The Enemy
Chapter Sixteen
We gave Trifonov his Steyr back and let him out at the Delta gate. He probably signed the gun back in and then legged it to his room and picked up his book. Probably carried on reading right where he left off. We parked the Humvee and walked back to my office. Summer went straight to the copy of the gate log. It was still taped to the wall, next to the map.
"Vassell and Coomer," she said. "They were the only other people who left the post that night."
"They went north," I said. "If you want to say they threw the briefcase out of the car, then you have to agree they went north. They didn't go south to Columbia."
"OK," she said. "So the same guy didn't do Carbone and Brubaker. There's no connection. We just wasted a lot of time."
"Welcome to the real world," I said.
The real world got a whole lot worse when my phone rang twenty minutes later. It was my sergeant. The woman with the baby son. She had Sanchez on the line, calling from Fort Jackson. She put him through.
"Willard has been and gone," he said. "Unbelievable."
"Told you so."
"He pitched all kinds of hissy fits."
"But you're fireproof."
"Thank God."
I paused. "Did you tell him about my guy?"
He paused. "You told me to. Shouldn't I have?"
"It was a dry hole. Looked good at first, but it wasn't in the end."
"Well, he's on his way up to see you about it. He left here two hours ago. He's going to be very disappointed."
"Terrific," I said.
"What are you going to do?" Summer asked.
"What is Willard?" I said. "Fundamentally?"
"A careerist," she said.
"Correct," I said.
Technically the army has a total of twenty-six separate ranks. A grunt comes in as an E-1 private, and as long as he doesn't do anything stupid he is automatically promoted to an E-2 private after a year, and to an E-3 private first class after another year, or even a little earlier if he's any good. Then the ladder stretches all the way up to a five-star General of the Army, although I wasn't aware of anyone except George Washington and Dwight David Eisenhower who ever made it that far. If you count the E-9 sergeant major grade as three separate steps to acknowledge the Command Sergeant Majors and the Sergeant Major of the Army, and if you count all four warrant officer grades, then a major like me has seven steps above him and eighteen steps below him. Which gives a major like me considerable experience of insubordination, going both ways, up and down, giving and taking. With a million people on twenty-six separate rungs on the ladder, insubordination was a true art form. And the canvas was one-on-one privacy.
So I sent Summer away and waited for Willard on my own. She argued about it. In the end I got her to agree that one of us should stay under the radar. She went to get a late dinner. My sergeant brought me a sandwich. Roast beef and Swiss cheese, white bread, a little mayo, a little mustard. The beef was pink. It was a good sandwich. Then she brought me coffee. I was halfway through my second cup when Willard arrived.
He came straight in. He left the door open. I didn't get up. Didn't salute. Didn't stop sipping my coffee. He tolerated it, like I knew he would. He was being very tactical. As far as he knew I had a suspect that could take Brubaker's case away from the Columbia PD and break the link between an elite colonel and drug dealers in a crack alley. So he was prepared to start out warm and friendly. Or maybe he was looking for a bonding experience with one of his staff. He sat down and started plucking at his trouser legs. He put a man-to-man expression on his face, like we had just been through some kind of a shared experience together.
"Wonderful drive from Jackson," he said. "Great roads."
I said nothing.
"Just bought a vintage Pontiac GTO," he said. "Fine car. I put polished headers on it, big bore pipes. Goes like shit off a shiny shovel."
I said nothing.
"You like muscle cars?"
"No," I said. "I like to take the bus."
"That's not much fun."
"OK, let me put it another way. I'm happy with the size of my penis. I don't need compensation."
He went white. Then he went red. The same shade as Trifonov's Corvette. He glared at me like he was a real tough guy.
"Tell me about the progress on Brubaker," he said.
"Brubaker's not my case."
"Sanchez told me you found the guy."
"False alarm," I said.
"Are you sure?"
"Totally."
"Who were you looking at?"
"Your ex-wife."
"What?"
"Someone told me she slept with half the colonels in the army. Always had, like a hobby. So I figured that might include Brubaker. I mean, it was a fifty-fifty chance."
He stared at me.
"Only kidding," I said. "It was nobody. Just a dry hole."
He looked away, furious. I got up and closed my office door. Stepped back to my desk. Sat down again. Faced him.
"Your insolence is incredible," he said.
"So make a complaint, Willard. Go up the chain of command and tell someone I hurt your feelings. See if anyone believes you. Or see if anyone believes you can't fix a thing like that all by yourself. Watch that note go in your file. See what kind of an impression it makes at your one-star promotion board."
He squirmed in his chair. Hitched his body from side to side and stared around the room. Fixed his gaze on Summer's map.
"What's that?" he said.
"It's a map," I said.
"Of what?"
"Of the eastern United States."
"What are the pins for?"
I didn't answer. He got up and stepped over to the wall. Touched the pins with his fingertips, one at a time. D.C., Sperryville, and Green Valley. Then Raleigh, Fort Bird, Cape Fear, and Columbia.
"What is all this?" he said.
"They're just pins," I said.
He pulled the pin out of Green Valley, Virginia.
"Mrs. Kramer," he said. "I told you to leave that alone."
He pulled all the other pins out. Threw them down on the floor. Then he saw the gate log. Scanned down it and stopped when he got to Vassell and Coomer.
"I told you to leave them alone as well," he said.
He tore the list off the wall. The tape took scabs of paint with it. Then he tore the map down. More paint came with it. The pins had left tiny holes in the Sheetrock. They looked like a map all by themselves. Or a constellation.
"You made holes in the wall," he said. "I won't have army property abused in this way. It's unprofessional. What would visitors to this room think?"
"They'd have thought there was a map on the wall," I said. "It was you that pulled it down and made the mess."
He dropped the crumpled paper on the floor.
"You want me to walk over to the Delta station?" he said.
"Want me to break your back?"
He went very quiet.
"You should think about your next promotion board, Major. You think you're going to make lieutenant colonel while I'm still here?"
"No," I said. "I really don't. But then, I don't expect you'll be here very long."
"Think again. This is a nice niche. The army will always need cops."
"But it won't always need clueless assholes like you."
"You're speaking to a senior officer."
I looked around the room. "But what am I saying? I don't see any witnesses."
He said nothing.
"You've got an authority problem," I said. "It's going to be fun watching you try to solve it. Maybe we could solve it man-to-man, in the gym. You want to try that?"
"Have you got a secure fax machine?" he said.
"Obviously," I said. "It's in the outer office. You passed it on your way in. What are you? Blind as well as stupid?"
"Be standing next to it at exactly nine hundred hours tomorrow. I'll be sending you a set of written orders."
He glared at me one last time. Then he stepped outside and slammed the door so hard that the whole wall shook and the air current lifted the map and the gate log an inch off the floor.
I stayed at my desk. Dialed my brother in Washington, but he didn't answer. I thought about calling my mother. But then I figured there was nothing to say. Whatever I talked about, she would know I had called to ask: Are you still alive? She would know that was what was on my mind.
So I got out of my chair and picked up the map and smoothed it out. Taped it back on the wall. I picked up all seven pins and put them back in place. Taped the gate log alongside the map. Then I pulled it down again. It was useless. I balled it up and threw it in the trash. Left the map there all on its own. My sergeant came in with more coffee. I wondered briefly about her baby's father. Where was he? Had he been an abusive husband? If so, he was probably buried in a swamp somewhere. Or several swamps, in several pieces. My phone rang and she answered it for me. Passed me the receiver.
"Detective Clark," she said. "Up in Virginia."
I trailed the phone cord around the desk and sat down again.
"We're making progress now," he said. "The Sperryville crowbar is our weapon, for sure. We got an identical sample from the hardware store and our medical examiner matched it up."
"Good work," I said.
"So I'm calling to tell you I can't keep on looking. We found ours, so we can't be looking for yours anymore. I can't justify the overtime budget."
"Sure," I said. "We anticipated that."
"So you're on your own with it now, bud. And I'm real sorry about that."
