I looked at her standing there. Her small brown hand was stretched like a starfish. She had clear polish on her nails. Her eyes were bright.
"Why would he ditch the crowbar?" I said. "After Carbone but before Brubaker?"
"Because he preferred a handgun," she said. "Like anyone normal would. But he knew he couldn't use one here. Too noisy. A mile from the main post, late in the evening, we'd have all come running. But in a bad part of a big city, nobody was going to think twice. Which is how it turned out, apparently."
"Could he have been sure of that?"
"No," she said. "Not entirely sure. He set up the rendezvous, so he knew where he was going. But he couldn't be exactly certain about what he would find when he got there. So I guess he would have liked to keep a backup weapon. But the crowbar was all covered with Carbone's blood and hair by then. There was no opportunity to clean it. He was in a hurry. The ground was frozen. No patch of soft grass to wipe it on. So he couldn't see having it in the car with him. Maybe he was worried about a traffic stop on the way south. So he ditched it."
I nodded. Ultimately, the crowbar was disposable. A handgun was a more reliable weapon against a fit and wary opponent. Especially in the tight confines of a city alley, as opposed to the kind of dark and wide-open spaces where he had taken Carbone down. I yawned. Closed my eyes. From the wide-open spaces where he had taken Carbone down. I opened my eyes again.
"He killed Carbone here," I repeated. "And then he jumped in his car and drove to Columbia and killed Brubaker there."
"Yes," Summer said.
"But you figured he was already in a car," I said.
"Yes," she said again. "I did."
"You figured he drove out on the track with Carbone, hit him in the head, arranged the scene, and then drove back here to the post. Your reasoning was pretty good. And where we found the crowbar kind of confirmed it."
"Thank you," she said.
"And then we figured he parked his car and went about his business."
"Correct," she said.
"But he can't have parked his car and gone about his business. Because now we're saying he drove straight to Columbia, South Carolina, instead. To meet with Brubaker. Three-hour drive. He was in a hurry. Not much time to waste."
"Correct," she said again.
"So he didn't park his car," I said. "He didn't even touch the brake. He drove straight out the main gate instead. There's no other way off the post. He drove straight out the main gate, Summer, immediately after he killed Carbone, somewhere around nine or ten o'clock."
"Check the gate log," she said. "There's a copy right there on the desk."
We checked the gate log together. Operation Just Cause in Panama had moved all domestic installations up one level on the DefCon scale and therefore all closed posts were recording entrances and exits in detail in bound ledgers that had preprinted page numbers in the top right-hand corner. We had a good clear Xerox of the page for January fourth. I was confident it was genuine. I was confident it was complete. And I was confident it was accurate. The Military Police have numerous failings, but snafus with basic paperwork aren't any of them.
Summer took the page from me and taped it to the wall next to the map. We stood side by side and looked at it. It was ruled into six columns. There were spaces for date, time in, time out, plate number, occupants, and reason.
"Traffic was light," Summer said.
I said nothing. I was in no position to know whether nineteen entries represented light traffic or not. I wasn't used to Bird and it had been a long time since I had pulled gate duty anywhere else. But certainly it seemed quiet compared to the multiple pages I had seen for New Year's Eve.
"Mostly people reporting back for duty," Summer said.
I nodded. Fourteen lines had entries in the Time In column but no corresponding entries in the Time Out column. That meant fourteen people had come in and stayed in. Back to work, after time away from the post for the holidays. Or after time away from the post for other reasons. I was right there among them: 1-4-90. 2302, Reacher, J., Mjr, RTB. January fourth, 1990, two minutes past eleven in the evening, Major J. Reacher, returning to base. From Paris, via Garber's old office in Rock Creek. My vehicle plate number was listed as: Pedestrian. My sergeant was there, coming in from her off-post address to work the night shift. She had arrived at nine-thirty, driving something with North Carolina plates.
Fourteen in, to stay in.
Only five exits.
Three of them were routine food deliveries. Big trucks, probably. An army post gets through a lot of food. Lots of hungry mouths to feed. Three trucks in a day seemed about right to me. Each of them was timed inward at some point during the early afternoon and then timed outward again a plausible hour or so later. The last time out was just before three o'clock.
Then there was a seven-hour gap.
The last-but-one recorded exit was Vassell and Coomer themselves, on their way out after their O Club dinner. They had passed through the gate at 2201. They had previously been timed in at 1845. At that point their Department of Defense plate number had been written down and their names and ranks had been entered. Their reason had been stated as: Courtesy visit.
Five exits. Four down.
One to go.
The only other person to have left Fort Bird on the fourth of January was logged as: 1-4-90, 2211, Trifonov, S., Sgt. There was a North Carolina passenger vehicle plate number written in the relevant space. There was no time in recorded. There was nothing in the reason column. Therefore a sergeant called Trifonov had been on-post all day or all week and then he had left at eleven minutes past ten in the evening. No reason had been recorded because there was no directive to inquire as to why a soldier was leaving. The assumption was that he was going out for a drink or a meal or for some other form of entertainment. Reason was a question the gate guards asked of people trying to get in, not trying to get out.
We checked again, just to be absolutely sure. We came up with the same result. Apart from General Vassell and Colonel Coomer in their self-driven Mercury Grand Marquis, and then a sergeant called Trifonov in some other kind of car, nobody had passed through the gate in an outward direction in a vehicle or on foot at any time on the fourth of January, apart from three food trucks in the early part of the afternoon.
"OK," Summer said. "Sergeant Trifonov. Whoever he is. He's the one."
"Has to be," I said.
I called the main gate. Got the same guy I had spoken to before, when I was checking on Vassell and Coomer earlier. I recognized his voice. I asked him to search forward through his log, starting from the page number immediately following the one we were looking at. Asked him to check exactly when a sergeant named Trifonov had returned to Bird. Told him it could be anytime after about four-thirty in the morning on January fifth. There was a moment's delay. I could hear the guy turning the stiff parchment pages in the ledger. He was doing it slowly, paying close attention.
"Sir, five o'clock in the morning precisely," the guy said. "January fifth, 0500, Sergeant Trifonov, returning to base." I heard another page turn. "He left at 2211 the previous evening."
"Remember anything about him?"
"He left about ten minutes after those Armored staffers you were asking me about before. He was in a hurry, as I recall. Didn't wait for the barrier to go all the way up. He squeezed right underneath it."