The Enemy

corpse back onto its front. Wasn’t easy. It weighed two hundred pounds, at least.
    “What do you think?” I asked.
    “About what?”
    “About Walter Reed doing the autopsy.”
    There was silence for a moment. Stockton looked at the wall.
    “That might be acceptable,” he said.
    There was a knock at the open door. One of the cops from the cars.
    “Medical examiner just called in,” he said. “He can’t get here for another two hours at least. It’s New Year’s Eve.”
    I smiled.
Acceptable
was about to change to
highly desirable.
Two hours from now Stockton would need to be somewhere else. A whole bunch of parties would be breaking up and the roads would be mayhem. Two hours from now he would be begging me to haul the old guy away. I said nothing and the cop went back to wait in his car and Stockton moved all the way into the room and stood facing the draped window with his back to the corpse. I took the hanger with the uniform coat on it and lifted it out of the closet and hung it on the bathroom door frame where the hallway light fell on it.
    Looking at a Class A coat is like reading a book or sitting next to a guy in a bar and hearing his whole life story. This one was the right size for the body on the bed and it had
Kramer
on the nameplate, which matched the dog tags. It had a Purple Heart ribbon with two bronze oak leaf clusters to denote a second and third award of the medal, which matched the scars. It had two silver stars on the epaulettes, which confirmed he was a major general. The branch insignia on the lapels denoted Armor and the shoulder patch was from XII Corps. Apart from that there were a bunch of unit awards and a whole salad bowl of medal ribbons dating way back through Vietnam and Korea, some of which he had probably earned the hard way, and some of which he probably hadn’t. Some of them were foreign awards, whose display was authorized but not compulsory. It was a very full coat, relatively old, well cared for, standard-issue, not privately tailored. Taken as a whole it told me he was professionally vain, but not personally vain.
    I went through the pockets. They were all empty, except for a key to the rental car. It was attached to a keyring in the shape of a figure 1, which was made out of clear plastic and contained a slip of paper with
Hertz
printed in yellow at the top and a license-plate number written by hand in black ballpoint underneath.
    There was no wallet. No loose change.
    I put the coat back in the closet and checked the pants. Nothing in the pockets. I checked the shoes. Nothing in them except the socks. I checked the hat. Nothing hidden underneath it. I lifted the suit carrier out and opened it on the floor. It contained a battledress uniform and an M43 field cap. A change of socks and underwear and a pair of shined combat boots, plain black leather. There was an empty compartment that I figured was for the Dopp kit. Nothing else. Nothing at all. I closed it up and put it back. Squatted down and looked under the bed. Saw nothing.
    “Anything we should worry about?” Stockton asked.
    I stood up. Shook my head.
    “No,” I lied.
    “Then you can have him,” he said. “But I get a copy of the report.”
    “Agreed,” I said.
    “Happy New Year,” he said.
    He walked out to his car and I headed for my Humvee. I called in a 10-5
ambulance requested
and told my sergeant to have it accompanied by a squad of two who could list and pack all Kramer’s personal property and bring it back to my office. Then I sat there in the driver’s seat and waited until Stockton’s guys were all gone. I watched them accelerate away into the fog and then I went back inside the room and took the rental key from Kramer’s jacket. Came back out and used it to unlock the Ford.
    There was nothing in it except the stink of upholstery cleaner and carbonless copies of the rental agreement. Kramer had picked the car up at one thirty-two that afternoon at Dulles Airport near Washington D.C. He had used a private American Express card and received a discount rate. The start-of-rental mileage was 13,215. Now the odometer was showing 13,513, which according to my arithmetic meant he had driven 298 miles, which was about right for a straight-line trip between there and here.
    I put the paper in my pocket and relocked the car. Checked the trunk. It was completely empty.
    I put the key in my pocket with the rental paper and headed across the street to the bar. The music got louder with every