Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  “Only if we do it wrong.”

  “What are the chances of doing it right?”

  “We might be able to manipulate the situation. There’ll be an embarrassment factor. She won’t want it broadcast.”

  “We can’t push her to the point where she calls Willard.”

  “You scared of him?”

  “I’m scared of what he can do to us bureaucratically. Doesn’t help anyone if we both get transferred to Alaska.”

  “Your call.”

  I was quiet for a long moment. Thought back to Kramer’s hardcover book. This was like July thirteenth, 1943, the pivotal day of the Battle of Kursk. We were like Alexander Vasilevsky, the Soviet general. If we attacked now, this minute, we had to keep on and on attacking until the enemy was run off his feet and the war was won. If we bogged down or paused for breath even for a second, we would be overrun again.

  “OK,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  We found Andrea Norton in the O Club lounge and I asked her if she would spare us a minute in her office. I could see she was puzzled as to why. I told her it was a confidential matter. She stayed puzzled. Willard had told her that Carbone was a closed case, and she couldn’t see what else we would have to talk to her about. But she agreed. She told us she would meet us there in thirty minutes.

  Summer and I spent the thirty minutes in my office with her list of who was on-post and who wasn’t at Carbone’s time of death. She had yards of computer paper neatly folded into a large concertina about an inch thick. There was a name, rank, and number printed on each line with pale dot-matrix ink. Almost every name had a check mark next to it.

  “What are the marks?” I asked her. “Here or not here?”

  “Here,” she said.

  I nodded. I was afraid of that. I riffed through the concertina with my thumb.

  “How many?” I asked.

  “Nearly twelve hundred.”

  I nodded again. There was nothing intrinsically difficult about boiling down twelve hundred names and finding one sole perpetrator. Police files everywhere are full of larger suspect pools. There had been cases in Korea where the entire U.S. military strength had been the suspect pool. But cases like that require unlimited manpower, big staffs, and endless resources. And they require everybody’s total cooperation. They can’t be handled behind a CO’s back, in secret, by two people acting alone.

  “Impossible,” I said.

  “Nothing’s impossible,” Summer said.

  “We have to go at it a different way.”

  “How?”

  “What did he take to the scene?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Wrong,” I said. “He took himself.”

  Summer shrugged. Dragged her fingers up the folded edges of her paper. The stack thickened and then thinned back down as the air sighed out from between the pages.

  “Pick a name,” she said.

  “He took a K-bar,” I said.

  “Twelve hundred names, twelve hundred K-bars.”

  “He took a tire iron or a crowbar.”

  She nodded.

  “And he took yogurt,” I said.

  She said nothing.

  “Four things,” I said. “Himself, a K-bar, a blunt instrument, and yogurt. Where did the yogurt come from?”

  “His refrigerator in his quarters,” Summer said. “Or one of the mess kitchens, or one of the mess buffets, or the commissary, or a supermarket or a deli or a grocery store somewhere off-post.”

  I pictured a man breathing hard, walking fast, maybe sweating, a bloodstained knife and a crowbar clutched together in his right hand, an empty yogurt pot in his left, stumbling in the dark, nearing a destination, looking down, seeing the pot, hurling it into the undergrowth, putting the knife in his pocket, slipping the crowbar under his coat.

  “We should look for the container,” I said.

  Summer said nothing.

  “He’ll have ditched it,” I said. “Not close to the scene, but not far from it either.”

  “Will it help us?”

  “It’ll have some kind of a product code on it. Maybe a best before date. Stuff like that. It might lead us to where it was bought.”

  Then I paused.

  “And it might have prints on it,” I said.

  “He’ll have worn gloves.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve seen people opening yogurt containers. But I’ve never seen anyone do it with gloves on. There’s a foil closure. With a tiny little tab to pull.”

  “We’re on a hundred thousand acres here.”

  I nodded. Square one. Normally a couple of phone calls would get me all the grunts on the post lined up a yard apart on their knees, crawling slowly across the terrain like a giant human comb, staring down at the ground and parting every blade of grass by hand. And then doing it again the next day, and the next, until one of them found what we were looking for. With manpower like the army has, you can find a needle in a haystack. You can find both halves of a broken needle. You can find the tiny chip of chrome that flaked off the break.

  Summer looked at the clock on the wall.

  “Our thirty minutes are up,” she said.

  We used the Humvee to get over to Psy-Ops and parked in a slot that was probably reserved for someone else. It was nine o’clock. Summer killed the motor and we opened the doors and slipped out into the cold.

  I took Kramer’s briefcase with me.

  We walked through the old tiled corridors and came to Norton’s door. Her light was on. I knocked and we went in. Norton was behind her desk. All her textbooks were back on her shelves. There were no legal pads on view. No pens or pencils. Her desktop was clear. The pool of light from her lamp was a perfect circle on the empty wood.

  She had three visitor’s chairs. She waved us toward them. Summer sat on the right. I sat on the left. I propped Kramer’s briefcase on the center chair, facing Norton, like a ghost at the feast. She didn’t look at it.

