by Lee Child
“Where would he have met her?”
“Right there.”
“Bird is all infantry. He was Armored Branch.”
“Maybe they had joint exercises. You should check back.”
I said nothing. Armored and the infantry run joint exercises all the time. But they run them where the tanks are, not where the grunts are. Much easier to transport men across a continent than tanks.
“Or maybe he met her at Irwin,” Summer said. “In California. Maybe she worked Irwin, but had to leave California for some reason, but she liked working military bases, so she moved to Bird.”
“What kind of a hooker would like working military bases?”
“The kind that’s interested in money. Which is all of them, presumably. Military bases support their local economies in all kinds of ways.”
I said nothing.
“Or maybe she always worked Bird, but followed the infantry to Irwin when they did a joint exercise out there one time. Those things can last a month or two. No point in hanging around at home with no customers.”
“Best guess?” I said.
“They met in California,” she said. “Kramer will have spent years at Irwin, on and off. Then she moved to North Carolina, but he still liked her enough to make the detour whenever he was in D.C.”
“She doesn’t do anything special, not for twenty bucks.”
“Maybe he didn’t need anything special.”
“We could ask the widow.”
Summer smiled. “Maybe he just liked her. Maybe she made damn sure he did. Hookers are good at that. They like repeat customers best of all. It’s much safer for them if they already know the guy.”
I closed my eyes again.
“So?” Summer said. “Did I come up with something you didn’t think of?”
“No,” I said.
I fell asleep before we were out of the state and woke up again nearly four hours later when Summer took the Green Valley ramp too fast. My head rolled to the right and hit the window.
“Sorry,” she said. “You should check Kramer’s phone records. He must have called ahead, to make sure she was around. He wouldn’t have driven all that way on the off chance.”
“Where would he have called from?”
“Germany,” she said. “Before he left.”
“More likely he used a pay phone at Dulles. But we’ll check.”
“We?”
“You can partner with me.”
She said nothing.
“Like a test,” I said.
“Is this important?”
“Probably not. But it might be. Depends what the conference is about. Depends what paperwork he was taking to it. He might have had the whole ETO order of battle in his case. Or new tactics, assessment of shortcomings, all kinds of classified stuff.”
“The Red Army is going to fold.”
I nodded. “I’m more worried about red faces. Newspapers, or television. Some reporter finds classified stuff on a trash pile near a strip club, there’ll be major embarrassment all around.”
“Maybe the widow will know. He might have discussed it with her.”
“We can’t ask her,” I said. “As far as she’s concerned he died in his sleep with the blanket pulled up to his chin, and everything else was kosher. Any worries we’ve got at this point stay strictly between me, you, and Garber.”
“Garber?” she said.
“Me, you, and him,” I said.
I saw her smile. It was a trivial case, but working it with Garber was a definite stroke of luck, for a person with a 110th Special Unit transfer pending.
Green Valley was a picture-perfect colonial town and the Kramer house was a neat old place in an expensive part of it. It was a Victorian confection with fish-scale tiles on the roof and a bunch of turrets and porches all painted white, sitting on a couple of acres of emerald lawn. There were stately evergreen trees dotted about. They looked like someone had positioned them with care, which they probably had, a hundred years ago. We pulled up at the curb and waited, just looking. I don’t know what Summer was thinking about, but I was scanning the scene and filing it away under A for America. I have a Social Security number and the same blue and silver passport as everyone else but between my old man’s Stateside tours and my own I can only put together about five years’ worth of actual residence in the continental U.S. So I know a bunch of basic elementary-school facts like state capitals and how many grand slams Lou Gehrig hit and some basic high-school stuff like the constitutional amendments and the importance of Antietam, but I don’t know much about the price of milk or how to work a pay phone or how different places look and smell. So I soak it up when I can. And the Kramer house was worth soaking up. That was for sure. A watery sun was shining on it. There was a faint breeze and the smell of woodsmoke in the air and a kind of intense cold-afternoon quiet all around us. It was the kind of place you would have wanted your grandparents to live. You could have visited in the fall and raked leaves and drunk apple cider and then come back in the summer and loaded a ten-year-old station wagon with a canoe and headed for a lake somewhere. It reminded me of the places in the picture books they gave me in Manila and Guam and Seoul.
Until we got inside.
“Ready?” Summer said.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s do it. Let’s do the widow thing.”
She was quiet. I was sure she had done it before. I had too, more than once. It was never fun. She pulled off the curb and headed for the driveway entrance. Drove slowly toward the front door and eased to a stop ten feet from it. We opened our doors together and slid out into the chill and straightened our jackets. We left our hats in the car. That would be Mrs. Kramer’s first clue, if she happened to be watching. A pair of MPs at your door is never good news, and if they’re bareheaded, it’s worse news.
This particular door was painted a dull antique red and it had a glass storm screen in front of it. I rang the bell and we waited. And waited. I started to think nobody was home. I rang the bell again. The breeze was cold. It was stronger than it had looked.
“We should have called ahead,” Summer said.
