by Lee Child
“She was underneath him when it happened,” I said. “That’s for sure. She had to wrestle her way out.”
“Hell of a way for a man to go.”
“I can think of worse ways.”
Stockton just smiled at me.
“What?” I said.
He didn’t answer.
“No sign of the woman?” I said.
“Hide nor hair,” he said. “She ran for it.”
“The desk guy see her?”
Stockton just smiled again.
I looked at him. Then I understood. A low-rent dive near a highway interchange with a truck stop and a strip bar, thirty miles north of a military base.
“She was a hooker,” I said. “That’s how he was found. The desk guy knew her. Saw her running out way too soon. Got curious as to why and came in here to check.”
Stockton nodded. “He called us right away. The lady in question was long gone by then, of course. And he’s denying she was ever here in the first place. He’s pretending this isn’t that kind of an establishment.”
“Your department had business here before?”
“Time to time,” he said. “It is that kind of an establishment, believe me.”
Control the situation, Garber had said.
“Heart attack, right?” I said. “Nothing more.”
“Probably,” Stockton said. “But we’ll need an autopsy to know for sure.”
The room was quiet. I could hear nothing except radio traffic from the cop cars outside, and music from the bar across the street. I turned back to the bed. Looked at the dead guy’s face. I didn’t know him. I looked at his hands. He had a West Point ring on his right and a wedding band on his left, wide, old, probably nine carat. His dog tags were hidden under his right arm, where he had reached across to grab his left bicep. I lifted the arm with difficulty and pulled the tags out. He had rubber silencers on them. I raised them until the chain went tight against his neck. His name was Kramer and he was a Catholic and his blood group was O.
“We could do the autopsy for you,” I said. “Up at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.”
“Out of state?”
“He’s a general.”
“You want to hush it up.”
I nodded. “Sure I do. Wouldn’t you?”
“Probably,” he said.
I let go of the dog tags and moved away from the bed and checked the nightstands and the built-in counter. Nothing there. There was no phone in the room. A place like this, I figured there would be a pay phone in the office. I moved past Stockton and checked the bathroom. There was a privately purchased black leather Dopp kit next to the sink, zipped closed. It had the initials KRK embossed on it. I opened it up and found a toothbrush and a razor and travel-sized tubes of toothpaste and shaving soap. Nothing else. No medications. No heart prescription. No pack of condoms.
I checked the closet. There was a Class A uniform in there, neatly squared away on three separate hangers, with the pants folded on the bar of the first and the coat next to it on the second and the shirt on a third. The tie was still inside the shirt collar. Centered above the hangers on the shelf was a field grade officer’s service cap. Gold braid all over it. On one side of the cap was a folded white undershirt and on the other side was a pair of folded white boxers.
There were two shoes side by side on the closet floor next to a faded green canvas suit carrier which was propped neatly against the back wall. The shoes were gleaming black and had socks rolled tight inside them. The suit carrier was a privately purchased item and had battered leather reinforcements at the stress points. It wasn’t very full.
“You’d get the results,” I said. “Our pathologist would give you a copy of the report with nothing added and nothing deleted. You see anything you’re not happy about, we could put the ball right back in your court, no questions asked.”
Stockton said nothing, but I wasn’t feeling any hostility coming off him. Some town cops are OK. A big base like Bird puts a lot of ripples into the surrounding civilian world. Therefore MPs spend a lot of time with their civilian counterparts, and sometimes it’s a pain in the ass, and sometimes it isn’t. I had a feeling Stockton wasn’t going to be a huge problem. He was relaxed. Bottom line, he seemed a little lazy to me, and lazy people are always happy to pass their burdens on to someone else.
“How much?” I said.
“How much what?”
“How much would a whore cost here?”
“Twenty bucks would do it,” he said. “There’s nothing very exotic available in this neck of the woods.”
“And the room?”
“Fifteen, probably.”
I rolled the corpse back onto its front. Wasn’t easy. It weighed two hundred pounds, at least.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“About what?”
“About Walter Reed doing the autopsy.”
There was silence for a moment. Stockton looked at the wall.
“That might be acceptable,” he said.
There was a knock at the open door. One of the cops from the cars.
“Medical examiner just called in,” he said. “He can’t get here for another two hours at least. It’s New Year’s Eve.”
I smiled. Acceptable was about to change to highly desirable. Two hours from now Stockton would need to be somewhere else. A whole bunch of parties would be breaking up and the roads would be mayhem. Two hours from now he would be begging me to haul the old guy away. I said nothing and the cop went back to wait in his car and Stockton moved all the way into the room and stood facing the draped window with his back to the corpse. I took the hanger with the uniform coat on it and lifted it out of the closet and hung it on the bathroom door frame where the hallway light fell on it.
