The dead woman had long gray hair. She was wearing an elaborate white flannel nightgown. She was on her side. Her feet were near the study door. Her arms and legs had sprawled in a way that made it look like she was running. There was a shotgun half underneath her. One side of her head was caved in. I could see blood and brains matted in her hair. More blood had pooled on the oak. It looked dark and sticky.

I stepped into the hallway and stopped an arm's length from her. I squatted down and reached for her wrist. Her skin was very cold. There was no pulse.

I stayed down. Listened. Heard nothing. I leaned over and looked at her head. She had been hit with something hard and heavy. Just a single blow, but a serious one. The wound was in the shape of a trench. Nearly an inch wide, maybe four inches long. It had come from the left side, and above. She had been facing the back of the house. Facing the kitchen. I glanced around and dropped her wrist and stood up and stepped into the den. A Persian carpet covered most of the floor. I stood on it and imagined I was hearing quiet tense footsteps coming down the hallway, toward me. Imagined I was still holding the wrecking bar I had used to force the lock. Imagined swinging it when my target stepped into view, on her way past the open doorway.

I looked down. There was a stripe of blood and hair on the carpet. The wrecking bar had been wiped on it.

Nothing else in the room was disturbed. It was an impersonal space. It looked like it was there because they had heard a family house should have a study. Not because they actually needed one. The desk was not set up for working. There were photographs in silver frames all over it. But fewer than I would have expected, from a long marriage. There was one that showed the dead man from the motel and the dead woman from the hallway standing together with the Mount Rushmore faces blurry in the background. General and Mrs. Kramer, on vacation. He was much taller than she was. He looked strong and vigorous. She looked petite in comparison.

There was another framed photograph showing Kramer himself in uniform. The picture was a few years old. He was standing at the top of the steps, about to climb into a C-130 transport plane. It was a color photograph. His uniform was green, the airplane was brown. He was smiling and waving. Off to assume his one-star command, I guessed. There was a second picture, almost identical, a little newer. Kramer, at the top of a set of airplane steps, turning back, smiling and waving. Off to assume his two-star command, probably. In both pictures he was waving with his right hand. In both pictures his left held the same canvas suit carrier I had seen in the motel room closet. And above it, in both pictures, tucked up under his arm, was a matching canvas briefcase.

I stepped out to the hallway again. Listened hard. Heard nothing. I could have searched the house, but I didn't need to. I was pretty sure there was nobody in it and I knew there was nothing I needed to find. So I took a last look at the Kramer widow. I could see the soles of her feet. She hadn't been a widow for long. Maybe an hour, maybe three. I figured the blood on the floor was about twelve hours old. But it was impossible to be precise. That would have to wait until the doctors arrived.

I retreated through the kitchen and went back outside and walked around to find Summer. Sent her inside to take a look. It was quicker than a verbal explanation. She came out again four minutes later, looking calm and composed. Score one for Summer, I thought.

"You like coincidences?" she said.

I said nothing.

"We have to go to D.C.," she said. "To Walter Reed. We have to make them double-check Kramer's autopsy."

I said nothing.

"This makes his death automatically suspicious. I mean, what are the chances? It's one in forty or fifty thousand that an individual soldier will die on any given day, but to have his wife die on the same day? For her to be a homicide victim on the same day?"

"Wasn't the same day," I said. "Wasn't even the same year."

She nodded. "OK, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day. But that just makes my point. It's inconceivable that Walter Reed had a pathologist scheduled to work last night. So they had to drag one in, specially. And from where? From a party, probably."

I smiled, briefly. "So you want us to go up there and say, hey, are you sure your doc could see straight last night? Sure he wasn't too juiced up to spot the difference between a heart attack and a homicide?"

"We have to check," she said. "I don't like coincidences."

"What do you think happened in there?"

"Intruder," she said. "Mrs. Kramer was woken up by the noise at the door, got out of bed, grabbed a shotgun she kept near at hand, came downstairs, headed for the kitchen. She was a brave lady."

