No Man's Land

by David Baldacci

  concentration.

  She had reached down for something there.

  He scrunched his face up.

  Her fingers touched the frame. It was a photo.

  She picked it up, looked at it.

  Then she put it back down.

  But Puller had seen enough.

  He opened his eyes and swore under his breath.

  He hadn’t asked the obvious follow-up question because he didn’t think it was relevant and he was also trying to be tactful.

  Well, the hell with tactful now.

  “Knox? Knox!”

  He rose, gripped her shoulder, and gently nudged her.

  “Hey, wake up. I might have something.”

  She stirred on the bed, mumbled something, and then sat straight up and looked at him crossly.

  “What?”

  He said, “Why would one woman know the history of another woman?”

  She rubbed her face and then gave him an even crosser look. “I don’t even understand the question.”

  He grabbed his laptop and sat next to her. “Here are my notes on a conversation I had with someone. Read through them.”

  Knox yawned, stretched, and refocused. She read down the page and scrolled to the next.

  “Okay,” she said. “That is a little unusual. I mean, she said they talked, but some of these things, at least it seems to me, the woman did her own research. I mean, they aren’t the sorts of things that would come up in normal conversation, certainly not between two women.”

  “She said my parents and she and her husband frequently socially interacted. And that my mother helped them through their issues. She spoke reverently about her.”

  “But she also said that your mother sort of floated above everyone else. You could read that two ways. Jealousy being one of them.”

  “And there’s something else,” said Puller. He showed her the news article.

  “Her husband committed suicide?” exclaimed Knox.

  “His body was found the morning after my mother disappeared. But he could have died the same night that she vanished.”

  “You think they might be connected?”

  “I don’t know. But I also don’t know they’re not connected.”

  “So this might explain what happened to your mother that night?”

  “Let’s hope so, because I’m fresh out of leads and ideas.”

  * * *

  This time Puller did not phone ahead.

  They arrived at eight o’clock in the morning on the woman’s doorstep.

  Lucy Bristow answered the door in her bathrobe. She didn’t look happy, but then neither did Puller.

  “What do you want?” she said brusquely.

  “Answers,” said Puller bluntly.

  “About what? I’ve told you all I know about your mother.”

  “Can we do this inside?” asked Knox.

  For a moment Bristow looked like she might slam the door in their faces, but then she stepped back and motioned them in. She led them into the kitchen and said, “I’m making some tea, would you like some?”

  Puller declined, Knox accepted.

  Bristow poured out two cups and they sat at the kitchen table.

  “Now what exactly is this about?”

  “You didn’t tell me that your husband committed suicide,” said Puller.

  “I didn’t know I had a responsibility to do so,” she retorted.

  “He most likely died on the very night my mother disappeared.”

  “So what?”

  “Who found him?”

  “I did.”

  “But you were separated,” said Puller. “You weren’t living together.”

  “We were supposed to meet to go over some details of the divorce. He didn’t show up. I called. He didn’t answer. No one knew where he was. I drove over there…And found him.”

  “How did he die? The article I read didn’t say.”

  “Why is this any of your business?”

  “If it’s connected to my mother’s disappearance it is my business.”

  “How could it possibly be?”

  “Please, Mrs. Bristow, just answer the question,” said Knox.

  She sighed, took a sip of tea, and said, “He overdosed. Painkillers. He’d suffered an injury and had a big supply of them in the house. He apparently used a whole bottle of them to commit suicide.”

  “You said that my mother helped you work through issues.”

  “She did.”

  “You also said she helped your husband.”

  “Earl and Jackie were friends,” she said stiffly.

  “I’m not suggesting there was anything deceitful going on between them,” said Puller.

  “I don’t see where this is going,” said Bristow sharply.

  “My mother got a phone call the night she disappeared. I was there. I remember she looked upset, agitated. Then she got dressed and went out somewhere. Could the call have come from your husband? Would he have called my mom if he were in distress? If he needed to talk?”

  “Particularly if he were contemplating suicide,” added Knox.

  “And if he did, don’t you think it likely that my mother would have gone over there to talk to him?”

  When Puller had mentioned the phone call, Bristow’s face had paled and she had put her teacup down because her hand had started to tremble.

  Knox said, “What is it?”

  Bristow put a hand to her mouth and tears emerged at the corners of her eyes.

  “Mrs. Bristow, please, tell us,” implored Puller.

  She composed herself. “Earl called me that night.”

  “You?”

  She nodded, wiping at her eyes. “He was distressed. He sounded drunk. He…” Her voice trailed away and she fell silent.

  “Did he ask you to come over?” said Puller.

  She looked at him and nodded.

  “And what happened?” asked Knox.

  “Nothing. Because I didn’t go over. I went out with some friends instead.”

  She let out a gush of air and leaned forward, put her forehead on the table, and started to sob.

  Knox and Puller just stared at her. Finally, Knox put a supportive hand on the woman’s shoulder and said, “It’s okay, Mrs. Bristow. You had no way of knowing.”

  The sobs racked the woman for another minute before she sat up, grabbed a napkin from the holder in the center of the table, wiped her eyes, and blew her nose.

  She sat back, let out a long breath, and said, “Well, I might as well get it all out.” She blew her nose again and wadded the napkin in her hand.

