“You answered your phone when you obviously knew why I was calling. You could have played ostrich and dodged the bullet. You’ve got a new command down in Texas that I’m sure is keeping you busy twenty-four/seven. So thanks.”
“I don’t much care
for ostriches. Never saw the point. And I’m getting these folks down here whipped into shape. I’ll call you later.”
He hung up and sat back. He wasn’t thinking about his brother right now and his dilemma. He was thinking about the woman who had been on the other end of that conversation.
When Puller had first met her, Julie Carson was an Army one-star assigned to the Pentagon with designs on at least one and possibly two more stars before her military career was finished. Puller had run into her during a case he was investigating in West Virginia. The two had started out as adversaries and then months later had ended up sharing a bed while Puller was investigating his aunt’s death at her home on the Gulf Coast of Florida. And Carson had almost been killed while trying to help him. Though badly wounded, she’d fully recovered. Puller still had nightmares about it.
She had gotten her second star and with it a new command at an Army base in Texas. They had said their goodbyes over a bottle of wine and take-out Italian. The Army tended to get in the way of any permanent relationships among service members. He knew he might not see her in person again, at least for a while. After Texas the odds were she would be headed to the Pacific Northwest. After that, it was anyone’s guess. He was just glad that she had answered his call. Right now he needed a friend with stars on her shoulders.
Later that day, he had just gotten back to his apartment near Quantico when his phone buzzed. It was Carson.
“I hope you don’t mind if I eat while I talk,” she said. “I had time today to either eat lunch or do a five-mile run.”
“And of course you opted to run.”
“Don’t we all?” she replied as he heard utensils hitting a plate and liquid being poured into a glass.
“You cook a lot down there?” he asked.
“Are you giving me shit?” she said in a mock-reproachful tone.
“No, I’m deadly serious,” he replied, though his tone wasn’t.
“I almost never cook,” she said. “My mother would be so disappointed. Well, she is disappointed. She could fill the house with what she did in the kitchen. And the smells were like you wouldn’t believe. I played three sports in high school and I think part of me did it so I could eat my mom’s cooking and not get fat. Maybe that’s why I never even really tried to learn my way around the kitchen. I knew I could never be as good as she was.”
“A little competitive, are we?”
“Show me anyone in uniform who isn’t,” she shot back.
He heard her gulp whatever she was drinking, and then her tone turned serious. “So let’s talk about your brother.”
“I still can’t get my arms around it.”
“John, how do you break out of DB?”
“How much do you know about it?”
“Mostly scuttlebutt, but there was a lot of it. A storm. Backup power failed. Reinforcements were called in. They restored order. Head count was done. And no Robert Puller in attendance. But there was mention of someone else who shouldn’t have been there.”
“Then you know about as much as I do. And the someone else was dead and in my brother’s cell.”
“Holy hell!” she exclaimed.
“Pretty much says it all,” he said evenly.
“I definitely hadn’t heard that. And no sign of him since?”
“Apparently not. Don White, my CO, filled me in today. Then I went to see my father. I figured he might have heard and even with his condition he might be upset.”
“And that’s when you ran into the suit and the generals?”
“They asked me the standard questions: my visits to him, what we discussed. Then, if he contacted me, to contact them. But then it got weird, like I said on the phone.”
“In what way weird?”
“First, although they never came out and said it, I believe they want me to look into the case.”
“How can that be? I’m sure your CO told you not to go near it.”
“He did. And then the Air Force guy wanted to know if I thought my brother was guilty.”
“And what did you say?”
“He was always the smart one in the family. Officer material. I was just the enlisted grunt in the trenches.”
“Did you ever ask him if he did it?” she asked bluntly.
Puller said, “Once.”
“And?”
“And he didn’t answer me.”