by Lee Child
But the pathologist was a her, not a him, and she had such a sunny disposition that I doubted anything could piss her off for long. We met with her in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s reception area, four o’clock in the afternoon, New Year’s Day. It looked like any other hospital lobby. There were holiday decorations hanging from the ceilings. They already looked a little tired. Garber was already there. He was sitting on a plastic chair. He was a small man and didn’t seem uncomfortable. But he was quiet. He didn’t introduce himself to Summer. She stood next to him. I leaned on the wall. The doctor faced us with a sheaf of notes in her hand, like she was lecturing a small group of keen students. Her name badge read Sam McGowan, and she was young and dark, and brisk, and open.
“General Kramer died of natural causes,” she said. “Heart attack, last night, after eleven, before midnight. There’s no possibility of doubt. I’m happy to be audited if you want, but it would be a complete waste of time. His toxicology was absolutely clear. The evidence of ventricular fibrillation is indisputable and his arterial plaque was monumental. So forensically, your only tentative question might be whether by coincidence someone electrically stimulated fibrillation in a man almost certain to suffer it anyway within minutes or hours or days or weeks.”
“How would it be done?” Summer asked.
McGowan shrugged. “The skin would have to be wet over a large area. The guy would have to be in a bathtub, basically. Then, if you applied wall current to the water, you’d probably get fibrillation without burn marks. But the guy wasn’t in a bathtub, and there’s no evidence he ever had been.”
“What if his skin wasn’t wet?”
“Then I’d have seen burn injuries. And I didn’t, and I went over every inch of him with a magnifying glass. No burns, no hypodermic marks, no nothing.”
“What about shock, or surprise, or fear?”
The doctor shrugged again. “Possible, but we know what he was doing, don’t we? That kind of sudden sexual excitement is a classic trigger.”
Nobody spoke.
“Natural causes, folks,” McGowan said. “Just a big old heart attack. Every pathologist in the world could take a look at him and there would be one hundred percent agreement. I absolutely guarantee it.”
“OK,” Garber said. “Thanks, Doc.”
“I apologize,” I said. “You’re going to have to repeat all that to about two dozen civilian cops, every day for a couple of weeks.”
She smiled. “I’ll print up an official statement.”
Then she looked at each of us in turn in case we had more questions. We didn’t, so she smiled once more and swept away through a door. It sucked shut behind her and the ceiling decorations rustled and stilled and the reception area went quiet.
We didn’t speak for a moment.
“OK,” Garber said. “That’s it. No controversy with Kramer himself, and his wife is a civilian crime. It’s out of our hands.”
“Did you know Kramer?” I asked him.
Garber shook his head. “Only by reputation.”
“Which was?”
“Arrogant. He was Armored Branch. The Abrams tank is the best toy in the army. Those guys rule the world, and they know it.”
“Know anything about the wife?”
He made a face. “She spent way too much time at home in Virginia, is what I hear. She was rich, from an old Virginia family. I mean, she did her duty. She spent time on-post in Germany, only when you add it up, it really wasn’t a hell of a lot of time. Like now, XII Corps told me she was home for the holidays, which sounds OK, but actually she came home for Thanksgiving and wasn’t expected back until the spring. So the Kramers weren’t real close, by all accounts. No kids, no shared interests.”
“Which might explain the hooker,” I said. “If they lived separate lives.”
“I guess,” Garber said. “I get the feeling it was a marriage, you know, but it was more window dressing than anything real.”
“What was her name?” Summer asked.
Garber turned to look at her.
“Mrs. Kramer,” he said. “That’s all the name we need to know.”
Summer looked away.
“Who was Kramer traveling to Irwin with?” I asked.
“Two of his guys,” Garber said. “A one-star general and a colonel, Vassell and Coomer. They were a real triumvirate. Kramer, Vassell, and Coomer. The corporate face of Armor.”
He stood up and stretched.
“Start at midnight,” I said to him. “Tell me everything you did.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like coincidences. And neither do you.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Everybody did something,” I said. “Except Kramer.”
Garber looked straight at me.
“I watched the ball drop,” he said. “Then I had another drink. I kissed my daughter. I kissed a whole bunch of people, as I recall. Then I sang ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ ”
“And then?”
“My office got me on the phone. Told me they’d found out by circuitous means that we had a dead two-star down in North Carolina. Told me the Fort Bird MP duty officer had palmed it off. So I called there, and I got you.”
“And then?”
“You set out to do your thing and I called the town cops and got Kramer’s name. Looked him up and found he was a XII Corps guy. So I called Germany and reported the death, but I kept the details to myself. I told you this already.”
“And then?”
“Then nothing. I waited for your report.”
“OK,” I said.
“OK what?”
“OK, sir?”
“Bullshit,” he said. “What are you thinking?”
“The briefcase,” I said. “I still want to find it.”
“So keep looking for it,” he said. “Until I find Vassell and Coomer. They can tell us whether there was anything in it worth worrying about.”
