Huang tries to maintain his composure, but Jefferson knows he’s getting under the doctor’s skin. Jefferson says, “You want to talk to me. Fine. I’ll save us all a bunch of time and tell you what’s what.”
Huang says, “All right. I’m curious to hear what you have to say.”
Jefferson makes a point of leaning over a bit more. “Just a question before I begin. You ever been out in the field?”
“I don’t see how—”
“Lieutenant, I get an answer or I’m out of here.”
Huang doesn’t look happy. “No,” he says.
“All right, let’s put it out there. My men and I, we don’t fight for God, country, or whatever clown is sitting in the Oval Office. We fight for one another or our platoon or our battalion. That is it. When you’re in a trench in the middle of the night and the muj are coming through the wire, sending RPG rounds your way, you may hate the guy next to you for stealing your clean socks last week, but by God, you’ve got his back.”
Huang sits quietly, and Jefferson says, “And who’s got our back? The Army? JAG? CID? You? Anybody else?”
The doctor says, “I can help. You tell me what’s going on, what happened, I might be able to—”
“Help in what way?” Jefferson asks. “Are you going to get that county sheriff to set us free? Think the district attorney won’t indict us? You think the families of those folks in that old historical house are going to forget what happened? You going to tell CID that it was all a mistake and put pressure on the county sheriff to let us go?”
Huang snaps to. “You’re telling me that you and your squad were in that house, Staff Sergeant?”
Jefferson withdraws his hands, puts them in his lap. That was stupid, getting angry like that.
“That’s enough,” Jefferson says. “Enough.”
Huang slowly unfolds himself from his chair and leans over the table. “Tell me, Sergeant. Tell me what happened in that home. Why were you there? Did they shoot first? Did you respond automatically, not able to stop?”
Jefferson says, “You like being a doctor?”
“What?” Huang asks, confused. “Yes, yes I do.”
Jefferson slowly stands up. “I love docs, honest to God I do. Combat medics in the field, shit, they are the goddamn best. Mortar rounds exploding around you, grenades flying overhead, rounds whipping near you…you hunker down so hard you want to dig a hole eight meters deep with your hands. But when a guy gets a piece of shrapnel in his neck, when somebody screams out, ‘I’m hit, I’m hit, Medic,’ those guys jump up and run out and do their job. God, I love ’em and respect them.”
He turns, anger building in him. “But not you, Lieutenant. You’re a goddamn head doc, worthless. And if you come talk to my squad again without my permission, one of these days I’ll track you down and hurt you. Bad.”
Chapter 19
SPECIAL AGENT MANUEL SANCHEZ pulls over to the side of the road in his rented Ford sedan, yawns, rubs at his eyes. It’s been one long grueling day, for after his interview with Wendy Gabriel he decided to continue going up and down Route 119, interviewing other households that might have witnesses to what happened on Wednesday night.
Not surprisingly, the interviews went bust. He’s talked to two men, three women, and two young boys, in a variety of rural houses and mobile homes, up and down this lonely stretch of Georgia state highway, and no one saw a thing. Lunch was a bottle of orange Fanta and two packages of peanuts from a service station’s vending machine just outside Sullivan.
He checks the car’s clock. It’s just after 8:00 p.m., the time when Wendy said she saw the pickup truck owned by Staff Sergeant Jefferson leave the kill house four nights ago. The dirt driveway to The Summer House and a utility pole with a single streetlight are up ahead.
Time to see what Wendy claims she saw.
He puts the car in drive, goes to the driveway, and backs in a couple of meters. Sanchez leaves the engine in park, gets out, and walks in the glare of the headlights, out to the road.
He turns around, looks at the Ford sedan. Even with the glare of the headlights it’s easy to make out the license plate. He goes back to the car, flicks off the headlights, leaving the amber parking lights on.
There.
Still visible.
He stands on the road, looks up at the streetlight. It’s an old streetlight, the kind with a large bulb screwed into a metal dome. The light is yellow and weak, gradually fading in and out.
