The Enemy

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.