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My oppo at Jackson was a guy called Sanchez I knew him fairly well, and I liked hiood I put the call on the speaker to include Summer and we talked briefly about jurisdiction, but without ray area, and we all kneere beaten froo Brubaker had been on vacation, he had been in civilian clothes, he had been in a city alley, and therefore the Colu we could do about it And the Columbia PD had notified the FBI, because Brubaker&039;s last knohereabouts were the North Carolina golf hotel, which added a possible interstate dimension to the situation, and interstate ho And also because an ar federal eive thee to throw at the perp if by any miracle they ever found him Neither Sanchez nor I nor Summer cared a whole hell of a lot about the difference between state courts and federal courts, but we all knew if the FBI was involved the case ell beyond our grasp We agreed the very best we could hope for was that we ht eventually see some of the relevant documentation, strictly for informational purposes only, and strictly as a courtesy Summer made a face and turned away I took the phone off the speaker and picked it up and spoke to Sanchez one-on-one again

"Got a feeling?" I asked him

"Someone he knew," Sanchez said "Not easy to surprise a Delta soldier as good as Brubaker was, in an alley"

"Weapon?"

"Paraun And they should know They see plenty of GSWs Apparently they do a lot of cleaning up every Friday and Saturday night, in that part of town"

"Why was he there?"

"No idea Rendezvous, presu about when?"

"The body&039;s stone cold, the skin is a little green, and rigor is all gone They&039;re saying twenty-four or forty-eight hours Safe bet would be to split the difference Let&039;s call it the arbage truck found hi Weekly trash collection"

"Where were you on Decehth?"

"Korea You?"

"Panama"

"Why did theywe&039;re about to find out," I said

"So on," Sanchez said "I checked, because I was curious, and there are more than twenty of us in the sanature is on all the orders, but I don&039;t think it&039;s legit"

"I&039; down there before this Brubaker situation?"

"Not a thing Quietest week I ever spent"

We hung up I sat still for a long moment Seemed to me that Columbia in South Carolina was about two hundred hway, cross the state line, find I-20 heading west, drive soht before last was the night we found Carbone&039;s body I had left Andrea Norton&039;s office just before two o&039;clock in theShe could alibi me up until that point Then I had been in the mortuary at seven o&039;clock, for the postist could confirm that So I had two unconnected alibi bookends But 0200 until 0700 still gave me a possible five-hour ith Brubaker&039;s likely tiht there in the middle of it Could I have driven two hundred miles there and two hundred miles back in five hours?

"What?" Suotwhether they&039;re going to be co at me for Brubaker too How does four hundred miles in five hours sound to you?"

"I could probably do it," she said "Average of eighty , of course, and road construction, and traffic, and weather, and cops It&039;s definitely possible"

"Terrific"

"But it&039;sBrubaker will be like killing God, to the over there to break the news?"

I nodded "I think I have to It&039;s a question of respect But you inform the post commander for me, OK?"

The Special Forces adjutant was an asshole, but he was human too He went very pale when I told him about Brubaker, and there was clearly more to it than an anticipation of mere bureaucratic hassle From what I had heard Brubaker was stern and distant and authoritarian, but he was a real father figure, to his men individually and to his unit as a whole And to his unit as a concept Special Forces generally and Delta in particular hadn&039;t always been popular inside the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill The ars The idea of a ragtag bunch of hunter-killers had been a hard sell at the outset, and Brubaker had been one of the guys doing the selling, and he had never let up since His death was going to hit Special Forces the way the death of a president would hit the nation

"Carbone was bad enough," the adjutant said "But this is unbelievable Is there a connection?"

I looked at him

"Why would there be a connection?" I said "Carbone was a training accident"

He said nothing

"Why was Brubaker at a hotel?"

"Because he likes to play golf He&039;s got a house near Bragg froolf there"

"Where was the hotel?"

"Outside of Raleigh"

"Did he go there a lot?"

"Every chance he got"

"Does his wife play golf?"

