“Don’t,” she said. “Won’t help a bit, coming from you. You’ll either be dead or in prison.”
“You brought all this stuff,” I said. “You haven’t given up on me yet.”
She said nothing.
“Where did Vassell and Coomer park their car?” I asked.
“On the fourth?” she said. “Nobody knows for sure. The first night patrol saw a staff car backed in all by itself at the far end of the lot. But you can’t take that to the bank. Patrol didn’t get a plate number, so it’s not a positive ID. And the second patrol can’t remember it at all. Therefore it’s one guy’s report against another’s.”
“What exactly did the first guy see?”
“He called it a staff car.”
“Was it a black Grand Marquis?”
“It was a black something,” she said. “But all staff cars are black or green. Nothing unique about a black car.”
“But it was out of the way?”
She nodded. “On its own, far end of the lot. But the second guy can’t confirm it.”
“Where was Major Marshall on the second and the third?”
“That was easier,” she said. “Two travel warrants. To Frankfurt on the second, back here on the third.”
“An overnight in Germany?”
She nodded again. “There and back.”
We sat quiet. The counterman came over with a pad and a pencil. I looked at the menu and the forty-seven dollars on the table and ordered less than two bucks’ worth of coffee and eggs. Summer took the hint and ordered juice and biscuits. That was about as cheap as we could get, consistent with staying vertical.
“Am I done here?” my sergeant asked.
I nodded. “Thanks. I mean it.”
Summer slid out to let her get up.
“Kiss your baby for me,” I said.
My sergeant just stood there, all bone and sinew. Hard as woodpecker lips. Staring straight at me.
“My mom just died,” I said. “One day your son will remember mornings like these.”
She nodded once and walked to the door. A minute later we saw her in her pickup truck, a small figure all alone at the wheel. She drove off into the dawn mist. A rope of exhaust followed behind her and then drifted away.
I shuffled all the paper into a logical pile and started with Marshall’s personal file. The quality of the fax transmission wasn’t great, but it was legible. There was the usual mass of information. On the first page I found out that Marshall had been born in September of 1958. Therefore he was thirty-one years old. He had no wife and no children. No ex-wives either. He was wedded to the military, I guessed. He was listed at six-four and two hundred twenty pounds. The army needed to know that to keep their quartermaster percentiles up to speed. He was listed as right-handed. The army needed to know
I turned the page.
Marshall had been born in Sperryville, Virginia, and had gone all the way through kindergarten and grade school and high school there.
I smiled. Summer looked at me, questions in her eyes. I separated the pages and slid them across to her and stretched over and used my finger to point out the relevant lines. Then I slid her the memo paper with the Jefferson Hotel number on it.
“Go find a phone,” I said.
She found one just inside the door, on the wall, near the register. I saw her put two quarters in, and dial, and talk, and wait. I saw her give her name and rank and unit. I saw her listen. I saw her talk some more. I saw her wait some more. And listen some more. She put more quarters in. It was a long call. I guessed she was getting transferred all over the place. Then I saw her say thank you. I saw her hang up. I saw her come back to me, looking grim and satisfied.
“He had a room,” she said. “In fact he made the booking himself, the day before. Three rooms, for him, and Vassell, and Coomer. And there was a valet parking charge.”
“Did you speak to the valet station?”
She nodded. “It was a black Mercury. In just after lunch, out again at twenty to one in the morning, back in again at twenty past three in the morning, out again finally after breakfast on New Year’s Day.”
I riffed through the pile of paper and found the fax from Detective Clark in Green Valley. The results of his house-to-house canvass. There was a fair amount of vehicle activity listed. It had been New Year’s Eve and lots of people were heading to and from parties. There had been what someone thought was a taxi on Mrs. Kramer’s road, just before two o’clock in the morning.
“A staff car could be mistaken for a taxi,” I said. “You know, a plain black sedan, clean condition but a little tired, a lot of miles on it, the same shape as a Crown Victoria.”
“Plausible,” Summer said.
“Likely,” I said.
We paid the check and left a dollar tip and counted what was left of my sergeant’s loan. Decided we were going to have to keep on eating cheap, because we were going to need gas money. And phone money. And some other expenses.
“Where to now?” Summer asked me.
“Across the street,” I said. “To the motel. We’re going to hole up all day. A little more work, and then we sleep.”
We left the Chevy hidden behind the lounge bar and crossed the street on foot. Woke the skinny guy in the motel office and asked him for a room.
“One room?” he said.
I nodded. Summer didn’t object. She knew we couldn’t afford two rooms. And we weren’t new to sharing. Paris had worked out OK for us, as far as nighttime arrangements were concerned.
“Fifteen bucks,” the skinny guy said.
I gave him the money and he smiled and gave me the key to the room Kramer had died in. I figured it was an attempt at humor. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t mind. I figured a room a guy had died in was better than the rooms that rented by the hour.
We walked together down the row and unlocked the door and stepped inside. The room was still dank and brown and miserable. The corpse had been hauled away, but other than that it was exactly the same as when I had first seen it.
“It ain’t the George V,” Summer said.
“That’s for damn sure,” I said.
We put our bags on the floor and I put my sergeant’s paperwork on the bed. The counterpane felt slightly damp. I fiddled with the heater under the window until I got some warmth out of it.
“What next?” Summer asked.
“The phone records,” I said. “I’m looking for a call to a 919 area code.”
“That’ll be a local call. Fort Bird is 919 too.”
“Great,” I said. “There’ll be a million local calls.”
I spread the printout on the bed and started looking. There weren’t a million local calls. But there were certainly hundreds. I started at midnight on New Year’s Eve and worked forward from there. I ignored the numbers that had been called more than once from more than one phone. I figured those would be cab companies or clubs or bars. I ignored the numbers that had the same exchange code as Fort Bird. Those would be off-post housing, mainly. Soldiers on duty would have been calling home in the hour after midnight, wishing their spouses and children a happy new year. I concentrated on numbers that stood out. Numbers in other North Carolina cities. In particular I was looking for a number in another city that had been called once only maybe thirty or forty minutes after midnight. That was my target. I went through the printout, patiently, line by line, page by page, looking for it. I was in no hurry. I had all day.