  “How can I help you?” she said.

  I made a point of adjusting the briefcase’s position so that it was completely upright on the chair.

  “Tell us about the dinner party last night,” I said.

  “What dinner party?”

  “You ate with some Armored staffers who were visiting.”

  She nodded.

  “Vassell and Coomer,” she said. “So?”

  “They worked for General Kramer.”

  She nodded again. “So I believe.”

  “Tell us about the meal.”

  “The food?”

  “The atmosphere,” I said. “The conversation. The mood.”

  “It was just dinner in the O Club,” she said.

  “Someone gave Vassell and Coomer a briefcase.”

  “Did they? What, like a present?”

  I said nothing.

  “I don’t remember that,” Norton said. “When?”

  “During dinner,” I said. “Or as they were leaving.”

  Nobody spoke.

  “A briefcase?” Norton said.

  “Was it you?” Summer asked.

  Norton looked at her, blankly. She was either genuinely puzzled, or she was a superb actress. “Was it me what?”

  “Who gave them the briefcase.”

  “Why would I give them a briefcase? I hardly knew them.”

  “How well did you know them?”

  “I met them once or twice, years ago.”

  “At Irwin?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Why did you eat with them?”

  “I was in the bar. They asked me. It would have been rude to decline.”

  “Did you know they were coming?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I had no idea. I was surprised they weren’t in Germany.”

  “So you knew them well enough to know where they’re based.”

  “Kramer was an Armored Branch commander in Europe. They were his staffers. I wouldn’t expect to find them based in Hawaii.”

  Nobody spoke. I watc
hed Norton’s eyes. She hadn’t looked at Kramer’s briefcase longer than about half a second. Just long enough to figure I was some guy who carried a briefcase, and then to forget all about it.

  “What’s going on here?” she said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Tell me.”

  I pointed to the briefcase. “This is General Kramer’s. He lost it on New Year’s Eve and it showed up again today. We’re trying to figure out where it’s been.”

  “Where did he lose it?”

  Summer moved in her chair.

  “In a motel,” she said. “During a sexual assignation with a woman from this post. The woman was driving a Humvee. Therefore we’re looking for women who knew Kramer, and who have permanent access to Humvees, and who were off-post on New Year’s Eve, and who were at dinner last night.”

  “I was the only woman at dinner last night.”

  Silence.

  Summer nodded. “We know that. And we promise we can keep the whole thing quiet, but first we need you to confirm who you gave the briefcase to.”

  The room stayed quiet. Norton looked at Summer like she had told a joke with a punch line she didn’t quite understand.

  “You think I was sleeping with General Kramer?” she said.

  Summer said nothing.

  “Well, I wasn’t,” Norton said. “God forbid.”

  Nobody spoke.

  “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” she said. “I’m seriously conflicted. That’s a completely absurd accusation. I’m astonished you made it.”

  Nobody spoke for a long time. Norton smiled, like the main component of her reaction was amusement. Not anger. She closed her eyes and opened them a moment later, like she was erasing the conversation from her memory.

  “Is there something missing from the briefcase?” she asked me.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Help me out here,” she said. “Please. I’m trying to see the point of this extraordinary visit. Is there something missing from Kramer’s briefcase?”

  “Vassell and Coomer say not.”

  “But?”

  “I don’t believe them.”

  “You probably should. They’re senior officers.”

  I said nothing.

  “What does your new CO say?”

  “He doesn’t want it pursued. He’s worried about embarrassment.”

  “You should be guided by him.”

  “I’m an investigator. I have to ask questions.”

  “The army is a family,” she said. “We’re all on the same side.”

  “Did Vassell or Coomer leave with this briefcase last night?” I said.

  Norton closed her eyes again. At first I thought she was just exasperated, but then I realized she was picturing last night’s scene, at the O Club coat check.

  “No,” she said. “Neither one of them left with that briefcase.”

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “I’m totally certain.”

  “What was their mood during dinner?”

  She opened her eyes.

  “They were relaxed,” she said. “Like they were passing an empty evening.”

  “Did they say why they were at Bird again?”

  “General Kramer’s funeral was yesterday, at noon.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I believe Walter Reed released the body and the Pentagon handled the details.”

  “Where was the funeral?”

  “Arlington Cemetery,” she said. “Where else?”

  “That’s three hundred miles away.”

  “Approximately. As the crow flies.”

  “So why did they come down here for dinner?”

  “They didn’t tell me,” she said.

  I said nothing.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “A motel?” she said. “Do I look like the kind of woman who would agree to meet a man in a motel?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Dismissed,” she said.

  I stood up. Summer did the same. I took Kramer’s briefcase from the center chair and walked out of the room. Summer followed behind me.

  “Did you believe her?” Summer asked me.

  We were sitting in the Humvee outside the Psy-Ops building. The engine was idling and the heater was blowing hot stale air that smelled of diesel.