“Can’t,” I said. “Can’t say, please be there four hours from now so we can deliver some very important news face-to-face. Too much of a preview, wouldn’t you say?”
“I came all this way and I’ve got nobody to hug.”
“Sounds like a country song. Then your truck breaks down and your dog dies.”
I tried the bell again. No response.
“We should look for a vehicle,” Summer said.
We found one in a closed two-car garage standing separate from the house. We could see it through the window. It was a Mercury Grand Marquis, metallic green, as long as an ocean liner. It was the perfect car for a general’s wife. Not new, not old, premium but not overpriced, suitable color, American as hell.
“Think this is hers?” Summer asked.
“Probably,” I said. “Chances are they had a Ford until he made lieutenant colonel. Then they moved up to a Mercury. They were probably waiting for the third star before they thought about a Lincoln.”
“Sad.”
“You think? Don’t forget where he was last night.”
“So where is she? You think she went out walking?”
We turned around and felt the breeze on our backs and heard a door bang at the rear of the house.
“She was out in the yard,” Summer said. “Gardening, maybe.”
“Nobody gardens on New Year’s Day,” I said. “Not in this hemisphere. There’s nothing growing.”
But we walked around to the front anyway and tried the bell again. Better to let her meet us formally, on her own terms. But she didn’t show. Then we heard the door again, at the back, banging aimlessly. Like the breeze had gotten hold of it.
“We should check that out,” Summer said.
I nodded. A banging door has a sound all its own. It suggests all kinds of things.
“Yes,” I said. “We probably shou
ld.”
We walked around to the rear of the house, side by side, into the wind. There was a flagstone path. It led us to a kitchen door. It opened inward, and it must have had a spring on the back to keep it closed. The spring must have been a little weak, because the gusting breeze was overpowering it from time to time and kicking the door open eight or nine inches. Then the gust would die away and the spring would reassert itself and the door would bang back into the frame. It did it three times as we watched. It was able to do it because the lock was smashed.
It had been a good lock, made of steel. But the steel had been stronger than the surrounding wood. Someone had used a wrecking bar. It had been jerked hard, maybe twice, and the lock had held but the wood had splintered. The door had opened up and the lock had just fallen out of the wreckage. It was right there on the flagstone path. The door had a crescent-shaped bite out of it. Splinters of wood had been blown here and there and piled by the wind.
“What now?” Summer said.
There was no security system. No intruder alarm. No pads, no wires. No automatic call to the nearest police precinct. No way of telling if the bad guys were long gone, or if they were still inside.
“What now?” Summer said again.
We were unarmed. No weapons, on a formal visit in Class A uniform.
“Go cover the front,” I said. “In case anyone comes out.”
She moved away without a word and I gave her a minute to get in position. Then I pushed the door with my elbow and stepped inside the kitchen. Closed the door behind me and leaned on it to keep it shut. Then I stood still and listened.
There was no sound. No sound at all.
The kitchen smelled faintly of cooked vegetables and stewed coffee. It was big. It was halfway between tidy and untidy. A well-used space. There was a door on the other side of the room. On my right. It was open. I could see a small triangle of polished oak floor. A hallway. I moved very slowly. Crept forward and to the right to line up my view. The door banged again behind me. I saw more of the hallway. I figured it ran straight to the front entrance. Off of it to the left was a closed door. Probably a dining room. Off of it to the right was a den or a study. Its door was open. I could see a desk and a chair and dark wood bookcases. I took a cautious step. Moved a little more.
I saw a dead woman on the hallway floor.
three
The dead woman had long gray hair. She was wearing an elaborate white flannel nightgown. She was on her side. Her feet were near the study door. Her arms and legs had sprawled in a way that made it look like she was running. There was a shotgun half underneath her. One side of her head was caved in. I could see blood and brains matted in her hair. More blood had pooled on the oak. It looked dark and sticky.
I stepped into the hallway and stopped an arm’s length from her. I squatted down and reached for her wrist. Her skin was very cold. There was no pulse.
I stayed down. Listened. Heard nothing. I leaned over and looked at her head. She had been hit with something hard and heavy. Just a single blow, but a serious one. The wound was in the shape of a trench. Nearly an inch wide, maybe four inches long. It had come from the left side, and above. She had been facing the back of the house. Facing the kitchen. I glanced around and dropped her wrist and stood up and stepped into the den. A Persian carpet covered most of the floor. I stood on it and imagined I was hearing quiet tense footsteps coming down the hallway, toward me. Imagined I was still holding the wrecking bar I had used to force the lock. Imagined swinging it when my target stepped into view, on her way past the open doorway.
I looked down. There was a stripe of blood and hair on the carpet. The wrecking bar had been wiped on it.
Nothing else in the room was disturbed. It was an impersonal space. It looked like it was there because they had heard a family house should have a study. Not because they actually needed one. The desk was not set up for working. There were photographs in silver frames all over it. But fewer than I would have expected, from a long marriage. There was one that showed the dead man from the motel and the dead woman from the hallway standing together with the Mount Rushmore faces blurry in the background. General and Mrs. Kramer, on vacation. He was much taller than she was. He looked strong and vigorous. She looked petite in comparison.
