‘Killing your officer,’ Reacher said. ‘It happened, time to time. Some gung-ho lieutenant, probably new in-country, gets all keen on advancing into dangerous positions. The grunts don’t like it, figure he’s after a medal, figure they’d rather keep their asses in one piece. So he says charge and somebody shoots him in the back, or throws a grenade at him, which was more efficient, because it didn’t need aiming and it disguised the whole thing better. That’s where the name comes from, fragging, fragmentation device, a grenade.’
‘So was it fragging?’ Jodie asked.
‘The details are classified,’ Newman said again. ‘But certainly there was fragging involved, at the end of a long and vicious career. According to the files, Carl Allen was definitely not the flavour of the month.’
Jodie nodded. ‘But why on earth is that classified? Whatever he did, he’s been dead thirty years. Justice is done, right?’
Reacher had stepped back to Allen’s casket. He was staring down into it.
‘Caution,’ he said. ‘Whoever the gung-ho lieutenant was, his family was told he died a hero, fighting the enemy. If they ever find out any different, it’s a scandal. And the Department of the Army doesn’t like scandals.’
‘Correct,’ Newman said again. ‘But where’s Hobie?’ Reacher asked again. ‘You’re still missing something. One step at a time, OK?’
‘But what is it?’ Reacher asked. ‘Where is it?’ ‘In the bones,’ Newman said. The clock on the laboratory wall showed five-thirty. Not much more than an hour to go. Reacher took a breath and walked back around the caskets in reverse order. Gunston, Zabrinski, Allen, Soper, Bamford, Tardelli, Kaplan. Six grinning skulls and one headless bony set of shoulders stared back up at him. He did the round again. The clock ticked on. He stopped next to each casket and gripped the cold aluminium sides and leaned over and stared in, desperate to spot what he was missing. In the bones. He started each search at the top. The skull, the neck, the collarbones, the ribs, the arms, the pelvis, the legs, the feet. He took to rummaging through the boxes, lightly, delicately sorting the dry bones, looking for it. A quarter to six.
Ten to six. Jodie was watching him, anxiously. He did the round for the third time, starting again with Gunston, the cop. He moved on to Zabrinski, the other cop. On to Allen, the criminal. On to Soper, the gunner. On to Bamford, the crew chief. He found it right there in Bamford’s box. He closed his eyes. It was obvious. It was so obvious it was like it was painted in Day-Glo paint and lit up with a searchlight. He ran back around the other six boxes, counting, double checking. He was right. He had found it. Six o’clock in the evening in Hawaii.
‘There are seven bodies,’ he said. ‘But there are fifteen hands.’
Six o’clock in the evening in Hawaii is eleven o’clock at night in New York City, and Hobie was alone in his apartment, thirty floors above Fifth Avenue, in the bedroom, getting ready to go to sleep. Eleven o’clock was earlier than his normal bedtime. Usually he would stay awake, reading a book or watching a film on cable until one or two in the morning. But tonight he was tired. It had been a fatiguing day. There had been a certain amount of physical activity, and some mental strain.
He was sitting on the edge of his bed. It was a king-size bed, although he slept alone, and always had. There was a thick comforter in white. The walls were white and the Venetian blinds were white. Not because he had wanted any kind of artistic consistency in his decor, but because white things were always the cheapest. Whatever you were dealing with, bed linen or paint or window coverings, the white option was always priced lowest. There was no art on the walls. No photographs, no ornaments, no souvenirs, no
hangings. The floor was plain oak strips. No rug.
His feet were planted squarely on the floor. His shoes were black Oxfords, polished to a high shine, planted exactly at right angles to the oak strips. He reached down with his good hand and undid the laces, one at a time. Eased the shoes off, one at a time. Pushed them together with his feet and picked them up both together and squared them away under the bed. He slid his thumb into the top of his socks, one at a time, and eased them off his feet. Shook them out and dropped them on the floor. He unknotted his tie. He always wore a tie. It was a source of great pride to him that he could knot a tie with one hand.