Zero Day (7 page)

“
W
AS IT SOMETHING
I
SAID
?” asked Puller quietly, his gaze on her face and not the muzzle of the Cobra. When someone drew down on you, you watched her eyes; that told you intent. And her intent clearly was to shoot him if he said the wrong thing or made the wrong move.

She said, “I must be punch-drunk because of lack of sleep.”

“Not following.”

“I have no idea if you are who you say you are. You’re the only one who said you were with CID. I should never have given you permission to enter the crime scene. For all I know you killed Larry Wellman and made up a story about seeing somebody. Maybe you’re a spy looking to steal what was in that man’s briefcase and laptop.”

“My car outside has Army plates.”

“Maybe it’s not your car. Or maybe you stole it.”

“I’ve got ID.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear.” She flicked the .45. “Show me, real, real slow.”

Cole backed slightly away. Puller noted she used a standard Weaver firing stance, named after a county deputy in California who’d revolutionized shooting competitions back in the late 1950s. Feet shoulder-width apart, knees locked. Gun-side foot slightly back of the other foot. She would employ the classic push-pull to control recoil when she fired. He could tell she had locked her dominant arm, but had not done the same with the hand. She would suffer grip tremble when she fired because of this. But she
held the Cobra like she knew it well. And while her form might not be perfect, it was more than good enough to take him down with one shot at this distance.

He three-fingered his cred pack from his shirt pocket.

“Flip it open for me,” she instructed. “Badge first, and then ID card.”

He did so. She studied his picture and then glanced back at him. She lowered her weapon. “Sorry about that.”

“I would’ve done the same.”

She holstered the Cobra. “But you didn’t ask for my ID.”

“I called you to come here. Name and number was in the official Army file. Army doesn’t make mistakes like that. I saw you climb out of your ride. Badge on your belt. When I grabbed you and you cried out, I recognized the voice I’d heard on the phone.”

“Still got the drop on you,” she reminded him.

“Maybe not as much as you thought.”

He showed her the black KA-BAR knife he was holding in his other hand, concealed by his forearm. “You probably would’ve still gotten your shot off just by reflex. Then maybe both of us would’ve gone down.” He slipped the knife into its holder on his belt. “But it didn’t happen.”

“I never saw you pull the knife.”

“I did it before you took your gun out.”

“Why?”

“I saw you look at me, then at the Cobra, and then at the bodies. Not too hard to figure what you were thinking.”

“So why didn’t you pull your gun on me instead?”

“When I pull my gun I intend on using it. Didn’t want to make an awkward situation worse. Knew you’d ask for the cred pack. I had the knife in reserve in case you had something else on your mind.” He looked back at the bodies. “The kids?”

She stepped forward, pulled a pair of latex gloves from her windbreaker, slapped them on, gripped the back of the boy’s neck, and tilted the corpse forward about ten degrees. With her free hand she pointed to a spot near the base of the neck.

Puller hit the area with his Maglite. He saw the large purplish bruise. “Somebody crushed his brain stem.”

She leaned the body back to its original position. “What it looks like.”

“Same with the girl?”

“Yes.”

“From the condition of the bodies they’ve been dead over twenty-four hours, ballpark, but less than thirty-six. Your CST have a better read?”

“Roughly twenty-nine hours, so you were close.”

Puller checked his watch. “So they were killed around midnight, Sunday night?”

“Right.”

“And the mailman found them on Monday in the early afternoon. So rigor would’ve just started by then. Can you confirm that as a supplemental benchmark?”

“Yes.”

“Did the mailman notice anything suspicious?”

“You mean after he dry-heaved on the front lawn for the fourth time after we got there? No, not really. Killers long gone by then.”

“But they came back tonight. Killed a cop, in fact. Any other wounds or marks?”

“As you can see, we haven’t undressed them, but we did a pretty good look around and found nothing. But you crush the brain stem, the person’s dead.”

“Yeah, that one I get.” He was looking around the room. “You have to know what you’re doing, though. Precise hit, otherwise you incapacitate instead of kill.”

“Professional, then.”

Puller thought,
Or military. And if this is a soldier-on-soldier killing?

He said, “Maybe, or lucky.” He looked at the girl. “But not lucky twice. They weren’t killed here, at least the colonel and his wife.”

