“One thing or the other has got to be possible,” I said. “Was he seeing anyone on the outside?”

“No, never.”

“So he was celibate for sixteen years?”

The guy paused a beat.

“I guess I don’t really know,” he said.

“Someone knew,” I said. “But I don’t think it was a factor. I think someone just tried to make it look like it was. Maybe we can make that clear, at least.”

The sergeant shook his head. “It’ll be the only thing anyone remembers about him.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I’m not gay,” he said.

“I don’t really care either way.”

“I’ve got a wife and a kid.”

He left me with that information and I went back to obeying Willard’s orders.

I spent the time thinking. There had been no weapon recovered at the scene. No significant forensics. No threads of clothing snagged on a bush, no footprints in the earth, none of his attacker’s skin under Carbone’s fingernails. All of that was easily explicable. The weapon had been taken away by the attacker, who had probably been wearing BDUs, which the Department of the Army specifies very carefully just so that they won’t fall apart and leave threads all over the place. Textile mills across the nation have stringent quality targets to meet, in terms of wear-and-tear standards for military twill and poplin. The earth was frozen hard, so footprints were impossible. North Carolina probably had a reliable frost window of about a month, and we were smack in the middle of it. And it had been a surprise attack. Carbone had been given no time to turn around and claw and kick at his assailant.

So there was no material information. But we had some advantages. We had a fixed pool of possible suspects. It was a closed base, and the army is pretty good at recording who was where, at all times. We could start with yards of printout paper and go through each name, on a simple binary basis, possible or not possible. Then we could collate all the possibles and go to work with the holy trinity of detectives everywhere: means, motive, opportunity. Means and opportunity wouldn’t signify much. By definition nobody would be on the possibles list unless they had been proved to have opportunity. And everybody in the army was physically capable of swinging a tire iron or a crowbar against the back of an unsuspecting victim’s head. It was probably a rough equivalent of the most basic entry requirement.

So it would end up with motive, which is where it had started for me. What was the reason?

I sat for another hour. Didn’t go anywhere, didn’t do anything, didn’t call anyone. My sergeant brought me more coffee. I mentioned that she might call Lieutenant Summer for me and suggest she stop by.

Summer showed up within five minutes. I had a whole raft of things to tell her, but she had anticipated every one of them. She had ordered a list of all base personnel, plus a copy of the gate log so we could add and subtract names as appropriate. She had arranged for Carbone’s quarters to be sealed, pending a search. She had arranged an interview with his CO to develop a better picture of his personal and professional life.

“Excellent,” I said.

“What’s this thing with Willard?” she asked.

“A pissing contest, probably,” I said. “Important case like this, he wants to come down and direct things personally. To remind me I’m under a cloud.”

But I was wrong.

Willard finally showed after a total of exactly four hours. I heard his voice in the outer office. I was pretty sure my sergeant wasn’t offering him coffee. She had better instincts than that. My door opened and he came in. He didn’t look at me. Just closed the door behind him and turned around and sat down in my visitor’s chair. Immediately started up with the shuffling thing. He was going at it hard and plucking at the knees of his pants like they were burning his skin.

“Yesterday,” he said. “I want a complete record of your movements. I want to hear it from your own lips.”

“You’re down here to ask me questions?”

“Yes,” he said.

I shrugged.

“I was on a plane until two,” I said. “I was with you until five.”

“And then?”

“I got back here at eleven.”

“Six hours? I did it in four.”

“You drove, presumably. I took two buses and hitched a ride.”

“After that?”

“I spoke to my brother on the phone,” I said.

“I remember your brother,” Willard said. “I worked with him.”

I nodded. “He mentioned that.”

“And then what?”

“I spoke to Lieutenant Summer,” I said. “Socially.”

“And then?”

“Carbone’s body was discovered about midnight.”

He nodded and twitched and shuffled and looked uncomfortable.

“Did you keep your bus tickets?” he said.

“I doubt it,” I said.

He smiled. “Remember who gave you a ride to the post?”

“I doubt it. Why?”

“Because I might need to know. To prove I didn’t make a mistake.”

I said nothing.

“You made mistakes,” Willard said.

“Did I?”

He nodded. “I can’t decide whether you’re an idiot or whether you’re doing this on purpose.”

“Doing what?”

“Are you trying to embarrass the army?”

“What?”

“What’s the big picture here, Major?” he said.

“You tell me, Colonel.”

“The Cold War is ending. Therefore there are big changes coming. The status quo will not be an option. Therefore we’ve got every part of the military trying to stand tall and make the cut. And you know what?”

“What?”

“The army is always at the bottom of the pile. The Air Force has got all those glamorous airplanes. The Navy has got submarines and carriers. The Marines are always untouchable. And we’re stuck down there in the mud, literally. The bottom of the pile. The army is boring, Reacher. That’s the view in Washington.”

“So?”

“This Carbone guy was a shirtlifter. He was a damn fudgepacker, for Christ’s sake. An elite unit has got perverts in it? You think the army needs for people to know that? At a time like this? You should have written him up as a training accident.”

“That wouldn’t have been true.”

“Who cares?”

“He wasn’t killed because of his orientation.”

“Of course he was.”

“I do this stuff for a living,” I said. “And I say he wasn’t.”

He glared at me. Went quiet for a moment.

“OK,” he said. “We’ll come back to that. Who else but you saw the body?”

“My guys,” I said. “Plus a Psy-Ops light colonel I wanted an opinion from. Plus the pathologist.”

He nodded. “You deal with your guys. I’ll tell Psy-Ops and the doctor.”

“Tell them what?”

“That we’re writing it up as a training accident. They’ll understand. No harm, no foul. No investigation.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You think the army wants this to get around? Now? That Delta had an illegal soldier for four years? Are you nuts?”

“The sergeants want an investigation.”

“I’m pretty sure their CO won’t. Believe me. You can take that as gospel.”

“You’ll have to give me a direct order,” I said. “Words of one syllable.”

“Watch my lips,” Willard said. “Do not investigate the fag. Write a situation report indicating that he died in a training accident. A night maneuver, a run, an exercise, anything. He tripped and fell and hit his head. Case closed. That is a direct order.”

“I’ll need it in writing,” I said.

“Grow up,” he said.

We sat quiet for a moment or two, just glaring at each other across the desk. I sat still, and Willard rocked and plucked. I clenched my fist, out of his sight. I imagined smashing a straight right to the center of his chest. I figured I could stop his lousy heart with a single blow. I could write it up as a training accident. I could say he had been practicing getting in and out of his chair, and he had slipped and caught his sternum on the corner of the desk.