Looking at a Class A coat is like reading a book or sitting next to a guy in a bar and hearing his whole life story. This one was the right size for the body on the bed and it had Kramer on the nameplate, which matched the dog tags. It had a Purple Heart ribbon with two bronze oak leaf clusters to denote a second and third award of the medal, which matched the scars. It had two silver stars on the epaulettes, which confirmed he was a major general. The branch insignia on the lapels denoted Armor and the shoulder patch was from XII Corps. Apart from that there were a bunch of unit awards and a whole salad bowl of medal ribbons dating way back through Vietnam and Korea, some of which he had probably earned the hard way, and some of which he probably hadn’t. Some of them were foreign awards, whose display was authorized but not compulsory. It was a very full coat, relatively old, well cared for, standard-issue, not privately tailored. Taken as a whole it told me he was professionally vain, but not personally vain.
I went through the pockets. They were all empty, except for a key to the rental car. It was attached to a keyring in the shape of a figure 1, which was made out of clear plastic and contained a slip of paper with Hertz printed in yellow at the top and a license-plate number written by hand in black ballpoint underneath.
There was no wallet. No loose change.
I put the coat back in the closet and checked the pants. Nothing in the pockets. I checked the shoes. Nothing in them except the socks. I checked the hat. Nothing hidden underneath it. I lifted the suit carrier out and opened it on the floor. It contained a battledress uniform and an M43 field cap. A change of socks and underwear and a pair of shined combat boots, plain black leather. There was an empty compartment that I figured was for the Dopp kit. Nothing else. Nothing at all. I closed it up and put it back. Squatted down and looked under the bed. Saw nothing.
“Anything we should worry about?” Stockton asked.
I stood up. Shook my head.
“No,” I lied.
“Then you can have him,” he said. “But I get a copy of the report.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“Happy New Year,” he said.
He walked out to his car and I headed for my Humvee. I called in a 10-5 ambulance requested and told my sergeant to have it
accompanied by a squad of two who could list and pack all Kramer’s personal property and bring it back to my office. Then I sat there in the driver’s seat and waited until Stockton’s guys were all gone. I watched them accelerate away into the fog and then I went back inside the room and took the rental key from Kramer’s jacket. Came back out and used it to unlock the Ford.
There was nothing in it except the stink of upholstery cleaner and carbonless copies of the rental agreement. Kramer had picked the car up at one thirty-two that afternoon at Dulles Airport near Washington D.C. He had used a private American Express card and received a discount rate. The start-of-rental mileage was 13,215. Now the odometer was showing 13,513, which according to my arithmetic meant he had driven 298 miles, which was about right for a straight-line trip between there and here.
I put the paper in my pocket and relocked the car. Checked the trunk. It was completely empty.
I put the key in my pocket with the rental paper and headed across the street to the bar. The music got louder with every step I took. Ten yards away I could smell beer fumes and cigarette smoke from the ventilators. I threaded through parked vehicles and found the door. It was a stout wooden item and it was closed against the cold. I pulled it open and was hit in the face by a wall of sound and a blast of hot thick air. The place was heaving. I could see five hundred people and black-painted walls and purple spotlights and mirrorballs. I could see a pole dancer on a stage in back. She was on all fours and naked except for a white cowboy hat. She was crawling around, picking up dollar bills.
There was a big guy in a black T-shirt behind a register inside the door. His face was in deep shadow. The edge of a dim spotlight beam showed me he had a chest the size of an oil drum. The music was deafening and the crowd was packed shoulder to shoulder and wall to wall. I backed out and let the door swing shut. Stood still for a moment in the cold air and then walked away and crossed the street and headed for the motel office.
It was a dismal place. It was lit with fluorescent tubes that gave the air a greenish cast and it was noisy from the Coke machine parked at its door. It had a pay phone on the wall and worn linoleum on the floor and a waist-high counter boxed in with the sort of fake wood paneling people use in their basements. The clerk sat on a high stool behind it. He was a white guy of about twenty with long unwashed hair and a weak chin.
“Happy New Year,” I said.
He didn’t reply.
“You take anything out of the dead guy’s room?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No.”
“Tell me again.”
“I didn’t take anything.”
I nodded. I believed him.
“OK,” I said. “When did he check in?”
“I don’t know. I came on at ten. He was already here.”
I nodded again. Kramer was in the rental lot at Dulles at one thirty-two and he hadn’t driven enough miles to do much of anything except come straight here, in which case he was checking in around seven-thirty. Maybe eight-thirty, if he stopped for dinner somewhere. Maybe nine, if he was an exceptionally cautious driver.
“Did he use the pay phone at all?”
“It’s busted.”
“So how did he get hold of the hooker?”
“What hooker?”
“The hooker he was poking when he died.”
“No hookers here.”
“Did he go over and get her from the lounge bar?”
“He was way the hell down the row. I didn’t see what he did.”
“You got a driver’s license?”
The guy paused. “Why?”
“Simple question,” I said. “Either you do or you don’t.”
“I got a license,” he said.
“Show me,” I said.
I was bigger than his Coke machine and all covered in badges and ribbons and he did what he was told, like most skinny twenty-year-olds do when I use that tone. He eased his butt up off the stool and reached back and came out with a wallet from his hip pocket. Flipped it open. His DL was behind a milky plastic window. It had his photograph on it, and his name, and his address.
“OK,” I said. “Now I know where you live. I’ll be back later with some questions. If I don’t find you here I’ll come and find you at home.”
