“Thanks,” he told the girl at the desk. She handed him his driv- er’s license, which had been lying on the counter beside the police radio microphone.
The door behind Jake opened. “Hi, Susie.” Jake turned. The trooper was clad in a green uniform and wore a short green nylon jacket. He was somewhere between thirty and thirty-five years of age, with a tanned, clean- shaven face and short military haircut. He stood several inches taller than Jake and was built heavier. On the left breast of his coat was a silver name tag: Keadle. “Hello,” he said, addressing the greeting to Jake.
“Hi.”
“This is Mr. Jacob L. Grafton of Arlington, Virginia,” the girl said. “He was a friend of Captain Strong’s.”
“Izzatso?” The trooper’s eyes swept him again, more carefully. “Why don’tcha step into this other room here for a minute. Susie, how about getting us both coffee. White or black?” he said to Jake.
“Black.”
“Black it is,” he said, and led the way behind the counter and through a door into an adjoining office. His big revolver swung freely below his jacket in a brown holster that hung halfway down his right leg.
“Captain Strong had a little cabin a few miles east of here for weekends and all,” the trooper said. “I knew him to speak to. Helluva nice guy. Too bad about that wreck.”
Jake nodded and sank onto an old sofa with the stuffing coming through the cracks in the vinyl.
“You in the navy too?” the trooper asked.
Jake took out his wallet and extracted his green ID card. He passed it across. The trooper looked it over, both sides, then handed it back. “Why’d you come up here. Captain Grafton?”
“Were you ever in the service?”
“Marines, four years. Why?”
“Just curious.”
The door opened and Susie came in with coffee in Styrofoam cups. Both men thanked her and she pulled the door shut on her way out.
“Let’s try it again. Why’d you come up here, Captain Grafton?”
“To get a copy of this report.”
Keadle thought about that for a bit, then said, “Well, you got one. What do you think of it?”
“It was a strange accident.”
“How so?”
“Car going up a steep, curvy road on a rainy evening goes skid- ding off the pavement and across a fifty- foot-wide gravel turnout. Right over the edge. Then there’s a furious fire in the passenger compartment.”
“What’s strange about that?”
“He must have been flying low that night. Or else somebody pushed him over the edge. And an interior fire — I thought that stuff only happened in movies. Wrecked cars rarely explode or catch fire.”
“You don’t say. If it wasn’t an accident, who wanted Captain Strong dead?”
“I don’t know. I dropped in to see if you did.”
“I’m just a rural peace officer, not some big-city detective. This county don’t have much real crime. Seems that most of the scum- bags just do their thing over in Washington. I’m not—“
“Let’s cut the bullshit. Why aren’t you investigating an apparent homicide?”
“Who says I’m not? I’m sitting here chinning with you, ain’t I?”
Jake sipped on his coffee. Finally he said, “Well, you got any more questions?”
“Gimme your address and phone number.” Keadle picked up a pad of paper and a pen from the desk. “If I think of any I’ll give you a call.”
Jake told him the number. “Susie already gave you my address from my driver’s license.” He stood and drained his coffee. ‘Thanks for the coffee. I hope you catch him.”
Keadle looked at him with pursed lips.
Jake opened the door and walked out. He nodded at Susie as he went by.
The red flag was up on the Main Street parking meter but no ticket yet. It was almost noon. Perhaps be should stop and see if the prosecutor was in his office. But what good would that do?
There was no way he could make it back to the office before everyone left for the day. Perhaps a hamburger. He fed the meter another quarter and walked down Main Street toward a cafe that he had noticed near the courthouse. Before he got there Trooper Keadle went by in a state police cruiser.
When he finished his lunch Jake drove east on the road back to Washington. Somewhere off one of these side roads, between here and the accident site, Harold Strong had had a cabin. He wished he had thought of finding the cabin and stopping by before he went to town.
Who are you kidding, Jake? What would you look for? A long golden hair on the bedspread? Perhaps a sterling silver cigarette case bearing Mata Hart’s initials? You’re no murder investigator. Keadle has undoubtedly been through that cabin with a fine-tooth comb. If there were clues he has them.
Thoroughly disgruntled, Jake drove at forty miles an hour along the two-lane highway toward Virginia. He didn’t want to see Trooper Keadle in the rearview mirror with his red light flashing. Not too likely, of course. The odds were that Keadle was sitting in his cruiser right now in sight of Strong’s cabin, hoping against hope that Jake would drop by and enter without using a key.
Keadle was no hick cop, even if he liked to play the role- He undoubtedly knew a murder when he tripped over one, and then the very next morning a man appeared — by the Lord Harry a vice admiral in the U.S. Navy — who wanted the investigation of the very recent death of a captain in that very same navy put on the back burner. And Keadle and the prosecutor went along. Or did they? And how did the FBI get involved?
But if it didn’t happen like that, why did Henry tell that fairy story?
He glanced at the map he had jammed over the passenger’s sun visor. The report said the accident happened four miles west of Capon Bridge, that little village Jake had stopped in this morning to get gas. The Shell station.
When he topped the mountain west of Capon Bridge he slowed and looked for the scenic overlook. There. On a whim he parked his car beside the trees so he could examine whatever marks re- mained after two months. As he got out of his car and surveyed the muddy gravel he knew it was hopeless. Two months of rain and snow and traffic pulling off to look at the valley had totally obliter- ated the marks that Keadle’s report said were here after Strong’s wreck.
He walked over to the edge. Some of the guardrails were obvi- ously newer than the others. He looked down the embankment. Beer cans, trash, bare dirt, washed-out furrows. Well, it sure looked like a car might have been dragged up that slope some time back. The ground was soft and no plants had yet had a chance to hide the scars. No sense going down there and getting muddy.
Harold Strong died here. Jake had lied to the office girl — he had never met Strong. He stood now feeling foolishly morbid and half listening to a car laboring up the grade from Capon Bridge. The engine noise carried through the trees budding with spring green and echoed off the mountainside.
Henry had been telling the truth about one thing anyway: Har- old Strong had been murdered. Not even a race car could come up that grade and around that curve fast enough to skid completely across this pullout and go over the edge. Not without help.
Jake glanced up as the car climbing the mountain went by. It was going about thirty miles per hour. The driver was watching the road. And the driver was Smoke Judy.
The commanding officer of Attack Squadron 128 (VA-128) nodded at Rita Moravia and Toad Tarkington, then picked up his phone-. A yeoman appeared almost immediately to collect their orders for processing and a lieutenant commander was right behind. He led them into another office and gave each of them a manual on the A-6E and introduced them to their personal mentors, two lieuten- ants. “These two gentlemen are going to teach you to be credible A-6 crewmen in one week, starting right now. We’ll get your lug- gage over to the BOQ and these guys will drop you there when they get finished tonight.”
Toad’s teacher was a prematurely bald extrovert from New En- gland named Jenks, who began talking about the A-6E’s electronic weapons system — radar, computers, inertial nav, forward-looking infrared and laser ranger- designator — in the car on the three-block trip to the building that housed the simulators. Toad listened si- lently with growing dread.
Jenks continued his monologue as he led Toad across the park- ing lot, lectured on at the security desk while Toad filled out a form to obtain a temporary visitor’s pass, and didn’t pause for breath as they climbed the stairs
