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"Maybe I am," I said "This week, anyway"

"Why are you even here? Is so I should know about?"

"I don&039;t knohy I&039;ot orders That&039;s all I know"

"Are you really a major?"

"Last tiators were usually warrant officers Working plain clothes or undercover"

"They usually are"

"So why bring you here when they could send a warrant officer and have him dress up as a major?"

"Good question," I said "Maybe one day I&039;ll find out"

"May I ask what your orders were?"

"Temporary detached duty as Fort Bird &039;s Provost Marshal&039;s executive officer"

"The Provost Marshal isn&039;t on-post," she said

"I know," I said "I found that out He transferred out the sa"

"So you&039;re acting CO"

"Like I said"

"MP XO isn&039;t a special unit job," she said

"I can fake it," I said "I started out a regular MP, just like you"

Su Just drove

"Kramer," I said "Why did he contemplate a six-hundred- time out of his twenty Just to spend fifteen bucks on a room and twenty on a whore?"

"Why does it ht? I mean, was there any question about it?"

I shook my head "Walter Reed already did the autopsy"

"So it doesn&039;t really matter where or when it happened"

"His briefcase is "

"I see," Su Her lower eyelids flicked upward a fraction

"How do you know he had a briefcase?" she said

"I don&039;t But did you ever see a general go to a conference without one?"

"No," she said "You think the hooker ran off with it?"

I nodded "That&039;s ht now"

"So, find the hooker"

"Who was she?"

Her eyelids ain

"Doesn&039;t ain "Exactly"

"Four possible reasons Kraht have been traveling with fellow officers and didn&039;t want to e a hooker coht have seen her in the corridor or heard her through the walls So he invented an excuse and stayed in a different place Two, even if he was traveling alone he ht have been on a DoD travel voucher and he was paranoid about a desk clerk seeing the girl and calling The Washington Post That happens So he preferred to pay cash in soovernuest or a fa for anonymity somewhere out of town Or four, his sexual tastes ran beyond what you can get froo where he knew for sure he could get what he wanted"

"But?"

"Proble ten or fifteen ht is completely excessive And whereas I&039;m prepared to believe there are tastes that can&039;t be satisfied in DC, I don&039;t see how they&039;re more likely to be satisfied way out here in the North Carolina boonies, and anyway I would guess such a thing would cost a lot more than twenty bucks wherever you eventually found it"

"So why did he take the six-hundred-mile detour?"

She didn&039;t answer Just drove, and thought I closed my eyes Kept them closed for about thirty-five irl," Summer said

I opened my eyes "How?"

"Soo Fell for her, in a way It can happen like that It can al"

"Where would he have ht 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 tirunts 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 so military bases, so she moved to Bird"

"What kind of a hooker would like working military bases?"

"The kind that&039;s interested in money Which is all of them, presumably Military bases support their local econo

"Or maybe she alorked Bird, but followed the infantry to Irhen they did a joint exercise out there one ti around at houess?" I said

"They met in California," she said "Kramer will have spent years at Irwin, on and off Then she h to make the detour whenever he was in DC"

"She doesn&039;t do anything special, not for twenty bucks"

"Maybe he didn&039;t need anything special"

"We could ask the "

Summer smiled "Maybe he just liked her Maybe she ood at that They like repeat customers best of all It&039;s uy"

I closed ain

"So?" Su you didn&039;t think of?"

"No," I said

I fell asleep before ere out of the state and woke up again nearly four hours later when Summer took the Green Valley raht and hit the

"Sorry," she said "You should check Kramer&039;s phone records He must have called ahead, to make sure she was around He wouldn&039;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&039;ll check"

"We?"

"You can partner with

"Like a test," I said

"Is this iht be Depends what the conference is about Depends what paperwork he was taking to it He ht have had the whole ETO order of battle in his case Or new tactics, assesss, all kinds of classified stuff"

"The Red Ar to fold"

I nodded "I&039;m more worried about red faces Newspapers, or television Some reporter finds classified stuff on a trash pile near a strip club, there&039;ll be major embarrassment all around"

"Maybe the ill know He ht have discussed it with her"

"We can&039;t ask her," I said "As far as she&039;s concerned he died in his sleep with the blanket pulled up to his chin, and everything else was kosher Any worries we&039;ve got at this point stay strictly between me, you, and Garber"

"Garber?" she said

"Me, you, and him," I said

I saw her s 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 ereen trees dotted about They looked like someone had positioned theo We pulled up at the curb and waited, just looking I don&039;t knohat Su 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 ether about five years&039; worth of actual residence in the continental US So I know a bunch of basic elerand slah-school stuff like the constitutional amendments and the importance of Antietam, but I don&039;t know much about the price of milk or hoork a pay phone or how different places look and smell So I soak it up when I can And the Kra 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 coon with a canoe and headed for a lake somewhere It reave ot inside

"Ready?" Summer said

"Sure," I said "Let&039;s do it Let&039;s do thething"

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 froether and slid out into the chill and straightened our jackets We left our hats in the car That would be Mrs Kra A pair of MPs at your door is never good news, and if they&039;re bareheaded, it&039;s worse news

This particular door was painted a dull antique red and it had a glass stor the bell and aited And waited I started to think nobody was hoer than it had looked

"We should have called ahead," Summer said

"Can&039;t," I said "Can&039;t say, please be there four hours from noe can deliver some very important news face-to-face Too much of a previeouldn&039;t you say?"

"I ca"

"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," Sue standing separate froh theIt was a Mercury Grand Marquis,as an ocean liner It was the perfect car for a general&039;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 theyfor the third star before they thought about a Lincoln"

"Sad"

"You think? Don&039;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," Suardens on New Year&039;s Day," I said "Not in this he"

But alked around to the front anyway and tried the bell again Better to let her meet us formally, on her own terain, at the back, banging aiotten hold of it

"We should check that out," Su door has a sound all its own It suggests all kinds of things

"Yes," I said "We probably should"

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 iton the back to keep it closed The springbreeze was overpowering it froht 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 atched It was able to do it because the lock was sood lock, er than the surrounding wood So 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 auto if the bad guys were long gone, or if they were still inside

"What now?" Suain

We were unarmed No weapons, on a formal visit in Class A uniform

"Go cover the front," I said "In case anyone coave her a et 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 setables 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 roole of polished oak floor A hallway I ht to line up ain behind ht to the front entrance Off of it to the left was a closed door Probably a dining rooht 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