The Summer House
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Synopsis
One historic lake house. Seven murder victims.
Four accused Army Rangers. Two versions of the truth.
Only one can survive.
Sullivan County, Georgia, belongs to Sheriff Emma Williams. But not when Army Rangers posted to the local base are implicated in a major crime. To an elite team of investigators led by Major Jeremiah Cook, the physical evidence Williams swears by presents clues to an entirely different story. The small-town sheriff has never worked a multiple homicide, and Cook knows it. Unless he can convince the locals that the recent crimes are part of a larger mystery, this outsider may never unlock the century of secrets hidden inside The Summer House.
Release date: June 8, 2020
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Print pages: 448
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The Summer House
James Patterson
Chapter 1
INSIDE THIS DUMP of a home in rural Sullivan, Georgia, Lillian Zachary’s rescue mission to save her younger sister and niece isn’t going well. Only because of her parents’ pleadings did she make the three-hour drive this warm evening from the safety of her Atlanta condo to liberate Gina and her daughter, Polly, from this place.
She nervously eyes the guns that are on open display, their promise of violence making her uneasy. A pump-action shotgun is leaning near the sole door leading outside, a hunting rifle is up against the wall on the other side of the old home, and two black semiautomatic pistols are on the cluttered kitchen counter, next to three sets of scales and plastic bags full of marijuana. Antique oak cabinets and porcelain-lined sinks and metal faucets are on the opposite side of the room.
Lillian is in a part of the home laughingly called a “living room,” and there’s nothing in here worth living for, save her sister and her sister’s two-year-old girl. The place is foul, with empty beer cans, two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew, crumpled-up McDonald’s bags, and crushed pizza cartons strewn across a wooden floor worn and gouged from a century of wear.
Built in the small plantation-plain style and named The Summer House, the place was once the getaway destination of a rich Savannah family fleeing city smells and sounds generations before the invention of air-conditioning. Now, decades later, the rich family has fallen on hard times, and their grandly named Summer House is a decaying rental property fit only for this group of lowlifes.
Lillian wonders if the ghosts of the old Savannah family are horrified to see how decayed and worn their perfect summer escape home has become.
Lillian is perched on the armrest of a black vinyl couch kept together with scrap lumber and duct tape, and Gina is sitting next to her, shaking a footless rag doll in front of little Polly, who’s on the carpeted floor before her mother, giggling.
Lillian says, “Gina, c’mon, can we get going?”
Her sister shakes her head. “No, not yet,” she says. “Polly’s laughing. I love it when Polly laughs. Don’t you?”
Lillian isn’t married, doesn’t seem to have that maternal urge to bear children, but something about the bright-blue eyes and innocent face of the chubby little girl in a pink corduroy jumper stirs her. Her little niece, trapped here with her single mom, in a crappy house in a crappy part of the state.
At the other end of the room is another couch in front of a large-screen television—no doubt stolen, she thinks—and three other people who live here are playing some stupid shoot-’em-up fantasy video game where fire-breathing dragons and knights do battle armed with machine guns. She’s already forgotten the names of the two lanky, long-haired boys and their woman friend. Shirley? Or Sally. Whatever. And Randy. Yeah. That’s one of the losers’ names.
The two guys gave her serious eye when earlier she knocked on the door, and she feels vulnerable and out of place with them and their guns. Even though they seem to be having fun on their couch, there’s a simmering tension between them that’s growing along with the insults they’ve been tossing at each other.
“Missed it, you fag!” Randy yells.
“Bite me!” the other young man shouts back.
Upstairs in the old home is the other occupant, Gina’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Stuart, who’s lying in bed, not feeling well, bitching and moaning like the community college dropout and drug dealer he is.
Plus the father of little and innocent Polly.
“Gina,” she says, looking away from the video game players. “Please.”
“Just a sec, Lilly, just a sec, okay?”
Lillian rubs her hands across her tan slacks, looking again at the shotgun resting between the television and the door leading outside. All she wants to do is carry the two green plastic trash bags holding the entire possessions of Gina and her daughter through that door. In just a very few minutes she’ll get Gina and Polly out of this shithole and back up to Atlanta and leave this crap off-ramp to a loser life behind.
If those increasingly angry young men let her, Gina, and Polly leave, that is. Randy said a while ago, “Hey, you plan on staying for a while, right? We’re gonna party hard later on.”
Her plump younger sister is wearing black yoga tights and an Atlanta Falcons sweatshirt, but even through her bad complexion, her eyes shine bright with joy and love for her baby girl. That light gives Lillian hope. Gina moved down to this little town with Stuart, promising Mom and Dad she would study dental hygiene at nearby Savannah Technical College, and not telling anyone until a week ago that she dropped out last year.
Tonight it’s going to change, Lillian thinks. She has a great job as a purchasing agent for Delta, and she’s confident she can get her younger sister a job even if the work is physical, like handling baggage. Gina is a stout, strong girl, and Lillian thinks that will be perfect for her, and much better pay than the night shift at the local Walmart.
Her little niece keeps on laughing and laughing.
There’s a sound of a helicopter flying overhead, and Lillian vows to leave in just one minute. Yep, in sixty seconds she’s going to tell Gina to get her ass in gear.
Lillian thinks she sees a shadow pass by one of the far windows.
As he moves through the typical Georgia pine forest to within twenty meters of the target house, he raises a fist, and the others with him halt. He wants to take one more good scan of the target area before the operation begins. A helicopter drones, heading to nearby Hunter Army Airfield. The woods remind him some of forests he operated in back in Kunar province in the ’stan, right up against the border to Pakistan. He likes the smell of trees at night. It reminds him of home, reminds him of previous missions that have gone well. Some meters off is a small lake with a shoreline overgrown with saplings and brush.
He slowly rotates his head from left to right, the night-vision goggles giving him a clear and green ghostly view of the surroundings. He can see that the two-story place used to be a fine small home with two front pillars and classy-looking, black-shuttered windows. Now the siding is peeling away, the pillars are cracked and stained, and one of the windows is covered with plastic.
Only one entry in and out between the two pillars, which will be challenging but not much of a problem.
Four vehicles in the yard. Two Chevy pickup trucks and a battered Sentra with a cracked windshield and trunk held closed with a frayed piece of rope. Previous surveillances of the area showed these same vehicles here, almost every night.
