Текст книги "The Forgotten"

Автор книги: David Baldacci

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

CHAPTER

20

PULLER SAT ON THE BED in his room and looked around. Nothing special. A floor, a door, a window, a bed, and a toilet. There was a double connecting door with the room next to his. He’d stayed in some better places and many far worse ones.

The walls were thin. He could hear the sounds coming from adjacent rooms, not clearly enough to recognize words, but certainly raised voices. On his way up to the room he’d passed several people, presumably residents here, who’d gazed at him suspiciously. He apparently was one of the few whites here. Maybe the only one.

By the glances and the whispers that had accompanied them, Puller assumed that some folks might vocalize their disapproval of his presence here in terms that would require him to take action. He didn’t want that to happen and would prefer if it didn’t. But he would be prepared if it did.

He unpacked the few clothes that he’d brought and checked his watch. He had some time before he was to meet Louise Timmins. Mason had not called back yet. Puller decided to do some more recon of the area and then meet Timmins. He did not like sitting in hotel rooms, whether they be a place like this or the Ritz—not that he would ever see the inside of a Ritz. Not on Uncle Sam’s pay.

He locked his door on the way out. He had left nothing behind that he could not afford to lose. He walked down the hall and reached the elevator, but he passed by this and walked to the stairwell. The building wasn’t in the best repair and he figured the elevator wouldn’t be either. Being trapped on one for several hours was not part of his plan.

He heard it before he could see anything. A man. A woman. And what sounded like a child.

He opened the door and stepped through. It was actually three grown men, a teenage girl about sixteen, and a boy who looked about five. One man was a Latino, one black, and the other had skin color the same as Puller’s. He appreciated diversity in prickish felons.

The girl—clearly against her will—was being held against the wall by the Latino. The black man had hold of the crying boy, restraining him. The kid was swinging his arms and trying to strike out. The white man was standing in front of the girl, a smile on his face. He had loosened his belt and was in the middle of unbuttoning his pants. His intent was as obvious as such intent had been for thousands of years.

Men forcing themselves on women.

When the door opened, the white guy, without even looking to see who it was, snarled, “Get the hell out of here. Now!”

Puller let the door shut behind him and noted the bulge in the back pocket of the white guy’s pants. Stupid place to keep your gun, but then White looked pretty dumb.

“Don’t think so. And you might as well cinch your belt back up. This is not going to go according to your plan.”

The three men turned to look at him. The girl shrank back and clutched at the boy.

White said, “You really want to do this, shithead?”

“Name’s Puller. First name John. And you are?”

White looked at his buddies and smiled. But there was nervousness behind the smile, Puller noted. The black man was the biggest, but Puller had him by four inches and forty pounds. White was five-nine and a pudgy one-ninety. The Latino was five-six, a buck fifty, and had no demonstrable muscle.

Puller towered over them all. The width of his shoulders nearly spanned the doorway. He edged forward, his gaze directly on White, but his peripheral radar keeping his buddies in view.

White buckled his belt.

“You looking to get your ass killed?” said the black guy.

“No. Same way I’m sure she wasn’t looking to get assaulted by three jerk-offs.”

White slightly turned his head, his right hand dipping to his back pocket in a move that was as obvious as it would prove to be futile.

Puller sighed. Not how he wanted it to go down, but he didn’t have much choice now. He struck before the gun was halfway out of the man’s back pocket. He slammed his elbow into White’s neck and followed that by whipping a knee into his left kidney. As White dropped screaming to the floor, Puller sent a crushing right cross to his jaw. White lay on the floor, blood coming from his mouth along with a few of his teeth.

Half of Puller wanted to give the other two guys a way out, but the looks on their faces indicated that their combined presence was puffing up each other’s courage beyond all reason. Two against one, they were thinking. Easy pickings.

Too bad for them.

