“An off answer, a look, a hesitation. And we need to comb through their histories, see if anything pops.”
“That could take a long time.”
Puller slapped the table with the palm of his hand. “I don’t care how long it takes, Knox. All I care about is setting this situation right.”
“And what exactly does that mean to you? Setting the situation right? Capturing your brother and returning him to prison safely?”
“What else would I mean?” he said slowly.
She studied him. “I wonder. But if this was an inside job, it might involve more than just a guard. And that for me is far-fetched.”
“It’s not far-fetched if it turns out to be true. Maybe the picture is a lot bigger than we think it is.”
“And maybe it isn’t.”
“Have you been briefed on my brother?”
“STRATCOM.”
Puller nodded. “And you know what that entails. That could be the motive right there. Our enemies snatch him for his brains, use what he knows against us.”
“So now you’ve moved on to spies?” she said skeptically. “A mole at DB?”
“Do you have another explanation?” he said tersely.
“No,” she admitted. “I don’t.”
“We still have no idea who the dead guy is or what he was doing there. I’ve made arrangements to see his body in the morning.”
“That is a puzzler,” she admitted. “I mean, how do you get into a prison and get yourself killed and no one sees or hears anything?”
“It might be easier than you think,” Puller said.
Knox looked at him expectantly, but he didn’t elaborate. Instead he said, “And who ordered you to babysit me?”
“I wasn’t ordered to babysit you!” she said sharply.
Puller ignored this. “Was it Schindler…Daughtrey…or Rinehart?”
Her face twitched at the last name.
“So, Lieutenant Ge
neral Rinehart. Three stars do tend to capture a captain’s attention. Especially if you want to move up and beat your old man’s rank. Might be a nice shortcut career-wise.”
She looked away. “Puller, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re really off on this whole thing.”
He laid down some cash for his part of the meal. “I’m sure Rinehart will reimburse you for your dinner tonight. You were still on duty, after all.” He rose. “Hang in there.”
“Where are you going?”
“To bed.”
She didn’t say anything right away, just held her gaze on him. Finally Knox said, “Why don’t I believe that?”
They went their separate ways. Puller had not even asked where Knox was staying. He doubted it was at the same motel. There weren’t that many guests there; he probably would have seen her. He pulled into the parking lot and cut the engine, got out, and looked around. There were two other cars parked in the lot, neither of which had been here when he’d left in the morning. They were clunkers, both with out-of-state license plates. That didn’t bother him—his was an out-of-state plate too. This was probably a motel where folks traveling east or west, north or south would pull in for a night’s sleep before heading on. Being in the middle of the country, Kansas, he knew, got a lot of such traffic.
He jogged up the steps to his room on the second floor and walked along the exterior passage to his door.
The next moment he had pulled his M11 and curled his finger around the trigger guard.
His door was open, not by much but enough. He distinctly remembered locking it that morning after leaving the light on for his cat.
And this motel did not provide daily maid service. You’d never see the maid, because she only showed up when you checked out, if then.
He slid to the side of the door and eyed the gap. Not wide enough to see anything. He nudged it open farther with his foot. He had both hands on his weapon and the next moment was inside the room, in a crouch, his M11 making defensive arcs in the air as he looked for a target to fire on.
He didn’t find one. But he saw two things.
First, AWOL was curled up in a ball on the bed. Her slow breathing and languid toss of her tail showed him his pet was just fine.
The same could not be said of the person next to her on the bed.
Puller eyed the bathroom door and cleared that and the shallow closet before coming back over to the bed and looking down.
Air Force brigadier general Tim Daughtrey was quite dead.
CHAPTER
15
THE OLD MOTEL probably had never seen so much activity. Local police were clustered around, talking, moving, observing, and otherwise getting in the way.
An Office of Special Investigations, or OSI, team had been flown in to head up the investigation. They were the Air Force’s counterpart to Puller’s CID. The Air Force had never lost a general in this way before, and as Puller surveyed what was going on he knew that every agent was taking special care to do things by the book.
He had been interrogated four times so far: once by the locals he’d summoned by dialing 911, then by a team sent over from Fort Leavenworth, next by a team of FBI agents in blue windbreakers and caps who looked grim and asked pointed questions and, at least it seemed to Puller, didn’t entirely believe his story and were very curious about whether his brother had tried to contact him. When he had said no, the disbelief in one of the agent’s eyes became palpable. Finally he was interviewed by the OSI personnel after they’d barged onto the scene and staked their claim as the lead investigative agency. The locals and the Army team had quickly backed down, though the FBI guys had pushed back some. Puller had found that the Bureau did not back down from anyone.
His statement had never varied. He had met with Daughtrey along with two other high-ranking personnel from the government. He had been assigned to investigate the escape of Robert Puller from the DB. He had been working the investigation from morning till night. He had arrived at his room about a quarter past eleven and found the general shot dead in his bed.
Puller had briefly been a suspect until Veronica Knox had shown up and corroborated that he had been with her up until a few minutes past eleven that night. Prelims on the TOD, or time of death, indicated Daughtrey had been killed around eight in the evening. That could change some, plus or minus, but for now Puller was in the clear.
Puller had gotten a text from Schindler about an hour after the news had broken about Daughtrey. The NSC suit wanted to meet. Puller had lagged that request because people had been grilling him, and he also didn’t want to leave the crime scene. He wasn’t investigating it, for obvious reasons—he had only been preliminarily crossed off as a suspect, and that status could change. And OSI had made clear it was the lead agency because Daughtrey had been a flyboy. But he still wanted to watch what was going on.
Puller had seen with his own eyes that Daughtrey had been shot once in the direct center of the forehead. There had been no gun evident. No signs of forced entry, though the lock on the motel room door was not complicated. There had been little blood on the bed or on Daughtrey, which told Puller a great deal. At this time of year the sun set a little after seven. It got truly dark about thirty minutes later.
Puller had gotten here about eleven-fifteen. Based on Daughtrey’s presumed time of death at around eight, that meant there was a nearly three-hour window, give or take, in which Daughtrey had been killed and then left here. Because he had been left, not shot here.
“I can see the wheels grinding.”
He looked up to see Knox standing next to him.
“Exciting evening,” she said, surveying the activity in the room.
“A bit more than I wanted, yeah,” said Puller.
“So what’s your take?”
“He wasn’t killed here. He was shot elsewhere and his body dumped here.”
“Lack of blood, bodily fluids, and other forensics residue?” said Knox, and Puller nodded.
“And there was a large exit wound on the back of his head. But the pillow wasn’t damaged from the fired round, and there was very little blood on the pillowcase. So the heart had stopped pumping a long time before he was dumped here. And the room was clean otherwise.”
“OSI figure that too?” asked Knox.
“Yes, at least from the little they’ve told me. For obvious reasons, they can’t share a lot.”
“My statement should have cleared you.”
“It did. For now. Thanks for giving it.”
“Just telling the truth. But why your room as the dumping ground?”