But tonight there’s an additional vehicle. A light-blue Volvo sedan.
It doesn’t fit, doesn’t belong, hasn’t been here before.
Which means there’s at least one additional person—and perhaps up to four—in the target house.
He sighs.
Embrace the suck, move on.
Has he ever been on a mission that went exactly, 100 percent right?
Never.
So why start tonight?
He catches the attention of his squad mates, and they move into position, with him leading the way to the open wooden porch before the solitary door.
He flips up his night-vision goggles, blinks a few times. He can hear music and sound effects from some sort of video game being played inside.
No worries.
He pulls out his pistol, gets ready to go to work.
Lillian puts her hand on Gina’s shoulder, is about to say, I want to get on I-16 before the drunks start leaving the roadhouses, when there’s a sharp bang! and the door leading outside blows wide open into the small, old house.
The woman on the other couch screams, and the guy to her right—Gordy, is that his name?—stands up and says, “Hey, what the hell—”
A man in military-style clothing ducks in with a pistol in his hand, and Lillian stands, putting her arms up in the air, thinking, Oh, damn it, it’s a police raid. These morons have finally been caught dealing their dope.
Funny how all cops nowadays feel like they have to dress up like soldiers, like this one, with fatigues, black boots, belts and harness, a black ski mask over his head.
Gordy says, “Hey, guy, I know my rights—”
He stops talking when the man with the pistol points it at him—and with horror Lillian recognizes there’s a suppressor on the end of the pistol, just like in the movies—and in two muffled reports, Gordy falls back onto the couch, his skull blown open in a blossom of brain and bone.
A spray of blood hits the face of Sally, who is now screaming louder, and the other guy on the couch scrambles over the side, toppling the couch. Lillian pushes Gina, screaming, “Run, run, run!”
Gina ducks down and picks up her girl, who’s still giggling, and Lillian shoves her sister and niece away as she grabs a dirty couch pillow and throws it at the gunman.
“Gina!” she screams at her sister. “Run!”
Polly in her arms, Gina runs up the stairs, Lillian pounding the steps right behind her.
Chapter 2
THE MAIN PART of the old house is cleared within seconds by his squad, and as he goes past the bodies, picking up warm shell casings and carefully digging out spent bullets as he does so, one thought comes to him: how often Hollywood gets this part wrong.
They love showing a squad like his breaking into a residence, screaming Go, go, go! or Down, down, down! Truth is, you move quietly and with deliberation, clearing and securing everything before moving on.
He heads to the wide wooden stairway, the others following him. Stops at the foot of the stairs. Makes the necessary hand signals, and they go up, sticking to the left side to reduce the sounds of creaking steps.
Halfway up the stairs he pauses, hearing frantic movement overhead.
When they got to the top of the stairs, Gina slammed open the door to the left with her free hand, saying, “Stuart, Stuart, oh, God, Stuart…”
Lillian broke right, going to the other bedroom, sobbing, panting, not wanting to think of what just happened, who that man was, not wanting again to see in her mind the spray of blood from Gordy being shot in the head, and above all, not wanting to think of the man coming up the stairs after them.
She nearly stumbles over the piles of clothing, shoes, and more crumpled boxes and beer cans strewn across the floor. Two beds. One bureau. Trash bags with clothing. Open closet door.
Two windows. One with an air-conditioning unit that’s not running.
The other leading out to safety.
Lillian gets to the window, yanks at the bottom.
It won’t move.
“Please, please, please,” she whispers.
She yanks again.
Nothing.
She senses the man with the gun is nearing the top of the stairs.
Lillian is too scared to turn around, dares not turn around.
Another tug.
A squeak.
It moves, just enough for her to shove her fingers in between the window and the sill.
“Please, please, please,” she prays, whispering louder.
She gives the window a good hard shove, leveraging her weight, her shoulders and arms straining from the attempt.
The window grinds open.
Fresh air flows in.
Lillian bends over, ducks her way through, as she hears the other bedroom door slam shut.
He’s nearly at the top of the stairs when he hears a window slide open, and then he gets to the landing.
Room to the left, room to the right.
The door is open to the right-side room. The other door is closed.
He looks back at his squad, gestures to the nearest two behind him, points to the left door, and they nod in acknowledgment.
He steps into the room on the right.
Empty.
Trashy, of course, but there’s no one he can see.
The window is wide open.
He’s focused on clearing this room, but he can’t help but hear the door to the other room open, a woman scream, and a man call out, “Hey, hey, hey—” followed by the friendly thump of a pistol firing through a sound suppressor.
Then a sentence is uttered, and two more thumps wrap up the job.
He moves through the room, dodging piles of clothes and trash. An overhead light from the top of the stairs gives him good illumination.
The closet is empty.
Fine.
He goes to the window, leans over, peers out.
Lillian is biting her fist, trying hard not to breathe, not to sneeze, not to do a damn thing to get noticed. She’s under one of the two unmade beds in this room, trembling, part of her ashamed that she’s wet herself from fear.
There are slow and measured paces of someone walking through the room, and then going over to the open window.
She shuts her eyes, her mother’s voice whispering to her from more than twenty-five years ago: There’s no such thing as the bogeyman, she would say. Just close your eyes and pray to Jesus, and everything will be all right.
Oh, Mamma, oh, Jesus, please, please, please help me.
He leans out the window, lowering his night-vision goggles to take in the view. More trees, more scrub, and a collapsed small wooden building that looks like it was once an outhouse.
Possible. This place is so old it would fit right in.
He looks closer to the side of the two-story summer house.
He’s up about six or so meters. Hell of a drop.
And what’s below here? Two rusty fifty-five-gallon oil drums, a roll of chicken-coop wire, and a pile of wooden shingles and scrap lumber.
All resting undisturbed.
He flips up the night-vision goggles, ducks back into the room, sees his squad mates have joined him. He holds a finger to his lips.
Moves across the room.
Lillian is still praying, still trembling, still biting into her fist when a strong hand slides under the bed and grabs her ankle, dragging her out.
She shrieks and rolls over and puts her hands up and says, “Please, please, please, no, no, no!”
