Full Metal Jack

by Diane Capri

  She nodded, thinking things through, looking for holes in her theory. She found none.

  No wonder the army was worried.

  She could imagine plausible alternative scenarios, though.

  Kim considered whether Nightingale had been tossed onto the tracks while she was still alive.

  He could have killed her on the spot, solving the whole issue of transporting the body.

  Nightingale might have walked with him to the tracks under her own steam. Maybe they were holding hands, talking quietly the way lovers do. He could have lured her there under some pretext.

  The reason she went with him didn’t matter now. All he needed to do was get Nightingale to the tracks shortly before the train came through.

  Either way, wherever her throat was slashed, big pools of blood would have accumulated. The stains might still be visible. She made a mental note to look for the murder site tomorrow in the daylight.

  Satisfied that the killer could have done the crime and left the scene, Kim walked slowly across the dirt to the train tracks, listening for noises of all kinds.

  She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes until the midnight train arrived. Plenty of time for a closer look.

  Kim pulled her high-powered flashlight from her pocket and flipped it on. She climbed up the embankment, stepped over the first rail, and stood on the first tie.

  The reports had been somewhat vague about the exact location of the body parts they’d located, too.

  She aimed the light beam north and south, looking for any piece of trace evidence that might identify the train’s point of impact with Nightingale’s body.

  Kim’s guess that the impact probably occurred near the bars had been based on instinct at first. Nightingale’s death was staged to look like a suicide.

  Regardless of where he’d killed her, Kim reasoned that he’d want to avoid being seen both coming and going from the work of depositing the body on the train tracks.

  He’d have wanted to be quick about the whole thing. Quick and quiet.

  He’d have wanted to watch to confirm the train had done the job.

  Either way, if he’d killed her elsewhere and transported the body, or if she’d walked to the tracks before he killed her, to make sure nothing went wrong, he’d have wanted to be the shortest possible distance across the open space so he could see clearly.

  Which was the shadowed area directly across from Brannan’s.

  He’d also have needed an alibi.

  If he’d left the body on the tracks and then returned to Brannan’s before the midnight train sped past, other patrons in the bar would have seen him there. Talked to him. Maybe he’d even bought a few drinks and left a big tip, to be sure the bartender remembered him.

  Which would have meant the point of impact had to be relatively near Brannan’s to give him the time to get there and also be able to observe the train.

  His alibi would have been more than sufficient for a suicide.

  Unless someone figured out Nightingale wasn’t killed by the speeding train.

  Which she wasn’t.

  But it should have taken a while to figure that out if the train mutilated the body. It was simply his bad luck that the train had left the cause of death unconcealed.

  Kim wondered whether he knew about the autopsy, even as Chief Greyson tried to keep a lid on that piece of intel.

  As soon as Nightingale’s murder became public knowledge, the killer would flee the jurisdiction. If he hadn’t already. He was in the army. He might have shipped out the very next day. He might have already received his orders before he killed Nightingale.

  Still standing on the railroad tie, she’d been so focused on the logistics of the Nightingale murder that she hadn’t noticed the ground’s faint, constant tremor at first.

  The trembling transferred from the ground to the tie to her boots and then up through her body. The rails began to whine.

  Kim peered into the murky distance. A single headlight muted by the fog was still far down the tracks. The train was coming her way. Fast. She glanced at her watch. It was two minutes until midnight. The train should be right on time.

  Her gaze was transfixed by the headlight, dancing like a fairy, growing larger and brighter and more terrifying by the moment.

  The ground shook harder under her feet. The rails howled. The train whistle blasted two long wails that shattered the remaining silence.

  The warning bells at the crossroads began to ring, and the lights flashed, and the safety arms lowered on either side.

  Kim hopped off the tracks and ran toward the bars on the other side of the open dirt.

  She’d waited too long.

  The train was right behind her now. Outrageously massive. Insanely loud.

  The engine roared past and the cars behind it followed at breakneck speed.

  She kept running, fearing that she’d be sucked up in the ferocious wind current caused by the train.

  When she made it safely to the sidewalk, Kim anchored her back against the building, braced her legs, breathing hard.

  The train continued hurtling north, shaking the ground, impossible to stop, even if anything at all had been inclined to try.

  She’d never felt so tiny and insignificant and weightless in her entire life.

  The boxcars and flatbeds kept coming, flashing past.

  One, five, ten. She lost count.

  Until finally, she watched the back of the last one roll away.

  One bit at a time, normalcy returned.

  The howling wind died.

  The earthquake stopped shaking the ground.

  The bells and flashing lights at the crossing stopped.

  The safety arms raised.

  Silence filled the air once more as if peace had never been disturbed by the massive train.

  Kim’s body continued vibrating and the lingering sounds overwhelmed her ears.

  When her ability to hear herself think returned, the first thing she did was to confirm her theory.

  No one could be ambushed by that train. No chance in hell. The noise, the shaking ground, the whipping wind. All of it made ignorance of the approaching train inconceivable.