I said nothing.
"Anything at your end? You got a name for me yet?"
I smiled. You can forget about a name, I thought. Bud. No quo, no quid. Not that there ever was a name in the first place.
"I'll let you know," I said.
Summer came back and I told her to take the rest of the night off. Told her to meet me for breakfast in the O Club. At nine o'clock exactly, when Willard's orders were due. I figured we could have a long leisurely meal, plenty of eggs, plenty of coffee, and we could stroll back over about ten-fifteen.
"You moved the map," she said.
"Willard tore it down. I put it back up."
"He's dangerous."
"Maybe," I said. "Maybe not. Time will tell."
She went back to her quarters and I went back to mine. I was in a room in the Bachelor Officers' row. It was pretty much like a motel. There was a street named after some long-dead Medal of Honor winner and a path branching off from the sidewalk that led to my door. There were posts every twenty yards with streetlights on them. The one nearest my door was out. It was out because it had been busted with a stone. I could see glass on the path. And three guys in the shadows. I walked past the first one. He was the Delta sergeant with the beard and the tan. He tapped the face of his watch with his forefinger. The second guy did the same thing. The third guy just smiled. I got inside and closed my door. Didn't hear them walk away. I didn't sleep well.
They were gone by morning. I made it to the O Club OK. At nine o'clock the dining room was pretty much empty, which was an advantage. The disadvantage was that whatever food remained had been stewing on the buffet for a while. But on balance I thought it was a good situation. I was more of a loner than a gourmet. Summer and I sat across from each other at a small table in the center of the room. Between us we ate almost everything that was left. Summer consumed about a pound of grits and two pounds of biscuits. She was small, but she could eat. That was for damn sure. We took our time with our coffee and walked over to my office at ten-twenty. There was mayhem inside. Every phone was ringing. The Louisiana corporal looked harassed.
"Don't answer your phone," he said. "It's Colonel Willard. He wanted immediate confirmation that you'd gotten your orders. He's mad as hell."
"What are the orders?"
He ducked back to his desk and offered me a sheet of fax paper. The phones kept on ringing. I didn't take the sheet of paper. I just stood there and read it over my corporal's shoulder. There were two closely spaced paragraphs. Willard was ordering me to examine the quartermaster's inward delivery note file and his outward distribution log. I was to use them to work out on paper exactly what ought to be there in the on-post warehouse. Then I was to verify my conclusion by means of a practical search. Then I was to compile a list of all missing items and propose a course of action in writing to track down their current whereabouts. I was to execute the order in a prompt and timely fashion. I was to call him to confirm receipt of the order immediately it was in my hand.
It was a classic make-work punishment. In the bad old days they ordered you to paint coal white or fill sandbags with teaspoons or scrub floors with toothbrushes. This was the modern-day MP equivalent. It was a mindless task that would take two weeks to complete. I smiled.
The phones were still ringing.
"The order was never in my hand," I said. "I'm not here."
"Where are you?"
"Tell him someone dropped a gum wrapper in the flower bed outside the post commander's office. Tell him I won't have army real estate abused in that way. Tell him I've been on the trail since well before dawn."
I led Summer back out onto the sidewalk, away from the ringing phones.
"Asshole," I said.
"You should lay low," she said. "He'll be calling all over."
I stood still. Looked around. Cold weather. Gray buildings, gray sky.
"Let's take the day off," I said. "Let's go somewhere."
"We've got things to do."
I nodded. Carbone. Kramer. Brubaker.
"Can't stay here," I said. "So we can't do much about Carbone."
"Want to go down to Columbia?"
"Not our case. Nothing we can do that Sanchez isn't doing."
"Too cold for the beach," Summer said.
I nodded again. Suddenly wished it wasn't too cold for the beach. I would have liked to see Summer on the beach. In a bikini. A very small one, for preference.
"We have to work," she said.
I looked south and west, beyond the post buildings. I could see the trees, cold and dead against the horizon. I could see a tall pine, dull and dormant, a little nearer. I figured it was close to where we had found Carbone.
Carbone.
"Let's go to Green Valley," I said. "Let's visit with Detective Clark. We could ask him for his crowbar notes. He made a start for us. So maybe we could finish up. A four-hour drive might be a good investment at this point."
"And four hours back."
"We could have lunch. Maybe dinner. We could go AWOL."
"They'd find us."
I shook my head.
"Nobody would find me," I said. "Not ever."
I stayed there on the sidewalk and Summer went away and came back five minutes later in the green Chevy we had used before. She pulled in tight to the curb and buzzed her window down before I could move.
"Is this smart?" she said.
"It's all we've got," I said.
"No, I mean you're going to be on the gate log. Time out, ten-thirty. Willard could check it."
I said nothing. She smiled.
"You could hide in the trunk," she said. "You could get out again when we're through the gate."
I shook my head. "I'm not going to hide. Not because of an asshole like Willard. If he checks the log I'll tell him the hunt for the gum-wrapper guy suddenly went interstate. Or global, even. We could go to Tahiti."
I got in beside her and racked the seat all the way back and started thinking about bikinis again. She took her foot off the brake and accelerated down the main drag. Slowed and stopped at the gate. An MP private came out with a clipboard. He noted our plate number and we showed him ID. He wrote our names down. Glanced into the car, checked the empty rear seat. Then he nodded to his partner in the guard shack and the barrier went up in front of us, very slowly. It was a thick pole with a counterweight, red and white stripes. Summer waited until it was exactly vertical and then she dropped the hammer and we took off in a cloud of blue government-funded smoke from the Chevy's rear tires.
The weather got better as we drove north. We slid out from under a shelf of low gray cloud into bright winter sunshine. It was an army car so there was no radio in it. Just a blank panel where the civilian model would have had AM and FM and a cassette slot. So we talked from time to time and whiled the rest away riding in aimless silence. It was a curious feeling, to be free. I had spent just about my whole life being where the military told me to be, every minute of every day. Now I felt like a truant. There was a world out there. It was going about its business, chaotic and untidy and undisciplined, and I was a part of it, just briefly. I lay back in the seat and watched it spool by, bright and stroboscopic, random images flashing past like sunlight on a running river.
"Do you wear a bikini or a one-piece?" I asked.
"Why?"
"Just checking," I said. "I was thinking about the beach."
"Too cold."
"Won't be in August."
"Think you'll be here in August?"
"No," I said.
"Pity," she said. "You'll never know what I wear."
"You could mail me a picture."
"Where to?"
"Fort Leavenworth, probably," I said. "The maximum security wing."
"No, where will you be? Seriously."
"I have no idea," I said. "August is eight months away."
"Where's the best place you ever served?"
I smiled. Gave her the same answer I give anyone who asks that question.
"Right here," I said. "Right now."
"Even with Willard on your back?"
"Willard's nothing. He'll be gone before I am."
"Why is he here at all?"
"My brother figures they're copying what corporations do. Know-nothings aren't invested in the status quo."
"So a guy trained to write fuel consumption algorithms winds up with two dead soldiers in his first week. And he doesn't want to investigate either one of them."
"Because that would be old-fashioned thinking. We have to move on. We have to see the big picture."
She smiled and drove on. Took the Green Valley ramp, going way too fast.
The Green Valley Police Department had a building north of town. It was a bigger place than I had expected, because Green Valley itself was bigger than I had expected. It encompassed the pretty town center we had already seen, but then it bulged north through some country that was mostly strip malls and light industrial units, almost all the way up to Sperryville. The police station looked big enough for twenty or thirty cops. It was built the way most places are where land is cheap. It was long and low and sprawling, with a one-story center core and two wings. The wings were built at right angles, so the place was U-shaped. The facades were concrete, molded to look like stone. There was a brown lawn in front and parking lots at both sides. There was a flagpole dead center on the lawn. Old Glory was up there, weather-beaten and limp in the windless air. The whole place looked a little grand, and a little bleached in the pale sunlight.
