"Any reason you can think of why someone would want to harm your son?" asked Cole.
"Not a one. Dickie didn't have any enemies. He had friends. He had his buddies in the motorcycle club."
"Where did he work?" asked Puller.
"He... uh, he didn't currently have a job," said Strauss.
"Well, where did he last work?"
"There isn't much work in Drake."
"Well, there's Trent Exploration," said Puller. "And you're the COO."
"Certainly. That's right. But Dickie didn't want to work at Trent."
"Why's that?"
"Just wasn't something he was interested in."
"So you supported him?" asked Puller.
"What?" Strauss said distractedly. "We, that is to say, I would give him money from time to time. And he lived at home. He was our only child. Maybe we spoiled him." He paused, drawing a sharp breath and with it more nicotine into his lungs. "But he didn't deserve to be murdered."
"Of course not," said Cole.
"If he lived here," said Puller, "we'll need to search his room at some point."
"But not tonight," said Cole.
"He told me why he was booted from the Army," Puller said. This comment drew a sharp glance from Strauss.
"It was... unfortunate," said Strauss.
"The gayness or the booting?" asked Puller.
"Both," said Strauss frankly. "I'm not a homophobe, Agent Puller. You might think everyone from a small town like this is not very open-minded to such things, but I loved my son."
"Okay," said Puller. "He was a good man. He wanted to do the right thing."
"What do you mean?"
"He was helping us in our investigation," said Cole.
"Helping you? How?"
"Just helping us."
"Do you think that's why he was killed?"
"I don't know."
"My God," said Strauss. "All these people killed in Drake in just a few days. Do you think they're connected?"
"We do," said Cole.
"Why?"
"Can't get into that," she said.
Puller sat staring at Strauss for a few moments, debating whether to take a new tack. Finally he decided time was just running out.
"Did you find out about the blasting approvals?"
In a distracted tone Strauss said, "I called the office that handles it. They checked. The foreman for that operation requested the special permit and it was received. But there was a glitch in the public notice. It didn't go out in time. The foreman didn't get that information, so he blasted anyway. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen."
"Who would've known about the timing of the blast?"
"I knew. The foreman. Lots of people at Trent."
"Roger Trent?" asked Puller.
"I don't know for sure, but if he had an interest he could have found out easily enough."
Cole rose and handed him her card. "You think of anything else, give me a call. I'm very sorry for your loss."
Strauss looked confused at the abrupt end to the interview but rose on unsteady legs. "Thank you, Sergeant Cole."
Puller was the last to get to his feet. He drew close to Strauss. "A lot of people have died, Mr. Strauss. We don't want to see any more corpses."
"Of course not." His face reddened. "You're not implying I had anything-"
"No, I'm not implying anything."
"You think he's lying, don't you?" said Cole as they walked back to the car.
"I think he knows more than he was willing to share with us."
"So he helped get his own son killed? He seemed genuinely torn up about it."
"Maybe he didn't intend for his son to be involved in any of this."
They got into the car and Puller drove away from the Strausses' home.
Cole looked back through the rear window. "I can't imagine losing my child."
"Actually, everyone can imagine it. No one wants to experience it."
"You ever think about getting married?"
Puller thought, I am married. My wife is the United States Army. And she can be a real bitch sometimes. I am married. My wife is the United States Army. And she can be a real bitch sometimes.
"I guess everybody thinks about it," he said. "At some point."
"It's hard being a cop and married."
"People do it all the time."
"I mean being a female cop and married."
"People still do it."
"I guess they do. You know, if you think Strauss is holding something back, I probably shouldn't have been so quick to postpone searching his son's room."
"We'll get to it, but I doubt Dickie would keep anything of real importance there."
"Well, where would he keep things of real importance?"
"Maybe the same place Eric Treadwell kept his tungsten carbide."
"You really think that's important?"
"It's important because it's inexplicable." He looked at his watch. "Sleepy?"
