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"Right here," I said "Right now"

"Even with Willard on your back?"

"Willard&039;s nothing He&039;ll be gone before I am"

"Why is he here at all?"

"My brother figures they&039;re copying what corporations do Know-nothings aren&039;t invested in the status quo"

"So a guy trained to write fuel consuorithms winds up with two dead soldiers in his first week And he doesn&039;t want to investigate either one of the We have topicture"

She s way too fast

The Green Valley Police Departer place than I had expected, because Green Valley itself was bigger than I had expected It encompassed the pretty town center we had already seen, but then it bulged north through soht industrial units, almost all the way up to Sperryville The police station looked big enough for twenty or thirty cops It was built the wayand low and sprawling, with a one-story center core and tings The wings were built at right angles, so the place was U-shaped The facades were concrete, molded to look like stone There was a bron in front and parking lots at both sides There was a flagpole dead center on the lawn Old Glory was up there, weather-beaten and lirand, and a little bleached in the pale sunlight

We parked in the right-hand lot in an eot out into the brightness Went in and asked the desk guy for Detective Clark The desk guy made an internal call and then pointed us toward the left-hand wing We walked through an untidy corridor and ended up in a roo was a detectives&039; bullpen There was a wooden fence that enclosed a line of four visitor&039;s chairs and then there was a gate with a receptionist&039;s desk next to it Beyond the gate was a lieutenant&039;s office way off in one corner and then nothing else except three pairs of back-to-back desks covered with phones and paper There were file cabinets against the walls The ere grimy and most of them had skewed and broken blinds

There was no receptionist at the desk There were two detectives in the roo tweed sport coats, both of the with their backs to us Clark was one of theate latch Both guys turned around Clark paused for a second, surprised, and then he waved us in We pulled chairs around and sat at the ends of his desk, one on each side He kept on talking into the phone We waited I spent the tilass walls fro desk in there Nobody behind it But on it I could see two plaster casts, just like the ones our own pathologist had o look at the up the phone and made a note on a yellow pad Then he breathed out and pushed his chair way back so he could see both of us at the sa He kneeren&039;ta social call But equally he didn&039;t want to coht out and ask if we had a name for him Because he didn&039;t want to look foolish if we didn&039;t

"Just passing through," I said

"OK," he said

"Looking for a little help," I said

"What kind of help?"

"Thought you ive us your crowbar notes Now that you don&039;t need them anymore Now that you&039;ve found yours"

"Notes?"

"You listed all kinds of hardware stores I figured it could save us some time if we picked up where you left off"

"I could have faxed them," he said

"There&039;s probably a lot of them We didn&039;t want to cause you the trouble"

"Iby anyway"

"OK," he said again "Crowbar notes" He swiveled his chair and got up out of it and walked over to a file cabinet Careen folder about a half-inch thick He dropped it on his desk It made a decent thump

"Good luck," he said

He sat down again and I nodded to Summer and she picked up the folder Opened it It was full of paper She leafed through Made a face Passed it across tolist of places that stretched from New Jersey to North Carolina There were names and addresses and phone nuainst them Then there were about four hundred that didn&039;t

"You have to be careful," Clark said "So bars You have to be sure they knohat you&039;re talking about"

"Do they have different sizes?"

"Lots of different sizes Ours is pretty big"

"Can I see it? Or is it in your evidence room?"

"It&039;s not evidence," Clark said "It&039;s not the actual weapon It&039;s just an identical sample on loan from the Sperryville store We can&039;t take it to court"

"But it fits your plaster casts"

"Like a glove," he said He got up again and walked into his lieutenant&039;s office and took the casts off the desk Carried them back one in each hand and put them down on his own desk They were very siative, just like we had Mrs Kramer&039;s head had been a lot smaller than Carbone&039;s, in terht less of its circumference Therefore the ith than ours But it was just as deep and ugly Clark picked it up and ran his fingertip through the trench

"Very violent blow," he said "We&039;re looking for a tall guy, strong, right-handed You seen anyone like that?"

"Every time I look in the mirror," I said

The cast of the weapon itself was a little shorter than ours too But other than that, it looked very much the same Same chalky section, pitted here and there with ht and smooth and brutal

"Can I see the actual crowbar?" I said

"Sure," Clark said He leaned down and opened a drawer in his desk Left it open like a display and et out of my way I leaned forward and looked down and saw the sa Same shape, saonal section Saloss, same precision It was exactly identical in every way to the one we had left behind in Fort Bird&039;s mortuary office

We drove ten h Clark&039;s list to find the hardware store&039;s address It was right there on the fifth line, because it was close to Green Valley But there was no check ainst its phone nuuessed the owner had been busy with a glazier and an insurance cootten around toa second call eventually, but they had been overtaken by the NCIC search