I nodded. Generals' wives, tough as they come.

"But she was slow," Summer said. "The intruder was already all the way into the study and was able to get her from the side. With the crowbar he had used on the door. As she walked past. He was taller than she was, maybe by a foot, probably right-handed."

I said nothing.

"So are we going to Walter Reed?"

"I think we have to," I said. "We'll go as soon as we've finished here."

We called the Green Valley cops from a wall phone we found in the kitchen. Then we called Garber and gave him the news. He said he would meet us at the hospital. Then we waited. Summer watched the front of the house, and I watched the back. Nothing happened. The cops came within seven minutes. They made a tight little convoy, two marked cruisers, a detective's car, an ambulance. They had lights and sirens going. We heard them a mile away. They howled into the driveway and then shut down. Summer and I stepped back in the sudden silence and they all swarmed past us. We had no role. A general's wife is a civilian, and the house was inside a civilian jurisdiction. Normally I wouldn't let such fine distinctions get in my way, but the place had already told me what I needed to know. So I was prepared to stand back and earn some Brownie points by doing it by the book. Brownie points might come in useful later.

A patrolman watched us for twenty long minutes while the other cops poked around inside. Then a detective in a suit came out to take our statements. We told him about Kramer's heart attack, the widow trip, the banging door. His name was Clark and he had no problem with anything we had to say. His problem was the same as Summer's. Both Kramers had died miles apart on the same night, which was a coincidence, and he didn't like coincidences any better than Summer did. I started to feel sorry for Rick Stockton, the deputy chief down in North Carolina. His decision to let me haul Kramer's body away was going to look bad, in this new light. It put half the puzzle in the military's hands. It was going to set up a conflict.

We gave Clark a phone number where he could reach us at Bird, and then we got back in the car. I figured D.C. was another seventy miles. Another hour and ten. Maybe less, the way Summer drove. She took off and found the highway again and put her foot down until the Chevy was vibrating fit to bust.

"I saw the briefcase in the photographs," she said. "Did you?"

"Yes," I said.

"Does it upset you to see dead people?"

"No," I said.

"Why not?"

"I don't know. You?"

"It upsets me a little."

I said nothing.

"You think it was a coincidence?" she said.

"No," I said. "I don't believe in coincidences."

"So you think the postmortem missed something?"

"No," I said again. "I think the postmortem was probably accurate."

"So why are we driving all the way to D.C.?"

"Because I need to apologize to the pathologist. I dropped him in it by sending him Kramer's body. Now he's going to have wall-to-wall civilians bugging him for a month. That will piss him off big time."

But the pathologist was a her, not a him, and she had such a sunny disposition that I doubted anything could piss her off for long. We met with her in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center 's reception area, four o'clock in the afternoon, New Year's Day. It looked like any other hospital lobby. There were holiday decorations hanging from the ceilings. They already looked a little tired. Garber was already there. He was sitting on a plastic chair. He was a small man and didn't seem uncomfortable. But he was quiet. He didn't introduce himself to Summer. She stood next to him. I leaned on the wall. The doctor faced us with a sheaf of notes in her hand, like she was lecturing a small group of keen students. Her name badge read Sam McGowan, and she was young and dark, and brisk, and open.

"General Kramer died of natural causes," she said. "Heart attack, last night, after eleven, before midnight. There's no possibility of doubt. I'm happy to be audited if you want, but it would be a complete waste of time. His toxicology was absolutely clear. The evidence of ventricular fibrillation is indisputable and his arterial plaque was monumental. So forensically, your only tentative question might be whether by coincidence someone electrically stimulated fibrillation in a man almost certain to suffer it anyway within minutes or hours or days or weeks."

"How would it be done?" Summer asked.

