The Enemy

twigs under the leaves, made the ground a little springy, 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 might be an issue of contributory negligence,” I said. “Whoever left it lying around for Carbone to fall on might need a reprimand.”
    The doctor nodded again. “Littering is a grave offense.”
    “In this man’s army,” I said.
    “What do you want me to do?”
    “Nothing,” I said. “We’re here to help you out, is all. With it being a closed case, we figured you wouldn’t want to clutter your place up with those plaster casts you made. Of the wound site. We figured we could haul them to the trash for you.”
    The doctor nodded for a third time.
    “You could do that,” he said. “It would save me a trip.”
    He paused for a long moment. 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 glass microscope slides on the paper.
    “That thing looks heavy,” he said to me.
    “It is,” I said.
    “Maybe you should put it down. Take the weight off your shoulder.”
    “Is that medical advice?”
    “You don’t want ligament damage.”
    “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 move a microscope slide. He picked it up and scraped it against the end of the crowbar where it was matted with blood and hair.
    “Damn,” he said. “I got this slide all dirty. Very careless of me.”
    He made the exact same error with five more slides.
    “Are we interested in fingerprints?” he said.
    I shook my head. “We’re assuming gloves.”
    “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 came back less than ten minutes later. He still had his glove on. The crowbar was washed clean. The black paint gleamed. It looked indistinguishable 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, formed by pressing wet plaster into the wound. The other was a negative, formed by molding more plaster over the positive. The negative 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 them up, parallel. The cast was about six inches long. It was white and a little pitted from the molding process but was otherwise identical to the smooth black iron. Absolutely identical. Same section, same thickness, same contours.
    Then the doctor put the negative 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’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’ll check the blood and the hair,” the doctor said. “Not that we don’t already know what 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 palms, like he was weighing it. Then he grasped it by the straighter end and swung it, like a batter going after a high fastball. He swung it again, harder, a compact, violent stroke. It looked big in his hands. Big, and a little heavy for him. A little out of control.
    “Very strong man,” he said. “Vicious swing. Big