masts bolted to its roof. It was maybe forty years old. The brick
was dull tan. It was impossible to say whether it had started out
yellow and then faded in the sun or whether it had started
out white and gotten dirty from the traffic fumes. There were
stainless steel letters in an art deco style spelling out North
Carolina State Police all along its length.
We pulled in and parked in front of a pair of glass doors.
Smnmer shut the Humvee down and we sat for a second and
162
then slid out. Crossed a narrow sidewalk and pulled the doors
and stepped inside the facility. It was a typical police place, built
for function and floored with linoleum which was shined every
night whether it needed it or not. The walls had many layers of
slick paint directly over concrete blocks. The air was hot and
smelled faintly of sweat and stewed coffee.
There was a desk guy behind a reception counter. We were
in battledress uniform and our Humvee was visible behind us
through the doors, so he made the connection fast enough. He
didn’t ask for ID or enquire why we were there. He didn’t
speculate as to why General Kramer hadn’t shown up himself.
He just glanced at me and spent a little longer looking at
Summer and then leaned down under his counter and came
back up with the briefcase. It was in a clear plastic bag. Not an
evidence bag. Just some kind of a shopping bag. It had a store’s
name printed across it in red.
The briefcase itself matched Kramer’s suit carrier in every
way. Same colour, same design, same age, same level of wear
and tear, no monogram. I opened it and looked inside. There
was a wallet. There were plane tickets. There was a passport.
There was a paperclipped itinerary three sheets thick. There
was a hardcover book.
There was no conference agenda.
I closed the case up again and laid it down on the counter.
Butted it square with the edge. I was disappointed, but not
surprised.
‘Was it in the plastic bag when the trooper found it?’ I asked.
The desk guy shook his head. He was looking at Summer,
not me.
‘I put it in the bag myself,’ he said. ‘I wanted to keep it clean.
I wasn’t sure how soon someone would get here.’
‘Where exactly was it found?’ I asked him.
He paused a beat and looked away from Summer and ran a
thick fingertip down a desk ledger and across a line to a mile
marker code. Then he turned around and used the same fingertip
on a map. The map was a large-scale plan of North Carolina’s
portion of 1-95 and was long and narrow, like a ribbon five
inches wide. It showed every mile of the highway from where
it entered from South Carolina and exited again into Virginia.
163
The guy’s finger hovered for a second and then came down,
decisively.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Northbound shoulder, a mile past the rest
area, about eleven miles south of where we are right now.’
‘Any way of knowing how long it had been there?’
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘We’re not out there specifically looking
for trash on the shoulders. Stuff can be there a month.’
‘So how was it found?’
‘Routine traffic stop. The trooper just saw it there, walking
from his car to the car he had stopped.’
‘When was this exactly?’
‘Today,’ the guy said. ‘Start of the second watch. Not long
after noon.’
‘It wasn’t there a month,’ I said.
‘When did he lose it?’
‘New Year’s Eve,’! said.
‘Where?’
‘It was stolen from where he was staying.’
‘Where was he staying?’
‘A motel about thirty miles south of here.’
‘So the bad guys were coming back north.’
‘I guess,’ I said.
The guy looked at me like he was asking permission and then
picked the case up with both hands and looked at it like he was
a connoisseur and it was a rare piece. He turned it in the light
and stared at it from every angle.
‘January,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a little night dew right now.