The Enemy Read Free Page A

"Our pathologist would give you a copy of the report with nothing added and nothing deleted. You see anything you're not happy about, we could put the ball right back in your court, no questions asked."
    Stockton said nothing, but I wasn't feeling any hostility coming off him. Some town cops are OK. A big base like Bird puts a lot of ripples into the surrounding civilian world. Therefore MPs spend a lot of time with their civilian counterparts, and sometimes it's a pain in the ass, and sometimes it isn't. I had a feeling Stockton wasn't going to be a huge problem. He was relaxed. Bottom line, he seemed a little lazy to me, and lazy people are always happy to pass their burdens on to someone else.
    "How much?" I said.
    "How much what?"
    "How much would a whore cost here?"
    "Twenty bucks would do it," he said. "There's nothing very exotic available in this neck of the woods."
    "And the room?"
    "Fifteen, probably."
    I rolled the corpse back onto its front. Wasn't easy. It weighed two hundred pounds, at least. "What do you think?" I asked.
    "About what?"
    "About Walter Reed doing the autopsy."
    There was silence for a moment. Stockton looked at the wall. "That might be acceptable," he said.
    There was a knock at the open door. One of the cops from the cars.
    "Medical examiner just called in," he said. "He can't get here for another two hours at least. It's New Year's Eve."
    I smiled. Acceptable was about to change to highly desirable. Two hours from now Stockton would need to be somewhere else. A whole bunch of parties would be breaking up and the roads would be mayhem.
    Two hours from now he would be begging me to haul the old guy away. I said nothing and the cop went back to wait in his car and Stockton moved all the way into the room and stood facing the draped window with his back to the corpse. I took the hanger with the uniform coat on it and lifted it out of the closet and hung it on the bathroom door frame where the hallway light fell on it.
    Looking at a Class A coat is like reading a book or sitting next to a guy in a bar and hearing his whole life story. This one was the right size for the body on the bed and it had Kramer on the name plate, which matched the dog tags. It had a Purple Heart ribbon with two bronze oak leaf clusters to denote a second and third award of the medal, which matched the scars. It had two silver stars on the epaulettes, which confirmed he was a major general. The branch insignia on the lapels denoted Armor and the shoulder patch was from XII Corps. Apart from that there were a bunch of unit awards and a whole salad bowl of medal ribbons dating way back through Vietnam and Korea, some of which he had probably earned the hard way, and some of which he probably hadn't. Some of them were foreign awards, whose display was authorized but not compulsory. It was a very full coat, relatively old, well cared for, standard issue, not privately tailored. Taken as a whole it told me he was professionally vain, but not personally vain.
    I went through the pockets. They were all empty, except for a key to the rental car. It was attached to a key ring in the shape of a figure 1, which was made out of clear plastic and contained a slip of paper with Hertz printed in yellow at the top and a plate number written by hand in black ballpoint underneath.
    There was no wallet. No loose change.
    I put the coat back in the closet and checked the pants. Nothing in the pockets. I checked the shoes. Nothing in them except the socks. I checked the hat. Nothing hidden underneath it. I lifted the suit carrier out and opened it on the floor. It contained a battledress uniform and an M43 field cap. A change of socks and underwear and a pair of shined combat boots, plain black leather. There was an empty compartment that I figured was for the Dopp kit. Nothing else. Nothing at all. I closed it up and put it back. Squatted down and looked under the bed. Saw nothing.
    "Anything we should worry about?" Stockton asked.
    I stood up.