We made the familiar trek to the Place de l'Opera and caught the airport bus. It was my sixth time on that bus in about a week. The sixth time was no more comfortable than the previous five. It was the discomfort that started me thinking.
We got out at international departures and found the Air France ticket desk. Swapped two vouchers for two seats to Dulles on the eleven o'clock red-eye. That gave us a long wait. We humped our bags across the concourse and started out in a bar. Summer wasn't conversational. I guess she couldn't think of anything to say. But the truth was, I was doing OK at that point. Life was unfolding the same way it always had for everyone. Sooner or later you ended up an orphan. There was no escaping it. It had happened that way for a thousand generations. No point in getting all upset about it.
We drank bottles of beer and looked for somewhere to eat. I had missed breakfast and lunch and I guessed Summer hadn't eaten either. We walked past all the little tax-exempt boutiques and found a place that was made up to look like a sidewalk bistro. We pooled our few remaining dollars and checked the menu and worked out that we could afford one course each, plus juice for her and coffee for me, and a tip for the waiter. We ordered steak frites, which turned out to be a decent slab of meat with shoestring fries and mayonnaise. You could get good food anywhere in France. Even an airport.
After an hour we moved down to the gate. We were still early and it was almost deserted. Just a few transit passengers, all shopped out, or broke like us. We sat far away from them and stared into space.
"Feels bad, going back," Summer said. "You can forget how much trouble you're in when you're away."
"All we need is a result," I said.
"We're not going to get one. It's been ten days and we're nowhere."
I nodded. Ten days since Mrs. Kramer died, six days since Carbone died. Five days since Delta had given me a week to clear my name.
"We've got nothing," Summer said. "Not even the easy stuff. We didn't even find the woman from Kramer's motel. That shouldn't have been difficult."
I nodded again. She was right. That shouldn't have been difficult.
We boarded forty minutes before takeoff. Summer and I had seats behind an old couple in an exit row. I wished we could change places with them. I would have been glad of the extra room. We took off on time and I spent the first hour getting more and more cramped and uncomfortable. The stewardess served a meal that I couldn't have eaten even if I had wanted to, because I didn't have enough room to move my elbows and operate the silverware.
One thought led to another.
I thought about Joe flying in the night before. He would have flown coach. That was clear. A civil servant on a personal trip doesn't fly any other way. He would have been cramped and uncomfortable all night long, a little more than me because he was an inch taller. So I felt bad all over again about putting him in the bus to town. I recalled the hard plastic seats and his cramped position and the way his head was jerked around by the motion. I should have sprung for a cab from the city and kept it waiting at the curb. I should have found a way to scare up some cash.
One thought led to another.
I pictured Kramer and Vassell and Coomer flying in from Frankfurt on New Year's Eve. American Airlines. A Boeing jet. No more spacious than any other jet. An early start from XII Corps. A long flight to Dulles. I pictured them walking down the jetway, stiff, airless, dehydrated, uncomfortable.
One thought led to another.
I pulled the George V bill out of my pocket. Opened the envelope. Read it through. Read it through again. Examined every line and every item.
The hotel bill, the airplane, the bus to town.
The bus to town, the airplane, the hotel bill.
I closed my eyes.
I thought about things that Sanchez and the Delta adjutant and Detective Clark and Andrea Norton and Summer herself had said to me. I thought about the crowd of meeters and greeters we had seen in the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle arrivals hall. I thought about Sperryville, Virginia. I thought about Mrs. Kramer's house in Green Valley.
In the end dominoes fell all over the place and landed in ways that made nobody look very good. Least of all me, because I had made many mistakes, including one big one that I knew for sure was going to come right back and bite me in the ass.
I kept myself so busy pondering my prior mistakes that I let my preoccupation lead me into making another one. I spent all my time thinking about the past and no time at all thinking about the future. About countermeasures. About what would be waiting for us at Dulles. We touched down at two in the morning and came out through the customs hall and walked straight into a trap set by Willard.
Standing in the same place they had stood six days earlier were the same three warrant officers from the Provost Marshal General's office. Two W3s and a W4. I saw them. They saw us. I spent a second wondering how the hell Willard had done it. Did he have guys standing by at every airport in the country all day and all night? Did he have a Europe-wide trace out on our travel vouchers? Could he do that himself? Or was the FBI involved? The Department of the Army? The State Department? Interpol? NATO? I had no idea. I made an absurd mental note that one day I should try to find out.
Then I spent another second deciding what to do about the situation.
