Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  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.

  “What’s your promising line of inquiry?” he asked.

  “There might be a military connection with Mrs. Kramer. We might be able to give you the guy on a plate all tied up with a bow.”

  “I’d really like that.”

  “Cooperation,” I said. “Makes the world go around.”

  “Sure does,” he said.

  He sounded happy. He bought the whole bill of goods. He promised to expand his search and copy me in. I hung up the phone and it rang again immediately. I picked it up and heard a woman’s voice. It sounded warm and intimate and Southern. It asked me to 10-33 a 10-16 from the MP XO at Fort Jackson, which meant Please stand by to take a secure landline call from your opposite number in South Carolina. I waited with the phone by my ear and heard an empty electronic hiss for a moment. Then there was a loud click and my oppo in South Carolina came on and told me I should know that Colonel David C. Brubaker, Fort Bird’s Special Forces CO, had been found that morning with two bullets in his head in an alley in a crummy district of Columbia, which was South Carolina’s capital city, and which was all of two hundred miles from the North Carolina golf course hotel where he had been spending his holiday furlough with his wife. And according to the local paramedics he had been dead for a day or two.

  fourteen

  My oppo at Jackson was a guy called Sanchez. I knew him fairly well, and I liked him better. He was smart, and he was good. I put the call on the speaker to include Summer and we talked briefly about jurisdiction, but without much enthusiasm. Jurisdiction was always a gray area, and we all knew we were beaten from the get-go. Brubaker had been on vacation, he had been in civilian clothes, he had been in a city alley, and therefore the Columbia PD was claiming him. There was nothing we could do about it. And the Columbia PD had notified the FBI, because Brubaker’s last known whereabouts were the North Carolina golf hotel, which added a possible interstate dimension to the situation, and interstate homicide was the Bureau’s bag. And also because an army officer is technically a federal employee, and killing federal employees is a separate offense, which would give them another charge to throw at the perp if by any miracle they ever found him. Neither Sanchez nor I nor Summer cared a whole hell of a lot about the difference between state courts and federal courts, but we all knew if the FBI was involved the case was well beyond our grasp. We agreed the very best we could hope for was that we might eventually see some of the relevant documentation, strictly for informational purposes only, and strictly as a courtesy. Summer made a face and turned away. I took the phone off the speaker and picked it up and spoke to Sanchez one-on-one again.

  “Got a feeling?” I asked him.

  “Someone he knew,” Sanchez said. “Not easy to surprise a Delta soldier as good as Brubaker was, in an alley.”

  “Weapon?”

  “Paramedics figured it for a nine-millimeter handgun. And they should know. They see plenty of GSWs. Apparently they do a lot of cleaning up every Friday and Saturday night, in that part of town.”

  “Why was he there?”

  “No idea. Rendezvous, presumably. With someone he knew.”

  “Got a feeling about when?”

  “The body’s stone cold, the skin is a little green, and rigor is all gone. They’re saying twenty-four or forty-eight hours. Safe bet would be to split the difference. Let’s call it the middle of the night before last. Maybe three, four A.M. City garbage truck found him at ten this morning. Weekly trash collection.”

  “Where were you on December twenty-eighth?”

  “Korea. You?”

  “Panama.”

  “Why did they move us?”

  “I keep thinking we’re about to find out,” I said.

  “Something weird is going on,” Sanchez said. “I checked, because I was curious, and there are more than twenty of us in the same boat, worldwide. And Garber’s signature is on all the orders, but I don’t think it’s legit.”

  “I’m certain it isn’t legit,” I said. “Anything happening down there before this Brubaker situation?”

  “Not a thing. Quietest week I ever spent.”

  We hung up. I sat still for a long moment. Seemed to me that Columbia in South Carolina was about two hundred miles from Fort Bird. Drive southwest on the highway, cross the state line, find I-20 heading west, drive some more, and you were there. About two hundred miles. The night before last was the night we found Carbone’s body. I had left Andrea Norton’s office just before two o’clock in the morning. She could alibi me up until that point. Then I had been in the mortuary at seven o’clock, for the postmortem. The pathologist could confirm that. So I had two unconnected alibi bookends. But 0200 until 0700 still gave me a possible five-hour window, with Brubaker’s likely time of death right there in the middle of it. Could I have driven two hundred miles there and two hundred miles back in five hours?

  “What?” Summer said.

  “The Delta guys have already got me in the frame for Carbone. Now I’m wondering whether they’re going to be coming at me for Brubaker too. How does four hundred miles in five hours sound to you?”

  “I could probably do it,” she said. “Average of eighty miles an hour all the way. Depends on what car I was using, of course, and road construction, and traffic, and weather, and cops. It’s definitely possible.”

  “Terrific.”

  “But it’s marginal.”

  “It better be marginal. Killing Brubaker will be like killing God, to them.”

  “You going over there to break the news?”

  I nodded. “I think I have to. It’s a question of respect. But you inform the post commander for me, OK?”

  The Special Forces adjutant was an asshole, but he was human too. He went very pale when I told him about Brubaker, and there was clearly more to it than an anticipation of mere bureaucratic hassle. From what I had heard Brubaker was stern and distant and authoritarian, but he was a real father figure, to his men individually and to his unit as a whole. And to his unit as a concept. Special Forces generally and Delta in particular hadn’t always been popular inside the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. The army hates change and it takes a long time to get used to things. The idea of a ragtag bunch of hunter-killers had been a hard sell at the outset, and Brubaker had been one of the guys doing the selling, and he had never let up since. His death was going to hit Special Forces the way the death of a president w
ould hit the nation.

  “Carbone was bad enough,” the adjutant said. “But this is unbelievable. Is there a connection?”

  I looked at him.

  “Why would there be a connection?” I said. “Carbone was a training accident.”

  He said nothing.

  “Why was Brubaker at a hotel?”

  “Because he likes to play golf. He’s got a house near Bragg from way back, but he doesn’t like the golf there.”

  “Where was the hotel?”

  “Outside of Raleigh.”

  “Did he go there a lot?”

  “Every chance he got.”

  “Does his wife play golf?”

  The adjutant nodded. “They play together.”

  Then he paused.

  “Played,” he said, and then he went quiet and looked away from me. I pictured Brubaker in my mind. I had never met him, but I knew guys just like him. One day they’re talking about how to angle a claymore mine so the little ball bearings explode outward at exactly the right angle to rip the enemy’s spines out of their backs with maximum efficiency. Next day they’re wearing pastel shirts with small crocodiles on the breast, playing golf with their wives, maybe holding hands and smiling as they ride together along the fairways in their little electric carts. I knew plenty of guys like that. My own father had been one. Not that he had ever played golf. He watched birds. He had been in most countries in the world, and he had seen a lot of birds.

  I stood up.

  “Call me if you need me,” I said. “You know, if there’s anything I can do.”

  The adjutant nodded.

  “Thanks for the visit,” he said. “Better than a phone call.”

  I went back to my office. Summer wasn’t there. I wasted more than an hour with her personnel lists. I made a shortcut decision and took the pathologist out of the mix. I took Summer out. I took Andrea Norton out. Then I took all the women out. The medical evidence was pretty clear about the attacker’s height and strength. I took the O Club dining room staff out. Their NCO had said they were all hard at work, fussing over their guests. I took the cooks out, and the bar staff, and the MP gate guards. I took out anyone listed as hospitalized and nonambulatory. I took myself out. I took Carbone out, because it wasn’t suicide.