by Lee Child
“I meant before,” Helen said. “I need to know who he saw, who he hung out with, who knew him well. Especially anyone new.”
“There wasn’t anyone new,” Rosemary said. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“What about old?”
“Have you got a big piece of paper?”
“I’ve got a whole yellow pad.”
“Well, you aren’t going to need it. A matchbook cover would do it. James is a very self-sufficient person.”
“He must have buddies.”
“A couple, I guess,” Rosemary said. “There’s a guy called Mike from the neighborhood. They talk about lawns and baseball, you know, guy stuff.”
Mike, Helen wrote. Guy stuff. “Anyone else?”
There was a long pause.
“Someone called Charlie,” Rosemary said.
“Tell me about Charlie,” Helen said.
“I don’t know much about him. I never really met him.”
“How long has James known him?”
“Years.”
“Including the time you lived there?”
“He never came around when I was in. I only ever saw him once. He was leaving as I was coming in. I said, Who was that? James said, That was Charlie, like he was an old pal.”
“What does he look like?”
“He’s small. He’s got weird hair. Like a black toilet brush.”
“Is he local?”
“I guess so.”
“What was their point of contact?”
Another long pause.
“Guns,” Rosemary said. “They shared an interest.”
Charlie, Helen wrote. Guns.
Donna Bianca spent some time on her cell phone and mapped out the flight schedules between D.C. and Indianapolis. She knew the onward connecting flights left on the hour and took thirty-five minutes. She figured a person with a courthouse appointment at four o’clock wouldn’t aim to arrive on anything later than the two thirty-five. Which meant leaving Indianapolis at two, which meant getting in there at about one-thirty, latest, to allow for the walk between gates. Which meant leaving Washington National at eleven-thirty or twelve, latest. Which wasn’t possible. The last direct flight from National to Indianapolis was at nine-thirty. There was a morning cluster and an evening cluster. Nothing in between.
“She’ll come in on the twelve thirty-five,” she said.
Emerson checked his watch. Quarter to twelve.
“Which means Reacher will be here soon,” he said.
At ten to twelve a courier arrived at Helen Rodin’s building with six large cardboard cartons containing the defense’s copies of the prosecution’s evidence. The discovery process, mandated by the rules of due process. By the Bill of Rights, as interpreted. The courier called from the lobby and Helen told him to come on up. He had to make two trips with his handcart. He stacked the boxes in the empty secretarial pen. Helen signed for them and he left. Then she opened them. There was a mass of paperwork and dozens of photographs. And eleven new VHS cassettes. They had labels with numbers neatly printed on them that referred to a notarized sheet that described them as faithful and complete copies of the parking garage’s security tapes, made by an independent third-party contractor. Helen took them all out and stacked them separately. She would have to take them home and use her own VCR to look at them. She didn’t have a VCR in the office. Or a television set.
There was a television set in the Marriott’s coffee shop. It was mounted high in the corner, on a black articulated bracket bolted to the wall. The sound was off. Reacher watched an advertisement that featured a young woman in a filmy summer dress romping through a field of wildflowers. He wasn’t sure what product was being advertised. The dress, maybe, or makeup, or shampoo, or allergy medicine. Then a news banner popped up. Noon Report. Reacher checked his watch. Twelve exactly. He glanced toward the reception desk in the lobby. He had a clear view. No sign of Hutton. Not yet. So he glanced back at the television. Ann Yanni was on. She seemed to be live on location, downtown, out on the street. In front of the Metropole Palace Hotel. She talked silently but earnestly for a moment and then the picture cut to tape of dawn twilight. An alley. Police barriers. A shapeless form under a white sheet. Then the picture cut again. To a driver’s license photograph. Pale skin. Green eyes. Red hair. Just under the chin a caption was superimposed: Alexandra Dupree.
Alexandra. Sandy.
Now they’ve gone too far, Reacher thought.
He shivered.
Way too far.
He stared at the screen. Sandy’s face was still there. Then the picture cut again, back to tape of the early hours, to a head-and-shoulders shot of Emerson. A recorded interview. Yanni had her microphone shoved up under Emerson’s nose. He was talking. Yanni pulled the microphone back and asked a question. Emerson talked some more. His eyes were flat and empty and tired and hooded against the bright light on the camera. Even without the sound Reacher knew what he was saying. He was promising a full and complete investigation. We’ll get this guy, he was saying.
“I saw you from the desk,” a voice said.
Then it said, “And I thought to myself, don’t I know that guy?”
Reacher looked away from the TV.
Eileen Hutton was standing right there in front of him.
Her hair was shorter. She had no tan. There were fine lines around her eyes. But otherwise she looked just the same as she had fourteen years ago. And just as good. Medium height, slim, poised. Groomed. Fragrant. Feminine as hell. She hadn’t put on a pound. She was wearing civvies. Khaki chino pants, a white T, a blue oxford shirt open over it. Penny loafers, no socks, no makeup, no jewelry.
No wedding band.
“Remember me?” she said.
Reacher nodded.
“Hello, Hutton,” he said. “I remember you. Of course I do. And it’s good to see you again.”
