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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