Someone grabs her shoulders, holds her down. Another man—the one who just shot Gordy—drops to one knee and looks down at her. Lillian takes a deep breath, hoping it will calm her.
It doesn’t.
The man has military-type viewing equipment on his forehead, he’s wearing military fatigues with some sort of harness and belts, and over one pocket where there should be a name tag is a strip of Velcro, meaning the name tag has been stripped off so he won’t be identified. The ski mask from before is pulled up, revealing a friendly and relaxed face.
“Please,” she whispers.
“Shhh,” he replies. “Just a few questions. I promise I won’t hurt you.”
Lillian just nods. Answer him, she thinks. Don’t ask questions. Just answer.
He says, “There was a man in the bedroom on the other side, with a woman and a child. Downstairs there was a woman and two other men. Is there anybody else here?”
“No,” she says, her whole body shaking, the hands of the man holding her shoulders down firm and strong.
“Are you the owner of the Volvo?”
“Yes.”
“Did you come down here alone?”
“Yes.”
“Is anyone expecting you to return in the next few minutes?”
She doesn’t process the question until it’s too late, for she answers truthfully, automatically, and hopefully and says, “No.”
The man stays quiet for a few long seconds and then lifts his head to nod to the man behind her. When he removes a hand from her shoulder and she feels the cold metal of a pistol barrel pressing against the side of her head, Lillian knows her mamma has always been wrong, that the bogeyman does exist.
Chapter 3
AFTER MY “WORKOUT” for the day, I’m resting on my bed at my condo rental just outside the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, reading Glory Road, the second book in Bruce Catton’s trilogy about the Union’s Army of the Potomac. I’m enjoying the book and hating Quantico, because it’s still not home, and it’s definitely not New York City.
My ringing iPhone quickly pulls me away from the year 1862, and my hand knocks the damn thing from the nightstand to the floor. Bending over to pick it up, I gasp as my permanently damaged left leg screams at me to stop moving.
And I quickly think of those poor Civil War soldiers, both blue and gray, how a shot in the leg with a bone-shattering Minié ball meant near-certain amputation. Some days I’m envious of them, suffering short-term grievous hurt and then living on without a damaged leg constantly throbbing with burning-hot pain. I declined a chance to get my left limb amputated, and some days I wonder if I made the right decision.
I grab the phone off the floor, then slide my fingers across the screen to answer.
“Cook,” I say, and a very familiar voice replies, “This is Phillips. What are you doing right now?”
“Besides talking to you, sir, I’m staring at my left leg and telling it to behave.”
Which is true. My left leg is propped up on a pillow. I’m wearing dark-blue athletic shorts and a blue-and-white NYPD T-shirt. My right leg is slightly tanned, slightly hairy, and highly muscular. My left leg is a shriveled mess of scars, burn tissue, and puckered craters of flesh where metal tore through it last year when I was deployed in Afghanistan.
But my left foot looks okay. Thank goodness for heavy-duty Army boots, which protected my foot during the long minutes when my leg was trapped and burning.
Colonel Ross Phillips, who’s probably a mile away from me in his office this bright Saturday afternoon, quickly gets to it. “We got a red ball case—a real screamer—down in Georgia.”
“Hold on, sir,” I say, and from my cluttered nightstand I pull free a small notepad and a pen from the Marine Federal Credit Union. I snap the pen into place and say, “Go ahead.”
He coughs, clears his throat, and says, “Sullivan, Georgia. About fifty miles from Hunter Army Airfield, near Savannah. We have four Army personnel in civilian custody, arrested by the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department. Their duty station is Hunter.”
“Four?” I ask.
“Four,” he says.
“Names and unit?”
“I’ve got someone tracking that down.”
“What are the charges?”
“Multiple homicides.”
My pen stops writing. I scribble and scribble and no ink appears.
“How many?” I ask.
“Another thing we’re tracking down,” he says. “We should know in a few more minutes. What we do know is that it was a house holding a number of civilians and that they were all shot. Some historical place called The Summer House. How original, eh? Our four guys were arrested by the county sheriff about forty-eight hours later, in a nearby roadhouse.”
“Who’s CID head at Hunter?”
“Colonel Brenda Tringali, Third MP Group,” he says. “But this case is no stolen Humvee from a motor pool. Mass killing of civilians by four Army personnel is one for you and your group. So far it hasn’t hit the news media, but it will soon enough.”
He coughs again. And again.
“Colonel…are you all right?”
“Shut up,” he says. “I expect you and your crew there by tonight. The sheriff for that county is Emma Williams. Get to her, use your folks to find out what happened, where it happened, and why. Do your job. And get it done. This brewing shit storm is going to rile up a lot of people and groups. Lucky for the Army you and your crew are going to be out there, taking the heat and whatever crap gets flung around.”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “I’ll contact you once I have more information.”
My supervisor hangs up, and I throw the dead pen across the room, open the nightstand drawer—grimace again as my leg shouts at me—and find a new pen to scribble down a few more notes.
Then back to my iPhone. I need to reach out to the four members of my investigative unit, but there’s one call I need to make—and now—even though I’m dreading it.
I tap on the contact number—the number that last year was my home number—and wait for the call to be picked up in Staten Island, about 250 miles away.
It’s picked up after one ring, and the woman says, “What’s wrong?”
I rub the side of my head. “Sorry to do this, but I can’t come up tonight.”
“What about tomorrow?” she asks. “You know how much Kelli is looking forward to seeing you.”
“Tomorrow’s not going to work, and Monday won’t, either,” I say, hating to say these words.
“Jeremiah.”
“Yes.”
She says, “Work again?”
“Yes.”
“Germany?”
“No, that was last month. I’m leaving for Georgia later today. Is Kelli there?”
My ex-wife, Sandy, says, “No. But don’t you worry. I’ll tell her myself. How Dad is missing another volleyball tournament. And I’ll even tell Kevin you’re missing his Boy Scouts Court of Honor Monday night. Anything else I can do for you?”
Months ago these words were sharp blades that Sandy used so well, but now, after months of hearing them, the words have dulled some, though they still hurt.
“No, just tell them I’m sorry, that I’ll do my best to make it up to them.”
Sandy says, “Fine. And you got a call here from Gary O’Toole, wanting to know if you’re going to Pete Monahan’s retirement next month.”