McGowan shrugged. "The skin would have to be wet over a large area. The guy would have to be in a bathtub, basically. Then, if you applied wall current to the water, you'd probably get fibrillation without burn marks. But the guy wasn't in a bathtub, and there's no evidence he ever had been."

"What if his skin wasn't wet?"

"Then I'd have seen burn injuries. And I didn't, and I went over every inch of him with a magnifying glass. No burns, no hypodermic marks, no nothing."

"What about shock, or surprise, or fear?"

The doctor shrugged again. "Possible, but we know what he was doing, don't we? That kind of sudden sexual excitement is a classic trigger."

Nobody spoke.

"Natural causes, folks," McGowan said. "Just a big old heart attack. Every pathologist in the world could take a look at him and there would be one hundred percent agreement. I absolutely guarantee it."

"OK," Garber said. "Thanks, Doc."

"I apologize," I said. "You're going to have to repeat all that to about two dozen civilian cops, every day for a couple of weeks."

She smiled. "I'll print up an official statement."

Then she looked at each of us in turn in case we had more questions. We didn't, so she smiled once more and swept away through a door. It sucked shut behind her and the ceiling decorations rustled and stilled and the reception area went quiet.

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."

We slid out into the cold and the dark. The fog was back. The streetlights burned through it. I stretched and yawned and then straightened my coat and watched Summer head past the Coke machine. Her skin flared red as she stepped through its glow. I crossed the road and headed for the bar.

The lot was as full as it had been the night before. Cars and trucks were parked all around the building. The ventilators were working hard again. I could see smoke and smell beer in the air. I could hear music thumping away. The neon was bright.

I pulled the door and stepped into the noise. The crowd was wall-to-wall again. The same spotlights were burning. There was a different girl naked on the stage. There was the same barrel-chested guy half in shadow behind the register. I couldn't see his face, but I knew he was looking at my lapels. Where Kramer had worn Armored's crossed cavalry sabers with a charging tank over them, I had the Military Police's crossed flintlock pistols, gold and shiny. Not the most popular sight, in a place like that.

"Cover charge," the guy at the register said.

It was hard to hear him. The music was very loud.

"How much?" I said.

"Hundred dollars," he said.

"I don't think so."

"OK, two hundred dollars."

"Hilarious," I said.

"I don't like cops in here."

"Can't think why," I said.

"Look at me."

I looked at him. There was nothing much to see. The edge of a downlighter beam lit up a big stomach and a big chest and thick, short, tattooed forearms. And hands the size and shape of frozen chickens with heavy silver rings on most of the fingers. But the guy's shoulders and his face were in deep shadow above them. Like he was half-hidden by a curtain. I was talking to a guy I couldn't see.

"You're not welcome here," he said.

"I'll get over it. I'm not an unduly sensitive person."

"You're not listening," he said. "This is my place and I don't want you in it."

"I'll be quick."

"Leave now."

"No."

"Look at me."

He leaned forward into the light. Slowly. The downlighter beam rode up his chest. Up his neck. Onto his face. It was an incredible face. It had started out ugly and it had gotten much worse. He had straight razor scars all over it. They crisscrossed it like a lattice. They were deep and white and old. His nose had been busted and badly reset and busted again and badly reset again, many times over. He had brows thick with scar tissue. Two small eyes were staring out at me from under them. He was maybe forty. Maybe five-ten, maybe three hundred pounds. He looked like a gladiator who had survived twenty years, deep inside the catacombs.

I smiled. "This thing with the face is supposed to impress me? With the dramatic lighting and all?"

"It should tell you something."

"It tells me you lost a lot of fights. You want to lose another, that's fine with me."

He said nothing.

"Or I could put this place off-limits to every enlisted man at Bird. I could see what that does to your bar profits."

He said nothing.

"But I don't want to do that," I said. "No reason to penalize my guys, just because you're an asshole."

He said nothing.

"So I guess I'll ignore you."

He sat back. The shadow slid back into place, like a curtain.