Delay was not an option. Not now. Not in Willard's hands. I needed freedom of movement and freedom of action for twenty-four or forty-eight more hours. Then I would go see Willard. I would go see him happily. Because at that point I would be ready to slap him around and arrest him.
The W4 walked up to us with his W3s at his back.
"I have orders to place you both in handcuffs," he said.
"Ignore your orders," I said.
"I can't," he said.
"Try."
"I can't," he said again.
I nodded.
"OK, we'll trade," I said. "You try it with the handcuffs, I'll break your arms. You walk us to the car, we'll go quietly."
He thought about it. He was armed. So were his guys. We weren't. But nobody wants to shoot people in the middle of an airport. Not unarmed people from your own unit. That would lead to a bad conscience. And paperwork. And he didn't want a fistfight. Not three against two. I was too big and Summer was too small to make it fair.
"Deal?" he said.
"Deal," I lied.
"So let's go."
Last time he had walked ahead of me and his hot-dog W3s had stayed on my shoulders. I sincerely hoped he would repeat that pattern. I guessed the W3s figured themselves for real badass sons of bitches and I guessed they were close to being correct, but it was the W4 I was most worried about. He looked like the genuine article. But he didn't have eyes in the back of his head. So I hoped he would walk in front.
He did. Summer and I stayed side by side with our bags in our hands and the W3s formed up wide and behind us in an arrowhead pattern. The W4 led the way. We went out through the doors into the cold. Turned toward the restricted lane where they had parked last time. It was past two in the morning and the airport approach roads were completely deserted. There were lonely pools of yellow light from fixtures up on posts. It had been raining. The ground was wet.
We crossed the public pickup lane and crossed the median where the bus shelters were. We headed onward into the dark. I could see the bulk of a parking garage half-left and the green Chevy Caprice far away to the right. We turned toward it. Walked in the roadway. Most other times of the day we would have been mown down by traffic. But right then the whole place was still and silent. Past two o'clock in the morning.
I dropped my bag and used both hands and shoved Summer out of the way. Stopped dead and jerked my right elbow backward and smashed the right-hand W3 hard in the face. Kept my feet planted and twisted the other way like a violent calisthenic exercise and smacked the left-hand W3 with my left elbow. Then I stepped forward and met the W4 as he spun toward the noise and came in for me. I hit him with a straight left to the chest. His weight was moving and my weight was moving and the blow messed him up pretty good. I followed it with a right hook to his chin and put him on the ground. Turned back to the W3s to check how they were doing. They were both down on their backs. There was some blood on their faces. Broken noses, loosened teeth. A lot of shock and surprise. An excellent stun factor. I was pleased. They were good, and I was better. I checked the W4. He wasn't doing much. I squatted down next to the W3s and took their Berettas out of their holsters. Then I twisted away and took the W4's out of his. Threaded all three guns on my forefinger. Then I used my other hand to find the car keys. The right-hand W3 had them in his pocket. I took them out and tossed them to Summer. She was back on her feet. She was looking a little dismayed.
I gave her the three Berettas and I dragged the W4 by his collar to the nearest bus shelter. Then I went back for the W3s and dragged them over, one in each hand. I got them all lined up facedown on the floor. They were conscious, but they were groggy. Heavy blows to the head are a lot more consequential in real life than they are in the movies. And I was breathing hard myself. Almost panting. The adrenaline was kicking in. Some kind of a delayed reaction. Fighting has an effect on both parties to the deal.
I crouched down next to the W4.
"I apologize, Chief," I said. "But you got in the way."
He said nothing. Just stared up at me. Anger, shock, wounded pride, confusion.
"Now listen," I said. "Listen carefully. You never saw us. We weren't here. We never came. You waited for hours, but we didn't show. You came back out and some thief had boosted your car in the night. That's what happened, OK?"
He tried to say something, but the words wouldn't come out right.
"Yes, I know," I said. "It's pretty weak and it makes you look real stupid. But how good does it make you look that you let us escape? That you didn't handcuff us like you were ordered to?"
He said nothing.
"That's your story," I said. "We didn't show, and your car was stolen. Stick to it or I'll put it about that it was the lieutenant who took you down. A ninety-pound girl. One against three. People will love that. They'll go nuts for it. And you know how rumors can follow you around forever."
He said nothing.
"Your choice," I said.
He shrugged. Said nothing.
"I apologize," I said. "Sincerely."
We left them there and grabbed our bags and ran to their car. Summer unlocked it and we slid in and she fired it up. Put it in gear and moved away from the curb.