“Pete?” I ask. “Pete’s pulling the pin?”
“That’s what Gary told me,” she says harshly, like I’m questioning her intelligence or her ability to listen carefully. “I guess Midtown South is planning a huge send-off. You should go.”
“No,” I say.
“You should go,” she repeats, “and you should kiss and make up with the chief of d’s…You know they were going to give you a nice desk job at One Police Plaza. I hear the offer is still out there, even if you’ve been a prick ever since you got hurt.”
I say, “Sandy, thanks for telling the kids I won’t make it. I’ll try to talk to them later this week.”
With that call out of the way, I send a text message to three members of my crew, giving them the raw basics. Rendezvous point and time to follow.
I pull up the contact of my fourth team member, but before I can call and speak to her directly, my iPhone chimes again. It’s Colonel Phillips.
He says, “More information, all bad.”
I get my new pen and pad and say, “Go ahead, sir.”
“The four Army personnel…they’re all Rangers. Assigned to the Fourth Ranger Battalion, stationed at Hunter Army Airfield.”
“Shit,” I say.
“Yeah,” Phillips says. “These aren’t four kids fresh out of Basic Training. Nope, these four are pros.”
“Names?”
“Jefferson, Barnes, Tyler, and Ruiz. Four-man fire team, part of Second Platoon, Alpha Company. Jefferson is a staff sergeant, fire-team leader.”
“Motive?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. And I got a count on the civilian deaths. Seven.”
Seven, I think. Seven civilians, gunned down by four Army Rangers. Jesus Christ on a crutch.
I’m in a race now, to see who’s going to get there first: my investigators and myself or CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and every journalist with a notepad, camera, or video equipment within a thousand-mile radius, ready to try to convict these men in thirty-second sound bites.
“Breakdown?”
He coughs once more. “Three men, three women. All shot at close range.”
I stop taking notes.
“Wait,” I say. “You said there were seven. And you said three men, three women. What’s the correct number?”
His breathing quivers for a long, long second.
“Six adults were shot,” he says. “And a two-year-old baby girl.”
Chapter 4
AT SAM’S INN RESTAURANT on Potomac Avenue in Quantico, Virginia, Special Agent Connie York of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division glances at the dessert menu and quickly drops it on the table.
“Sorry, Pete,” she says, trying to smile at her date, a pudgy gent who owns a landscaping business in nearby Southbridge. “I really don’t have the appetite for dessert.”
Which is a lie, because she’s still hungry and loves sweets, and there’s a chocolate fudge cake on the menu that’s calling to her. But spending one more minute than necessary with Pete Laurion is going to be intolerable. Oh, not that he’s a bad guy, but her condo neighbor Claire hooked her up with him, and since Claire took care of her leaky toilet while Connie was on a recent deployment to Germany, it was a favor she was happy to do.
But just this once.
Pete seems intimidated by the other customers in the restaurant, mostly off-duty Marine and Navy personnel, and his thick fingers end with nails that still have a ridge of dirt under them. His heavy blue eyes flick around the place, like he’s expecting some officer to make him drop to the ground and do fifty push-ups. Yesterday Claire said, Pete’s a bit rough around the edges, hon, but he’s got a good heart. And it’ll be a nice change of pace from those gung-ho guys you always end up with.
Which is true, for along with her ten years of service in the Army have come two failed marriages, both to fellow investigators in the Army’s CID. While she feels she’s good at solving crimes, Connie admits she so far hasn’t puzzled out the secrets of a happy relationship.
Pete smiles with hope in his eyes. “I understand, you wanting to keep your figure and all that. Can I call you later?”
Her iPhone starts chiming, and with a sense of relief, she pulls it out of her purse and sees a familiar name. To Pete she says, “Oh, I don’t think so. But thanks for the brunch.”
With iPhone in one hand and purse in the other, she steps out onto a crowded deck, drops her purse onto the decking, and puts the phone up to one ear while plugging the other ear with a finger. “York,” she answers.
“It’s Cook,” he says. “Call you at a bad time?”
“Actually, Major, it’s a great time,” she says. “I needed the break.”
“I hear people and music in the background. A date?”
She shakes her head. “No, a dull brunch. What do we have?”
The tone of his voice instantly changes. “A red ball case, down in Georgia. Seven civilians killed in a house in the town and county of Sullivan. Four Rangers from Hunter Army Airfield have been arrested and are currently in the custody of the county sheriff.”
“Oh, shit,” she says.
“Get down to Georgia, soon as you can. I’ve called out Pierce, Huang, and Sanchez, but you’ll be the first on the scene.”
“Yes, sir,” she says.
“And once you get there, arrange transport to Sullivan and get us accommodations with an extra room to use as a meeting area. You’re not going to talk to the county sheriff, the State Patrol, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, or any news media.”
“Yes, sir,” she says again, biting off the words. “You want me to set up housekeeping, am I right?”
“Agent York,” he says, his voice just as sharp, “that’s right. And I’m trusting you, as my second-in-command, to do that job to the best of your abilities. Got it, York?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” he says. “And among the civilian dead is a two-year-old girl. So enough with the pushback.”
“Oh, boss,” she says, “that’s horrible.”
“It’s bound to get worse,” he says. “See you in Georgia.”
Chapter 5
IT TOOK LESS than four hours to fly via Delta from Dulles to Savannah and its small, fifteen-gate airport—grandly named Savannah/Hilton Head International—and I was fortunate to have an aisle seat to stretch my leg. The long, brick terminal is topped by a glass atrium. Using a cane and rolling my black carry-on luggage, I walk past a number of potted tropical trees in the few minutes it takes to get outside.
It’s just past 5:00 p.m., with less than two hours of daylight left, and I’m planning to use as much of that time as possible. It’s muggy warm—low eighties, it seems—and I spot among the coach buses and other vehicles trundling through the ground transportation area Special Agent Connie York standing next to a parked silver Ford Fusion, the rental vehicle of choice for government travelers.
She has on a simple black suit-jacket-and-slacks outfit, with a plain white buttoned blouse, and I have a quick, inappropriate observation that I’ve never seen her in a dress. That’s the atavistic, chauvinist part of me, which thankfully is almost always overruled by the competent leadership part of me that recognizes her skills as a CID investigator.
