The Enemy

“The usual way,” I said. “By preventing some future action on Sergeant Carbone’s part. Or to cover up a crime that Sergeant Carbone was a party to or had knowledge of.”

“To silence him, in other words.”

“To dead-end something,” I said. “That would be my guess.”

“And you do this stuff for a living.”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

“How would you have located this person?”

“By conducting an investigation.”

Willard nodded. “And when you found this person, hypothetically, assuming you were able to, what would you have done?”

“I would have taken him into custody,” I said. Protective custody, I thought. I pictured Carbone’s squadron buddies in my mind, pacing anxiously, ready to lock and load.

“And your suspect pool would have been whoever was on-post at the time?”

I nodded. Lieutenant Summer was probably struggling with reams of printout paper even as we spoke.

“Verified via strength lists and gate logs,” I said.

“Facts,” Willard said. “I would have thought that facts would be extremely important to someone who does this stuff for a living. This post covers nearly a hundred thousand acres. It was last strung with perimeter wire in 1943. Those are facts. I discovered them with very little trouble, and you should have too. Doesn’t it occur to you that not everyone on the post has to come through the main gate? Doesn’t it occur to you that someone recorded as not being here could have slipped in through the wire?”

“Unlikely,” I said. “It would have given him a walk of well over two miles, in pitch dark, and we run random motor patrols all night.”

“The patrols might have missed a trained man.”

“Unlikely,” I said again. “And how would he have rendezvoused with Sergeant Carbone?”

“Prearranged location.”

“It wasn’t a location,” I said. “It was just a spot near the track.”

“Map reference, then.”

“Unlikely,” I said, for the third time.

“But possible?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“So a man could have met with the shirtlifter, then killed him, then gotten back out through the wire, and then walked around to the main gate, and then signed in?”

“Anything’s possible,” I said again.

“What kind of timescale are we looking at? Between killing him and signing in?”

“I don’t know. I would have to work out the distance he walked.”

“Maybe he ran.”

“Maybe he did.”

“In which case he would have been out of breath when he passed the gate.”

I said nothing.

“Best guess,” Willard said. “How much time?”

“An hour or two.”

He nodded. “So if the fairy was offed at nine or ten, the killer could have been logging in at eleven?”

“Possible,” I said.

“And the motive would have been to dead-end something.”

I nodded. Said nothing.

“And you took six hours to complete a four-hour journey, thereby leaving a potential two-hour gap, which you explain with the vague claim that you took a slow route.”

I said nothing.

“And you just agreed that a two-hour window is generous in terms of getting the deed done. In particular the two hours between nine and eleven, which by chance are the same two hours that you can’t account for.”

I said nothing. Willard smiled.

“And you arrived at the gate out of breath,” he said. “I checked.”

I didn’t reply.

“But what would have been your motive?” he said. “I assume you didn’t know Carbone well. I assume you don’t move in the same social circles that he did. At least I sincerely hope you don’t.”

“You’re wasting your time,” I said. “And you’re making a big mistake. Because you really don’t want to make an enemy out of me.”

“Don’t I?”

“No,” I said. “You really don’t.”

“What do you need dead-ended?” he asked me.

I said nothing.

“Here’s an interesting fact,” Willard said. “Sergeant First Class Christopher Carbone was the soldier who lodged the complaint against you.”