"Go slow," I said.
I waited until we were alongside the bus shelter and then wound the window down and tossed the Berettas out on the sidewalk. Their cover story wouldn't hold up if they lost their weapons as well as their car. The three guns landed near the three guys and they all got up on their hands and knees and started to crawl toward them.
"Now go," I said.
Summer hit the gas hard and the tires lit up and about a second later we were well outside handgun range. She kept her foot down and we left the airport doing about ninety miles an hour.
"You OK?" I said.
"So far," she said.
"I'm sorry I had to shove you."
"We should have just run," she said. "We could have lost them in the terminal."
"We needed a car," I said. "I'm sick of taking the bus."
"But now we're way out of line."
"That's for sure," I said.
I checked my watch. It was close to three in the morning. We were heading south from Dulles. Going nowhere, fast. In the dark. We needed a destination.
"You know my phone number at Bird?" I said.
"Sure," Summer said.
"OK, pull over at the next place with a phone."
She spotted an all-night gas station about five miles later. It was all lit up on the horizon. We pulled in and checked it out. There was a miniature grocery store behind the pumps but it was closed. At night you had to pay for your gas through a bulletproof window. There was a pay phone outside next to the air hose. It was in an aluminum box mounted on the wall. The box had phone shapes drilled into the sides. Summer dialed my Fort Bird office number and handed me the receiver. I heard one cycle of ring tone and then my sergeant answered. The night-duty woman. The one with the baby son.
"This is Reacher," I said.
"You're in deep shit," she said.
"And that's the good news," I said.
"What's the bad news?"
"You're going to join me right there in it. What kind of babysitting arrangements have you got?"
"My neighbor's girl stays. From the trailer next door."
"Can she stay an hour longer?"
"Why?"
"I want you to meet me. I want you to bring me some stuff."
"It'll cost you."
"How much?"
"Two dollars an hour. For the babysitter."
"I haven't got two dollars. That's something I want you to bring. Money."
"You want me to give you money?"
"A loan," I said. "Couple of days."
"How much?"
"Whatever you've got."
"When and where?"
"When you get off. At six. At the diner near the strip club."
"What do you need me to bring?"
"Phone records," I said. "All calls made out of Fort Bird starting from midnight on New Year's Eve until maybe the third of January. And an army phone book. I need to speak to Sanchez and Franz and all kinds of other people. And I need Major Marshall's personal file. The XII Corps guy. I need you to get a copy faxed in from somewhere."
"Anything else?"
"I want to know where Vassell and Coomer parked their car when they came down for dinner on the fourth. I want you to see if anyone noticed."
"OK," she said. "Is that it?"
"No," I said. "I want to know where Major Marshall was on the second and the third. Scare up some travel clerk somewhere and see if any vouchers were issued. And I want a phone number for the Jefferson Hotel in D.C."
"That's an awful lot to do in three hours."
"That's why I'm asking you instead of the day guy. You're better than he is."
"Stick it," she said. "Flattery doesn't work on me."
"Hope springs eternal," I said.
We got back into the car and got back on the road. Headed east for I-95. I told Summer to go slow. If I didn't, then the way she was likely to drive on empty roads at night would get us to the diner well before my sergeant, and I didn't want that to happen. My sergeant would get there around six-thirty. I wanted to get there after her, maybe six-forty. I wanted to check she hadn't done her duty and dropped a dime on me and set up an ambush. It was unlikely, but not impossible. I wanted to be able to drive by and check. I didn't want to be already in a booth drinking coffee when Willard showed up.
"Why do you want all that stuff?" Summer asked.
"I know what happened to Mrs. Kramer," I said.
"How?"
"I figured it out," I said. "Like I should have at the beginning. But I didn't think. I didn't have enough imagination."
"It's not enough to imagine things."
"It is," I said. "Sometimes that's what it's all about. Sometimes that's all an investigator has got. You have to imagine what people must have done. The way they must have thought and acted. You have to think yourself into being them."
"Being who?"
"Vassell and Coomer," I said. "We know who they are. We know what they're like. Therefore we can predict what they did."
"What did they do?"
"They got an early start and flew all day from Frankfurt. On New Year's Eve. They wore Class As, trying to get an upgrade. Maybe they succeeded, with American Airlines out of Germany. Maybe they didn't. Either way, they couldn't have counted on it. They must have been prepared to spend eight hours in coach."
"So?"
"Would guys like Vassell and Coomer be happy to wait in the Dulles taxi line? Or take a shuttle bus to the city? All cramped and uncomfortable?"
