down. Glanced into the car, checked the empty rear seat. Then
he nodded to his partner in the guard shack and the barrier
went up in front of us, very slowly. It was a thick pole with a
counterweight, red and white stripes. Summer waited until it
was exactly vertical and then she dropped the hammer and we
took off in a cloud of blue government-funded smoke from the
Chevy’s rear tyres.
The weather got better as we drove north. We slid out from
under a shelf of low grey cloud into bright winter sunshine. It
was an army car so there was no radio in it. Just a blank panel
where the civilian model would have had AM and FM and a
cassette slot. So we talked from time to time and whiled the rest
away riding in aimless silence. It was a curious feeling, to be
free. I had spent just about my whole life being where the
military told me to be, every minute of every day. Now I felt like
246
a truant. There was a world out there. It was going about its
business, chaotic and untidy and undisciplined, and I was a part
of it, just briefly. I lay back in the seat and watched it spool
by, bright and stroboscopic, random images flashing past like
sunlight on a running river.
‘Do you wear a bikini or a one-piece?’ I asked.
v’hy?’
‘Just checking,’ I said. ‘I was thinking about the beach.’
‘Too cold.’
‘Won’t be in August.’
‘Think you’ll be here in August?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Pity,’ she said. ‘You’ll never know what I wear.’
‘You could mail me a picture.’ Where to?’
‘Fort Leavenworth, probably,’ I said. ‘The maximum security
wing.’
‘No, where will you be? Seriously?’
‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘August is eight months away.’
%Vhere’s the best place you ever served?’
I smiled. Gave her the same answer I give anyone who asks
that question.
‘Right here,’ I said. ‘Right now.’
‘Even with Willard on your back?’
‘Willard’s nothing. He’ll be gone before I am.’
‘Why is he here at all?’
I moved in my seat. ‘My brother figures they’re copying what
corporations do. Know-nothings aren’t invested in the status
qtlO.’
‘So a guy trained to write fuel consumption algorithms winds
up with two dead soldiers in his first week. And he doesn’t want
to investigate either one of them.’
‘Because that would be old-fashioned thinking. We have to
move on. We have to see the big picture.’
She smiled and drove on. Took the Green Valley ramp, going
way too fast.
The Green Valley Police Department had a building north of
town. It was a bigger place than I had expected, because Green
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Valley itself was bigger than I had expected. It encompassed
the pretty centre we had already seen, but then it bulged north
through some country that was mostly strip malls and light
industrial units, almost all the way up to Sperryville. The police
station looked big enough for twenty or thirty cops. It was built
the way most places are where land is cheap. It was long
and low and sprawling, with a one-storey centre core and two
wings. The wings were built at right-angles, so the place was
U-shaped. The facades were concrete, moulded to look like
stone. There was a brown lawn in front and parking lots at both
sides. There was a flagpole dead centre on the lawn. Old Glory
was up there, weather-beaten and limp in the windless air. The
whole place looked a little grand, and a little bleached in the
pale sunlight.
We parked in the right-hand lot in an empty slot between two
white police cruisers. We got out into the brightness. Walked
over to the front doors and went in and asked the desk guy for
Detective Clark. The desk guy made an internal call and then
pointed us towards the left-hand wing. We walked through an
untidy corridor and ended up in a room the size of a basketball
court. Pretty much the whole thing was a detectives’ bullpen.
There was a wooden fence that enclosed a line of four visitor
chairs and then there was a gate with a receptionist’s desk next