Puller got back into his car and was about to start it up when he noted a white van passing by. It seemed to slow as it neared where he was. Then it regained speed and kept going.
It looked like a van that a workman would use. The driver was probably heading out to an early morning job.
He put the car in gear and drove to the next site. It was two miles away. The streets were deserted, the moon full, the air crisp. He reached the site and once more got out with his camera.
He took a few pictures and walked the area where the second body had been dumped. Gloria Patterson, twenty-four and an engineer. The killer had not even bothered to cover her with leaves.
He eyed the area. It was isolated although the campus of William and Mary was not very far away. Just through some trees, really.
He got back into his car and started it up. When he reached the third site, he saw it heading down the road away from him.
A white van.
But was it the same white van?
He couldn’t be sure. It looked the same.
He snapped a few pictures of the area and then jumped back into his car.
The van was out of sight, but that didn’t matter. Puller knew where he was going, and if this turned out to be the mother of all breaks, so did the person driving the white van.
He turned down the road leading to the fourth and last site. As he drove up, he saw a glimmer of white as it reached a curve in the road and disappeared.
Puller didn’t even bother to stop. He sped up, but kept back a bit. The last thing he wanted was to spook whoever was up there.
They passed the site where the fourth victim, the computer programmer Julie Watson, had been found, and the van seemed to slow. Puller was praying that it would stop and the driver would get out. Then Puller would do his questioning with an M11 pointed in the person’s face.
But that didn’t happen. The van kept going. And so did Puller.
The two vehicles reached a main road.
Puller snatched his camera and fired a few shots at the rear of the van.
They turned onto another road.
It was nearly five in the morning now and early-rising commuters were out in full force. This was a military community and those folks worked varying shifts, but the one coming up now was one of the biggest.
The van sped up and got on the entry ramp for Interstate 64 heading east.
Puller had to fall back because of the volume of traffic. It was still dark and now all he could see in front of him were winking red brake lights. He counted ahead to where he thought the van was located.
Soon he went through the Hampton Roads tunnel. It was lighted inside and he thought he could see the van far ahead.
By the time he came out of the tunnel and the overhead lights vanished, all he could see were taillights. And there was a white van right in front of him and one next to him. Neither was the van, because they both had stenciling on the sides and rear. One was a plumber, the other an electrician.
Puller looked up ahead. There were exits and the van could take any one of them, or none at all and keep going.
He decided to stay on the road.
He had driven many more miles, and traffic had gotten heavier as more and more cars piled onto the interstate. Finally, he gave it up and exited. He reversed course and headed west. He drove back to the hotel where he had stayed before and got a room.
He got out his camera and checked the pictures. He zoomed in on the shots of the van. He could just make out a license plate.
He wrote it down. It was a West Virginia plate. If he’d still been with CID, running the plate would have been no problem.
Had he just blown an incredible opportunity? Had the guy in the van been the killer thirty years ago, checking out his dumpsites at the very same time Puller had decided to do that too?
He was thinking what to do when his phone buzzed. He checked his watch.
Early call.
Puller didn’t like calls this early. They usually portended bad news, and he’d already had enough of that lately.
“Yes?”
It was his lawyer friend, Shireen Kirk.
“Puller. I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.”
“About what?”
“No, about who.”
“Then who?” he barked, his nerves frayed near their breaking point.
“Your father.”
36
FOR A MOMENT Puller thought that his heart had stopped.
Instantly appearing in his mind’s eye was the image of his father in a coffin dressed in his blues and stars, he and his brother in full dress uniform standing off to the side while folks came to view their dad for the very last time.
“He’s…dead?”
She said quickly, “No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said it that way.”
“What the hell is going on, Shireen?” he shouted into the phone.
“Okay, just calm down. I can tell you’re already having a bad day, though it’s still morning.”
“Is my father okay?” Puller snapped.
“Yes. And no.”
Puller closed his eyes and with a massive effort willed himself to remain calm. “Just tell me.”
“Your father got a phone call. I don’t know how it got to his room or why it wasn’t screened out. I mean, the personnel at the hospital know his condition.”
“Who was the call from?’
“Lynda Demirjian.”
“What!” barked Puller. “Did my dad answer the phone? How could he?”
“No one knows how he could, but apparently he did.”
“What did she say to him?”
“Well, we couldn’t ask your father that, of course. But we talked to Stan Demirjian. He told us. He didn’t know that she was going to do that. But she told him afterwards what she’d done.”
“Wait a minute, why ask Stan? Why not just talk to his wife?”
Puller could hear Shireen let out a long breath. “Because she’s dead. She died right after telling her husband about the call.”
Puller put his head in one hand and rocked back and forth on the bed. “And what did she say was my father’s reaction to what she told him?”
“He started screaming things at her. Unintelligible, or so she said. And then he hung up.”
“Well, that’s great,” said Puller. “How did you find out?”
“I’m your father’s lawyer. I started my work. I called Stan Demirjian to get a statement from him before I talked to his wife. That’s when he told me.”
“And how was Stan taking it?”
“His wife had just died, so there’s that part of it; the man was grieving. Plus he was sort of caught between a rock and a hard place-his wife dead, the man she had accused of this terrible crime a person Stan revered.”
Yeah, I get being caught between a rock and a hard place, Puller thought. “Did you tell my father’s doctors what happened?”
“As soon as I got off the phone with Stan. But they had already given him something to calm him. He was so agitated, they just didn’t know why.”
“Thanks for doing that.”
“There’s something else, Puller.”
“What?” he said wearily.
“CID has dropped their investigation. Ted Hull-”
“Has been reassigned, I know.” Puller paused. “Shireen, I want you to just drop the whole thing.”
“What? Why?”
“The CID’s been called off. So just drop it, Shireen.”
“But I thought you wanted to find the truth?”
“I just…just forget I ever called you.”
“Puller!”
He clicked off and tossed his phone down on the bed. He hoped that Shireen heeded his advice.
His phone rang. It was Shireen. He didn’t answer.
It was then that he noticed the piece of paper on the floor. It was over by the door. He automatically pulled his M11 and skittered across the room, keeping low, halfway expecting the door to be kicked in at any moment. He slowly reached down and picked up the paper.