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bungalow somewhere. It had no dining table. My mother called
people and had one delivered. It came packed flat in a carton. I tried to help her put it together. All the parts were there. There
was a laminated tabletop, and four chrome legs, and four big
steel bolts. We laid them out on the floor in the dining nook.
The top, four legs, four bolts. But there was no way to fit them
together. No way at all. It was some kind of an inexplicable
design. Nothing would join up. We knelt side by side and
worked on it. We sat cross-legged on the floor, with the dust
bunnies and the cockroaches. The smooth chrome was cold in
my hands. The edges were rough, where the laminate was
shaped on the corners. We couldn’t put it together. Joe came in,
and tried, and failed. My dad tried, and failed. We ate in the
kitchen for a month. We were still trying to put that table
together when we moved out. Now I felt like I was wrestling
with it all over again. Nothing went together. Everything looked
good at first, and then everything stalled and died.
‘The crowbar didn’t walk in by itself,’ Summer said. ‘One of
those twenty-eight names brought it in. Obviously. It can’t have
gotten here any other way.’
I said nothing.
‘Want dinner?’ she said.
‘I think better when I’m hungry,’ I said.
‘We’ve run out of things to think about.’
I nodded. Gathered the twenty-eight medical charts together
and piled them neatly. Put Summer’s original list of thirty-three
names on top. Thirty-three, minus Carbone, because he didn’t
bring the crowbar in himself and commit suicide with it. Minus
the pathologist, because he wasn’t a convincing suspect, and
because he was short, and because his practice swings with the
crowbar had been weak. Minus Vassell and Coomer and their
driver, Marshall, because their alibis were too good. Vassell and
Coomer had been stuffing their faces, and Marshall hadn’t even
come at all.
‘Why wasn’t Marshall here?’ I said.
Summer nodded. ‘That’s always bothered me. It’s like Vassell
and Coomer had something to hide from him.’
‘All they did was eat dinner.’
‘But Marshall must have been right there at Kramer’s funeral
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with them. So they must have specifically told him not to drive
them here. Like a positive order to get out of the car and stay
home.’
I nodded. Pictured the long line of black government sedans
at Arlington National Cemetery, under a leaden January sky.
Pictured the ceremony, the folding of the flag, the salute from
the riflemen. The shuffling procession back to the cars, bareheaded
men with their chins ducked into their collars against
the cold, maybe snow in the air. I pictured Marshall holding the
Mercury’s rear doors, for Vassell first, then for Coomer. He
must have driven them back to the Pentagon lot and then
gotten out and watched Coomer move up into the driver’s seat.
‘We should talk to him,’ I said. ‘Find out exactly what they
told him. What kind of reason they gave him. It must have been
a slightly awkward moment. A blue-eyed boy like that must
have felt a little excluded.’
I picked up the phone and spoke to my sergeant. Asked her
to get a number for Major Marshall. Told her he was a XII
Corps staffer based at the Pentagon. She said she would get
back to me. Summer and I sat quiet and waited. I gazed at the
map on the wall. I figured we should take the pin out of
Columbia. It distorted the picture. Brubaker hadn’t been killed
there. He had been killed somewhere else. North, south, east,
or west.
‘Are you going to call Willard?’ Summer asked me.
‘Probably,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow, maybe.’
‘Not before midnight?’
‘I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.’
‘That’s a risk.’
‘I’m protected,’ I said.
‘Might not last for ever.’
‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll have Delta Force coming after me soon.
That’ll make everything else seem kind of academic.’
‘Call Willard tonight,’ she said. ‘That would be my advice.’
I looked at her.
‘As a friend,’ she said. ‘AWOL is a big deal. No point making