We parked in the right-hand lot in an empty slot between two white police cruisers. We got out into the brightness. Went in and asked the desk guy for Detective Clark. The desk guy made an internal call and then pointed us toward the left-hand wing. We walked through an untidy corridor and ended up in a room the size of a basketball court. Pretty much the whole thing was a detectives' bullpen. There was a wooden fence that enclosed a line of four visitor's chairs and then there was a gate with a receptionist's desk next to it. Beyond the gate was a lieutenant's office way off in one corner and then nothing else except three pairs of back-to-back desks covered with phones and paper. There were file cabinets against the walls. The windows were grimy and most of them had skewed and broken blinds.
There was no receptionist at the desk. There were two detectives in the room, both of them wearing tweed sport coats, both of them sitting with their backs to us. Clark was one of them. He was talking on the phone. I rattled the gate latch. Both guys turned around. Clark paused for a second, surprised, and then he waved us in. We pulled chairs around and sat at the ends of his desk, one on each side. He kept on talking into the phone. We waited. I spent the time looking around the room. The lieutenant's office had glass walls from waist height upward. There was a big desk in there. Nobody behind it. But on it I could see two plaster casts, just like the ones our own pathologist had made. I didn't get up and go look at them. Didn't seem polite.
Clark hung up the phone and made a note on a yellow pad. Then he breathed out and pushed his chair way back so he could see both of us at the same time. He didn't say anything. He knew we weren't making a social call. But equally he didn't want to come right out and ask if we had a name for him. Because he didn't want to look foolish if we didn't.
"Just passing through," I said.
"OK," he said.
"Looking for a little help," I said.
"What kind of help?"
"Thought you might give us your crowbar notes. Now that you don't need them anymore. Now that you've found yours."
"Notes?"
"You listed all kinds of hardware stores. I figured it could save us some time if we picked up where you left off."
"I could have faxed them," he said.
"There's probably a lot of them. We didn't want to cause you the trouble."
"I might not have been here."
"We were passing by anyway."
"OK," he said again. "Crowbar notes." He swiveled his chair and got up out of it and walked over to a file cabinet. Came back with a green folder about a half-inch thick. He dropped it on his desk. It made a decent thump.
"Good luck," he said.
He sat down again and I nodded to Summer and she picked up the folder. Opened it. It was full of paper. She leafed through. Made a face. Passed it across to me. It was a long, long list of places that stretched from New Jersey to North Carolina. There were names and addresses and phone numbers. The first ninety or so had check marks against them. Then there were about four hundred that didn't.
"You have to be careful," Clark said. "Some places call them crowbars and some call them wrecking bars. You have to be sure they know what you're talking about."
"Do they have different sizes?"
"Lots of different sizes. Ours is pretty big."
"Can I see it? Or is it in your evidence room?"
"It's not evidence," Clark said. "It's not the actual weapon. It's just an identical sample on loan from the Sperryville store. We can't take it to court."
"But it fits your plaster casts."
"Like a glove," he said. He got up again and walked into his lieutenant's office and took the casts off the desk. Carried them back one in each hand and put them down on his own desk. They were very similar to ours. There was a positive and a negative, just like we had. Mrs. Kramer's head had been a lot smaller than Carbone's, in terms of diameter. Therefore the crowbar had caught less of its circumference. Therefore the impression of the fatal wound was a little shorter in length than ours. But it was just as deep and ugly. Clark picked it up and ran his fingertip through the trench.
"Very violent blow," he said. "We're looking for a tall guy, strong, right-handed. You seen anyone like that?"
"Every time I look in the mirror," I said.
The cast of the weapon itself was a little shorter than ours too. But other than that, it looked very much the same. Same chalky section, pitted here and there with microscopic imperfections in the plaster, but basically straight and smooth and brutal.
"Can I see the actual crowbar?" I said.
"Sure," Clark said. He leaned down and opened a drawer in his desk. Left it open like a display and moved his chair to get out of my way. I leaned forward and looked down and saw the same curved black thing I had seen the previous morning. Same shape, same contours, same color, same size, same claws, same octagonal section. Same gloss, same precision. It was exactly identical in every way to the one we had left behind in Fort Bird's mortuary office.
We drove ten miles to Sperryville. I looked through Clark's list to find the hardware store's address. It was right there on the fifth line, because it was close to Green Valley. But there was no check mark against its phone number. There was a penciled note instead: No answer. I guessed the owner had been busy with a glazier and an insurance company. I guessed Clark's guys would have gotten around to making a second call eventually, but they had been overtaken by the NCIC search.
Sperryville wasn't a big place, so we just cruised around looking for the address. We found a bunch of stores on a short strip and after driving it three times we found the right street name on a green sign. It pointed us down what was basically a narrow dead-end alley. We passed between the sides of two clapboard structures and then the alley widened into a small yard and we saw the hardware store facing us at the far end. It was like a small one-story barn, painted up to look more urban than rural. It was a real mom-and-pop place. It had a family name painted on an old sign. No indication that it was part of a franchise. It was just an American small business, standing alone, weathering the booms and busts from one generation to the next.
But it was an excellent place for a dead-of-night burglary. Quiet, isolated, invisible from passersby on the main street, no living accommodation on the second floor. In the front wall it had a display window on the left set next to an entrance door on the right, separated only by the width of the door frame. There was a moon-shaped hole in the window glass, temporarily backed by a sheet of unfinished plywood. The plywood had been neatly trimmed to the right size. I figured the hole had been punched through by the sole of a shoe. It was close to the door. I figured a tall guy could put his left arm through the hole up to the shoulder and get his hand around to the door latch easily enough. But he would have had to reach all the way in first and then bend his elbow slowly and deliberately, to avoid snagging his clothes. I pictured him with his left cheek against the cold glass, in the dark, breathing hard, groping blindly.
We parked right in front of the store. Got out and spent a minute looking in the window. It was full of items on display. But whoever had put them there wasn't about to move on to Saks Fifth Avenue anytime soon. Not for their famous holiday windows. Because there was no art involved. No design. No temptation. Everything was just lined up neatly on hand-built shelves. Everything had a price tag. The window was saying: This is what we've got. If you want it, come in and get it. But it all looked like quality stuff. There were some strange items. I had no idea what some of them were for. I didn't know much about tools. I had never really used any, except knives. But it was clear to me that this store chose what it carried pretty carefully.
We went in. There was a mechanical bell on the door that rang as we entered. The plain neatness and organization we had seen in the window was maintained inside. There were tidy racks and shelves and bins. A wide-plank wooden floor. There was a faint smell of machine oil. The place was quiet. No customers. There was a guy behind the counter, maybe sixty years old, maybe seventy. He was looking at us, alerted by the bell. He was medium height and slender and a little stooped. He wore round eyeglasses and a gray cardigan sweater. They made him look intelligent, but they also made him look like he wasn't accustomed to handling anything bigger than a small screwdriver. They made him look like selling tools was a definite second best to being at a university, teaching a course about their design and their history and their development.
"May I help you?" he asked.
"We're here about the stolen wrecking bar," I said. "Or the stolen crowbar, if that's what you prefer to call it."
He nodded.
"Crowbar," he said. "Wrecking bar is a little uncouth, in my opinion."
"OK, we're here about the stolen crowbar," I said.
He smiled, briefly. "You're the army. Has martial law been declared?"
"We have a parallel inquiry," Summer said.
"Are you Military Police?"
"Yes," Summer said. She told him our names and ranks. He reciprocated with his own name, which matched the sign above his door.
"We need some background," I said. "About the crowbar market."
He made a face like he was interested, but not very excited. It was like asking a forensics guy about fingerprinting instead of DNA. I got the impression that crowbar development had slowed to a halt a long time ago.
"Where can I start?" he said.
"How many different sorts are there?"
"Dozens," he said. "There are at least six manufacturers that I would consider dealing with myself. And plenty of others I wouldn't."
I looked around the store. "Because you only carry quality stuff."
"Exactly," he said. "I can't compete with the big chains on price alone. So I have to offer absolutely top quality and service."
