Zero Day

by David Baldacci

  “Nice to meet you, Special Agent Puller.”

  “Just make it Puller.” He glanced at the bags. “Your equipment?”

  “Yep.”

  Cole said, “Did you do Larry’s car?”

  Monroe nodded. “The prelim didn’t turn up anything. There was no blood in the vehicle. I had it towed back to the station. I’ll do a more thorough scrub there.”

  Puller said, “Sergeant Cole said you’d taken pictures. Can I see them?”

  “That’s a big ten-four, good buddy.”

  Monroe dug into one of his bags while Puller glanced over at Cole with hiked eyebrows. She shrugged and attempted a smile.

  Monroe got his camera out, powered it up, and showed the range of pictures on the flip-out viewfinder.

  “Thirty-five mil SLR?” said Puller.

  “Yep. That’s what they had us use at school. Now, I did three shots of everything, one in relation to nearby objects, one with ruler, and one close-up without.”

  “Good. What aperture setting did you use?”

  Cole shot Puller a hard glance. He ignored it.

  Monroe remained oblivious to these exchanges. He said, “F/16 with everything three feet or more away, f/28 for the close-ups.”

  Puller nodded approvingly. “What were your angles of photography?”

  “I did everything from eye level.”

  “Did you do a three-sixty overlap?”

  Monroe suddenly looked uncertain and shook his head. “Uh, no.”

  Puller glanced at Cole and found her still staring intently at him, hands on hips, lips pursed. For a moment he thought she might go for her Cobra again.

  Puller said, “No problem. Just Army overkill. Look, I need an experienced hand to help me with that, Lan. And you obviously know your way around a camera.”

  “No prob,” said Monroe, his good spirits restored. “Glad to do it.” He pointed at the tripod and other equipment Puller had taken from his rucksack. “Is that a flash extension?” he asked.

  Puller nodded. “We’ll use it to photograph fingerprints, tire marks, and any tool marks. We’ll use the synch cord to engage the flash.”

  “How far away do you Army guys hold it?” asked Monroe eagerly.

  “Ideally three feet. And at a forty-five-degree angle. Two shots from all four directions.”

  “What’s the big deal with the extension thing?” asked Cole.

  Puller replied, “Prevents hot spots of light. Causes overexposure to the top of the photos.”

  “Cool,” said Monroe.

  Puller pointed to the four members of the Reynolds family. “Since they haven’t been moved, we need to photograph them properly. All four sides, including the rear. Five shots of the face, all wounds, and other marks. With and without rulers, livor mortis patterns, and all gunshot powder and stippling. You got a video camera?”

  Monroe nodded.

  Puller said, “You video everything but you don’t rely on that for fine detail. Defense attorney will blow you out of the water with that.”

  Cole said, “And did that happen to you?”

  “It happens to everybody,” said Puller.

  Puller was about to set up his tripod to start taking pictures of the bodies when he looked down at the carpet and stopped. He knelt and took a closer look at the medium-pile carpeting.

  “What do you see there?” he asked.

  Monroe and Cole came over. The tech dropped to his knees and studied the spot. “Not sure,” he said. “An impression of something.”

  “Impressions, actually. Three of them, circular, but in a triangular pattern.” Puller hefted the tripod and set it down a few feet from the others. Then he picked it back up. “What do you see?”

  Monroe looked at the spot. So did Cole. They both started and looked back over at the original spot. The impressions were nearly identical.

  Cole said, “Somebody already set up a tripod here. Why?”

  Puller looked at the spot and then over at the bodies all lined up. “Bodies in a row, on a couch. Tripod in front, camera mounted on it.”

  “They were filming the Reynoldses?” said Cole.

  Puller took several shots of the impressions. “No, they were interrogating them.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  HOURS LATER they had finished photographing the four bodies and processing other parts of the crime scene. Puller and Monroe had laid the bodies next to each other on white plastic sheeting spread on the floor. Larry Wellman’s body had been brought up and was lying in a zippered body bag in the dining room. There were no defensive wounds on Wellman or the Reynoldses. They had all apparently been taken by surprise.

  Puller had recorded his observations and used the device he’d previously stuck in his belt to help him organize the investigation. Monroe had excitedly asked him what the tool was.

