The Enemy

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 tall guy, right-handed, physically very fit. But that describes a lot of people on this post, I guess."

"There was no guy," I said. "Carbone fell and hit his head."

The doctor smiled briefly and balanced the bar across his palms again.

"It’s handsome, in its way," he said. "Does that sound strange?"

I knew what he meant. It was a nice piece of steel, and it was everything it needed to be and nothing it didn’t. Like a Colt Detective Special, or a K-bar, or a cockroach. He slid it inside a long steel drawer. The metals scraped one on the other and then boomed faintly when he let it go and dropped it the final inch.

"I’ll keep it here," he said. "If you like. Safer that way."

"OK," I said.

He closed the drawer.

"Are you right-handed?" he asked me.

"Yes," I said. "I am."

"Colonel Willard told me you did it," he said. "But I didn’t believe him."

"Why not?"

"You were very surprised when you saw who it was. When I put his face back on. You had a definite physical reaction. People can’t fake that sort of thing."

"Did you tell Willard that?"

The doctor nodded. "He found it inconvenient. But it didn’t really deflect him. And I’m sure he’s already developed a theory to explain it away."

"I’ll watch my back," I said.

"Some Delta sergeants came to see me too. There are rumors starting. I think you should watch your back very carefully."

"I plan to," I said.

"Very carefully," the doctor said.

Summer and I got back in the Humvee. She fired it up and put it in gear and sat with her foot on the brake.

"Quartermaster," I said.

"It wasn’t military issue," she said.

"It looked expensive," I said. "Expensive enough for the Pentagon, maybe."

"It would have been green."

I nodded. "Probably. But we should still check. Sooner or later we’re going to need all our ducks in a row."

She took her foot off the brake and headed for the quartermaster building. She had been at Bird much longer than me and she knew where everything was. She parked again in front of the usual type of warehouse. I knew there would be a long counter inside with massive off-limits storage areas behind it. There would be huge bales of clothing, tires, blankets, mess kits, entrenching tools, equipment of every kind.

We went in and found a young guy in new BDUs behind the counter. He was a cheerful corn-fed country boy. He looked like he was working in his dad’s hardware store, and he looked like it was his life’s ambition. He was enthusiastic. I told him we were interested in construction equipment. He opened a manual the size of eight phone books. Found the correct section. I asked him to find listings for crowbars. He licked his forefinger and turned pages and found two entries. Prybar, general issue, long, claw on one end and then crowbar, general issue, short, claw on both ends. I asked him to show us an example of the latter.

The kid went away and disappeared among the tall stacks. We waited. Breathed in the unique quartermaster smell of old dust and new rubber and damp cotton twill. He came back after five long minutes with a GI crowbar. Laid it down on the counter in front of us. It landed with a heavy thump. Summer had been right. It was painted olive green. And it was a completely different item than the one we had just left in the pathologist’s office. Different section, six inches shorter, slightly thinner, slightly different curves. It looked carefully designed. It was probably a perfect example of the way the army does things. Years ago it had probably been the ninety-ninth item on someone’s reequipment agenda. A subcommittee would have been formed, with expert input from survivors of the old construction battalions. A specification would have been drawn up concerning length and weight and durability. Metal fatigue would have been investigated. Arenas of likely use would have been considered. Brittleness in the frozen winters of northern Europe would have been evaluated. Malleability in the severe heat of the equator would have been taken into account. Detailed drawings would have been made. Then tenders would have gone out. Mills all over Pennsylvania and Alabama would have priced the job. Prototypes would have been forged. They would have been tested, exhaustively. One and only one winner would have been approved. Paint would have been supplied, and the thickness and uniformity of its application would have been specified and carefully monitored. Then the whole business would have been completely forgotten. But the product of all those long months of deliberation was still coming through, thousands of units a year, needed or not.

"Thanks, soldier," I said.

"You need to take it?" the kid asked.

"Just needed to see it," I said.

We went back to my office. It was midmorning, a dull day, and I felt aimless. So far, the new decade wasn’t doing much for me. I wasn’t a huge fan of the 1990s yet, at that point, six days in.

"Are you going to write the accident report?" Summer asked.