He hooked Latino around the head and, using him as a weapon, swung him off his feet and into Black, knocking him down the flight of stairs. He came to rest at the bottom, both the fight and his consciousness gone from him.

Puller kept swinging Latino until the latter’s head met the wall with crunching impact. He slumped down, joining Black in the land of involuntary sleep.

Puller stood there for a moment, not even out of breath, and more than a little pissed off that all this had come to pass.

He looked at the girl. “You okay?”

She nodded. She was pretty, with soft curves and a large bosom. She looked older than she probably was. He doubted that this was the first time this kind of an assault had happened to her.

Puller eyed the little boy. “He your brother?”

She nodded again.

“What’re your names?”

“I’m Isabel. He’s Mateo,” she said in a tiny, scared voice.

“You want to call the cops?”

Puller thought he knew the answer to this, but felt compelled to ask it anyway. She was shaking her head before he’d even finished the question.

“Do you want me to call the cops?”

“No. Please don’t do that.”

He looked at the fallen men. They had buzz cuts and tats all over. He didn’t think it was possible, but one never knew.

“They in the military?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “No.”

So no jurisdiction for me, thought Puller. Other than as a concerned citizen.

He said, “They won’t stop. I just made them a lot madder, in fact. They might take it out on you.”

She grabbed her brother’s hand and they both ran off through the door. Puller could hear their footsteps for a few seconds and then they were gone.

He did a quick check of the three guys. All breathing. All pulses strong. He didn’t care if bones were broken or skulls fractured. That was the price one paid for being pieces of shit that preyed on others. Especially three grown men against a girl and her five-year-old brother.

When White moaned and moved a bit, Puller kicked him in the head, sending him back to sleep.

“Prick.”

He debated whether to call the cops or not, but without the girl’s statement he’d have nothing except his own account. And if she didn’t back him up, which she wouldn’t, Puller might be looking at being charged with assault, the lies of the three men stacked against him.

He decided just to keep on going. He’d have to deal with the fallout later. He went back to his room, grabbed his bag, and walked out to retrieve his car.

He still had a recon to do. He was here to find out what had happened to his aunt. Nothing was going to detour him from that.

He could not have been more wrong.

CHAPTER

21

AS PULLER WALKED out of the building another man was walking in. When they crossed paths Puller did something he almost never had to do to when meeting another person.

He looked up.

It was the same guy from the back of the truck he’d seen earlier while eating lunch on the waterfront.

Up close the man looked even larger and more intimidating. Puller had never before seen a more perfectly proportioned physique. He could have been a poster boy for a superhero recruiting ad. As the two men went by each other, they both did the up-down, side-side checkout of the other. Practiced, smooth, looking for things that would not be obvious to the uninformed, meaning just about every other person on the planet.

Puller came away impressed not just with the other man’s physique but also with the preciseness of the observation of those intense eyes. It was obvious to Puller that the man recognized him from earlier in the day, even though it had only been a seconds-long glance. You had to be trained to achieve that sort of recognition skill.

Puller again ran his eye up and down the man. He wore a landscaping company uniform. Dark green T-shirt soaked in sweat and dark blue pants. New-looking work shoes that must have been a size sixteen.

So the guy either had gotten a new pair of shoes, which seemed unlikely, or he had just started this job. The shirt was stretched too tight across his torso. Every muscle was revealed through the flimsy fabric. He looked like the musculature chart one saw in a doctor’s office.

They probably didn’t have a shirt to fit him, reasoned Puller. The pants too were a little short. Most companies didn’t keep in stock uniforms to fit gents who topped six and a half feet in height. As they passed by one another Puller instinctively looked back; he wasn’t completely surprised when he found the other man doing the very same thing. The look was not threatening, just watchful, curious, appraising.

Puller walked to the garage, retrieved his car, and drove off.

He took Paradise grid by grid, memorizing as many details as he could. He finally pulled into a parking lot, shut the car off, sat back, and wondered about the contents of his aunt’s letter.

