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"Maybe he bounced Maybe there were dead twigs under the leaves, y, like a trampoline"
The doctor nodded "Terrain can be like that, this time of year"
"Lethal," I said
I lowered the crowbar again Waited
"Why did you bring it here?" the doctor asked
"There ence," I said "Whoever left it lying around for Carbone to fall on ain "Littering is a grave offense"
"In this man&039;s army," I said
"What do you want ," I said "We&039;re here to help you out, is all With it being a closed case, we figured you wouldn&039;t want to clutter your place up with those plaster casts you ured we could haul them to the trash for you"
The doctor nodded for a third time
"You could do that," he said "It would savemoment Then he cleared the file away from in front of him and opened some drawers and laid sheets of clean white paper on the desktop and arranged half-a-dozen glasslooks heavy," he said to me
"It is," I said
"Maybe you should put it down Take the weight off your shoulder"
"Is that ae"
"Where should I put it down?"
"Any flat surface you can find"
I stepped forward and laid the crowbar gently on his desk, on top of the paper and the glass slides Unhooked my boot lace and picked the knot out of it Squatted down and threaded it back through all the eyelets Tightened it up and tied it off I looked up in time to see the doctor ainst the end of the crohere it was ot this slide all dirty Very careless of me"
He made the exact same error with five erprints?" he said
I shook loves"
"We should check, I think Contributory negligence is a serious matter"
He opened another drawer and peeled a latex glove out of a box and snapped it on his hand It made a tiny cloud of talcum dust Then he picked the crowbar up and carried it out of the room
He calove on The croashed clean The black paint gleauishable from new
"No prints," he said
He put the crowbar down on his chair and pulled a file drawer and came out with a plain brown cardboard box Opened it up and took out two chalk-white plaster casts Both were about six inches long and both had Carbone handwritten in black ink on the underside One was a positive, for wet plaster into the wound The other was a negative, forative showed the shape of the wound the weapon had made, and therefore the positive showed the shape of the weapon itself
The doctor put the positive on the chair next to the crowbar Lined the It hite and a little pitted fro process but was otherwise identical to the smooth black iron Absolutely identical Same section, same thickness, saative on the desk It was a little bigger than the positive, and a little messier It was an exact replica of the back of Carbone&039;s shattered skull The doctor picked up the crowbar Hefted it in his hand Lined it up, speculatively Brought it down, very slowly, one, for the first blow, then two for the second Then three for the last He touched it to the plaster The third and final wound was the best defined It was a clear three-quarter-inch trench in the plaster, and the crowbar fitted it perfectly
"I&039;ll check the blood and the hair," the doctor said "Not that we don&039;t already knohat the results will be"
He lifted the crowbar out of the plaster and tried it again It went in again, precisely, and deep He lifted it out and balanced it across his open palhter end and swung it, like a batter going after a high fastball He swung it again, harder, a co, and a little heavy for hi ht-handed, physically very fit But that describes a lot of people on this post, I guess"
"There was no guy," I said "Carbone fell and hit his head"
The doctor sain
"It&039;s handsoe?"
I knehat heit needed to be and nothing it didn&039;t Like a Colt Detective Special, or a K-bar, or a cockroach He slid it inside a long steel drawer The metals scraped one on the other and then booo and dropped it the final inch
"I&039;ll keep it here," he said "If you like Safer that way"
"OK," I said
He closed the drawer
"Are you right-handed?" he asked me
"Yes," I said "I am"
"Colonel Willard told me you did it," he said "But I didn&039;t believe him"
"Why not?"
"You were very surprised when you saho it was When I put his face back on You had a definite physical reaction People can&039;t fake that sort of thing"
"Did you tell Willard that?"
The doctor nodded "He found it inconvenient But it didn&039;t really deflect him And I&039;m sure he&039;s already developed a theory to explain it away"
"I&039;ll watch eants ca I think you should watch your back very carefully"
"I plan to," I said
"Very carefully," the doctor said
Suot back in the Huear and sat with her foot on the brake
"Quartermaster," I said
"It wasn&039;t military issue," she said
"It looked expensive," I said "Expensive enough for the Pentagon, reen"
I nodded "Probably But we should still check Sooner or later we&039;re going to need all our ducks in a row"
She took her foot off the brake and headed for the quarterer than ain in front of the usual type of warehouse I knew there would be a long counter inside with e bales of clothing, tires, blankets,tools, equip guy in new BDUs behind the counter He was a cheerful corn-fed country boy He looked like he orking in his dad&039;s hardware store, and he looked like it was his life&039;s ambition He was enthusiastic I told him ere interested in construction equipht phone books Found the correct section I asked hier and turned pages and found two entries Prybar, general issue, long, claw on one end and then crowbar, general issue, short, claw on both ends I asked him to show us an example of the latter
The kid went away and disappeared a the tall stacks We waited Breathed in the unique quartermaster smell of old dust and new rubber and da minutes with a GI crowbar Laid it down on the counter in front of us It landed with a heavy thureen And it was a completely different iteist&039;s office Different section, six inches shorter, slightly thinner, slightly different curves It looked carefully designed It was probably a perfect exao it had probably been the ninety-ninth iteenda A subcommittee would have been formed, with expert input from survivors of the old construction battalions A specification would have been drawn up concerning length and weight and durability Metal fatigue would have been investigated Arenas of likely use would have been considered Brittleness in the frozen winters of northern Europe would have been evaluated Malleability in the severe heat of the equator would have been taken into account Detailed drawings would have been one out Mills all over Pennsylvania and Alabaed They would have been tested, exhaustively One and only one winner would have been approved Paint would have been supplied, and the thickness and uniformity of its application would have been specified and carefully monitored Then the whole business would have been co h, thousands of units a year, needed or not
"Thanks, soldier," I said
"You need to take it?" the kid asked
"Just needed to see it," I said
We went back to , a dull day, and I felt ai e fan of the 1990s yet, at that point, six days in
"Are you going to write the accident report?" Summer asked
"For Willard? Not yet"
"He&039;ll expect it today"
"I know But I&039; to make hiuess because it&039;s a fascinating experience Like watchingthat died"
"What died?"
