listen.’
‘Big step,’ she said.
‘One that you already took,’ I said.
‘Why did you cut me out?’
‘Because if I blow it I don’t want to take anyone down with
me.’
‘You were protecting me.’
I nodded.
‘Well don’t,’ she said. ‘I can think for myself.’
I said nothing.
‘How old are you?’ she asked.
‘Twenty-nine,’ I said.
‘So next year you’ll be thirty. You’ll be a thirty-year-old
white man with a dishonourable discharge from the only
job you’ve ever had. And whereas I’m young enough to start
over, you’re not. You’re institutionalized, you’ve got no social
skills, you’ve never been in the civilian world, and you’re good
for nothing. So maybe it should be you lying in the weeds, not
,
me.
I said nothing.
‘You should have talked it over,’ she said.
‘It’s a personal choice,’ I said.
‘I already made my personal choice,’ she said. ‘Seems like
you know that now. Seems like Detective Clark accidentally
ratted me out.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ I said. ‘One stray phone call and
you could be out on the street. This is a high-stakes game.’
‘And I’m right here in it with you, Reacher. So bring me up to
speed.’
Five minutes later she knew what I knew. All questions, no
answers.
‘Garber’s signature was a forgery,’ she said.
I nodded.
‘So what about Carbone’s, on the complaint? Is that forged
too?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. I took the copy that Willard had given me out
of my desk drawer. Smoothed it out on the blotter and passed it
160
across to her. She folded it neatly and put it in her inside
pocket.
‘I’ll get the writing checked,’ she said. ‘Easier for me than
yOU, now.’
‘Nothing’s easy for either of us now,’ I said. ‘You need to be
very clear about that. So you need to be very clear about what
you’re doing.’
‘I’m clear,’ she said. ‘Bring it on.’
I sat quiet for a minute. Just looked at her. She had a small
smile on her face. She was plenty tough. But then, she had
grown up poor in an Alabama shack with churches burning
and exploding all around her. I guessed watching her back
against Willard and a bunch of Delta vigilantes might represent
progress, of a sort, in her life.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For being on my side.’
‘I’m not on your side,’ she said. ‘You’re on mine.’
My phone rang. I picked it up. It was the Louisiana corporal,
calling from his desk outside my door.
‘North Carolina State Police on the line,’ he said. ‘They want
a duty officer. You want to take it?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘But I guess I better.’
There was a click and some dead air and another click. Then
a dispatcher came on the line and told me a trooper in an 1-95
patrol car had found an abandoned green canvas briefcase on
the highway shoulder. He told me it had a wallet inside that
identified the owner as a General Kenneth R. Kramer, U.S.
Army. He told me he was calling Fort Bird because he figured it
was the closest military installation to where the briefcase had
been found. And he was calling to tell me where the briefcase
was currently being held, in case I was interested in having
someone sent out to pick it up.
161
TWELVE
S
UMMER I)ROVE. WE TOOK THE HUMVEE I HAD LEFT ON THE KERB.
We didn’t want to take time to sign out a sedan. It
cramped her style a little. Humvees are big slow trucks
that are good for a lot of things, but covering paved roads fast
isn’t one of them. She looked tiny behind the wheel. The vehicle
was full of noise. The engine was thrashing and the tyres were
whining loud. It was four o’clock on a dull day and it was
starting to go dark.
We drove north to Kramer’s motel and turned east through
the cloverleaf and then north on 1-95 itself. We covered fifteen
miles and passed a rest area and started looking for the right
State Police building. We found it twelve miles farther on. It was
a long low one-storey brick structure with a forest of tall radio