The Summer House

THE MAIN PART of the old house is cleared within seconds by his squad, and as he goes past the bodies, picking up warm shell casings and carefully digging out spent bullets as he does so, one thought comes to him: how often Hollywood gets this part wrong.

They love showing a squad like his breaking into a residence, screaming Go, go, go! or Down, down, down! Truth is, you move quietly and with deliberation, clearing and securing everything before moving on.

He heads to the wide wooden stairway, the others following him. Stops at the foot of the stairs. Makes the necessary hand signals, and they go up, sticking to the left side to reduce the sounds of creaking steps.

Halfway up the stairs he pauses, hearing frantic movement overhead.

When they got to the top of the stairs, Gina slammed open the door to the left with her free hand, saying, "Stuart, Stuart, oh, God, Stuart…"

Lillian broke right, going to the other bedroom, sobbing, panting, not wanting to think of what just happened, who that man was, not wanting again to see in her mind the spray of blood from Gordy being shot in the head, and above all, not wanting to think of the man coming up the stairs after them.

She nearly stumbles over the piles of clothing, shoes, and more crumpled boxes and beer cans strewn across the floor. Two beds. One bureau. Trash bags with clothing. Open closet door.

Two windows. One with an air-conditioning unit that's not running.

The other leading out to safety.

Lillian gets to the window, yanks at the bottom.

It won't move.

"Please, please, please," she whispers.

She yanks again.

Nothing.

She senses the man with the gun is nearing the top of the stairs.

Lillian is too scared to turn around, dares not turn around.

Another tug.

A squeak.

It moves, just enough for her to shove her fingers in between the window and the sill.

"Please, please, please," she prays, whispering louder.

She gives the window a good hard shove, leveraging her weight, her shoulders and arms straining from the attempt.

The window grinds open.

Fresh air flows in.

Lillian bends over, ducks her way through, as she hears the other bedroom door slam shut.

He's nearly at the top of the stairs when he hears a window slide open, and then he gets to the landing.

Room to the left, room to the right.

The door is open to the right-side room. The other door is closed.

He looks back at his squad, gestures to the nearest two behind him, points to the left door, and they nod in acknowledgment.

He steps into the room on the right.

Empty.

Trashy, of course, but there's no one he can see.

The window is wide open.

He's focused on clearing this room, but he can't help but hear the door to the other room open, a woman scream, and a man call out, "Hey, hey, hey—" followed by the friendly thump of a pistol firing through a sound suppressor.

Then a sentence is uttered, and two more thumps wrap up the job.

He moves through the room, dodging piles of clothes and trash. An overhead light from the top of the stairs gives him good illumination.

The closet is empty.

Fine.

He goes to the window, leans over, peers out.

Lillian is biting her fist, trying hard not to breathe, not to sneeze, not to do a damn thing to get noticed. She's under one of the two unmade beds in this room, trembling, part of her ashamed that she's wet herself from fear.

There are slow and measured paces of someone walking through the room, and then going over to the open window.

She shuts her eyes, her mother's voice whispering to her from more than twenty-five years ago: There's no such thing as the bogeyman, she would say. Just close your eyes and pray to Jesus, and everything will be all right.

Oh, Mamma, oh, Jesus, please, please, please help me.

He leans out the window, lowering his night-vision goggles to take in the view. More trees, more scrub, and a collapsed small wooden building that looks like it was once an outhouse.

Possible. This place is so old it would fit right in.

He looks closer to the side of the two-story summer house.

He's up about six or so meters. Hell of a drop.

And what's below here? Two rusty fifty-five-gallon oil drums, a roll of chicken-coop wire, and a pile of wooden shingles and scrap lumber.

All resting undisturbed.

He flips up the night-vision goggles, ducks back into the room, sees his squad mates have joined him. He holds a finger to his lips.

Moves across the room.

Lillian is still praying, still trembling, still biting into her fist when a strong hand slides under the bed and grabs her ankle, dragging her out.

She shrieks and rolls over and puts her hands up and says, "Please, please, please, no, no, no!"

Someone grabs her shoulders, holds her down. Another man—the one who just shot Gordy—drops to one knee and looks down at her. Lillian takes a deep breath, hoping it will calm her.

It doesn't.

The man has military-type viewing equipment on his forehead, he's wearing military fatigues with some sort of harness and belts, and over one pocket where there should be a name tag is a strip of Velcro, meaning the name tag has been stripped off so he won't be identified. The ski mask from before is pulled up, revealing a friendly and relaxed face.

"Please," she whispers.

"Shhh," he replies. "Just a few questions. I promise I won't hurt you."

Lillian just nods. Answer him, she thinks. Don't ask questions. Just answer.

He says, "There was a man in the bedroom on the other side, with a woman and a child. Downstairs there was a woman and two other men. Is there anybody else here?"

"No," she says, her whole body shaking, the hands of the man holding her shoulders down firm and strong.

"Are you the owner of the Volvo?"

"Yes."

"Did you come down here alone?"

"Yes."

"Is anyone expecting you to return in the next few minutes?"

She doesn't process the question until it's too late, for she answers truthfully, automatically, and hopefully and says, "No."

The man stays quiet for a few long seconds and then lifts his head to nod to the man behind her. When he removes a hand from her shoulder and she feels the cold metal of a pistol barrel pressing against the side of her head, Lillian knows her mamma has always been wrong, that the bogeyman does exist.

AFTER MY "WORKOUT" for the day, I'm resting on my bed at my condo rental just outside the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, reading Glory Road, the second book in Bruce Catton's trilogy about the Union's Army of the Potomac. I'm enjoying the book and hating Quantico, because it's still not home, and it's definitely not New York City.