  “Totally,” I said. “As soon as she didn’t look at the briefcase. She’d have gotten very flustered if she’d ever seen it before. And I certainly believed her about the motel. It would cost you a suite at the Ritz to get in her pants.”

  “So what did we learn?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.”

  “No, we learned that Bird is a very attractive place, apparently. Vassell and Coomer keep coming all the way down here, for no very obvious reason.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “And that Norton thinks we’re a family.”

  “Officers,” I said. “What do you expect?”

  “You’re an officer. I’m an officer.”

  I nodded.

  “I was at West Point for four years,” I said. “I should know better. I should have changed my name and come back in as a private. Three promotions, I’d be an E-4 specialist by now. Maybe even an E-5 sergeant. I wish I was.”

  “What now?”

  I checked my watch. It was close to ten o’clock.

  “Sleep,” I said. “First light, we go out looking for a yogurt container.”

  thirteen

  I had never eaten yogurt myself but I had seen some and my impression was that individual portions came in small pots about two inches wide, which meant you could fit about three hundred of them in a square yard. Which meant you could fit nearly a million and a half of them in an acre. Which meant you could hide a hundred-fifty billion of them inside Fort Bird’s perimeter wire. Which meant that looking for one would be like looking for a single anthrax spore in Yankee Stadium. I did the calculation while I showered and dressed in the predawn darkness.

  Then I sat on my bed and waited for some light in the sky. No point in going out there and missing the 1-in-150-billion chance because it was too dark to see properly. But as I sat I started to figure we could narrow the odds by being intelligent about where exactly we looked. The guy with the yogurt obviously made it back from A to B. We knew where A was. A was where Carbone had been killed. And there was a limited choice of places for B. B was either a random hole in the perimeter wire or somewhere among the main post buildings. So if we were smart, we could cut the billions to millions, and find the thing in a hundred years instead of a thousand.

  Unless it was already licked clean inside some starving raccoon’s den.

  I met Summer in the MP motor pool. She was bright and full of energy but we didn’t talk. There was nothing to say, except that the task we had set for ourselves was impossible. And I guessed neither of us wanted to confirm that out loud. So we didn’t speak. We just picked a Humvee at random and headed out. I drove, for a change, the same three-minute journey I had driven thirty-some hours before.

  According to the Humvee’s trip meter we traveled exactly a mile and a half and according to its compass we traveled south and west, and then we arrived at the crime scene. There were still tatters of MP tape on some of the trees. We parked ten yards off the track and got out. I climbed up on the hood and sat on the roof above the windshield. Gazed west and north, and then turned around and gazed east and south. The air was cold. There was a breeze. The landscape was brown and dead and immense. The dawn sun was weak and pale.

  “Which way did he go?” I called.

  “North and east,” Summer called back.

  She sounded pretty sure about it.

  “Why?” I called.

  She climbed up on the hood and sat next to me.

  “He had a vehicle,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because we didn’t find one left out here, and I doubt if
they walked.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if they’d walked, it would have happened closer to where they started. This is at least a thirty-minute walk from anywhere. I don’t see the bad guy concealing a tire iron or a crowbar for thirty solid minutes, not walking side by side. Under a coat, it would make him move like a robot. Carbone would have twigged. So they drove. In the bad guy’s vehicle. He had the weapon under a jacket or something on the backseat. Maybe the knife and the yogurt too.”

  “Where did they start?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Only thing that matters to us now is where the bad guy went afterward. And if he was in a vehicle, he didn’t drive outward toward the wire. We can assume there are no vehicle-sized holes in it. Man-sized maybe, or deer-sized, but nothing big enough to drive a truck or a car through.”

  “OK,” I said.

  “So he headed back to the post. He can’t have gone anywhere else. Can’t just drive a vehicle into the middle of nowhere. He drove back along the track and parked his vehicle and went about his business.”

  I nodded. Looked at the western horizon ahead of me. Turned and looked north and east, back along the track. Back toward the post. A mile and a half of track. I pictured the aerodynamics of an empty yogurt container. Lightweight plastic, cup-shaped, a torn foil closure flapping like an air brake. I pictured throwing one, hard. It would sail and stall in the air. It would travel ten feet, tops. A mile and a half of track, ten feet of shoulder, on the left, on the driver’s side. I felt millions shrink to thousands. Then I felt them expand all the way back up to billions.

  “Good news and bad news,” I said. “I think you’re right, so you’ve cut the search area down by about ninety-nine percent. Maybe more. Which is good.”

  “But?”

  “If he was in a vehicle, did he throw it out at all?”

  Summer was silent.

  “He could have just dropped it on the floor,” I said. “Or chucked it in the back.”

  “Not if it was a pool vehicle.”

  “So maybe he put it in a sidewalk trash can later, after he parked. Or maybe he took it home with him.”

  “Maybe. It’s a fifty-fifty situation.”

  “Seventy-thirty at best,” I said.

  “We should look anyway.”

  I nodded. Braced the palms of my hands on the windshield’s header rail and vaulted down to the ground.