Zero Day (18 page)

D
R
. W
ALTER
K
ELLERMAN
had once been a far heavier man but had dropped a lot of weight, noted Puller, when they arrived for the autopsies. He deduced this from his sagging facial skin and his belt having four additional holes cut in the leather to accommodate his shrinking waist.

The bodies had been transported from the funeral home to Kellerman’s surgery. It was in a two-room brick building behind his office, which clearly used to be someone’s home and was located about a mile from the downtown area. Portable refrigeration beds had been brought in to hold the bodies.

“Is the man sick or eating better?” Puller asked in a low voice to Cole as they slipped on surgical gowns and gloves.

“Little of both. He’s walking more, cutting out the red meat, and eating less. They took out his gallbladder and left kidney about a year ago. He knows if he wants to see his seventies he needs to get it together.”

“You attended autopsies before?” asked Puller.

“More than I wanted to,” she replied.

“Lindemann said the last murder you had was ten years ago.”

“They do autopsies for other reasons. Accidents mostly. In coal mining country you have quite a few of those. And car accidents. Have quite a few of those too.”

“Okay.”

“And if you’re wondering whether I’m going to start puking when he starts cutting, the answer is no.”

Kellerman had a trim white beard, blue eyes, little hair on his head, and a friendly manner. When he was introduced to Puller he said, “I pulled one stint in the Air Force. Two years in Vietnam, but the GI Bill helped pay for college and I went on and got my medical degree.”

“See, Uncle Sam can do things right,” said Puller.

“I never regretted it. Makes you stronger.”

“If you survive it,” said Cole.

Puller noted the body on the steel table with the sheet over it. “Who’s first?”

“Colonel Reynolds.” Kellerman glanced at the portable cold beds. “I have two trained assistants helping, but it’s still going to be a long day.”

“We’re just here to observe and ask questions,” said Cole.

“You’re very welcome to do both. I looked over the bodies this morning. An interesting mixture of wounds. Shotgun, small-caliber handgun, strangulation, and blunt force trauma.”

“Any idea what was used to kill the teenagers?” asked Puller.

“Probably a hand.”

“How can you be sure of that?” asked Cole.

“I’m not sure. He asked if I had an idea. And that’s it.”

“But why a hand?”

“A bat, metal tool, or other foreign object would have almost certainly left some sort of residue or telltale mark on the skin. Did one post where you could make out the logo of a Louisville Slugger bat on the deceased’s chest. But the hand leaves a distinctive mark too. And I found trace embedded in the neck of the boy.”

“What was it?” asked Puller.

“Looks to be a bit of black leather.”

“Meaning they wore gloves.”

“Now I see it, yes.”

“It’s not easy to hit the medulla just right to kill someone,” noted Puller. “It’s only about three inches long.”

“I’d say you were looking for someone with special training. Maybe martial arts.”

“Or military,” suggested Cole.

“Right. Or military,” agreed Kellerman.

He slid down his clear face mask, lifted the sheet from the dead colonel, and readied his instruments.

“Shall we?”

Even with the two assistants’ help the seven bodies took many hours to properly autopsy. Puller had boxed up quite a bit of the evidence in special containers, carefully marked, that he would ship down to USACIL. He would include with the packages specific instructions for the lab at Fort Gillem when they processed the evidence. And he would follow up those instructions with an email and a phone call.

Kellerman had left his assistants to sew up the Y-incisions, changed his clothes, and gone home. Cole and Puller walked outside. Puller put the boxes into Cole’s car. He had also filled up his recorder with notes on the posts and Cole had taken extensive handwritten notes as well. Yet there was nothing too remarkable revealed by the process.

Shotgun wadding was taken from Reynolds’s head and would be compared to find the gauge of gun used. Some of the white material found embedded in his face had not been wadding. Kellerman had theorized it was a blindfold they had made the colonel wear.

“Probably why he didn’t try to defend himself or throw up his hands,” said Puller.

“He never saw it coming,” added Cole.

Stacey Reynolds’s torso had been filled with shotgun pellets. The two kids had died from strikes to their necks as they had speculated. Eric Treadwell and Molly Bitner had been killed by .22 caliber shots into their brains. The bullets had come out in reasonable shape and now all they needed was a gun to match them to.

Wellman had been struck on the head hard enough to cause unconsciousness. His life had not been ended by a broken neck. That required a considerable drop that the low ceiling in the basement could not provide. Instead, Wellman had suffered a slow asphyxiation.

Cole and Puller leaned against her car. She slid out a cigarette and lit up.

“Don’t look at me like that, Puller,” she said. “I just sat through seven bodies being cut up. It’s stressful.”

“They didn’t leave much behind,” he said.

“You have any ideas?”

“None that work all the way through right now.”

She checked her watch. “Dinner at my sister’s.”

“Why does she want me there?”

“I don’t know, other than you’re younger, taller, and fitter than her husband.”

“So you’re saying she cheats on him?”

“I’m not saying anything, because I don’t know. Roger’s gone a lot.”

“She didn’t seem overly concerned about the death threats.”

“Roger is not a popular guy. I guess you get desensitized to it.”

“She might be, but he clearly isn’t. He was both pissed and scared.”

“Well, he’s the target, not her.”

“True.”

“I can drop you off at your car and then pick you up at the motel. Give us both time to shower and change. I need to scrub hard to get the smell of death off me.”