Cole stepped back away from the couch, looked at the carpet. “Right, blood spatters. None up here. Basement is a different story.”

“I noted that when I was down there.”

“Speaking of, I need to go see Larry.”

Puller thought he heard her voice catch even though she had tried to say this in a casual tone.

“Do me a favor first?”

“What’s that?”

“Make the call to the station and put the seal on the colonel’s briefcase and laptop.”

She did as he asked. As soon as she closed the phone he said, “Follow me.”

She trudged after Puller down the stairs. He led her over to the spot where the cop was hanging. The dead man had dropped still lower, his black leathers almost touching the concrete.

Puller studied her while she was studying the dead guy. No tears this time. Brief shake of the head. Woman was internalizing it. Probably embarrassed to have already teared up in front of him. And then the voice catch. She shouldn’t have been embarrassed. He’d seen friends die, lots of them. It never got any easier. It only got harder. You thought you became desensitized to it, but that was just an illusion. The hole in your mind just got deeper so more shit would fit inside it.

She stepped back. “I’m going to get whoever did this.”

“I know you are.”

“Can we get him down? I don’t want to leave him up there like a damn slaughtered hog.”

Puller checked the back of the man’s neck. “We can cut the noose loose opposite the knot in the line to preserve it. But give me a sec.”

He hustled out to his car and grabbed his rucksack.

Back downstairs, he took out some plastic sheeting and a portable stepladder. “I’m going to wrap this around the body to safeguard any trace, then hold him up while you climb on the stepladder and cut him down. Remember, cut on the opposite side of the knot. You can use my knife.”

They accomplished this without a hitch and the plastic-wrapped dead man leaned into Puller’s strong arms. He laid him down on the floor on his back while Cole climbed down.

Puller said, “Turn on that light over there.” He motioned to a wall switch.

The light came on and Puller examined Wellman’s neck. “Carotid and jugular compressed. Hyoid bone’s probably fractured. Post will confirm that.” He pointed to several spots around the dead man’s neck. “Blood vessels ruptured, means he was alive when they strung him up.”

Puller carefully edged the cop up on one side so they could see his bound hands. “Check for defensive wounds or trace under the nails. If we’re real lucky we got some DNA leave-behind.”

Cole used Puller’s Maglite to do this. “Nothing that I can see. Don’t understand that. Larry should’ve fought back. Or maybe the killer scrubbed it afterwards.”

“I think this probably explains it.” Puller pointed to matted blood in the man’s hair. “They knocked him out before hanging him.”

He pulled a skin thermometer from his rucksack, ran it over Wellman’s forehead, and checked the reading.

“Little under five degrees down from normal.” He swiftly did the required calculation in his head. “Dead about three hours. So about half past two.”

They heard cars pulling to a stop outside.

“Cavalry’s here,” said Puller.

Cole looked down at her colleague. “You seem to know what you’re doing,” she said softly, staring down at the dead man.

“I’m here to help, if you want it. Your call.”

“I do.” She turned and walked toward the steps.

Puller said, “I know you’ve already processed the scene, but I’d like to do it again.” He added, “I’m not looking to step on anyone’s professional toes, but I’ve got people I have to report to. And they expect our investigations to be processed in a particular way.”

“I don’t care so long as we get the son of a bitch who did this.”

Cole headed up the stairs.

Puller looked down at the dead cop and then over at the far walls where the collection of blood and flesh against the studs revealed where the adult Reynoldses had been executed.

Executed
was really the only way to look at it.

Head shot for him, torso for her. He wondered why the different
treatment. And then the kids not shot at all. Usually with mass killing the same method of murder was employed. Changing weapons took time, precious time. And killing and then moving the bodies took still more time. But maybe this killer had all the time in the world.

Puller glanced back down at Wellman’s body.

Every murder was the same in that someone was dead from a violent cause. Yet other than that factor, everything was always different.

And solving it was like treating cancer. What worked in one case almost never worked in another. They all required their own unique solution.

He walked off to join Cole upstairs.

T
HE THREE
D
RAKE
C
OUNTY COPS
stood in a row looking down at their fallen colleague. As they did this Puller studied them. All about six feet tall, two lean, one chubby. They were young, the oldest in his early thirties. Puller spotted an anchor tattoo on the hand of one.

“Navy?” he asked.

The man nodded, drawing his gaze briefly from Wellman’s body.

