by Lee Child
Summer stood up next to me.
“We don’t need to type the blood either,” she said. “We can assume it’s Carbone’s.”
I said nothing.
“We could just leave it here,” Summer said.
“No,” I said. “We can’t do that.”
I bent down and untied my right boot. Pulled the lace all the way out and used a reef knot to tie the ends together. That gave me a closed loop about fifteen inches in diameter. I draped it over my right palm and dragged the free end across the dead stubble until I snagged it under the crowbar’s tip. Then I closed my fist and lifted the heavy steel weight carefully out of the grass. I held it up, like a proud angler with a fish.
“Let’s go,” I said.
I limped around to the front passenger seat with the crowbar swinging gently in midair and my boot half off. I sat close to the transmission tunnel and steadied the crowbar against the floor just enough to stop it touching my legs as the vehicle moved.
“Where to?” Summer asked.
“The mortuary,” I said.
I was hoping the pathologist and his staff would be out eating breakfast, but they weren’t. They were all in the building, working. The pathologist himself caught us in the lobby. He was on his way somewhere with a file in his hand. He looked at us and then he looked at the trophy dangling from my boot lace. Took him half of a second to understand what it was, and the other half to realize it put us all in a very awkward situation.
“We could come back later,” I said. When you’re not here.
“No,” he said. “We’ll go to my office.”
He led the way. I watched him walk. He was a small dark man with short legs, brisk, competent, a little older than me. He seemed nice enough. And I guessed he wasn’t stupid. Very few medics are. They have all kinds of complicated stuff to learn, before they get to be where they want to be. And I guessed he wasn’t unethical. Very few medics were that either, in my experience. They’re scientists at heart, and scientists generally retain a good-faith interest in facts and the truth. Or at least they retain some kind of innate curiosity. All of which was good, because this guy’s attitude was going to be crucial. He could stay out of our way, or he could sell us out with a single phone call.
His office was a plain square room full of original-issue gray steel desks and file cabinets. It was crowded. There were framed diplomas on the walls. There were shelves full of books and manuals. No specimen jars. No weird stuff pickled in formaldehyde. It could have been an army lawyer’s office, except the diplomas were from medical schools, not law schools.
He sat down in his rolling chair. Placed his file on his desk. Summer closed his door and leant on it. I stood in the middle of the floor, with the crowbar hanging in space. We all looked at each other. Waited to see who would make the opening bid.
“Carbone was a training accident,” the doctor said, like he was moving his first pawn two squares forward.
I nodded.
“No question,” I said, like I was moving my own pawn.
“I’m glad we’ve got that straight,” he said.
But he said it in a voice that meant: Can you believe this shit?
I heard Summer breathe out, because we had an ally. But we had an ally who wanted distance. We had an ally who wanted to hide behind an elaborate charade. And I didn’t altogether blame him. He owed years of service in exchange for his medical school tuition. Therefore he was cautious. Therefore he was an ally whose wishes we had to respect.
“Carbone fell and hit his head,” I said. “It’s a closed case. Pure accident, very unfortunate for all concerned.”
“But?”
I held the crowbar a little higher.
“I think this is what he hit his head on,” I said.
“Three times?”
“Maybe he bounced. Maybe there were dead twigs under the leaves, made the ground a little springy, like a trampoline.”
The doctor nodded. “Terrain can be like that, this time of year.”
“Lethal,” I said.
I lowered the crowbar again. Waited.
“Why did you bring it here?” the doctor asked.
“There might be an issue of contributory negligence,” I said. “Whoever left it lying around for Carbone to fall on might need a reprimand.”
The doctor nodded again. “Littering is a grave offense.”
“In this man’s army,” I said.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing,” I said. “We’re here to help you out, is all. With it being a closed case, we figured you wouldn’t want to clutter your place up with those plaster casts you made. Of the wound site. We figured we could haul them to the trash for you.”
The doctor nodded for a third time.