“I don’t think anyone can scrub that hard.”

“I’m sure as hell going to try.”

P
ULLER DROVE
straight to the post office, which was a few minutes away from Annie’s Motel. He arrived right before it closed for the day. He mailed off the boxes via priority shipping to Atlanta and then focused on the young woman behind the counter, who gazed up at him expectantly.

He flashed his cred pack to her. “I’m with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.”

“I know you are,” she said back.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“Small town. And you’re too big to miss.”

“I need to find out about a delivery.”

“What delivery?”

He explained about the certified mail package Howard Reed had delivered on Monday to the Reynoldses but in care of the Halversons’ address.

She nodded. “Howard mentioned that to me this morning when he came in to get his delivery load.”

“It’s really important that we find out where the package came from.”

The young woman gazed behind her. “I really should get my supervisor involved with this.”

“Okay.”

“But he’s gone for the day.”

Puller put his big hands on the counter. “What’s your name?”

“Sandy. Sandy Dreidel.”

“Okay, Sandy, let me lay it out for you. This delivery might be
very important in finding out who killed those people. The longer we wait the farther away they get. All I need is the name and address of who sent the package, that’s all.”

“I understand that. But we have policies and procedures.”

Puller suddenly grinned. “I understand that. I’m in the Army. For every policy the post office has, the Army has ten, guaranteed.”

Sandy smiled back. “Sure thing. I bet you’re right.”

“But there is a way to find out the information?”

“Well, yes. We have records.”

“Probably just a few clicks of that computer there will tell you.”

Sandy looked embarrassed. “Well, we don’t have everything in computers just yet. But we have log books in the back.”

Puller held out his notebook and a pen. “If you could take a couple of minutes and just write the name and address down here, that could really help us find whoever killed all those people.”

Sandy hesitated, glanced over Puller’s shoulder and through the window overlooking the street, and then took the items from him.

It took her five minutes, but she returned with the notebook and pen and handed them to Puller. He glanced down at what she’d written and then looked up.

“This is a big help, Sandy. I really appreciate it.”

“But you won’t tell anybody I did it,” she said worriedly.

“No one will ever find out from me.”

Back at his motel room, Puller studied the name and address that Sandy had written down for him.

The company name he didn’t recognize. The address was Ohio. He did a Google search on his laptop and pulled up the company’s home page. When he saw what the firm did he wondered if he finally had a break in this case. If he did, it wasn’t that obvious. He phoned the number on the home page but only received a recorded response. The company was closed and would reopen tomorrow morning at nine.

Stymied for the moment, Puller called the hospital where the motel owner Louisa had been taken. He couldn’t find anyone who would tell him her condition, but he did purchase a vase of flowers
from the hospital gift shop, paying for it with his credit card. On the card he had them write, “Cat is fine. Hope you are too. Your good egg, Puller.”

He put the phone down, stripped off his clothes, and stepped into the shower. The Army taught you to wash fast and dress faster, so he was dry and clothed five minutes later.

He was just sliding his M11 into the front holster when he saw it.

Someone had slipped a piece of paper under the door to his room.

He immediately checked the window next to the door. He could see no one. The little courtyard was empty of both cars and people. He stripped the pillowcase off one of the bed pillows, knelt down, and used the pillowcase to pick up the paper.

He turned it over. The writing was laser print. The message was straightforward.

I know things you need to know
.

There was an address listed.

And then there was one more word printed.

Now
.

Puller used the map app on his phone to find the location. From where he was it was a fifteen-minute ride by car. That would probably put him even more in the middle of nowhere than he already was.

Perfect place for an ambush.

Long-range shot.

Or shotgun at close range.

Or ten guys on one. Maybe Dickie and his big friend with the broken nose had decided to get even and would be bringing necessary reinforcements this time.

Puller looked down at his phone. He could call Cole and fill her in. He probably should. He hit the numbers. The phone rang. Went to voice mail. She was probably still in the shower scrubbing death off her.

He left a message telling her about this latest development. He gave her the address he’d been given and then clicked off.

He made one more call, to his friend Kristen Craig at USACIL.
He gave the lady a heads-up on what he was sending and what results he was hoping for from the lab.

“How’re things coming on the laptop and the briefcase?” he asked her. “Did you get read into it by DIA?”

“We did,” she answered. “But I have to tell you, I’m disappointed so far.”

“Why?”

“His briefcase had an old sandwich, a few private-sector business cards, and a couple of magazines. The only report in there wasn’t even classified.”

“And the laptop?”

“A little porn and a whole lot of nothing else. I mean, he had work stuff on there, but nothing that would have caused the collapse of Western civilization as we know it if the bad guys got hold of it.”

“DIA know this?”

“Of course. They’re DIA. They had someone come to the lab.”

“Porn, huh?”

“We find that on military laptops all the time, you know that. And this stuff wasn’t hardcore. Just crap you can watch in your hotel room and not see the title on the bill the next morning. Barely titillating with awful production values. But then I’m not a guy.”

“Women have far higher standards. So why all the sirens going off from SecArm?”

“Hey, I’m just a tech; you’re the investigator,” she said in a playful tone.

He clicked off, pondered this, glanced down at the note, pondered that.

He waited for Cole to call him back. She didn’t.

He locked the motel room door on his way out.

He fired up the Malibu, popped the address he’d been given into his GPS, and drove off.