"Niche marketing," I said.
He nodded again.
"Low-end crowbars would come from China," he said. "Mass produced, cast iron, wrought iron, low-grade forged steel. I wouldn't be interested."
"So what do you carry?"
"I import a few titanium crowbars from Europe," he said. "Very expensive, but very strong. More importantly, very light. They were designed for police and firefighters. Or for underwater work, where corrosion would otherwise be an issue. Or for anyone else that needs something small and durable and easily portable."
"But it wasn't one of those that was stolen."
The old guy shook his head. "No, the titanium bars are specialist items. The others I offer are slightly more mainstream."
"And what are those?"
"This is a small store," he said. "I have to choose what I carry very carefully. Which in some ways is a burden, but which is also a delight, because choice is very liberating. These decisions are mine, and mine alone. So obviously, for a crowbar, I would choose high-carbon chromium steel. Then the question is, should it be single-tempered or double-tempered? My honest preference would always be double-tempered, for strength. And I would want the claws to be very slim, for utility, and therefore case-hardened, for safety. That could be a lifesaver, in some situations. Imagine a man on a high roof beam, whose claw shattered. He'd fall off."
"I guess he would," I said. "So, the right steel, double-tempered, with the hard claws. What did you pick?"
"Well, actually I compromised with one of the items I carry. My preferred manufacturer won't make anything shorter than eighteen inches. But I needed a twelve-inch, obviously."
I must have looked blank.
"For studs and joists," the old guy said. "If you're working inside sixteen-inch centers, you can't use an eighteen-inch bar, can you?"
"I guess not," I said.
"So I take a twelve-inch with a half-inch section from one source, even though it's only single-tempered. I think it's satisfactory, though. In terms of strength. With only twelve inches of leverage, the force a person generates isn't going to overwhelm it."
"OK," I said.
"Apart from that particular item and the titanium specialties, I order exclusively from a very old Pittsburgh company called Fortis. They make two models for me. An eighteen-inch, and a three-footer. Both of them are three-quarter-inch section. High-carbon double-tempered chromium steel, case-hardened claws, very fine quality paint."
"And it was the three-footer that was stolen," I said.
He looked at me like I was clairvoyant.
"Detective Clark showed us the sample you lent him," I said.
"I see," he said.
"So, is the thirty-six-inch three-quarter-section Fortis a rare item?"
He made a face, like he was a little disappointed.
"I sell one a year," he said. "Two, if I'm very lucky. They're expensive. And appreciation for quality is declining shamefully. Pearls before swine, I say."
"Is that the same everywhere?"
"Everywhere?" he repeated.
"In other stores. Regionally. With the Fortis crowbars."
"I'm sorry," he said. "Perhaps I didn't make myself quite clear. They're made for me. To my own design. To my own exact specification. They're custom items."
I stared at him. "They're exclusive to this store?"
He nodded. "The privilege of independence."
"Literally exclusive?"
He nodded again. "Unique in all the world."
"When did you last sell one?"
"About nine months ago."
"Does the paint wear off?"
"I know what you're asking," he said. "And the answer is yes, of course. If you find one that looks new, it's the one that was stolen on New Year's Eve."
We borrowed an identical sample from him for comparative purposes, the same way Detective Clark had. It was dewed with machine oil and had tissue paper wrapped around the center shaft. We laid it like a trophy across the Chevy's backseat. Then we ate in the car. Burgers, from a drive-through a hundred yards north of the tool store.
"Tell me three new facts," I said.
"One, Mrs. Kramer and Carbone were killed by the same individual weapon. Two, we're going to drive ourselves nuts trying to find a connection between them."
"And three?"
"I don't know."
"Three, the bad guy knew Sperryville pretty well. Could you have found that store in the dark, in a hurry, unless you knew the town?"
We looked ahead through the windshield. The mouth of the alley was just about visible. But then, we knew it was there. And it was full daylight.
Summer closed her eyes.
"Focus on the weapon," she said. "Forget everything else. Visualize it. The custom crowbar. Unique in all the world. It was carried out of that alley, right there. Then it was in Green Valley at two A.M. on January first. And then it was inside Fort Bird at nine P.M. on the fourth. It went on a journey. We know where it started, and we know where it finished. We don't know for sure where it went in between, but we do know for certain it passed one particular point along the way. It passed Fort Bird's main gate. We don't know when, but we know for sure that it did."
She opened her eyes.
"We have to get back there," she said. "We have to look at the logs again. The earliest it could have passed the gate is six A.M. on January first, because Bird is four hours from Green Valley. The latest it could have passed the gate is, say, eight P.M. on January fourth. That's an eighty-six-hour window. We need to check the gate logs for everybody who entered during that time. Because we know for sure that the crowbar came in, and we know for sure that it didn't walk in by itself."
I said nothing.
"I'm sorry," she said. "There'll be a lot of names."
The truant feeling was completely gone. We got back on the road and headed east, looking for I-95. We found it and we turned south, toward Bird. Toward Willard on the phone. Toward the angry Delta station. We slid back under the shelf of gray cloud just before the North Carolina state line. The sky went dark. Summer put the headlights on. We passed the State Police building on the opposite shoulder. Passed the spot where Kramer's briefcase had been found. Passed the rest area a mile later. We merged with the east-west highway spur and came off at the cloverleaf next to Kramer's motel. We left it behind us and drove the thirty miles down to Fort Bird's gate. The guard shack MPs signed us in at 1930 hours exactly. I told them to copy their logs starting at 0600 hours January first and ending at 2000 hours January fourth. I told them to have a Xerox record of that eighty-six-hour slice of life delivered to my office immediately.
My office was very quiet. The morning mayhem was long gone. The sergeant with the baby son was back on duty. She looked tired. I realized she didn't sleep much. She worked all night and probably played with her kid all day. Tough life. She had coffee going. I figured she was just as interested in it as I was. Maybe more.
"Delta guys are restless," she said. "They know you arrested the Bulgarian guy."
"I didn't arrest him. I just asked him some questions."
"That's a distinction they don't seem willing to make. People have been in and out of here looking for you."
"Were they armed?"
"They don't need to be armed. Not those guys. You should have them confined to quarters. You could do that. You're acting MP CO here."
I shook my head. "Anything else?"
"You need to call Colonel Willard before midnight, or he's going to write you up as AWOL. He said that's a promise."
I nodded. It was Willard's obvious next move. An AWOL charge wouldn't reflect badly on a CO. Wouldn't make him look like he had lost his grip. An AWOL charge was always on the man who ran, fair and square.
"Anything else?" I said again.
"Sanchez wants a ten-sixteen," she said. "Down at Fort Jackson. And your brother called again."
"Any message?" I said.
"No message."
"OK," I said.
I went inside to my desk. Picked up my phone. Summer stepped over to the map. Traced her fingers across the pins, D.C. to Sperryville, Sperryville to Green Valley, Green Valley to Fort Bird. I dialed Joe's number. He answered, second ring.
"I called Mom," he said. "She's still hanging in there."
"She said soon, Joe. Doesn't mean we have to mount a daily vigil."
"Bound to be sooner than we think. And than we want."
"How was she?"
"She sounded shaky."
"You OK?"
"Not bad," he said. "You?"
"Not a great year so far."
"You should call her next," he said.
"I will," I said. "In a few days."
"Do it tomorrow," he said.
He hung up and I sat for a minute. Then I dabbed the cradle to clear the line and asked my sergeant to get Sanchez for me. Down at Jackson. I held the phone by my ear and waited. Summer was looking right at me.
"A daily vigil?" she said.
"She's waiting for the plaster to come off," I said. "She doesn't like it."
Summer looked at me a little more and then turned back to the map. I put the phone on speaker and laid the handset down on the desk. There was a click on the line and we heard Sanchez's voice.
"I've been hassling the Columbia PD about Brubaker's car," he said.
"Didn't they find it yet?" I said.
"No," he said. "And they weren't putting any effort into finding it. Which was inconceivable to me. So I kept on hassling them."
