Джеймс Паттерсон - The Summer House

There’s a piece of paper, a note. From a local newspaper reporter. Peggy something or other. She wants an interview. Talk to her. She’ll be your local intelligence agency.

She turns, and Sanchez, Pierce, and Huang are inside the room.

“Quick,” she says. “Anybody know where they dump the trash for this place?”

Huang says, “I went out for a run early yesterday morning. There’s a Dumpster out behind the coffee shop.”

She brushes by them, goes out, and, damn it, a herd of reporters is out there, with cameras, notepads, pens, and they pepper her with questions as she makes a quick walk to the coffee shop.

“Excuse me, do you have any comment on the suicide…”

“Will the Army defend these killers of innocents…”

“Do you think the Army is responsible for the death of that little girl…”

She pushes through, gets around the corner of the building, and Sanchez is behind her, and bless Pierce and Huang, they hang back, block the reporters, trying to give her a few seconds to herself.

There’s low brush, plastic bags of trash, broken bottles, wooden pallets leaning up against the concrete-block wall. Ventilation fans hum in the side of the building. A dirt lot bordered by brush and saplings. A green Dumpster is next to the rear entrance of the coffee shop. She stops, sees a puddle near the bottom of the metal container, where grease, waste, and other nasty fluids have seeped out. Clouds of flies are buzzing around the open cover.

Sanchez says, “Damn,” but he’s smiling at her, like he’s daring her.

Dare taken.

She steps up to the Dumpster, grabs the greasy metal edge, hauls herself up, and falls in, losing a shoe in the process.

York tries breathing through her mouth, but it’s hard to keep focused. She’s knee-deep in trash, sludge, bottles, empty cans. No recycling program here in Sullivan County. There are vegetable peelings, cold mashed potatoes, clumps of grease, chewed rib bones, crumpled and soiled napkins, chicken bones. So many flies are buzzing and hovering that she’s afraid she’s going to swallow some.

Get to work, she thinks. Get to work.

Using bare hands—damn it, why didn’t she get a pair of gloves before diving in so quickly?—she moves piles of trash, broken green bags, more trash and peelings and sludge tumbling out, and she makes a mistake, breathing through her nose, and her mouth starts filling with saliva. Nausea is coming at her in waves.

“You okay in there, Agent York?” Sanchez asks from outside.

She’s afraid if she tries to talk, the vomiting will begin, and she doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

In a corner is a pile of smaller, white plastic trash bags.

Like the ones motel and hotel maids use on their carts. She trudges over, breathing hard, something sharp poking her left leg, and she tears open the near bag. Crumpled paper towels, used tissues, scraps of plastic, and—

Bits of paper. Note paper.

Sopped through with coffee.

Connie carefully unfolds the notes, laying out the little bits of paper on a nearby piece of cardboard. CNN, the New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution .

A note in careful cursive, with a phone number at the bottom.

Dear Army officer,

It would really make me happy to talk to you about what happened at The Summer House.

Sincerely,

Peggy Reese

Connie memorizes the phone number, folds up the wet paper, puts it into her coat pocket. The flies are so thick that it looks like ashes are falling from the sky. She stumbles through the piles again, gets to the wall, and hauls herself up and over, falling to the ground. Sanchez is there and steps back, bringing a hand up to his face.

“God, Agent York, you stink.”

She sits up against the Dumpster. “Nice powers of observation. Get me my bag, will you?”

There’s just a passing look in Sanchez’s eyes— What am I, your gofer? —but he does as he’s told, and he brings over her bag. She digs out her cell phone and makes the call to Peggy Reese of the Sullivan County Times .

No answer.

She can hear the voices of reporters out there, beyond the brush and piles of trash.

Sanchez squats down next to her.

“We’ll try later,” she says.

“I don’t like it,” Sanchez says. “You talk with reporters, you always get screwed.”

“Well, good for the investigation that I don’t agree with you.”

York goes back into the bag, takes out her Iridium 9555 satellite phone, powers it up. Waits a moment, and then dials a preprogrammed number.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

Nothing.

Sanchez says, “I thought these phones have worldwide coverage.”

“Most times,” she says. “Most times.”

Damn it, she thinks as the crowd of reporters plows its way through and starts asking questions, taking photos, pushing and shoving.

A horrible thought comes to her. The last time she saw their boss he was walking into Fourth Battalion headquarters. But that doesn’t mean he got on a transport to Afghanistan, now, does it? Maybe the reason the sat phone isn’t getting answered is that it’s not in his possession. Maybe he’s in detention somewhere back at Hunter.

Where ’s Major Cook?

Chapter 55

IN HIS CELL at the Ralston town jail, Staff Sergeant Caleb Jefferson makes a decision and then gets off his bunk. Funny, when the decision is made, then it’s done. You go out and do the job, and respond to emerging threats and situations, but there’s no second-guessing, not in the Rangers. You learn lessons at some point, but when you set off on a mission, there’s no looking back.

Ever.

At the other end of the block, one of the jail attendants with a meal cart is passing out an early supper—usually barely warm hot dogs in untoasted buns, a bag of chips, a mustard packet, a juice box. Jefferson raps the old metal bars with his hands and says, “Hey, you down there. I need to see the chief. Straightaway.”

The attendant is a chubby, surly young boy wearing a tan uniform and light-blue latex gloves. He says, “I’ll get to him, soon enough. I’m doing my job here.”

“And doing it so fine,” Jefferson says, and he goes back and sits down on his bunk. A couple of minutes later, the young boy comes back, drops a paper plate with the supper on it, and shoves it into Jefferson’s cell with a foot. Then he leaves, pushing the meal cart before him.

The Ranger picks up the two cold hot dogs, makes sure they’ve not been spit upon or tampered with, and in a few minutes, supper is finished.

Corporal Barnes calls out, “Everything okay, Sergeant?”

“It’s perfect,” he says, wiping his hands with two brown paper napkins.

Specialist Ruiz says, “You sure, Sergeant? I don’t remember this part coming up, you seeing the chief.”

Jefferson crumples up the napkins, steps up to the bars. Both Barnes and Ruiz are standing close to the bars of their respective cells, wearing the same dull orange jumpsuit as Jefferson. He tosses a crumpled napkin at each, and both go through the bars and strike their heads.

“No turning back now, gentlemen,” he says.

He hears a metallic clatter of a door opening, and a still-angry-looking Chief Kane strolls in. Jefferson has a funny thought that if the poor chief were to have a coronary and die right now, that angry look would probably stay on his face all the way through the funeral.

“What is it?” Kane asks.

Jefferson says, “Chief, we’ve been here a few days, and I’ve made a decision.”

The chief hitches a hand on his utility belt. “What decision is that?”