Never Go Back: (Jack Reacher 18)

by Child, Lee

  No answer.

  Reacher said, ‘Have you had a conference with the prosecutor?’

  Sullivan said, ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe there is no prosecutor. Maybe this is a one-sided illusion. Designed to work for one minute only. As in, I was supposed to see your file and run like hell.’

  ‘It can’t be an illusion. I’m getting pressure from the Secretary’s office.’

  ‘Says who? Maybe you’re getting messages, but you don’t really know where they’re coming from. Do you even know the Big Dog is dead? Have you seen a death certificate?’

  ‘This is crazy talk.’

  ‘Maybe. But humour me. Suppose it really was litigated sixteen years ago. Without my knowledge. Perhaps one of hundreds, with a specimen case involving some other guy, but I was in the supporting cast. Like class action. Maybe they started some aggressive new policy against ambulance chasers. Which might account for the guy getting his butt kicked so bad. What kind of paperwork would we have seen?’

  ‘If it really was litigated? A lot of paperwork. You don’t want to know.’

  ‘So if I searched Reacher, defence against complaint, what would I find?’

  ‘Eventually you’d find everything they tagged as defence material, I suppose. Hundreds of pages, probably, in a big case.’

  ‘Is it like shopping on a web site? Does it link from one thing to another?’

  ‘No, I told you. It’s a clunky old thing. It was designed by people over thirty. This is the army, don’t forget.’

  ‘OK, so if I was worried about a guy called Reacher, and I wanted to scare him away, and I was in a big hurry, I could search the archive for Reacher, complaint against, and I could find the Big Dog’s affidavit, and I could put it back in circulation, while being completely unaware it was only a small part of a much bigger file. Because of the way the search function works. Is that correct?’

  ‘Hypothetically.’

  ‘Which is your job, starting right now. You have to test that hypothesis. See if you can find any trace of a bigger file. Search under all the tags you can think of.’

  They got in the car and drove east on the freeway, back to Vineland Avenue, and then south, past the girl’s neighbourhood, to the coach diner. She was gone, inevitably, and so was the blonde waitress, and so were all the other dinner-time customers. Rush hour was definitely over. Late evening had started. There were three men in separate booths, drinking coffee, and there was a woman eating pie. The brunette waitress was talking to the counter man. Reacher and Turner stood at the door, and the waitress broke away and greeted them, and Reacher said, ‘I’m sorry, but I had to run before. There was an emergency. I didn’t pay for my cup of coffee.’

  The waitress said, ‘It was taken care of.’

  ‘Who by? Not the kid, I hope. That wouldn’t be right.’

  ‘It was taken care of,’ the woman said again.

  ‘It’s all good,’ the counter man said. Arthur. He was wiping his counter.

  ‘How much is a cup of coffee?’ Reacher asked him.

  ‘Two bucks and a penny,’ the guy said. ‘With tax.’

  ‘Good to know,’ Reacher said. He dug out two bills and a lone cent, and he put them on the counter, and he said, ‘To return the favour, to whoever it was. Very much appreciated. What goes around comes around.’

  ‘OK,’ the guy said. He left the money where it was.

  ‘She told me she came in often.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Samantha. The kid.’

  The guy nodded. ‘She’s pretty much a regular.’

  ‘Tell her I was sorry I had to run. I don’t want her to think I was rude.’

  ‘She’s a kid. What do you care?’

  ‘She thinks I work for the government. I don’t want to give her a negative impression. She’s a bright girl. Public service is something she could think about.’

  ‘Who do you work for really?’

  ‘The government,’ Reacher said. ‘But not the part she guessed.’

  ‘I’ll pass on the message.’

  ‘How long have you known her?’

  ‘Longer than I’ve known you. So if there’s a choice between her privacy and your questions, I guess I’m going to go with her privacy.’

  ‘I understand,’ Reacher said. ‘I would expect nothing less. But would you tell her one more thing for me?’

  ‘Which would be what?’

  ‘Tell her to remember what I said about the hexagons.’

  ‘The hexagons?’

  ‘The little hexagons,’ Reacher said. ‘Tell her it’s important.’

  They got back in the car and they started it up, but they didn’t go anywhere. They sat in the diner’s lot, their faces lit up pink and blue by the Art Deco neon, and Turner said, ‘Do you think she’s safe?’