Sperryville wasn&039;t a big place, so we just cruised around looking for the address We found a bunch of stores on a short strip and after driving it three tin It pointed us doas basically a narrow dead-end alley We passed between the sides of two clapboard structures and then the alley widened into a s us at the far end It was like a small one-story barn, painted up to look more urban than rural It was a real n No indication that it was part of a franchise It was just an A the booeneration to the next

But it was an excellent place for a dead-of-night burglary Quiet, isolated, invisible fro accommodation on the second floor In the front wall it had a displayon the left set next to an entrance door on the right, separated only by the width of the door fralass, temporarily backed by a sheet of unfinished plywood The plywood had been neatly triured the hole had been punched through by the sole of a shoe It was close to the door I figured a tall guy could put his left aret his hand around to the door latch easily enough But he would have had to reach all the way in first and then bend his elboly and deliberately, to avoid snagging his clothes I pictured hilass, in the dark, breathing hard, groping blindly

We parked right in front of the store Got out and spent ain theIt was full of items on display But whoever had put them there wasn&039;t about to move on to Saks Fifth Avenue anytime soon Not for their famous holiday s Because there was no art involved No design No te was just lined up neatly on hand-built shelves Everything had a price tag The as saying: This is e&039;ve got If you want it, coet it But it all looked like quality stuff There were soe items I had no idea what some of them were for I didn&039;t know much about tools I had never really used any, except knives But it was clear to me that this store chose what it carried pretty carefully

We went in There was aas we entered The plain neatness and organization we had seen in the as maintained inside There were tidy racks and shelves and bins A wide-plank wooden floor There was a faint smell of uy behind the counter,at us, alerted by the bell He was ht and slender and a little stooped He wore round eyeglasses and a gray cardigan sweater They ent, but they alsoanything bigger than a s tools was a definite second best to being at a university, teaching a course about their design and their history and their development

"May I help you?" he asked

"We&039;re here about the stolen wrecking bar," I said "Or the stolen crowbar, if that&039;s what you prefer to call it"

He nodded

"Crowbar," he said "Wrecking bar is a little uncouth, in my opinion"

"OK, we&039;re here about the stolen crowbar," I said

He smiled, briefly "You&039;re the army Has martial law been declared?"

"We have a parallel inquiry," Summer said

"Are you Military Police?"

"Yes," Summer said She told him our names and ranks He reciprocated with his own nan above his door

"We need soround," I said "About the crowbar market"

He made a face like he was interested, but not very excited It was like asking a forensics guy about fingerprinting instead of DNA I got the i tio

"Where can I start?" he said

"How many different sorts are there?"

"Dozens," he said "There are at least sixwith myself And plenty of others I wouldn&039;t"

I looked around the store "Because you only carry quality stuff"

"Exactly," he said "I can&039;t co chains on price alone So I have to offer absolutely top quality and service"

"Niche ain

"Low-end crowbars would coht iron, low-grade forged steel I wouldn&039;t be interested"

"So what do you carry?"

"I import a few titanium crowbars fro More ined for police and firefighters Or for underwater work, where corrosion would otherwise be an issue Or for anyone else that needs so small and durable and easily portable"

"But it wasn&039;t one of those that was stolen"

The old guy shook his head "No, the titaniuhtly more mainstream"

"And what are those?"

"This is a small store," he said "I have to choose what I carry very carefully Which in soht, because choice is very liberating These decisions are mine, and h-carbon chrole-tempered or double-tempered? My honest preference would always be double-teth And I would want the claws to be very slim, for utility, and therefore case-hardened, for safety That could be a lifesaver, in soh roof beam, whose claw shattered He&039;d fall off"

"I guess he would," I said "So, the right steel, double-tempered, with the hard claws What did you pick?"

"Well, actually I compromised with one of the ite shorter than eighteen inches But I needed a twelve-inch, obviously"

I must have looked blank

"For studs and joists," the old guy said "If you&039;re working inside sixteen-inch centers, you can&039;t use an eighteen-inch bar, can you?"

"I guess not," I said

"So I take a twelve-inch with a half-inch section frole-teh In tere, the force a person generates isn&039;t going to overwhelm it"

"OK," I said

"Apart from that particular item and the titaniuh cohteen-inch, and a three-footer Both of theh-carbon double-tempered chromium steel, case-hardened claws, very fine quality paint"

"And it was the three-footer that was stolen," I said

He looked at me like I was clairvoyant

"Detective Clark showed us the sample you lent him," I said

"I see," he said

"So, is the thirty-six-inch three-quarter-section Fortis a rare item?"

He made a face, like he was a little disappointed

"I sell one a year," he said "Two, if I&039;m very lucky They&039;re expensive And appreciation for quality is declining shamefully Pearls before swine, I say"

"Is that the same everywhere?"