"I'll see you later," he said, from out of the darkness. "Somewhere, sometime. That's for sure. That's a promise. You can count on that."

"Now I'm scared," I said. I moved on and pressed into the crowd. I made it through a packed bottleneck and into the main part of the building. It was much bigger inside than it had looked. It was a big low square, full of noise and people. There were dozens of separate areas. Speakers everywhere. Loud music. Flashing lights. There were plenty of civilians in there. Plenty of military too. I could spot them by their haircuts, and their clothes. Off-duty soldiers always dress distinctively. They try to look like everybody else, and they fail. They're always a little clean and out-of-date. They were all looking at me as I passed them by. They weren't pleased to see me. I looked for a sergeant. Looked for a few lines around the eyes. I saw four likely candidates, six feet back from the edge of the main stage. Three of them saw me and turned away. The fourth saw me and paused for a second and then turned toward me. Like he knew he had been selected. He was a compact guy maybe five years older than me. Special Forces, probably. There were plenty of them at Bird, and he had the look. He was having a good time. That was clear. He had a smile on his face and a bottle in his hand. Cold beer, dewy with moisture. He raised it, like a toast, like an invitation to approach. So I went up close to him and spoke in his ear.

"Spread the word for me," I said. "This is nothing official. Nothing to do with our guys. Something else entirely."

"Like what?" he said.

"Lost property," I said. "Nothing important. Everything's cool."

He said nothing.

"Special Forces?" I said.

He nodded. "Lost property?"

"No big deal," I said. "Just something that went missing across the street."

He thought about it and then he raised his bottle again and clinked it against where mine would have been if I had bought one. It was a clear display of acceptance. Like a mime, in all the noise. But even so a thin stream of men started up, shuffling toward the exit. Maybe twenty grunts left during my first two minutes in the room. MPs have that effect. No wonder the guy with the face didn't want me in there.

A waitress came up to me. She was wearing a black T-shirt cut off about four inches below the neck and black shorts cut off about four inches below the waist and black shoes with very high heels. Nothing else. She stood there and looked at me until I ordered something. I asked for a Bud, and I paid about eight times its value. Took a couple of sips, and then went looking for whores.

They found me first. I guess they wanted me out of sight before I emptied the place completely. Before I reduced their customer base to zero. Two of them came straight at me. One was a platinum blonde. The other was a brunette. Both were wearing tiny tight sheath dresses that sparkled with all kinds of synthetic fibers. The blonde got in front of the brunette and headed her off. Came clattering straight toward me, awkward in absurd clear plastic heels. The brunette wheeled away and headed for the Special Forces sergeant I had spoken to. He waved her off with what looked like an expression of genuine distaste. The blonde kept on track and came right up next to me and leaned on my arm. Stretched up tall until I could feel her breath in my ear.

"Happy New Year," she said.

"You too," I said.

"I haven't seen you in here before," she said, like I was the only thing missing from her life. Her accent wasn't local. She wasn't from the Carolinas. She wasn't from California either. Georgia or Alabama, probably.

"You new in town?" she asked, loud, because of the music.

I smiled. I had been in more whorehouses than I cared to count. All MPs have. Every single one is the same, and every single one is different. They all have different protocols. But the Are you new in town? question was a standard opening gambit. It invited me to start the negotiations. It insulated her from a solicitation charge.

"What's the deal here?" I asked her.

She smiled shyly, like she had never been asked such a thing before. Then she told me I could watch her onstage in exchange for dollar tips, or I could spend ten to get a private show in a back room. She explained the private show could involve touching, and to make sure I was paying attention she ran her hand up the inside of my thigh.


I could see how a guy could be tempted. She was cute. She looked to be about twenty. Except for her eyes. Her eyes looked like a fifty-year-old's.

"What about something more?" I said. "Someplace else we could go?"

"We can talk about that during the private show."