My ringing iPhone quickly pulls me away from the year 1862, and my hand knocks the damn thing from the nightstand to the floor. Bending over to pick it up, I gasp as my permanently damaged left leg screams at me to stop moving.

And I quickly think of those poor Civil War soldiers, both blue and gray, how a shot in the leg with a bone-shattering Minié ball meant near-certain amputation. Some days I'm envious of them, suffering short-term grievous hurt and then living on without a damaged leg constantly throbbing with burning-hot pain. I declined a chance to get my left limb amputated, and some days I wonder if I made the right decision.

I grab the phone off the floor, then slide my fingers across the screen to answer.

"Cook," I say, and a very familiar voice replies, "This is Phillips. What are you doing right now?"

"Besides talking to you, sir, I'm staring at my left leg and telling it to behave."

Which is true. My left leg is propped up on a pillow. I'm wearing dark-blue athletic shorts and a blue-and-white NYPD T-shirt. My right leg is slightly tanned, slightly hairy, and highly muscular. My left leg is a shriveled mess of scars, burn tissue, and puckered craters of flesh where metal tore through it last year when I was deployed in Afghanistan.

But my left foot looks okay. Thank goodness for heavy-duty Army boots, which protected my foot during the long minutes when my leg was trapped and burning.

Colonel Ross Phillips, who's probably a mile away from me in his office this bright Saturday afternoon, quickly gets to it. "We got a red ball case—a real screamer—down in Georgia."

"Hold on, sir," I say, and from my cluttered nightstand I pull free a small notepad and a pen from the Marine Federal Credit Union. I snap the pen into place and say, "Go ahead."

He coughs, clears his throat, and says, "Sullivan, Georgia. About fifty miles from Hunter Army Airfield, near Savannah. We have four Army personnel in civilian custody, arrested by the Sullivan County Sheriff's Department. Their duty station is Hunter."

"Four?" I ask.

"Four," he says.

"Names and unit?"

"I've got someone tracking that down."

"What are the charges?"

"Multiple homicides."

My pen stops writing. I scribble and scribble and no ink appears.

"How many?" I ask.

"Another thing we're tracking down," he says. "We should know in a few more minutes. What we do know is that it was a house holding a number of civilians and that they were all shot. Some historical place called The Summer House. How original, eh? Our four guys were arrested by the county sheriff about forty-eight hours later, in a nearby roadhouse."

"Who's CID head at Hunter?"

"Colonel Brenda Tringali, Third MP Group," he says. "But this case is no stolen Humvee from a motor pool. Mass killing of civilians by four Army personnel is one for you and your group. So far it hasn't hit the news media, but it will soon enough."

He coughs again. And again.

"Colonel…are you all right?"

"Shut up," he says. "I expect you and your crew there by tonight. The sheriff for that county is Emma Williams. Get to her, use your folks to find out what happened, where it happened, and why. Do your job. And get it done. This brewing shit storm is going to rile up a lot of people and groups. Lucky for the Army you and your crew are going to be out there, taking the heat and whatever crap gets flung around."

"Yes, sir," I say.

"Good," he says. "I'll contact you once I have more information."

My supervisor hangs up, and I throw the dead pen across the room, open the nightstand drawer—grimace again as my leg shouts at me—and find a new pen to scribble down a few more notes.

Then back to my iPhone. I need to reach out to the four members of my investigative unit, but there's one call I need to make—and now—even though I'm dreading it.

I tap on the contact number—the number that last year was my home number—and wait for the call to be picked up in Staten Island, about 250 miles away.

It's picked up after one ring, and the woman says, "What's wrong?"

I rub the side of my head. "Sorry to do this, but I can't come up tonight."

"What about tomorrow?" she asks. "You know how much Kelli is looking forward to seeing you."

"Tomorrow's not going to work, and Monday won't, either," I say, hating to say these words.

"Jeremiah."

"Yes."

She says, "Work again?"

"Yes."

"Germany?"

"No, that was last month. I'm leaving for Georgia later today. Is Kelli there?"

My ex-wife, Sandy, says, "No. But don't you worry. I'll tell her myself. How Dad is missing another volleyball tournament. And I'll even tell Kevin you're missing his Boy Scouts Court of Honor Monday night. Anything else I can do for you?"

Months ago these words were sharp blades that Sandy used so well, but now, after months of hearing them, the words have dulled some, though they still hurt.

"No, just tell them I'm sorry, that I'll do my best to make it up to them."

Sandy says, "Fine. And you got a call here from Gary O'Toole, wanting to know if you're going to Pete Monahan's retirement next month."

"Pete?" I ask. "Pete's pulling the pin?"

"That's what Gary told me," she says harshly, like I'm questioning her intelligence or her ability to listen carefully. "I guess Midtown South is planning a huge send-off. You should go."

"No," I say.

"You should go," she repeats, "and you should kiss and make up with the chief of d's…You know they were going to give you a nice desk job at One Police Plaza. I hear the offer is still out there, even if you've been a prick ever since you got hurt."

I say, "Sandy, thanks for telling the kids I won't make it. I'll try to talk to them later this week."

With that call out of the way, I send a text message to three members of my crew, giving them the raw basics. Rendezvous point and time to follow.

I pull up the contact of my fourth team member, but before I can call and speak to her directly, my iPhone chimes again. It's Colonel Phillips.

He says, "More information, all bad."

I get my new pen and pad and say, "Go ahead, sir."

"The four Army personnel…they're all Rangers. Assigned to the Fourth Ranger Battalion, stationed at Hunter Army Airfield."

"Shit," I say.