“Probably not,” I said. “Being dead and all.”

Garber didn’t answer that.

“How long was he over here for?” I said.

“He was due back in Germany inside a week.”

“What’s his full name?”

“Kenneth Robert Kramer.”

“I bet you know his date of birth,” I said. “And where he was born.”

“So?”

“And his flight numbers and his seat assignments. And what the government paid for the tickets. And whether or not he requested a vegetarian meal. And what exact room Irwin VOQ was planning on putting him in.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is, why don’t I know all that stuff too?”

“Why would you?” Garber said. “I’ve been working the phones and you’ve been poking around in a motel.”

“You know what?” I said. “Every time I go anywhere I’ve got a wad of airplane tickets and travel warrants and reservations and if I’m flying in from overseas I’ve got a passport. And if I’m going to a conference I’ve got a briefcase full of all kinds of other crap to carry them in.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying there were things missing from the motel room. Tickets, reservations, passport, itinerary. Collectively, the kind of things a person would carry in a briefcase.”

Garber didn’t respond.

“He had a suit carrier,” I said. “Green canvas, brown leather bindings. A buck gets ten he had a briefcase to match. His wife probably chose them both. Probably got them mail-order from L.L.Bean. Maybe for Christmas, ten years ago.”

“And the briefcase wasn’t there?”

“He probably kept his wallet in it too, when he was wearing Class As. As many medal ribbons as this guy had, it makes the inside pocket tight.”

“So?”

“I think the hooker saw where he put his wallet after he paid her. Then they got down to business, and he croaked, and she saw a little extra profit for herself. I think she stole his briefcase.”

Garber was quiet for a moment.

“Is this going to be a problem?” he asked.

“Depends what else was in the briefcase,” I said.

two

I put the phone down and saw a note my sergeant had left me: Your brother called. No message. I folded the note once and dropped it in the trash. Then I headed back to my quarters and got three hours’ sleep. Got up again fifty minutes before first light. I was back at the motel just as dawn was breaking. Morning didn’t make the neighborhood look any better. It was depressed and abandoned for miles around. And quiet. Nothing was stirring. Dawn on New Year’s Day is as close as any inhabited place gets to absolute stillness. The highway was deserted. There was no traffic. None at all.

The diner at the truck stop was open but empty. The motel office was empty. I walked down the row to the last-but-one room. Kramer’s room. The door was locked. I stood with my back to it and pretended I was a hooker whose client had just died. I had pushed his weight off me and dressed fast and grabbed his briefcase and I was running away with it. What would I do? I wasn’t interested in the briefcase itself. I wanted the cash in the wallet, and maybe the American Express card. So I would rifle through and grab the cash and the card and ditch the bag itself. But where would I do that?

Inside the room would have been best. But I hadn’t done it there, for some reason. Maybe I was panicking. Maybe I was shocked and spooked and just wanted to get the hell out, fast. So where else? I looked straight ahead at the lounge bar. That was probably where I was going. That was probably where I was based. But I wouldn’t carry the briefcase in there. My co-workers would notice, because I was already carrying a big purse. Hookers always carry big purses. They’ve got a lot of stuff to haul around. Condoms, massage oils, maybe a gun or a knife, maybe a credit card machine. That’s the easiest way to spot a hooker. Look for someone dressed like she’s going to a ball, carrying a bag like she’s going on vacation.

I looked to my left. Maybe I walked around behind the motel. It would be quiet back there. All the windows faced that way, but it was night and I could count on the drapes being closed. I turned left and left again and came out behind the bedrooms on a rectangle of scrubby weeds that ran the length of the building and was about twenty feet deep. I imagined walking fast and then stopping in deep shadow and going through the bag by feel. I imagined finding what I wanted and heaving the bag away into the darkness. I might have thrown it thirty feet.

I stood where she might have stood and scoped out a quarter circle. It gave me about a hundred and fifty square feet to check. The ground was stony and nearly frozen by overnight frost. I found plenty of stuff. I found trash and used needles and foil crack pipes and a Buick hubcap and a skateboard wheel. But I didn’t find a briefcase.

There was a wooden fence at the rear of the lot. It was about six feet tall. I jacked myself up on it and looked over. Saw another rectangle of weeds and stones. No briefcase. I got down off the fence and walked onward and came up on the motel office from the back. There was a window made of dirty pebbled glass that I guessed let into the staff bathroom. Underneath it were a dozen trashed air conditioners all stacked in a low pile. They were rusty. They hadn’t been moved in years. I walked on and came around the corner and turned left into a weedy gravel patch with a Dumpster on it. I opened the lid. It was three-quarters full of garbage. No briefcase.

I crossed the street and walked through the empty lot and looked at the lounge bar. It was silent and closed up tight. Its neon signs were all switched off and the little bent tubes looked cold and dead. It had its own Dumpster, close by in the lot, just sitting there like a parked vehicle. There was no briefcase in it.

I ducked inside the greasy spoon. It was still empty. I checked the floor around the tables and the banquettes in the booths. I looked on the floor behind the register. There was a cardboard box back there with a couple of forlorn umbrellas in it. But no briefcase. I checked the women’s bathroom. No women in it. No briefcase in it either.

I looked at my watch and walked back to the bar. I would need to ask some face-to-face questions there. But it wouldn’t be open for business for another eight hours at least. I turned around and looked across the street at the motel. There was still nobody in the office. So I headed back to my Humvee and got there in time to hear a 10-17 come in on the radio. Return to base. So I acknowledged and fired up the big diesel and drove all the way back to Bird. There was no traffic and I made it inside forty minutes. I saw Kramer’s rental parked in the motor pool lot. There was a new person at the desk outside my borrowed office. A corporal. The day shift. He was a small dark guy who looked like he was from Louisiana. French blood in there, certainly. I know French blood when I see it.

“Your brother called again,” the corporal said.

“Why?”

“No message.”

“What was the ten-seventeen for?”

“Colonel Garber requests a ten-nineteen.”

I smiled. You could live your whole life saying nothing but 10-this and 10-that. Sometimes I felt like I already had. A 10-19 was a contact by phone or radio. Less serious than a 10-16, which was a contact by secure landline. Colonel Garber requests a 10-19 meant Garber wants you to call him, was all. Some MP units get in the habit of speaking English, but clearly this one hadn’t yet.

I stepped into my office and saw Kramer’s suit carrier propped against the wall and a carton containing his shoes and underwear and hat sitting next to it. His uniform was still on three hangers. They were hung one in front of the other on my coatrack. I walked past them to my borrowed desk and dialed Garber’s number. Listened to the purr of the ring tone and wondered what my brother wanted. Wondered how he had tracked me down. I had been in Panama sixty hours ago. Before that I had been all over the place. So he had made a big effort to find me. So maybe it was important. I picked up a pencil and wrote Joe on a slip of paper. Then I underlined it, twice.