LITMIR.BIZ

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beer or two.”

      “Ah, my kind of woman!”

      Without bothering to explain, she tossed the address of the bus station at him and pulled out of the mall. The bus station, it turned out, was no more than a ticket booth inside a hotel at the central crossroads of the town. The King’s Arms had obviously seen better days. The desk clerk did remember Patricia leaving, but not arriving, and had no idea what direction she’d come from. She recalled only that Patricia seemed excited.

      “Well, that was about as useful as tits on a bull,” Steroids pronounced as they came back out of the hotel.

      “You’d be surprised how useful tits can be,” she retorted. If the guy couldn’t see the implication of Patricia being excited, he was a dead loss. Patricia must have had more luck uncovering secrets than they had.

      Steroids chuckled. “Speaking of eating...”

      Ignoring him, she stood in the parking lot to figure out her next move. There didn’t appear to be any obvious bar scene in this jumbled up town, but when Patricia got off the bus, she would have been on foot. Which limited the places she might go.

      “We’d do better to split up and canvass all the places nearby.” She pointed down the street. “You take that far side of the block, and I’ll do this side, including the hotel. And while I’m driving you there, you’re going to get a crash course in interview techniques. Not anything like the ones you learn in cop school.”

      Before she dropped him off at the first restaurant on the block, she made him ditch the sports jacket and undo another button on his blue shirt, but he still looked like a cop. She could only hope the girls mistook his steely gaze for a special forces hotshot on leave.

      She drove back to the hotel and parked around the back near the railway tracks. She’d spotted a bar tucked into the back of the dank old hotel, and instinct told her that, after a long bus ride, that would be the first place Patricia would go. She tossed her pink jacket into the backseat, unbuckled her gun, and hesitated before shoving it into the glove compartment. It was bending the rules, she knew, but the Glock was too damn big to conceal in her purse. The worst she was likely to encounter in broad daylight was a lecherous drunk anyway, so she slipped her tiny pepper spray can into her purse along with her notebook. After peering at herself in the car mirror, she smeared on some hot pink lipstick and shook her frizzy red hair loose. Eat your hearts out, boys, she muttered and set off for the hotel bar.

      At three o’clock in the afternoon, it was too late for the lunch crowd and too early for anyone but the serious drinkers, but nonetheless she found a bunch of rookie privates shooting pool in the corner. Their freshly shaved heads and lean, trim bodies despite the quantity of beer cans stacked on a nearby table gave them away. They hooted when she walked in, but she ignored them. Not one of them looked over twenty, and she was looking for an older crowd. The type of men Patricia would have sought out were the type who’d been around and had the war stories to prove it. Cops or soldiers, they were all the same. Old drunks only needed a listening ear and the occasional top-up to recount the horrors they had survived. Proud of the wounds and the toughness they stood for. When in fact they hadn’t survived at all.

      She found her man at the back of the bar, nursing a beer and scotch chaser as he watched the pool game. She walked the length of the bar and chose a stool several down from his, ignoring him. The bartender, a skinny mass of sinew and bone, was leaning against the wall, watching her. He made no move to approach.

      “Give me a Blue,” she said.

      He shoved himself off the wall, reached beneath the bar and pulled out a can. Without cracking the tab, he plunked it down on the counter.

      “I’m looking for a woman,” she said to the bartender. “Friend of mine who went missing a couple of weeks ago. She said she was coming up here to see an old friend. Mid-thirties, blonde going grey, on the thin side. She looks a bit rough right now. Has this big, ugly-ass black purse with pink daisies on it. She likes her liquor, so I’m hoping she’s been in here.”

      The bartender’s expression didn’t change, but he lifted his scrawny shoulders in a shrug.

      “Thing is,” Peters said. “I’m worried about her. We’ve been through a lot of shit together, and she’s not handling it as well as me. She might get in with a nasty crowd.”

      “What do the cops want with Patti Oliver?” The voice came from the corner. Gravelly from cigarettes and booze.

      Peters swung around to stare at the man against the wall. For a moment she was dumbstruck. “Patti Oliver. Yeah, that’s her name. Did you see her?”

      “Depends.”

      She picked up her Blue and shifted to the stool next to him. Losing interest, the bartender wandered off towards the front.

      “But you saw her. Is she all right?”

      “You think I’m an idiot, lady? You come in here at three in the afternoon, as cool as you please, nice outfit, no fear. You got cop branded on your forehead. So I repeat, what do the cops want with Patti Oliver?”

      Peters scrutinized him in the semi-darkness. At closer quarters, he was not as old or as far gone as she’d first thought. Amidst his wrinkled, leathery skin, his eyes were clear, and at the moment they appeared to see right through her. With a sigh, she reached into her purse and took out the photos.

      “Is this the woman you call Patti Oliver?”

      The man spread the pictures on the bar and bent over them in the dim light. After a long look, he shoved them away. “She’s dead.”

      “Murdered.”

      “Shit.”

      Peters opened her notebook. “What did you talk to her about?”

      “This and that. Her boyfriend that died. How she had a ticket to even the score, right here in this town.”

      “Even the score. Those were her words? What did she mean?”

      “Beats me. She was playing things pretty close to her chest. But she was asking questions about the base, and did I know the guys who served in Croatia. And also the election. Kind of weird, that, wanting to know the background of the guys who were running. I don’t follow that shit, but some of the men are pretty excited about it this time. So—”

      “Hey, officer!” It was the bartender calling. She looked up to see him standing at the phone near the door. “Your partner called. He wants you to meet him outside ASAP , around the back where you parked the car.”

      Peters cursed. Moron, she thought, blowing my cover like that. And what the hell is this ASAP shit? Couldn’t he wait till I’m done my first stop?

      She shoved the photos back into her purse and turned to the guy at the bar. “Hold that thought. I’ll be right back once I deal with this. And the next beer’s on me.”

      She stomped out of the dark bar and paused, blinded for a moment by the bright afternoon sun. After getting her bearings, she headed for the car.

      Muttering, “Okay, asshole, this had better be good.”

      FOURTEEN

      June 23, Sector West, Croatia.

      Dear Kit... Only eight days till my UN leave and I can’t wait to see you, hang out at the farm, watch TV , go to a movie. Man, just to take a walk down the lane without checking for mines! It’s been boring here, sitting at the hot dog stand all day. The rules have changed, which is frustrating. We’re not supposed to confiscate weapons any more, we’re supposed to ask the belligerents nicely if they’d like to give them up. Like that’s going to happen!

      So the other day a bunch of Serbs walked in and took all their rifles and grenades out of the cache we had them in, and we couldn’t do a fucking thing. I thought the Hammer was going to have a stroke. He’s on the radio screaming to the OC , but that’s the orders from the new Sector West commander. Jordanian guy. I don’t know about

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