“You could do that,” he said. “It would save me a trip.”
He paused for a long moment. Then he cleared the file away from in front of him and opened some drawers and laid sheets of clean white paper on the desktop and arranged half-a-dozen glass microscope slides on the paper.
“That thing looks heavy,” he said to me.
“It is,” I said.
“Maybe you should put it down. Take the weight off your shoulder.”
“Is that medical advice?”
“You don’t want ligament damage.”
“Where should I put it down?”
“Any flat surface you can find.”
I stepped forward and laid the crowbar gently on his desk, on top of the paper and the glass slides. Unhooked my boot lace and picked the knot out of it. Squatted down and threaded it back through all the eyelets. Tightened it up and tied it off. I looked up in time to see the doctor move a microscope slide. He picked it up and scraped it against the end of the crowbar where it was matted with blood and hair.
“Damn,” he said. “I got this slide all dirty. Very careless of me.”
He made the exact same error with five more slides.
“Are we interested in fingerprints?” he said.
I shook my head. “We’re assuming gloves.”
“We should check, I think. Contributory negligence is a serious matter.”
He opened another drawer and peeled a latex glove out of a box and snapped it on his hand. It made a tiny cloud of talcum dust. Then he picked the crowbar up and carried it out of the room.
He came back less than ten minutes later. He still had his glove on. The crowbar was washed clean. The black paint gleamed. It looked indistinguishable from new.
“No prints,” he said.
He put the crowbar down on his chair and pulled a file drawer and came out with a plain brown cardboard box. Opened it up and took out two chalk-white plaster casts. Both were about six inches long and both had Carbone handwritten in black ink on the underside. One was a positive, formed by pressing wet plaster into the wound. The other was a negative, formed by molding more plaster over the positive. The negative showed the shape of the wound the weapon had made, and therefore the positive showed the shape of the weapon itself.
The doctor put the positive on the chair next to the crowbar. Lined them up, parallel. The cast was about six inches long. It was white and a little pitted from the molding process but was otherwise identical to the smooth black iron. Absolutely identical. Same section, same thickness, same contours.
Then the doctor put the negative on the desk. It was a little bigger than the positive, and a little messier. It was an exact replica of the back of Carbone’s shattered skull. The doctor picked up the crowbar. Hefted it in his hand. Lined it up, speculatively. Brought it down, very slowly, one, for the first blow, then two for the second. Then three for the last. He touched it to the plaster. The third and final wound was the best defined. It was a clear three-quarter-inch trench in the plaster, and the crowbar fitted it perfectly.
“I’ll check the blood and the hair,” the doctor said. “Not that we don’t already know what the results will be.”
He lifted the crowbar out of the plaster an
d tried it again. It went in again, precisely, and deep. He lifted it out and balanced it across his open palms, like he was weighing it. Then he grasped it by the straighter end and swung it, like a batter going after a high fastball. He swung it again, harder, a compact, violent stroke. It looked big in his hands. Big, and a little heavy for him. A little out of control.
“Very strong man,” he said. “Vicious swing. Big tall guy, right-handed, physically very fit. But that describes a lot of people on this post, I guess.”
“There was no guy,” I said. “Carbone fell and hit his head.”
The doctor smiled briefly and balanced the bar across his palms again.
“It’s handsome, in its way,” he said. “Does that sound strange?”
I knew what he meant. It was a nice piece of steel, and it was everything it needed to be and nothing it didn’t. Like a Colt Detective Special, or a K-bar, or a cockroach. He slid it inside a long steel drawer. The metals scraped one on the other and then boomed faintly when he let it go and dropped it the final inch.
“I’ll keep it here,” he said. “If you like. Safer that way.”
“OK,” I said.
He closed the drawer.
“Are you right-handed?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said. “I am.”
“Colonel Willard told me you did it,” he said. “But I didn’t believe him.”
“Why not?”