"No. I feel like somebody hitched me to a live wire. But you should stay at my place tonight."
"Why? I've got a room."
"Someone also tried to blow you up. Twice."
"Okay, maybe you're right."
They picked up her car and he followed Cole to her house. She showed him to his room and made sure he had everything he needed.
She paused at the door as he sat back on the bed and slipped off his Army boots.
He looked up. "Yeah?"
"Why Drake? Just because we have a pipeline and a nuclear reactor nearby?"
"I guess for some folks, that's all it takes."
He dropped his second boot on the floor and pulled his forward M11 from its holster.
"You expecting to live your whole life with a gun in your hand?" she asked.
"Are you?"
"I don't know. Right now it seems like a pretty good idea."
"Yeah. I'm thinking the same thing."
"Puller, if we make it out of this alive." She paused. "Maybe we could..."
He looked up at her. "Yeah, I was thinking that too."
CHAPTER
79
IT WAS ONE in the morning when Puller found himself in Afghanistan again, in the middle of the firefight that he would win every time, even if he couldn't bring home the men he'd lost. He woke from the dream slowly, calmly. But he woke with something else. in the morning when Puller found himself in Afghanistan again, in the middle of the firefight that he would win every time, even if he couldn't bring home the men he'd lost. He woke from the dream slowly, calmly. But he woke with something else.
An idea.
There had been a hole. A lead he had not followed up. While he'd been killing Afghanis in the desert, his mind had finally fixated on that hole. And he didn't have much time to get it done. He rose, dressed, and left the house as quietly as he had moved through foot patrols in the Middle East. He had paused only to check on Cole. She was asleep in her bed, a single sheet over her in deference to the heat outside. He left her a note on the fridge, made sure her front door was securely locked, rolled his car out of the driveway and partway down the street before starting it up. And then he was off.
Thirty minutes later he eyed the bleak concrete-block building. There was no security system. He'd already noted that on his last visit here.
He scanned the area one more time and then moved forward. The front door lock took all of thirty seconds.
He moved through the interior. He hadn't used his flashlight yet because he had memorized the interior from his earlier visit. Down the hall, fifteen strides, door on the left. He used a penlight to illuminate the lock while he used his tools to pick it.
Twenty seconds later he was on the other side of the door and had closed it behind him. He stared over at the other door. He tried the knob. Surprisingly, it wasn't locked. He opened it with his gloved hand. The large freestanding safe stared back at him. This would be the trickier one. But he'd brought with him several elements that could be used to defeat it.
He shone his light on the metal face of the safe. It was old but sturdy. He inserted his tools in the lock. He worked with a practiced hand for five minutes. There was a low click, and he tugged on the locking mechanism arm and pulled the door open. It took him ten minutes of searching before he found what he was pretty sure he had been looking for.
He unfolded the blueprints and placed them on the desk. He shone his light over them, going page by page. Then he took pictures of each page, folded the plans back up, replaced them in the safe, cranked the door closed, and made sure it locked properly. Five minutes later he was driving off in his Malibu. He reached Cole's house, carried the camera in, and sat on his bed going through each frame. When he was finished he sat back and thought about it, trying to put things in order. Strauss had had this in his safe. Eric Treadwell and Molly Bitner had designed a plan to get this out of the safe and make copies of it. If he needed any confirmation that they had done so, he had it.
He had brought with him fingerprint cards of both Treadwell and Bitner. Both of them must have been sweating when they'd pulled their little raid at Strauss's office, because the moisture along with their prints had been transferred perfectly to the paper. And it was the sort of paper that would carry latent prints pretty much forever. The matches had been perfect for both Treadwell and Bitner.
This is what they had risked so much for. This was ultimately what they had sacrificed their lives for. The one piece he had not followed up on.
Until now.
Now the question was: Did he tell Cole?
The answer was clearer and more immediate than he expected.
He looked at his watch: 0400.