The Enemy

"You have to be careful," Clark said. "Some places call them crowbars and some call them wrecking bars. You have to be sure they know what you’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’s not evidence," Clark said. "It’s not the actual weapon. It’s just an identical sample on loan from the Sperryville store. We can’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’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 similar to ours. There was a positive and a negative, just like we had. Mrs. Kramer’s head had been a lot smaller than Carbone’s, in terms of diameter. Therefore the crowbar had caught less of its circumference. Therefore the impression of the fatal wound was a little shorter in length 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’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 microscopic imperfections in the plaster, but basically straight 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 moved his chair to get out of my way. I leaned forward and looked down and saw the same curved black thing I had seen the previous morning. Same shape, same contours, same color, same size, same claws, same octagonal section. Same gloss, same precision. It was exactly identical in every way to the one we had left behind in Fort Bird’s mortuary office.

We drove ten miles to Sperryville. I looked through Clark’s list to find the hardware store’s address. It was right there on the fifth line, because it was close to Green Valley. But there was no check mark against its phone number. There was a penciled note instead: No answer. I guessed the owner had been busy with a glazier and an insurance company. I guessed Clark’s guys would have gotten around to making a second call eventually, but they had been overtaken by the NCIC search.

Sperryville wasn’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 times we found the right street name on a green sign. It pointed us down what was basically a narrow dead-end alley. We passed between the sides of two clapboard structures and then the alley widened into a small yard and we saw the hardware store facing 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 mom-and-pop place. It had a family name painted on an old sign. No indication that it was part of a franchise. It was just an American small business, standing alone, weathering the booms and busts from one generation to the next.

But it was an excellent place for a dead-of-night burglary. Quiet, isolated, invisible from passersby on the main street, no living accommodation on the second floor. In the front wall it had a display window on the left set next to an entrance door on the right, separated only by the width of the door frame. There was a moon-shaped hole in the window glass, temporarily backed by a sheet of unfinished plywood. The plywood had been neatly trimmed to the right size. I figured 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 arm through the hole up to the shoulder and get 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 elbow slowly and deliberately, to avoid snagging his clothes. I pictured him with his left cheek against the cold glass, in the dark, breathing hard, groping blindly.

We parked right in front of the store. Got out and spent a minute looking in the window. It was full of items on display. But whoever had put them there wasn’t about to move on to Saks Fifth Avenue anytime soon. Not for their famous holiday windows. Because there was no art involved. No design. No temptation. Everything was just lined up neatly on hand-built shelves. Everything had a price tag. The window was saying: This is what we’ve got. If you want it, come in and get it. But it all looked like quality stuff. There were some strange items. I had no idea what some of them were for. I didn’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 a mechanical bell on the door that rang as we entered. The plain neatness and organization we had seen in the window was maintained inside. There were tidy racks and shelves and bins. A wide-plank wooden floor. There was a faint smell of machine oil. The place was quiet. No customers. There was a guy behind the counter, maybe sixty years old, maybe seventy. He was looking at us, alerted by the bell. He was medium height and slender and a little stooped. He wore round eyeglasses and a gray cardigan sweater. They made him look intelligent, but they also made him look like he wasn’t accustomed to handling anything bigger than a small screwdriver. They made him look like selling 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’re here about the stolen wrecking bar," I said. "Or the stolen crowbar, if that’s what you prefer to call it."

He nodded.

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

"OK, we’re here about the stolen crowbar," I said.

He smiled, briefly. "You’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 name, which matched the sign above his door.

"We need some background," 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 impression that crowbar development had slowed to a halt a long time ago.

"Where can I start?" he said.

"How many different sorts are there?"

"Dozens," he said. "There are at least six manufacturers that I would consider dealing with myself. And plenty of others I wouldn’t."

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

"Exactly," he said. "I can’t compete with the big chains on price alone. So I have to offer absolutely top quality and service."

"Niche marketing," I said.

He nodded again.

"Low-end crowbars would come from China," he said. "Mass produced, cast iron, wrought iron, low-grade forged steel. I wouldn’t be interested."

"So what do you carry?"

"I import a few titanium crowbars from Europe," he said. "Very expensive, but very strong. More importantly, very light. They were designed for police and firefighters. Or for underwater work, where corrosion would otherwise be an issue. Or for anyone else that needs something small and durable and easily portable."

"But it wasn’t one of those that was stolen."