"The chief said I should start in the bathroom."
"Good plan," I said. "Toothbrush, toothpaste, tampon box, personal things like that. Things that were boxed up or wrapped in cellophane in the store. No one else will have touched them."
I hung back so as not to crowd him, but I watched him pretty carefully. He was extremely competent. He took twenty minutes and got twenty good prints, all small neat ovals, all obviously a woman's. We agreed that was an adequate sample, and he packed up his gear and gave me a ride back to town.
I got out of Butler's car outside the Sheriff's Department and walked south to the hotel, where I stood on the sidewalk and wrestled with a dilemma. I felt I should go buy a new shirt, but I didn't want Deveraux to feel that dinner was supposed to be more than just dinner. Or in reality I did want her to feel dinner could be more than just dinner, but I didn't want her to see me wanting it. I didn't want her to feel pushed into anything, and I didn't want to appear overeager.
But in the end I decided a shirt was just a shirt, so I hiked across to the other side of Main Street and looked at the stores. Most of them were about to close. It was after five o'clock. I found a men's outfitters three enterprises south of where I started. It didn't look promising. In the window was a jacket made from some kind of synthetic denim. It glittered and shone in the lights. It looked like it had been knitted out of atomic waste. But the only other shopping choice was the pharmacy, and I didn't want to show up at dinner wearing a dollar T. So I went in and looked around.
There was plenty more stuff pieced together from dubious fabrics, but there was plenty of plainer stuff too. There was an old guy behind the counter who seemed happy to let me poke around. He had a tape measure draped around his neck. Like a badge of office. Like a doctor wears a stethoscope. He didn't say anything, but he seemed to understand I was looking for shirts and he either frowned and tutted or beamed and nodded as I moved around from pile to pile, as if I was playing a parlor game, getting warmer and colder in my search.
Eventually I found a white button-down made of heavy cotton. The collar was an eighteen and the sleeves were thirty-seven inches long, which was about my size. I hauled my choice to the counter and asked, "Would this be OK for a job in an office?"
The old guy said, "Yes, sir, it would."
"Would it impress a person at dinner?"
"I think you'd want something finer, sir. Maybe a pinpoint."
"So it's not what you'd call formal?"
"No, sir. Not by a long chalk."
"OK, I'll take it."
It cost me less than the pink shirt from the PX. The old guy wrapped it in brown paper and taped it up into a little parcel. I carried it back across the street. I planned to dump it in my room. I made it into the hotel lobby just in time to see the owner setting off up the stairs in a big hurry. He turned when he heard the door, and he saw it was me and he stopped. He was out of breath. He said, "Your uncle is on the phone again."
39
I took the call alone in the back office, as before. Garber was tentative from the get-go, which made me uneasy. His first question was, "How are you?"
"I'm fine," I said. "You?"
"How's it going down there?"
"Bad," I said.
"With the sheriff?"
"No, she's OK."
"Elizabeth Deveraux, right? We're having her checked out."
"How?"
"We're having a quiet word with the Marine Corps."
"Why?"
"Maybe we can get you something you can use against her. You might need leverage at some point."
"Save your effort. She's not the problem."
"So what is?"
"We are," I said. "Or you are. Or whoever. The army, I mean. They're patrolling outside of Kelham's fence and shooting people."
"That's categorically impossible."
"I've seen the blood. And the car wreck has been sanitized."
"That can't be happening."
"It is happening. And you need to stop it happening. Because right now you've got a big problem, but you're going to turn it into World War Three."
"You must be mistaken."
"There are two guys beat up and one guy dead down here. I'm not mistaken."
"Dead?"
"As in no longer alive."
"How?"
"He bled out through a gunshot wound to the thigh. There was a half-assed attempt to patch it up with a GI field dressing. And I found a NATO shell case at the scene."
"That's not us. I would know."
"Would you?" I said. "Or would I? You're up there guessing and I'm down here looking."
"It's not legal."
"Tell me about it. Worst case, it's a policy decision. Best case, someone's gone rogue. You need to find out which and get it stopped."
"How?" Garber said. "You want me to walk up to a random selection of senior officers and accuse them of an egregious breach of the law? Maybe the worst ever in American military history? I'd be locked up before lunch and court-martialed the next morning."
I paused. Breathed. Asked, "Are there names I shouldn't say on an open line?"
Garber said, "There are names you shouldn't even know."
"This whole thing is drifting out of control. It's going from bad to worse. I've seen three lawyers heading in and out of Kelham. Someone needs to make a decision. The officer in question needs to be pulled out and redeployed. Right now."
"That's not going to happen. Not as long as Kosovo is important. This guy could stop a war singlehanded and all by himself."
"He's one of four hundred men, for Christ's sake."
"Not according to the political ad campaigns two years from now. Think about it. He's going to be the Lone Ranger."
"He's going to be locked up in Leavenworth."
"Munro doesn't think so. He says the officer in question is likely innocent."
"Then we should act like it. We should stop with the lawyers and we should stop patrolling outside the fence."
"We're not patrolling outside the fence."
I gave up. "Anything else?"
"One thing," Garber said. "I have to do this. I hope you understand."
"Try me."
"You got a postcard from your brother."
"Where?"
"At your office."
"And you read it?"
"An army officer has no reasonable expectation of privacy."
"Is that in the regulations too? Along with the hairstyles?"
"You need to explain the message to me."
"Why? What does it say?"
"The picture on the front is downtown Atlanta. The card was mailed from the Atlanta airport eleven days ago. The text reads: Heading to a town called Margrave, south of here, business, but heard a story Blind Blake died there, will let you know. Then it's signed Joe, his name."
"I know my brother's name."
"What does the message mean?"
"It's a personal note."
"I'm ordering you to explain it to me. I apologize, but I have to do this."
"You went to elementary school. You can read."
"What does it mean?"
"It means what it says. He's heading south of Atlanta to a town called Margrave."
"Who was Blind Blake?"
"A guitar player, from way back. Blues music. One of the first legends."