  If Nightingale hadn’t been dead already, she’d have had enough warning and enough time to get safely off the tracks.

  Kim did it herself just moments before the train sped past. Unless she’d been incapacitated, Nightingale could have done it, too.

  Which explained why the locals jumped to the conclusion that Nightingale had committed suicide.

  A woman would have had to be determined and desperate to stand in front of the oncoming train to wait to be battered to death. There were easier ways to commit suicide.

  Even without the evidence that her throat had been cut, Kim would have reached the same conclusion.

  Bonnie Nightingale was definitely murdered.

  Anybody who’d ever been anywhere near the midnight train should believe the same.

  The killer had dumped the body and left before the train passed to establish an alibi.

  For sure.

  An old man opened one of the doors and cheers spilled out of Brannan’s behind him. He held onto the door a moment to steady his feet. Then he moved clear and staggered along the sidewalk in the opposite direction.

  Kim watched him until he reached the end of the block. His gait was jerky and uneven. Twice, he tripped and fell forward, but managed to stay upright. Eventually, he turned the corner out of sight.

  The door to the bar had not closed completely. A televised sporting event of some sort elicited periodic whoops and jeers from a small group of spectators inside.

  Kim glanced through the glass. The place was narrow and small and dark, and a hundred years of grime covered the floor. Four men huddled at the bar near the television. One might have been the bartender.

  She argued with herself briefly. What were the chances that any of them had seen Bonnie Nightingale’s killer? And even if they had, Chief Greyson would have already t
aken statements from them.

  But they were old enough to have been around when Reacher was here fifteen years ago. One of them might know something.

  Hell, she was already here. She might as well find out.

  It was the slenderest thread of possibility.

  But she was used to pulling on the least likely threads.

  Hunting Reacher had proven as elusive as searching for the Loch Ness monster and ten times as dangerous.

  She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, opened the door, and stepped inside.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Thursday, May 12

  Memphis, TN

  12:05 a.m.

  He was tired and wrung out. This wasn’t a trip he’d have chosen to make. Jasper had screwed things up royally, leaving him no real choice in the matter.

  He’d chosen the wrong vehicle, too. But there weren’t many options on that score, either.

  The old pickup truck he’d found abandoned at a truck stop was two dozen years old and rode like its shock absorbers were made of concrete. If there were any springs left in the bench seat, they’d long ago given up their capacity for bouncing with the potholes.

  All the way to Memphis, blowing rain pelted the truck from every angle.

  The headlights were weak and hadn’t been adjusted since Methuselah was a pup. The right headlight pointed high and the left one low, making it difficult to see the road ahead in the rainy darkness, even at reduced travel speeds. He’d squinted the whole way, straining his eyes and increasing his fatigue.

  When he’d finally reached the turnoff, he found the hospital surprisingly busy for a weeknight.

  He followed behind a trail of winking taillights. A line of vehicles turned into the main driveway and split off in several directions. He moved aside for an incoming ambulance and then followed a small SUV into the visitor parking garage.

  CCTV cameras were perched here and there along the route and at the entrance. The cameras were most likely running unattended at this hour. But he didn’t take the chance.

  He flipped the visor down on the truck and tilted his head down. The hat worked with the visor to shield his features while he pulled a ticket from the machine, stuck the ticket in his shirt pocket, and waited for the gate arm to open.

  He was expected back at Kelham before dawn. No time to rest or find coffee or anything else. He had one job here. He wanted to get in, get it done, and get on the road. The drive back to Carter’s Crossing wouldn’t be a walk in the park, either. But he couldn’t dwell on that now.

  He drove up to the seventh floor and parked the stolen pickup out of CCTV camera range. He backed into the space and rested the pickup’s back bumper against the concrete wall to block the muddy license plate from view.

  When he climbed down from the driver’s seat, his body ached all over. He spent a few seconds stretching out the kinks in his back and loosening up his stiff muscles.

  He adjusted his civilian camo. Turned his collar up, straightened his leather gloves, and pulled the hat down low on his forehead. He’d have worn sunglasses, but they’d have drawn too much attention since it was well after midnight.

  He left the truck unlocked to help the next guy who tried to steal it. Then he hustled toward the down ramp where it was easier to avoid the cameras than in the stairwells or the elevators.

  The air was slightly cleaner on the ramps, too. Stairwells and elevators in old garages were bound to be full of deadly germs and appalling odors.

  On the ground level, he strode purposefully toward the emergency room entrance, tossing the truck’s keys into a muddy ditch in the back of the building along the way.

  He’d find another vehicle easily enough. There were plenty to choose from in that garage. His old bones wouldn’t have survived the two-hour return trip in that heap anyway.

  All he had to do was get into Jasper’s private room for a few minutes alone. The rest would be easy. He fingered the syringe resting in his pocket.

  He entered the hospital behind a group of people as if he’d been there a dozen times before.