"No," Summer said. "They wouldn't do either thing."
"Exactly," I said. "They wouldn't do either thing. They're way too important for that. They wouldn't dream of it. Not in a million years. Guys like that, they need to be met by a car and a driver."
"Who?"
"Marshall," I said. "That's who. He's their blue-eyed gofer. He was already over here, at their service. He must have picked them up at the airport. Maybe Kramer too. Did Kramer take the Hertz bus to the rental lot? I don't think so. I think Marshall drove him there. Then he drove Vassell and Coomer to the Jefferson Hotel."
"And?"
"And he stayed there with them, Summer. I think he had a room booked. Maybe they wanted him on the spot to drive them to National the next morning. He was going with them, after all. He was going to Irwin too. Or maybe they just wanted to talk to him, urgently. Just the three of them, Vassell, Coomer, and Marshall. Maybe it was easier to talk without Kramer there. And Marshall had a lot of stuff to talk about. They started his temporary detached duty in November. You told me that yourself. November was when the Wall started coming down. November was when the danger signals started coming in. So they sent him over here in November to get his ear close to the ground in the Pentagon. That's my guess. But whatever, Marshall stayed the night with Vassell and Coomer at the Jefferson Hotel. I'm sure of it."
"OK, so?"
"Marshall was at the hotel, and his car was in valet parking. And you know what? I checked our bill from Paris. They charged an arm and a leg for everything. Especially the phone calls. But not all the phone calls. The room-to-room calls we made didn't show up at all. You called me at six, about dinner. Then I called you at midnight, because I was lonely. Those calls didn't show up anywhere on the bill. Hit three for another room, and it's free. Dial nine for a line, and it triggers the computer. There were no calls on Vassell and Coomer's bill and therefore we thought they had made no calls. But they had made calls. It's obvious. They made internal calls. Room to room. Vassell took the message from XII Corps in Germany, and then he called Coomer's room to discuss what the hell to do about the situation. And then one or the other of them picked up the phone and called Marshall's room. They called their blue-eyed gofer and told him to run downstairs and jump in his car."
"Marshall did it?"
I nodded. "They sent him out into the night to clean up their mess."
"Can we prove it?"
"We can make a start," I said. "I'll bet you three things. First, we'll call the Jefferson Hotel and we'll find a booking in Marshall's name for New Year's Eve. Second, Marshall's file will tell us he once lived in Sperryville, Virginia. And third, his file will tell us he's tall and heavy and right-handed."
She went quiet. Her eyelids started moving.
"Is it enough?" she said. "Is Mrs. Kramer enough of a result to get us off the hook?"
"There's more to come," I said.
It was like being in a parallel universe, watching Summer driving slow. We drifted down the highway with the world going half-speed outside our windows. The big Chevy engine was loafing along a little above idle. The tires were quiet. We passed all our familiar landmarks. The State Police facility, the spot where Kramer's briefcase had been found, the rest area, the spur to the small highway. We crawled off at the cloverleaf and I scanned the gas station and the greasy spoon and the lounge parking and the motel. The whole place was full of yellow light and fog and black shadow but I could see well enough. There was no sign of a setup. Summer turned into the lot and drove a long slow circuit. There were three eighteen-wheelers parked like beached whales and a couple of old sedans that were probably abandoned. They had the look. They had dull paint and soft tires and they were low on their springs. There was an old Ford pickup truck with a baby seat strapped to the bench. I guessed that was my sergeant's. There was nothing else. Six-forty in the morning, and the world was dark and still and quiet.
We put the car out of sight behind the lounge bar and walked across the lot to the diner. Its windows were misted by the cooking steam. There was hot white light inside. It looked like a Hopper painting. My sergeant was alone at a booth in back. We walked in and sat down beside her. She hauled a grocery bag up off the floor. It was full of stuff.
"First things first," she said.
She put her hand in the bag and came out with a bullet. She stood it upright on the table in front of me. It was a standard nine-millimeter Parabellum. Standard NATO load. Full metal jacket. For a sidearm or a submachine gun. The shiny brass casing had something scratched on it. I picked it up. Looked at it. There was a word engraved there. It was rough and uneven. It had been done fast and by hand. It said: Reacher.
"A bullet with my name on it," I said.
"From Delta," my sergeant said. "Hand-delivered, yesterday."
"Who by?"
"The young one with the beard."
"Charming," I said. "Remind me to kick his ass."
"Don't joke about it. They're awful stirred up."
"They're looking at the wrong guy."