"And?"
"They dropped the other shoe."
"Which is?"
"Brubaker wasn't killed in Columbia," he said. "He was dumped there, is all."
"Vassell and Coomer," she said. "They were the only other people who left the post that night."
"They went north," I said. "If you want to say they threw the briefcase out of the car, then you have to agree they went north. They didn't go south to Columbia."
"OK," she said. "So the same guy didn't do Carbone and Brubaker. There's no connection. We just wasted a lot of time."
"Welcome to the real world," I said.
The real world got a whole lot worse when my phone rang twenty minutes later. It was my sergeant. The woman with the baby son. She had Sanchez on the line, calling from Fort Jackson. She put him through.
"Willard has been and gone," he said. "Unbelievable."
"Told you so."
"He pitched all kinds of hissy fits."
"But you're fireproof."
"Thank God."
I paused. "Did you tell him about my guy?"
He paused. "You told me to. Shouldn't I have?"
"It was a dry hole. Looked good at first, but it wasn't in the end."
"Well, he's on his way up to see you about it. He left here two hours ago. He's going to be very disappointed."
"Terrific," I said.
"What are you going to do?" Summer asked.
"What is Willard?" I said. "Fundamentally?"
"A careerist," she said.
"Correct," I said.
Technically the army has a total of twenty-six separate ranks. A grunt comes in as an E-1 private, and as long as he doesn't do anything stupid he is automatically promoted to an E-2 private after a year, and to an E-3 private first class after another year, or even a little earlier if he's any good. Then the ladder stretches all the way up to a five-star General of the Army, although I wasn't aware of anyone except George Washington and Dwight David Eisenhower who ever made it that far. If you count the E-9 sergeant major grade as three separate steps to acknowledge the Command Sergeant Majors and the Sergeant Major of the Army, and if you count all four warrant officer grades, then a major like me has seven steps above him and eighteen steps below him. Which gives a major like me considerable experience of insubordination, going both ways, up and down, giving and taking. With a million people on twenty-six separate rungs on the ladder, insubordination was a true art form. And the canvas was one-on-one privacy.
So I sent Summer away and waited for Willard on my own. She argued about it. In the end I got her to agree that one of us should stay under the radar. She went to get a late dinner. My sergeant brought me a sandwich. Roast beef and Swiss cheese, white bread, a little mayo, a little mustard. The beef was pink. It was a good sandwich. Then she brought me coffee. I was halfway through my second cup when Willard arrived.
He came straight in. He left the door open. I didn't get up. Didn't salute. Didn't stop sipping my coffee. He tolerated it, like I knew he would. He was being very tactical. As far as he knew I had a suspect that could take Brubaker's case away from the Columbia PD and break the link between an elite colonel and drug dealers in a crack alley. So he was prepared to start out warm and friendly. Or maybe he was looking for a bonding experience with one of his staff. He sat down and started plucking at his trouser legs. He put a man-to-man expression on his face, like we had just been through some kind of a shared experience together.
"Wonderful drive from Jackson," he said. "Great roads."
I said nothing.
"Just bought a vintage Pontiac GTO," he said. "Fine car. I put polished headers on it, big bore pipes. Goes like shit off a shiny shovel."
I said nothing.
"You like muscle cars?"
"No," I said. "I like to take the bus."
"That's not much fun."
"OK, let me put it another way. I'm happy with the size of my penis. I don't need compensation."
He went white. Then he went red. The same shade as Trifonov's Corvette. He glared at me like he was a real tough guy.
"Tell me about the progress on Brubaker," he said.
"Brubaker's not my case."
"Sanchez told me you found the guy."
"False alarm," I said.
"Are you sure?"
"Totally."
"Who were you looking at?"
"Your ex-wife."
"What?"
"Someone told me she slept with half the colonels in the army. Always had, like a hobby. So I figured that might include Brubaker. I mean, it was a fifty-fifty chance."
He stared at me.
"Only kidding," I said. "It was nobody. Just a dry hole."
He looked away, furious. I got up and closed my office door. Stepped back to my desk. Sat down again. Faced him.
"Your insolence is incredible," he said.
"So make a complaint, Willard. Go up the chain of command and tell someone I hurt your feelings. See if anyone believes you. Or see if anyone believes you can't fix a thing like that all by yourself. Watch that note go in your file. See what kind of an impression it makes at your one-star promotion board."
He squirmed in his chair. Hitched his body from side to side and stared around the room. Fixed his gaze on Summer's map.
"What's that?" he said.
"It's a map," I said.
"Of what?"
"Of the eastern United States."
"What are the pins for?"
I didn't answer. He got up and stepped over to the wall. Touched the pins with his fingertips, one at a time. D.C., Sperryville, and Green Valley. Then Raleigh, Fort Bird, Cape Fear, and Columbia.
"What is all this?" he said.
"They're just pins," I said.
He pulled the pin out of Green Valley, Virginia.
"Mrs. Kramer," he said. "I told you to leave that alone."
He pulled all the other pins out. Threw them down on the floor. Then he saw the gate log. Scanned down it and stopped when he got to Vassell and Coomer.
"I told you to leave them alone as well," he said.
He tore the list off the wall. The tape took scabs of paint with it. Then he tore the map down. More paint came with it. The pins had left tiny holes in the Sheetrock. They looked like a map all by themselves. Or a constellation.
"You made holes in the wall," he said. "I won't have army property abused in this way. It's unprofessional. What would visitors to this room think?"
"They'd have thought there was a map on the wall," I said. "It was you that pulled it down and made the mess."
He dropped the crumpled paper on the floor.
"You want me to walk over to the Delta station?" he said.
"Want me to break your back?"
He went very quiet.
"You should think about your next promotion board, Major. You think you're going to make lieutenant colonel while I'm still here?"
"No," I said. "I really don't. But then, I don't expect you'll be here very long."
"Think again. This is a nice niche. The army will always need cops."
"But it won't always need clueless assholes like you."
"You're speaking to a senior officer."
I looked around the room. "But what am I saying? I don't see any witnesses."
He said nothing.
"You've got an authority problem," I said. "It's going to be fun watching you try to solve it. Maybe we could solve it man-to-man, in the gym. You want to try that?"
"Have you got a secure fax machine?" he said.
"Obviously," I said. "It's in the outer office. You passed it on your way in. What are you? Blind as well as stupid?"
"Be standing next to it at exactly nine hundred hours tomorrow. I'll be sending you a set of written orders."
He glared at me one last time. Then he stepped outside and slammed the door so hard that the whole wall shook and the air current lifted the map and the gate log an inch off the floor.
I stayed at my desk. Dialed my brother in Washington, but he didn't answer. I thought about calling my mother. But then I figured there was nothing to say. Whatever I talked about, she would know I had called to ask: Are you still alive? She would know that was what was on my mind.
So I got out of my chair and picked up the map and smoothed it out. Taped it back on the wall. I picked up all seven pins and put them back in place. Taped the gate log alongside the map. Then I pulled it down again. It was useless. I balled it up and threw it in the trash. Left the map there all on its own. My sergeant came in with more coffee. I wondered briefly about her baby's father. Where was he? Had he been an abusive husband? If so, he was probably buried in a swamp somewhere. Or several swamps, in several pieces. My phone rang and she answered it for me. Passed me the receiver.
"Detective Clark," she said. "Up in Virginia."
I trailed the phone cord around the desk and sat down again.
"We're making progress now," he said. "The Sperryville crowbar is our weapon, for sure. We got an identical sample from the hardware store and our medical examiner matched it up."
"Good work," I said.
"So I'm calling to tell you I can't keep on looking. We found ours, so we can't be looking for yours anymore. I can't justify the overtime budget."
"Sure," I said. "We anticipated that."
"So you're on your own with it now, bud. And I'm real sorry about that."
I said nothing.
"Anything at your end? You got a name for me yet?"
I smiled. You can forget about a name, I thought. Bud. No quo, no quid. Not that there ever was a name in the first place.
