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The dead wo an elaborate white flannel nightgown She was on her side Her feet were near the study door Her ars had sprawled in a way that un 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 arth 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 sole blow, but a serious one The wound was in the shape of a trench Nearly an inch wide,It had co 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 coveredquiet tense footsteps co the wrecking bar I had used to force the lock Iet 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, froe There was one that showed the dead man froether with the Mount Rushround General and Mrs Kramer, on vacation He was orous She looked petite in coraph showing Kramer himself in unifor at the top of the steps, about to cliraph His unifor Off to assuuessed There was a second picture, almost identical, a little newer Kra back, s Off to assume his two-star coht 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 ar canvas briefcase
I stepped out to the hallway again Listened hard Heard nothing I could have searched the house, but I didn&039;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 KramerI could see the soles of her feet She hadn&039;t been afor long Maybe an hour, ured 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 ca calht
"You like coincidences?" she said
I said nothing
"We have to go to DC," she said "To Walter Reed We have to make them double-check Kra
"This makes his death automatically suspicious I mean, what are the chances? It&039;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&039;t the same day," I said "Wasn&039;t even the same year"
She nodded "OK, New Year&039;s Eve, New Year&039;s Day But that just makes my point It&039;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 so up there and say, hey, are you sure your doc could see straight last night? Sure he wasn&039;t too juiced up to spot the difference between a heart attack and a homicide?"
"We have to check," she said "I don&039;t like coincidences"
"What do you think happened in there?"
"Intruder," she said "Mrs Krarabbed a shotgun she kept near at hand, came downstairs, headed for the kitchen She was a brave lady"
I nodded Generals&039; 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, ht-handed"
I said nothing
"So are we going to Walter Reed?"
"I think we have to," I said "We&039;ll go as soon as we&039;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 aited Summer watched the front of the house, and I watched the back Nothing happened The cops caht little convoy, two marked cruisers, a detective&039;s car, an a We heard them a mile away They howled into the driveway and then shut down Summer and I stepped back in the sudden silence and they all swareneral&039;s wife is a civilian, and the house was inside a civilian jurisdiction Noret in my way, but the place had already told me what I needed to know So I was prepared to stand back and earn soht come in useful later
A patrol minutes while the other cops poked around inside Then a detective in a suit came out to take our statements We told hiing door His na we had to say His problem was the same as Suht, which was a coincidence, and he didn&039;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 letto look bad, in this new light It put half the puzzle in theto set up a conflict
We gave Clark a phone nuot back in the car I figured DC was another seventy miles Another hour and ten Maybe less, the way Suain 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&039;t know You?"
"It upsets
"You think it was a coincidence?" she said
"No," I said "I don&039;t believe in coincidences"
"So you think the postain "I think the postmorte all the way to DC?"
"Because I need to apologize to the pathologist I dropped hi to have wall-to-wall civilians bugging hi tiist 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 &039;s reception area, four o&039;clock in the afternoon, New Year&039;s Day It looked like any other hospital lobby There were holiday decorations hanging fros They already looked a little tired Garber was already there He was sitting on a plastic chair He was a small man and didn&039;t seem uncomfortable But he was quiet He didn&039;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 se read Sa and dark, and brisk, and open
"General Kraht, after eleven, before ht There&039;s no possibility of doubt I&039;m happy to be audited if you want, but it would be a coy was absolutely clear The evidence of ventricular fibrillation is indisputable and his arterial plaque was ht be whether by coincidence someone electrically stimulated fibrillation in a man almost certain to suffer it anyithin minutes or hours or days or weeks"
"Hoould it be done?" Sued "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&039;d probably get fibrillation without burn uy wasn&039;t in a bathtub, and there&039;s no evidence he ever had been"
"What if his skin wasn&039;t wet?"
"Then I&039;d have seen burn injuries And I didn&039;t, and I went over every inch of hilass No burns, no hypoder"
"What about shock, or surprise, or fear?"