“You were very surprised when you saw who it was. When I put his face back on. You had a definite physical reaction. People can’t fake that sort of thing.”
“Did you tell Willard that?”
The doctor nodded. “He found it inconvenient. But it didn’t really deflect him. And I’m sure he’s already developed a theory to explain it away.”
“I’ll watch my back,” I said.
“Some Delta sergeants came to see me too. There are rumors starting. I think you should watch your back very carefully.”
“I plan to,” I said.
“Very carefully,” the doctor said.
Summer and I got back in the Humvee. She fired it up and put it in gear and sat with her foot on the brake.
“Quartermaster,” I said.
“It wasn’t military issue,” she said.
“It looked expensive,” I said. “Expensive enough for the Pentagon, maybe.”
“It would have been green.”
I nodded. “Probably. But we should still check. Sooner or later we’re going to need all our ducks in a row.”
She took her foot off the brake and headed for the quartermaster building. She had been at Bird much longer than me and she knew where everything was. She parked again in front of the usual type of warehouse. I knew there would be a long counter inside with massive off-limits storage areas behind it. There would be huge bales of clothing, tires, blankets, mess kits, entrenching tools, equipment of every kind.
We went in and found a young guy in new BDUs behind the counter. He was a cheerful corn-fed country boy. He looked like he was working in his dad’s hardware store, and he looked like it was his life’s ambition. He was enthusiastic. I told him we were interested in construction equipment. He opened a manual the size of eight phone books. Found the correct section. I asked him to find listings for crowbars. He licked his forefinger and turned pages and found two entries. Prybar, general issue, long, claw on one end and then crowbar, general issue, short, claw on both ends. I asked him to show us an example of the latter.
The kid went away and disappeared among the tall stacks. We waited. Breathed in the unique quartermaster smell of old dust and new rubber and damp cotton twill. He came back after five long minutes with a GI crowbar. Laid it down on the counter in front of us. It landed with a heavy thump. Summer had been right. It was painted olive green. And it was a completely different item than the one we had just left in the pathologist’s office. Different section, six inches shorter, slightly thinner, slightly different curves. It looked carefully designed. It was probably a perfect example of the way the army does things. Years ago it had probably been the ninety-ninth item on someone’s reequipment agenda. A subcommittee would have been formed, with expert input from survivors of the old construction battalions. A specification would have been drawn up concerning length and weight and durability. Metal fatigue would have been investigated. Arenas of likely use would have been considered. Brittleness in the frozen winters of northern Europe would have been evaluated. Malleability in the severe heat of the equator would have been taken into account. Detailed drawings would have been made. Then tenders would have gone out. Mills all over Pennsylvania and Alabama would have priced the job. Prototypes would have been forged. They would have been tested, exhaustively. One and only one winner would have been approved. Paint would have been supplied, and the thickness and uniformity of its application would have been specified and carefully monitored. Then the whole business would have been completely forgotten. But the product of all those long months of deliberation was still coming through, thousands of units a year, needed or not.
“Thanks, soldier,” I said.
“You need to take it?” the kid asked.
“Just needed to see it,” I said.
We went back to my office. It was midmorning, a dull day, and I felt aimless. So far, the new decade wasn’t doing much for me. I wasn’t a huge fan of the 1990s yet, at that point, six days in.
“Are you going to write the accident report?” Summer asked.
“For Willard? Not yet.”
“He’ll expect it today.”
“I know. But I’m going to make him ask, one more time.”
“Why?”
“I guess because it’s a fascinating experience. Like watching maggots writhing around in something that died.”
“What died?”
“My enthusiasm for getting out of bed in the morning.”
“One bad apple,” she said. “Doesn’t mean much.”
“Maybe,” I said. “If it is just one.”
She said nothing.
“Crowbars,” I said. “We’ve got two separate cases with crowbars, and I don’t like coincidences. But I can’t see how they can be connected. There’s no way to join them up. Carbone was a million miles from Mrs. Kramer, in every way imaginable. They were in completely different worlds.”