The adjutant nodded "They play together"

Then he paused

"Played," he said, and then he went quiet and looked away from me I pictured Brubaker in uys just like hile a clays explode outward at exactly the right angle to rip the enemy&039;s spines out of their backs withpastel shirts with solf with their wives,the fairways in their little electric carts I knew plenty of guys like that My own father had been one Not that he had ever played golf He watched birds He had been in most countries in the world, and he had seen a lot of birds

I stood up

"Call me if you needI can do"

The adjutant nodded

"Thanks for the visit," he said "Better than a phone call"

I went back to my office Summer wasn&039;t there I wasted more than an hour with her personnel lists I ist out of the mix I took Summer out I took Andrea Norton out Then I took all the women out The medical evidence was pretty clear about the attacker&039;s height and strength I took the O Club dining room staff out Their NCO had said they were all hard at work, fussing over their guests I took the cooks out, and the bar staff, and the MP gate guards I took out anyone listed as hospitalized and nonambulatory I took myself out I took Carbone out, because it wasn&039;t suicide

Then I counted the re check marks, and wrote the number 973 on a slip of paper That was our suspect pool I stared into space My phone rang I picked it up It was Sanchez again, down at Fort Jackson

"Colu their initial findings"

"And?"

"Their ree withIt was one twenty-three AM, the night before last"

"That&039;s very precise"

"Bullet caught his atch"

"A broken watch? Can&039;t necessarily rely on that"

"No, it&039;s fir season for measurable insect activity, which would have helped, but the stoht for five or six hours after he ate a heavy dinner"

"What does his wife say?"

"He disappeared at eight that night, after a heavy dinner Got up from the table and never came back"

"What did she do about it?"

"Nothing," Sanchez said "He was Special Forces Their whole , the ht, days or weeks at a time, never able to say where or why afterward She was used to it"

"Did he get a phone call or so?"

"She assumes he did, at some point She&039;s not really sure She was in the spa before dinner They&039;d just played twenty-seven holes"

"Can you call her yourself? She&039;ll talk to you faster than civilian cops"

"I could try, I suppose"

"Anything else?" I said

"The GSWs were nine-h and through, neat entry wounds, bad exit wounds"

"Full metal jackets," I said

"Contact shots There were powder burns And soot"

I paused I couldn&039;t picture it Two rounds fired? Contact shots? So one of the bullets goes in, comes out, loops all the way around, comes back, and drops down and smashes his atch?

"Did he have his hands on his head?"

"He was shot from behind, Reacher A double tap, to the back of the skull Bang bang, thank you and good night The second round ht his watch Doard trajectory Tall shooter"

I said nothing

"Right," Sanchez said "How likely is all that? Did you know him?"

"Never e 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 shooter, definitely Had to Why else would he turn his back, in theat people from Jackson?"

"That&039;s a lot of people"

"Tell me about it"

"Did he have enemies at Bird?"

"Not that I&039;ve heard," I said "He had enemies up the chain of command"

"Those pussies don&039;t ht"

"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&039;s weird"

"They&039;re civilians What else would they be?"

He went quiet

"You met Willard yet?" I asked hiht 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 e to be nervous about ie? What does he care?"

"The are," I said "Willard won&039;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&039;t get near this case anyway So what kind of pull does he have with the Colu 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 et theuy, technically"

"You do it," I said "I&039;ve got other things to do"

We hung up and I went back to Summer&039;s lists Nine hundred seventy-three Nine hundred seventy-two innocent, one guilty But which one?

Suave me a sheet of paper It was a photocopy of a weapons requisition that Sergeant First Class Christopher Carbone had un Maybe he had liked the H a, and therefore he wanted the P7 for his personal sidearm He had asked for it to be chae He had asked for the thirteen-round azine, 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 amp;K was a German outfit and Germany was a NATO country, last time I checked There would have been no compatibility issues either Nine-millimeter Parabellue of them We had warehouses craazines 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&039;s complaint out of her inside pocket and handed it over I spread it out on my desk, side by side with the requisition fornatures were identical

"We&039;re not handwriting experts," I said

"We don&039;t need to be They&039;re the sanatures 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 and linear As a whole it was a bold, proud, legible, self-confident signature, developed no doubt by long years of signing checks and bar bills and leases and car papers No signature was iured this one would have been a real challenge A challenge that I guessed would have been iht and 0845 on a North Carolina arenuine"

I left it on the desk Suh she must have read it plenty of times already

"It&039;s cold," she said "It&039;s like a knife in the back"

"It&039;s weird," I said "That&039;s what it is I never uy before I&039;entle pacifist souls over there Why would he be offended? It wasn&039;t his leg I broke"

"Maybe it was personal Maybe the fat guy was his friend"

I shook my head "He&039;d have stepped in He&039;d have stopped the fight"