"I'll let you know," I said.
Summer came back and I told her to take the rest of the night off. Told her to meet me for breakfast in the O Club. At nine o'clock exactly, when Willard's orders were due. I figured we could have a long leisurely meal, plenty of eggs, plenty of coffee, and we could stroll back over about ten-fifteen.
"You moved the map," she said.
"Willard tore it down. I put it back up."
"He's dangerous."
"Maybe," I said. "Maybe not. Time will tell."
She went back to her quarters and I went back to mine. I was in a room in the Bachelor Officers' row. It was pretty much like a motel. There was a street named after some long-dead Medal of Honor winner and a path branching off from the sidewalk that led to my door. There were posts every twenty yards with streetlights on them. The one nearest my door was out. It was out because it had been busted with a stone. I could see glass on the path. And three guys in the shadows. I walked past the first one. He was the Delta sergeant with the beard and the tan. He tapped the face of his watch with his forefinger. The second guy did the same thing. The third guy just smiled. I got inside and closed my door. Didn't hear them walk away. I didn't sleep well.
They were gone by morning. I made it to the O Club OK. At nine o'clock the dining room was pretty much empty, which was an advantage. The disadvantage was that whatever food remained had been stewing on the buffet for a while. But on balance I thought it was a good situation. I was more of a loner than a gourmet. Summer and I sat across from each other at a small table in the center of the room. Between us we ate almost everything that was left. Summer consumed about a pound of grits and two pounds of biscuits. She was small, but she could eat. That was for damn sure. We took our time with our coffee and walked over to my office at ten-twenty. There was mayhem inside. Every phone was ringing. The Louisiana corporal looked harassed.
"Don't answer your phone," he said. "It's Colonel Willard. He wanted immediate confirmation that you'd gotten your orders. He's mad as hell."
"What are the orders?"
He ducked back to his desk and offered me a sheet of fax paper. The phones kept on ringing. I didn't take the sheet of paper. I just stood there and read it over my corporal's shoulder. There were two closely spaced paragraphs. Willard was ordering me to examine the quartermaster's inward delivery note file and his outward distribution log. I was to use them to work out on paper exactly what ought to be there in the on-post warehouse. Then I was to verify my conclusion by means of a practical search. Then I was to compile a list of all missing items and propose a course of action in writing to track down their current whereabouts. I was to execute the order in a prompt and timely fashion. I was to call him to confirm receipt of the order immediately it was in my hand.
It was a classic make-work punishment. In the bad old days they ordered you to paint coal white or fill sandbags with teaspoons or scrub floors with toothbrushes. This was the modern-day MP equivalent. It was a mindless task that would take two weeks to complete. I smiled.
The phones were still ringing.
"The order was never in my hand," I said. "I'm not here."
"Where are you?"
"Tell him someone dropped a gum wrapper in the flower bed outside the post commander's office. Tell him I won't have army real estate abused in that way. Tell him I've been on the trail since well before dawn."
I led Summer back out onto the sidewalk, away from the ringing phones.
"Asshole," I said.
"You should lay low," she said. "He'll be calling all over."
I stood still. Looked around. Cold weather. Gray buildings, gray sky.
"Let's take the day off," I said. "Let's go somewhere."
"We've got things to do."
I nodded. Carbone. Kramer. Brubaker.
"Can't stay here," I said. "So we can't do much about Carbone."
"Want to go down to Columbia?"
"Not our case. Nothing we can do that Sanchez isn't doing."
"Too cold for the beach," Summer said.
I nodded again. Suddenly wished it wasn't too cold for the beach. I would have liked to see Summer on the beach. In a bikini. A very small one, for preference.
"We have to work," she said.
I looked south and west, beyond the post buildings. I could see the trees, cold and dead against the horizon. I could see a tall pine, dull and dormant, a little nearer. I figured it was close to where we had found Carbone.
Carbone.
"Let's go to Green Valley," I said. "Let's visit with Detective Clark. We could ask him for his crowbar notes. He made a start for us. So maybe we could finish up. A four-hour drive might be a good investment at this point."
"And four hours back."
"We could have lunch. Maybe dinner. We could go AWOL."
"They'd find us."
I shook my head.
"Nobody would find me," I said. "Not ever."
I stayed there on the sidewalk and Summer went away and came back five minutes later in the green Chevy we had used before. She pulled in tight to the curb and buzzed her window down before I could move.
"Is this smart?" she said.
"It's all we've got," I said.
"No, I mean you're going to be on the gate log. Time out, ten-thirty. Willard could check it."
I said nothing. She smiled.
"You could hide in the trunk," she said. "You could get out again when we're through the gate."
I shook my head. "I'm not going to hide. Not because of an asshole like Willard. If he checks the log I'll tell him the hunt for the gum-wrapper guy suddenly went interstate. Or global, even. We could go to Tahiti."
I got in beside her and racked the seat all the way back and started thinking about bikinis again. She took her foot off the brake and accelerated down the main drag. Slowed and stopped at the gate. An MP private came out with a clipboard. He noted our plate number and we showed him ID. He wrote our names down. Glanced into the car, checked the empty rear seat. Then he nodded to his partner in the guard shack and the barrier went up in front of us, very slowly. It was a thick pole with a counterweight, red and white stripes. Summer waited until it was exactly vertical and then she dropped the hammer and we took off in a cloud of blue government-funded smoke from the Chevy's rear tires.
The weather got better as we drove north. We slid out from under a shelf of low gray cloud into bright winter sunshine. It was an army car so there was no radio in it. Just a blank panel where the civilian model would have had AM and FM and a cassette slot. So we talked from time to time and whiled the rest away riding in aimless silence. It was a curious feeling, to be free. I had spent just about my whole life being where the military told me to be, every minute of every day. Now I felt like a truant. There was a world out there. It was going about its business, chaotic and untidy and undisciplined, and I was a part of it, just briefly. I lay back in the seat and watched it spool by, bright and stroboscopic, random images flashing past like sunlight on a running river.
"Do you wear a bikini or a one-piece?" I asked.
"Why?"
"Just checking," I said. "I was thinking about the beach."
"Too cold."
"Won't be in August."
"Think you'll be here in August?"
"No," I said.
"Pity," she said. "You'll never know what I wear."
"You could mail me a picture."
"Where to?"
"Fort Leavenworth, probably," I said. "The maximum security wing."
"No, where will you be? Seriously."
"I have no idea," I said. "August is eight months away."
"Where's the best place you ever served?"
I smiled. Gave her the same answer I give anyone who asks that question.
"Right here," I said. "Right now."
"Even with Willard on your back?"
"Willard's nothing. He'll be gone before I am."
"Why is he here at all?"
"My brother figures they're copying what corporations do. Know-nothings aren't invested in the status quo."
"So a guy trained to write fuel consumption algorithms winds up with two dead soldiers in his first week. And he doesn't want to investigate either one of them."
"Because that would be old-fashioned thinking. We have to move on. We have to see the big picture."
She smiled and drove on. Took the Green Valley ramp, going way too fast.
The Green Valley Police Department had a building north of town. It was a bigger place than I had expected, because Green Valley itself was bigger than I had expected. It encompassed the pretty town center we had already seen, but then it bulged north through some country that was mostly strip malls and light industrial units, almost all the way up to Sperryville. The police station looked big enough for twenty or thirty cops. It was built the way most places are where land is cheap. It was long and low and sprawling, with a one-story center core and two wings. The wings were built at right angles, so the place was U-shaped. The facades were concrete, molded to look like stone. There was a brown lawn in front and parking lots at both sides. There was a flagpole dead center on the lawn. Old Glory was up there, weather-beaten and limp in the windless air. The whole place looked a little grand, and a little bleached in the pale sunlight.
