The Enemy

were issued. And I want a phone number for the Jefferson Hotel in D.C.”
    “That’s an awful lot to do in three hours.”
    “That’s why I’m asking you instead of the day guy. You’re better than he is.”
    “Stick it,” she said. “Flattery doesn’t work on me.”
    “Hope springs eternal,” I said.

    We got back into the car and got back on the road. Headed east for I-95. I told Summer to go slow. If I didn’t, then the way she was likely to drive on empty roads at night would get us to the diner well before my sergeant, and I didn’t want that to happen. My sergeant would get there around six-thirty. I wanted to get there after her, maybe six-forty. I wanted to check she hadn’t done her duty and dropped a dime on me and set up an ambush. It was unlikely, but not impossible. I wanted to be able to drive by and check. I didn’t want to be already in a booth drinking coffee when Willard showed up.
    “Why do you want all that stuff?” Summer asked.
    “I know what happened to Mrs. Kramer,” I said.
    “How?”
    “I figured it out,” I said. “Like I should have at the beginning. But I didn’t think. I didn’t have enough imagination.”
    “It’s not enough to
imagine
things.”
    “It is,” I said. “Sometimes that’s what it’s all about. Sometimes that’s all an investigator has got. You have to imagine what people must have done. The way they must have thought and acted. You have to think yourself into
being
them.”
    “Being who?”
    “Vassell and Coomer,” I said. “We know who they are. We know what they’re like. Therefore we can predict what they did.”
    “What did they do?”
    “They got an early start and flew all day from Frankfurt. On New Year’s Eve. They wore Class As, trying to get an upgrade. Maybe they succeeded, with American Airlines out of Germany. Maybe they didn’t. Either way, they couldn’t have counted on it. They must have been prepared to spend eight hours in coach.”
    “So?”
    “Would guys like Vassell and Coomer be happy to wait in the Dulles taxi line? Or take a shuttle bus to the city? All cramped and uncomfortable?”
    “No,” Summer said. “They wouldn’t do either thing.”
    “Exactly,” I said. “They wouldn’t do either thing. They’re way too important for that. They wouldn’t dream of it. Not in a million years. Guys like that, they need to be met by a car and a driver.”
    “Who?”
    “Marshall,” I said. “That’s who. He’s their blue-eyed gofer. He was already over here, at their service. He must have picked them up at the airport. Maybe Kramer too. Did Kramer take the Hertz bus to the rental lot? I don’t think so. I think Marshall drove him there. Then he drove Vassell and Coomer to the Jefferson Hotel.”
    “And?”
    “And
he stayed there with them,
Summer. I think he had a room booked. Maybe they wanted him on the spot to drive them to National the next morning. He was going with them, after all. He was going to Irwin too. Or maybe they just wanted to talk to him, urgently. Just the three of them, Vassell, Coomer, and Marshall. Maybe it was easier to talk without Kramer there. And Marshall had a lot of stuff to talk about. They started his temporary detached duty in November. You told me that yourself. November was when the Wall started coming down. November was when the danger signals started coming in. So they sent him over here in November to get his ear close to the ground in the Pentagon. That’s my guess. But whatever, Marshall stayed the night with Vassell and Coomer at the Jefferson Hotel. I’m sure of it.”
    “OK, so?”
    “Marshall was at the hotel, and his car was in valet parking. And you know what? I checked our bill from Paris. They charged an arm and a leg for everything. Especially the phone calls. But not
all
the phone calls. The room-to-room calls we made didn’t show up at all. You called me at six, about dinner. Then I called you at midnight, because I was lonely. Those calls didn’t show up anywhere on the bill. Hit three for another room, and it’s free. Dial nine for a line, and it triggers the computer. There were no calls on Vassell and Coomer’s bill and therefore we thought they had
made
no calls. But they
had
made calls. It’s obvious. They made internal calls. Room to room. Vassell took the message from XII Corps in Germany, and then he called Coomer’s room to discuss what the hell to do about the situation. And then one or the other of them picked up the phone and