She had a purse and a key card in her hand. A rolling carry-on with a long handle at her feet.
“It’s good to see you again, too,” she said. “But please tell me it’s a coincidence that you’re here. Please tell me that.”
Feminine as hell, except she was still a woman in a man’s world, and you could still see the steel if you knew where to look. Which was into her eyes. They ran like a stock ticker, warm, warm, welcome, welcome, with a periodic bright flash: Mess with me and I’ll rip your lungs out.
“Sit down,” Reacher said. “Let’s have lunch.”
“Lunch?”
“It’s what people do at lunch time.”
“You were expecting me. You’ve been waiting for me.”
Reacher nodded. Glanced back up at the TV set. Sandy’s driver’s license picture was on the screen again. Hutton followed his gaze.
“Is that the dead girl?” she asked. “I heard it on the radio, driving down. Sounds like a person should get combat pay, coming here.”
“What did the radio say? There’s no sound in here.”
“Homicide. Late last night. Local girl got her neck broken. A single blow to the right temple. In an alley outside a hotel. Not this one, I hope.”
“No,” Reacher said. “It wasn’t this one.”
“Brutal.”
“I guess it was.”
Eileen Hutton sat down at the table. Not across from him. In the chair next to him. Just like Sandy, at the sports bar.
“You look great,” he said. “You really do.”
She said nothing.
“It’s good to see you,” he said again.
“Likewise,” she said.
“No, I mean it.”
“I mean it, too. Believe me, if we were at some Beltway cocktail party I would be getting all misty and nostalgic with the best of them. I might still, as soon as I find out you’re not here for the reason I think you’re here.”
“What reason would that be?”
“To keep your promise.”
“You remember that?”
“Of course I do. You talked about it all one night.”
“And you’re here because the Department of the Army got a subpoena.”
Hutton nodded. “From some idiot prosecutor.”
“Rodin,” Reacher said.
“That’s the guy.”
“My fault,” Reacher said.
“Christ,” Hutton said. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing,” Reacher said. “I didn’t tell him anything. But he told me something. He told me my name was on the defense’s witness list.”
“The defense list?”
Reacher nodded. “That surprised me, obviously. So I was confused. So I asked him if my name had come from some old Pentagon file.”
“Not in this lifetime,” Hutton said.
“As I found out,” Reacher said. “But still, I had said the magic words. I had mentioned the Pentagon. The type of guy he is, I knew he would go fishing. He’s very insecure. He likes his cases armor-plated. So I’m sorry.”
“You should be. I get to spend two days in the back of beyond and I get to perjure myself from here to breakfast time.”
“You don’t need to do that. You can claim national security.”
Hutton shook her head. “We talked about it, long and hard. We decided to stay away from anything that draws attention. That Palestinian thing was very thin. If that unravels, everything unravels. So I’m here to swear blind that James Barr was GI Joe.”
“You OK with that?”
“You know the army. None of us is a virgin anymore. It’s about the mission, and the mission is to keep a lid on the KC thing.”
“Why did they delegate you?”
“Two birds with one stone. No good to them to send someone else and still have me out there knowing the truth. This way, I can’t talk about it ever again, anywhere. Not without effectively confessing to perjury one time in Indiana. They’re not dumb.”
“I’m surprised they still care. It’s practically ancient history.”
“How long have you been out?”
“Seven years.”
“And clearly you don’t have a subscription to the Army Times.”
“What?”
“Or maybe you never knew.”
“Never knew what?”
“Where it went back then, up the chain of command.”
“Division, I supposed. But maybe not all the way to the top.”
“It stopped on a certain colonel’s desk. He was the one who nixed it.”
“And?”
“His name was Petersen.”
“And?”
“Colonel Petersen is now Lieutenant General Petersen. Three stars. Congressional liaison. About to get his fourth star. About to be named Vice Chief of Staff of the Army.”
That could complicate things, Reacher thought.
“Embarrassing,” he said.
“You bet your ass embarrassing,” Hutton said. “So believe me, this is one lid that is going to stay on. You need to bear that in mind. Whatever you want to do about your promise, you can’t talk about what happened. Any more than I can. They would find a way to get to you.”
“Neither of us needs to talk about it. It’s a done deal.”
“I’m very glad to hear it.”
“I think.”
“You think?”
“Ask me how they really got my name.”
“How did they really get your name?”
“From James Barr himself.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I didn’t believe it, either. But I do now.”
“Why?”
“We should have lunch. We really need to talk. Because I think there’s someone else out there who knows.”
Emerson and Bianca called it quits at twelve-fifty. Reacher never showed. The feeder flight came in on time. Nobody that could have been a female Brigadier General from the Pentagon got off. The two cops waited until the arrivals hall emptied out and went quiet. Then they got in their car and drove back to town.
Reacher and Hutton had lunch. A waitress came over, happy to get some business out of her corner table at last. The menu was coffee-shop-basic. Reacher ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and coffee. Hutton went with chicken Caesar and tea. They ate and talked. Reacher ran through the details of the case. Then he ran through his theory. The perverse choice of location, the presumed coercion. He told Hutton about Niebuhr’s theory of the new and persuasive friend. Told her that Barr claimed he had no new friends, and very few old ones.
