halfway into the room. I sat facing the front, with my back to the kitchen. Not possible to watch both entrances at once, which would have been my preference.
“Something to drink?” the waitress asked me.
“Black coffee,” I said. “Please.”
She went away and came back again, with coffee in a mug, and a menu.
I said, “Quiet night.”
She nodded, unhappy, probably worried about her tips.
She said, “They closed the base.”
“Kelham?” I said. “They closed it?”
She nodded again. “They locked it down this afternoon. They’re all in there, eating army chow tonight.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
“Never happened before.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “What do you recommend?”
“For what?”
“To eat.”
“Here? It’s all good.”
“Cheeseburger,” I said.
“Five minutes,” she said. She went away and I took my coffee with me and headed back past the hostess station to the pay phone. I dug in my pocket and found three quarters from my lunch-time change, which were enough for a short conversation, which was the kind I liked. I dialed Garber’s office and a duty lieutenant put him on the line and he asked, “Are you there yet?”
I said, “Yes.”
“Trip OK?”
“It was fine.”
“Got a place to stay?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve got seventy-five cents and four minutes before I eat. I need to ask you something.”
“Fire away.”
“Who briefed you on this?”
Garber paused.
“I can’t tell you that,” he said.
“Well, whoever it was, he’s kind of hazy about the details.”
“That can happen.”
“And Kelham is locked down.”
“Munro did that, as soon as he got there.”
“Why?”
“You know how it is. There’s a risk of bad feeling between the town and the base. It was a common-sense move.”
“It was an admission of guilt.”
“Well, maybe Munro knows something you don’t. Don’t worry about him. Your only job is to eavesdrop on the local cops.”
“I’m on it. I rode in with one.”
“Did he buy the civilian act?”
“He seemed to.”
“Good. They’ll clam up if they know you’re connected.”
“I need you to find out if anyone from Bravo Company owns a blue car.”
“Why?”
“The cop said someone parked a blue car on the railroad track. The midnight train wrecked it. Could have been an attempt to hide evidence.”
“He’d have burned it out, surely.”
“Maybe it was the kind of evidence that burning wouldn’t conceal. Maybe a big dent in the fender or something.”
“How would that relate to a woman getting carved up in an alley?”
“She wasn’t carved up. Her throat was cut. That was all. Deep and wide. One pass, probably. The cop I talked to said he saw bone.”
Garber paused a beat.
He said, “That’s how Rangers are taught to do it.”
I said nothing.
He asked, “But how would that relate to a car?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t relate. But let’s find out, OK?”
“There are two hundred guys in Bravo Company. Law of averages says there’s going to be about fifty blue cars.”
“And all fifty of them should be parked on the base. Let’s find out if one isn’t.”
“It was probably a civilian vehicle.”
“Let’s hope it was. I’ll work that end. But either way, I need to know.”
“This is Munro’s investigation,” Garber said. “Not yours.”
I said, “And we need to know if someone got a gravel rash. Hands, knees, and elbows, maybe. From the rape. The cop said Chapman had matching injuries.”
“This is Munro’s investigation,” Garber said again.
I didn’t answer that. I saw the waitress push in through the kitchen door. She was carrying a plate piled high with an enormous burger in a bun and a tangle of shoelace fries as big and untidy as a squirrel’s nest. I said, “I have to go, boss. I’ll call you tomorrow,” and I hung up and carried my coffee back to my table. The waitress put my plate down with a degree of ceremony. The meal looked good and smelled good.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“You can tell me about the hotel,” I said. “I need a room, but there was nobody home.”
The waitress half-turned and I followed her gaze to the old couple settled in at their table for four. They were still reading. The waitress said, “They usually sit a spell in here, and then they go back. That would be the best time to catch them.”
Then she went away and left me to it. I ate slowly and enjoyed every bite. The old couple sat still and read. The woman turned a page every couple of minutes. Much less often the guy made a big loud production out of snapping the spine of his paper and refolding it ready for the next section. He was studying it intently. He was practically reading the print off it.
Later the waitress came back and picked up my plate and offered me dessert. She said she had great pies. I said, “I’m going to take a walk. I’ll look in again on my way back and if those two are still here, then I’ll stop in for pie. I guess there’s no hurrying them.”
“Not usually,” the waitress said.
I paid for the burger and the coffee and added a tip that didn’t compare to a roomful of hungry Rangers, but it was enough to make her smile a little. Then I headed back to the street. The night was turning cold and there was a little mist in the air. I turned right and strolled past the vacant lot and the Sheriff’s Department building. Pellegrino’s car was parked outside and there was a glow in one window suggesting an interior room was occupied. I kept on going and came to the T where we had turned. To the left was the way Pellegrino had brought me in, through the forest. To the right that road continued east into the darkness. Presumably it crossed the railroad line and then led onward through the wrong side of town to Kelham. Garber had described it as a dirt track, which it might have been once. Now it was a standard rural road, with a stony surface bound with tar. It was dead straight and unlit. There were deep ditches either side of it. There was a thin moon in the sky, and a little light to see by. I turned right and walked on into the gloom.