  Reacher said, ‘She’s got the 75th MP and the FBI staring at her bedroom window all night long, both of them specifically on the alert for an intruder, which they expect to be me, except it won’t be, because I’m not going there, and neither is Shrago, in my opinion, because he knows what I know. Neither one of us could get in that house tonight. So, yes, I think she’s safe. Almost by accident.’

  ‘Then we should go find ourselves a place to stay. Got a preference?’

  ‘You’re the CO.’

  ‘I’d like to go to the Four Seasons. But we should keep radio silence on the credit cards, as far as our overnight location is concerned. So it’s cash only, which means motels only, which means we should go back to that hot-sheets place in Burbank, where we met Emily the hooker. All part of the authentic experience.’

  ‘Like driving a car on Mulholland Drive.’

  ‘Or shooting a man on Mulholland Drive. That’s in the movies too.’

  ‘You OK?’

  She said, ‘If I have a problem, you’ll be the first to know.’

  The motel was certainly authentic. It had a wire grille over the reception window, and cash was all it took. The room looked like it should feel cold and damp, but it was in Los Angeles, where nothing was cold and damp. Instead it felt brittle and papery, as if it had been baked too long. But it was functional, and not far from comfortable.

  The car was parked five rooms away. No place else to hide it. But safe enough, even if Shrago saw it. He would watch the room in front of it, and then he would break in, and find the wrong people, and assume the car was one step to the side of where it should have been, but left or right was a fifty-fifty chance, which meant if he called it wrong he would have committed three separate burglaries before he even laid eyes on the target, and suppose the car was two steps from where it should have been? How many rooms was that? His head would explode long before he got to five steps. His tiny ears would ping off into the far distance, like shrapnel.

  Reacher figured he had about four hours to sleep. He was sure Edmonds was busting a gut in Virginia, on East Coast time, gathering information, so she could call early and wake him up.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  EDMONDS’ FIRST CALL came in at two in the morning local time, which was five o’clock Eastern. Reacher and Turner both woke up. Reacher put the open phone between their pillows, and they rolled over forehead to forehead, so they could both hear. Edmonds said, ‘You asked me earlier, about Jason Kenneth Rickard, and a guy called Shrago. Got a pen?’

  Reacher said, ‘No.’

  ‘Then listen carefully. They’re the same as the first two. They’re all deployed with the same company at Fort Bragg. Three teams to a squad, and they’re a team. What that means exactly, I don’t know. Possibly this is skilled work, and they learn to rely on each other.’

  ‘And to keep their mutual secrets,’ Reacher said. ‘Tell me about Shrago.’

  ‘Ezra-none-Shrago, staff sergeant and team leader. Thirty-six years old. Hungarian grandparents. He’s been in the unit since the start of the war. He was in and out of Afghanistan for five years, and since then he’s been based at home, exclusively.’

  ‘What’s up with h
is ears?’

  ‘He was captured.’

  ‘In North Carolina or Afghanistan?’

  ‘By the Taliban. He was gone three days.’

  ‘Why didn’t they cut his head off?’

  ‘Probably for the same reason we didn’t shoot Emal Zadran. They have politicians too.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Five years ago. They gave him a permanent billet at home after that. And he hasn’t been back to Afghanistan since.’

  Reacher closed the phone, and Turner said, ‘I don’t like that at all. Why would he sell arms to the people who cut his ears off?’

  ‘He doesn’t make the deals. He’s just a cog in a machine. They don’t care what he thinks. They want his muscle, not his opinions.’

  ‘We should offer him immunity. We could turn him on a dime.’

  ‘He beat Moorcroft half to death.’

  ‘I said offer, not give. We could stab him in the back afterwards.’

  ‘So call him, and make the pitch. He’s still on speed dial, in Rickard’s phone.’

  Turner got up and found the right cell, and got back in bed and dialled, but the phone company told her the number she wanted was blocking her calls.

  ‘Efficient,’ she said. ‘They’re cleaning house as they go, minute by minute. No more Mr Rickard. Or Baldacci, or Lozano. All consigned to history.’

  ‘We’ll manage without Shrago’s input,’ Reacher said. ‘We’ll figure it out. Maybe in a dream, about five minutes from now.’