Besides, I’m also plainly dressed in one of my two black suits, and like her, I’m armed with a 9mm SIG Sauer P228 pistol.
Connie pops open the trunk, respectfully allowing me to pick up and toss in my luggage.
“How many history books do you have packed in there, boss?” she asks, slamming the lid shut.
“Just enough,” I say. “Barely.”
She steps to the driver’s door, and as I ente. . .
INSIDE THIS DUMP of a home in rural Sullivan, Georgia, Lillian Zachary’s rescue mission to save her younger sister and niece isn’t going well. Only because of her parents’ pleadings did she make the three-hour drive this warm evening from the safety of her Atlanta condo to liberate Gina and her daughter, Polly, from this place.
She nervously eyes the guns that are on open display, their promise of violence making her uneasy. A pump-action shotgun is leaning near the sole door leading outside, a hunting rifle is up against the wall on the other side of the old home, and two black semiautomatic pistols are on the cluttered kitchen counter, next to three sets of scales and plastic bags full of marijuana. Antique oak cabinets and porcelain-lined sinks and metal faucets are on the opposite side of the room.
Lillian is in a part of the home laughingly called a “living room,” and there’s nothing in here worth living for, save her sister and her sister’s two-year-old girl. The place is foul, with empty beer cans, two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew, crumpled-up McDonald’s bags, and crushed pizza cartons strewn across a wooden floor worn and gouged from a century of wear.
Built in the small plantation-plain style and named The Summer House, the place was once the getaway destination of a rich Savannah family fleeing city smells and sounds generations before the invention of air-conditioning. Now, decades later, the rich family has fallen on hard times, and their grandly named Summer House is a decaying rental property fit only for this group of lowlifes.
Lillian wonders if the ghosts of the old Savannah family are horrified to see how decayed and worn their perfect summer escape home has become.
Lillian is perched on the armrest of a black vinyl couch kept together with scrap lumber and duct tape, and Gina is sitting next to her, shaking a footless rag doll in front of little Polly, who’s on the carpeted floor before her mother, giggling.
Lillian says, “Gina, c’mon, can we get going?”
Her sister shakes her head. “No, not yet,” she says. “Polly’s laughing. I love it when Polly laughs. Don’t you?”
Lillian isn’t married, doesn’t seem to have that maternal urge to bear children, but something about the bright-blue eyes and innocent face of the chubby little girl in a pink corduroy jumper stirs her. Her little niece, trapped here with her single mom, in a crappy house in a crappy part of the state.
At the other end of the room is another couch in front of a large-screen television—no doubt stolen, she thinks—and three other people who live here are playing some stupid shoot-’em-up fantasy video game where fire-breathing dragons and knights do battle armed with machine guns. She’s already forgotten the names of the two lanky, long-haired boys and their woman friend. Shirley? Or Sally. Whatever. And Randy. Yeah. That’s one of the losers’ names.
The two guys gave her serious eye when earlier she knocked on the door, and she feels vulnerable and out of place with them and their guns. Even though they seem to be having fun on their couch, there’s a simmering tension between them that’s growing along with the insults they’ve been tossing at each other.
“Missed it, you fag!” Randy yells.
“Bite me!” the other young man shouts back.
Upstairs in the old home is the other occupant, Gina’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Stuart, who’s lying in bed, not feeling well, bitching and moaning like the community college dropout and drug dealer he is.
Plus the father of little and innocent Polly.
“Gina,” she says, looking away from the video game players. “Please.”
“Just a sec, Lilly, just a sec, okay?”
Lillian rubs her hands across her tan slacks, looking again at the shotgun resting between the television and the door leading outside. All she wants to do is carry the two green plastic trash bags holding the entire possessions of Gina and her daughter through that door. In just a very few minutes she’ll get Gina and Polly out of this shithole and back up to Atlanta and leave this crap off-ramp to a loser life behind.
If those increasingly angry young men let her, Gina, and Polly leave, that is. Randy said a while ago, “Hey, you plan on staying for a while, right? We’re gonna party hard later on.”
Her plump younger sister is wearing black yoga tights and an Atlanta Falcons sweatshirt, but even through her bad complexion, her eyes shine bright with joy and love for her baby girl. That light gives Lillian hope. Gina moved down to this little town with Stuart, promising Mom and Dad she would study dental hygiene at nearby Savannah Technical College, and not telling anyone until a week ago that she dropped out last year.
Tonight it’s going to change, Lillian thinks. She has a great job as a purchasing agent for Delta, and she’s confident she can get her younger sister a job even if the work is physical, like handling baggage. Gina is a stout, strong girl, and Lillian thinks that will be perfect for her, and much better pay than the night shift at the local Walmart.
Her little niece keeps on laughing and laughing.
There’s a sound of a helicopter flying overhead, and Lillian vows to leave in just one minute. Yep, in sixty seconds she’s going to tell Gina to get her ass in gear.
Lillian thinks she sees a shadow pass by one of the far windows.
As he moves through the typical Georgia pine forest to within twenty meters of the target house, he raises a fist, and the others with him halt. He wants to take one more good scan of the target area before the operation begins. A helicopter drones, heading to nearby Hunter Army Airfield. The woods remind him some of forests he operated in back in Kunar province in the ’stan, right up against the border to Pakistan. He likes the smell of trees at night. It reminds him of home, reminds him of previous missions that have gone well. Some meters off is a small lake with a shoreline overgrown with saplings and brush.
He slowly rotates his head from left to right, the night-vision goggles giving him a clear and green ghostly view of the surroundings. He can see that the two-story place used to be a fine small home with two front pillars and classy-looking, black-shuttered windows. Now the siding is peeling away, the pillars are cracked and stained, and one of the windows is covered with plastic.
Only one entry in and out between the two pillars, which will be challenging but not much of a problem.
Four vehicles in the yard. Two Chevy pickup trucks and a battered Sentra with a cracked windshield and trunk held closed with a frayed piece of rope. Previous surveillances of the area showed these same vehicles here, almost every night.
But tonight there’s an additional vehicle. A light-blue Volvo sedan.
It doesn’t fit, doesn’t belong, hasn’t been here before.
Which means there’s at least one additional person—and perhaps up to four—in the target house.
He sighs.
Embrace the suck, move on.
