No Man's Land

17

PULLER SAT IN a chair in his motel room and stared at the duffel.

It was just an ordinary duffel.

Canvas.

Zippered.

Crammed with stuff that helped Puller do what he did.

Find the truth.

What he did. All he ever wanted to do.

Was that because his mother had left the house and never come back?

Because some evil had made sure she couldn’t ever come back?

And was that evil his own father?

He covered his face with his hands, the impossible burden of this thought threatening to crush him without a gram of actual weight behind it.

Then he sat up straight and composed himself.

You’re Army, John Puller. You’re an Army Ranger. You can do the impossible. You’re expected to do the impossible on a regular basis.

So open the bag, John. Open the damn bag and just let it out. Finally.

His fingers reached out to take hold of the zipper.

He imagined his father glowering at him.

Come on, soldier, you put your life on the line for your country. A damn zipper shouldn’t be too hard.

He slid it down, spread open the canvas, and saw what he had put in there.

He touched the edge of the letter but didn’t pull it out. Not right away.

He had to work up to it, as strange as that sounded. The gravitational pull of family dynamics; it left a black hole in the dust.

He finally eased it out enough to see the name written on the front of the envelope.

Written in his mother’s hand.

John.

Not him, his father.

The letter had been for John Puller Sr. At the time he was a one-star busting his ass to add more silver to the epaulets. This meant leaving everything else in his life, including his family, in a distant second place.

Puller Sr. would finish his career with a trio of stars. There were only forty-three of those in the entire United States Army. But his old man wanted the fourth, which would have put him in the elite company of only nine people on earth at any given time. And because he never got there, he was a failure, at least in his eyes.

A failure in the mind he used to have.

Puller took the letter out and unfolded it.

He had never read it. He had found it when he was a little boy, his mother gone barely six months. His father had left it somewhere in the house at Fort Monroe. The envelope had been opened, but he had no idea if his father had read the contents.

He looked down at the writing that, despite the passage of years, he recognized as his mother’s. She used to write many notes to him and his brother, ones of encouragement, support, sometimes just funny things to make them smile or, better yet, laugh, particularly when they were sad or uncertain or fearful.

The life of an Army brat was not easy. The life of a son of an Army legend could sometimes be pure hell.

The Puller brothers had learned that lesson vividly as they had grown into men.

People either assumed you were as good and talented and brave as your legendary father and never allowed you to fall below that supremely high bar, or they assumed you were nowhere near as good as he was because it was a rare family that could spawn multiple fighting legends. Thus you were instantly relegated to being parasites riding your father’s coattails. Nothing you achieved would ever be because of what you did, but only because of who your father was.

So anything you accomplished, under either scenario, would never be good enough.

Because you would never be him.

The letter was brief but compelling, even heartwrenching in parts. What he would have given to have received letters from her when he’d been at college, or when he’d first joined the Army. Or when he’d been deployed overseas and was literally fighting for his life through some of the most hostile and chaotic situations imaginable.

Her words would have been his touchstone, his oasis in a sea of shit.

Puller felt his hand begin to shake as he read through the thoughts of his mother from three decades before.

Problems in the marriage. Problems with him. Problems with her.

But…she was willing to work things out.

Not for her or him.

But because of their sons.

Because that was what was truly important. At least to Jackie Puller.

But-and here was the crux of it-she wrote that she and the boys would have to go away for a while. To let John Puller Sr. see what his real priorities were in life. And then, depending on what he decided, they would go from there.

Puller folded the letter and slid it back into the envelope.

Words from the grave. Or if not the grave, Puller didn’t know where.

Despite the obvious love and affection she held for her sons, as noted in the letter, Puller came away from reading it more depressed than he had been before.

Part of him had hoped that his mother had left her husband. Because that meant she might still be alive.

To Puller, this letter meant that his mother most likely was dead.

He would take bullets and bombs and jihadist fanatics trying to rip his life from him over that. You fought for the flag and country you represented. But you really fought for the guy beside you.

Here, Puller was alone.

It was just him and a vanished mother to whom he had given all of his heart.

As he stood there looking down at the envelope, depression was suddenly replaced with an even more powerful emotion.

Guilt.

Why had he waited all these years to do anything about this?

He was a trained investigator. Yet he’d never investigated the one case that meant more to him than any he would ever confront. Even more than his brother being in prison.

Yet he had done nothing. Just let the time slip past.

He put the envelope back in his duffel and zippered it up, securing the fastener with a CID lock.

He pondered whether to call his brother.

But Bobby would probably just try to be logical and thus disdainful of every emotion his younger brother was feeling.

He didn’t need logic or disdain right now.

He just needed someone to talk to about this who could see it from a side of life that had nothing to do with practicality and common sense.

He looked at his watch.

Hopefully he would have a lead on Father Rooney by the time he left and drove back to Fort Monroe.

He locked his room up and headed to his car.

When he turned the corner he saw her, perched regally on the hood of his Malibu like a flesh-and-blood ornament. He was so stunned he almost ran into a support post holding up the motel’s porch.

Veronica Knox said, “I understand you might need a friend.”