The Summer House

Chapter 40

It’s either late at night or early in the morning — depending on one’s point of view — and Special Agent Connie York is awake in her damn uncomfortable bed, sitting up, her laptop in front of her.

Her temporary roommate, Pierce, is only three feet away, but he’s sleeping soundly, which is a gift. She has foam earplugs that she always brings with her on trips, to deaden any noise out there that would prevent her from sleeping, but she could be in the middle of a dead desert tonight with no sounds and she still wouldn’t be able to get to sleep.

Too much is going on.

Since Sheriff Williams left with that one last and compelling piece of evidence, and after a lousy evening meal and even lousier discussion about what to do next with the major and the rest of the crew, she’s now here in her shared room, watching and rewatching the convenience store surveillance tape.

Something is bugging her, and she can’t figure out what it is.

The lights are off in their cruddy room. Occasionally she hears voices outside, from either drunks leaving the town’s few bars after closing time or members of the press, still hovering around them like the vultures they are.

The only illumination comes from her laptop, and the brief bit of surveillance tape she views again and again.

Outside the store, near the gas pumps, Specialist Vinny Tyler and Specialist Paulie Ruiz are smoking, talking, pointing at each other. Voices seemingly raised. An argument going on.

“Oh, damn,” she whispers. “Too bad there’s no audio. I’d love to hear what you fellows are saying.”

Inside the store, Staff Sergeant Caleb Jefferson and Corporal Curtis Barnes move briskly and efficiently, going to the rear to get energy drinks and then coming up to the counter to pay for their purchases.

Money is passed over and change is received. Outside Tyler and Barnes are still talking, and it seems like Tyler is on the defensive. Hard to pin it down, but it looks like poor Tyler is making an argument to Barnes and is losing.

Poor Tyler indeed, his life ending not on some foreign battlefield in the service of his country but in some steel-and-concrete cell in a small Georgia town.

She goes through the surveillance tape two more times. Yawns.

Something is still wrong.

Again, she goes back to the beginning and sees the big pickup truck roll in, and the owner, Vihan Laghari, is sitting on a metal stool, smoking a cigarette, watching the television set underneath the counter.

When the door opens up, Laghari stubs out the cigarette, stands up, and—

She rewinds the video.

Watches.

Rewinds the video.

Even in the poor black-and-white quality of the video, she can make out what Laghari is watching on the hidden television.

It’s not a Bollywood program.

It’s one of those reality housewives shows on the Bravo network.

“Damn,” she whispers.

She opens a browser window, gets to work, and there’s a pounding on the door that goes on and on and on.

York instantly slaps the cover down on her laptop — getting rid of a light source — then she rolls over onto the floor and thrusts her right hand into her open go bag.

On the other side of the room Pierce wakes up and says, “What the hell is going on?”

The pounding is heavy, hard, determined.

“Keep your voice down,” she says to the JAG lawyer. “Somebody either wants in or wants our attention.”

She slides along the wall, SIG Sauer in hand, and she quietly unbolts the chain to the door. There’s a peephole in the door, but there’s no way she’s putting an unguarded eye up to it. Too many memories of horror movies with ice picks driving through the peephole into dumb victims... which she most certainly is not.

York grabs the doorknob, gives it a good spin, and quickly pulls the door open.

Outside an angry-looking Major Cook is there, metal cane in hand, dressed in gym shorts and a gray-and-blue NYPD T-shirt, and he says, “Choir practice. Now.”

He limps off to room 11, and after grabbing her laptop she follows him, with Pierce right behind her, yawning and scratching at his head.

Pierce says, “Mind telling me what ‘choir practice’ means?”

The laptop is warm under her arm. “Old cop slang. An after-hours meeting, unofficial, no records kept. Usually it means an after-shift party. Or an ass kicking. Care to guess what we’re in for?”

“No,” Pierce says.

Inside room 11 it’s warm and stuffy, and it smells of sweat and old grease, just like her own room with Pierce. If there’s housekeeping at this motel, Connie has yet to see it.

Huang and Sanchez are there, sitting next to each other, wearing shorts and T-shirts. Sanchez has a number of tattoos on his large upper biceps. The major waits until everyone is seated and then slams the door shut.

Nobody says a word. Everyone is paying attention. Cook’s face is mottled red, and York thinks this is the first time she and the others have seen his wounded leg. She’s shocked at how pale and thin it is, and how the flesh is puckered and ridged with scars and burn tissue. The pain her boss goes through every day must be tremendous.

He says, “Listen up. Look around. This is a special unit, coordinated by the Criminal Investigation Division of the goddamn United States Army, tasked to investigate crimes of high interest and severity. That means Colonel Phillips and myself thought at one point you had the experience and guts to get the job done.”

York’s computer is on her lap, and she’s slowly manipulating the keys, wanting to take a closer look at what the new browser window is revealing.

Cook leans into his cane, and she thinks he’s standing here, leg exposed, to shock all of them, and the major’s doing a good job. Even though she’s quietly working on something else, his words shoot out at them like chunks of cold stone.

“Right now, damn it, you’re failing. All of you. You’ve done some preliminary work gathering information and evidence, but you know what? It’s all been fed to us! All of it! The police reports, the witnesses, the surveillance tape, the forensics, the county coroner... everything has been set up on the proverbial goddamn silver platter, and right now it stops!”

York freezes the browser.

My God.

Can this be true?

Cook nearly shouts, “Sanchez!”

He sits up. “Sir!”

“Wendy Gabriel, the witness who has the dog. Find her or find someone who knows why she’s gone, or where she’s gone. You hit every mobile home and shack within five miles of that place. You go back to her home and you look it over, see if there’s anything there that says why she left and where she went.”

“Sir, she’s a hoarder and—”

“I don’t care if she collects her dog’s urine in mason jars. You get back into that house and find something. Pierce.”

“Sir,” Pierce says.

York slowly moves her fingers, the digits feeling fat and clumsy, because she can’t believe what she’s just found.

“Pierce, you get your ass back to the Ralston jail. Do whatever you have to do to talk to the Rangers. Why in hell are they planning to defend themselves without outside counsel? Are they being pressured? Blackmailed? And when you go to Ralston, you take Huang with you.”

Huang says in a tired voice, “But, sir, I mean—”

“Doctor, shut up and do your job,” Cook says, his face even more red. “You suck it up and get back to Ralston, and you do your damn professional best and get in there and talk to those Rangers. What happened to them in Afghanistan with that civilian house they supposedly hit? What rivalries and jealousies do other members of their battalion have against them? What do they think drove Tyler to kill himself?”

York is staring at her computer screen, hoping she’s right, hoping she’s—

“Agent York!” Cook yells. “What the hell is so goddamn important on your goddamn computer? Have you listened to a goddamn word I’ve said?”

“Sir, I—”

A phone rings. York feels warm and ashamed, like a high school student caught cheating on a test. Everyone looks around the room to see which one of them has interrupted the major, until he curses, reaches into his shorts, pulls out his phone.

He glances at the screen.

“Colonel Phillips,” Cook says. “Good. Let’s see what he’s found out about our Rangers and the CIA.”

The major brings his phone up and says, “Cook, here. Sir, could I — oh.”

Then, amazingly and frighteningly, his red face drains of all color, becoming pasty white.

Something is wrong, York thinks.

Cook says, “But, sir—”

No.

Something is very seriously wrong.