  She smiled, and said, ‘OK, goodnight again.’

  Juliet called Romeo, because some responsibilities were his, and he said, ‘Shrago has located their car. It’s at a motel south of the Burbank airport.’

  Romeo said, ‘But?’

  ‘Shrago feels it’s likely not in front of the right room, as a basic security measure. He’d have to check ten or a dozen, and he feels he won’t get away with that. One or two, maybe, but no more. And there’s no point in disabling the car, because they’d only rent another, on one of our own credit cards.’

  ‘Can’t he get to the girl?’

  ‘Not before she leaves the house again. It’s buttoned up tight.’

  Romeo said, ‘There’s activity in the legal archive. A lone user, with JAG access, searching for something. Which is unusual, at this time of night.’

  ‘Captain Edmonds?’

  ‘No, she’s in the HRC system. She just took a good look at Rickard and Shrago, about an hour ago. They’re closing in.’

  ‘On Shrago, perhaps. But not on us. There’s no direct link.’

  ‘The link is through Zadran. It’s like a neon sign. So tell Shrago to get out of Burbank. Tell him to wait on the girl. Tell him we’re counting on him, and tell him this mess has to be cleaned up first thing in the morning, whatever it takes.’

  Edmonds’ second call came at five in the morning local time, which was eight in the East. Reacher and Turner did the fore-head-to-forehead thing again, and Edmonds said, ‘OK, here’s an update. Treadmill time is over, and office hours are yet to begin, so all I have is rumour and gossip, but in D.C. that’s usually more accurate than anything else.’

  Reacher said, ‘And?’

  ‘I spoke to eight people either in or associated with the office of the Secretary.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Rodriguez or Juan Rodriguez or Dog or Big Dog is ringing no bells. No one recognizes the name, no one is aware of an active case, no one has passed a message to Major Sullivan, and no one is aware of a senior officer doing so either.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘But not definitive. Eight people is a small sample, and the feeling is a sixteen-year-old embarrassment wouldn’t be given much bandwidth. We’ll know more in an hour, when everyone is back in the office.’

  ‘Thank you, captain.’

  ‘Sleeping well?’

  ‘We’re in a motel that rents by the hour. We’re getting our money’s worth. Was Ezra Shrago offered counselling after the thing with his ears in Afghanistan?’

  ‘Psychiatric notes are eyes-only.’

  ‘But I’m sure you read them anyway.’

  ‘He was offered counselling, and he accepted, which was considered unusual. Most people seem to do it the army way, which is to bottle it up until they collapse with a nervous breakdown. But Shrago was a willing patient.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘As of three years after the incident he still retained strong feelings of anger, resentment, humiliation and hatred. The home deployment was pre-emptive, just as much as therapeutic. The feeling was he couldn’t be trusted among the native population. He was an atrocity waiting to happen. The notes say he hates the Taliban with a passion.’

  Afterwards Turner said, ‘Now I really don’t like it. Why would he sell weapons to people he hates?’

  ‘He’s a cog,’ Reacher said again. ‘He lives in North Carolina. He hasn’t seen a raghead in five years. He gets paid a lot of money.’

  ‘But he’s participating.’

  ‘He’s disassociating. Out of sight, out of mind.’

  Reacher left the phone where it was, between their pillows, and they went back to sleep.

  But not for long. Edmonds called for a third time forty minutes later, at a quarter to six in the morning, local time. She said, ‘Just for fun I went back through the Fort Bragg deployments, because I wanted to see how long they had all served together as a quartet. Shrago was in at the beginning, as I said, and then came Rickard, and then Lozano, and then Baldacci was the last in, which was four years ago, and they’ve been together ever since. Which makes them the oldest team in the unit, by a big margin. They’ve had plenty of time to get to know each other.’

  ‘OK,’ Reacher said.

  ‘But that’s not the real point. The real point is, four years ago that unit had a temporary commander. The previous guy fell down dead with a heart attack. It was the temporary commander who put Shrago’s team together. And guess who he was?’

  ‘Morgan,’ Reacher said.

  ‘You got it in one. He was a major then. He got his promotion soon after that, for no very obvious reason. His file is pretty thin. You could read it as a cure for insomnia.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind. But right now I sleep fine, apart from getting woken up by the phone.’