We parked in the right-hand lot in an empty slot between two white police cruisers. We got out into the brightness. Went in and asked the desk guy for Detective Clark. The desk guy made an internal call and then pointed us toward the left-hand wing. We walked through an untidy corridor and ended up in a room the size of a basketball court. Pretty much the whole thing was a detectives' bullpen. There was a wooden fence that enclosed a line of four visitor's chairs and then there was a gate with a receptionist's desk next to it. Beyond the gate was a lieutenant's office way off in one corner and then nothing else except three pairs of back-to-back desks covered with phones and paper. There were file cabinets against the walls. The windows were grimy and most of them had skewed and broken blinds.
There was no receptionist at the desk. There were two detectives in the room, both of them wearing tweed sport coats, both of them sitting with their backs to us. Clark was one of them. He was talking on the phone. I rattled the gate latch. Both guys turned around. Clark paused for a second, surprised, and then he waved us in. We pulled chairs around and sat at the ends of his desk, one on each side. He kept on talking into the phone. We waited. I spent the time looking around the room. The lieutenant's office had glass walls from waist height upward. There was a big desk in there. Nobody behind it. But on it I could see two plaster casts, just like the ones our own pathologist had made. I didn't get up and go look at them. Didn't seem polite.
Clark hung up the phone and made a note on a yellow pad. Then he breathed out and pushed his chair way back so he could see both of us at the same time. He didn't say anything. He knew we weren't making a social call. But equally he didn't want to come right out and ask if we had a name for him. Because he didn't want to look foolish if we didn't.
"Just passing through," I said.
"OK," he said.
"Looking for a little help," I said.
"What kind of help?"
"Thought you might give us your crowbar notes. Now that you don't need them anymore. Now that you've found yours."
"Notes?"
"You listed all kinds of hardware stores. I figured it could save us some time if we picked up where you left off."
"I could have faxed them," he said.
"There's probably a lot of them. We didn't want to cause you the trouble."
"I might not have been here."
"We were passing by anyway."
"OK," he said again. "Crowbar notes." He swiveled his chair and got up out of it and walked over to a file cabinet. Came back with a green folder about a half-inch thick. He dropped it on his desk. It made a decent thump.
"Good luck," he said.
He sat down again and I nodded to Summer and she picked up the folder. Opened it. It was full of paper. She leafed through. Made a face. Passed it across to me. It was a long, long list of places that stretched from New Jersey to North Carolina. There were names and addresses and phone numbers. The first ninety or so had check marks against them. Then there were about four hundred that didn't.
"You have to be careful," Clark said. "Some places call them crowbars and some call them wrecking bars. You have to be sure they know what you're talking about."
"Do they have different sizes?"
"Lots of different sizes. Ours is pretty big."
"Can I see it? Or is it in your evidence room?"
"It's not evidence," Clark said. "It's not the actual weapon. It's just an identical sample on loan from the Sperryville store. We can't take it to court."
"But it fits your plaster casts."
"Like a glove," he said. He got up again and walked into his lieutenant's office and took the casts off the desk. Carried them back one in each hand and put them down on his own desk. They were very similar to ours. There was a positive and a negative, just like we had. Mrs. Kramer's head had been a lot smaller than Carbone's, in terms of diameter. Therefore the crowbar had caught less of its circumference. Therefore the impression of the fatal wound was a little shorter in length than ours. But it was just as deep and ugly. Clark picked it up and ran his fingertip through the trench.
"Very violent blow," he said. "We're looking for a tall guy, strong, right-handed. You seen anyone like that?"
"Every time I look in the mirror," I said.
The cast of the weapon itself was a little shorter than ours too. But other than that, it looked very much the same. Same chalky section, pitted here and there with microscopic imperfections in the plaster, but basically straight and smooth and brutal.
"Can I see the actual crowbar?" I said.
"Sure," Clark said. He leaned down and opened a drawer in his desk. Left it open like a display and moved his chair to get out of my way. I leaned forward and looked down and saw the same curved black thing I had seen the previous morning. Same shape, same contours, same color, same size, same claws, same octagonal section. Same gloss, same precision. It was exactly identical in every way to the one we had left behind in Fort Bird's mortuary office.
We drove ten miles to Sperryville. I looked through Clark's list to find the hardware store's address. It was right there on the fifth line, because it was close to Green Valley. But there was no check mark against its phone number. There was a penciled note instead: No answer. I guessed the owner had been busy with a glazier and an insurance company. I guessed Clark's guys would have gotten around to making a second call eventually, but they had been overtaken by the NCIC search.
Sperryville wasn't a big place, so we just cruised around looking for the address. We found a bunch of stores on a short strip and after driving it three times we found the right street name on a green sign. It pointed us down what was basically a narrow dead-end alley. We passed between the sides of two clapboard structures and then the alley widened into a small yard and we saw the hardware store facing us at the far end. It was like a small one-story barn, painted up to look more urban than rural. It was a real mom-and-pop place. It had a family name painted on an old sign. No indication that it was part of a franchise. It was just an American small business, standing alone, weathering the booms and busts from one generation to the next.
But it was an excellent place for a dead-of-night burglary. Quiet, isolated, invisible from passersby on the main street, no living accommodation on the second floor. In the front wall it had a display window on the left set next to an entrance door on the right, separated only by the width of the door frame. There was a moon-shaped hole in the window glass, temporarily backed by a sheet of unfinished plywood. The plywood had been neatly trimmed to the right size. I figured the hole had been punched through by the sole of a shoe. It was close to the door. I figured a tall guy could put his left arm through the hole up to the shoulder and get his hand around to the door latch easily enough. But he would have had to reach all the way in first and then bend his elbow slowly and deliberately, to avoid snagging his clothes. I pictured him with his left cheek against the cold glass, in the dark, breathing hard, groping blindly.
We parked right in front of the store. Got out and spent a minute looking in the window. It was full of items on display. But whoever had put them there wasn't about to move on to Saks Fifth Avenue anytime soon. Not for their famous holiday windows. Because there was no art involved. No design. No temptation. Everything was just lined up neatly on hand-built shelves. Everything had a price tag. The window was saying: This is what we've got. If you want it, come in and get it. But it all looked like quality stuff. There were some strange items. I had no idea what some of them were for. I didn't know much about tools. I had never really used any, except knives. But it was clear to me that this store chose what it carried pretty carefully.
We went in. There was a mechanical bell on the door that rang as we entered. The plain neatness and organization we had seen in the window was maintained inside. There were tidy racks and shelves and bins. A wide-plank wooden floor. There was a faint smell of machine oil. The place was quiet. No customers. There was a guy behind the counter, maybe sixty years old, maybe seventy. He was looking at us, alerted by the bell. He was medium height and slender and a little stooped. He wore round eyeglasses and a gray cardigan sweater. They made him look intelligent, but they also made him look like he wasn't accustomed to handling anything bigger than a small screwdriver. They made him look like selling tools was a definite second best to being at a university, teaching a course about their design and their history and their development.
"May I help you?" he asked.
"We're here about the stolen wrecking bar," I said. "Or the stolen crowbar, if that's what you prefer to call it."
He nodded.
"Crowbar," he said. "Wrecking bar is a little uncouth, in my opinion."
"OK, we're here about the stolen crowbar," I said.
He smiled, briefly. "You're the army. Has martial law been declared?"
"We have a parallel inquiry," Summer said.
"Are you Military Police?"
"Yes," Summer said. She told him our names and ranks. He reciprocated with his own name, which matched the sign above his door.
"We need some background," I said. "About the crowbar market."
He made a face like he was interested, but not very excited. It was like asking a forensics guy about fingerprinting instead of DNA. I got the impression that crowbar development had slowed to a halt a long time ago.
"Where can I start?" he said.
"How many different sorts are there?"
"Dozens," he said. "There are at least six manufacturers that I would consider dealing with myself. And plenty of others I wouldn't."
I looked around the store. "Because you only carry quality stuff."
"Exactly," he said. "I can't compete with the big chains on price alone. So I have to offer absolutely top quality and service."
"Niche marketing," I said.
He nodded again.
"Low-end crowbars would come from China," he said. "Mass produced, cast iron, wrought iron, low-grade forged steel. I wouldn't be interested."