She took me by the hand and led me past their dressing room door and through a velvet curtain into a dim room behind the stage. It wasn't small. It was maybe thirty feet by twenty. It had an upholstered bench running around the whole perimeter. It wasn't especially private either. There were about six guys in there, each of them with a naked woman on his lap. The blonde girl led me to a space on the bench and sat me down. She waited until I came out with my wallet and paid her ten bucks. Then she draped herself over me and snuggled in tight. The way she sat made it impossible for me not to put my hand on her thigh. Her skin was warm and smooth.

"So where can we go?" I asked.

"You're in a hurry," she said. She moved around and eased the hem of her dress up over her hips. She wasn't wearing anything under it.

"Where are you from?" I asked her.

" Atlanta," she said.

"What's your name?"

"Sin," she said. "Spelled S, i, n."

I was fairly certain that was a professional alias.

"What's yours?" she said.

"Reacher," I said. There was no point adopting an alias of my own. I was fresh from the widow visit, still in Class As, with my nameplate big and obvious on my right jacket pocket.

"That's a nice name," she said, automatically. I was fairly certain she said it to everybody. Quasimodo, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, that's a nice name. She moved her hand. Started with the top button of my jacket and undid it all the way down. Smoothed her fingers inside across my chest, under my tie, on top of my shirt.

"There's a motel across the street," I said.

She nodded against my shoulder.

"I know there is," she said.

"I'm looking for whoever went over there last night with a soldier."

"Are you kidding?"

"No."

She pushed against my chest. "Are you here to have fun, or ask questions?"

"Questions," I said.

She stopped moving. Said nothing.

"I'm looking for whoever went over to the motel last night with a soldier."

"Get real," she said. "We all go over to the motel with soldiers. There's practically a groove worn in the pavement. Look carefully, and you can see it."

"I'm looking for someone who came back a little sooner than normal, maybe."

She said nothing.

"Maybe she was a little spooked."

She said nothing.

"Maybe she met the guy there," I said. "Maybe she got a call earlier in the day."

She eased her butt up off my knee and pulled her dress down as far as it would go, which wasn't very far. Then she traced her fingertips across my lapel badge.

"We don't answer questions," she said.

"Why not?"

I saw her glance at the velvet curtain. Like she was looking through it and all the way across the big square room to the register by the door.

"Him?" I said. "I'll make sure he isn't a problem."

"He doesn't like us to talk to cops."

"It's important," I said. "The guy was an important soldier."

"You all think you're important."

"Any of the girls here from California?"

"Five or six, maybe."

"Any of them used to work Fort Irwin?"

"I don't know."

"So here's the deal," I said. "I'm going to the bar. I'm going to get another beer. I'm going to spend ten minutes drinking it. You bring me the girl who had the problem last night. Or you show me where I can find her. Tell her there's no real problem. Tell her nobody will get in trouble. I think you'll find she understands that."

"Or?"

"Or I'll roust everybody out of here and I'll burn the place to the ground. Then you can all find jobs somewhere else."

She glanced at the velvet curtain again.

"Don't worry about the fat guy," I said. "Any pissing and moaning out of him, I'll bust his nose again."

She just sat still. Didn't move at all.

"It's important," I said again. "We fix this now, nobody gets in trouble. We don't, then someone winds up with a big problem."

"I don't know," she said.

"Spread the word," I said. "Ten minutes."

I bumped her off my lap and watched her disappear through the curtain. Followed her a minute later and fought my way to the bar. I left my jacket hanging open. I thought it made me look off duty. I didn't want to ruin everybody's evening.

I spent twelve minutes drinking another overpriced domestic beer. I watched the waitresses and the hookers work the room. I saw the big guy with the face moving through the press of people, looking here, looking there, checking on things. I waited. My new blonde friend didn't show. And I couldn't see her anywhere. The place was very crowded. And it was dark. The music was thumping away. There were strobes and black lights and the whole scene was confusion. The ventilation fans were roaring but the air was hot and foul. I was tired and I was getting a headache. I slid off my stool and tried a circuit of the whole place. Couldn't find the blonde anywhere. I went around again. Didn't find her. The Special Forces sergeant I had spoken to before stopped me halfway through my third circuit.