There was another framed photograph showing Kramer himself in uniform. The picture was a few years old. He was standing at the top of the steps, about to climb into a C-130 transport plane. It was a color photograph. His uniform was green, the airplane was brown. He was smiling and waving. Off to assume his one-star command, I guessed. There was a second picture, almost identical, a little newer. Kramer, at the top of a set of airplane steps, turning back, smiling and waving. Off to assume his two-star command, probably. In both pictures he was waving with his right hand. In both pictures his left held the same canvas suit carrier I had seen in the motel room closet. And above it, in both pictures, tucked up under his arm, was a matching canvas briefcase.
I stepped out to the hallway again. Listened hard. Heard nothing. I could have searched the house, but I didn’t need to. I was pretty sure there was nobody in it and I knew there was nothing I needed to find. So I took a last look at the Kramer widow. I could see the soles of her feet. She hadn’t been a widow for long. Maybe an hour, maybe three. I figured the blood on the floor was about twelve hours old. But it was impossible to be precise. That would have to wait until the doctors arrived.
I retreated through the kitchen and went back outside and walked around to find Summer. Sent her inside to take a look. It was quicker than a verbal explanation. She came out again four minutes later, looking calm and composed. Score one for Summer, I thought.
“You like coincidences?” she said.
I said nothing.
“We have to go to D.C.,” she said. “To Walter Reed. We have to make them double-check Kramer’s autopsy.”
I said nothing.
“This makes his death automatically suspicious. I mean, what are the chances? It’s one in forty or fifty thousand that an individual soldier will die on any given day, but to have his wife die on the same day? For her to be a homicide victim on the same day?”
“Wasn’t the same day,” I said. “Wasn’t even the same year.”
She nodded. “OK, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day. But that just makes my point. It’s inconceivable that Walter Reed had a pathologist scheduled to work last night. So they had to drag one in, specially. And from where? From a party, probably.”
I smiled, briefly. “So you want us to go up there and say, hey, are you sure your doc could see straight last night? Sure he wasn’t too juiced up to spot the difference between a heart attack and a homicide?”
“We have to check,” she said. “I don’t like coincidences.”
“What do you think happened in there?”
“Intruder,” she said. “Mrs. Kramer was woken up by the noise at the door, got out of bed, grabbed a shotgun she kept near at hand, came downstairs, headed for the kitchen. She was a brave lady.”
I nodded. Generals’ wives, tough as they come.
“But she was slow,” Summer said. “The intruder was already all the way into the study and was able to get her from the side. With the crowbar he had used on the door. As she walked past. He was taller than she was, maybe by a foot, probably right-handed.”
I said nothing.
“So are we going to Walter Reed?”
“I think we have to,” I said. “We’ll go as soon as we’ve finished here.”
We called the Green Valley cops from a wall phone we found in the kitchen. Then we called Garber and gave him the news. He said he would meet us at the hospital. Then we waited. Summer watched the front of the house, and I watched the back. Nothing happened. The cops came within seven minutes. They made a tight little convoy, two marked cruisers, a detective’s car, an ambulance. They had lights and sirens going. We heard them a mile away. They howled into the driveway and then shut down. Summer and I stepped back in the su
dden silence and they all swarmed past us. We had no role. A general’s wife is a civilian, and the house was inside a civilian jurisdiction. Normally I wouldn’t let such fine distinctions get in my way, but the place had already told me what I needed to know. So I was prepared to stand back and earn some Brownie points by doing it by the book. Brownie points might come in useful later.
A patrolman watched us for twenty long minutes while the other cops poked around inside. Then a detective in a suit came out to take our statements. We told him about Kramer’s heart attack, the widow trip, the banging door. His name was Clark and he had no problem with anything we had to say. His problem was the same as Summer’s. Both Kramers had died miles apart on the same night, which was a coincidence, and he didn’t like coincidences any better than Summer did. I started to feel sorry for Rick Stockton, the deputy chief down in North Carolina. His decision to let me haul Kramer’s body away was going to look bad, in this new light. It put half the puzzle in the military’s hands. It was going to set up a conflict.
We gave Clark a phone number where he could reach us at Bird, and then we got back in the car. I figured D.C. was another seventy miles. Another hour and ten. Maybe less, the way Summer drove. She took off and found the highway again and put her foot down until the Chevy was vibrating fit to bust.
“I saw the briefcase in the photographs,” she said. “Did you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Does it upset you to see dead people?”
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. You?”
“It upsets me a little.”
I said nothing.
“You think it was a coincidence?” she said.
“No,” I said. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“So you think the postmortem missed something?”
“No,” I said again. “I think the postmortem was probably accurate.”
“So why are we driving all the way to D.C.?”
“Because I need to apologize to the pathologist. I dropped him in it by sending him Kramer’s body. Now he’s going to have wall-to-wall civilians bugging him for a month. That will piss him off big time.”
