Chapter 18 Chapter Eighteen

The two bodies provided no further clues.The basement of this house is much more interesting. Puller and Cole searched below and came across a locked door.With Cole's acquiescence, Puller took out an iron rod for prying tires from the storage box next to the wall and opened the door.What was displayed in front of them was a small room of about ten square meters. On the rectangular folding table were piled several propane cans, several bottles of paint thinner, a can of picnic stove fuel, some canning bottles, a large roll of rubber tubing, several high-pressure gas cylinders, some medicine bottles, and mineral salt, Funnels, tongs, coffee filters, pillowcases, coolers, and thermoses.

"Do you have a bio-corps on your staff?" Puller asked.He covered his nose and mouth with his hands, trying to avoid the pungent smell of chemicals and solvents. "This is a drug lab," Cole said. "Drug lab," Puller repeated, and then asked. "Do you have a bio-unit? These things are explosive, and they can blow up the crime scene upstairs." "We don't have any biological troops, Puller." "Then I will create such a force." Twenty minutes later, Puller was back in the house.Under the watchful eyes of neighbors, Cole and his men, Puller put on a green biohazard suit with a hood and respirator, red boots and green latex gloves, and returned to the room.He took this outfit out of his backpack.

Puller carefully inspected everything on the scene in an orderly manner, collected various fingerprints after displaying them with dust, isolated items with potential explosion hazards, took pictures from various angles, and affixed labels to all relevant evidence. He stepped out the door two hours later and noticed that the sun had almost completely set.He took off his protective clothing and was found drenched in sweat.It was too hot in the room, and the clothes raised the temperature by at least six or seven degrees. Cole looked at the sweat dripping down his face and his completely soaked hair, and handed him a bottle of iced water.

"How are you? You look exhausted." Puller downed half a bottle of water in one gulp. "I'm fine. I've collected a lot. I've dealt with a lot of cases related to drug laboratories in the army. The equipment in this laboratory is not very good, but it is very practical. We can find some valuable things, but not too much." many." "While you were inside, I fixed the place to store the corpse." "Where?" "The local funeral home, they have refrigeration." "There needs to be security there." "I have arranged two guards here, and the funeral home has arranged one person. They are on duty in rotation, and the guards cannot be empty 24 hours a day."

Puller stretched. "Are you hungry?" she asked. "yes." "There's a nice restaurant in town. Closes late." "Will being late give me enough time to take a shower and change?" "No problem. I'm trying to do the same, to get rid of this smell." "Tell me where it is?" "Where do you live?" "Annie's Motel." "The restaurant is only three minutes away. Go east two blocks and turn right on Cyrus Street, and you won't miss it. Ha, there's nowhere in there that's more than three minutes apart." It’s a driving distance. It’s such a town.”

"Forty minutes to the hotel. Ten minutes to shower and dress. Five minutes to get there. I'll see you in sixty minutes." "All together it's only fifty-five minutes." "I need five minutes to report to my boss. I should have reported to him long ago, but it's kind of busy here." "Just a little busy? Then your standards are high enough. I've got a stopwatch, so don't disappoint me by being late." On his way back to the hotel he passed the restaurant where he was going for dinner.He showered, changed into clean jeans and a T-shirt, pulled out his tiny laptop, plugged in the wireless card, and sent an encrypted email to Quantico's headquarters.Then he spent another two minutes reporting to White over the secure phone what he had discovered and the progress of his work.Don White asked him to email him the details tomorrow, followed by a more formal report by conventional mail.

"A lot of people are watching this, Puller." "Yes, sir, you have made that very clear." "Any tentative conclusions?" White asked. "I'll report to you as soon as I form a preliminary opinion. The Colonel's laptop and briefcase are sealed. I'm trying to get them out of the police and into that DHS safehouse." "Isn't there anything going to the Army Criminal Investigative Laboratory right now?" "In progress, sir. It should be out tomorrow, at least the first evidence. There's still a lot to do here. It's two crime scenes, not one." Puller paused to let the White proposed sending additional manpower to help him.There was no such proposal at all.

"You can report to me anytime, Puller," said White. "Yes, sir." Puller turned off the phone and put the microcomputer in the inside pocket of his jacket.He didn't want to leave that sort of thing in a motel room where anyone could break open the door with a pocketknife or a credit card.Then he took the guns, one on the chest and one on the back. As he passed his car, he reconfirmed that the doors were locked.He thought it would be quicker to walk to the restaurant than to drive. So Puller started walking.This will make him more familiar with the terrain in this area.Maybe he'll also meet the guys who brutally wiped out two families.Intuition told him that the murder was done by the locals.But no matter how you look at it, this is not an easy thing to determine.