and tracked along the boundary fences until I was looking at
Willard’s own back yard. It was full of dead hummocked grass.
There was a rusted-out barbecue grill abandoned in the middle
of the lawn. In army terms the place was not standing tall and
squared away. It was a mess.
I bent a fence post until I had room to slip past it. Walked
straight through Willard’s yard and around his garage to his
front door. There was no porch light. The view from the street
was half-open, half-obscured. Not perfect. But not bad. I put my
elbow on the bell. Heard it sound inside. There was a short
pause and then I heard footsteps. I stood back. Willard opened
the door. No delay at all. Maybe he was expecting Chinese
food. Or a pizza.
4O5
I punched him in the chest to move him backward. Stepped in
after him and closed the door behind me with my foot. It was a
dismal house. The air was stale. Willard was clutching the stair
post, gasping for breath. I hit him in the face and knocked him
down. He came up on his hands and knees and I kicked
him hard in the ass and kept on kicking until he took the hint
and started crawling towards the kitchen as fast as he could. He
got himself in there and kind of rolled over and sat on the floor
with his back hard up against a cabinet. There was fear in his
face, for sure, but confusion, too. Like he couldn’t believe I was
doing this. Like he was thinking: this is about a disciplinary
complaint? His bureaucratic calculus couldn’t compute it.
‘Did you hear about Vassell and Coomer?’ I asked him.
He nodded, fast and scared.
‘Remember Lieutenant Summer?’ I asked him.
He nodded again.
‘She pointed something out to me,’ I said. ‘Kind of obvious,
but she said they would have gotten away with it if I hadn’t
ignored you.’
He just stared at me.
‘It made me think,’ I said. ‘What exactly was I ignoring?’
He said nothing.
‘I misjudged you,’ I said. ‘I apologize. Because I thought I was
ignoring a busybody careerist asshole. I thought I was ignoring
some kind of a prissy nervous idiot corporate manager who
thought he knew better. But I wasn’t. I was ignoring something
else entirely.’
He stared up at me.
‘You didn’t feel embarrassed about Kramer,’ I said. ‘You
didn’t feel sensitive about me harassing Vassell and Coomer.
You weren’t speaking for the army when you wanted Carbone
written up as a training accident. You were doing the job
you were put there to do. Someone wanted three homicides
covered up, and you were put there to do it for them. You
were participating in a deliberate cover-up, Willard. That’s what
you were doing. That’s what I was ignoring. I mean, what the
hell else were you doing, ordering me not to investigate a
homicide? It was a cover-up, and it was planned, and it was
structured, and it was decided well in advance. It was decided
406
on the second day of January, when Garber was moved out and
you were moved in. You were put in there so that what they
were planning to do on the fourth could be controlled. No other
reason.’
He said nothing.
‘I thought they wanted an incompetent in there, so that
nature would take its course. But they went one better than
that. They put a friend in there.’
He said nothing.
‘You should have refused,’ I said. ‘If you had refused, they
wouldn’t have gone ahead with it and Carbone and Brubaker
would still be alive.’
He said nothing.
‘You killed them, Willard. Just as much as they did.’
I crouched down next to him. He scrabbled on the floor and
pressed backward against the cupboard behind him. He had
defeat in his eyes. But he gave it one last shot.
‘You can’t prove anything,’ he said.
Now I said nothing.
‘Maybe it was just incompetence,’ he said. ‘You thought about
that? How are you going to prove the intention?’
I said nothing. His eyes went hard.
‘You’re not dealing with idiots,’ he said. ‘There’s no proof