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"Can she stay an hour longer?"
"Why?"
"I want you to meet me. I want you to bring me some stuff. "
"It'll cost you. "
"How much?"
"Two dollars an hour. For the babysitter. "
"I haven't got two dollars. That's something I want you to bring. Money. "
"You want me to give you money?"
"A loan," I said. "Couple of days. "
"How much?"
"Whatever you've got. "
"When and where?"
"When you get off. At six. At the diner near the strip club. "
"What do you need me to bring?"
"Phone records," I said. "All calls made out of Fort Bird starting from midnight on New Year's Eve until maybe the third of January. And an army phone book. I need to speak to Sanchez and Franz and all kinds of other people. And I need Major Marshall's personal file. The XII Corps guy. I need you to get a copy faxed in from somewhere. "
"Anything else?"
"I want to know where Vassell and Coomer parked their car when they came down for dinner on the fourth. I want you to see if anyone noticed. "
"OK," she said. "Is that it?"
"No," I said. "I want to know where Major Marshall was on the second and the third. Scare up some travel clerk somewhere and see if any vouchers were issued. And I want a phone number for the Jefferson Hotel in D. C. "
"That's an awful lot to do in three hours. "
"That's why I'm asking you instead of the day guy. You're better than he is. "
"Stick it," she said. "Flattery doesn't work on me. "
"Hope springs eternal," I said.
We got back into the car and got back on the road. Headed east for I-95. I told Summer to go slow. If I didn't, then the way she was likely to drive on empty roads at night would get us to the diner well before my sergeant, and I didn't want that to happen. My sergeant would get there around six-thirty. I wanted to get there after her, maybe six-forty. I wanted to check she hadn't done her duty and dropped a dime on me and set up an ambush. It was unlikely, but not impossible. I wanted to be able to drive by and check. I didn't want to be already in a booth drinking coffee when Willard showed up.
"Why do you want all that stuff?" Summer asked.
"I know what happened to Mrs. Kramer," I said.
"How?"
"I figured it out," I said. "Like I should have at the beginning. But I didn't think. I didn't have enough imagination. "
"It's not enough to imagine things. "
"It is," I said. "Sometimes that's what it's all about. Sometimes that's all an investigator has got. You have to imagine what people must have done. The way they must have thought and acted. You have to think yourself into being them. "
"Being who?"
"Vassell and Coomer," I said. "We know who they are. We know what they're like. Therefore we can predict what they did. "
"What did they do?"
"They got an early start and flew all day from Frankfurt. On New Year's Eve. They wore Class As, trying to get an upgrade. Maybe they succeeded, with American Airlines out of Germany. Maybe they didn't. Either way, they couldn't have counted on it. They must have been prepared to spend eight hours in coac
h. "
"So?"
"Would guys like Vassell and Coomer be happy to wait in the Dulles taxi line? Or take a shuttle bus to the city? All cramped and uncomfortable?"
"No," Summer said. "They wouldn't do either thing. "
"Exactly," I said. "They wouldn't do either thing. They're way too important for that. They wouldn't dream of it. Not in a million years. Guys like that, they need to be met by a car and a driver. "
"Who?"
"Marshall," I said. "That's who. He's their blue-eyed gofer. He was already over here, at their service. He must have picked them up at the airport. Maybe Kramer too. Did Kramer take the Hertz bus to the rental lot? I don't think so. I think Marshall drove him there. Then he drove Vassell and Coomer to the Jefferson Hotel. "
"And?"
"And he stayed there with them, Summer. I think he had a room booked. Maybe they wanted him on the spot to drive them to National the next morning. He was going with them, after all. He was going to Irwin too. Or maybe they just wanted to talk to him, urgently. Just the three of them, Vassell, Coomer, and Marshall. Maybe it was easier to talk without Kramer there. And Marshall had a lot of stuff to talk about. They started his temporary detached duty in November. You told me that yourself. November was when the Wall started coming down. November was when the danger signals started coming in. So they sent him over here in November to get his ear close to the ground in the Pentagon. That's my guess. But whatever, Marshall stayed the night with Vassell and Coomer at the Jefferson Hotel. I'm sure of it. "
"OK, so?"
