Child, Lee – The Enemy

He was wearing tan uniform pants and a short leather jacket

zipped to his chin. No hat. The jacket had badges pinned to it

that told me his name was Stockton and his rank was deputy

chief. I didn’t know him. I had never served there before. He

was grey, about fifty. He was medium height and a little soft and

heavy but the way he was reading the badges on my coat told

me he was probably a veteran, like a lot of cops are.

‘Major,’ he said, as a greeting.

I nodded. A veteran, for sure. A major gets a little gold

coloured oak leaf on the epaulette, one inch across, one on each

side. This guy was looking upward and sideways at mine, which

wasn’t the clearest angle of view. But he knew what they were.

So he was familiar with rank designations. And I recognized his

voice. He was the guy who had called me, at five seconds past

midnight.

‘I’m Rick Stockton,’ he said. ‘Deputy Chief.’

He was calm. He had seen heart attacks before.

Tm Jack Reacher,’ I said. ‘MP duty officer tonight.’

He recognized my voice in turn. Smiled.

‘You decided to come out,’ he said. ‘After all.’

‘You didn’t tell me the DOA was a two-star.’

‘Well, he is.’

‘I’ve never seen a dead general,’ I said.

‘Not many people have,’ he said, and the way he said it made

me think he had been an enlisted man.

‘Army?’ I asked.

‘Marine Corps,’ he said. ‘First sergeant.’

‘My old man was a Marine,’ I said. I always make that point,

talking to Marines. It gives me some kind of genetic legitimacy.

Stops them from thinking of me as a pure army dogface. But I

keep it vague. I don’t tell them my old man had made captain.

Enlisted men and officers don’t automatically see eye to eye.

‘Humvee,’ he said.

He was looking at my ride.

‘You like it?’ he asked.

I nodded. Humvee was everyone’s best attempt at saying

16

HMMWV, which stands tot Htgi¢ IVloOtltty JVlUlttpurpose vvneetea

Vehicle, which about says it all. Like the army generally, what

you’re told is what you get.

‘It works as advertised,’ I said.

‘Kind of wide,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t like to drive it in a city.’

‘You’d have tanks in front of you,’ I said. ‘They’d be clearing

the way. I think that would be the basic plan.’

The music from the bar thudded on. Stockton said nothing.

‘Let’s look at the dead guy,’ I said to him.

He led the way inside. Flicked a switch that lit up the interior

hallway. Then another that lit up the whole room. I saw a

standard motel layout. A yard-wide lobby with a closet on the

left and a bathroom on the right. Then a twelve-by-twenty

rectangle with a built-in counter the same depth as the closet,

and a queen bed the same depth as the bathroom. Low ceiling.

A wide window at the far end, draped, with an integrated

heater-cooler unit built through the wall underneath it. Most of

the things in the room were tired and shabby and coloured

brown. The whole place looked dim and damp and miserable.

There was a dead man on the bed.

He was naked, face down. He was white, maybe pushing

sixty, quite tall. He was built like a fading pro athlete. Like a

coach. He still had decent muscle, but he was growing love

handles the way old guys do, however fit they are. He had pale

hairless legs. He had old scars. He had wiry grey hair buzzed

close to his scalp and cracked weathered skin on the back of

his neck. He was a type. Any hundred people could have looked

at him and all hundred would have said army officer, for sure.

‘He was found like this?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ Stockton said.

Second question: how? A guy takes a room for the night, he

expects privacy until the maid comes in the next morning, at

the very least.

‘How?’ I said.

‘How what?’

‘How. was he found? Did he call nine one one?’

‘No.’

‘So how?’

‘You’ll see.’

17

I paused. I didn’t see anything yet.

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