We didn’t speak for a moment.

“OK,” Garber said. “That’s it. No controversy with Kramer himself, and his wife is a civilian crime. It’s out of our hands.”

“Did you know Kramer?” I asked him.

Garber shook his head. “Only by reputation.”

“Which was?”

“Arrogant. He was Armored Branch. The Abrams tank is the best toy in the army. Those guys rule the world, and they know it.”

“Know anything about the wife?”

He made a face. “She spent way too much time at home in Virginia, is what I hear. She was rich, from an old Virginia family. I mean, she did her duty. She spent time on-post in Germany, only when you add it up, it really wasn’t a hell of a lot of time. Like now, XII Corps told me she was home for the holidays, which sounds OK, but actually she came home for Thanksgiving and wasn’t expected back until the spring. So the Kramers weren’t real close, by all accounts. No kids, no shared interests.”

“Which might explain the hooker,” I said. “If they lived separate lives.”

“I guess,” Garber said. “I get the feeling it was a marriage, you know, but it was more window dressing than anything real.”

“What was her name?” Summer asked.

Garber turned to look at her.

“Mrs. Kramer,” he said. “That’s all the name we need to know.”

Summer looked away.

“Who was Kramer traveling to Irwin with?” I asked.

“Two of his guys,” Garber said. “A one-star general and a colonel, Vassell and Coomer. They were a real triumvirate. Kramer, Vassell, and Coomer. The corporate face of Armor.”

He stood up and stretched.

“Start at midnight,” I said to him. “Tell me everything you did.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like coincidences. And neither do you.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Everybody did something,” I said. “Except Kramer.”

Garber looked straight at me.

“I watched the ball drop,” he said. “Then I had another drink. I kissed my daughter. I kissed a whole bunch of people, as I recall. Then I sang ‘Auld Lang Syne.’”

“And then?”

“My office got me on the phone. Told me they’d found out by circuitous means that we had a dead two-star down in North Carolina. Told me the Fort Bird MP duty officer had palmed it off. So I called there, and I got you.”

“And then?”

“You set out to do your thing and I called the town cops and got Kramer’s name. Looked him up and found he was a XII Corps guy. So I called Germany and reported the death, but I kept the details to myself. I told you this already.”

“And then?”

“Then nothing. I waited for your report.”

“OK,” I said.

“OK what?”

“OK, sir?”

“Bullshit,” he said. “What are you thinking?”

“The briefcase,” I said. “I still want to find it.”

“So keep looking for it,” he said. “Until I find Vassell and Coomer. They can tell us whether there was anything in it worth worrying about.”

“You can’t find them?”

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “They checked out of their hotel, but they didn’t fly to California. Nobody seems to know where the hell they are.”

Garber left to drive himself back to town and Summer and I climbed into the car and headed south again. It was cold, and it was getting dark. I offered to take the wheel, but Summer wouldn’t let me. Driving seemed to be her main hobby.

“Colonel Garber seemed tense,” she said. She sounded disappointed, like an actress who had failed an audition.

“He was feeling guilty,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because he killed Mrs. Kramer.”

She just stared at me. She was doing about ninety, looking at me, sideways.

“In a manner of speaking,” I said.

“How?”

“This was no coincidence.”

“That’s not what the doctor told us.”

“Kramer died of natural causes. That’s what the doctor told us. But something about that event led directly to Mrs. Kramer becoming a homicide victim. And Garber set all that in motion. By notifying XII Corps. He put the word out, and within about two hours the widow was dead too.”

“So what’s going on?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” I said.

“And what about Vassell and Coomer?” she said. “They were a threesome. Kramer’s dead, his wife is dead, and the other two are missing.”

“You heard the man. It’s out of our hands.”

“You’re not going to do anything?”

“I’m going to look for a hooker.”

We set off on the most direct route we could find, straight back to the motel and the lounge bar. There was no real choice. First the Beltway, and then I-95. Traffic was light. It was still New Year’s Day. The world outside our windows looked dark and quiet, cold and sleepy. Lights were coming on everywhere. Summer drove as fast as she dared, which was plenty fast. What might have taken Kramer six hours was going to take us less than five. We stopped for gas early, and we bought stale sandwiches that had been made in the previous calendar year. We forced them down as we hustled south. Then I spent twenty minutes watching Summer. She had small neat hands. She had them resting lightly on the wheel. She didn’t blink much. Her lips were slightly parted and every minute or so she would run her tongue across her teeth.

“Talk to me,” I said.

“About what?”

“About anything,” I said. “Tell me the story of your life.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m tired,” I said. “To keep me awake.”

“Not very interesting.”

“Try me,” I said.

So she shrugged and started at the beginning, which was outside of Birmingham, Alabama, in the middle of the sixties. She had nothing bad to say about it, but she gave me the impression that she knew even then there were better ways to grow up than poor and black in Alabama at that time. She had brothers and sisters. She had always been small, but she was nimble, and she parlayed a talent for gymnastics and dancing and jumping rope into a way of getting noticed at school. She was good at the book work too, and had assembled a patchwork of minor scholarships and moved out of state to a college in Georgia. She had joined the ROTC and in her junior year the scholarships ran out and the military picked up the tab in exchange for five years’ future service. She was now halfway through it. She had aced MP school. She sounded comfortable. The military had been integrated for forty years and she said she found it to be the most color-blind place in America. But she was also a little frustrated about her own individual progress. I got the impression her application to the 110th was make-or-break for her. If she got it, she was in for life, like me. If she didn’t, she was out after five.

“Now tell me about your life,” she said.

“Mine?” I said. Mine was different in every way imaginable. Color, gender, geography, family circumstances. “I was born in Berlin. Back then, you stayed in the hospital seven days, so I was one week old when I went into the military. I grew up on every base we’ve got. I went to West Point. I’m still in the military. I always will be. That’s it, really.”

“You got family?”

I recalled the note from my sergeant: Your brother called. No message.

“A mother and a brother,” I said.

“Ever been married?”

“No. You?”

“No,” she said. “Seeing anyone?”

“Not right now.”

“Me either.”

We drove on, a mile, and another.

“Can you imagine a life outside the service?” she asked.

“Is there one?”

“I grew up out there. I might be going back.”

“You civilians are a mystery to me,” I said.

Summer parked outside Kramer’s room, I guessed for authenticity’s sake, a little less than five hours after we left Walter Reed. She seemed satisfied with her average speed. She shut the motor down and smiled.

“I’ll take the lounge bar,” I said. “You speak to the kid in the motel office. Do the good cop thing. Tell him the bad cop is right behind you.”