by Lee Child
And then just for formality’s sake he fired up his computer and entered the plate numbers Reacher had given him. They came back as late-model Cadillac DeVilles, both black, both registered to Specialized Services of Indiana. He wrote dead end on the sheet of paper and dropped it in a file.
Reacher woke up every time he heard the elevator motors start. The sound whined down the shaft through the cables and the moving cars rumbled. The first three times were false alarms. Just anonymous office people heading home after a long day at work. Every forty minutes or so they came down alone and walked wearily to their cars and drove away. Three times the tang of cold exhaust fumes drifted and three times the garage went quiet again and three times Reacher went back to sleep.
The fourth time, he stayed awake. He heard the elevator start and checked his watch. Eleven forty-five. Showtime. He waited and heard the elevator doors open. This time, it wasn’t just another lone guy in a suit. It was a big crowd. Eight or ten people. Noisy. It was the whole cast and crew from the NBC affiliate’s eleven o’clock news.
Reacher pressed himself down in the Mustang’s passenger seat and hid the tire iron underneath the tails of his shirt. It was cold against the skin of his stomach. He stared up at the fabric roof and waited.
A heavy guy in baggy jeans passed through the darkness within five feet of the Mustang’s front fender. He had a ragged gray beard and was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt under a torn cotton cardigan. Not on-screen talent. Maybe a cameraman. He walked on toward a silver pickup and climbed inside. Then came a man in a sharkskin suit and orange makeup. He had big hair and white teeth. Definitely on-screen talent, maybe weather, maybe sports. He passed by on the Mustang’s other side and got into a white Ford Taurus. Then came three women together, young, casual dress, maybe the studio director and the floor manager and the vision mixer. They squeezed between the Mustang’s trunk and a broadcast van. The car rocked three times as they nudged it. Then they split up and headed for their own separate rides.
Then came three more people.
Then came Ann Yanni.
Reacher didn’t notice her individually until she put her hand on her car’s door handle. She paused and called something out to one of the others. She got an answer, said something else, and then opened the door. She came in butt-first, swiveling and ducking her head. She was wearing old jeans and a new silk blouse. It looked expensive. Reacher guessed she had been on camera, but at an anchor’s desk, visible from the waist up only. Her hair was stiff with spray. She dumped herself in the seat and shut her door. Then she glanced to her right.
“Keep very quiet,” Reacher said to her. “Or I’ll shoot you.”
He jabbed the tire iron at her, under his shirt. Half-inch wide, long and straight, it looked plausible. She stared at it in shock. Face-to-face two feet away she looked thinner and older than she looked on the television screen. There were fine lines all around her eyes, full of makeup. But she was very beautiful. She had impossibly perfect features, bold and vivid and larger than life, like most TV people. Her blouse had a formal collar but was open three buttons. Prim and sexy, at the same time.
“Hands where I can see them,” Reacher said. “In your lap.” He didn’t want her to go for the horn. “Keys on the console.” He didn’t want her to hit the panic button. The new Fords he had driven had a little red button on the remote fob. He assumed it set off an alarm.
“Just sit tight,” he said. “Nice and quiet. We’ll be OK.”
He clicked the button on his side and locked the car.
“I know who you are,” she said.
“So do I,” he said.
He kept the tire iron in place and waited. Yanni sat still, hands in her lap, breathing hard, looking more and more scared as all around them her colleagues’ cars started up. Blue haze drifted. People drove away, one by one. No backward glances. The end of a long day.
“Keep very quiet,” Reacher said again, as a reminder. “Then we’ll be OK.”
Yanni glanced left, glanced right. Tension in her body.
“Don’t do it,” Reacher said. “Don’t do anything. Or I’ll pull the trigger. Gut shot. Or thigh. You’ll take twenty minutes to bleed out. Lots of pain.”
“What do you want?” Yanni asked.
“I want you to be quiet and sit still. Just for a few more minutes.”
She clamped her teeth and went quiet and sat still. The last car drove away. The white Taurus. The guy with the hair. The weatherman, or the sportscaster. There was tire squeal as he turned and engine noise as he gunned up the ramp. Then those sounds faded out and the garage went completely silent.
“What do you want?” Yanni asked again. Her voice wobbled. Her eyes were huge. She was trembling. She was thinking rape, murder, torture, dismemberment.
Reacher turned on the dome light.
“I want you to win the Pulitzer Prize,” he said.
“What?”
“Or the Emmy or whatever it is you guys get.”
“What?”
“I want you to listen to a story,” he said.
“What story?”
“Watch,” Reacher said.
He lifted his shirt. Showed her the tire iron resting against his stomach. She stared at it. Or at his shrapnel scar. Or both. He wasn’t sure. He balanced the tire iron in his palm. Held it up in the light.
“From your trunk,” he said. “Not a gun.”
He clicked the button on the door and unlocked the car.
“You’re free to go,” he said. “Whenever you want.”
She put her hand on the handle.
“But if you go, I go,” Reacher said. “You won’t see me again. You’ll miss the story. Someone else will get it.”
