No Man's Land Page 9

  Puller gave her his number.

  “Oh, John?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for.”

  “Me too.”

  Chapter

  12

  PAUL ROGERS HAD walked around the perimeter of Fort Monroe. He had done this a dozen times now and saw things on the last circuit that he had failed to see on the first. In some ways the place looked like a Hollywood back-lot set of a small town. The only thing missing was the film crew and actors.

  This had been his playground of sorts thirty years ago. He’d been in his twenties, alone, confused, intimidated.

  He was still alone. But he was no longer confused or intimidated.

  He eyed the terreplein that ran around the fort. He had often run around this strip of grass and knew that it was one point two miles in length. Constructed over a sixteen-year period, the fort, also known as “the Gibraltar of the Chesapeake,” had walls that extended over a mile and encompassed over sixty acres of land. The old rusted gun mounts could still be seen. These were the Endicott batteries that had replaced the cannon in the fort. Rifled barrels had led to the fortress cannons being rendered obsolete. Ships could fire from a long way away and the cannon could not match that range. The Endicott batteries had been brought in to fix that problem. Then with the invention of the airplane even the Endicotts became obsolete. After that the strategic and operational attributes of the fort were pretty much exhausted. It became more administrative and focused on “training and doctrine” after that, and indeed became the Army’s center for those two intertwined disciplines.

  As he looked down at the water in the moat, Rogers could see that nearly two hundred years of silt buildup had shortened the depth, already fairly shallow, to the point where at low tide he could see a sandbar.

  He stared out over the narrow channel where the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia had fought the first naval duel between ironclads. The channel was shallow and the deeper part was on the Fort Monroe side, so the ships coming in would hug the shore there. He remembered that the aircraft carriers would come so close to land they would shade the parade grounds.

  Back then Rogers had learned as much about Fort Monroe’s history as he could. Across that same channel three slaves had rowed across at the start of the Civil War and asked for refuge. The garrison commander, Major General Benjamin Butler, had agreed. When the Confederates, under a white flag, had shown up and demanded their return under the recently passed federal law about runaway slaves, Butler, a former lawyer, had given the rebels a lesson in the nuances of the law. Since they had seceded from the United States, Butler told them, they were no longer entitled to the protections of federal law. And since the slaves were being used in the war effort against the Union, Butler was treating them as contraband to be kept by the United States. Word of this reached the ears of many slaves, and thousands ended up seeking refugee status as “contraband” in what became known as “Freedom’s Fortress.”

  Rogers’s walk had taken him past the Old Point Comfort Lighthouse. It had been built in 1802 and still worked, making it the oldest working lighthouse on the Chesapeake Bay.

  Rogers remembered it well. As part of his training he had been required to climb the sheer walls of the lighthouse all the way up to the top railing. In the dead of night no less.

  He had succeeded. He could remember standing on top of the lighthouse looking out at the vastness of the bay and the ocean beyond and thinking that his future was truly limitless. That he was special, when he never had been before.

  On his walk Rogers saw the old arsenal that had made bullets and bombs for the Union. He passed the stone and arch-windowed St. Mary’s Church where he had worshipped as a young man. A far different young man.

  Afterward, he had not wanted to worship anything or anyone. It was all changed. He was all changed.

  He clambered up on top of a wall to see the Chesapeake Bay better. He had spent days out there treading water, swimming, surviving in all possible weather. They had pushed him. Broken him. Rebuilt him.

  And broken him again.

  He hopped down off the wall.

  After a while they hadn’t bothered to fix him anymore.

  He rubbed his head. But the pains were now more consistent and more frequent. He didn’t know why. He walked back to the van and drove off, passing by a row of officers’ quarters.

  A world of memories had flooded back to him as soon as he had seen Fort Monroe. But none like the ones he had recollected when he stopped in front of what was known back then as Building Q. It was set off in a remote part of the fort. It had large buffers of empty land around it. There was a high perimeter fence with concertina wire. There were gates with armed guards. Their job had been to keep some folks out and other folks in.