  The ER was crowded and chaotic and smelled like citrus. The scent was clean, even if the patients weren’t. His nose wrinkled involuntarily. The guy in front of him had some of the worst body odor he’d ever encountered. He could only imagine the heavy-duty air filtration systems the hospital must have working overtime to keep the worst of humanity’s stench at bay.

  A line of patients waited to be checked in by an overworked desk clerk, providing identification and proof of insurance. A room full of patients were already waiting for care. Gunshot victims, sick kids, drug addicts, bar fighters, and vehicle crash victims. They were easy to classify based on appearance and blood patterns.

  Enough patients and companions to keep the staff fully occupied for hours, he figured.

  Which explained why Jasper had been stabilized instead of taken to surgery right away.

  The overloaded ER also meant he wasn’t likely to be noticed or stopped. Finally, he’d caught a break.

  He skipped the line at the visitor’s desk and turned left, mingling with the preoccupied crowd.

  He knew exactly where he was going.

  Like all hospitals, this one was clearly marked. He followed the posted signs and moved through the throngs in the hallways toward Jasper’s room.

  Jasper was holding in ICU for an open operating room. He’d been triaged and heavily sedated and hooked up to a dozen machines in a surgical ICU bed on the third floor.

  He found the correct elevator and punched the button. The oversized elevator car lumbered to a slow stop and bounced slightly. The doors opened ever-so-slowly and closed behind him at the same snail’s pace. After five seconds, the car rose to the second floor and bounced to a stop and repeated the opening-closing dance before it moved glacially up to the third floor.

  He felt like he’d aged two years during the process.

  He stepped out on the floor and spied a blue and white sign pointing toward the surgical ICU waiting room.

  When he reached the ICU, the patient rooms were behind a closed door that required a key card for entry.

  He moved into the smaller ICU waiting room and watched the door.

  Hospital personnel dressed in scrubs of various colors scurried in and out, sometimes pushing a bed with a patient on it or a piece of rolling equipment and a clipboard. But more often simply walking through purposefully but empty-handed.

  Like the elevator, the oversized double entry doors opened slowly and closed even more slowly. Presumably, the idea was to give the beds enough time to roll through without interference. Which made sense.

  The glacial pace of the entry system also made his plan a lot easier.

  He leaned against a wall in the ICU waiting room and watched personnel, patients, and visitors come and go for a while to get the rhythm of the doors fixed in his mind.

  Every time the doors opened, he could see inside. The wide hallway interior of the unit was bright and clean and mostly deserted. Rooms on the left, nurses’ station on the right. From time to time, a single nurse manned the station, coming and going at irregular intervals between other duties, he assumed.

  Sliding glass walls, covered with floor-to-ceiling drapes, separated the patient rooms from the hallway. To move the patients in and out, nurses folded the walls to one side along a ceiling track. They rolled the bed into place before unfolding the walls and drawing the curtains again.

  Two beds sat in the interior hallway. One bed had a patient on it, waiting at the nurse’s station while the orderly stopped to look at something on the computer. The other bed rested against the wall, empty.

  The door slowly swung shut behind another nurse. It seemed to be operating on a timer rather than a sensor. He checked the cycle against his watch. The opening and closing process lasted a full two minutes.

  He grinned. He could have moved a fully equipped six-man team through in that much time. Piece of cake.

  On the waiting room side
of the door where he was perched, the duty desk was unoccupied, too. The attendant had gone for the night.

  After one more cycle of the door, he was ready to move.

  He’d watched the phone posted on the wall near the door sensor, patiently waiting for his opportunity.

  He didn’t need to wait long.

  After about ten minutes, a visitor approached, picked up the phone, and talked quietly. A young woman dressed in sneakers, jeans, and a hoodie had been crying. Barely holding it together. She said something quietly into the phone, nodded, replaced the receiver, and waited.

  The door swung open in slow motion.

  The visitor shuffled inside.

  He paused a beat to allow her some distance and then slid through behind her as if he had every right to visit his sick relative, too.

  No one seemed to notice.

  No one tried to stop him.

  His luck held.

  The interior section of the ICU unit was almost deserted. There were no nurses at the desk at the moment. The doors to the individual rooms were closed and the curtains were drawn as if the patients had been tucked in for the night a while ago.

  He knew which bed Jasper occupied. But even if he hadn’t, the patient’s names were posted on the wall near each entrance.

  He found Jasper’s room exactly where he’d expected it to be and slipped inside, making sure the heavy drapery concealed him from view.

  He took a few seconds to scan the room.

  Jasper was alone and heavily sedated. He was wearing a clear plastic face mask connected by tubes to a machine that pushed oxygen into his lungs with every breath. Both arms were tethered by IVs feeding him fluids, medications, and what looked like blood.

  A sheet and blanket covered most of his body.

  Jasper’s face appeared remarkably unscathed. The helmet he’d been wearing did most of its job. The skin on his arms looked okay, too.

  He approached Jasper’s bed, keeping his back to the door. He pulled the big syringe from his pocket and used it to administer the lethal overdose.

  He stepped back and watched Jasper’s breathing for a few moments as if saying his last farewell.