Clyde remembered it. It was a low concrete-block structure standing off to itself near the entrance to the post, identified as such by a stark general-issue Army sign. When Desiree had picked him and Maggie up at the airport, she had slowed down and pointed it out to him, and they’d laughed at the very Army-ness of it.
_Well, it’s been busy, if you can believe it. They march the men in there, give them gas masks, expose them to tear gas, and then make them practice getting the masks on under “combat” conditions. Hopefully they won’t make us medical weenies do it. But they say Saddam has a lot of NBC capabilities, and so we are going to get a lot of training in MOPP gear and chemical mass casualties and all the rest. Talked to a doc who says they are hitting the books and learning all about good old anthrax. I wonder why. Anyway, I told him I grew up on a farm and am immune to it._
That was just like Desiree: turning it into a joke. Clyde put his hands over his face when he read that and wondered whether anyone else in the Medical Corps was laughing.
The doorbell rang just then, and Clyde got up and ran to answer it, fearing that a second ring might wake Maggie from her nap.
“How do people die in Forks County?”
Dr. Kevin Vandeventer was asking the question. He had shown up unexpected, much as Clyde had materialized on Kevin’s doorstep a few weeks earlier. But Vandeventer wasn’t running for anything and so had no clear excuse. He looked about ten years older than he had during their last conversation.
“Beg pardon?” Clyde said through his screen door. Vandeventer hadn’t got around to saying hello-how-are-you yet. Clyde could see that Vandeventer was all worked up and did not really want this man bringing his troubles into the Banks home, which was troubled enough. Maggie was inside napping, so Clyde stepped outside and joined Vandeventer on the front porch. It was about ninety-five degrees out there. Clyde immediately began to sweat freely—something that Vandeventer had evidently been doing for hours.
“How do people die around here?”
“What are you getting at? Would you like some iced tea?”
Vandeventer didn’t seem to hear the offer. “In D.C. it happens several times a year that some black kids will come over to the west side of town, mug a white guy in a suit, and end up shooting him to death in the bargain.”
“Dang,” Clyde said.
“So when that happens, of course everyone’s shocked and outraged and all that—but the important thing, Clyde, is that no one is surprised. That kind of thing doesn’t make anyone suspicious.” He leaned forward into Clyde’s face as he delivered this punch line, then bounced back away from him with a triumphant look on his face.
“Sounds pretty suspicious to me.”
“But what I’m saying is, if you wanted to assassinate someone, and you set it up to look like just another one of those crimes, no one—not even the D.C. police—would have any reason to suspect it was anything different.”
“Okay,” Clyde said, after cogitating for a while. “So the reason you came round this afternoon is to ask me if you wanted to assassinate someone in Forks County without making the cops suspicious, what kind of crime would you set it up as?”
“Precisely.”
Clyde sucked his teeth and squinted off into the distance, getting his brain in gear. But Vandeventer interrupted him. “Just let me say that if anything of the kind happens to me, Clyde, look a little deeper. I know that when Marwan Habibi died, you were the only cop in Forks County who bothered to look a little deeper. And I have confidence in you.”
“Are you saying someone’s trying to assassinate you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Clyde looked searchingly at Vandeventer, then decided to let this pass for the time being. “Well,” he finally said, “usually when I see a stiff in my line of work, it’s a stiff in a smashed-up car.” He was about to launch into a canned peroration about Sheriff Mullowney’s abysmal record when it came to catching drunk drivers, but Vandeventer didn’t seem to be in the mood for it, and, besides, it appeared that Clyde had already earned his vote. “Also,” he offered, “a lot of people get drowned in the rivers, especially in that Rotary at the dam where Habibi spent a couple of weeks caught in the spin cycle. Then there’s hunting accidents, but this isn’t the time of year for that.”
“Well, Clyde, just for the record, I don’t plan to go swimming or hunting.”
Clyde’s cop instincts were finally coming into play.
“Who do you think is going to assassinate you?”