“You can’t find them?”
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “They checked out of their hotel, but they didn’t fly to California. Nobody seems to know where the hell they are.”
Garber left to drive himself back to town and Summer and I climbed into the car and headed south again. It was cold, and it was getting dark. I offered to take the wheel, but Summer wouldn’t let me. Driving seemed to be her main hobby.
“Colonel Garber seemed tense,” she said. She sounded disappointed, like an actress who had failed an audition.
“He was feeling guilty,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because he killed Mrs. Kramer.”
She just stared at me. She was doing about ninety, looking at me, sideways.
“In a manner of speaking,” I said.
“How?”
“This was no coincidence.”
“That’s not what the doctor told us.”
“Kramer died of natural causes. That’s what the doctor told us. But something about that event led directly to Mrs. Kramer becoming a homicide victim. And Garber set all that in motion. By notifying XII Corps. He put the word out, and within about two hours the widow was dead too.”
“So what’s going on?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” I said.
“And what about Vassell and Coomer?” she said. “They were a threesome. Kramer’s dead, his wife is dead, and the other two are missing.”
“You heard the man. It’s out of our hands.”
“You’re not going to do anything?”
“I’m going to look for a hooker.”
We set off on the most direct route we could find, straight back to the motel and the lounge bar. There was no real choice. First the Beltway, and then I-95. Traffic was light. It was still New Year’s Day. The world outside our windows looked dark and quiet, cold and sleepy. Lights were coming on everywhere. Summer drove as fast as she dared, which was plenty fast. What might have taken Kramer six hours was going to take us less than five. We stopp
ed for gas early, and we bought stale sandwiches that had been made in the previous calendar year. We forced them down as we hustled south. Then I spent twenty minutes watching Summer. She had small neat hands. She had them resting lightly on the wheel. She didn’t blink much. Her lips were slightly parted and every minute or so she would run her tongue across her teeth.
“Talk to me,” I said.
“About what?”
“About anything,” I said. “Tell me the story of your life.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m tired,” I said. “To keep me awake.”
“Not very interesting.”
“Try me,” I said.
So she shrugged and started at the beginning, which was outside of Birmingham, Alabama, in the middle of the sixties. She had nothing bad to say about it, but she gave me the impression that she knew even then there were better ways to grow up than poor and black in Alabama at that time. She had brothers and sisters. She had always been small, but she was nimble, and she parlayed a talent for gymnastics and dancing and jumping rope into a way of getting noticed at school. She was good at the book work too, and had assembled a patchwork of minor scholarships and moved out of state to a college in Georgia. She had joined the ROTC and in her junior year the scholarships ran out and the military picked up the tab in exchange for five years’ future service. She was now halfway through it. She had aced MP school. She sounded comfortable. The military had been integrated for forty years and she said she found it to be the most color-blind place in America. But she was also a little frustrated about her own individual progress. I got the impression her application to the 110th was make-or-break for her. If she got it, she was in for life, like me. If she didn’t, she was out after five.
“Now tell me about your life,” she said.
“Mine?” I said. Mine was different in every way imaginable. Color, gender, geography, family circumstances. “I was born in Berlin. Back then, you stayed in the hospital seven days, so I was one week old when I went into the military. I grew up on every base we’ve got. I went to West Point. I’m still in the military. I always will be. That’s it, really.”
“You got family?”
I recalled the note from my sergeant: Your brother called. No message.
“A mother and a brother,” I said.
“Ever been married?”
“No. You?”
“No,” she said. “Seeing anyone?”
“Not right now.”
“Me either.”
We drove on, a mile, and another.
“Can you imagine a life outside the service?” she asked.
“Is there one?”
“I grew up out there. I might be going back.”
“You civilians are a mystery to me,” I said.
Summer parked outside Kramer’s room, I guessed for authenticity’s sake, a little less than five hours after we left Walter Reed. She seemed satisfied with her average speed. She shut the motor down and smiled.
“I’ll take the lounge bar,” I said. “You speak to the kid in the motel office. Do the good cop thing. Tell him the bad cop is right behind you.”
We slid out into the cold and the dark. The fog was back. The streetlights burned through it. I stretched and yawned and then straightened my coat and watched Summer head past the Coke machine. Her skin flared red as she stepped through its glow. I crossed the road and headed for the bar.
The lot was as full as it had been the night before. Cars and trucks were parked all around the building. The ventilators were working hard again. I could see smoke and smell beer in the air. I could hear music thumping away. The neon was bright.
I pulled the door and stepped into the noise. The crowd was wall-to-wall again. The same spotlights were burning. There was a different girl naked on the stage. There was the same barrel-chested guy half in shadow behind the register. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was looking at my lapels. Where Kramer had worn Armored’s crossed cavalry sabers with a charging tank over them, I had the Military Police’s crossed flintlock pistols, gold and shiny. Not the most popular sight, in a place like that.
“Cover charge,” the guy at the register said.
It was hard to hear him. The music was very loud.