People not being what they seemed.

Mysterious happenings in the night.

Something just not being right.

As he drove he broke things down logically, something the military had spent years drilling into him. It was now how he approached everything in life, even the things to which logic didn’t necessarily pertain.

Like families.

Emotions.

Relationships.

Applying logic to any of them was a recipe for a lifetime of heartache.

Pretty much the story of his life.

He thought about the first of his aunt’s observations:

People not being what they seemed.

He didn’t know who his aunt’s friends were other than Cookie, who seemed innocuous and certainly exactly what he appeared to be. But that was based on only one interview, and thus to Puller the jury was still out on it.

There could be other neighbors to whom she was referring. Puller would have to check them all out. There was Jane Ryon, the caregiver. He would definitely check her out. Then the lawyer, Mason. Possibly others.

He moved on to the second observation in the letter:

Mysterious happenings in the night.

Happenings, plural. In the night. Did she mean mysterious happenings in her neighborhood? If so, did they involve one of her neighbors? To Puller the area had seemed like a normal suburb where mysterious happenings probably were at a minimum. But his aunt was dead and that obviously shined a new light on things.

Finally he considered his aunt’s third observation:

Something just not being right.

That was open to lots of interpretations. What Puller could fall back on was his experience with his aunt. One of the most no-nonsense people he’d ever known, if she said it or wrote it she believed it. She did not reach knee-jerk conclusions. There was the possibility that old age had changed those personality traits, but somehow Puller didn’t think so. They were too ingrained in his family’s genes.

He had to work from the assumption that everything in his aunt’s letter was true. And if she had stumbled onto something and the people involved in that something had found out, it was a prime motive to remove Betsy Simon from this earth. And if that had happened, Puller would welcome the opportunity to repay the folks who had done it. He would provide either a long prison sentence or their own early exit from the living.

Having exhausted the possibilities based on his limited investigation so far, he got out of the car, walked down a wooden boardwalk, and reached the beach. It was nearly six-thirty, and the café where he was meeting Timmins was close by. He decided to walk along the sand both to relax a bit and to think some more while the waves pounded the shore.

There were a number of people on the beach. Some were power walking with exaggerated motions of their legs and arms. Others strolled arm in arm. Still others had their dogs with them and were tossing tennis balls and Frisbees for their canine companions to run down.

Puller moved on, letting his gaze sweep from the ocean to the boardwalk and beyond. There were parts of Paradise that definitely fit the name. However, having been here only a relatively short period of time, Puller had seen other parts that did not remotely belong.

An interesting place, he thought.

When he saw what was going on up ahead, he picked up his pace. He didn’t know if it would have anything to do with his aunt’s death, but right now anything in Paradise that seemed unusual interested him.

CHAPTER

22

PULLER SAW OFFICER LANDRY FIRST, then Bullock. Hooper was nowhere to be seen.

What he saw next made him slow down to a leisurely walk. A barrier formed from metal stands and blue tarp had been erected to shield something from view. When police were around, the thing to be shielded from view typically was a human body.

Puller drew to within a hundred feet and stopped, taking it all in. Landry was standing near a couple whom Puller recognized. He had seen them at the police station earlier, looking worried and upset. The names they had mentioned came back to his mind.

Nancy and Fred Storrow.

They went out and never came back. There seemed to be a lot of that going around in Paradise. Puller wondered if either or both of them were behind the shield.

He looked out toward the water. The tide was coming in. Had it brought the body or bodies along with it?

He couldn’t imagine that two bodies had been dumped on the beach and were just now being found. You didn’t dump bodies in public places in broad daylight. It was now nearing seven in the evening. He looked out toward the water again.

Tide. Had to be. He doubted the corpses were in very good shape. Prolonged time in the water did awful things to bodies.

He glanced over at the couple again. The woman was weeping, leaning in against the shoulder of the man, while Landry stood awkwardly next to them, her official notebook dangling in one hand.