The tattoo, Puller knew, had been done after the man had left the service. No tattoos that were visible with your uniform on were allowed in the military.

“You’re Army?” said Anchor Man.

“I’m with the 701st CID out of Quantico.”

“Marines train down there, right?” said the chubby cop.

“That’s right,” said Puller.

“My cousin’s a Marine,” said Chubby. “He said they’re always first in the fight.”

“Marines covered my butt many times in the Middle East.”

Cole came down the stairs. “A miner on his way to work found Larry’s cruiser about two miles from here, down in a ravine, and called it in. Sending our tech over to scrub it down.”

Puller nodded. “And then he can come here? I need to talk to him.”

“I’ll let him know.” She turned to her men. “Considering what happened to Larry, we’ll need two officers to post here at all times.”

“Sarge, that really cuts into our patrol. Pulled thin as it is,” said Anchor Man.

She pointed down at Wellman. “Maybe Larry thought that too, and look what happened to him.”

“Yes, Sarge.”

“And, Dwayne, I want you to head over and secure Larry’s cruiser,” she told him.

“Yes, Sarge,” said Dwayne.

Puller observed the other cops for any visible reaction in dealing with a female superior. If West Virginia was anything like the Army it was still tough going for the girls even in the twenty-first century. From the looks of them it was still tough going for the ladies in the Mountain State.

“Special Agent Puller here will be assisting us in this investigation,” said Cole.

The three cops looked at him with stiffened expressions. This didn’t surprise Puller at all. In their shoes he would’ve felt resentment too.

He didn’t say anything as patently clichéd as that they were all looking for the same thing, justice. In fact he didn’t say anything at all. While he was being polite and professional, the truth was he had no authority over these folks. It was left to Cole to keep her men in line.

“Where’s the crime scene log?” he asked, glancing at Cole. She’d zippered up her windbreaker—perhaps, Puller thought, to cover the sheerness of the T-shirt underneath in the presence of her deputies.

“In my pickup.”

She got the log and Puller added his name to it, recording the date and time of entry. He studied the names of the other people on the list. Cops and the one tech. And a medical professional who had no doubt officially proclaimed the four corpses to be lawfully dead.

He waited for Cole to give Dwayne the location of Wellman’s ride and send him off.

“Any media on this yet?” he asked Cole. They were on the front porch. Dawn had broken and it was light enough for him to see the dark circles under her eyes. She pulled a cigarette from her pack.
He held up his hand and lowered his voice so the cops who were still inside the house couldn’t hear. “Let’s put together a break area in the side yard over there. This scene is going to take a while to process. You can smoke, and we can eat and pile our trash up there. And we’ll need a portable john.”

“There’re two bathrooms in the house.”

“We don’t change the crime scene in any way. Don’t touch the thermostat, use the john, smoke, eat, drink, or chew tobacco. Our stuff gets mingled with what’s here it makes things more complicated.”

She put the smoke away and folded her arms over her chest. “Okay,” she said grudgingly.

“Media?” he said again.

“We only have one weekly newspaper. The nearest TV and radio stations are a ways away. So no, not much in the way of media, and I won’t be holding a press conference, just in case you’re wondering. We’re hard to get to. You have to really want to get to Drake. And right now, no one in the media seems to want to.”

“Good.” He paused, looked at her.

“What?” she finally said under his scrutiny.

“You related to somebody named Randy Cole?”

“My younger brother. Why?”

“Ran into him earlier.”

“Ran into him where?” she asked sharply.

“Place I’m staying.”

She assumed an uninterested air that Puller saw right through. “And how was he?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean drunk or drunker?”

“He was sober.”

“What a shock.”

“But he said he gets headaches.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said in a more worried tone. “For the last year or so.”

“Told him to get that checked out.”

“I told him the same thing. Doesn’t mean he’s going to do it. In fact, it means he probably won’t.”

“I’m going to grab my gear and get to it.”

“You need any help?”

“You’re in charge. That’s lackey work, isn’t it?”

“Not much around here is lackey work. We all pitch in. And even if it were, Larry getting killed changes things. At least for me. Never lost a man on my watch. Now I have. Changes things,” she said again.

“I can see that. I’ll let you know if I need a hand.”

“You lose many of your guys over in the Middle East?”

“Even one was too many,” replied Puller.