  “Army calls it a CSED, or Crime Scene Exploitation Device. It’s a camera with a bar coder, digital screen, labeler, and printer all rolled into one. It’s got a flip-out USB so I can down-and upload from my laptop. My digital recorder has the same capability. And it has an electronic transcriber so it’ll automatically type out what I’ve recorded by voice. I’m not great on the keyboard.”

  “That is beyond cool,” said Monroe.

  “Don’t get too excited, Lan,” said Cole. “Doubt there’s money in the budget for us to get one of those.”

  Puller glanced at Cole. “Tell me about the dog that was here.”

  “Collie. Got a colleague taking care of it. Friendly thing.”

  “Okay, but any of the neighbors report hearing any barking?”

  “Dog can’t bark,” replied Cole. “Probably the only reason they let it live.”

  “A dog that can’t bark?”

  “Well, it hasn’t once barked for us. Might’ve had an operation done. That can sometimes screw up the bark. At least according to a vet friend of mine that I asked.”

  Looking down at the lined-up bodies, Cole said, “You said they were interrogated but didn’t really explain what you meant. They obviously weren’t being interrogated after they were killed. So why line them up on the couch after they were dead?”

  “I think the person wanted to see them being interrogated. And they also wanted to see on the video that they were dead.”

  “So they were broadcasting the video out to someone else?”

  “That’s how I read it.”

  Cole slowly nodded. “So if we can get our hands on the video, there might be some clues. One of the killers might have stepped in front of the camera, for example. Or maybe it might have caught a reflection of one or more of them.”

  “That’s true. But odds are if we find the video, we’ll find the killers too. That’s not something they’ll leave lying around.”

  “Well, let’s hope that happens.”

  “We need to get the bodies to a refrigerated environment soon and then have the posts done,” said Puller as he stared down at the decomposing bodies. “At some point courtroom evidence starts falling apart. How’s it coming with your doctor friend?”

  “Should know something definitive later today.”

  Puller knelt down next to Matt Reynolds. “Shotgun to the face. Less than three feet away, minimal pellet dispersal, wadding in the wounds. If the muzzle was choke-bored it could muddy that analysis.” He indicated the wadding. “Lan, have you taken a sample yet to verify gauge?”

  “Yeah. Haven’t done the test yet, but I hope once I compare the diameter with sample wads it’ll give us an answer.”

  Puller turned to the wife’s body. “I measured the distance between pellets, and that together with no central wound or wadding means she was probably shot from farther away than ten feet.”

  “But down in the basement,” said Cole, who knelt next to him.

  “Presumably. But serology results will confirm it,” said Puller.

  “Why the basement?” asked Cole.

  “Quieter,” said Puller. “But you still have problems.�
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  “Like what?”

  “Shotgun blast even in a basement in the middle of the night might attract attention. And you have to control the other captives. They hear the shot, they panic, start screaming, trying to get away, knowing they’ll probably be next.”

  Monroe snapped his fingers, unlocked a metal evidence box he’d previously brought into the house, and pulled out some sealed, labeled evidence bags.

  “I was wondering why I found these things in those places. But what you just said may explain it.”

  Puller took up the bags one by one. “Tell me what you’ve got here.”

  “That bit of gray fuzz came from the girl’s left ear. The white thread I found inside the boy’s mouth. Found a similar one hung up on the mom’s left molar.”

  Cole looked at them over Puller’s shoulder.

  Puller said, “The white thread in the mouth? Gag?”

  “And the thing in the ear?” asked Cole.

  Monroe said, “I’m thinking it’s a piece of an ear bud. Like from headphones to an iPod or MP3 player.”

  Puller said, “They were blasting music into their ears when they were shooting people. So they couldn’t hear it.”

  “That’s pretty hardcore,” added Monroe.

  Puller said, “But that doesn’t explain the shotgun use. Maybe they couldn’t hear it, but some of the neighbors might have.”

  Cole rose and went over to the window and looked out. She whirled back around.

  “You said blasted.”

  Puller handed the bags back to Monroe and turned to her. “Yeah. So?”

  “Trent Exploration. They might’ve blasted on Sunday night. And this neighborhood is only a couple miles away from where they’re doing it.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  PULLER WAS STARING at Cole. “Okay, but would the blast be loud enough to cover a fired shotgun from being heard in another house?”

  “From a basement, I’d say so. If you’re close enough to them, some of those explosions can lift you right out of your bed.”

  “You say they might’ve blasted. You don’t know for certain?”

