No Man's Land Page 12

  for him?”

  “My name is John Puller Jr. My father was in the Army, same as me. I used to come here with my mother and brother when we were little. My mother disappeared from Fort Monroe thirty years ago. She was never found. I’m just trying to piece together what might have happened.”

  The watery blue eyes softened even more. “Why now if so much time has gone by?”

  Puller took out his CID cred pack.

  The priest studied it. “CID? So is this an official investigation?”

  “No, just personal. Some things have occurred recently that led me to want to finally find out what happened to her.”

  “I can understand that, Agent Puller. Not knowing is a terrible thing.”

  “So might you know what happened to Father Rooney? I don’t even know if he’s alive.”

  “Well, I can certainly try to find out. I can certainly make some calls. Do you mind waiting, or perhaps coming back later? I have a meeting coming up in about fifteen minutes that I have to prepare for, but I can do it right after that. Say about two hours or so?”

  “I’ll be back. And thank you, Father.”

  Puller left the church and checked his watch. He didn’t like to waste time. The Army did not teach wasting time—quite the reverse.

  Puller hadn’t even reached his Malibu when he heard the man.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He turned to see CID special agent Ted Hull sitting in the driver’s seat of his Army-issued Malibu that was a clone of Puller’s. The Army bought in bulk with not a thought to diversity of the product. Indeed, in their eyes uniformity was a good thing, whether it was a soldier or a car.

  Puller looked back at the church and then walked over to Hull’s ride. “Just revisiting old times.”

  Hull eyed him suspiciously. Puller knew he would be doing the exact same thing if the positions were reversed.

  “Is that right? At Fort Monroe, the scene of your mother’s disappearance?”

  Puller shrugged and leaned closer to the window. “You’re the one who dropped this in my lap. Made me curious. What would you do if it was you and your mother?”

  Hull nodded and tapped the steering wheel with his thumbs. “Probably the exact same thing you’re doing.”

  Puller straightened. “Well, okay.”

  “You find out anything?”

  Puller leaned back down. “I’ve talked to a few people. My mother was dressed up that night. She walked; our car was still in the driveway. The church was within walking distance. She was devoutly religious. Maybe she came here.”

  “Why here?”

  “If she had a problem she might come here to talk about it.”

  “You mean like a confession?”

  “They don’t have any actual confessionals in the church, they just do it in one of the rooms. But no, I mean like just talking to a priest.”

  Hull eyed the church. “The same priest still here?”

  “No, but they’re trying to locate him.”

  “You think it might be a viable lead?”

  “Since I have no others I’ll take what I can get.”

  “I didn’t see any record of the CID agents talking to a priest thirty years ago.”

  “They didn’t really know my mother. I did. But then again, it may come to nothing.” He looked around. “Place is really different now. I remember when it was full of uniformed people hustling somewhere.”

  Hull nodded. “Me too. But we got too many posts and not enough money. So there you go. When will you know if they found the priest?”

  “A few hours.”

  Hull considered this. “You can’t officially investigate this.”

  “I get that.”

  “So what are you really doing, Puller?”

  “I’m just looking into my mother’s disappearance. No law against that.”

  “If your father is a suspect there is. You’re in uniform.”

  “But my father is not officially a suspect.”

  “Will you give me a call when and if this priest turns up?”

  “Be glad to.”

  “Don’t throw your career away over this, Puller. I understand a little about what happened with your brother when he was at USDB. Scuttlebutt was you got perilously close to the line there.”

  “I’m a soldier. Peril comes with the territory.”

  “There are different kinds of peril. And the one coming from your own side is sometimes a lot worse than anything the enemy can chuck at you.”

  Hull drove off.

  Puller watched him go for a bit before turning his attention elsewhere.

  He hadn’t been completely truthful with Hull. He had another lead to follow up.

  Part of it was real.

  The other part was all in his head.

  Chapter

  17

  PULLER SAT IN a chair in his motel room and stared at the duffel.

  It was just an ordinary duffel.

  Canvas.

  Zippered.

  Crammed with stuff that helped Puller do what he did.

  Find the truth.

  What he did. All he ever wanted to do.

  Was that because his mother had left the house and never come back?

  Because some evil had made sure she couldn’t ever come back?

  And was that evil his own father?

  He covered his face with his hands, the impossible burden of this thought threatening to crush him without a gram of actual weight behind it.

  Then he sat up straight and composed himself.

  You’re Army, John Puller. You’re an Army Ranger. You can do the impossible. You’re expected to do the impossible on a regular basis.

  So open the bag, John. Open the damn bag and just let it out. Finally.

  His fingers reached out to take hold of the zipper.

  He imagined his father glowering at him.

  Come on, soldier, you put your life on the line for your country. A damn zipper shouldn’t be too hard.

  He slid it down, spread open the canvas, and saw what he had put in there.

  He touched the edge of the letter but didn’t pull it out. Not right away.

  He had to work up to it, as strange as that sounded. The gravitational pull of family dynamics; it left a black hole in the dust.

  He finally eased it out enough to see the name written on the front of the envelope.

  Written in his mother’s hand.

  John.

  Not him, his father.

  The letter had been for John Puller Sr. At the time he was a one-star busting his ass to add more silver to the epaulets. This meant leaving everything else in his life, including his family, in a distant second place.