Bullock was standing over near the shield shaking his head and tapping his fingers against his gun belt like he was sending out an SOS signal.

They hadn’t set up a perimeter, but people were keeping their distance.

Puller walked toward Bullock until the man looked up and saw him.

He at first put up his hands to ward Puller off, but then recognized him. He strode forward, his black shoes slipping in the sand.

When Bullock got to within a foot of Puller he said, “What are you doing here?”

“Just going for a walk on the beach. What do you have here?”

“What we have is an ongoing investigation that I am not at liberty to disclose to a civilian.”

“I’m not a civilian.”

“To me you are.”

“One body or two?”

“Excuse me?” Bullock took a step back and looked suspicious.

“Behind the shield. Did the tide bring it or them in?”

“What the hell do you know about it?”

“Nothing. But you put up a shield on a beach and you got a woman sobbing over there—a woman I saw at the station earlier today probably filing a missing persons report—and the dominos begin to fall into place. Was it an accident?”

“Look, Puller, my best advice to you is to turn yourself around, get back on a plane, and fly home.”

“Appreciate the advice, but Paradise is growing on me. I can see why you like it down here so much.”

Bullock turned on his heel and walked off, his shoes rooster-tailing streams of sand behind him.

Another officer came and took charge of the couple, allowing Landry to break free and walk over to him.

“What did Chief Bullock say to you?” she asked.

“He wanted me to join the investigation and lend my expertise in helping solve the crime. He also invited me over for a beer later at his house.”

She smiled. “He doesn’t drink beer. But I didn’t believe you anyway.”

Puller nodded at the blue tarp. “You called the ME yet?”

“She’ll be here as soon as she can.”

Puller nodded. It seemed that his seven o’clock meeting with Timmins was going to be postponed.

“I won’t ask you for details, because I don’t want you to get in trouble with Bullock.”

“Thanks.”

“Where’s your partner?”

Landry looked uncomfortable. “He, uh, he ran into a little problem.”

“Did he puke and pass out when he saw the body?”

She looked away, but something in her features told Puller he had nailed that one.

“I’ve got a lot of experience with bodies coming out of the ocean.”

“Why? I thought you were Army, not Navy.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe what goes on in the infantry. And lots of Army bases are next to bodies of water.”

“I doubt Chief Bullock would approve of that.”

“I know he wouldn’t. But I thought I’d offer anyway. And if you ever want to run anything by me, unofficially of course, feel free.”

“I appreciate that. We don’t have a traditional plainclothes detective division. Uniforms do it all. If we get in over our heads we can call in help from the county or the state police.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“You been busy following up on things with your aunt’s death?”

“A little.”

“If you find out anything that shows it wasn’t an accident will you bring it to me?”

“I will.”

“And you won’t play vigilante?”

“I never go looking for trouble.”

“But somehow it finds you?”

“Sometimes. I’m staying over at a place called the Sierra.”

“Not exactly a great part of town.”

“It is if you can’t afford the really great parts. And for the record, eighty bucks a night is not exactly cheap in my mind. Even with breakfast thrown in.”

“What can I say, it’s Paradise.”

“Can you tell me more about the area?”

“Like what?”

“I’m sure you have the typical problems. But do you have any gangs?”

“Officially no. In reality yes.”

“What do you mean officially no, then?”

“Paradise is a tourist destination. Of the millions of people who come to the Panhandle every year, lots of them come to Paradise. So officially we don’t have a gang problem.”

“Okay, so what does your unofficial gang problem consist of?”

“An unusual hybrid. We don’t have the typical ethnic and racial divides here. No Bloods and Crips versus Latino gangs versus skinheads.”

“Meaning you have diversity in your gangs. Very commendable.”

She looked at him funny. “Why do you ask? Did something happen?”

“Nothing worth mentioning. Crime limited to the poorer areas?”

