The Summer House

Chapter 8

Captain Allen Pierce of the US Army JAG Corps opens the door to his room at the Route 119 Motel and Coffee Shop in Sullivan, Georgia, flips on the light, and takes in his temporary home. Two sagging single beds separated by a nightstand with a light. A low bureau against the right-hand wall, a television chained to the floor. The carpet stained and scarred with cigarette burns. An open bathroom with a small shower.

Several hours ago he was playing the fifteenth hole at the Nassau Country Club, on the outskirts of Glen Cove, odd man out in a foursome with Pop and two of his friends, all three Wall Street lawyers, all members of the Urban League, all summering at Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard.

Pop was trying to grease the skids to ease the way forward for his lawyer son if he ever leaves the Army, and the incoming text from Major Cook meant Pierce didn’t have to say no again to his father.

Pierce decides to take the far bed, thinking it’ll be farther away from any noise in the parking lot, and dumps his go bag, then uses the bathroom to freshen up. He feels disoriented, like he did in the first few weeks after graduating from Columbia Law and going straight to Fort Benning, taking the direct-commission route from civilian to second lieutenant.

While at Fort Benning for his six weeks of initial training, he was in a huge complex, under constant supervision and in the company of other soldiers and trainees. Today? He drove here from the airport by himself, along the twilit back roads of Georgia, and for thirty minutes he was followed by a car that slowed when he slowed, accelerated when he accelerated.

Paranoia, he thinks, but he also thinks of his great-uncle Byron, who had his skull fractured during the Freedom Rides back in the early sixties.

Pierce walks outside and tenses up as a car drives right up to his motel unit, lights bright, and there’s his service pistol back in his luggage — which he’s fired a total of three times, on the range — but the engine and lights switch off, and Major Jeremiah Cook’s voice cuts through the Georgia darkness.

“Good to see you, Captain,” he says. “Let’s get to work.”

After retrieving his legal pad and laptop, Pierce follows Major Cook and Special Agent Connie York past two other rooms in this motel, which is L-shaped, with an office at the junction of the L and a coffee shop at the far end. Connie unlocks the door of the next room — marked 11 in stick-on numbers — and leads them in, switching on the lights. “It’s a hole, but it’s workable,” she says. “Allen, give me a hand, will you?”

The motel room looks like it’s part storage facility, and he works a few minutes with Connie to push the beds against the walls and get a row of folding chairs and a table set up. Connie then digs around in the remaining clutter of boxes and shopping bags and emerges with a large whiteboard, which he helps her hang up on a wall. Connie is an attractive woman, and Allen not only enjoys working with her but also just likes being in her presence. Not enough to ask her out — one piece of advice he did take from Pop was never to dip one’s pen in the company ink — but he can still admire a smart and good-looking woman.

Pierce takes a seat and says, “What do we have, Major?”

Cook’s face is red and strained, and Allen recalls their last deployment, to Germany, where Cook insisted on going for a run every morning, despite his scarred and wounded leg. Allen wonders how his boss keeps it together.

“Just a quick brief until Huang and Sanchez show up,” he says. “When they do, we’re each going to fire up our laptops and check out each Ranger’s service record. Connie, will you put up the photos?”

York arranges the booking photos of four Army Rangers on the left side of the whiteboard and then writes the names of seven civilian dead on the right side. Allen keeps pace, taking careful notes on the details of the case and the soldiers’ arrest, pausing just once at hearing that a two-year-old baby girl is among the victims.

His writing hand stills. Part of his JAG training at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville after his six weeks at Fort Benning involved looking at past incidents when Army personnel went beyond the normal bounds of civilized actions — No Gun Ri, My Lai, and Abu Ghraib — and he knows he shouldn’t be too surprised to see a case in which Army Rangers apparently went berserk and killed civilians.

But a little girl? Two years old?

“And that’s it so far,” Connie says, recapping her black marker. “Sir? Anything you’d like to add?”

Cook struggles to his feet, goes to the whiteboard, taps at the photos and then the list of victims.

“Here’s the gap,” he says, pointing to the clear section between the photos and the writing. “We need to fill it in. Find out what possible connection could exist between these civilians” — a tap to the board — “and these Rangers.”

Allen says, “Do we know when Huang and Sanchez are arriving?”

Connie says, “Just before midnight, if their flights are on time. There’s a rental car waiting for them at the airport. Sir?”

Cook goes back to his chair, sits, winces, and stretches his left leg out. “The three of us are about to find out what kind of meal this motel’s coffee shop serves. Then tomorrow, bright and early, we’re going to send Huang and you, Allen, to the jail where these four are being held. It’s in Ralston, next town over.”

“Sounds good,” Allen says.

“Connie, you and I, along with Sanchez, we’re also getting an early start tomorrow.”

She looks confused. “You mean the 8:00 a.m. meeting with Sheriff Williams?”

“No,” he says. “I mean the three of us are going over to the murder scene. The so-called Summer House.”

“But she said we couldn’t gain entry,” Connie says.

Allen takes notice of that. The locals are already pushing back hard, even before they’ve been here a full day?

“That she did,” her boss replies. “Let’s just show up and see what happens.”

Connie says, “She’ll be pissed. Sir.”

Cook nods, and Allen likes the tone of his boss’s voice.

“I’m counting on it,” the major says.