The Enemy

cold-afternoon quiet all around us. It was the kind of place you would have wanted your grandparents to live. You could have visited in the fall and raked leaves and drunk apple cider and then come back in the summer and loaded a ten-year-old station wagon with a canoe and headed for a lake somewhere. It reminded me of the places in the picture books they gave me in Manila and Guam and Seoul.
    Until we got inside.
    “Ready?” Summer said.
    “Sure,” I said. “Let’s do it. Let’s do the widow thing.”
    She was quiet. I was sure she had done it before. I had too, more than once. It was never fun. She pulled off the curb and headed for the driveway entrance. Drove slowly toward the front door and eased to a stop ten feet from it. We opened our doors together and slid out into the chill and straightened our jackets. We left our hats in the car. That would be Mrs. Kramer’s first clue, if she happened to be watching. A pair of MPs at your door is never good news, and if they’re bareheaded, it’s worse news.
    This particular door was painted a dull antique red and it had a glass storm screen in front of it. I rang the bell and we waited. And waited. I started to think nobody was home. I rang the bell again. The breeze was cold. It was stronger than it had looked.
    “We should have called ahead,” Summer said.
    “Can’t,” I said. “Can’t say, please be there four hours from now so we can deliver some very important news face-to-face. Too much of a preview, wouldn’t you say?”
    “I came all this way and I’ve got nobody to hug.”
    “Sounds like a country song. Then your truck breaks down and your dog dies.”
    I tried the bell again. No response.
    “We should look for a vehicle,” Summer said.
    We found one in a closed two-car garage standing separate from the house. We could see it through the window. It was a Mercury Grand Marquis, metallic green, as long as an ocean liner. It was the perfect car for a general’s wife. Not new, not old, premium but not overpriced, suitable color, American as hell.
    “Think this is hers?” Summer asked.
    “Probably,” I said. “Chances are they had a Ford until he made lieutenant colonel. Then they moved up to a Mercury. They were probably waiting for the third star before they thought about a Lincoln.”
    “Sad.”
    “You think? Don’t forget where he was last night.”
    “So where is she? You think she went out walking?”
    We turned around and felt the breeze on our backs and heard a door bang at the rear of the house.
    “She was out in the yard,” Summer said. “Gardening, maybe.”
    “Nobody gardens on New Year’s Day,” I said. “Not in this hemisphere. There’s nothing growing.”
    But we walked around to the front anyway and tried the bell again. Better to let her meet us formally, on her own terms. But she didn’t show. Then we heard the door again, at the back, banging aimlessly. Like the breeze had gotten hold of it.
    “We should check that out,” Summer said.
    I nodded. A banging door has a sound all its own. It suggests all kinds of things.
    “Yes,” I said. “We probably should.”
    We walked around to the rear of the house, side by side, into the wind. There was a flagstone path. It led us to a kitchen door. It opened inward, and it must have had a spring on the back to keep it closed. The spring must have been a little weak, because the gusting breeze was overpowering it from time to time and kicking the door open eight or nine inches. Then the gust would die away and the spring would reassert itself and the door would bang back into the frame. It did it three times as we watched. It was able to do it because the lock was smashed.
    It had been a good lock, made of steel. But the steel had been stronger than the surrounding wood. Someone had used a wrecking bar. It had been jerked hard, maybe twice, and the lock had held but the wood had splintered. The door had opened up and the lock had just fallen out of the wreckage. It was right there on the flagstone path. The door had a crescent-shaped bite out of it. Splinters of wood had been blown here and there and piled by the wind.
    “What now?” Summer said.
    There was no security system. No intruder alarm. No pads, no wires. No automatic call to the nearest police precinct. No way of telling if the bad guys were long gone, or if they were still inside.
    “What now?” Summer said again.
    We were unarmed. No weapons, on a formal visit in Class A uniform.
    “Go cover the