by Lee Child
“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.”
seventeen
Sanchez told us the Columbia medical examiners had found confused lividity patterns on Brubaker’s body that in their opinion meant he had been dead about three hours before being tossed in the alley. Lividity is what happens to a person’s blood after death. The heart stops, blood pressure collapses, liquid blood drains and sinks and settles into the lowest parts of the body under the simple force of gravity. It rests there and over a period of time it stains the skin liverish purple. Somewhere between three and six hours later the color fixes permanently, like a developed photograph. A guy who falls down dead on his back will have a pale chest and a purple back. Vice versa for a guy who falls down dead on his front. But Brubaker’s lividity was all over the place. The Columbia medical examiners figured he had been killed, then kept on his back for about three hours, then dumped in the alley on his front. They were pretty confident about their estimate of the three-hour duration, because three hours was the point where the stains would first start to fix. They said he had signs of early fixed lividity on his back and major fixed lividity on his front. They also said he had a broad stripe across the middle of his back where the dead flesh had been partially cooked.
“He was in the trunk of a car,” I said.
“Right over the muffler,” Sanchez said. “Three-hour journey, plenty of temperature.”
“This changes a lot of things.”
“It explains why they never found his Chevy in Columbia.”
“Or any witnesses,” I said. “Or the shell cases or the bullets.”
“So what are we looking at?”
“Three hours in a car?” I said. “At night, with empty roads? Anything up to a two-hundred-mile radius.”
“That’s a pretty big circle,” Sanchez said.
“A hundred and twenty-five thousand square miles,” I said. “Approximately. Pi times the radius squared. What’s the Columbia PD doing about it?”
“Dropping it like a hot potato. It’s an FBI case now.”
“What does the Bureau think about the dope thing?”
“They’re a little skeptical. They figure heroin isn’t our bag. They figure we’re more into marijuana and amphetamines.”
“I wish,” I said. “I could use a little of both right now.”
“On the other hand they know Delta guys go all over. Pakistan, South America. Which is where heroin comes from. So they’ll keep it in their back pocket, in case they don’t get anywhere, just like the Columbia PD was going to.”
“They’re wasting their time. Heroin? A guy like Brubaker would die first.”
“They’re thinking maybe he did.”
His end of the line clicked off. I killed the speaker and put the handset back.
“It happened to the north, probably,” Summer said. “Brubaker started out in Raleigh. We should be looking for his car somewhere up there.”
“Not our case,” I said.
“OK, the FBI should be looking.”
“I’m sure they already are.”
There was a knock at the door. It opened up and an MP corporal came in with sheets of paper under his arm. He saluted smartly and stepped a pace forward and placed the sheets of paper on my desk. Stepped the same pace back and saluted again.
“Copies of the gate log, sir,” he said. “First through fourth of this month, times as requested.”
He turned around and walked back out of the room. Closed the door. I looked at the pile of paper. There were about seven sheets in it. Not too bad.
“Let’s go to work,” I said.
Operation Just Cause helped us again. The raised DefCon level meant a lot of leave had been canceled. No real reason, because the Panama thing was no kind of a big deal, but that was how the military worked. No point in having DefCon levels if they couldn’t be raised up and dropped down, no point in moving them at all if there weren’t any associated consequences. No point in staging little foreign dramas unless the whole establishment felt a remote and vicarious thrill.
No point in canceling leave without giving people something to fill their time either. So there were extra training sessions and daily readiness exercises. Most of them were arduous and started early. Therefore the big bonus for us was that almost everyone who had gone out to celebrate New Year’s Eve was back on-post and in the rack relatively early. They must have straggled back around three or four or five in the morning, because there was very little gate activity recorded
after six.
Incoming personnel during the eighteen hours we were looking at on New Year’s Day totaled nineteen. Summer and I were two of them, returning from Green Valley and D.C. after the widow trip and the visit to Walter Reed. We crossed ourselves off the list.
Incoming personnel other than ourselves on January second totaled sixteen. Twelve, on January third. Seventeen, before 2000 hours on January fourth. Sixty-two names in total, during the eighty-six-hour window. Nine of them were civilian delivery drivers. We crossed them off. Eleven of them were repeats. They had come in, gone out, come in again. Like commuters. My night-duty sergeant was one of them. We crossed her off, because she was a woman. And short. Elsewhere we deleted the second and any subsequent entries in each case.
We ended up with forty-one individuals, listed by name, rank, and initial. No way of telling which were men and which were women. No way of telling which of the men were tall and strong and right-handed.
“I’ll work on the genders,” Summer said. “I’ve still got the basic strength lists. They have full names on them.”
I nodded. Left her to it. Got on the phone and scared up the pathologist and asked him to meet me in the mortuary, right away.
I drove our Chevy between my office and his because I didn’t want to be seen walking around with a crowbar. I parked outside the mortuary entrance and waited. The guy showed up inside five minutes, walking, from the direction of the O Club. I probably interrupted his dessert. Or maybe even his main course. I slid out to meet him and leaned back in and took the crowbar out of the backseat. He glanced at it. Led me inside. He seemed to understand what I wanted to do. He unlocked his office and hit the lights and unlocked his drawer. Opened it and lifted out the crowbar that had killed Carbone. Laid it on his desk. I laid the borrowed specimen next to it. Pulled the tissue paper off it. Lined it up at the same angle. It was exactly identical.
“Are there wide variations?” the pathologist asked. “With crowbars?”