"Everywhere?" he repeated

"In other stores Regionally With the Fortis crowbars"

"I&039;m sorry," he said "Perhaps I didn&039;t make n To my own exact specification They&039;re custom items"

I stared at him "They&039;re exclusive to this store?"

He nodded "The privilege of independence"

"Literally exclusive?"

He nodded again "Unique in all the world"

"When did you last sell one?"

"About nine o"

"Does the paint wear off?"

"I knohat you&039;re asking," he said "And the answer is yes, of course If you find one that looks new, it&039;s the one that was stolen on New Year&039;s Eve"

We borrowed an identical sample from him for comparative purposes, the same way Detective Clark had It was deith machine oil and had tissue paper wrapped around the center shaft We laid it like a trophy across the Chevy&039;s backseat Then we ate in the car Burgers, froh a hundred yards north of the tool store

"Tell me three new facts," I said

"One, Mrs Kramer and Carbone were killed by the sa to drive ourselves nuts trying to find a connection between them"

"And three?"

"I don&039;t know"

"Three, the bad guy knew Sperryville pretty well Could you have found that store in the dark, in a hurry, unless you knew the town?"

We looked ahead through the windshield The mouth of the alley was just about visible But then, we kneas there And it was full daylight

Summer closed her eyes

"Focus on the weapon," she said "Forget everything else Visualize it The custom crowbar Unique in all the world It was carried out of that alley, right there Then it was in Green Valley at two AM on January first And then it was inside Fort Bird at nine PM on the fourth It went on a journey We knohere it started, and we knohere it finished We don&039;t know for sure where it went in between, but we do know for certain it passed one particular point along the way It passed Fort Bird&039;s ate We don&039;t knohen, but we know for sure that it did"

She opened her eyes

"We have to get back there," she said "We have to look at the logs again The earliest it could have passed the gate is six AM on January first, because Bird is four hours froate is, say, eight PM on January fourth That&039;s an eighty-six-hourWe need to check the gate logs for everybody who entered during that time Because we know for sure that the crowbar came in, and we know for sure that it didn&039;t walk in by itself"

I said nothing

"I&039;m sorry," she said "There&039;ll be a lot of naone We got back on the road and headed east, looking for I-95 We found it and we turned south, toward Bird Toward Willard on the phone Toward the angry Delta station We slid back under the shelf of gray cloud just before the North Carolina state line The sky went dark Suhts on We passed the State Police building on the opposite shoulder Passed the spot where Kramer&039;s briefcase had been found Passed the rest area a hway spur and came off at the cloverleaf next to Kramer&039;s motel We left it behind us and drove the thirty ned us in at 1930 hours exactly I told the at 0600 hours January first and ending at 2000 hours January fourth I told thehty-six-hour slice of life delivered to my office i eant with the baby son was back on duty She looked tired I realized she didn&039;t sleep ht and probably played with her kid all day Tough life She had coffee going I figured she was just as interested in it as I was Maybe uys are restless," she said "They know you arrested the Bulgarian guy"

"I didn&039;t arrest him I just asked him some questions"

"That&039;s a distinction they don&039;t see for you"

"Were they armed?"

"They don&039;t need to be aruys You should have the MP CO here"

I shookelse?"

"You need to call Colonel Willard beforeto write you up as AWOL He said that&039;s a promise"

I nodded It was Willard&039;s obvious next e wouldn&039;t reflect badly on a CO Wouldn&039;t e was always on theelse?" I said again

"Sanchez wants a ten-sixteen," she said "Down at Fort Jackson And your brother called again"

"Any e"

"OK," I said

I went inside to my desk Picked up ers across the pins, DC to Sperryville, Sperryville to Green Valley, Green Valley to Fort Bird I dialed Joe&039;s nu

"I called Mo in there"

"She said soon, Joe Doesn&039;t il"

"Bound to be sooner than we think And than ant"

"Hoas she?"

"She sounded shaky"

"You OK?"

"Not bad," he said "You?"

"Not a great year so far"

"You should call her next," he said

"I will," I said "In a few days"

"Do it to up and I sat for a minute Then I dabbed the cradle to clear the line and asked et Sanchez for me Down at Jackson I held the phone by ht at il?" she said

"She&039;s waiting for the plaster to come off," I said "She doesn&039;t like it"

Summer looked at me a little more and then turned back to the map I put the phone on speaker and laid the handset down on the desk There was a click on the line and we heard Sanchez&039;s voice

"I&039;ve been hassling the Columbia PD about Brubaker&039;s car," he said

"Didn&039;t they find it yet?" I said

"No," he said "And they weren&039;t putting any effort into finding it Which was inconceivable tothem"

"And?"

"They dropped the other shoe"

"Which is?"

"Brubaker wasn&039;t killed in Columbia," he said "He was dumped there, is all"