The doctor shrugged again "Possible, but we knohat he was doing, don&039;t we? That kind of sudden sexual exciteer"
Nobody spoke
"Natural causes, folks," McGowan said "Just a big old heart attack Every pathologist in the world could take a look at hireeuarantee it"
"OK," Garber said "Thanks, Doc"
"I apologize," I said "You&039;re going to have to repeat all that to about two dozen civilian cops, every day for a couple of weeks"
She smiled "I&039;ll print up an official statement"
Then she looked at each of us in turn in case we had more questions We didn&039;t, so she sh a door It sucked shut behind her and the ceiling decorations rustled and stilled and the reception area went quiet
We didn&039;t speak for a moment
"OK," Garber said "That&039;s it No controversy with Kramer himself, and his wife is a civilian crime It&039;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 Abrauys rule the world, and they know it"
"Know anything about the wife?"
He inia, is what I hear She was rich, froinia family I mean, she did her duty She spent time on-post in Germany, only when you add it up, it really wasn&039;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 ca and wasn&039;t expected back until the spring So the Kramers weren&039;t real close, by all accounts No kids, no shared interests"
"Which ht explain the hooker," I said "If they lived separate lives"
"I guess," Garber said "I get the feeling it was athan anything real"
"What was her name?" Summer asked
Garber turned to look at her
"Mrs Kramer," he said "That&039;s all the name we need to know"
Su to Irith?" 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 atyou did"
"Why?"
"Because I don&039;t like coincidences And neither do you"
"I didn&039;t do anything"
"Everybody did so," I said "Except Kraht at me
"I watched the ball drop," he said "Then I had another drink I kissed hter I kissed a whole bunch of people, as I recall Then I sang &039;Auld Lang Syne&039;"
"And then?"
"My office got me on the phone Told me they&039;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 palot you"
"And then?"
"You set out to do your thing and I called the town cops and got Krauy 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 Coo in it worth worrying about"
"You can&039;t find them?"
He shook his head
"No," he said "They checked out of their hotel, but they didn&039;t fly to California Nobody seems to knohere the hell they are"
Garber left to drive himself back to town and Suain It was cold, and it was getting dark I offered to take the wheel, but Su 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 Kra about ninety, looking at ," I said
"How?"
"This was no coincidence"
"That&039;s not what the doctor told us"
"Kramer died of natural causes That&039;s what the doctor told us But so a ho XII Corps He put the word out, and within about two hours the as dead too"
"So what&039;s going on?"
"I have absolutely no idea," I said
"And what about Vassell and Coomer?" she said "They were a threesome Kramer&039;s dead, his wife is dead, and the other two are "
"You heard the man It&039;s out of our hands"
"You&039;re not going to do anything?"
"I&039; to look for a hooker"
We set off on the ht back to the e bar There was no real choice First the Beltway, and then I-95 Traffic was light It was still New Year&039;s Day The world outside our s looked dark and quiet, cold and sleepy Lights were co on everywhere Summer drove as fast as she dared, which was plenty fast Whatto take us less than five We stopped 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 twentySuhtly on the wheel She didn&039;t blink htly parted and every ue across her teeth
"Talk to me," I said
"About what?"
"About anything," I said "Tell me the story of your life"
"Why?"
"Because I&039;m tired," I said "To keep "
"Try ed and started at the beginning, which was outside of Birha bad to say about it, but she gave me the irow up than poor and black in Alabama at that time She had brothers and sisters She had always been sy noticed at school She was good at the book work too, and had assembled a patchwork of e in Georgia She had joined the ROTC and in her junior year the scholarships ran out and the e for five years&039; future service She was now halfway through it She had aced MP school She sounded corated 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 ot it, she was in for life, like me If she didn&039;t, she was out after five
"Now tell me about your life," she said
"Mine?" I said Mine was different in every way iraphy, 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 ot I went to West Point I&039;m still in the military I alill be That&039;s it, really"
"You got faeant: Your brother called No e
"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 ine a life outside the service?" she asked
"Is there one?"
"I grew up out there Iback"
"You civilians are a mystery to me," I said
Suuessed for authenticity&039;s sake, a little less than five hours after we left Walter Reed She seee speed She shut the e bar," I said "You speak to the kid in theTell hiht 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 low 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 orking hard again I could see s away The neon was bright
I pulled the door and stepped into the noise The croall-to-wall again The sairl naked on the stage There was the saister I couldn&039;t see his face, but I kneas looking at my lapels Where Kramer had worn Ar tank over them, I had the Military Police&039;s crossed flintlock pistols, gold and shiny Not the ht, 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&039;t think so"