her middle finger on Sperryville and her index finger on Green
Valley.
‘Vassell and Coomer,’ she said. ‘They left D.C., they stole the
209
crowbar in Sperryville, they broke into Mrs Kramer’s house in
Green Valley.’
‘Except they didn’t,’ I said. ‘They were just in from the
airport. They didn’t have a car. And they didn’t call for one. You
checked the phone records yourself.’
She said nothing.
‘Plus they’re lard-ass staff officers,’ I said. ‘They wouldn’t
know how to burgle a hardware store if their lives depended on it.’
She took her hand off the map. I stepped back to my desk and
sat down again and butted the personnel lists into a neat pile.
‘We need to concentrate on Carbone,’ I said.
‘Then we need a new plan,’ she said. ‘Detective Clark is going
to stop looking for crowbars now. He’s found the one he’s
interested in.’
I nodded. ‘Back to traditional time-honoured methods of investigation.’
‘Which are?’
‘I don’t really know. I went to West Point. I didn’t go to MP
school.’
My phone rang. I picked it up. The same warm southern
voice I had heard before went through the same 10-33, 10-16 from Jackson routine I had heard before. I acknowledged and hit
the speaker button and leaned all the way back in my chair and
waited. The room filled with electronic hum. Then there was a
click.
‘Reacher?’ Sanchez said.
‘And Lieutenant Summer,’ I said. ‘We’re on the speaker.’
‘Anyone else in the room?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Door closed?’
‘Yes. What’s up?’
‘Columbia PD came through again, is what. They’re feeding
me stuff bit by bit. And they’re having themselves a real good
time doing it. They’re gloating like crazy.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Brubaker had heroin in his pocket, that’s why.
Three dime bags of brown. And a big wad of cash money.
They’re saying it was a drug deal that went bad.’
210
FIFTEEN
l
WAS BORN IN 1960, WHICH MADE ME SEVEN I)URING THE
Summer of Love, and thirteen at the end of our effective
involvement in Vietnam, and fifteen at the end of our official
involvement there. Which meant I missed most of the American
military’s collision with narcotics. The heavy-duty Purple
Haze years passed me by. I had caught the later, stable phase.
Like many soldiers I had smoked a little weed from time
to time, maybe just enough to develop a preference among
different strains and sources, but nowhere near enough to put
me high on the list of U.S. users in terms of lifetime volume
consumed. I was a part-timer. I was one of those guys who
bought, not sold.
But as an MP, I had seen plenty sold. I had seen drug deals. I
had seen them succeed, and I had seen them fail. I knew the
drill. And one thing I knew for sure was that if a bad deal ends
up with a dead guy on the floor, there’s nothing in the dead
guy’s pocket. No cash, no product. No way. Why would there
be? If the dead guy was the buyer, the seller runs away with his
dope intact and the buyer’s cash. If the dead guy was the seller,
then the buyer gets the whole stash for free. The deal money
walks right back home with him. Either way someone takes a
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nice big profit in exchange for a couple of bullets and a little
rummaging around.
‘It’s bullshit, Sanchez,’ I said. ‘It’s faked.’
‘Of course it is. I know that.’
‘Did you make that point?’
‘Did I need to? They’re civilians, but they ain’t stupid.’
‘So why are they gloating?’
‘Because it gives them a free pass. If they can’t close the case,
they can just write it off. Brubaker ends up looking bad, not
them.’
‘They found any witnesses yet?’
‘Not a one.’
‘Shots were fired,’ I said. ‘Someone must have heard something.’
‘Not according to the cops.’
‘Willard is going to freak,’ I said.
‘That’s the least of our problems.’
‘Are you alibied?’ The ? Do I need to be?’
‘Willard’s going to be looking for leverage. He’s going to use
anything he can invent to get you to toe the line.’