by Lee Child
“Now go,” I said.
Summer hit the gas hard and the tires lit up and about a second later we were well outside handgun range. She kept her foot down and we left the airport doing about ninety miles an hour.
“You OK?” I said.
“So far,” she said.
“I’m sorry I had to shove you.”
“We should have just run,” she said. “We could have lost them in the terminal.”
“We needed a car,” I said. “I’m sick of taking the bus.”
“But now we’re way out of line.”
“That’s for sure,” I said.
I checked my watch. It was close to three in the morning. We were heading south from Dulles. Going nowhere, fast. In the dark. We needed a destination.
“You know my phone number at Bird?” I said.
“Sure,” Summer said.
“OK, pull over at the next place with a phone.”
She spotted an all-night gas station about five miles later. It was all lit up on the horizon. We pulled in and checked it out. There was a miniature grocery store behind the pumps but it was closed. At night you had to pay for your gas through a bulletproof window. There was a pay phone outside next to the air hose. It was in an aluminum box mounted on the wall. The box had phone shapes drilled into the sides. Summer dialed my Fort Bird office number and handed me the receiver. I heard one cycle of ring tone and then my sergeant answered. The night-duty woman. The one with the baby son.
“This is Reacher,” I said.
“You’re in deep shit,” she said.
“And that’s the good news,” I said.
“What’s the bad news?”
“You’re going to join me right there in it. What kind of babysitting arrangements have you got?”
“My neighbor’s girl stays. From the trailer next door.”
“Can she stay an hour longer?”
“Why?”
“I want you to meet me. I want you to bring me some stuff.”
“It’ll cost you.”
“How much?”
“Two dollars an hour. For the babysitter.”
“I haven’t got two dollars. That’s something I want you to bring. Money.”
“You want me to give you money?”
“A loan,” I said. “Couple of days.”
“How much?”
“Whatever you’ve got.”
“When and where?”
“When you get off. At six. At the diner near the strip club.”
“What do you need me to bring?”
“Phone records,” I said. “All calls made out of Fort Bird starting from midnight on New Year’s Eve until maybe the third of January. And an army phone book. I need to speak to Sanchez and Franz and all kinds of other people. And I need Major Marshall’s personal file. The XII Corps guy. I need you to get a copy faxed in from somewhere.”
“Anything else?”
“I want to know where Vassell and Coomer parked their car when they came down for dinner on the fourth. I want you to see if anyone noticed.”
“OK,” she said. “Is that it?”
“No,” I said. “I want to know where Major Marshall was on the second and the third. Scare up some travel clerk somewhere and see if any vouchers were issued. And I want a phone number for the Jefferson Hotel in D.C.”
“That’s an awful lot to do in three hours.”
“That’s why I’m asking you instead of the day guy. You’re better than he is.”
“Stick it,” she said. “Flattery doesn’t work on me.”
“Hope springs eternal,” I said.
We got back into the car and got back on the road. Headed east for I-95. I told Summer to go slow. If I didn’t, then the way she was likely to drive on empty roads at night would get us to the diner well before my sergeant, and I didn’t want that to happen. My sergeant would get there around six-thirty. I wanted to get there after her, maybe six-forty. I wanted to check she hadn’t done her duty and dropped a dime on me and set up an ambush. It was unlikely, but not impossible. I wanted to be able to drive by and check. I didn’t want to be already in a booth drinking coffee when Willard showed up.
“Why do you want all that stuff?” Summer asked.
“I know what happened to Mrs. Kramer,” I said.
“How?”
“I figured it out,” I said. “Like I should have at the beginning. But I didn’t think. I didn’t have enough imagination.”
“It’s not enough to imagine things.”
“It is,” I said. “Sometimes that’s what it’s all about. Sometimes that’s all an investigator has got. You have to imagine what people must have done. The way they must have thought and acted. You have to think yourself into being them.”
“Being who?”
“Vassell and Coomer,” I said. “We know who they are. We know what they’re like. Therefore we can predict what they did.”
“What did they do?”
“They got an early start and flew all day from Frankfurt. On New Year’s Eve. They wore Class As, trying to get an upgrade. Maybe they succeeded, with American Airlines out of Germany. Maybe they didn’t. Either way, they couldn’t have counted on it. They must have been prepared to spend eight hours in coach.”
“So?”
“Would guys like Vassell and Coomer be happy to wait in the Dulles taxi line? Or take a shuttle bus to the city? All cramped and uncomfortable?”
“No,” Summer said. “They wouldn’t do either thing.”
“Exactly,” I said. “They wouldn’t do either thing. They’re way too important for that. They wouldn’t dream of it. Not in a million years. Guys like that, they need to be met by a car and a driver.”
“Who?”
“Marshall,” I said. “That’s who. He’s their blue-eyed gofer. He was already over here, at their service. He must have picked them up at the airport. Maybe Kramer too. Did Kramer take the Hertz bus to the rental lot? I don’t think so. I think Marshall drove him there. Then he drove Vassell and Coomer to the Jefferson Hotel.”
“And?”