  He was one of the other folks.

  Unlike many of the large commercial-sized buildings around here, Building Q was not empty. The parking lot inside the fence was full of cars. The lights inside were on. As he watched, someone came out of a side door, moved away from the building, and lit up a cigarette.

  The concertina wire remained on top of the fence. The gates were manned by armed guards. He wondered if the electronic security system was still active.

  He didn’t think about this for a casual reason.

  He was coming back to break into the place.

  After that Rogers was pretty certain of his strategy.

  As he watched, the smoker threw down the butt of his cigarette and walked back to the door. He used a key card access to gain entry, pulled open the door, and went back to whatever work he was doing inside.

  So there is electronic security as well.

  Rogers had seen enough for now. He left the fort and went in search of work that paid cash and required no filling out of any papers. He was tired of sleeping in cars. It might be nice to have a bed. And a bathroom not connected to a gas station.

  As he left Fort Monroe he felt a sense of peace that he had not experienced in a very long time.

  It was a good feeling. Normally, he only thought about hurting and killing. It was not his fault.

  It was just the way he was wired.

  Only others had done the wiring.

  Chapter

  13

  PULLER LOOKED AT the email, deciding whether or not to open it.

  It had information he needed.

  But it was also information that part of him didn’t want to confront.

  Shireen Kirk had not wasted any time. She must have already informed CID that she was representing John Puller Sr. And she had no doubt requested this documentation.

  CID, being efficient even with a file three decades old, had promptly sent it to her. The fact that Shireen was a longtime JAG lawyer and knew pretty much everyone who mattered at all in the criminal investigative branches of the various services had surely aided her effort.

  Nobody wanted to screw with Shireen Kirk, regardless of whether she still wore the uniform or not. She’d file a motion faster than you could discharge your sidearm.

  After the drive from Fort Monroe, Puller sat down in a chair in his motel room and opened the file on his laptop.

  The case heading for the file was daunting right off the bat.

  Investigation into the disappearance of Jacqueline Puller.

  He ran his finger over the letters of his mother’s full name.

  Jacqueline Elizabeth Puller.

  Formally correct, though he had called her nothing other than Mom for the eight years he had had her as a mother.

  After that? He had rarely used the term at all.

  For several years when he was growing up, people would come up to him, their features full of sadness, and tell them how bad they felt for his loss.

  He had no doubt they were being sincere, but for a little boy it was way too much to deal with. And Puller had started running the other way when folks headed toward him with “that look.”

  His father had not spoken
of his wife from that day on. The family had just continued to exist with an enormously important piece of their world simply gone without any reason given.

  Puller and his brother would speak of it sometimes, first as boys and then as men. But as the years passed and no word was ever heard about their mother, they began to talk less and less of her.

  In his heart Puller felt sure that both his father and his brother believed that Jacqueline Puller had abandoned them and run off to a new and better life.

  And that would be better, he thought, than his father’s having killed her.

  However, she had left no note, taken none of her clothes or other possessions. She had prepared dinner for them, arranged for a babysitter, and walked out the door, never to return.

  As an investigator, Puller knew that when folks planned to leave—and he had traced several who had done so—they usually left some sort of note. If there were kids and it was the mother leaving, she invariably took the kids with her. They also took a suitcase with clothes and other essentials. And they normally took the car. And they cleaned out bank accounts and maxed out ATM withdrawals.

  His mother had done none of those things.

  He believed she was planning to come back that night. But something had prevented her from doing so.

  Or someone.

  He read through the report, word by word, page by page. And then he read it twice more.

  Pertinent people were questioned. Answers were received.

  A few tangential leads had been run down.

  And that was it.

  Abject failure.

  In less than two weeks.

  Puller wondered if his father’s status as the husband had had anything to do with the truncated investigation. Had they wondered if Puller Sr. had been involved and just didn’t want to go there?