"Can you prove that?"
I paused. Knowing and proving were two different things. I dropped the bullet into my pocket and put my hands on the table.
"Maybe I can," I said.
"You know who killed Carbone too?" Summer said.
"One thing at a time," I said.
"Here's your money," my sergeant said. "It's all I could get."
She went into her bag again and put forty-seven dollars on the table.
"Thanks," I said. "Call it I owe you fifty. Three bucks interest."
"Fifty-two," she said. "Don't forget the babysitter."
"What else have you got?"
She came out with a concertina of printer paper. It was the kind with faint blue rulings and holes in the sides. There were lines and lines of numbers on it.
"The phone records," she said.
Then she gave me a sheet of army memo paper with a 202 number on it.
"The Jefferson Hotel," she said.
Then she gave me a roll of curled fax paper.
"Major Marshall's personal file," she said.
She followed that with an army phone book. It was thick and green and had numbers in it for all our posts and installations worldwide. Then she gave me more curled fax paper. It was Detective Clark's street canvass results, from New Year's Eve, up in Green Valley.
"Franz in California told me you wanted it," she said.
"Great," I said. "Thanks. Thanks for everything."
She nodded. "You better believe I'm better than the day guy. And someone better be prepared to say so when they start with the force reduction."
"I'll tell them," I said.
"Don't," she said. "Won't help a bit, coming from you. You'll either be dead or in prison."
"You brought all this stuff," I said. "You haven't given up on me yet."
She said nothing.
"Where did Vassell and Coomer park their car?" I asked.
"On the fourth?" she said. "Nobody knows for sure. The first night patrol saw a staff car backed in all by itself at the far end of the lot. But you can't take that to the bank. Patrol didn't get a plate number, so it's not a positive ID. And the second patrol can't remember it at all. Therefore it's one guy's report against another's."
"What exactly did the first guy see?"
"He called it a staff car."
"Was it a black Grand Marquis?"
"It was a black something," she said. "But all staff cars are black or green. Nothing unique about a black car."
"But it was out of the way?"
She nodded. "On its own, far end of the lot. But the second guy can't confirm it."
"Where was Major Marshall on the second and the third?"
"That was easier," she said. "Two travel warrants. To Frankfurt on the second, back here on the third."
"An overnight in Germany?"
She nodded again. "There and back."
We sat quiet. The counterman came over with a pad and a pencil. I looked at the menu and the forty-seven dollars on the table and ordered less than two bucks' worth of coffee and eggs. Summer took the hint and ordered juice and biscuits. That was about as cheap as we could get, consistent with staying vertical.
"Am I done here?" my sergeant asked.
I nodded. "Thanks. I mean it."
Summer slid out to let her get up.
"Kiss your baby for me," I said.
My sergeant just stood there, all bone and sinew. Hard as woodpecker lips. Staring straight at me.
"My mom just died," I said. "One day your son will remember mornings like these."
She nodded once and walked to the door. A minute later we saw her in her pickup truck, a small figure all alone at the wheel. She drove off into the dawn mist. A rope of exhaust followed behind her and then drifted away.
I shuffled all the paper into a logical pile and started with Marshall's personal file. The quality of the fax transmission wasn't great, but it was legible. There was the usual mass of information. On the first page I found out that Marshall had been born in September of 1958. Therefore he was thirty-one years old. He had no wife and no children. No ex-wives either. He was wedded to the military, I guessed. He was listed at six-four and two hundred twenty pounds. The army needed to know that to keep their quartermaster percentiles up to speed. He was listed as right-handed. The army needed to know that because bolt-action sniper rifles are made for right-handers. Left-handed soldiers don't usually get assigned as snipers. Pigeonholing starts on day one in the military.
I turned the page.
Marshall had been born in Sperryville, Virginia, and had gone all the way through kindergarten and grade school and high school there.
I smiled. Summer looked at me, questions in her eyes. I separated the pages and slid them across to her and stretched over and used my finger to point out the relevant lines. Then I slid her the memo paper with the Jefferson Hotel number on it.
"Go find a phone," I said.
She found one just inside the door, on the wall, near the register. I saw her put two quarters in, and dial, and talk, and wait. I saw her give her name and rank and unit. I saw her listen. I saw her talk some more. I saw her wait some more. And listen some more. She put more quarters in. It was a long call. I guessed she was getting transferred all over the place. Then I saw her say thank you. I saw her hang up. I saw her come back to me, looking grim and satisfied.