Interesting.
He looks around at the scenery. So dark, so empty. Just brooding, heavy trees. The bare pavement. So quiet, save for insects out there, and night birds and a dog barking. Toby Baby? Maybe. So very, very different from the constant lights, noise, horns, engines, and music back home in LA.
Sanchez goes back to the car, switches off even the parking lights, and then returns to the road.
The overhead utility light is still bright enough to make out the license plate. Not crystal clear but enough to do the job, for someone to get the first three letters and a number.
“There you go,” he whispers.
His jacket feels clammy and confining on him, so he takes it off, folds it in half, and then stops.
A car or truck engine, out there.
He turns.
No headlights.
He looks back at the sedan.
Walks to it, opens the door, drapes the jacket—a Brooks Brothers coat with shiny buttons his wife, Conchita, bought for him when he got a promotion last year—over the driver’s seat, so the buttons are facing up.
He switches on the headlights.
Goes back to the road.
The license plate is clear. The color of the car is easy to make out, as well as the car brand.
That’s it.
He returns to the car, switches off the headlights, puts on the parking lights once more.
Goes back to the road.
Waits.
The overhead utility light fades in and out, the yellow light faint.
An engine loudly starts up, and his LAPD instincts kick in as he leaps away from the road, just as a pickup truck roars by, so close he feels the warmth from the exhaust pipe. The truck races down the road and brakes, squealing rubber.
The truck’s lights are doused.
It waits, somewhere down the road.
Sanchez’s SIG Sauer is in his hands. He doesn’t remember pulling it from his holster. He quickly goes to the Ford, switches off the parking lights. He drops to one knee, holding the pistol in both hands, over the hood of his rental car.
The truck is still there.
Engine running loudly.
No lights. No voices. No honky-tonk tunes coming from within. He’s pretty sure the driver switched off the engine some ways back and coasted down here before roaring by, to catch him by surprise.
Sanchez wishes he could trade the rented sedan for one of the unit cars he used back when he was a cop. Then at least he’d have some heavier firepower, a Remington 870 pump-action shotgun or a Bushmaster .223 semiautomatic rifle with a thirty-round magazine.
The driver revs the engine.
Sanchez whispers, “Come on, pendejo, come on back and let’s play.”
Another squeal of rubber and the truck roars down the highway, and a few seconds later, its headlights and taillights flick on, like the driver is taunting him.
Sanchez stands up, puts the SIG Sauer back in its holster.
The overhead streetlight is still weak, and he looks into the car interior and sees not a thing.
Chapter 20
STAFF SERGEANT CALEB JEFFERSON stares at his late-night visitor and says, “How the hell did you get in here?”
Major Frank Moore, executive officer for the Fourth Battalion, says, “I spun a tale. What else? I told the jail attendant I really, really needed to see you, and she wouldn’t let me in, and then I pulled the weary war vet who needs help bullshit story.”
Jefferson says, “And that got you here?”
Moore
shakes his head. “Nah. I had to promise to give her a helicopter ride next week.”
“Sir, you need to leave, right now,” Jefferson says. “This isn’t helping.”
“But you need to know a couple of things, and I sure as hell don’t trust the phones here or at the post,” Moore says.
The major is a good guy and has run interference for him several times with the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Marcello, but Moore’s exposing himself, being an hour away from post and at this town jail.
“All right, sir, but please, make it quick.”
The major is still in his fatigues, and he lowers his voice. “The battalion commander was interviewed earlier today by two CID investigators.”
“I’m sure Marcello told the investigators what fine, upstanding troopers we are.”
Moore smiles. “I had my ear to the door. He threw all of you under the bus, you know, the heavy-duty one with spiked tires.”
“You drove out here to tell me this?” Jefferson asks.
“Staff Sergeant, I’m an officer, but I try not to be stupid,” he says. “The crew that’s here, looking into things…it’s not a typical CID investigation. They’re here from Quantico, and they’re going to poke into anything and everything.”