Has he ever been on a mission that went exactly, 100 percent right?
Never.
So why start tonight?
He catches the attention of his squad mates, and they move into position, with him leading the way to the open wooden porch before the solitary door.
He flips up his night-vision goggles, blinks a few times. He can hear music and sound effects from some sort of video game being played inside.
No worries.
He pulls out his pistol, gets ready to go to work.
Lillian puts her hand on Gina’s shoulder, is about to say, I want to get on I-16 before the drunks start leaving the roadhouses, when there’s a sharp bang! and the door leading outside blows wide open into the small, old house.
The woman on the other couch screams, and the guy to her right—Gordy, is that his name?—stands up and says, “Hey, what the hell—”
A man in military-style clothing ducks in with a pistol in his hand, and Lillian stands, putting her arms up in the air, thinking, Oh, damn it, it’s a police raid. These morons have finally been caught dealing their dope.
Funny how all cops nowadays feel like they have to dress up like soldiers, like this one, with fatigues, black boots, belts and harness, a black ski mask over his head.
Gordy says, “Hey, guy, I know my rights—”
He stops talking when the man with the pistol points it at him—and with horror Lillian recognizes there’s a suppressor on the end of the pistol, just like in the movies—and in two muffled reports, Gordy falls back onto the couch, his skull blown open in a blossom of brain and bone.
A spray of blood hits the face of Sally, who is now screaming louder, and the other guy on the couch scrambles over the side, toppling the couch. Lillian pushes Gina, screaming, “Run, run, run!”
Gina ducks down and picks up her girl, who’s still giggling, and Lillian shoves her sister and niece away as she grabs a dirty couch pillow and throws it at the gunman.
“Gina!” she screams at her sister. “Run!”
Polly in her arms, Gina runs up the stairs, Lillian pounding the steps right behind her.
Chapter 2
THE MAIN PART of the old house is cleared within seconds by his squad, and as he goes past the bodies, picking up warm shell casings and carefully digging out spent bullets as he does so, one thought comes to him: how often Hollywood gets this part wrong.
They love showing a squad like his breaking into a residence, screaming Go, go, go! or Down, down, down! Truth is, you move quietly and with deliberation, clearing and securing everything before moving on.
He heads to the wide wooden stairway, the others following him. Stops at the foot of the stairs. Makes the necessary hand signals, and they go up, sticking to the left side to reduce the sounds of creaking steps.
Halfway up the stairs he pauses, hearing frantic movement overhead.
When they got to the top of the stairs, Gina slammed open the door to the left with her free hand, saying, “Stuart, Stuart, oh, God, Stuart…”
Lillian broke right, going to the other bedroom, sobbing, panting, not wanting to think of what just happened, who that man was, not wanting again to see in her mind the spray of blood from Gordy being shot in the head, and above all, not wanting to think of the man coming up the stairs after them.
She nearly stumbles over the piles of clothing, shoes, and more crumpled boxes and beer cans strewn across the floor. Two beds. One bureau. Trash bags with clothing. Open closet door.
Two windows. One with an air-conditioning unit that’s not running.
The other leading out to safety.
Lillian gets to the window, yanks at the bottom.
It won’t move.
“Please, please, please,” she whispers.
She yanks again.
Nothing.
She senses the man with the gun is nearing the top of the stairs.
Lillian is too scared to turn around, dares not turn around.
Another tug.
A squeak.
It moves, just enough for her to shove her fingers in between the window and the sill.
“Please, please, please,” she prays, whispering louder.
She gives the window a good hard shove, leveraging her weight, her shoulders and arms straining from the attempt.
The window grinds open.
Fresh air flows in.
Lillian bends over, ducks her way through, as she hears the other bedroom door slam shut.
He’s nearly at the top of the stairs when he hears a window slide open, and then he gets to the landing.
Room to the left, room to the right.
The door is open to the right-side room. The other door is closed.
He looks back at his squad, gestures to the nearest two behind him, points to the left door, and they nod in acknowledgment.
He steps into the room on the right.
Empty.
Trashy, of course, but there’s no one he can see.
The window is wide open.
He’s focused on clearing this room, but he can’t help but hear the door to the other room open, a woman scream, and a man call out, “Hey, hey, hey—” followed by the friendly thump of a pistol firing through a sound suppressor.
Then a sentence is uttered, and two more thumps wrap up the job.
He moves through the room, dodging piles of clothes and trash. An overhead light from the top of the stairs gives him good illumination.
The closet is empty.
Fine.
He goes to the window, leans over, peers out.
Lillian is biting her fist, trying hard not to breathe, not to sneeze, not to do a damn thing to get noticed. She’s under one of the two unmade beds in this room, trembling, part of her ashamed that she’s wet herself from fear.
There are slow and measured paces of someone walking through the room, and then going over to the open window.
She shuts her eyes, her mother’s voice whispering to her from more than twenty-five years ago: There’s no such thing as the bogeyman, she would say. Just close your eyes and pray to Jesus, and everything will be all right.
Oh, Mamma, oh, Jesus, please, please, please help me.
He leans out the window, lowering his night-vision goggles to take in the view. More trees, more scrub, and a collapsed small wooden building that looks like it was once an outhouse.
Possible. This place is so old it would fit right in.
He looks closer to the side of the two-story summer house.
He’s up about six or so meters. Hell of a drop.
And what’s below here? Two rusty fifty-five-gallon oil drums, a roll of chicken-coop wire, and a pile of wooden shingles and scrap lumber.
All resting undisturbed.
He flips up the night-vision goggles, ducks back into the room, sees his squad mates have joined him. He holds a finger to his lips.
Moves across the room.
Lillian is still praying, still trembling, still biting into her fist when a strong hand slides under the bed and grabs her ankle, dragging her out.
She shrieks and rolls over and puts her hands up and says, “Please, please, please, no, no, no!”
Someone grabs her shoulders, holds her down. Another man—the one who just shot Gordy—drops to one knee and looks down at her. Lillian takes a deep breath, hoping it will calm her.
It doesn’t.
The man has military-type viewing equipment on his forehead, he’s wearing military fatigues with some sort of harness and belts, and over one pocket where there should be a name tag is a strip of Velcro, meaning the name tag has been stripped off so he won’t be identified. The ski mask from before is pulled up, revealing a friendly and relaxed face.