  Perspectives about domestic abuse were different thirty years ago. Wife beaters were given time to cool off and sent back to battered women who were too scared to press charges. What was clearly illegal now was tolerated back then. A wink, a nod, a look the other way.

  On an Army post three decades back Puller assumed things were different too. But to be fair, the CID back then was not aware that Puller Sr. had arrived home in time to possibly be involved in his wife’s disappearance. He had not been a suspect.

  Now, technically, he was.

  Puller took out a notebook and a pen.

  He needed to get a name from Carol Powers. One of his mother’s friends whom he could talk to. That might lead to something else.

  He needed to trace his mother’s movements on the day of her disappearance.

  He needed to see if there was any truth to the rumor that she was going to leave her husband.

  He needed to find out why she was dressed up that night. Was it a date? Was it a function? If so, CID had been unable to determine what it was.

  He put his pen down and closed his eyes, focusing his thoughts on the last day with his mother. The face in the window. The smile. Everything seemed good. That was not the expression of a woman about to abruptly change her life by walking out on her family.

  Puller opened his eyes. He had learned that not only did time heal wounds, but it also played with memories. People often rejiggered memories to match what they wanted the past to look like, rather than how it actually had been.

  He took the picture out of his wallet. It showed the three Puller men all in a row. Puller was the tallest, his father next in height, and his brother, at six-two, bringing up the rear. Age and deteriorating health had robbed Puller Sr. of two inches of his stature, so he would now be last in the height pecking order.

  But Puller was looking to the left of the picture. Where his mother would have been standing had she still been with them.

  This was the only family picture Puller had ever carried with him. In combat overseas, on every mission he had performed on behalf of the U.S. Army. On every investigation he had carried out as a CID agent.

  He had no pictures of his mother.

  He had had no choice in the matter.

  His father had found and destroyed them all.

  Puller slowly put the photo away, closed his eyes, and refocused…on that day.

  The face at the window. Him playing outside. The smile.

  A bead of sweat appeared on his forehead.

  Come on, John. More happened. Bobby knows. Get past whatever is in your head blocking it. See it for how it really was.

  He sat there for five more minutes, straining, his eyes scrunched so tightly closed that his pupils started to feel sore.

  His eyes popped open and he sat there.

  The wall had held.

  He couldn’t get through it.

  He rose. Well, if not in his head, then with his boots on the ground.

  One way or another he was going to finally get to the truth.

  Chapter

  14

  ON THE WAY to his car his phone buzzed. It was Carol Powers.

  “Okay,” she began. “It took a few phone calls, but I finally found Lucy Bristow.”

  “Lucy Bristow?”

  “You probably don’t remember her. She was friends with both our moms. They all volunteered at the Catholic church at Fort Monroe. St. Mary’s.”

  “Okay. That was fast work. How’d you manage it?”

  She laughed. “Women do these things differently from men. We keep phone numbers and addresses, and the ladies’ network is a little more sophisticated than the beer-and-football phone circle. And we tend to keep in touch with each other.”

  “I guess that’s right.”

  “She was around your mother’s age. Her husband was under your father’s command. Anyway, I just talked to her. She lives in Richmond now. Not that far away. And she said she’d talk to you.”

  “Did she remember anything from that day?”

  “I didn’t ask. I think it’s better that she tells you directly, John.”

  “Okay, Carol, thank you. I really appreciate this.”

  She gave him the contact information and then clicked off.

  Puller called Bristow and she agreed to meet with him later that day.

  He drove off, heading northwest toward Virginia’s capital city.

  Part of him felt like he was playing the children’s game of hot and cold. The farther away from Fort Monroe he drove, the colder the trail seemed to become. He assumed that whatever had happened to his mother, the answers would lie here. But to get to that point he would travel wherever he needed to.

  Five minutes after he hit the highway his phone buzzed. He saw the caller ID. It was his CO, Don White.

  He hesitated, not really wanting to answer and be told something he didn’t want to hear.