The Enemy

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