“I know that,” Jefferson says. “My guys and I were interviewed a few hours ago by a shrink, trying to find out what makes us tick.”
“What did you tell him?”
Jefferson says, “I told the nosy little shit I wet the bed a lot when I was a kid and had mommy issues. What do you think?”
“This isn’t a joking matter, Sergeant.”
“Again, you drove out here to tell me that, sir?” he asks. “Major Moore, did they talk to you as well?”
“That they did,” Moore says. “I told them I hardly knew you and your squad.”
“Good job, sir,” he says, pleased that this officer, at least, is on the beam. “Is there anything else?”
“Your aunt Sophie called me,” he says.
Oh, shit, Jefferson thinks. “No.”
“Yes,” Major Moore says.
“Is everything all right with Carol?”
Moore says, “Oh, yes, Carol is doing fine under the circumstances. What we talked about earlier is all set. But Aunt Sophie knows you and yours are in trouble, and she wants to—”
“No,” Jefferson says.
“Sergeant, all she wants—”
“Sir, no,” Jefferson says. “It’s all under control. Everything is under control, thanks to you. But if my aunt starts making a fuss, it’ll be all done. Game over. You call my aunt on your way home, tell her to keep quiet. Please. Keep quiet.”
“Sergeant, are you sure?”
“A hundred percent,” he says, scraping his chair back. “Call my aunt when you can. Tell her I’m fine, tell her thanks for taking care of my girl. And that I’ll come over for a visit when I can. But be careful. Call my aunt from a pay phone on your way back.”
“Might be hard to find one.”
“Sir, no offense, you better find one,” he says.
Ninety minutes later, Major Frank Moore pulls up to his townhouse in Georgetown, his late-night dinner—fried chicken from a Publix store nearby—sitting on the car’s passenger seat.
Besides a quick meal, this Publix also offered a rare public pay phone outside, which he used to call Staff Sergeant Jefferson’s aunt, Sophie Johnson. The strong-willed and strong-voiced woman seemed to reluctantly agree to her nephew’s request to keep quiet and not stir up a fuss about what was happening to the staff sergeant.
Moore gets out of his Honda CR-V, goes up the brick pathway to the front door. It’s a nice, quiet development, and his wife, Patricia—four months along with their first child—is spending the week visiting her mom in DC. He gets to the door, puts the plastic bag on the steps, and, as he takes the key out to unlock the door, hears rustling in the shrubbery over by the living room windows.
Damn white-tailed deer, he thinks, are getting more and more brazen, coming out and chewing up everyone’s yard, and as he steps back to take a closer look, a man emerges from the shrubbery and says, “Hey, Major Moore.”
Before Moore can reply, the man pulls a pistol with a sound suppressor from his waistband and shoots the Army major in the forehead.
Chapter 21
IT’S EARLY EVENING and I’m leaning so heavily on my cane that I think the metal might split. My left leg feels like it’s a carved roast sizzling under an infrared restaurant lamp. My leg throbs and throbs, seemingly in pace with my heartbeat, and what’s keeping me going is knowing that this is our last visit of the day, and when I get back to my motel room, it’ll be time for my early evening ration of Extra Strength Tylenol.
Earlier Connie and I visited the Route 119 Gas N’ Go convenience store, and an eager young Indian man working behind the counter who didn’t speak much English managed to tell us that we needed to speak to his uncle Vihan in the morning to get access to the store’s surveillance system.
Now we’re at the side entrance of Briggs Brothers Funeral Home after a bit of sleuthing—all right, maybe ten seconds’ work on Connie’s part—revealed that the Sullivan County coroner is Ferguson Briggs, owner of the largest funeral home in this part of Georgia.
The building is white with black shutters, with a mini steeple to make it look like a house of worship, and a three-car garage is off to the side of a large paved parking lot. There’s a lot of shrubbery and a wooden sign out on the road painted black and a faded maroon color.