“Please,” she whispers.
“Shhh,” he replies. “Just a few questions. I promise I won’t hurt you.”
Lillian just nods. Answer him, she thinks. Don’t ask questions. Just answer.
He says, “There was a man in the bedroom on the other side, with a woman and a child. Downstairs there was a woman and two other men. Is there anybody else here?”
“No,” she says, her whole body shaking, the hands of the man holding her shoulders down firm and strong.
“Are you the owner of the Volvo?”
“Yes.”
“Did you come down here alone?”
“Yes.”
“Is anyone expecting you to return in the next few minutes?”
She doesn’t process the question until it’s too late, for she answers truthfully, automatically, and hopefully and says, “No.”
The man stays quiet for a few long seconds and then lifts his head to nod to the man behind her. When he removes a hand from her shoulder and she feels the cold metal of a pistol barrel pressing against the side of her head, Lillian knows her mamma has always been wrong, that the bogeyman does exist.
Chapter 3
AFTER MY “WORKOUT” for the day, I’m resting on my bed at my condo rental just outside the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, reading Glory Road, the second book in Bruce Catton’s trilogy about the Union’s Army of the Potomac. I’m enjoying the book and hating Quantico, because it’s still not home, and it’s definitely not New York City.
My ringing iPhone quickly pulls me away from the year 1862, and my hand knocks the damn thing from the nightstand to the floor. Bending over to pick it up, I gasp as my permanently damaged left leg screams at me to stop moving.
And I quickly think of those poor Civil War soldiers, both blue and gray, how a shot in the leg with a bone-shattering Minié ball meant near-certain amputation. Some days I’m envious of them, suffering short-term grievous hurt and then living on without a damaged leg constantly throbbing with burning-hot pain. I declined a chance to get my left limb amputated, and some days I wonder if I made the right decision.
I grab the phone off the floor, then slide my fingers across the screen to answer.
“Cook,” I say, and a very familiar voice replies, “This is Phillips. What are you doing right now?”
“Besides talking to you, sir, I’m staring at my left leg and telling it to behave.”
Which is true. My left leg is propped up on a pillow. I’m wearing dark-blue athletic shorts and a blue-and-white NYPD T-shirt. My right leg is slightly tanned, slightly hairy, and highly muscular. My left leg is a shriveled mess of scars, burn tissue, and puckered craters of flesh where metal tore through it last year when I was deployed in Afghanistan.
But my left foot looks okay. Thank goodness for heavy-duty Army boots, which protected my foot during the long minutes when my leg was trapped and burning.
Colonel Ross Phillips, who’s probably a mile away from me in his office this bright Saturday afternoon, quickly gets to it. “We got a red ball case—a real screamer—down in Georgia.”
“Hold on, sir,” I say, and from my cluttered nightstand I pull free a small notepad and a pen from the Marine Federal Credit Union. I snap the pen into place and say, “Go ahead.”
He coughs, clears his throat, and says, “Sullivan, Georgia. About fifty miles from Hunter Army Airfield, near Savannah. We have four Army personnel in civilian custody, arrested by the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department. Their duty station is Hunter.”
“Four?” I ask.
“Four,” he says.
“Names and unit?”
“I’ve got someone tracking that down.”
“What are the charges?”
“Multiple homicides.”
My pen stops writing. I scribble and scribble and no ink appears.
“How many?” I ask.
“Another thing we’re tracking down,” he says. “We should know in a few more minutes. What we do know is that it was a house holding a number of civilians and that they were all shot. Some historical place called The Summer House. How original, eh? Our four guys were arrested by the county sheriff about forty-eight hours later, in a nearby roadhouse.”
“Who’s CID head at Hunter?”
“Colonel Brenda Tringali, Third MP Group,” he says. “But this case is no stolen Humvee from a motor pool. Mass killing of civilians by four Army personnel is one for you and your group. So far it hasn’t hit the news media, but it will soon enough.”
He coughs again. And again.
“Colonel…are you all right?”
“Shut up,” he says. “I expect you and your crew there by tonight. The sheriff for that county is Emma Williams. Get to her, use your folks to find out what happened, where it happened, and why. Do your job. And get it done. This brewing shit storm is going to rile up a lot of people and groups. Lucky for the Army you and your crew are going to be out there, taking the heat and whatever crap gets flung around.”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “I’ll contact you once I have more information.”
My supervisor hangs up, and I throw the dead pen across the room, open the nightstand drawer—grimace again as my leg shouts at me—and find a new pen to scribble down a few more notes.
Then back to my iPhone. I need to reach out to the four members of my investigative unit, but there’s one call I need to make—and now—even though I’m dreading it.
I tap on the contact number—the number that last year was my home number—and wait for the call to be picked up in Staten Island, about 250 miles away.
It’s picked up after one ring, and the woman says, “What’s wrong?”
I rub the side of my head. “Sorry to do this, but I can’t come up tonight.”
“What about tomorrow?” she asks. “You know how much Kelli is looking forward to seeing you.”
“Tomorrow’s not going to work, and Monday won’t, either,” I say, hating to say these words.
“Jeremiah.”
“Yes.”
She says, “Work again?”
“Yes.”
“Germany?”
“No, that was last month. I’m leaving for Georgia later today. Is Kelli there?”
My ex-wife, Sandy, says, “No. But don’t you worry. I’ll tell her myself. How Dad is missing another volleyball tournament. And I’ll even tell Kevin you’re missing his Boy Scouts Court of Honor Monday night. Anything else I can do for you?”
Months ago these words were sharp blades that Sandy used so well, but now, after months of hearing them, the words have dulled some, though they still hurt.
“No, just tell them I’m sorry, that I’ll do my best to make it up to them.”
Sandy says, “Fine. And you got a call here from Gary O’Toole, wanting to know if you’re going to Pete Monahan’s retirement next month.”
“Pete?” I ask. “Pete’s pulling the pin?”
“That’s what Gary told me,” she says harshly, like I’m questioning her intelligence or her ability to listen carefully. “I guess Midtown South is planning a huge send-off. You should go.”
“No,” I say.
“You should go,” she repeats, “and you should kiss and make up with the chief of d’s…You know they were going to give you a nice desk job at One Police Plaza. I hear the offer is still out there, even if you’ve been a prick ever since you got hurt.”