“We’ve been running your picture all night,” she said. “And the cops have got Wanted posters all over town. You killed Alexandra Dupree.”
Reacher shook his head. “Actually I didn’t, and that’s part of the story.”
“What story?” she said again.
“Last Friday,” Reacher said. “It wasn’t what it seemed.”
“I’m going to get out of the car now,” Yanni said.
“No,” Reacher said. “I’ll get out. I apologize if I upset you. But I need your help and you need mine. So I’ll get out. You lock the doors, start the car, keep your foot on the brake, and open your window an inch. We’ll talk through the window. You can drive off anytime you want.”
She said nothing. Just stared straight ahead as if she could make him vanish by not looking at him. He opened his door. Slid out and turned and laid the tire iron gently on the seat. Then he closed the door and just stood there. He tucked his shirt in. He heard the thunk of her door locks. She started her engine. Her brake lights flared red. He saw her reach up and switch off the dome light. Her face disappeared into shadow. He heard the transmission move out of Park. Her back-up lights flashed white as she moved the selector through Reverse into Drive. Then her brake lights went out and the engine roared and she drove off in a fast wide circle through the empty garage. Her tires squealed. Grippy rubber on smooth concrete. The squeals echoed. She lined up for the exit ramp and accelerated hard.
Then she jammed on the brakes.
The Mustang came to rest with its front wheels on the base of the ramp. Reacher walked toward it, crouching a little so he could see through the small rear window. No cell phone. She was just sitting there, staring straight ahead, hands on the wheel. The brake lights blazed red, so bright they hurt. The exhaust pipes burbled. White fumes kicked backward. Drops of water dripped out and made tiny twin pools on the floor.
Reacher walked around to her window and stayed three feet away. She buzzed the glass down an inch and a half. He dropped into a crouch so he could see her face.
“Why do I need your help?” she asked.
“Because Friday was over too soon for you,” he said. “But you can get it back. There’s another layer. It’s a big story. You’ll win prizes. You’ll get a better job. CNN will beat a path
to your door.”
“You think I’m that ambitious?”
“I think you’re a journalist.”
“What does that mean?”
“That in the end, journalists like stories. They like the truth.”
She paused, almost a whole minute. Stared straight ahead. The car ticked and clicked as it warmed up. Reacher could sense the idle speed straining against the brakes. Then he saw her glance down and move her arm and shove the selector into Park. The Mustang rolled back six inches and stopped. Reacher shuffled sideways to stay level with the window. Yanni turned her head and looked straight at him.
“So tell me the story,” she said. “Tell me the truth.”
He told her the story, and the truth. He sat cross-legged on the concrete floor, so as to appear immobile and unthreatening. He left nothing out. He ran through all the events, all the inferences, all the theories, all the guesses. At the end he just stopped talking and waited for her reaction.
“Where were you when Sandy was killed?” she asked.
“Asleep in the motor court.”
“Alone?”
“All night. Room eight. I slept very well.”
“No alibi.”
“You never have an alibi when you need one. That’s a universal law of nature.”
She looked at him for a long moment.
“What do you want me to do?” she said.
“I want you to research the victims.”
She paused.
“We could do that,” she said. “We have researchers.”
“Not good enough,” Reacher said. “I want you to hire a guy called Franklin. Helen Rodin can tell you about him. She’s in this building, two floors above you.”
“Why hasn’t she hired this Franklin guy herself?”
“Because she can’t afford him. You can. I assume you’ve got a budget. A week of Franklin’s time probably costs less than one of your weather guy’s haircuts.”
“And then what?”
“Then we put it all together.”
“How big is this?”
“Pulitzer-sized. Emmy-sized. New-job-sized.”
“How would you know? You’re not in the business.”
“I was in the army. I would guess this is worth a Bronze Star. That’s probably a rough equivalent. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I should turn you in.”
“You can’t,” he said. “You pull out a phone and I’ll take off up the ramp. They won’t find me. They’ve been trying all day.”
“I don’t really care about prizes,” she said.
“So do it for fun,” he said. “Do it for professional satisfaction.”
He rocked sideways and took out the napkin with Helen Rodin’s number on it. Held it edge-on at the crack of the window. Yanni took it from him, delicately, trying to avoid touching his fingers with hers.
“Call Helen,” Reacher said. “Right now. She’ll vouch for me.”
Yanni took a cell phone out of her purse and turned it on. Watched the screen and waited until it was ready and then dialed the number. She passed the napkin back. Listened to the phone.
“Helen Rodin?” she said. Then she buzzed the window all the way up and Reacher didn’t hear any of the conversation. He gambled that it was really Helen she was speaking to. It was possible that she had looked at the napkin and dialed another number entirely. Not 911, because she had dialed ten digits. But she might have called the cops’ main desk. A reporter might know that number by heart.
But it was Helen on the line. Yanni buzzed the window down again and passed him her phone through the gap.
“Is this for real?” Helen asked him.
“I don’t think she’s decided yet,” Reacher said. “But it might work out.”
“Is it a good idea?”