“People crimes, yeah, for the most part. Gang on gang. But the property crimes leach into the higher-dollar communities, for obvious reasons.”

“Go where the good stuff to steal is?”

“Exactly. The really rich places around here have their own security. Either behind community walls with rent-a-cops or behind their own gates with professional types.”

“I’m seeing a whole other side of Paradise.”

“Hey, this stuff happens where you have money bumping up against poverty.”

“Meaning America basically.”

“Don’t know about that.”

“So who’s assigned to investigate this?” asked Puller.

“Chief Bullock is going to personally handle it. He knows the family.”

“Is he good at investigative work?”

“He’s the chief!”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

She let out a sigh. “I guess we’ll find out.”

“I guess you will,” said Puller.

CHAPTER

23

PULLER SAT DOWN ON a beach chair and watched as Landry and another uniformed officer strung up yellow police tape around the scene using long metal poles driven into the sand to support it.

What Puller expected to happen did occur about twenty minutes later. A Volvo pulled up and a woman got out. She was in her fifties, with graying hair cut short, a white sleeveless blouse, a blue skirt that hit right below the knees, and sandals. She wore bifocals that rode on a chain. She carried a black medical bag.

Louise Timmins, the medical examiner, had arrived. She looked harried and upset. She walked directly to the police tape and was admitted by Landry. Timmins ducked under the tape and marched to the blue tarp, where she was met by Bullock. After a brief conversation Timmins slipped inside the makeshift enclosure. It would not be a pleasant sight or smell within such close, heated quarters, Puller knew.

You just had to keep breathing and pretty soon your sense of smell would fail, and fortunately so.

By his watch it was half an hour before Timmins reemerged into the sunlight. To Puller’s eye she looked a little queasy and more than a little upset. He wondered if she might have known the deceased, if there was only one body in there.

She spoke for some minutes to Bullock, who nodded and wrote things down on a spiral notepad.

When Timmins cleared the tape and headed for her car, Puller approached.

“Dr. Timmins?”

She looked up at him. She was only about five-two and thus had to crane her neck back some to fully take him in.

“Yes?”

“John Puller. We talked before?”

“Right, your aunt.” She did not seem pleased to have encountered him here. “I meant to call you to say that I would be delayed when I found out about this, but time got away from me.”

He said, “That’s okay. We can reschedule. I know you weren’t expecting this thing on the beach.”

He studied her more closely while she pulled her car keys from her purse. Up close she looked pale, drawn, and jumpy.

“No, I wasn’t expecting it. I was totally floored by it in fact.”

“Anyone you knew?”

She looked at him sharply. “What makes you ask that?”

“You look more upset than is warranted by seeing a dead body, even one pulled out of the water.”

“Looking at death is never easy.”

“But you’re a doctor and a medical examiner. You see it all the time, under all conditions. And since this is an oceanside town, I doubt that’s the first drowning victim you’ve seen.”

‘ ”I really can’t talk to you about this.”

“I know. And I’d much prefer not to waste your time. Can we meet about my aunt?”

She looked at her watch.

He said, “I’d be glad to buy you dinner. If you have an appetite.”

She glanced back at the blue tarp. “No food, but maybe a little ginger ale on my stomach might help.”

“Okay. The café we were going to meet at is a few blocks over. You want to walk or drive?”

“Let’s drive. My legs are a little wobbly right now.”

As they walked to their cars, Puller turned around and saw both Bullock and Landry watching them. The police chief looked pissed. Landry seemed merely curious.

They drove separately to the café and found parking on the street. The place was crowded but they were able to snag a table near the front.

Timmins ordered a glass of ginger ale and Puller a Coke. It was after seven and the temperature was still in the mid-eighties and the ocean breeze had fallen away.

“Feels more like Hell than Paradise, doesn’t it?” said Timmins after they had gotten their drinks. She took a long sip of her ginger ale and sat back, looking a bit better.

