bright red with yellow letters saying OFFICIAL BIKINI INSPECTOR.

John thinks, Yeah, lost in time, about five decades, and Allen says, “I’m Captain Allen Pierce, United States Army, and this is Lieutenant John Huang. We’re here to see the four Rangers.”

The door is being held open by the man’s hip, and he takes a sip from his coffee mug before saying, “You guys have an appointment?”

John says, “No, we don’t.”

“You’ve spoken to Chief Kane about coming here?”

Allen says, “No, we haven’t. We got in late last night.”

The man says, “You got badges or something?”

John takes out his leather badge case from an inside coat pocket, shows it to the jail attendant, and Allen does the same. The jail attendant rubs his chin with the hand holding his keys and says, “Well…I guess the chief needs to okay this. But he’s not here.”

Allen smiles, but John sees how his fellow investigator is nearly gritting his teeth. “So where is he? Can you call him?”

The young man looks surprised, like both he and Allen should know what’s going on. “Fellas, it’s deer-hunting season for muzzle-loaders. The chief is out by Sweeney’s Tract by now…and there ain’t no cell phone coverage out there.”

Allen’s smile is getting icier, and John says, “Sir, if I may…We’re not here to cause any trouble. We’re here to help those four men. Now, we know they’ve been charged with horrible crimes. We understand that. But the captain here is an Army lawyer, and I’m an Army doctor, and we’ve been ordered to see the men, to talk to them, to send a report back to Washington.”

John knows what he’s said is 50 percent true, 50 percent bullshit, but he hopes the magic words of Army, ordered, and Washington just might work.

The jail attendant says, “You’re here to help, then?”

Allen says, “Sir, absolutely.”

John has a guilty thought that this is probably one of the few times this pudgy young man has ever been called sir .

He says, “You stay here. I’ll be right back.” With coffee cup still in hand, he steps back in, locks the door, and then disappears from sight.

Allen says, “Looks like it worked.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me again, how do you do it?” Allen asks. “Me, I’ve got law books and online records to help me puzzle out legal crap, years of precedents, and judges out there to kick me in the nuts if I stray too far. But you?” Allen taps the side of his head. “All between your ears, Doc, trying to figure out what’s going on with some other guy’s brain. Don’t know how you do it.”

“There are degrees and learning on our end, too,” John says, feeling uncomfortable in the heat.

“Yeah, but I know enough about psychiatry to know that every ten or so years there’s a big upheaval that turns everything upside down. Lawyers? Man, we’re still working off a document that King John signed more than a thousand years back. How do you do it?”