As they walked off, Puller said, “Know the man well?”
“One of Drake’s leading citizens. And one of the wealthiest.”
“Right. Number two guy. So in the same league with Trent?”
“The Trents are in a league by themselves. Strauss is just one of his peons. But a very well-compensated peon. His house is smaller than Trent’s but gargantuan by Drake standards.”
“Strauss from Drake?”
“No, he moved here with his family over twenty years ago. He was from the East Coast, at least I think.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but what brought him here?”
“Work. He was a business guy and in the energy field. Drake may not look like much, but we do have energy in the form of coal and gas. He started working for Trent and the business really took off. Now what was that DD stuff you mentioned?”
Puller said, “A BCD means Big Chicken Dinner. That stands for a bad conduct discharge. A DD is worse, a dishonorable discharge. Since Dickie’s still walking around free, I’m guessing it wasn’t a DD. They kicked him out for a reason that didn’t involve a court-martial. That’s what he meant when he said the Army didn’t much like him.”
Cole gazed in the direction of the Strausses. “I never knew that.”
“The only reason it might be relevant is that lots of BCDs are tied to drug use that the Army just doesn’t want to screw around with. So they choose kicking guys out instead of prosecuting them.”
“And maybe that ties to the meth lab we found?”
“You noticed it, right?” asked Puller.
She nodded. “Dickie’s tat sleeve is identical to Eric Treadwell’s.”
CHAPTER
21
PULLER SNAGGED THE LAPTOP and briefcase from the Drake Sheriff’s Office’s evidence room. He had to fill out the necessary paperwork to maintain proper chain of custody.
As they walked out Cole yawned and stretched.
He said, “You should head home and get some sack time. I promise not to call and wake you up.”
She smiled. “I appreciate that.”
“The tat sleeve? Is that a gang deal? Or do people around here just like that particular arm design?”
“I suppose I’ve seen it on Dickie before but never really focused on it. I can ask around.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You really going to be there at 0600?”
“I’ll give you a break, I’ll make it 0630.”
“Oh, I found a doc to do the posts.”
“Who is he?”
“Walter Kellerman. He’s first-rate. Even wrote a textbook on forensic pathology.”
“When is he going to do the posts?”
“Starting tomorrow afternoon. At his office in Drake around two. You want to be there?”
“Yes.” He turned to head back to the motel.
“Hey, Puller, why do I think you’re not really going to bed yet?”
He glanced back. “You need me, you’ve got my number.”
“So I can call and wake you up?”
“Anytime.”
Puller fast-walked back to Annie’s Motel. Cole had been spot-on. He wasn’t going to bed yet. He checked the little traps he always put in his room to make sure no one had been there. Annie’s Motel did not offer maid or room service. One had to police his own space and find his own grub, which suited Puller just fine. He found nothing amiss.
He was on the road within five minutes, his destination the designated DHS drop site. He could kill two birds with one stone with this maneuver. He made a call and arranged for the agent stationed there to meet him. It took fifty minutes on the curvy roads. Normally the drop site was for evidence storage when a CID agent was in the field with no access to secure facilities. It took two agents to log in or log out any evidence, for obvious reasons.
When he got to the site Puller and the agent on duty packaged the laptop and briefcase in special boxes to be sent to the Army’s criminal lab in Atlanta. Puller did not have the technical expertise to break the passcodes and access the laptop. And though he possessed both TS and SCI clearances, he probably didn’t have the specific authorizations to look at what might be on there anyway. Because the laptop and briefcase potentially contained national security information, a commercial shipper could not be used. A special military courier was being summoned to accompany the sealed boxes down on a morning flight out of Charleston, West Virginia. They would be in Atlanta later that day. Puller could have taken the stuff down to Georgia himself, which he’d actually done in the past, but he thought it was more important to remain at the scene.
In the Army you always covered your ass. Thus he’d gotten approval for this plan from his SAC, who had covered his ass by getting necessary approvals all the way up to the one-star level. How the one-star covered her butt Puller didn’t know and didn’t really care.
On his drive back to Drake, Puller phoned USACIL in Atlanta and spoke with a supervisor he knew there who was working late on a rush case. She was a DA civilian named Kristen Craig. They had worked on many cases together, though they’d only met a few times in person. He gave her a thumbnail of what was coming.
“Kristen, I know you guys are cleared for most stuff. But you’ll need to be read into this by DIA. And the stuff has to go in your secret safe. I marked everything appropriately.”
“Got it, Puller. Thanks for the heads-up.”
The CIL had multiple branches depending on what evidence was being processed. Latent prints, firearms and tool marks, drug chemistry, DNA, serology, paint, cars, digital evidence and computers, and the list went on and on.
“And, Kristen, it’s a complicated crime scene. I’ll be sending down a batch of different things across most branches. So be prepared. I’ll try to be as specific as I can on the accompanying docs, but I’ll probably need to clarify things by email or phone. And I think the Army is real anxious on this one.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t call on us for tech support. How many agents you have with you?”
“It’s just me.”
“You’re joking?”
“Just me, Kristen.”
He could hear her take a deep breath. “Hey, Puller?”
“Yeah?”
“What you just told me is starting to make sense based on what happened here today.”
“What happened?”
“We got a call from the Secretary of the Army’s office.”
Puller kept one hand tightly on the wheel while the other pressed the phone to his ear. “SecArm?”
“Yep. That’s not an everyday thing.”
“I know. What did they want?”
“To be kept in the loop on everything. And then we got another call.”
“You’re a popular place. Who from?”
“FBI. The Director’s office. Same thing. Be kept in the loop. Just thought you should know.”
Puller mulled this. His SAC had said there were many eyes on this, and he hadn’t been exaggerating. Maybe the answer did lie with Colonel Reynolds and whatever he was doing at DIA. But then why was the FBI involved?
“Thanks, Kristen.”
“Hey, how’s your father?”