your butt is on a cargo plane out of here. And just to make sure you don’t come snooping back around on your own time, your next assignment will be overseas, starting tomorrow. Got a couple of unsolved murders on two different bases, one in Germany and one in South Korea. Army hasn’t decided yet which one you’ll be assigned to. My vote would be Korea, and my vote will carry great weight.”
Puller took all this in but didn’t immediately respond. They had him boxed in and both he and they knew it. “Why me?” he said finally. “You’ve got lots of resources at your fingertips. CID. Military Intelligence. You don’t need me.”
Rinehart responded, “On the surface a fair and accurate statement, Puller. But you have something none of those resources have.”
Puller thought he knew the answer but waited patiently for the man to deliver it.
Rinehart said, “You’re his brother. You grew up together. You both served together, albeit in different branches. We know of his assisting you on that investigation in West Virginia. We know you visited him frequently at DB. We know you two talk on the phone. You know him better than anyone else. So we think that you have the best shot to bring him in.”
“Alive,” said Puller.
“Absolutely.”
“If I say yes to your offer, when can I start my investigation?”
“Immediately.”
“No strings attached? No conditions?”
“Other than the one stated, that you report to us.”
“And what about the other people investigating this? You can’t stop them from doing their jobs. There’s no way they’ll leave this case to one CID agent.”
“You’ll just have to work around them. We’ll leave it up to you.”
“And no help from you on that point?”
“We’ll see what we can do. But that ball will largely fall in your court, Puller.”
“And my CO?”
Schindler said, “You’ll get a written directive from him confirming this, of course, with all necessary authorizations. We don’t expect you to take it on faith.”
“Okay, I accept. And I’ll begin my investigation by interviewing all of you.”
The three men exchanged glances and then together looked back at Puller.
Schindler said, “We have nothing to do with this case other than the national security interest in bringing Robert Puller back to prison.”
“You said no strings and no conditions other than the one stated. Are you walking that back now?”
“No, but—”
“Because I am a trained investigator and my training and experience have shown that someone may think they have no valuable information to share, but they actually do. But unless I ask the questions and get the answers, that information never comes to light.”
Schindler slowly nodded. “Okay, what do you want to know?”
“You said this was a national security case. Why?”
“You know what your brother was involved in with the Air Force?”
“STRATCOM.”
“That’s right. The United States Strategic Command. It used to be limited to nuclear defense. Now its mission covers space operations, missile defense, cyber and information warfare, WMDs, global command and control, surveillance, reconnaissance, global strike, the list goes on and on. I can’t think of another military command more important to this country. Your brother worked both at the Missile Correlation Center in Cheyenne Mountain and also at STRATCOM’s HQ at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.”
“I knew all that, sir. I’d actually visited my brother when he worked at STRATCOM at Offutt. But then he was assigned to a satellite office here in Leavenworth, right?” said Puller.
Daughtrey nodded. “STRATCOM outgrew its footprint at Offutt. The new facility won’t be completely ready for a few more years. Leavenworth was one of many farm-out locations. But everything was wired back to HQ.”
“I understand,” said Puller.
Even now Robert Puller couldn’t refer to it as a room, or an apartment, or a flat. It was quarters. Military vernacular was drilled into the minds of those in uniform like fingers marking letters in wet concrete that dried to permanency.
His “quarters” was a motel room on the outskirts of Kansas City, Kansas. He had left Leavenworth behind for no other reason than—
I could.
It was a right-angle drive, hands twelve and three on the clock, meaning straight south and then straight east on I-70, the two perfectly equal legs of a right triangle, only awaiting the hypotenuse to complete it, which he might, taking an alternate but no less straight and direct route back to Leavenworth, if necessary. He had always framed things that way, with a reference to math or science or an adjunct of either one, placing them into a perspective that amused some, bewildered others, but was off-putting to most, he had found.
And which bothered him not at all.