"He had a room," she said. "In fact he made the booking himself, the day before. Three rooms, for him, and Vassell, and Coomer. And there was a valet parking charge."
"Did you speak to the valet station?"
She nodded. "It was a black Mercury. In just after lunch, out again at twenty to one in the morning, back in again at twenty past three in the morning, out again finally after breakfast on New Year's Day."
I riffed through the pile of paper and found the fax from Detective Clark in Green Valley. The results of his house-to-house canvass. There was a fair amount of vehicle activity listed. It had been New Year's Eve and lots of people were heading to and from parties. There had been what someone thought was a taxi on Mrs. Kramer's road, just before two o'clock in the morning.
"A staff car could be mistaken for a taxi," I said. "You know, a plain black sedan, clean condition but a little tired, a lot of miles on it, the same shape as a Crown Victoria."
"Plausible," Summer said.
"Likely," I said.
We paid the check and left a dollar tip and counted what was left of my sergeant's loan. Decided we were going to have to keep on eating cheap, because we were going to need gas money. And phone money. And some other expenses.
"Where to now?" Summer asked me.
"Across the street," I said. "To the motel. We're going to hole up all day. A little more work, and then we sleep."
We left the Chevy hidden behind the lounge bar and crossed the street on foot. Woke the skinny guy in the motel office and asked him for a room.
"One room?" he said.
I nodded. Summer didn't object. She knew we couldn't afford two rooms. And we weren't new to sharing. Paris had worked out OK for us, as far as nighttime arrangements were concerned.
"Fifteen bucks," the skinny guy said.
I gave him the money and he smiled and gave me the key to the room Kramer had died in. I figured it was an attempt at humor. I didn't say anything. I didn't mind. I figured a room a guy had died in was better than the rooms that rented by the hour.
We walked together down the row and unlocked the door and stepped inside. The room was still dank and brown and miserable. The corpse had been hauled away, but other than that it was exactly the same as when I had first seen it.
"It ain't the George V," Summer said.
"That's for damn sure," I said.
We put our bags on the floor and I put my sergeant's paperwork on the bed. The counterpane felt slightly damp. I fiddled with the heater under the window until I got some warmth out of it.
"What next?" Summer asked.
"The phone records," I said. "I'm looking for a call to a 919 area code."
"That'll be a local call. Fort Bird is 919 too."
"Great," I said. "There'll be a million local calls."
I spread the printout on the bed and started looking. There weren't a million local calls. But there were certainly hundreds. I started at midnight on New Year's Eve and worked forward from there. I ignored the numbers that had been called more than once from more than one phone. I figured those would be cab companies or clubs or bars. I ignored the numbers that had the same exchange code as Fort Bird. Those would be off-post housing, mainly. Soldiers on duty would have been calling home in the hour after midnight, wishing their spouses and children a happy new year. I concentrated on numbers that stood out. Numbers in other North Carolina cities. In particular I was looking for a number in another city that had been called once only maybe thirty or forty minutes after midnight. That was my target. I went through the printout, patiently, line by line, page by page, looking for it. I was in no hurry. I had all day.
I found it after the third concertina fold. It was listed at twelve thirty-two. Thirty-two minutes after 1989 became 1990. That was right about when I would have expected it. It was a call that lasted nearly fifteen minutes. That was about right too, in terms of duration. It was a solid prospect. I scanned ahead. Checked the next twenty or thirty minutes. There was nothing else there that looked half as good. I went back and put my finger under the number I liked. It was my best bet. Or my only hope.
"Got a pen?" I said.
Summer gave me one from her pocket.
"Got quarters?" I said.
She showed me fifty cents. I wrote the best-bet number on the army memo paper right underneath the D.C. number for the Jefferson Hotel. Passed it to her.
"Call it," I said. "Find out who answers. You'll have to go back across the street to the diner. The motel phone is busted."
She was gone about eight minutes. I spent the time cleaning my teeth. I had a theory: If you can't get time to sleep, a shower is a good substitute. If you can't get time to shower, cleaning your teeth is the next best thing.
I left my toothbrush in a glass in the bathroom and Summer came through the door. She brought cold and misty air in with her.
"It was a golf resort outside of Raleigh," she said.
"Good enough for me," I said.
"Brubaker," she said. "That's where Brubaker was. On vacation."
"Probably dancing," I said. "Don't you think? At half past midnight on New Year's Eve? The desk clerk probably had to drag him out of the ballroom to the phone. That's why the call lasted a quarter of an hour. Most of it was waiting time."
"Who called him?"