  Puller Sr. would finish his career with a trio of stars. There were only forty-three of those in the entire United States Army. But his old man wanted the fourth, which would have put him in the elite company of only nine people on earth at any given time. And because he never got there, he was a failure, at least in his eyes.

  A failure in the mind he used to have.

  Puller took the letter out and unfolded it.

  He had never read it. He had found it when he was a little boy, his mother gone barely six months. His father had left it somewhere in the house at Fort Monroe. The envelope had been opened, but he had no idea if his father had read the contents.

  He looked down at the writing that, despite the passage of years, he recognized as his mother’s. She used to write many notes to him and his brother, ones of encouragement, support, sometimes just funny things to make them smile or, better yet, laugh, particularly when they were sad or uncertain or fearful.

  The life of an Army brat was not easy. The life of a son of an Army legend could sometimes be pure hell.

  The Puller brothers had learned that lesson vividly as they had grown into men.

  People either assumed you were as good and talented and brave as your legendary father and never allowed you to fall below that supremely high bar,
or they assumed you were nowhere near as good as he was because it was a rare family that could spawn multiple fighting legends. Thus you were instantly relegated to being parasites riding your father’s coattails. Nothing you achieved would ever be because of what you did, but only because of who your father was.

  So anything you accomplished, under either scenario, would never be good enough.

  Because you would never be him.

  The letter was brief but compelling, even heartwrenching in parts. What he would have given to have received letters from her when he’d been at college, or when he’d first joined the Army. Or when he’d been deployed overseas and was literally fighting for his life through some of the most hostile and chaotic situations imaginable.

  Her words would have been his touchstone, his oasis in a sea of shit.

  Puller felt his hand begin to shake as he read through the thoughts of his mother from three decades before.

  Problems in the marriage. Problems with him. Problems with her.

  But…she was willing to work things out.

  Not for her or him.

  But because of their sons.

  Because that was what was truly important. At least to Jackie Puller.

  But—and here was the crux of it—she wrote that she and the boys would have to go away for a while. To let John Puller Sr. see what his real priorities were in life. And then, depending on what he decided, they would go from there.

  Puller folded the letter and slid it back into the envelope.

  Words from the grave. Or if not the grave, Puller didn’t know where.

  Despite the obvious love and affection she held for her sons, as noted in the letter, Puller came away from reading it more depressed than he had been before.

  Part of him had hoped that his mother had left her husband. Because that meant she might still be alive.

  To Puller, this letter meant that his mother most likely was dead.

  He would take bullets and bombs and jihadist fanatics trying to rip his life from him over that. You fought for the flag and country you represented. But you really fought for the guy beside you.

  Here, Puller was alone.

  It was just him and a vanished mother to whom he had given all of his heart.

  As he stood there looking down at the envelope, depression was suddenly replaced with an even more powerful emotion.

  Guilt.

  Why had he waited all these years to do anything about this?

  He was a trained investigator. Yet he’d never investigated the one case that meant more to him than any he would ever confront. Even more than his brother being in prison.

  Yet he had done nothing. Just let the time slip past.

  He put the envelope back in his duffel and zippered it up, securing the fastener with a CID lock.

  He pondered whether to call his brother.

  But Bobby would probably just try to be logical and thus disdainful of every emotion his younger brother was feeling.

  He didn’t need logic or disdain right now.

  He just needed someone to talk to about this who could see it from a side of life that had nothing to do with practicality and common sense.

  He looked at his watch.

  Hopefully he would have a lead on Father Rooney by the time he left and drove back to Fort Monroe.

  He locked his room up and headed to his car.

  When he turned the corner he saw her, perched regally on the hood of his Malibu like a flesh-and-blood ornament. He was so stunned he almost ran into a support post holding up the motel’s porch.

  Veronica Knox said, “I understand you might need a friend.”

  Chapter

  18

  ROGERS SHOWERED, DRESSED in his new clothes, and slipped his smartphone into his inside jacket pocket.

  He drove over to the Grunt and parked in the rear.

  He entered through the front door, and the stares he got from the folks working there told him quite clearly that his beatdown of giant Karl had made the gossip rounds.

  Anyone making eye contact with him quickly broke it off.

  That suited him just fine. He was not here to make friends. This was all about the cash.

  He was directed back to the office, where Helen Myers was waiting for him. She had changed into a sleek black pantsuit with stilettos. Her hair cascaded around her shoulders and her face was fully made up.

  “Where’s Karl?” he asked.

  “He took the night off. He had to see to some things.”

  Rogers nodded. He imagined Karl had to see to a broken finger, a nearly crushed windpipe, a bad leg, and a wrenched arm. But that wasn’t his problem.

  Myers spent thirty minutes going over work details and the protocols and policies of the bar. “Half the IDs you’ll see are fake. Twenty-one is the legal drinking age. No one under that age is allowed in. No exceptions. Most of the people in uniform are nineteen or twenty. You err on the side of keeping people out. The last thing I need is to be put out of business for promoting underage drinking.”

  “You’d think if you’re old enough to fight for your country you should be able to drink a beer.”

  “I agree, but I don’t make the laws. Weekends are our big nights, obviously. We’re closed on Mondays to let everybody take a breather, but we’re open every other night of the week.”

  “Anything else?” Rogers asked.

  “You have to exercise discretion and good judgment, Paul. While we want to keep underage people out, we don’t want a rep of being a