“So, the Jackie Puller case,” began Knox.
DiRenzo finished loosening one bolt and dropped it into a bucket on the boat’s deck. He asked Puller for another size socket. Puller handed it to him and DiRenzo took a moment to pop it on before glancing at Puller.
“Notice you had the same last name.”
“She was my mother.”
“I actually remember you and your brother, although I’m sure you don’t remember me. And everybody knew about your dad.” He started loosening another bolt. “After you phoned, I made some calls to old buddies still in harness. You’ve got one helluva rep at CID, Chief Puller.”
“I try to do my job like the Army taught me to do it.”
“No argument there.” DiRenzo wiped some grease off his hands and sat on the boat’s gunwale. “Over the years I’ve thought about your mother’s case from time to time. Damnedest thing I’d ever seen. It was like she vanished into thin air. No one saw, heard anything. I worked my ass off trying to get traction. A one-star’s wife goes missing? You better cover all your bases. And it wasn’t just any one-star. Hell, it was Fighting John Puller. You didn’t want to face that man with no answers. Intimidating doesn’t come close to describing your father.”
“But you never reached any sort of resolution?”
DiRenzo shook his head. “We never even had one solid lead.”
“I’ve looked at the case notes. You were thorough. Followed all the right procedures.”
“But as you well know, some of it, maybe the most important parts of it, are what you feel in the gut. Probably eighty percent of the cases I solved were like that. You get a feel for the situation and then your instincts tell you when something doesn’t smell right. But with that case I never got a feel for anything. I hit a total wall at the end. It was the most frustrating point of my career. I almost quit CID because of it. I felt like a failure. And it wasn’t just me. They had other agents on the case. Again, it was Fighting John Puller. They were going scorched earth.”
“Did you personally speak to General Puller?” asked Knox.
“Several times. As you know, he was out of the country when his wife disappeared.”
Puller and Knox exchanged a subtle look that DiRenzo failed to notice.
“There was never any motive,” continued DiRenzo. “That’s what always bugged the hell out of me. There usually is. Random crimes, particularly on a military installation, aren’t all that common. The people usually know each other.”
“At the time my mother disappeared there was a series of murders in Williamsburg?” He paused and studied DiRenzo for his reaction to this.
The older man finished wiping off his hands and took up his socket wrench once more. But he didn’t start loosening bolts. He just held it in his hand, tapping it against his other palm.
“We knew about that, of course. But your mother didn’t fit that pattern, as I recall.”
“She wasn’t exactly the right age, but she could have passed for at least five years younger,” pointed out Knox. “And she was well dressed that night. That’s not so far off from the victims in Williamsburg. They were young professional women.”
“But all those other killings took place in the Williamsburg area. The bodies were all found within five miles of the place.”
“But Hampton is not that far away. And serial killers have been known to have one-offs. Seize an opportunity.”
“Well, what you say is true,” conceded DiRenzo. “But I remember back then that it was not deemed to be connected.”
“Do you know who made that determination?” asked Puller.
“Well, it wasn’t me. It came from higher up.”
“In CID or somewhere else?”
“Just higher up. It filtered down to us grunts. Not sure of the origin. You know the Army. You follow orders.”
Puller drew closer to the man. “Let me get this perfectly straight. Are you saying that you were told not to look into the Williamsburg cases as being possibly connected?”
“I never really looked into them, if that’s an answer,” said DiRenzo, avoiding Puller’s gaze.
“And you never questioned that?” said Knox.
DiRenzo looked at her. “I did what I was told. I was an investigator, but I was also in the Army. And like I just told you, I followed orders. Because if the Army teaches you nothing else, it beats that into you.”
Puller said, “And did you ever think of a reason why the higher-ups didn’t want you to check into the serial murders to see if they were possibly connected to my mother’s disappearance?”
“I thought about it. I thought about it a lot, actually.”
“And?” said Knox.
“And any answer I came away with scared the shit out of me. So I finally stopped thinking about it.”
26
SO THIS WAS how the other half lived. Well, the one-tenth of the one percent, anyway.
Rogers was leaning next to a tree off a road paralleling the beach.
The drive here had taken less than two hours. It was not even noon. He would have to get back in time for work. But he still had several hours to accomplish some things.
He was staring up at a home behind a high wall and steel gates that would have stopped a runaway Abrams tank. This was the palatial retirement home of Chris Ballard, the founder of what was now CB Excelon Corp.
Rogers had left his van back at a public parking lot just in case there were surveillance cameras posted by the front gate. He imagined they might film every car that went by the mansion. He did not want to be on that tape.
His eyes took in all points of the compound, for that’s what it was behind the high walls. Multiple buildings, an internal road system, cars, people. He had found an aerial view of the place on the Internet.
Ballard had clearly struck gold sucking at the teat of the federal government.
There wasn’t a whole lot of high ground here, but Rogers managed to find what there was. He worked through several spots before he found a place that allowed him to see into the compound but provided him cover while doing so. He automatically took in all points of entry and exit, strengths, weaknesses, potential hiding places, and security configurations. He waited patiently as he watched fit men in khakis, polo shirts, and ball caps with holstered handguns and headsets making their rounds.
Four buildings, including the main mansion, which looked to run to over twenty thousand square feet, were set around an enormous infinity pool.
One of the buildings looked to be a pool house that was three times the size of a normal house that folks actually lived in. Sleek chaise lounges lined the pool, all positioned perfectly parallel to their neighbors. There was an outdoor bar, an elaborate fire pit, patios, flagstone walkways, and sumptuous landscaping.
Cars, mostly Mercedes and Bentleys, were parked in the bays of the eight-car garage. Rogers could see this because all the overhead doors were open and a couple of men were working on one of the cars.
Outside the stone walls and set up on the east side of the mansion was a helipad with a large “B” painted in the center. And behind that and running parallel to the beach was a three-thousand-foot paved runway. Parked at one end of the tarmac was a trim Falcon 2000 jet. As Rogers watched, a man in a pilot’s uniform was doing a visual inspection of the aircraft.
All the accouterments of the super-rich down to the very last detail, thought Rogers. So many toys, so little time.
He made his way through a public access far down from the Ballard mansion to the beach. The Atlantic swelled and plunged in front of him as a strong wind pummeled the water. Salt air slammed into his lungs. Seagulls dipped and soared looking for meals. But none of that held Rogers’s interest. He kept walking toward the mansion. The sand belonged to everyone and he wanted to see what the defenses of the estate looked like from the beach side.
He reached a spot directly in front of the Ballard property and saw that a high stone wall ran the entire length of the property. It was so high in fact that he could only see the upper floors of the main house.