him?’
‘Never met him,’ I said.
‘He was way above average. He was a real pro. And he was a
thinker. Any angle, any advantage, any wrinkle, he knew it and
he was ready to use it.’
‘But he got himself shot in the back of the head?’
‘He knew the guy, definitely. Had to. Why else would he turn
his back, in the middle of the night, in an alley?’
‘You looking at people from Jackson?’
‘That’s a lot of people.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Did he have enemies at Bird?’
‘Not that I’ve heard,’ I said. ‘He had enemies up the chain
of command.’
‘Those pussies don’t meet people in alleys in the middle of
the night.’
‘Where was the alley?’
‘Not in a quiet part of town.’
‘So did anyone hear anything?’
‘Nobody,’ Sanchez said. ‘Columbia PD ran a canvass and
came up empty.’
‘That’s weird.’
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‘They’re civilians. What else would they be?’
He went quiet.
‘You met Willard yet?’ I asked him.
‘He’s on his way here right now. Seems to be a real hands-on
type of asshole.’
‘What was the alley like?’
‘Whores and crack dealers. Nothing that the Columbia city
fathers are likely to put in their tourism brochures.’
‘Willard hates embarrassment,’ I said. ‘He’s going to be
nervous about image.’
‘Columbia’s image? What does he care?’
‘The army’s image,’ I said. ‘He won’t want Brubaker put next
to whores and crack dealers. Not an elite colonel. He figures
this Soviet stuff is going to shake things up. He figures we need
good PR right now. He figures he can see the big picture.’
‘The big picture is I can’t get near this case anyway. So what
kind of pull does he have with the Columbia PD and the FBI?
Because that’s what it’s going to take.’
‘Just be ready for trouble,’ I said.
‘Are we in for seven lean years?’
‘Not that long.’
‘Why not?’
‘Just a feeling,’ I said.
‘You happy with me handling liaison down here? Or should
I get them to call you direct? Brubaker is your dead guy,
technically.’
‘You do it,’ I said. ‘I’ve got other things to do.’
We hung up and I went back to Summer’s lists. Nine hundred
seventy-three. Nine hundred seventy-two innocent, one guilty.
But which one?
Summer came back inside another hour. She walked in and
gave me a sheet of paper. It was a photocopy of a weapons
requisition that Sergeant First Class Christopher Carbone had
made four months ago. It was for a Heckler & Koch P7 handgun.
Maybe he had liked the H&K sub-machine guns Delta was
using, and therefore he wanted the P7 for his personal sidearm.
He had asked for it to be chambered for the standard
nine-millimetre Parabellum cartridge. He had asked for the
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13-round magazine, and three spares. It was a perfectly
standard requisition form, and a perfectly reasonable request. I
was sure it had been granted. There would have been no
political sensitivities. H&K was a German outfit and Germany
was a NATO country, last time I checked. There would
have been no compatibility issues, either. Nine-millimetre
Parabellums were standard NATO loads. The U.S. Army had no
shortage of them. We had warehouses crammed full of them.
We could have filled 13-round magazines with them a million
times over, every day for the rest of history.
‘So?’ I said.
‘Look at the signature on it,’ Summer said. She took my copy
of Carbone’s complaint out of her inside pocket and handed it
over. I spread it out on my desk, side by side with the requisi
tion form. Looked from one to the other.
The two signatures were identical.
‘We’re not handwriting experts,’ I said.
‘We don’t need to be. They’re the same, Reacher. Believe
it.’
I nodded. Both signatures read C. Carbone, and the
four capital letter Cs were very distinctive. They were fast,
elongated, curling flourishes. The lower-case e on the end of
each sample was distinctive too. It made a small round shape,
and then the tail of the letter whipped way out to the right
of the page, well beyond the name itself, horizontally, and
exuberantly. The a-r-b-o-n in the middle was fast and fluid