“I’d appreciate it,” she said, “if I could be out of here before noon.”

“No problem. No problem at all.” Now Rider gave up ransacking his desk and began to go through his coat pockets, one of which produced the envelope and letter. “Ah, here we are. This is the main thing, Miss Madera. A letter the boy sent from Santa Barbara just before his death. It arrived back in Illinois about the same time Mr. Hook did, with his body.”

Rider held the letter out to her—for a good six seconds before she finally reached out and took it.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Read it.”

She unfolded the four crowded pages and began reading, rapidly, with cool dark eyes purged of any expression at all.

Rider gave Hook a cryptic look, then leaned back in his swivel chair and began to maul his face. Surveying the clutter of his desk, Hook noticed the man’s choice of paperweights: a pair of hand grenades. On the wall hung a number of framed photographs: Rider receiving a citation of some kind; Rider standing with three other men, one of whom was no less than the nation’s only film star turned governor; and a photo of a half-dozen bedraggled combat soldiers standing in bright sunshine next to the burned-out shell of a Second World War German tank. Hook recognized Rider in the center of the group, holding up a can of Blue Ribbon beer. And he looked even more bull-like then, with no belly and a full head of hair. Hook did not miss the fact that among all the photographs there was not one family picture.

But his attention kept straying to Miss Madera as she read, as she turned the pages one after another. And she had come to the last one now, to the last paragraph, by now graven in Hook’s mind:

Seriously, I can hardly wait to see you all again, and see the farm and feel some real weather for a change. But I figure I’m here now, and I just might not pass this way again.

I miss you all. Much love.

Then there was his signature.

And she had come to it now, had reached the end of the letter. For a moment Hook thought there was nothing, just the same cool dark control, but as she looked up he saw that her eyes had filmed over. She was swift with explanation, however.

“It’s so terrible. So sad.” She looked boldly at Hook now, eyes level, honest, grave. “As I told you last week, Mr. Hook, I am very sorry for you. For your loss. I can understand your grief.”

Rider had taken out a pack of cigarettes and now he offered one to her. She declined it. The sergeant took one himself and lit it. “That’s all, Miss Madera?” he said. “That’s your only reaction to the letter—sympathy?”

“Not at all.”

“What else?”

“I don’t enjoy saying this in front of Mr. Hook. But I obviously don’t have much choice in the matter, do I? The letter just doesn’t sound like the boy I picked up, that’s all. Not like the boy I talked with. It sounds too normal. Too healthy. It sounds like someone else entirely. A stranger.”