“Can’t be a new friend anyway,” Hutton said. “Because this is a multilayered setup. There’s the contemporaneous evidence, and the historical parallels. Second story of a parking garage fourteen years ago in KC, second story of a parking garage here and now. Virtually the same rifle. Boat tail sniper ammunition. And the desert boots. I never saw them before Desert Shield. They’re suggestive. Whoever scripted this for him knew all about his past. Which means it isn’t a new friend. It can’t be. It would take years and years before Barr would feel like sharing anything about KC.”
Reacher nodded. “But obviously he did, eventually. Which is why I said there’s someone else out there who knows.”
“We need to find that person,” Hutton said. “The mission is to keep the lid on this thing.”
“Not my mission. I don’t care if this Petersen guy gets his fourth star.”
“But you do care that a quarter million veterans don’t get their reputations trashed. The scandal would taint all of them. And they were good people.”
Reacher said nothing.
“It’s easy enough,” Hutton said. “If James Barr doesn’t have many friends, you don’t have a very big pool to search through. One of them has to be the guy.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Two birds with one stone,” Hutton said. “You get to the puppet master and the army gets to relax.”
“So why doesn’t the army do it for me?”
“We can’t afford to draw attention.”
“I’ve got operational problems,” Reacher said.
“No jurisdiction?”
“Worse than that. I’m about to get arrested.”
“For what?”
“For killing that girl behind the hotel.”
“What?”
“The puppet master doesn’t like me being here. He already tried something on Monday night, with that same girl as bait. So I went to see her yesterday, twice. And now they killed her and I’m sure I’m her last unexplained contact.”
“Have you got an alibi?”
“Depends on the exact timing, but probably not. I’m sure the cops are already looking for me.”
“Problem,” Hutton said.
“Only temporary,” Reacher said. “Science is on my side. If her neck was broken by a single blow to her right temple, then her head rotated a little, counterclockwise, which means the punch was thrown by a left-hander. And I’m right-handed. If I had hit her in the right temple I would have knocked her out for sure, but I wouldn’t have broken her neck. I would have had to do that separately, afterward.”
“You sure?”
Reacher nodded. “I used to do this stuff for a living, remember.”
“But will they believe you? Or will they figure you’re big enough to have done it with your weak hand?”
“I’m not going to risk finding out.”
“You’re going to run?”
“No, I’m going to stick around. But I’m going to have to stay out of their way. Which will slow me down some. A lot, in fact. Which is why I said I’ve got operational problems.”
“Can I help?”
Reacher smiled.
“It’s good to see you, Hutton,” he said. “It really is.”
“How can I help?”
“My guess is there’ll be a cop called Emerson waiting for you after you’re done with your deposition. He’ll ask you about me. Just play dumb. Just say I never showed up, you didn’t see me, you don’t know where I am, all
that kind of stuff.”
She was quiet for a spell.
“You’re upset,” she said. “I can tell.”
He nodded. Rubbed his face, like he was washing without water.
“I don’t care much about James Barr,” he said. “If someone wanted to set him up so he took the punishment he should have taken fourteen years ago, that was OK with me. But this thing with the girl is different. It’s way out of line. She was just a sweet dumb kid. She meant no harm.”
Hutton was quiet for a moment longer.
“Are you sure about the threat to Barr’s sister?” she asked.
“I don’t see any other leverage.”
“But there’s no sign of a threat. As a prosecutor I couldn’t see entering it as a separate charge.”
“Why else would Barr have done what he did?”
Hutton didn’t answer.
“Will I see you later?” she asked.
“I’ve got a room not far away,” he said. “I’ll be around.”
“OK,” she said.
“Unless I’m already in jail.”
The waitress came back and they ordered dessert. Reacher asked for more coffee and Hutton got more tea. They kept on talking. Random subjects, random questions. They had fourteen years to catch up on.
Helen Rodin searched through the six cartons of evidence and found a crisp photocopy of a sheet of paper that had been found next to James Barr’s telephone. It was as close as he had gotten to a personal phone book. It had three numbers on it, written in neat and careful handwriting. Two were for his sister Rosemary, one at her condo and the other at work. The third number was for Mike. The neighborhood guy. Nothing for anyone called Charlie.
Helen dialed Mike’s number. It rang six times and cut to an answering machine. She left her office number and asked for a return call on a matter of great importance.
Emerson spent an hour with a sketch artist and came up with a pretty good likeness of Jack Reacher’s face. The drawing was then scanned into a computer and colorized. Dirty-blond hair, ice-blue eyes, medium-to-dark tan. Emerson then typed the name, and estimated the height at six-five, the weight at two-fifty, the age between thirty-five and forty-five. He put the police department’s phone number on the bottom line. Then he e-mailed it all over the place and set the printer to churn out two hundred color copies. He told every prowl car driver to take a sheaf and give one to every hotel clerk and barman in town. Then he added: every restaurant, diner, lunch counter, and sandwich shop, too.
