The Summer House(54)
Cook passes his room key over and says, “Go through the trash in my room.”
“What?”
He says, “There’s a piece of paper, a note. From a local newspaper reporter. Peggy something or other. She wants an interview. Talk to her. She’ll be your local intelligence agency. Find out if she has anything to offer. When I get a chance to call, I will.”
Cook gets out, shuts the door, and then opens the rear door and grabs a black knapsack. He starts limping to the front door of the battalion building.
Something both warm and cold seems to settle into her chest.
York knows she should get to work, but she can’t take her eyes off her handsome and struggling boss, limping like he has the entire hopes and fears of the squad riding on his shoulders.
The major opens the front door, walks in, disappears from sight.
Connie sighs, starts up the Ford’s engine, and then jumps with fear as the passenger door opens and a soldier gets in and sits down.
“How’s it going, Agent York?” asks Colonel Tringali, head of the base’s Third MP Group.
Chapter 45
SPECIAL AGENT MANUEL SANCHEZ is back at the home of Wendy Gabriel, famed dog walker.
“Wendy?” he calls out. “Toby? Hello?”
No answer, but once he expertly picks the lock, he still enters the house with his SIG Sauer pistol out in a two-handed grip, just in case.
He blinks his eyes. The stench is burning them.
The voice from the major returns to him:
Find something.
The search is slow, methodical, and sickening.
In the living room thirty-three minutes ago, seeing handwriting on a thick manila envelope hidden underneath two old copies of Glamour magazine, he picked up the envelope and opened it.
Revealing plastic-wrapped stool samples from Toby from a month ago.
That led to a vomiting match out on the porch, soiling his Brooks Brothers jacket, and he has a foul thought of that ice queen, Connie York, being in charge of the unit while the major is in Afghanistan. Sure, according to the records, she is senior to him by about two months, but based on his street experience, he should be running this case, not her.
Now he’s up on the second floor, head light, guts sour, and feeling like he needs an hour-long shower, wishing he could burn his clothes—save for his jacket—when this is done.
But he won’t give up.
Not with the major flying over the Atlantic toward a place so filled with horrors he swore he would never return there.
Sanchez spends just a few minutes in the bathroom, wishing for the light-blue latex gloves he had back in the LAPD, but he finds nothing but old cosmetics and prescription bottles.
From there he goes into the bedroom, follows the same cluttered path leading to the unmade bed, sees two impressions in the stained, crumpled sheet, one smeared with dog hair and what looks to be dog spit. Wonderful.
Sanchez turns, follows a narrower path cleared through the waist-high piles of junk to the bureau at the other end of the room, the top of it clean save for some sheets of paper.
“Idiota,” he whispers. Here, at least, are some things Wendy likes to keep ordered. Recent bills from Georgia Power, Comcast, and AT&T. Envelopes in a neat pile, with handwriting noting, “Pd 8/24, ck #1119.”
One other envelope is apart from the others. Cream-colored and thicker.
The typewritten address is Wendy’s, and the return address is an embossed blue seal and SULLIVAN DISTRICT ATTORNEY.
Sanchez opens the envelope, reads the message on a nice thick piece of office stationery, whereupon one WENDY GABRIEL of Sullivan, in and of Sullivan County, is charged with numerous violations of Georgia Code 16-12-4: Cruelty to animals; said complaint brought to the District Attorney’s Office by…
He quickly folds the sheet of paper, returns it to the envelope, and puts it in his jacket pocket just as his cell phone rings.
Chapter 46
FOR THE LAST forty seconds Captain Rory O’Connell’s stare at me has been steady and unyielding.
“Lucky you,” he finally whispers, “we do have a C-17 Globemaster taking off within thirty minutes, end destination Bagram, carrying additional equipment, but why in hell should I allow you to get onto that aircraft?”
“I need to get to Afghanistan,” I say.
“Why?”
“I’m convinced there’s evidence over there concerning the Rangers from Alpha Company.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“All right,” O’Connell says. “Do you have orders from your superiors in Quantico?”
“No.”
“Travel authorizations?”
“No.”
“Have you had a recent medical exam and immunization update?”
“No.”
The Fourth Battalion’s rear detachment commander waits another long second. “I don’t see a helmet, body armor, gas mask, or anything else you need for an overseas deployment, Major.”
“I’m hoping you’ll help me out.”
O’Connell shakes his lead, leans back a bit in his chair, and I see him wince from his old injuries. “Major, why in God’s name would I even consider letting you on that aircraft? No orders, no authorization, no equipment. What, you think this is an episode of NCIS, you can just hitch a ride into a combat zone? It’s a career ender for both of us. Now, please…leave me be. Fourth Battalion’s XO is still not available, there’s a missing pallet of equipment that should be in Bagram, and I’ve got a shitload of paperwork to get through. All because someone decided Fourth Battalion needed to be deployed nearly a month ahead of schedule.”