“Vassell and Coomer join them up,” she said. “They had an interest in something that could have been in Mrs. Kramer’s house, and they were here at Bird the night Carbone was murdered.”
I nodded. “That’s what’s driving me crazy. It’s a perfect connection, except it isn’t. They took one call in D.C., they were too far from Green Valley to do anything to Mrs. Kramer themselves, and they didn’t call anyone from the hotel. Then they were here the night Carbone died, but they were in the O Club with a dozen witnesses the whole time, eating steak and fish.”
“First time they were here, they had a driver. Major Marshall, remember? But the second time, they were on their own. That feels a little clandestine to me. Like they were here for a secret reason.”
“Nothing very secret about hanging around in the O Club bar and then eating in the O Club dining room. They weren’t out of sight for a minute, all night long.”
“But why didn’t they have their driver? Why come on their own? I assume Marshall was at the funeral with them. But then they chose to drive more than three hundred miles by themselves? And more than three hundred back?”
“Maybe Marshall was unavailable,” I said.
“Marshall’s their blue-eyed boy,” she said. “He’s available when they say so.”
“Why did they come here at all? It’s a very long way for a very average dinner.”
“They came for the briefcase, Reacher. Norton’s wrong. She must be. Someone gave it to them. They left with it.”
“I don’t think Norton’s wrong. She convinced me.”
“Then maybe they picked it up in the parking lot. Norton wouldn’t have seen that. I assume she didn’t go out there
in the cold and wave them off. But they left with it, for sure. Why else would they be happy to fly back to Germany?”
“Maybe they just gave up on it. They were due back in Germany anyway. They couldn’t stay here forever. They’ve got Kramer’s command to fight over.”
Summer said nothing.
“Whatever,” I said. “There’s no possible connection.”
“It’s a random universe.”
I nodded. “So they stay on the back burner. Carbone stays on the front.”
“Are we going back out to look for the yogurt pot?”
I shook my head. “It’s in the guy’s car, or in his trash.”
“Could have been useful.”
“We’ll work with the crowbar instead. It’s brand new. It was probably bought just as recently as the yogurt was.”
“We have no resources.”
“Detective Clark up in Green Valley will do it for us. He’s already looking for his crowbar, presumably. He’ll be canvassing hardware stores. We’ll ask him to widen his radius and stretch his time frame.”
“That’s a lot of extra work for him.”
I nodded. “We’ll have to offer him something. We’ll have to string him along. We’ll tell him we’re working on something that might help him.”
“Like what?”
I smiled. “We could fake it. We could give him Andrea Norton’s name. We could show her exactly what kind of a family we are.”
I called Detective Clark. I didn’t give him Andrea Norton’s name. I told him a few lies instead. I told him I recalled the damage to Mrs. Kramer’s door, and the damage to her head, and that I figured a crowbar was involved, and I told him that as it happened we had a rash of break-ins at military installations all up and down the Eastern seaboard that also seemed to involve crowbars, and I asked him if we could piggyback on the legwork he was undoubtedly already doing in terms of tracing the Green Valley weapon. He paused at that point, and I filled the silence by telling him that military quartermasters currently had no crowbars on general issue and therefore I was convinced our bad guys had used a civilian source of supply. I gave him some guff about not wanting to duplicate his efforts because we had a more promising line of inquiry to spend our time on. He paused again at that point, like cops everywhere, waiting to hear the proffered quid pro quo. I told him that as soon as we had a name or a profile or a description he would have it too, just as fast as stuff can travel down a fax line. He perked up then. Clark was a desperate man, staring at a brick wall. He asked what exactly I wanted. I told him it would be helpful to us if he could expand his canvass to a three-hundred-mile radius around Green Valley, and check hardware store purchases during a window that started late on New Year’s Eve and extended through, say, January fourth.