There were codes on the printout indicating the location of the originating phone. They meant nothing to me. They were just numbers and letters. But my sergeant had supplied a key for me. On the sheet after the last concertina fold was a list of the codes and the locations they stood for. She had been right. She was better than the day guy. But then, she was an E-5 sergeant and he was an E-4 corporal, and sergeants made the U.S. Army worth serving in.
I checked the code against the key.
"Someone on a pay phone in the Delta barracks," I said.
"So a Delta guy called his CO," Summer said. "How does that help us?"
"The timing is suggestive," I said. "Must have been an urgent matter, right?"
"Who was it?"
"One step at a time," I said.
"Don't shut me out."
"I'm not."
"You are. You're walling up."
I said nothing.
"Your mom died, and you're hurting, and you're closing in on yourself. But you shouldn't. You can't do this alone, Reacher. You can't live your whole life alone."
I shook my head.
"It's not that," I said. "It's that I'm only guessing here. I'm holding my breath all the time. One long shot after another. And I don't want to fall flat on my face. Not right in front of you. You wouldn't respect me anymore."
She said nothing.
"I know," I said. "You already don't respect me because you saw me naked."
She paused. Then she smiled.
"But you need to get used to that," I said. "Because it's going to happen again. Right now, in fact. We're taking the rest of the day off."
The bed was awful. The mattress dipped in the middle and the sheets were damp. Maybe worse than damp. A place like that, if the room hadn't been rented since Kramer died, I was pretty sure the bed wouldn't have been changed either. Kramer had never actually gotten into it, but he had died right on top of it. He had probably leaked all kinds of bodily fluids. Summer didn't seem to mind. But she hadn't seen him there, all gray and white and inert.
But then I figured, What do you want for fifteen bucks? And Summer took my mind off the sheets. She distracted me big-time. We were plenty tired, but not too tired. We did well, second time around. The second time is often the best. That's been my experience. You're looking forward to it, and you're not bored with it yet.
Afterward, we slept like babies. The heater finally put some temperature into the room. The sheets warmed up. The traffic sounds on the highway were soothing. Like white noise. We were safe. Nobody would think of looking for us there. Kramer had chosen well. It was a hideaway. We rolled down into the mattress dip together and held each other tight. I ended up thinking it was the best bed I had ever been in.
We woke up much later, very hungry. It was after six o'clock in the evening. Already dark outside the window. The January days were spooling by one after the other, and we weren't paying much attention to them. We showered and dressed and headed across the street to eat. I took the army phone directory with me.
We went for the most calories for the fewest dollars but still ended up blowing more than eight bucks between us. I got my own back with the coffee. The diner had a bottomless cup policy and I exploited it ruthlessly. Then I camped out near the register and used the phone on the wall. Checked the number in the army book and called Sanchez down at Jackson.
"I hear you're in the shit," he said.
"Temporarily," I said. "You heard anything more about Brubaker?"
"Like what?"
"Like, did they find his car yet?"
"Yes, they did. And it was a long way from Columbia."
"Let me guess," I said. "Somewhere more than an hour due north of Fort Bird, and maybe east and a little south of Raleigh. How about Smithfield, North Carolina?"
"How the hell did you know that?"
"Just a feeling," I said. "Had to be close to where I-95 meets U.S. 70. Right on a main drag. Do they think that's where he was killed?"
"No question about it. Killed right there in his car. Someone shot him from the backseat. The windshield was blown out in front of the driver's position and what was left of the glass was all covered in blood and brains. And there were spatters on the steering wheel that hadn't been smudged. Therefore nobody drove the car after he died. Therefore that's where he was killed. Right there in his car. Smithfield, North Carolina."
"Did they find shell cases?"
"No shell cases. No significant trace evidence either, apart from the kind of normal shit they would expect to find."
"Have they got a narrative theory?"
"It was an industrial unit parking lot. Big place, like a local landmark, with a big lot, busy in the daytime but deserted at night. They think it was a two-car rendezvous. Brubaker gets there first, the second car pulls up alongside, at least two guys get out of it, they get into Brubaker's car, one in the front and one in the back, they sit a spell, maybe they talk a little, then the guy in the back pulls a gun and shoots. Which by the way is how they figure Brubaker's watch got busted. They figure he had his left wrist up on the top of the wheel, the way guys do when they're sitting in their cars. But whatever, he goes down and they drag him out and they put him in the trunk of the other car and they drive him down to Columbia and they leave him there."
"With dope and money in his pocket."
"They don't know where that came from yet."
