The Enemy

went back to my quarters and packed my duffel with everything I owned. I cashed a check at the commissary and left fifty-two dollars in an envelope for my sergeant. I mailed fifty back to Franz. I collected the crowbar that Marshall had used from the pathologist and I put it with the one we had on loan from the store. Then I went to the MP motor pool and looked for a vehicle to borrow. I was surprised to see Kramer’s rental still parked there.
    “Nobody told us what to do with it,” the clerk said.
    “Why not?”
    “Sir, you tell me. It was your case.”
    I wanted something inconspicuous, and the little red Ford stood out among all the olive drab and black. But then I realized the situation would be reversed out in the world. Out there, the little red Ford wouldn’t attract a second glance.
    “I’ll take it back now,” I said. “I’m headed to Dulles anyway.”
    There was no paperwork, because it wasn’t an army vehicle.

    I left Fort Bird at twenty past ten in the morning and drove north toward Green Valley. I went much slower than before, because the Ford was a slow car and I was a slow driver, at least compared to Summer. I didn’t stop for lunch. I just kept on going. I arrived at the police station at a quarter past three in the afternoon. I found Detective Clark at his desk in the bullpen. I told him his case was closed. Told him Summer would give him the details. I collected the crowbar he had on loan and drove the ten miles to Sperryville. I squeezed through the narrow alley and parked outside the hardware store. The window had been fixed. The square of plywood was gone. I looped all three crowbars over my forearm and went inside and returned them to the old guy behind the counter. Then I got back in the car and followed the only road out of town, all the way to Washington D.C.

    I took a short counterclockwise loop on the Beltway and went looking for the worst part of town I could find. There was plenty of choice. I picked a four-block square that was mostly crumbling warehouses with narrow alleys between. I found what I wanted in the third alley I checked. I saw an emaciated whore come out a brick doorway. I went in past her and found a guy in a hat. He had what I wanted. It took a minute to get some mutual trust going. But eventually cash money settled our differences, like it always does everywhere. I bought a little reefer, a little speed, and two dime rocks of crack cocaine. I could see the guy in the hat wasn’t impressed by the quantities. I could see he wrote me off as an amateur.

    Then I drove to Rock Creek, Virginia. I got there just before five o’clock. Parked three hundred yards from 110th Special Unit headquarters, up on a rise, where I could look down over the fence into the parking lot. I picked out Willard’s car with no trouble at all. He had told me all about it. A classic Pontiac GTO. It was right there, near the rear exit. I slumped way down in my seat and kept my eyes wide-open and watched.

    He came out at five-fifteen. Bankers’ hours. He fired up the Pontiac and backed it away from the building. I had my window cracked open for air and even from three hundred yards I could hear the rumble of the pipes. They made a pretty good V-8 sound. I figured it was a sound Summer would have enjoyed. I made a mental note that if I ever won the lottery I should buy her a GTO of her own.
    I fired up the Ford. Willard came out of the lot and turned toward me. I hunkered down and let him go past. Then I waited
one thousand, two thousand
and U-turned and followed after him. He was an easy tail. With the window down I could have done it by sound alone. He drove fairly slow, big and obvious up ahead, near the crown of the road. I stayed well back and let the drive-time traffic fill his mirrors. He headed east toward the D.C. suburbs. I figured he would have a rental in Arlington or Maclean from his Pentagon days. I hoped it wasn’t an apartment. But I figured it would more likely be a house. With a garage, for the muscle car. Which was good, because a house was easier.

    It was a house. It was on a rural street in the no-man’s-land north of Arlington. Plenty of trees, most of them bare, some of them evergreen. The lots were irregular. The driveways were long and curved. The plantings were messy. The street should have had a sign:
Divorced or single male middle-income government workers only.
It was that kind of a place. Not totally ideal, but a lot better than a straight suburban