"So what do you carry?"
"I import a few titanium crowbars from Europe," he said. "Very expensive, but very strong. More importantly, very light. They were designed for police and firefighters. Or for underwater work, where corrosion would otherwise be an issue. Or for anyone else that needs something small and durable and easily portable."
"But it wasn't one of those that was stolen."
The old guy shook his head. "No, the titanium bars are specialist items. The others I offer are slightly more mainstream."
"And what are those?"
"This is a small store," he said. "I have to choose what I carry very carefully. Which in some ways is a burden, but which is also a delight, because choice is very liberating. These decisions are mine, and mine alone. So obviously, for a crowbar, I would choose high-carbon chromium steel. Then the question is, should it be single-tempered or double-tempered? My honest preference would always be double-tempered, for strength. And I would want the claws to be very slim, for utility, and therefore case-hardened, for safety. That could be a lifesaver, in some situations. Imagine a man on a high roof beam, whose claw shattered. He'd fall off."
"I guess he would," I said. "So, the right steel, double-tempered, with the hard claws. What did you pick?"
"Well, actually I compromised with one of the items I carry. My preferred manufacturer won't make anything shorter than eighteen inches. But I needed a twelve-inch, obviously."
I must have looked blank.
"For studs and joists," the old guy said. "If you're working inside sixteen-inch centers, you can't use an eighteen-inch bar, can you?"
"I guess not," I said.
"So I take a twelve-inch with a half-inch section from one source, even though it's only single-tempered. I think it's satisfactory, though. In terms of strength. With only twelve inches of leverage, the force a person generates isn't going to overwhelm it."
"OK," I said.
"Apart from that particular item and the titanium specialties, I order exclusively from a very old Pittsburgh company called Fortis. They make two models for me. An eighteen-inch, and a three-footer. Both of them are three-quarter-inch section. High-carbon double-tempered chromium steel, case-hardened claws, very fine quality paint."
"And it was the three-footer that was stolen," I said.
He looked at me like I was clairvoyant.
"Detective Clark showed us the sample you lent him," I said.
"I see," he said.
"So, is the thirty-six-inch three-quarter-section Fortis a rare item?"
He made a face, like he was a little disappointed.
"I sell one a year," he said. "Two, if I'm very lucky. They're expensive. And appreciation for quality is declining shamefully. Pearls before swine, I say."
"Is that the same everywhere?"
"Everywhere?" he repeated.
"In other stores. Regionally. With the Fortis crowbars."
"I'm sorry," he said. "Perhaps I didn't make myself quite clear. They're made for me. To my own design. To my own exact specification. They're custom items."
I stared at him. "They're exclusive to this store?"
He nodded. "The privilege of independence."
"Literally exclusive?"
He nodded again. "Unique in all the world."
"When did you last sell one?"
"About nine months ago."
"Does the paint wear off?"
"I know what you're asking," he said. "And the answer is yes, of course. If you find one that looks new, it's the one that was stolen on New Year's Eve."
We borrowed an identical sample from him for comparative purposes, the same way Detective Clark had. It was dewed with machine oil and had tissue paper wrapped around the center shaft. We laid it like a trophy across the Chevy's backseat. Then we ate in the car. Burgers, from a drive-through a hundred yards north of the tool store.
"Tell me three new facts," I said.
"One, Mrs. Kramer and Carbone were killed by the same individual weapon. Two, we're going to drive ourselves nuts trying to find a connection between them."
"And three?"
"I don't know."
"Three, the bad guy knew Sperryville pretty well. Could you have found that store in the dark, in a hurry, unless you knew the town?"
We looked ahead through the windshield. The mouth of the alley was just about visible. But then, we knew it was there. And it was full daylight.
Summer closed her eyes.
"Focus on the weapon," she said. "Forget everything else. Visualize it. The custom crowbar. Unique in all the world. It was carried out of that alley, right there. Then it was in Green Valley at two A.M. on January first. And then it was inside Fort Bird at nine P.M. on the fourth. It went on a journey. We know where it started, and we know where it finished. We don't know for sure where it went in between, but we do know for certain it passed one particular point along the way. It passed Fort Bird's main gate. We don't know when, but we know for sure that it did."
She opened her eyes.
"We have to get back there," she said. "We have to look at the logs again. The earliest it could have passed the gate is six A.M. on January first, because Bird is four hours from Green Valley. The latest it could have passed the gate is, say, eight P.M. on January fourth. That's an eighty-six-hour window. We need to check the gate logs for everybody who entered during that time. Because we know for sure that the crowbar came in, and we know for sure that it didn't walk in by itself."
I said nothing.
"I'm sorry," she said. "There'll be a lot of names."
The truant feeling was completely gone. We got back on the road and headed east, looking for I-95. We found it and we turned south, toward Bird. Toward Willard on the phone. Toward the angry Delta station. We slid back under the shelf of gray cloud just before the North Carolina state line. The sky went dark. Summer put the headlights on. We passed the State Police building on the opposite shoulder. Passed the spot where Kramer's briefcase had been found. Passed the rest area a mile later. We merged with the east-west highway spur and came off at the cloverleaf next to Kramer's motel. We left it behind us and drove the thirty miles down to Fort Bird's gate. The guard shack MPs signed us in at 1930 hours exactly. I told them to copy their logs starting at 0600 hours January first and ending at 2000 hours January fourth. I told them to have a Xerox record of that eighty-six-hour slice of life delivered to my office immediately.
My office was very quiet. The morning mayhem was long gone. The sergeant with the baby son was back on duty. She looked tired. I realized she didn't sleep much. She worked all night and probably played with her kid all day. Tough life. She had coffee going. I figured she was just as interested in it as I was. Maybe more.
"Delta guys are restless," she said. "They know you arrested the Bulgarian guy."
"I didn't arrest him. I just asked him some questions."
"That's a distinction they don't seem willing to make. People have been in and out of here looking for you."
"Were they armed?"
"They don't need to be armed. Not those guys. You should have them confined to quarters. You could do that. You're acting MP CO here."
I shook my head. "Anything else?"
"You need to call Colonel Willard before midnight, or he's going to write you up as AWOL. He said that's a promise."
I nodded. It was Willard's obvious next move. An AWOL charge wouldn't reflect badly on a CO. Wouldn't make him look like he had lost his grip. An AWOL charge was always on the man who ran, fair and square.
"Anything else?" I said again.
"Sanchez wants a ten-sixteen," she said. "Down at Fort Jackson. And your brother called again."
"Any message?" I said.
"No message."
"OK," I said.
I went inside to my desk. Picked up my phone. Summer stepped over to the map. Traced her fingers across the pins, D.C. to Sperryville, Sperryville to Green Valley, Green Valley to Fort Bird. I dialed Joe's number. He answered, second ring.
"I called Mom," he said. "She's still hanging in there."
"She said soon, Joe. Doesn't mean we have to mount a daily vigil."
"Bound to be sooner than we think. And than we want."
"How was she?"
"She sounded shaky."
"You OK?"
"Not bad," he said. "You?"
"Not a great year so far."
"You should call her next," he said.
"I will," I said. "In a few days."
"Do it tomorrow," he said.
He hung up and I sat for a minute. Then I dabbed the cradle to clear the line and asked my sergeant to get Sanchez for me. Down at Jackson. I held the phone by my ear and waited. Summer was looking right at me.
"A daily vigil?" she said.
"She's waiting for the plaster to come off," I said. "She doesn't like it."
Summer looked at me a little more and then turned back to the map. I put the phone on speaker and laid the handset down on the desk. There was a click on the line and we heard Sanchez's voice.
"I've been hassling the Columbia PD about Brubaker's car," he said.
"Didn't they find it yet?" I said.
"No," he said. "And they weren't putting any effort into finding it. Which was inconceivable to me. So I kept on hassling them."
"And?"
"They dropped the other shoe."
"Which is?"
"Brubaker wasn't killed in Columbia," he said. "He was dumped there, is all."