  “I told Earl that I wasn’t coming over and…” She stopped and looked at Puller.

  “And what?” asked Puller.

  “And that he should call Jackie.”

  “Why my mother?”

  “Because he was infatuated with her. Besotted, head over heels in love, that’s why. It was a bitchy thing to do, I know, but I was just fed up.”

  Puller sat back looking surprised.

  Knox glanced nervously at him and said to Bristow, “Was that the problem in your marriage? Is that why you separated?”

  Bristow nodded. “That along with the fact that Earl drank too much.”

  Puller said, “Are you saying they were having an affair?”

  Bristow shook her head. “Earl clearly wanted to. He would have married Jackie if he could have.”

  Puller exclaimed, “She was already married. To his commanding officer! And my father.”

  Bristow looked at him from under hooded, reddened eyes. “Do you think someone in love gives a damn about that?”

  “And my mother?”

  “Your mother had no interest in anything like that. She was a devout Catholic. When I told you earlier that she floated above the rest of us, I meant that in a divinely spiritual way.”

  “You seemed to know a lot about Mrs. Puller,” said Knox. “More than you would get simply from conversation with her.”

  “When it
was clear my husband was in love with her I did some research. I don’t know why. I just did. I wanted to hate her, I guess. Find some flaw to make myself feel better. But when I realized that Jackie had no interest in breaking her marriage vows I actually became closer to her. She knew what was going on. She knew how Earl felt. And she gently but firmly made it very clear to him that it was never going to happen.”

  “So when you declined to go over there that night, you told him to call her?”

  “Yes. And if she got a call that night I’m sure it was from Earl. But I had no idea she had gotten a call that night, so I never thought that Earl had contacted her.”

  “She didn’t go right away. She made us dinner, my brother and me, so I doubt he told her he was thinking of killing himself. She would have called the police immediately.”

  “Do you remember what time the call was?”

  “Around six, I think.”

  “Then it was after he called me.” She glanced at Puller. “Why did you think about this connection?”

  “The date of your husband’s suicide. Your knowledge about my mother. And I remembered that before she left the house that night she picked up a photo off her dresser. In that photo were my parents, and you and your husband.”

  Bristow sighed and closed her eyes.

  “So my mother goes to meet him,” said Puller. “She disappears. And later he commits suicide?”

  Bristow’s eyes popped open. She seemed to sense where he was going. “Do you…are you alleging that Earl murdered your mother? He loved her.”

  “And love can turn to hate when it’s rebuffed,” said Puller grimly. “As an Army investigator I’ve seen that happen more times than I can count.”

  “Omigod!” Bristow said. “But what would he have done with…?”

  “With her body? I don’t know. Did he call you again that night?”

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t you go to see him?” asked Knox.

  “Because I had nothing to say to him. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. So I just told him to talk to the woman he really loved, which wasn’t me!”

  “Did my father know about all this?”

  Bristow looked at him contemptuously. “Do you think if he did know he would have let things stand like that? Your father would have come over and kicked the shit out of Earl. And Earl knew it. He feared your father, like most of the junior officers.”

  “But those officers didn’t have the hots for my mom,” retorted Puller. “And if he couldn’t control himself, and he couldn’t have my mom, then maybe he decided no one else could either,” said Puller.

  “I can’t believe that Earl would have harmed her.”

  “And I can’t take the chance that he didn’t without thoroughly checking it out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean getting a search warrant for your former house.”

  “You can’t think that—”

  “I’m a criminal investigator. What you think and what I know people are capable of are light-years apart.”

  Chapter

  58

  PULLER HAD CALLED his CO, Don White, explained the situation, and White had gotten a search warrant. It was fairly easy because the house the Bristows had lived in back then was now vacant.

  A team of agents had come in and spent all day tearing the place apart. Cadaver-sniffing dogs had been brought in to go over the house and grounds.

  It had taken time, and money.

  And the result was zip.

  Puller had seen the resentment in the CID agents who performed this work. They were overworked as it was without this time-waster. That’s what he read in their looks.

  Puller had been so sure, but the dogs would have found something if there had been anything.

  He leaned against his new rental, surveying the property, while Knox stood beside him.

  “Well, it was worth a shot,” she said.

  “We may be the only ones who think that. And now we’re back to square one,” he replied.

  “We need more information,” said Knox.

  “The thing is, if Earl Bristow wasn’t involved in my mother’s disappearance, who was?”

  “You don’t think the wife was, do you? Maybe she was feeding us a bunch of bull. Maybe she wanted to get back with her husband and was jealous of your mother.”

  “I checked. She had an alibi for the time in question. And people I talked to seemed unanimous in their recollection that Lucy Bristow wanted the divorce.”

  “So maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  Puller glanced up and down the street they were on. “Shit,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “Come with me.”

  He started walking and Knox fell in beside him. “Where are we going?”

  “If my mom came to visit Bristow that night she would have come this way. It’s really the only way to come from our house.”

  “Okay.”

  Puller kept going, his long, purposeful strides eating up ground. Knox, tall as she was, had to hurry to keep up.

  He stopped when he got to a heavily wooded area, and took a picture of it with his camera.

  “What was that for?” asked Knox.

  “You’ll see.”

  They rounded a bend in the road and Puller stopped.