Small Wars Read Free Page B

She wouldn’t divert resources away from the big war. It would be extra spending. The president is a Republican.”
    “So she was a woman with no enemies.”
    “She was rich,” Neagley said. “Did you know that?”
    Reacher said, “No.”
    “People say it was family money. She bought a sports car to celebrate her promotion.”
    “What kind of sports car?”
    “German.”
    “A Volkswagen?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    Reacher leafed through the faxed report.
    “A Porsche,” he said. “The POV she was found in.”
    He scanned the rest of the report. Words, maps, charts. And the photographs. Mud, marks, wounds. He passed it all to Neagley. She scanned it in turn, the same way, words, maps, charts, mud, marks, and wounds.
    She said, “Two in the chest and one in the head. That’s an execution.”
    Reacher nodded. “The woman with no enemies. But not exactly. Because it can’t have been random. It wasn’t a robbery. Not just some punk. Even a hillbilly would have taken the car. He’d have driven it hard all night and burned it in the morning.”
    “Two in the chest and one in the head is standard military practice. Under certain circumstances, in certain units. You can look it up.”
    “Is it exclusively military?”
    “Probably not.”
    “And there are plenty of vets in the state of Georgia. We shouldn’t narrow it down too much. We shouldn’t put the blinders on.”
    Neagley turned to the last page of the written report. She said, “We might as well put blindfolds on. It isn’t our case. The State Police has got it.”
    “How many rich people are there in the army?”
    “Very few.”
    “How many are also smart enough to fast-track through one tough gig after another?”
    “Very few.”
    “So does this feel random to you?”
    “Not with the execution-style placement, no.”
    “So she was a specific target, deliberately ambushed.”
    “You can see the tire marks in the mud. The guy parked across the road. Sawed back and forth a bit, to make it look good. Then he got out to wait. Big feet. That’s how to narrow it down. This guy wears size fifteen boots.”
    Reacher took the paperwork back from her. He flipped forward to the maps. Not the kind of thing for sale at the gas station. Detailed government surveys, of woodland and streams and roads and tracks of every description and purpose, all Xeroxed and tiled together on slightly-overlapping pages.
    He said, “But that road doesn’t really go anywhere. Maybe it’s just a firebreak. There’s no logical reason to be on that road. You’d have to detour to get there, and then get yourself back on track again afterward. Wherever you were going. Therefore there’s no logical way to predict she would use that road. The odds get worse and worse after the first big fork. She could have used any road. It’s ten to one at best. And who sets up a deliberate ambush on a ten-to-one chance? So it must have been random.”
    “So let the State Police have it. They’ll chase it through the shoe size. This guy must be a basketball player. I mean, what size are your feet?”
    “Eleven.”
    “Is that big or small?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “We need a larger sample. What about Joe, for instance?”
    Reacher didn’t answer.
    Neagley said, “What?”
    “Sorry, I was thinking.”
    “What about?”
    “About Joe and his footwear habits. He’s same as me, I think. Maybe eleven and a half.”
    “And he’s an inch taller, as I recall, as well as better looking, so if we ballpark it we could round it up and say a size twelve is about right for guys about your height, and we could push it up to size fourteen, maybe, to allow for some genetic variation, which has to mean a guy who wears a size fifteen is not going to be any smaller than you, at least, and probably bigger, which makes him some kind of ape man who lives in the woods. Should be easy to spot. Should be easy to eliminate suspects. The State Police will handle it fine.”
    “We’re supposed to