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“Close enough. It’s a sweet way to say hi to a good friend in French.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “I don’t know if you’re pranking me or not, but I’ll tell her.”
Leilah’s melodic laughter followed him out of the diner and did nothing to allay his suspicion.
He leaned against the front of the building, pulled up the address book on the phone Chelsea had given him, and scrolled through the contact list until he found Marielle’s office extension. He pressed the button to make the call and walked over to the metal newspaper box near the diner’s entrance while he waited for the call to connect. He crouched and peered through the front glass. The box was empty. Not surprising, given the slow, steady death of local journalism. The local paper was nearly as much of a relic as the roadside diner.
“Allô?”
Marielle’s greeting interrupted his musing. “Hi, it’s me.”
“Oh, you have perfect timing.”
“You have something for me?”
“I do. Mr. Ito may have tripped and fallen down a flight of stairs, but he didn’t stumble drunkenly.”
“You got the blood alcohol level?” She was a magician.
“Yes. There was a trace, and I mean trace, level of alcohol, confirmed by his stomach contents. According to the bartender’s statement, which was curiously missing from the official files, Natsuo Ito ordered and then nursed two non-alcoholic beers over the course of three hours.”
“Huh.”
“Indeed.”
“Does anything else stand out?”
“The autopsy wasn’t performed by the District’s Medical Examiner.”
“Now, that’s odd. Who did it?” He frowned.
“The AFMES.”
“Who?”
“Exactly. The Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, which is a thing that exists, handled the autopsy.”
“Never heard of them, but it sounds like they would handle investigations into the deaths of active duty military personnel.”
“Gold star for you. Yes. The Department of Defense website only mentions one exception: DNA testing to identify former service members who went missing in action.”
“Which Nat was not.” He thought for a moment. “He had been in the Army. They paid for law school, and he served his four years in the JAG Corps. before he joined the DOJ.”
“Hmm. There’s a four-year reserve commitment, too, isn’t there?”
“That sounds right.”
“If he was still in the Reserve, Iguessthere’s an argument for AFMES to involve itself.”
The doubt in her voice echoed his own lack of conviction. “Maybe.”
“That’s all I have for now.”
“Thanks, Marielle. Oh, Leilah said to tell you‘coucou.’”
She laughed merrily. “Andcoucouto her as well.”
He ended the call and fished a folded-over sticky note out of his pocket. He read Grover Anderson’s telephone number from the square of paper and punched it into the phone.
