62 pages • 2 hours read
David BaldacciZero Day
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 40-47Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 40-42 Summary
Cole shows Puller a valley fill where Trent’s company tears everything off the surface of the mountain to get to the coal. The result, she explains, is rivers redirected, flash floods, rock falls, and earth slides that crush houses. Compromised water and air quality make people sick. She guesses that when all the coal is gone and West Virginia is a wasteland, no one else will care. Puller asks if Randy was the one who made the earlier threats on Trent. Cole doesn’t answer.
Cole takes Puller to the cemetery where her parents are buried. Roger Trent owns the community around the mine, including the cemetery. Reaching the grave, they see someone fleeing the cemetery, and Cole recognizes Randy.
They return to Cole’s cottage. She offers him coffee. They sit outside drinking it. Puller mentions that he has to go to DC the next day. Cole seems disappointed. She offers to let him stay the night, but he declines. She kisses him on the cheek, and he leaves.
Returning to the motel, Puller learns that Louisa, the old lady whose life he saved, has died. He feels he has failed her just as he failed the men in his squad back in Afghanistan. He realizes the most important things in life are outside his control. In his own room, he receives a call from his father. Tonight, the old man thinks Puller is his gunnery sergeant and wants Puller to join him for a night out in Hong Kong. Puller reflects that every one of these conversations tears away a little piece of his reality. Something about the situation makes him feel as if he never left Afghanistan.
Chapters 43-44 Summary
The next morning Puller meets Cole at the diner and tells her he has guessed that Randy sent Trent the earlier death threats. He asks if Randy might be responsible for the new ones as well. She says she doesn’t think so and reminds him that the death threats aren’t part of his investigation. He tells her they have no way of knowing yet whether they are connected or not.
At that moment, Jean and Randy pull up in front of the diner in Jean’s car. Randy and Jean join Puller and Cole at their table. Randy and Jean have an ugly, sniping quarrel. Puller sees Bill Strauss—Roger Trent’s COO—at another table. Puller asks Strauss when Trent will be back in town, but Strauss isn’t sure.
Chapters 45-47 Summary
Leaving the diner, Cole and Puller head for the Trent Exploration office, where Molly Bitner, the female victim from the meth house, worked. On the way, Puller phones the soil analysis company and learns that Colonel Reynolds asked for an analysis of some organic matter. Cole and Puller hypothesize that Reynolds was looking for contaminants from the mine. It would make sense for Molly Bitner to see something suspicious at her job; maybe she saw Reynolds in uniform and turned to him for help.
Cole points out that the problem with the theory is that all the soil and water in the area are contaminated by the mine; even if Trent exceeded legal limits for pollution, it wouldn’t be worth committing seven murders. At most, he would have to pay a fine.
At the Trent office where Molly worked, Cole asks what Molly did for the company. According to Strauss, Molly was a secretary, and he hadn’t noticed anything unusual about her behavior recently. The office manager, Judy Johnson, tells Puller and Cole that Molly had access to all the files at the office except the ones in the safe in Strauss’s office—the ones having to do with geological reports. She says that Molly had nothing to do with soil testing. Johnson remembers an unusual incident when Treadwell came to the office drunk while Strauss was out and Molly let him sleep it off in Strauss’s office.
Chapters 40-47 Analysis
Cole’s remark that no one thought Roger Trent would ever amount to anything doesn’t fit with his current success. It foreshadows the discovery that Trent was never more than a blustering figurehead with Bill Strauss as the mastermind behind the business.
The visit to the cemetery represents Cole’s roots in Drake. Everything she cares about most deeply is there, and even that is owned by Roger Trent. Spotting Randy there implies that the ties between the siblings are deeper than they appear. Cole and Randy both come here, and although he flees at the sight of her, it is still a tie between them. Randy’s flight symbolizes that he is deliberately putting distance between himself and his sisters, suggesting the loss of their parents hurt him enough that he is pushing away all family connection. Jean and Randy arriving at the diner together suggests that the family is caught in a push/pull dynamic. Jean and Randy love each other enough to want their connection even while Randy pushes Jean away, punishing her for staying with Roger.
Jean describes Cole, unkindly, as desperate, but Cole is actually lonely. She is set at a distance from her fellow officers by their resentment of her as a superior. Her job doesn’t allow her much time for a personal life, and her surviving family isn’t close; Roger Trent is a constant source of friction between them.
If Puller represents, or demands of himself to be, a Savior, Louisa’s death demands that he accept his own fallibility and acknowledge that he is as much entitled to second chances as anyone else. Louisa and his father are linked in Puller’s mind. If he can’t save Louisa, then there’s nothing he can do to help his father. Every reminder that he can’t save his father evokes the firefight in Afghanistan, to the moment in which he has already lost four men and is fighting alone against a horde of enemies to save the rest.
Puller is right to point out to Cole that they can’t be sure the death threats against Trent aren’t related to the Reynolds murders. Cole wants to keep Puller out of her family business. Randy is a sore point for her. She loves him, but he is also a source of embarrassment and professional conflict, and his headaches make her fear for his health. He won’t let her get close to him, as shown by his flight when Cole and Puller see him at the cemetery.
The soil sample is the first real indication of a possible motive, and it suggests a link between Bitner/Treadwell, Trent Exploration, and Reynolds. Puller and Cole spend valuable time and energy trying to find out what was in the soil sample that might be serious enough to prompt seven murders.
At this point, nearing the midpoint of the mystery, clues proliferate, all seeming to point in different directions. The reader can expect the case to become more complex and confusing until the fourth quarter, when threads typically begin to tie together, possibly leading the investigator to a false conclusion before the red herrings are all eliminated and the antagonist is exposed.
Related Titles
By David Baldacci
