‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe in coincidences.’
‘So you think the post-mortem missed something?’
‘No,’ I said again. ‘I think the post-mortem 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 had arrived before us. 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.’
47
‘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 per cent 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
48
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