“How much?” I said.
“Hundred dollars,” he said.
“I don’t think so.”
“OK, two hundred dollars.”
“Hilarious,” I said.
“I don’t like cops in here.”
“Can’t think why,” I said.
“Look at me.”
I looked at him. There was nothing much to see. The edge of a downlighter beam lit up a big stomach and a big chest and thick, short, tattooed forearms. And hands the size and shape of frozen chickens with heavy silver rings on most of the fingers. But the guy’s shoulders and his face were in deep shadow above them. Like he was half-hidden by a curtain. I was talking to a guy I couldn’t see.
“You’re not welcome here,” he said.
“I’ll get over it. I’m not an unduly sensitive person.”
“You’re not listening,” he said. “This is my place and I don’t want you in it.”
“I’ll be quick.”
“Leave now.”
“No.”
“Look at me.”
He leaned forward into the light. Slowly. The downlighter beam rode up his chest. Up his neck. Onto his face. It was an incredible face. It had started out ugly and it had gotten much worse. He had straight razor scars all over it. They crisscrossed it like a lattice. They were deep and white and old. His nose had been busted and badly reset and busted again and badly reset again, many times over. He had brows thick with scar tissue. Two small eyes were staring out at me from under them. He was maybe forty. Maybe five-ten, maybe three hundred pounds. He looked like a gladiator who had survived twenty years, deep inside the catacombs.
I smiled. “This thing with the face is supposed to impress me? With the dramatic lighting and all?”
“It should tell you something.”
“It tells me you lost a lot of fights. You want to lose another, that’s fine with me.”
He said nothing.
“Or I could put this place off-limits to every enlisted man at Bird. I could see what that does to your bar profits.”
He said nothing.
“But I don’t want to do that,” I said. “No reason to penalize my guys, just because you’re an asshole.”
He said nothing.
“So I guess I’ll ignore you.”
He sat back. The shadow slid back into place, like a curtain.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, from out of the darkness. “Somewhere, sometime. That’s for sure. That’s a promise. You can count on that.”
“Now I’m scared,” I said. I moved on and pressed into the crowd. I made it through a packed bottleneck and into the main part of the building. It was much bigger inside than it had looked. It was a big low square, full of noise and people. There were dozens of separate areas. Speakers everywhere. Loud music. Flashing lights. There were plenty of civilians in there. Plenty of military too. I could spot them by their haircuts, and their clothes. Off-duty soldiers always dress distinctively. They try to look like everybody else, and they fail. They’re always a little clean and out-of-date. They were all looking at me as I passed them by. They weren’t pleased to see me. I looked for a sergeant. Looked for a few lines around the eyes. I saw four likely candidates, six feet back from the edge of the main stage. Three of them saw me and turned away. The fourth saw me and paused for a second and then turned toward me. Like he knew he had been selected. He was a compact guy maybe five years older than me. Special Forces, probably. There were plenty of them at Bird, and he had the look. He was having a good time. That was clear. He had a smile on his face and a bottle in his hand. Cold beer, dewy with moisture. He raised it, like a toast, like an invitation to approach. So I went up close to him and spoke in his ear.
“Spread t
he word for me,” I said. “This is nothing official. Nothing to do with our guys. Something else entirely.”
“Like what?” he said.
“Lost property,” I said. “Nothing important. Everything’s cool.”
He said nothing.
“Special Forces?” I said.
He nodded. “Lost property?”
“No big deal,” I said. “Just something that went missing across the street.”
He thought about it and then he raised his bottle again and clinked it against where mine would have been if I had bought one. It was a clear display of acceptance. Like a mime, in all the noise. But even so a thin stream of men started up, shuffling toward the exit. Maybe twenty grunts left during my first two minutes in the room. MPs have that effect. No wonder the guy with the face didn’t want me in there.
A waitress came up to me. She was wearing a black T-shirt cut off about four inches below the neck and black shorts cut off about four inches below the waist and black shoes with very high heels. Nothing else. She stood there and looked at me until I ordered something. I asked for a Bud, and I paid about eight times its value. Took a couple of sips, and then went looking for whores.
They found me first. I guess they wanted me out of sight before I emptied the place completely. Before I reduced their customer base to zero. Two of them came straight at me. One was a platinum blonde. The other was a brunette. Both were wearing tiny tight sheath dresses that sparkled with all kinds of synthetic fibers. The blonde got in front of the brunette and headed her off. Came clattering straight toward me, awkward in absurd clear plastic heels. The brunette wheeled away and headed for the Special Forces sergeant I had spoken to. He waved her off with what looked like an expression of genuine distaste. The blonde kept on track and came right up next to me and leaned on my arm. Stretched up tall until I could feel her breath in my ear.
“Happy New Year,” she said.
“You too,” I said.
“I haven’t seen you in here before,” she said, like I was the only thing missing from her life. Her accent wasn’t local. She wasn’t from the Carolinas. She wasn’t from California either. Georgia or Alabama, probably.