‘What died?’
‘My enthusiasm for getting out of bed in the morning.’
‘One bad apple,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t mean much.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘If it is just one.’
She said nothing.
‘Crowbars,’ I said. ‘We’ve got two separate cases with crowbars,
and I don’t like coincidences. But I can’t see how they can
be connected. There’s no way to join them up. Carbone was a
million miles from Mrs Kramer, in every way imaginable. They
were in completely different worlds.’
‘Vassell and Coomer join them up,’ she said. ‘They had an
interest in something that could have been in Mrs Kramer’s
house, and they were here at Bird the night Carbone was
killed.’
I nodded. ‘That’s what’s driving me crazy. It’s a perfect connection,
except it isn’t. They took one call in D.C., they were too
far from Green Valley to do anything to Mrs Kramer themselves,
and they didn’t call anyone from the hotel. Then they
were here the night Carbone died, but they were in the O Club
with a dozen witnesses the whole time, eating steak and fish.’
‘First time they were here, they had a driver. Major Marshall,
remember? But the second time, they were on their own. That
feels a little clandestine to me. Like they were here for a secret
reason.’
‘Nothing very secret about hanging around in the O Club bar
and then eating in the O Club dining room. They weren’t out of
sight for a minute, all night long.’
‘But why didn’t they have their driver? Why come on their
own? I assume Marshall was at the funeral with them. But they
chose to drive more than three hundred miles by themselves?
And more than three hundred back?’
‘Maybe Marshall was unavailable,’ I said.
‘He’s their blue-eyed boy,’ she said. ‘He’s available when they
say so.’
‘Why did they come here at all? It’s a very long way for a very
average dinner.’
192
‘They came for the briefcase, Reacher. Norton’s wrong. She
must be. Someone gave it to them. They left with it.’
‘I don’t think Norton’s wrong. She convinced me.’
‘Then maybe they picked it up in the parking lot. Norton
wouldn’t have seen that. I assume she didn’t go out there in the
cold and wave them off. But they left with it, for sure. Why else
would they be happy to fly back to Germany?’
‘Maybe they just gave up on it. They were due back in
Germany anyway. They couldn’t stay here for ever. They’ve got
Kramer’s command to fight over.’
Summer said nothing.
‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘There’s no possible connection.’
‘It’s a random universe.’
I nodded. ‘So they stay on the back burner. Carbone stays on
the front.’
‘Are we going back out to look for the yogurt pot?’
I shook my head. ‘It’s in the guy’s car, or in his trash.’
‘Could have been useful.’
‘We’ll work with the crowbar instead. It’s brand new. It was
probably bought just as recently as the yogurt was.’
‘We have no resources.’
‘Detective Clark up in Green Valley will do it for us. He’s
already looking for his crowbar, presumably. He’ll be canvassing
hardware stores. We’ll ask him to widen his radius and
stretch his time frame.’
‘That’s a lot of extra work for him.’
I nodded. ‘We’ll have to offer him something. We’ll have to
string him along. We’ll tell him we’re working on something
that might help him.’
‘Like what?’
I smiled. ‘We could fake it. We could give him Andrea
Norton’s name. We could show her exactly what kind of a
family we are.’
I called Detective Clark. I didn’t give him Andrea Norton’s
name..I told him a few lies instead. I told him I recalled
the damage to Mrs Kramer’s door, and the damage to her
head, and that I figured a crowbar was involved, and I told him
that as it happened we had a rash of break-ins at military
193
installations all up and down the Eastern seaboard that also
seemed to involve crowbars, and I asked him if we could
piggy-back on the legwork he was undoubtedly already doing
in terms of tracing the Green Valley weapon. He paused at
that point, and I filled the silence by telling him that military