  ‘Likewise,’ Edmonds said.

  Reacher asked, ‘Who sent Morgan to Bragg four years ago? Who tells a guy like that where to go?’

  ‘I’m working on that now.’

  Reacher left the phone where it was, and they went back to sleep.

  They got a final half-hour, and then the fourth call of the morning came in, at a quarter after six local time, and it came direct from Major Sullivan at JAG. She said, ‘I just spent three hours in the archive, and I’m afraid your theory is a little off the mark. The Big Dog’s claim was not litigated sixteen years ago, nor has it been at any time since.’

  Reacher paused a beat.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Understood. Thanks for trying.’

  ‘Now do you want the good news?’

  ‘Is there any?’

  ‘It wasn’t litigated, but it was investigated very thoroughly.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was a fraud, from beginning to end.’

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  SULLIVAN SAID, ‘SOMEONE really went to bat for you. You must have been very well respected, major. It wasn’t a class action thing. There was no new policy regarding ambulance chasers. This was all about you. Someone wanted to clear your name.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The hard work was done by a captain from the 135th MP, name of Granger.’

  ‘Man or woman?’

  ‘A man, based on the West Coast. Don Granger.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘All his notes were copied to an MP two-star, name of Garber.’

  ‘Leon Garber,’ Reacher said. ‘He was my rabbi, more or less. I owe him a lot. Even more than I thought, clearly.’

>   ‘I guess so. He must have driven the whole thing. And you must have been his blue-eyed boy, because this was one hell of a full court press. But you owe Granger, too. He worked his butt off for you, and he saw something everyone else missed.’

  ‘What was the story?’

  ‘You guys generate a lot of complaints. Your branch’s standard operating procedure is play dumb and hope they go away, which they often do, but if they don’t, then they’re defended, with historically mixed results. That’s how it went for many years. Then the ones that went away started to cause a problem, ironically. You all had old unproven allegations on file. Most of them were obvious bullshit, quite rightly ignored, but some were marginal. And promotions boards saw them. And they started wondering about smoke without fire, and people weren’t getting ahead, and it became an issue. And the Big Dog’s complaint was worse than most. I guess General Garber felt it was too toxic to ignore, even if it might have gone away by itself. He didn’t want to leave it sitting there on the record. It was way too smoky.’

  ‘He could have asked me about it direct.’

  ‘Granger asked him why he didn’t.’

  ‘And what was the answer?’

  ‘Garber thought you might have done it. But he didn’t want to hear it direct.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He thought you might have gotten upset at the thought of SAWs on the streets of Los Angeles.’

  ‘That was the LAPD’s problem, not mine. All I wanted was a name.’

  ‘Which you got, and he didn’t really see how else you could have gotten it.’

  ‘He didn’t talk to me afterwards, either.’

  ‘He was afraid you’d stop by and put a bullet in the lawyer’s head.’

  ‘I might have.’

  ‘Then Garber was a wise man. His strategy was immaculate. He put Granger on it, and the first thing Granger didn’t like was the Big Dog, and the second thing he didn’t like was the lawyer. But there were no cracks anywhere, and he knew you had been with the guy moments before he was beaten, and the affidavit was what it was, so he was stuck. He came up with the same thing you did, which was some other dude did it, or dudes, maybe a delegation sent over by a disgruntled customer, which in that context meant a gang, either Latino like Rodriguez or black, but he didn’t make any progress on his own. So next he went to the LAPD, but the cops had nothing to offer, either. Which Granger didn’t necessarily regard as definitive, because at the relevant time the cops had been up to their eyes in racial sensitivity issues, like the LAPD often was back then, and they were nervous about discussing gangs with a stranger, in case the stranger was really a journalist who believed gang issues were code words for racial insensitivity. So Granger went back to the gang idea on his own, and he checked the record for who had been armed and dangerous at the time, as a kind of starting point, and he found no one had been armed and dangerous at the time. There was a seventy-two-hour period without a single gang crime reported anywhere. So initially Granger concluded gangs were on the wane in LA, and he better look elsewhere, but he had no luck, and Garber was ready to pull him out. Then Granger saw what he was missing.’