Without asking for direction from me, her commanding officer, Connie picks up the courtesy phone.
“Hello?” she says. “Yes, who’s this, please? Jim Briggs, thank you. Could you meet me at your door, please? I’m Special Agent Connie York from the US Army, here with Major Jeremiah Cook. Yes. We’re Army investigators and—thank you, we’ll wait.”
Connie’s face is red and shiny with perspiration, and strands of her blond hair are sticking to her forehead, but she still looks great. She catches me looking at her and says, “What?”
“Been a long day,” I say.
“Yeah, and not much progress,” she says. “I hope the others have something to show for it.”
“When we’re done here, send out a group text,” I reply. “Time for a session back at the motel before we call it a night.”
Connie looks over my shoulder at a nearby brick building with a concrete chimney and then the three-car garage and says, “Think that’s where they keep the hearses?”
“Watch your language,” I say. “They’re called coaches.”
Inside the funeral home lights click on.
“Duly noted,” Connie says. “Funny thing, the county coroner being a funeral director.”
“Lots of funny things here in Sullivan County,” I say. “And it’s an elected position. Meaning the good citizens of this county didn’t vote him in just because he’s got a degree in forensics or forensic anthropology. He’s here because probably he treats the locals with respect, sympathy, and doesn’t overcharge them for pretty boxes with shiny handles.”
“Aren’t you the cynic today,” she says, smiling. “Sir.”
Flying insects are hammering themselves against two yellow light bulbs when the rear door is unlocked, and a young man steps out, straightening his thin black necktie.
To Connie I say, “It’s a day ending in y…Thank you, sir, for coming to see us. Mr. Briggs, I’m Major Cook, and this is Special Agent York. We’re with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.”
He’s about a half foot taller than me, early twenties, skinny, and he runs one hand through a thick tangle of brown hair while trying to tighten the knot on his necktie with the other. He has on black trousers, black shoes, a white dress shirt that’s wrinkled, and I have three quick assumptions: one, he’s wearing this clothing on a Sunday evening because his father told him to; two, like it or not, he’s going to inherit this family business one of these days; and three, he’s proba
bly not alone back there in the funeral home. He’s either with someone else or a video game. I know I wouldn’t want to be alone, with bodies being stored in the building’s basement.
“Ah, heck, you can call me Jimmy,” he says. “But I need to ask to see your IDs. A couple of months ago some guy from the Georgia State Patrol came by and I was fixin’ him coffee, and Daddy nearly tore my head off when he came over and found out I didn’t know if the guy was official or not.”
Connie displays her shield, as do I, and she says, “Was he official?”
“Oh, yeah, but that didn’t mean anything,” he says shyly. “Daddy was still upset. What can I do for you folks?”
I take a breath as a new, stronger wave of pain radiates up and down my leg. “I understand the county coroner’s office is located here. Am I right?”
Jimmy nods. “One hundred percent. Daddy’s been coroner for twelve years, and in less than two weeks he’s going to be reelected.”
“Do you have the bodies of the…folks who were murdered this past Wednesday, here in storage?” I ask.
His face seems even more yellow in the light. “Blessed Jesus, that we do. We’re lucky that two of the guys were pretty skinny. We were able to put them together on one tray, and the mom and her kid…” He swallows, revealing a prominent Adam’s apple. “Bless ’em all.”
“We’d like to examine them, please,” I say.
“Now? You mean…right now?”
“That’s right,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Can’t do it, sir. Can’t.”
I say, “You’ve seen our shields. We’ve identified ourselves. Four Army Rangers have been arrested for those murders. We’d like your assistance in our investigation.”
Another shake of the head, and he takes a step back into the funeral home, like he’d rather be in a place storing seven dead civilians than be out here with us.
“I can’t do that. Honest, I can’t,” he says. “Daddy would have my hide.”
I don’t have to say anything, but Connie steps into play, smiling.
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