He said nothing to me. I turned away and pushed out through the door and went back to my Humvee to wait.
Forty minutes later a military meat wagon and another Humvee showed up. I told my guys to grab everything including the rental car but didn’t wait around to watch them do it. I headed back to base instead. I logged in and got back to my borrowed office and told my sergeant to get me Garber on the phone. I waited at my desk for the call to come through. It took less than two minutes.
“What’s the story?” he asked.
“His name was Kramer,” I said.
“I know that,” Garber said. “I spoke to the police dispatcher after I spoke to you. What happened to him?”
“Heart attack,” I said. “During consensual sex with a prostitute. In the kind of motel a fastidious cockroach would take pains to avoid.”
There was a long silence.
“Shit,” Garber said. “He was married.”
“Yes, I saw his wedding band. And his West Point ring.”
“Class of Fifty-two,” Garber said. “I checked.”
The phone went quiet.
“Shit,” he said again. “Why do smart people pull stupid stunts like this?”
I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know.
“We’ll need to be discreet,” Garber said.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “The cover-up is already started. The locals let me send him to Walter Reed.”
“Good,” he said. “That’s good.” Then he paused. “From the beginning, OK?”
“He was wearing XII Corps patches,” I said. “Means he was based in Germany. He flew into Dulles yesterday. From Frankfurt, probably. Civilian flight, for sure, because he was wearing Class As, hoping for an upgrade. He would have worn BDUs on a military flight. He rented a cheap car and drove two hundred ninety-eight miles and checked into a fifteen-dollar motel room and picked up a twenty-dollar hooker.”
“I know about the flight,” Garber said. “I called XII Corps and spoke with his staff. I told them he was dead.”
“When?”
“After I got off the phone with the dispatcher.”
“You tell them how or where he was dead?”
“I said a probable heart attack, nothing more, no details, no location, which is starting to look like a very good decision now.”
“What about the flight?” I said.
“American Airlines, yesterday, Frankfurt to Dulles, arrived thirteen hundred hours, with an onward connection nine hundred hours today, Washington National to LAX. He was going to an Armored Branch conference at Fort Irwin. He was an Armored commander in Europe. An important one. Outside chance of making Vice-Chief of Staff in a couple of years. It’s Armored’s turn next, for Vice-Chief. Current guy is infantry, and they like to rotate. So he stood a chance. But it ain’t going to happen for him now, is it?”
“Probably not,” I said. “Being dead and all.”
Garber didn’t answer that.
“How long was he over here for?” I said.
“He was due back in Germany inside a week.”
“What’s his full name?”
“Kenneth Robert Kramer.”
“I bet you know his date of birth,” I said. “And where he was born.”
“So?”
“And his flight numbers and his seat assignments. And what the government paid for the tickets. And whether or not he requested a vegetarian meal. And what exact room Irwin VOQ was planning on putting him in.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is, why don’t I know all that stuff too?”
“Why would you?” Garber said. “I’ve been working the phones and you’ve been poking around in a motel.”
“You know wh
at?” I said. “Every time I go anywhere I’ve got a wad of airplane tickets and travel warrants and reservations and if I’m flying in from overseas I’ve got a passport. And if I’m going to a conference I’ve got a briefcase full of all kinds of other crap to carry them in.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying there were things missing from the motel room. Tickets, reservations, passport, itinerary. Collectively, the kind of things a person would carry in a briefcase.”
Garber didn’t respond.
“He had a suit carrier,” I said. “Green canvas, brown leather bindings. A buck gets ten he had a briefcase to match. His wife probably chose them both. Probably got them mail-order from L.L.Bean. Maybe for Christmas, ten years ago.”
“And the briefcase wasn’t there?”
“He probably kept his wallet in it too, when he was wearing Class As. As many medal ribbons as this guy had, it makes the inside pocket tight.”
“So?”
“I think the hooker saw where he put his wallet after he paid her. Then they got down to business, and he croaked, and she saw a little extra profit for herself. I think she stole his briefcase.”
Garber was quiet for a moment.
“Is this going to be a problem?” he asked.
“Depends what else was in the briefcase,” I said.
two
I put the phone down and saw a note my sergeant had left me: Your brother called. No message. I folded the note once and dropped it in the trash. Then I headed back to my quarters and got three hours’ sleep. Got up again fifty minutes before first light. I was back at the motel just as dawn was breaking. Morning didn’t make the neighborhood look any better. It was depressed and abandoned for miles around. And quiet. Nothing was stirring. Dawn on New Year’s Day is as close as any inhabited place gets to absolute stillness. The highway was deserted. There was no traffic. None at all.
The diner at the truck stop was open but empty. The motel office was empty. I walked down the row to the last-but-one room. Kramer’s room. The door was locked. I stood with my back to it and pretended I was a hooker whose client had just died. I had pushed his weight off me and dressed fast and grabbed his briefcase and I was running away with it. What would I do? I wasn’t interested in the briefcase itself. I wanted the cash in the wallet, and maybe the American Express card. So I would rifle through and grab the cash and the card and ditch the bag itself. But where would I do that?
