“Reacher?” Sanchez said.
“And Lieutenant Summer,” I said. “We’re on the speaker.”
“Anyone else in the room?”
“No,” I said.
“Door closed?”
“Yes. What’s up?”
“Columbia PD came through again, is what. They’re feeding me stuff bit by bit. And they’re having themselves a real good time doing it. They’re gloating like crazy.”
“Why?”
“Because Brubaker had heroin in his pocket, that’s why. Three dime bags of brown. And a big wad of cash money. They’re saying it was a drug deal that went bad.”
fifteen
I was born in 1960, which made me seven during the Summer of Love, and thirteen at the end of our effective involvement in Vietnam, and fifteen at the end of our official involvement there. Which meant I missed most of the American military’s collision with narcotics. The heavy-duty Purple Haze years passed me by. I had caught the later, stable phase. Like many soldiers I had smoked a little weed from time to time, maybe just enough to develop a preference among different strains and sources, but nowhere near enough to put me high on the list of U.S. users in terms of lifetime volume consumed. I was a part-timer. I was one of those guys who bought, not sold.
But as an MP, I had seen plenty sold. I had seen drug deals. I had seen them succeed, and I had seen them fail. I knew the drill. And one thing I knew for sure was that if a bad deal ends up with a dead guy on the floor, there’s nothing in the dead guy’s pocket. No cash, no product. No way. Why would there be? If the dead guy was the buyer, the seller runs away with his dope intact
“It’s bullshit, Sanchez,” I said. “It’s faked.”
“Of course it is. I know that.”
“Did you make that point?”
“Did I need to? They’re civilians, but they ain’t stupid.”
“So why are they gloating?”
“Because it gives them a free pass. If they can’t close the case, they can just write it off. Brubaker ends up looking bad, not them.”
“They found any witnesses yet?”
“Not a one.”
“Shots were fired,” I said. “Someone must have heard something.”
“Not according to the cops.”
“Willard is going to freak,” I said.
“That’s the least of our problems.”
“Are you alibied?”
“Me? Do I need to be?”
“Willard’s going to be looking for leverage. He’s going to use anything he can invent to get you to toe the line.”
Sanchez didn’t answer right away. Some kind of electronic circuitry in the phone line brought the background hiss up loud to cover the silence. Then he spoke over it.
“I think I’m fireproof here,” he said. “It’s the Columbia PD making the accusations, not me.”
“Just take care,” I said.
“Bet on it,” he said.
I clicked the phone off. Summer was thinking. Her face was tense and her lower lids were moving.
“What?” I said.
“You sure it was faked?” she said.
“Had to be,” I said.
“OK,” she said. “Good.” She was still standing next to the map. She put her hand back on it. Little finger on the Fort Bird pin, index finger on the Columbia pin. “We agree that it was faked. We’re sure of it. So there’s a pattern now. The drugs and the money in Brubaker’s pocket are the exact same thing as the branch up Carbone’s ass and the yogurt on his back. Elaborate misdirection. Concealment of the true motive. It’s a definite MO. It’s not just a guess anymore. The same guy did both. He killed Carbone here and then jumped in his car and drove down to Columbia and killed Brubaker there. It’s a clear sequence. Everything fits. Times, distances, the way the guy thinks.”
I looked at her standing there. Her small brown hand was stretched like a starfish. She had clear polish on her nails. Her eyes were bright.
“Why would he ditch the crowbar?” I said. “After Carbone but before Brubaker?”
“Because he preferred a handgun,” she said. “Like anyone normal would. But he knew he couldn’t use one here. Too noisy. A mile from the main post, late in the evening, we’d have all come running. But in a bad part of a big city, nobody was going to think twice. Which is how it turned out, apparently.”
“Could he have been sure of that?”
“No,” she said. “Not entirely sure. He set up the rendezvous, so he knew where he was going. But he couldn’t be exactly certain about what he would find when he got there. So I guess he would have liked to keep a backup weapon. But the crowbar was all covered with Carbone’s blood and hair by then. There was no opportunity to clean it. He was in a hurry. The ground was frozen. No patch of soft grass to wipe it on. So he couldn’t see having it in the car with him. Maybe he was worried about a traffic stop on the way south. So he ditched it.”
I nodded. Ultimately, the crowbar was disposable. A handgun was a more reliable weapon against a fit and wary opponent. Especially in the tight confines of a city alley, as opposed to the kind of dark and wide-open spaces where he had taken Carbone down. I yawned. Closed my eyes.
“He killed Carbone here,” I repeated. “And then he jumped in his car and drove to Columbia and killed Brubaker there.”
“Yes,” Summer said.
“But you figured he was
“Yes,” she said again. “I did.”
“You figured he drove out on the track with Carbone, hit him in the head, arranged the scene, and then drove back here to the post. Your reasoning was pretty good. And where we found the crowbar kind of confirmed it.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“And then we figured he parked his car and went about his business.”
“Correct,” she said.
“But he can’t have parked his car and gone about his business. Because now we’re saying he drove straight to Columbia, South Carolina, instead. To meet with Brubaker. Three-hour drive. He was in a hurry. Not much time to waste.”
“Correct,” she said again.
“So he didn’t park his car,” I said. “He didn’t even touch the brake. He drove straight out the main gate instead. There’s no other way off the post. He drove straight out the main gate, Summer, immediately after he killed Carbone, somewhere around nine or ten o’clock.”
“Check the gate log,” she said. “There’s a copy right there on the desk.”
We checked the gate log together. Operation Just Cause in Panama had moved all domestic installations up one level on the DefCon scale and therefore all closed posts were recording entrances and