"Marshall was at the hotel, and his car was in valet parking. And you know what? I checked our bill from Paris. They charged an arm and a leg for everything. Especially the phone calls. But not all the phone calls. The room-to-room calls we made didn't show up at all. You called me at six, about dinner. Then I called you at midnight, because I was lonely. Those calls didn't show up anywhere on the bill. Hit three for another room, and it's free. Dial nine for a line, and it triggers the computer. There were no calls on Vassell and Coomer's bill and therefore we thought they had made no calls. But they had made calls. It's obvious. They made internal calls. Room to room. Vassell took the message from XII Corps in Germany, and then he called Coomer's room to discuss what the hell to do about the situation. And then one or the other of them picked up the phone and called Marshall's room. They called their blue-eyed gofer and told him to run downstairs and jump in his car. "
"Marshall did it?"
I nodded. "They sent him out into the night to clean up their mess. "
"Can we prove it?"
"We can make a start," I said. "I'll bet you three things. First, we'll call the Jefferson Hotel and we'll find a booking in Marshall's name for New Year's Eve. Second, Marshall's file will tell us he once lived in Sperryville, Virginia. And third, his file will tell us he's tall and heavy and right-handed. "
She went quiet. Her eyelids started moving.
"Is it enough?" she said. "Is Mrs. Kramer enough of a result to get us off the hook?"
"There's more to come," I said.
It was like being in a parallel universe, watching Summer driving slow. We drifted down the highway with the world going half-speed outside our windows. The big Chevy engine was loafing along a little above idle. The tires were quiet. We passed all our familiar landmarks. The State Police facility, the spot where Kramer's briefcase had been found, the rest area, the spur to the small highway. We crawled off at the cloverleaf and I scanned the gas station and the greasy spoon and the lounge parking and the motel. The whole place was full of yellow light and fog and black shadow but I could see well enough. There was no sign of a setup. Summer turned into the lot and drove a long slow circuit. There were three eighteen-wheelers parked like beached whales and a couple of old sedans that were probably abandoned. They had the look. They had dull paint and soft tires and they were low on their springs. There was an old Ford pickup truck with a baby seat strapped to the bench. I guessed that was my sergeant's. There was nothing else. Six-forty in the morning, and the world was dark and still and quiet.
We put the car out of sight behind the lounge bar and walked across the lot to the diner. Its windows were misted by the cooking steam. There was hot white light inside. It looked like a Hopper painting. My sergeant was alone at a booth in back. We walked in and sat down beside her. She hauled a grocery bag up off the floor. It was full of stuff.
"First things first," she said.
She put her hand in the bag and came out with a bullet. She stood it upright on the table in front of me. It was a standard nine-millimeter Parabellum. Standard NATO load. Full metal jacket. For a sidearm or a submachine gun. The shiny brass casing had something scratched on it. I picked it up. Looked at it. There was a word engraved there. It was rough and uneven. It had been done fast and by hand. It said: Reacher.
"A bullet with my name on it," I said.
"From Delta," my sergeant said. "Hand-delivered, yesterday. "
"Who by?"
"The young one with the beard. "
"Charming," I said. "Remind me to kick his ass. "
"Don't joke about it. They're awful stirred up. "
"They're looking at the wrong guy. "
"Can you prove that?"
I paused. Knowing and proving were two different things. I dropped the bullet into my pocket and put my hands on the table.
"Maybe I can," I said.
"You know who killed Carbone too?" Summer said.
"One thing at a time," I said.
"Here's your money," my sergeant said. "It's all I could get. "
She went into her bag again and put forty-seven dollars on the table.