I say, “Sandy, thanks for telling the kids I won’t make it. I’ll try to talk to them later this week.”
With that call out of the way, I send a text message to three members of my crew, giving them the raw basics. Rendezvous point and time to follow.
I pull up the contact of my fourth team member, but before I can call and speak to her directly, my iPhone chimes again. It’s Colonel Phillips.
He says, “More information, all bad.”
I get my new pen and pad and say, “Go ahead, sir.”
“The four Army personnel…they’re all Rangers. Assigned to the Fourth Ranger Battalion, stationed at Hunter Army Airfield.”
“Shit,” I say.
“Yeah,” Phillips says. “These aren’t four kids fresh out of Basic Training. Nope, these four are pros.”
“Names?”
“Jefferson, Barnes, Tyler, and Ruiz. Four-man fire team, part of Second Platoon, Alpha Company. Jefferson is a staff sergeant, fire-team leader.”
“Motive?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. And I got a count on the civilian deaths. Seven.”
Seven, I think. Seven civilians, gunned down by four Army Rangers. Jesus Christ on a crutch.
I’m in a race now, to see who’s going to get there first: my investigators and myself or CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and every journalist with a notepad, camera, or video equipment within a thousand-mile radius, ready to try to convict these men in thirty-second sound bites.
“Breakdown?”
He coughs once more. “Three men, three women. All shot at close range.”
I stop taking notes.
“Wait,” I say. “You said there were seven. And you said three men, three women. What’s the correct number?”
His breathing quivers for a long, long second.
“Six adults were shot,” he says. “And a two-year-old baby girl.”
Chapter 4
AT SAM’S INN RESTAURANT on Potomac Avenue in Quantico, Virginia, Special Agent Connie York of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division glances at the dessert menu and quickly drops it on the table.
“Sorry, Pete,” she says, trying to smile at her date, a pudgy gent who owns a landscaping business in nearby Southbridge. “I really don’t have the appetite for dessert.”
Which is a lie, because she’s still hungry and loves sweets, and there’s a chocolate fudge cake on the menu that’s calling to her. But spending one more minute than necessary with Pete Laurion is going to be intolerable. Oh, not that he’s a bad guy, but her condo neighbor Claire hooked her up with him, and since Claire took care of her leaky toilet while Connie was on a recent deployment to Germany, it was a favor she was happy to do.
But just this once.
Pete seems intimidated by the other customers in the restaurant, mostly off-duty Marine and Navy personnel, and his thick fingers end with nails that still have a ridge of dirt under them. His heavy blue eyes flick around the place, like he’s expecting some officer to make him drop to the ground and do fifty push-ups. Yesterday Claire said, Pete’s a bit rough around the edges, hon, but he’s got a good heart. And it’ll be a nice change of pace from those gung-ho guys you always end up with.
Which is true, for along with her ten years of service in the Army have come two failed marriages, both to fellow investigators in the Army’s CID. While she feels she’s good at solving crimes, Connie admits she so far hasn’t puzzled out the secrets of a happy relationship.
Pete smiles with hope in his eyes. “I understand, you wanting to keep your figure and all that. Can I call you later?”
Her iPhone starts chiming, and with a sense of relief, she pulls it out of her purse and sees a familiar name. To Pete she says, “Oh, I don’t think so. But thanks for the brunch.”
With iPhone in one hand and purse in the other, she steps out onto a crowded deck, drops her purse onto the decking, and puts the phone up to one ear while plugging the other ear with a finger. “York,” she answers.
“It’s Cook,” he says. “Call you at a bad time?”
“Actually, Major, it’s a great time,” she says. “I needed the break.”
“I hear people and music in the background. A date?”
She shakes her head. “No, a dull brunch. What do we have?”
The tone of his voice instantly changes. “A red ball case, down in Georgia. Seven civilians killed in a house in the town and county of Sullivan. Four Rangers from Hunter Army Airfield have been arrested and are currently in the custody of the county sheriff.”
“Oh, shit,” she says.
“Get down to Georgia, soon as you can. I’ve called out Pierce, Huang, and Sanchez, but you’ll be the first on the scene.”
“Yes, sir,” she says.
“And once you get there, arrange transport to Sullivan and get us accommodations with an extra room to use as a meeting area. You’re not going to talk to the county sheriff, the State Patrol, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, or any news media.”
“Yes, sir,” she says again, biting off the words. “You want me to set up housekeeping, am I right?”
“Agent York,” he says, his voice just as sharp, “that’s right. And I’m trusting you, as my second-in-command, to do that job to the best of your abilities. Got it, York?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” he says. “And among the civilian dead is a two-year-old girl. So enough with the pushback.”
“Oh, boss,” she says, “that’s horrible.”
“It’s bound to get worse,” he says. “See you in Georgia.”
Chapter 5
IT TOOK LESS than four hours to fly via Delta from Dulles to Savannah and its small, fifteen-gate airport—grandly named Savannah/Hilton Head International—and I was fortunate to have an aisle seat to stretch my leg. The long, brick terminal is topped by a glass atrium. Using a cane and rolling my black carry-on luggage, I walk past a number of potted tropical trees in the few minutes it takes to get outside.
It’s just past 5:00 p.m., with less than two hours of daylight left, and I’m planning to use as much of that time as possible. It’s muggy warm—low eighties, it seems—and I spot among the coach buses and other vehicles trundling through the ground transportation area Special Agent Connie York standing next to a parked silver Ford Fusion, the rental vehicle of choice for government travelers.
She has on a simple black suit-jacket-and-slacks outfit, with a plain white buttoned blouse, and I have a quick, inappropriate observation that I’ve never seen her in a dress. That’s the atavistic, chauvinist part of me, which thankfully is almost always overruled by the competent leadership part of me that recognizes her skills as a CID investigator.
Besides, I’m also plainly dressed in one of my two black suits, and like her, I’m armed with a 9mm SIG Sauer P228 pistol.
Connie pops open the trunk, respectfully allowing me to pick up and toss in my luggage.
“How many history books do you have packed in there, boss?” she asks, slamming the lid shut.
“Just enough,” I say. “Barely.”
She steps to the driver’s door, and as I ente. . .
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