"Why didn't the bad guys move his car?" I said. "Seems kind of dumb to take the body to South Carolina and leave the car where it was."
"Nobody knows why. Maybe because it's conspicuous to drive a car full of blood with a blown windshield. Or maybe because bad guys are dumb sometimes."
"You got notes about what Mrs. Brubaker said about the phone calls he took?"
"After dinner on the fourth?"
"No, earlier," I said. "On New Year's Eve. About half an hour after they all held hands and sang 'Auld Lang Syne.'"
"Maybe. I took some pretty good notes. I could go look."
"Be quick," I said. "I'm on a pay phone here."
I heard the receiver go down on his desk. Heard faint scratchy movement far away in his office. I waited. Put another pair of quarters in the slot. We were already down two bucks on toll calls. Plus twelve for eating and fifteen for the room. We had eighteen dollars left. Out of which I knew for sure I was going to be spending another ten, hopefully pretty soon. I began to wish the army didn't buy Caprices with big V-8s in them. A little four-cylinder thing like Kramer had rented would have gotten us farther, on eight bucks' worth of gas.
I heard Sanchez pick up the phone again.
"OK, New Year's Eve," he said. "She told me he was dragged out of a dinner dance around twelve-thirty in the morning. She told me she was a little bit aggrieved about it."
"Did he tell her anything about the call?"
"No. But she said he danced better after it. Like he was all fired up. Like he was on the trail of something. He was all excited."
"She could tell that from the way he danced?"
"They were married a long time, Reacher. You get to know a person."
"OK," I said. "Thanks, Sanchez. I got to go."
"Be careful."
"Always am."
I hung up and walked back to our table.
"Where now?" Summer said.
"Now we're going to go see girls take their clothes off," I said.
It was a short walk across the lot from the greasy spoon to the lounge bar. There were a few cars around, but not many. It was still early. It would be another couple of hours before the crowds really built up. The locals were still home, eating dinner, watching the sports news. Guys from Fort Bird were finishing chow time in the mess, showering, getting changed, hooking up in twos and threes, finding car keys, picking out designated drivers. But I still kept my eye out. I didn't want to bump into a crowd of Delta people. Not outside in the dark. Time was too precious to waste.
We pulled the door and stepped inside. There was a new face behind the register. Maybe a friend or a relative of the fat guy. I didn't know him. He didn't know me. And we were in BDUs. No unit designations. No indication that we were MPs. So the new face was happy enough to see us. He figured us for a nice little upward tick in his first-hour cash flow. We walked right past him.
The place was less than one-tenth full. It felt very different that way. It felt cold and vast and empty. Like some kind of a factory. Without a press of bodies the music was louder and tinnier than ever. There were whole expanses of vacant floor. Whole acres. Hundreds of unoccupied chairs. There was only one girl performing. She was on the main stage. She was bathed in warm red light, but she looked cold and listless. I saw Summer watching her. Saw her shudder. I had said: So what are you going to do? Go work up at the strip club with Sin? Face-to-face, it wasn't a very appealing option.
"Why are we here?" she asked.
"For the key to everything," I said. "My biggest mistake."
"Which was?"
"Watch," I said.
I walked around to the dressing room door. Knocked twice. A girl I didn't know opened up. She kept the door close to her body and stuck her head around. Maybe she was naked.
"I need to see Sin," I said.
"She's not here."
"She is," I said. "She's got Christmas to pay for."
"She's busy."
"Ten dollars," I said. "Ten dollars to talk. No touching."
The girl disappeared and the door swung shut behind her. I stood out of the way, so the first person Sin would see would be Summer. We waited. And waited. Then the door opened up again and Sin stepped out. She was in a tight sheath dress. It was pink. It sparkled. She was tall on clear plastic heels. I stepped behind her. Got between her and the dressing room door. She turned and saw me. Trapped.
"Couple of questions," I said. "That's all."
She looked better than the last time I had seen her. The bruises on her face were ten days old and were more or less healed up. Her makeup was maybe a little thicker than before. But that was the only sign of her troubles. Her eyes looked vacant. I guessed she had just shot up. Right between her toes. Whatever gets you through the night.
"Ten dollars," she said.
"Let's sit," I said.
We found a table far from a speaker. It was relatively quiet there. I took a ten-spot out of my pocket and held it out. Didn't let go of it.
"You remember me?" I said.
She nodded.
"Remember that night?" I said.
She nodded again.
"OK, here's the thing. Who hit you?"
"That soldier," she said. "The one you were talking to just before."