"Looking for your girlfriend?" he said.

I nodded. He pointed at the dressing room door.

"I think you just caused her some trouble," he said.

"What kind of trouble?"

He said nothing. Just held up his left palm and smacked his right fist into it.

"And you didn't do anything?" I said.

He shrugged.

"You're the cop," he said. "Not me."

The dressing room door was a plain plywood rectangle painted black. I didn't knock. I figured the women who used the room weren't shy. I just pulled it open and stepped inside. There were regular lightbulbs burning in there, and piles of clothes, and the stink of perfume. There were vanity tables with theater mirrors. There was an old sofa, red velvet. Sin was sitting on it, crying. She had a vivid red outline of a hand on her left cheek. Her right eye was swollen shut. I figured it for a double slap, first forehand, then backhand. Two heavy blows. She was pretty shaken. Her left shoe was off. I could see needle marks between her toes. Addicts in the skin trades often inject there. It rarely shows. Models, hookers, actresses.

I didn't ask if she was OK. That would have been a stupid question. She was going to live, but she wasn't going to work for a week. Not until the eye went black and then turned yellow enough to hide with makeup. I just stood there until she saw me, through the eye that was still open.

"Get out," she said.

She looked away.

"Bastard," she said.

"You find the girl yet?" I said.

She looked straight at me.

"There was no girl," she said. "I asked all around. I asked everybody. And that's what I heard back. Nobody had a problem last night. Nobody at all."

I paused a beat. "Anyone not here who should be?"

"We're all here. We've all got Christmas to pay for."

I didn't speak.

"You got me slapped for nothing," she said.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry for your trouble."

"Get out," she said again, not looking at me.

"OK," I said.

"Bastard," she said.

I left her sitting there and forced my way back through the crowd around the stage. Through the crowd around the bar. Through the bottleneck entrance, to the doorway. The guy with the face was right there in the shadows again, behind the register. I guessed where his head was in the darkness and swung my open right hand and slapped him on the ear, hard enough to rock him sideways.

"You," I said. "Outside."

I didn't wait for him. Just pushed my way out into the night. There was a bunched-up crowd of people in the lot. All military. The ones who had trickled out when I came in. They were standing around in the cold, leaning on cars, drinking beer from the long-neck bottles they had carried out with them. They weren't going to be a problem. They would have to be very drunk indeed to mix it up with an MP. But they weren't going to be any help either. I wasn't one of them. I was on my own.

The door burst open behind me. The big guy came out. He had a couple of locals with him. Both looked like farmers. We all stepped into a pool of yellow light from a fixture on a pole. We all faced each other. Our breath turned to vapor in the air. Nobody spoke. No preamble was required. I guessed that parking lot had seen plenty of fights. I guessed this one would be no different from all the others. It would finish up just the same, with a winner and a loser.

I slipped out of my jacket and hung it on the nearest car's door mirror. It was a ten-year-old Plymouth, good paint, good chrome. An enthusiast's ride. I saw the Special Forces sergeant I had spoken to come out into the lot. He looked at me for a second and then stepped away into the shadows and stood with his men by the cars. I took my watch off and turned away and dropped it in my jacket pocket. Then I turned back. Studied my opponent. I wanted to mess him up bad. I wanted Sin to know I had stood up for her. But there was no percentage in going for his face. That was already messed up bad. I couldn't make it much worse. And I wanted to put him out of action for a spell. I didn't want him coming around and taking his frustration out on the girls, just because he couldn't get back at me.

He was barrel-chested and overweight, so I figured I might not have to use my hands at all. Except on the farmers, maybe, if they piled in. Which I hoped wouldn't happen. No need to start a big conflict. On the other hand, it was their call. Everybody has a choice in life. They could hang back, or they could choose up sides.