"My enthusias"
"One bad apple," she said "Doesn&039;t mean much"
"Maybe," I said "If it is just one"
She said nothing
"Crowbars," I said "We&039;ve got two separate cases with crowbars, and I don&039;t like coincidences But I can&039;t see how they can be connected There&039;s no way to join them up Carbone was a inable They were in completely different worlds"
"Vassell and Coomer join the that could have been in Mrs Kraht Carbone was murdered"
I nodded "That&039;s what&039;s driving me crazy It&039;s a perfect connection, except it isn&039;t They took one call in DC, they were too far fro to Mrs Kramer themselves, and they didn&039;t call anyone froht Carbone died, but they were in the O Club with a dozen witnesses the whole ti 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 roo"
"But why didn&039;t they have their driver? Why come on their own? I assume Marshall was at the funeral with them But then they chose to drive more than three hundred miles by themselves? And more than three hundred back?"
"Maybe Marshall was unavailable," I said
"Marshall&039;s their blue-eyed boy," she said "He&039;s available when they say so"
"Why did they coe dinner"
"They ca She ave it to them They left with it"
"I don&039;t think Norton&039;s wrong She convincedlot Norton wouldn&039;t have seen that I assuo 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 Gerave up on it They were due back in Germany anyway They couldn&039;t stay here forever They&039;ve got Kraht over"
Su
"Whatever," I said "There&039;s no possible connection"
"It&039;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 uy&039;s car, or in his trash"
"Could have been useful"
"We&039;ll ith the crowbar instead It&039;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&039;s already looking for his crowbar, presu hardware stores We&039;ll ask him to widen his radius and stretch his time frame"
"That&039;s a lot of extra work for him"
I nodded "We&039;ll have to offer hi We&039;ll tell hiht help him"
"Like what?"
I sive him Andrea Norton&039;s name We could show her exactly what kind of a family we are"
I called Detective Clark I didn&039;t give him Andrea Norton&039;s name I told hie to Mrs Kraured a croas involved, and I told him that as it happened we had a rash of break-ins at military installations all up and down the Eastern seaboard that also seeyback on the legwork he was undoubtedly already doing in ter the Green Valley weapon He paused at that point, and I filled the silence by telling hieneral issue and therefore I was convinced our bad guys had used a civilian source of supply I gave hi to duplicate his efforts because we had aline of inquiry to spend our tiain at that point, like cops everywhere, waiting to hear the proffered quid pro quo I told him that as soon as we had a name or a profile or a description he would have it too, just as fast as stuff can travel down a fax line He perked up then Clark was a desperateat a brick wall He asked what exactly I wanted I told him it would be helpful to us if he could expand his canvass to a three-hundred-mile radius around Green Valley, and check hardware store purchases during athat started late on New Year&039;s Eve and extended through, say, January fourth
"What&039;s your proht be a ive you the guy on a plate all tied up with a bow"
"I&039;d really like that"
"Cooperation," I said "Makes the world go around"
"Sure does," he said
He sounded happy He bought the whole bill of goods He pro up the phone and it rang again immediately I picked it up and heard a woman&039;s voice It sounded warm and intimate and Southern It asked me to 10- 33 a 10-16 from the MP XO at Fort Jackson, which meant Please stand by to take a secure landline call from your opposite number in South Carolina I waited with the phone by my ear and heard an empty electronic hiss for a moment Then there was a loud click and my oppo in South Carolina came on and told me I should know that Colonel David C Brubaker, Fort Bird&039;s Special Forces CO, had been found thatwith two bullets in his head in an alley in a crummy district of Columbia, which was South Carolina&039;s capital city, and which was all of two hundred olf course hotel where he had been spending his holiday furlough with his wife And according to the local paramedics he had been dead for a day or two