but the database brought them back as the husband’s. And the
ratio of hers to his suggests he was hardly there over the last
five years or so. Is that usual?’
‘He’ll have stayed on post a lot,’ I said. ‘But he should have
been home for the holidays every year. The story here is that
the marriage wasn’t so great.’
‘People like that should just go ahead and get divorced,’
Clark said. ‘I mean, that’s not a dealbreaker even for a general,
right?’
‘Not that I’ve heard,’ I said. ‘Not any more.’
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Then he went quiet for a minute. He was thinking.
‘How bad was the marriage?’ he asked. ‘Bad enough that we
should be looking at the husband for the doer?’
‘The timing doesn’t work,’ I said. ‘He was dead when it
happened.’
‘Was there money involved?’
‘Nice house,’ I said. ‘Probably hers.’
‘So what about a paid hit, maybe set up way ahead of time?’
Now he was really clutching at straws.
‘He’d have arranged it for when he was away in Germany.’
Clark said nothing to that.
‘Who called you for this progress report?’ I asked him.
‘You did,’ he said. ‘An hour ago.’
‘I don’t recall doing that.’
‘Not you personally,’ he said. ‘Your people. It was the little
black chick I met at the scene. Your lieutenant. I was too busy
to talk. She gave me a number, but I left it somewhere. So I
called back on the number you gave me originally. Did I do
wrong?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You did fine. Sorry we can’t help you.’
We hung up. I sat quiet for a moment and then I buzzed my
corporal.
‘Ask Lieutenant Summer to come see me,’ I said.
Summer showed up inside ten minutes. She was in BDUs and
between her face and her body language I could see she was
feeling a little nervous of me and a little contemptuous of me all
at the same time. I let her sit down and then I launched right
into it.
‘Detective Clark called back,’ I said.
She said nothing.
‘You disobeyed my direct order,’ I said.
She said nothing.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Why did you give me the order?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘Because you’re toeing Willard’s line.’
‘He’s the CO,’ I said. ‘It’s a good line to toe.’
‘I don’t agree.’
158
‘You’re in the army now, Summer. You don’t obey orders just
because you agree with them.’
‘We don’t cover things up just because we’re told to, either.’
‘We do,’ I said. 5Ve do that all the time. We always have.’
‘Well, we shouldn’t.’
‘Who made you Chief of Staff?’
‘It’s unfair to Carbone and Mrs Kramer,’ she said. ‘They’re
innocent victims.’
I paused. ‘Why did you start with Mrs Kramer? You see her
as more important than Carbone?’
Summer shook her head. ‘I didn’t start with Mrs Kramer. I
got to her second. I had already started on Carbone. I went
through the personnel lists and the gate log and marked who
was here at the time and who wasn’t.’
‘You gave me that paperwork.’
‘I copied it first.’
‘You’re an idiot,’ I said.
‘Why? Because I’m not chicken?’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘So next year you’ll be twenty-six. You’ll
be a twenty-six-year-old black woman with a dishonourable
discharge from the only career you’ve ever had. Meanwhile the
civilian job market will be flooded because of force reduction
and you’ll be competing with people with chests full of medals
and pockets full of testimonials. So what are you going to do?
Starve? Go work up at the strip club with Sin?’
She said nothing.
‘You should have left it to me,’ I said.
‘You weren’t doing anything.’
‘I’m glad you thought so,’ I said. ‘That was the plan.’
‘What?’
‘I’m going to take Willard on,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be him or
me.’
She said nothing.
‘I work for the army,’ I said. ‘Not for Willard. I believe in the
army. I don’t believe in Willard. I’m not going to let him trash
everything.’
She said nothing.
159
‘I told him not to make an enemy out of me. But he didn’t