I was maybe seven inches taller than the guy with the face, but maybe seventy pounds lighter. And ten years younger. I watched him run the numbers. Watched him conclude that on balance he would be OK. I guessed he figured himself for a real junkyard dog. Figured me for an upstanding representative of Uncle Sam. Maybe the Class As made him think I was going to act like an officer and a gentleman. Somewhat proper, somewhat inhibited.

His mistake.

He came at me, swinging. Big chest, short arms, not much reach at all. I arched around the punch and let him skitter away. He came back at me. I swatted his hand away and tapped him in the face with my elbow. Not hard. I just wanted to stop his momentum and get him standing still right in front of me, just for a moment.

He put all his weight on his back foot and lined up a straight drive aimed for my face. It was going to be a big blow. It would have hurt me if it had landed. But before he let it go I stepped in and smashed my right heel into his right kneecap. The knee is a fragile joint. Ask any athlete. This guy had three hundred pounds bearing down on it and he got two hundred thirty driving straight through it. His patella shattered and his leg folded backward. Exactly like a regular knee joint, but in reverse. He went down forward and the top of his boot came up to meet the front of his thigh. He screamed, real loud. I stepped back and smiled. He shoots, he scores.

I stepped back in and looked at the guy's knee, carefully. It was messed up, but good. Broken bone, ripped ligaments, torn cartilage. I thought about kicking it again, but I really didn't need to. He was in line for a visit to the cane store, as soon as they let him out of the orthopedic ward. He was going to be choosing a lifetime supply. Wood, aluminum, short, long, his pick.

"I'll come back and do the other one," I said. "If anything happens that I don't want to happen."

I don't think he heard me. He was writhing around in an oily puddle, panting and whimpering, trying to get his knee in a position where it would stop killing him. He was shit out of luck there. He was going to have to wait for surgery.

The farmers were busy choosing up sides. Both of them were pretty dumb. But one of them was dumber than the other. Slower. He was flexing his big red hands. I stepped in and headbutted him full in the face, to help with the decision-making process. He went down, head-to-toe with the big guy, and his pal beat a fast retreat behind the nearest pickup truck. I lifted my jacket off the Plymouth 's door mirror and shrugged back into it. Took my watch out of my pocket. Strapped it back on my wrist. The soldiers drank their beer and looked at me, nothing in their faces. They were neither pleased nor disappointed. They had invested nothing in the outcome. Whether it was me or the other guys on the ground was all the same to them.

I saw Lieutenant Summer on the fringe of the crowd. Threaded my way through cars and people toward her. She looked tense. She was breathing hard. I guessed she had been watching. I guessed she had been ready to jump in and help me out.

"What happened?" she said.

"The fat guy hit a woman who was asking questions for me. His pal didn't run away fast enough."

She glanced at them and then back at me. "What did the woman say?"

"She said nobody had a problem last night."

"The kid in the motel still denies there was a hooker with Kramer. He's pretty definite about it."

I heard Sin say: You got me slapped for nothing. Bastard.

"So what made him go looking in the room?"

Summer made a face. "That was my big question, obviously."

"Did he have an answer?"

"Not at first. Then he said it was because he heard a vehicle leaving in a hurry."

"What vehicle?"

"He said it was a big engine, revving hard, taking off fast, like a panic situation."

"Did he see it?"

Summer just shook her head.

"Makes no sense," I said. "A vehicle implies a call girl, and I doubt if they have many call girls here. And why would Kramer need a call girl anyway, with all those other hookers right here in the bar?"

Summer was still shaking her head. "The kid says the vehicle had a very distinctive sound. Very loud. And diesel, not gasoline. He says he heard the exact same sound again a little later on."

"When?"

"When you left in your Humvee."

"What?"

Summer looked right at me. "He says he checked Kramer's room because he heard a military vehicle peeling out of the lot in a panic."