“And he stayed there with them, Summer. I think he had a room booked. Maybe they wanted him on the spot to drive them to National the next morning. He was going with them, after all. He was going to Irwin too. Or maybe they just wanted to talk to him, urgently. Just the three of them, Vassell, Coomer, and Marshall. Maybe it was easier to talk without Kramer there. And Marshall had a lot of stuff to talk about. They started his temporary detached duty in November. You told me that yourself. November was when the Wall started coming down. November was when the danger signals started coming in. So they sent him over here in November to get his ear close to the ground in the Pentagon. That’s my guess. But whatever, Marshall stayed the night with Vassell and Coomer at the Jefferson Hotel. I’m sure of it.”
“OK, so?”
“Marshall was at the hotel, and his car was in valet parking. And you know what? I checked our bill from Paris. They charged an arm and a leg for everything. Especially the phone calls. But not all the phone calls. The room-to-room calls we made didn’t show up at all. You called me at six, about dinner. Then I called you at midnight, because I was lonely. Those calls didn’t show up anywhere on the bill. Hit three for another room, and it’s free. Dial nine for a line, and it triggers the computer. There were no calls on Vassell and Coomer’s bill and therefore we thought they had made no calls. But they had made calls. It’s obvious. They made internal calls. Room to room. Vassell took the message from XII Corps in Germany, and then he called Coomer’s room to discuss what the hell to do about the situation. And then one or the other of them picked up the phone and called Marshall’s room. They called their blue-eyed gofer and told him to run downstairs and jump in his car.”
“Marshall did it?”
I nodded. “They sent him out into the night to clean up their mess.”
“Can we prove it?”
“We can make a start,” I said. “I’ll bet you three things.
First, we’ll call the Jefferson Hotel and we’ll find a booking in Marshall’s name for New Year’s Eve. Second, Marshall’s file will tell us he once lived in Sperryville, Virginia. And third, his file will tell us he’s tall and heavy and right-handed.”
She went quiet. Her eyelids started moving.
“Is it enough?” she said. “Is Mrs. Kramer enough of a result to get us off the hook?”
“There’s more to come,” I said.
It was like being in a parallel universe, watching Summer driving slow. We drifted down the highway with the world going half-speed outside our windows. The big Chevy engine was loafing along a little above idle. The tires were quiet. We passed all our familiar landmarks. The State Police facility, the spot where Kramer’s briefcase had been found, the rest area, the spur to the small highway. We crawled off at the cloverleaf and I scanned the gas station and the greasy spoon and the lounge parking and the motel. The whole place was full of yellow light and fog and black shadow but I could see well enough. There was no sign of a setup. Summer turned into the lot and drove a long slow circuit. There were three eighteen-wheelers parked like beached whales and a couple of old sedans that were probably abandoned. They had the look. They had dull paint and soft tires and they were low on their springs. There was an old Ford pickup truck with a baby seat strapped to the bench. I guessed that was my sergeant’s. There was nothing else. Six-forty in the morning, and the world was dark and still and quiet.
We put the car out of sight behind the lounge bar and walked across the lot to the diner. Its windows were misted by the cooking steam. There was hot white light inside. It looked like a Hopper painting. My sergeant was alone at a booth in back. We walked in and sat down beside her. She hauled a grocery bag up off the floor. It was full of stuff.
“First things first,” she said.
She put her hand in the bag and came out with a bullet. She stood it upright on the table in front of me. It was a standard nine-millimeter Parabellum. Standard NATO load. Full metal jacket. For a sidearm or a submachine gun. The shiny brass casing had something scratched on it. I picked it up. Looked at it. There was a word engraved there. It was rough and uneven. It had been done fast and by hand. It said: Reacher.
“A bullet with my name on it,” I said.
“From Delta,” my sergeant said. “Hand-delivered, yesterday.”
“Who by?”
“The young one with the beard.”
“Charming,” I said. “Remind me to kick his ass.”
“Don’t joke about it. They’re awful stirred up.”
“They’re looking at the wrong guy.”
“Can you prove that?”
I paused. Knowing and proving were two different things. I dropped the bullet into my pocket and put my hands on the table.
“Maybe I can,” I said.
“You know who killed Carbone too?” Summer said.
“One thing at a time,” I said.
“Here’s your money,” my sergeant said. “It’s all I could get.”
She went into her bag again and put forty-seven dollars on the table.
“Thanks,” I said. “Call it I owe you fifty. Three bucks interest.”
“Fifty-two,” she said. “Don’t forget the babysitter.”
“What else have you got?”
She came out with a concertina of printer paper. It was the kind with faint blue rulings and holes in the sides. There were lines and lines of numbers on it.
“The phone records,” she said.
Then she gave me a sheet of army memo paper with a 202 number on it.
“The Jefferson Hotel,” she said.
Then she gave me a roll of curled fax paper.
“Major Marshall’s personal file,” she said.
She followed that with an army phone book. It was thick and green and had numbers in it for all our posts and installations worldwide. Then she gave me more curled fax paper. It was Detective Clark’s street canvass results, from New Year’s Eve, up in Green Valley.
