The US Army Quartermaster Museum was located in Ft. Lee, just past Kenner Army Hospital. I slowly drove past offices and classrooms housed in rows of white trailers, and squads of young men and women in camouflage and athletic clothes. The building I wanted was brick with a blue roof and columns and the heraldry of an eagle, crossed sword and key just left of the door. I parked and went inside, looking for John Gruber.
The museum was the attic for the Quartermaster Corps, which since the American Revolution had been the army's innkeeper. Troops were clothed, fed and sheltered by the QMC, which also had supplied Buffalo soldiers with spurs and saddles, and General Fatten with bullhorns for his jeep. I was familiar with the museum because the corps was also responsible for collecting, identifying and burying the army's dead. Ft. Lee had the only Graves Registration Division in the country, and its officers rotated through my office regularly.
I walked past displays of field dress, mess kits, and a World War II trench scene with sandbags and grenades. I stopped at Civil War uniforms that I knew were real and wondered if tears in cloth were from shrapnel or age. I wondered about the men who had worn them.
'Dr. Scarpetta?'
I turned around.
'Dr. Gruber,' I said warmly. 'I was just looking for you. Tell me about the whistle.' I pointed at a showcase filled with musical instruments.
'That's a Civil War pennywhistle,' he said. 'Music was very important. They used it to tell the time of day.'
Dr. Gruber was the museum's curator, an older man with bushy gray hair and a face carved of granite. He liked baggy trousers and bow ties. He called me when an exhibit was related to war dead, and I visited him whenever unusual military objects turned up with a body. He could identify virtually any buckle, button or bayonet at a glance.
'I take it you've got something for me to look at?' he asked, nodding at my briefcase.
'The photographs I mentioned to you over the phone.'
'Let's go to the office. Unless you'd like to look around a bit.' He smiled like a bashful grandfather talking about his grandchildren. 'We have quite an exhibit on Desert Storm. And General Eisenhower's mess uniform. I don't believe that was here when you were here last.'
'Dr. Gruber, please let me do it another time.' I did not put up any pretenses. My face showed him how I felt.
He patted my shoulder and led me through a back door that took us out of the museum into a loading area where an old trailer painted army green was parked.
'Belonged to Eisenhower,' Dr. Gruber said as we walked. 'He lived in there at times, and it wasn't too bad unless Churchill visited. Then the cigars. You can imagine.'
We crossed a narrow street, and the snow was blowing harder. My eyes began to water as I again envisioned the pennywhistle in the showcase and thought about the woman we called Jane. I wondered if Gault had ever come here. He seemed to like museums, especially those displaying artifacts of violence. We followed a sidewalk to a small beige building I had visited before. During World War II it had been a filling station for the army. Now it was the repository for the Quartermaster archives.
Dr. Gruber unlocked a door and we entered a room crowded with tables and manikins wearing uniforms from antiquity. Tables were covered with the paperwork necessary to catalog acquisitions. In back was a large storage area where the heat was turned low and aisles were lined with large metal cabinets containing clothing, parachutes, mess kits, goggles, glasses. What we were interested in was found in large wooden cabinets against a wall.
'May I see what you've got?' Dr. Gruber asked, turning on more lights. 'I apologize about the temperature, but we've got to keep it cold.'
I opened my briefcase and pulled out an envelope, from which I slid several eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs of the footprints found in Central Park. Mainly, I cared about those we believed had been left by Gault. I showed the photographs to Dr. Gruber, and he moved them closer to a light.
1 realize it's rather difficult to see since they were left in snow,' I said. 'I wish there were a little more shadow for contrast.'
'This is quite all right. I'm getting a very good idea. This is definitely military, and it's the logotype that fascinates me.'
I looked on as he pointed to a circular area on the heel that had a tail on one side.
'Plus you've got this area of raised diamonds down here and two holes, see?' He showed me. 'Those could be shoe grip holes for climbing trees.' He handed the photographs to me. 'This looks very familiar.'
He went to a cabinet and opened its double doors, revealing rows of army boots on shelves. One by one he picked up boots and turned them over to look at the soles. Then he went to the second cabinet, opened its doors and started again. Toward the back he pulled out a boot with green canvas uppers, brown leather reinforcements and two brown leather straps with buckles at the top. He turned it over.
'May I see the photographs again, please?'
I held them close to the boot. The sole was black rubber with a variety of patterns. There were nail holes, stitching, wavy tread and pebble grain. A large oval at the ball of the foot was raised diamond tread with the shoe grip holes that were so clear in the photographs. On the heel was a wreath with a ribbon that seemed to match the tail barely visible in the snow and also on the side of Davila's head where we believed Gault's heel had struck him.
'What can you tell me about this boot?' I said.
He was turning it this way and that, looking. 'It's World War Two and was tested right here at Ft. Lee. A lot of tread patterns were developed and tested here.'
'World War Two was a long time ago,' I said. 'How would someone have a boot like this now? Could someone even be wearing a boot like this now?'
'Oh sure. These things hold up forever. You might find a pair in an Army Surplus store somewhere. Or it could have been in someone's family.'
He returned the boot to its crowded locker, where I suspected it would be neglected again for a very long time. As we left the building and he locked it behind us, I stood on a sidewalk turning soft with snow. I looked up at skies solid gray and at the slow traffic on streets. People had turned their headlights on, and the day was still. I knew what kind of boots Gault had but wasn't sure it mattered.
'Can I buy you coffee, my dear?' Dr. Gruber said, slipping a little. I grabbed his arm. 'Oh my, it's going to be bad again,' he said. 'They're predicting five inches.'
'I've got to get back to the morgue,' I said, tucking his arm in mine. 'I can't thank you enough.'
He patted my hand.
'I want to describe a man to you and ask if you might have seen him here in the past.'
He listened as I described Gault and his many shades of hair. I described his sharp features and eyes as pale blue as a malamute's. I mentioned his odd attire, and that it was becoming clear he enjoyed military clothing or designs suggestive of it, such as the boots and the long black leather coat he was seen wearing in New York.
'Well, we get types like that, you know,' he said, reaching the museum's back door. 'But I'm afraid he doesn't ring a bell.'
Snow frosted the top of Eisenhower's mobile home. My hair and hands were getting wet, and my feet were cold. 'How hard would it be to run down a name for me?' I said. 'I'd like to know if a Peyton Gault was ever in the Quartermaster Corps.'
Dr. Gruber hesitated. 'I'm assuming you believe he was in the army.'
'I'm not assuming anything,' I said. 'But I suspect he's old enough to have served in World War Two. The only other thing I can tell you is at one time he lived in Albany, Georgia, on a pecan plantation.'
'Records can't be obtained unless you're a relative or have power of attorney. That would be St. Louis you'd call, and I'm sorry to say records A through J were destroyed in a fire in the early eighties.'
'Great,' I said dismally.
He hesitated again. 'We do have our own computerized list of veterans here at the museum.'