“I take it you’re a transplant here?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Your skin is too pale and you’re not used to wearing sandals, which for women down here are probably a daily accessory.”

She glanced down at her feet where the sandal straps had made several red marks against her skin.

He continued, “The longer you wear sandals the more your skin will toughen up.”

“You’re very observant.”

“The Army pays me to be.”

“I’m from Minnesota originally. Moved down here about six months ago. My first summer here. Minnesota can get hot in the summer, but nothing like this.”

“So why’d you come down?”

“My husband died. I’d never been out of the state. I was tired of long winters. A doctor I’d met was selling his practice and I’ve always had an interest in forensic pathology. When I found out the job also included being the district ME, I jumped on it.”

“And the place being named Paradise probably didn’t hurt.”

“The brochures were very attractive,” she replied, with a weary smile.

“So will you be heading back north?”

“I doubt it. Place grows on you. June through August it gets crowded and the heat and humidity are pretty bad, but the rest of the year is quite nice. I could never take a walk in shorts in February in St. Paul.”

Puller leaned forward, officially ending the chitchat session. “My aunt?”

“You saw the body.”

“How do you know that?”

“Carl Brown over at Bailey’s told me. We’re friends. Local doctor and the funeral home in Florida get very close. Lots of my patients die. Old age catches up with everyone at some point.”

“I saw the body.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“I checked you out, Agent Puller. I have some contacts at the Pentagon. My brother is in the Air Force. I was informed that you are absolutely terrific at what you do and that tenacity doesn’t come close to describing your intensity when on the hunt.”

Puller sat back, gauging the woman in a different light now. “There was a bruise on her right temple.”

“I saw that. There was also a slight bloodstain on the stone surround at the fountain.”

“So cause and effect. But what made her fall? Did she stumble or did she have a heart attack or stroke or did an aneurysm pop?”

“None of the above. She was in remarkably good shape, at least internally. Heart, lungs, other organs disease-free. She had bad osteoporosis and a curved spine but that was about it. She died from water in the lungs. Asphyxiation, technically.”

“So what made her fall?”

“She was using a walker, the ground might have been slick from some of the water from the fountain falling there. She goes down, hits her head, becomes unconscious, and drowns in twenty-four inches of water. It happens.”

“I wonder how often?”

“Once is enough in this case.”

“Nothing else suspicious on the body?”

“No defensive wounds, no ligature marks, no other bruising that would indicate someone had attacked her.”

Puller nodded. That corresponded to what he’d found. “Tox screens?”

“Won’t be back for a while. But I saw no signs of poisoning, if that’s where you’re going. And there were no indications of abuse of alcohol or drugs.”

“I think the most my aunt ever had was a glass of wine. At least that I remember.”

“The post bore that out. As I said, except for the spinal issues, she was in remarkable shape for someone her age. She had quite a few years left to go.”

“My aunt wrote a letter. In that letter she was concerned about something in Paradise. Any idea what she could have meant?”

“What sort of concerns did she have?”

“People not being who they seemed. Mysterious happenings at night.”

“Like I said, I just got here six months ago. I don’t know enough people to be aware if they are who they are or not. And mysterious happenings? If she counts parties of drunk guys and gals parading half-naked down the main strip at two a.m. as being mysterious then she’s got my vote.”

“So nothing else you can tell me?”

“Afraid not. I know it seems senseless, Agent Puller. But accidents do happen.”

“Yeah, they do.”

But what Puller was thinking was, If it was an accident, why are people in a Chrysler following me?

He wasn’t just spontaneously thinking this. He had just seen the car pass by the front of the café and stop near his Corvette. The window came down and he was pretty sure he saw a flash. They had taken a picture. Before he could even think of racing after them, the Chrysler drove away.

“Agent Puller, is everything all right?”

He refocused on her. “Everything’s cool.”

“I hope I was able to allay your concerns about your aunt.”

“I think my concerns are right where they should be.”