“Franz in California told me you wanted it,” she said.
“Great,” I said. “Thanks. Thanks for everything.”
She nodded. “You better believe I’m better than the day guy. And someone better be prepared to say so when they start with the force reduction.”
“I’ll tell them,” I said.
“Don’t,” she said. “Won’t help a bit, coming from you. You’ll either be dead or in prison.”
“You brought all this stuff,” I said. “You haven’t given up on me yet.”
She said nothing.
“Where did Vassell and Coomer park their car?” I asked.
“On the fourth?” she said. “Nobody knows for sure. The first night patrol saw a staff car backed in all by itself at the far end of the lot. But you can’t take that to the bank. Patrol didn’t get a plate number, so it’s not a positive ID. And the second patrol can’t remember it at all. Therefore it’s one guy’s report against another’s.”
“What exactly did the first guy see?”
“He called it a staff car.”
“Was it a black Grand Marquis?”
“It was a black something,” she said. “But all staff cars are black or green. Nothing unique about a black car.”
“But it was out of the way?”
She nodded. “On its own, far end of the lot. But the second guy can’t confirm it.”
“Where was Major Marshall on the second and the third?”
“That was easier,” she said. “Two travel warrants. To Frankfurt on the second, back here on the third.”
“An overnight in Germany?”
She nodded again. “There and back.”
We sat quiet. The counterman came over with a pad and a pencil. I looked at the menu and the forty-seven dollars on the table and ordered less than two bucks’ worth of coffee and eggs. Summer took the hint and ordered juice and biscuits. That was about as cheap as we could get, consistent with staying vertical.
“Am I done here?” my sergeant asked.
I nodded. “Thanks. I mean it.”
Summer slid out to let her get up.
“Kiss your baby for me,” I said.
My sergeant just stood there, all bone and sinew. Hard as woodpecker lips. Staring straight at me.
“My mom just died,” I said. “One day your son will remember mornings like these.”
She nodded once and walked to the door. A minute later we saw her in her pickup truck, a small figure all alone at the wheel. She drove off into the dawn mist. A rope of exhaust followed behind her and then drifted away.
I shuffled all the paper into a logical pile and started with Marshall’s personal file. The quality of the fax transmission wasn’t great, but it was legible. There was the usual mass of information. On the first page I found out that Marshall had been born in September of 1958. Therefore he was thirty-one years old. He had no wife and no children. No ex-wives either. He was wedded to the military, I guessed. He was listed at six-four and two hundred twenty pounds. The army needed to know that to keep their quartermaster percentiles up to speed. He was listed as right-handed. The army needed to know that because bolt-action sniper rifles are made for right-handers. Left-handed soldiers don’t usually get assigned as snipers. Pigeonholing starts on day one in the military.
I turned the page.
Marshall had been born in Sperryville, Virginia, and had gone all the way through kindergarten and grade school and high school there.
I smiled. Summer looked at me, questions in her eyes. I separated the pages and slid them across to her and stretched over and used my finger to point out the relevant lines. Then I slid her the memo paper with the Jefferson Hotel number on it.
“Go find a phone,” I said.
She found one just inside the door, on the wall, near the register. I saw her put two quarters in, and dial, and talk, and wait. I saw her give her name and rank and unit. I saw her listen. I saw her talk some more. I saw her wait some more. And li
sten some more. She put more quarters in. It was a long call. I guessed she was getting transferred all over the place. Then I saw her say thank you. I saw her hang up. I saw her come back to me, looking grim and satisfied.
“He had a room,” she said. “In fact he made the booking himself, the day before. Three rooms, for him, and Vassell, and Coomer. And there was a valet parking charge.”
“Did you speak to the valet station?”
She nodded. “It was a black Mercury. In just after lunch, out again at twenty to one in the morning, back in again at twenty past three in the morning, out again finally after breakfast on New Year’s Day.”
I riffed through the pile of paper and found the fax from Detective Clark in Green Valley. The results of his house-to-house canvass. There was a fair amount of vehicle activity listed. It had been New Year’s Eve and lots of people were heading to and from parties. There had been what someone thought was a taxi on Mrs. Kramer’s road, just before two o’clock in the morning.
“A staff car could be mistaken for a taxi,” I said. “You know, a plain black sedan, clean condition but a little tired, a lot of miles on it, the same shape as a Crown Victoria.”
“Plausible,” Summer said.
“Likely,” I said.
We paid the check and left a dollar tip and counted what was left of my sergeant’s loan. Decided we were going to have to keep on eating cheap, because we were going to need gas money. And phone money. And some other expenses.
“Where to now?” Summer asked me.
“Across the street,” I said. “To the motel. We’re going to hole up all day. A little more work, and then we sleep.”
We left the Chevy hidden behind the lounge bar and crossed the street on foot. Woke the skinny guy in the motel office and asked him for a room.
“One room?” he said.
I nodded. Summer didn’t object. She knew we couldn’t afford two rooms. And we weren’t new to sharing. Paris had worked out OK for us, as far as nighttime arrangements were concerned.