“She’s got resources. And having the media watching our backs might help us.”
“Put her back on.”
Reacher passed the phone through the window. This time Yanni kept the glass down so that Reacher heard her end of the rest of the conversation. Initially she sounded skeptical, and then neutral, and then somewhat convinced. She arranged to meet on the fourth floor first thing in the morning. Then she clicked the phone off.
“There’s a cop outside her door,” Reacher said.
“She told me that,” Yanni said. “But they’re looking for you, not me.”
“What exactly are you going to do?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
Reacher said nothing.
“I guess I need to understand where you’re coming from first,” Yanni said. “Obviously you don’t care anything about James Barr himself. So is this all for the sister? Rosemary?”
Reacher watched her watching him. A woman, a journalist.
“Partly for Rosemary,” he said.
“But?”
“Mostly for the puppet master. He’s sitting there thinking he’s as smart as a whip. I don’t like that. Never have. Makes me want to show him what smart really is.”
“Like a challenge?”
“He had a girl killed, Yanni. She was just a dumb sweet kid looking for a little fun. He pushed open the wrong door there. So he deserves to have something come out at him. That’s the challenge.”
“You hardly knew her.”
“That doesn’t make her any less innocent.”
“OK.”
“OK what?”
“NBC will spring for Franklin. Then we’ll see where that takes us.”
“Thanks,” Reacher said. “I appreciate it.”
“You should.”
“I apologize again. For scaring you.”
“I nearly died of fright.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes,” Reacher said. “I need to borrow your car.”
“My car?”
“Your car.”
“What for?”
“To sleep in and then to go to Kentucky in.”
“What’s in Kentucky?”
“Part of the puzzle.”
Yanni shook her head. “This is nuts.”
“I’m a careful driver.”
“I’d be aiding and abetting a fugitive criminal.”
“I’m not a criminal,” Reacher said. “A criminal is someone who has been convicted of a crime after a trial. Therefore I’m not a fugitive, either. I haven’t been arrested or charged. I’m a suspect, that’s all.”
“I can’t lend you my car after running your picture all night.”
“You could say you didn’t recognize me. It’s a sketch, not a photograph. Maybe it isn’t totally accurate.”
“Your hair is different.”
“There you go. I had it cut this morning.”
“But I would recognize your name. I wouldn’t lend my car to a stranger without at least knowing his name, would I?”
“Maybe I gave you a false name. You met a guy with a different name who didn’t look much like the sketch, that’s all.”
“What name?”
“Joe Gordon,” Reacher said.
“Who’s he?”
“Yankees’ second baseman in 1940. They finished third. Not Joe’s fault. He had a decent career. He played exactly one thousand games and got exactly one thousand hits.”
“You know a lot.”
“I’ll know more tomorrow if you lend me your car.”
“How would I get home tonight?”
“I’ll drive you.”
“Then you’ll know where I live.”
“I already know where you live. I checked your registration. To make sure it was your car.”
Yanni said nothing.
“Don’t worry,” Reacher said. “If I wanted to hurt you, you’d already be hurt, don’t you think?”
She said nothing.
“I’m a careful driver,” he said again. “I’ll get you home safe.”
“I’ll call a cab,” she said. �
�Better for you that way. The roads are quiet now and this is a distinctive car. The cops know it’s mine. They stop me all the time. They claim I’m speeding but really they want an autograph or they want to look down my shirt.”
She used her phone again and told a driver to meet her inside the garage. Then she climbed out of the car and left the motor running.
“Go park in a dark corner,” she said. “Safer for you if you don’t leave before the morning rush.”
“Thanks,” Reacher said.
“And do it now,” she said. “Your face has been all over the news and the cab driver will have been watching. At least I hope he was watching. I need the ratings.”
“Thanks,” Reacher said again.
Ann Yanni walked away and stood at the bottom of the ramp like she was waiting for a bus. Reacher slid into her seat and racked it back and reversed the car deep into the garage. Then he swung it around and parked nose-in in a distant corner. He shut it down and watched in the mirror. Five minutes later a green-and-white Crown Vic rolled down the ramp and Ann Yanni climbed into the back. The cab turned and drove out to the street and the garage went quiet.
Reacher stayed in Ann Yanni’s Mustang but he didn’t stay in the garage under the black glass tower. Too risky. If Yanni had a change of heart he would be a sitting duck. He could picture her getting hit by cold feet or a crisis of conscience and picking up the phone and calling Emerson. He’s fast asleep in my car in the corner of the garage at work. Right now. So three minutes after her cab left he started up again and drove out and around to the garage on First Street. It was empty. He went up to the second level and parked in the slot that James Barr had supposedly used. He didn’t put money in the meter. Just pulled out Yanni’s stack of road maps and planned his route and then pushed back on the wheel and reclined the seat and went back to sleep.
He woke himself up five hours later, before dawn, and set out on the drive south to Kentucky. He saw three cop cars before he passed the city limits. But they didn’t pay him any attention. They were too busy hunting Jack Reacher to waste time harassing a cute news anchor.