  “No, I live pretty far from here. But the sound of a blast reaching this neighborhood had to come from a Trent operation. It’s the only one nearby.”

  Monroe said slowly, “Wait a minute. I was out late that night with my girlfriend. About two miles from here but in another direction. I remember hearing it.”

  Puller said quickly, “Do you recall the time of the explosion?”

  He thought for a few moments. “Between midnight and one, I’d say.”

  “That mirrors the timeline established by the body deterioration,” said Puller. “But having a tighter time window helps us in one respect.”

  “Alibis, or lack thereof,” noted Cole, and he nodded in agreement.

  Puller said, “But then we have to wonder why they shotgunned the parents and not the kids. Or why not blunt force to all of them and you don’t have to worry about the sound of a gun?”

  Neither Cole nor Monroe had a ready answer to those queries.

  Puller looked at the tech. “You get elimination prints from the victims and the wife’s parents?”

  “Yeah. That’s where I was early this morning before I went to scrub the car.”

  “You didn’t tell them what had happened, though?” Cole said quickly.

  “Well, the mom’s had a stroke. I just printed her while she was unconscious, so I couldn’t tell her anything. The dad goes in and out. I made it a game so he wouldn’t catch on.”

  “Dementia?” said Puller, and Cole nodded.

  “Does he have lucid moments?”

  She said, “I think so, sometimes. You think he might be helpful?”

  Puller shrugged. “Well, if somebody local killed these folks he might know something. Here’re the possibilities as I see them. One, they were killed because of Colonel Reynolds’s employment with DIA. Two, something connected to the mom. Three, something connected to the kids. Four, something connected to the wife’s parents. Or five, something we don’t see as yet.”

  “Could be a random burglary,” noted Monroe.

  Puller shook his head. “They left a late-model Lexus, a laptop computer, and the wife’s wedding ring. No other valuables known to be missing. And random burglars seldom take the time to interrogate their victims.”

  Cole added, “The wife’s parents probably don’t have an enemy in the world. And the wife and kids were just here for the summer. I doubt they had time to make any enemies. That leaves Colonel Reynolds.”

  “Maybe. Still have to check it all out.” Puller rose. “Any other prints here that didn’t match the eliminated ones from the first responders?”

  “The mailman’s. A caregiver who works at the nursing home. Got her latent on the fridge. She was here to help Mr. Halverson before he went in the nursing home. And two EMTs who were called here when the old lady had her stroke.”

  “No others?”

  “There were two. On the living room wall and one on the kitchen counter. I’m running the prints through our database.”

  Puller said, “Let me have copies and I’ll get them run through the federal databases too.”

  “Thanks.”

  Puller said, “How did the killers know when the mine blasts would take place? Is that public knowledge?”

  “Yes,” said Cole. “There’s a bunch of regulations about surface mining blasting. You have to get proper permits and have a blasting plan in place. You have to post blasting schedules in the local papers well in advance. People close to the blast get personal notification. You have to use a certified blaster. There are limits on noise, so they have to monitor the decibels of the blast. They also have to measure ground vibration. And they often separate the blast charges by eight milliseconds.”

  “Why?” asked Monroe, who looked fascinated by the discussion. He caught Puller gazing at him. “Went to WVU but I’m not from around here.”

  Cole said, “The eight milliseconds allow enough separation to keep the air blast noise and ground vibration under control.”

  Puller gazed at her. “You obviously know a lot about all this. How come?”

  She shrugged. “West Virginia gal. Whole state’s one big mine. At least that’s what it feels like sometimes.”

  “And didn’t your dad work for Trent Exploration?” asked Monroe.

  Cole shot a quick glance at Puller, who was staring at her even more intently. “He did,” she said quietly. “Not anymore.”

  “Why not?” asked Puller.

  “He’s dead.”

  “Sorry to hear that.” He paused for a few moments. “What explosives do they use to do the blasting?”

  “Usually ANFO, combination of ammonium nitrate—fertilizer, really—and diesel fuel. They scrape the topsoil and subsoil layers and then drill holes in the rock to lay their charges. The goal is to fracture the rock layers. Then they bring in heavy equipment to expose the coal seam.”

  “Why do they blow it up instead of digging tunnels?”

  “Decades ago they did tunnel. But getting to the coal that’s left won’t allow tunneling. Softness of the rock. Or so they claim. It’s funny, though.”

  “What?” asked Puller.

  “Typically blasting has to take place between sunrise and sunset,