Black Jack

by Diane Capri

  Kim nodded, waiting. No questions yet.

  Perspiration popped out on his upper lip. “The utilities have been off since then, according to records.”

  He paused a beat or two, probably hoping she’d signal his next move. She sipped her coffee, thinking about how that liquid got into the tub. Water wouldn’t run without a pump, and pumps required electricity. Unless the body had been there when the utilities were turned off, how did whatever the liquid was get there?

  “We’ve been trying to find the real estate agent, but the storm’s been getting in the way all day today.” Another pause. More perspiration, on his forehead this time.

  She’d learned what she’d wanted to know. He wasn’t authorized to read her into anything significant on the situation. He was a flunky, following orders. Nothing more. His boss was probably an asshole who would make his life miserable if he colored outside the lines, too.

  She’d been on the receiving end of that kind of relationship. So she threw him a bone. “What kind of work does the owner do?”

  He looked so relieved that she almost laughed. “We don’t know yet.”

  “What’s his name?”

  He glanced down at the menu, avoiding eye contact. “Don’t know that yet, either.”

  “So the woman in the bathtub is the guy’s wife?”

  His eyebrows shot up, and he gaped at her. “What? Why would you ask that?”

  She shrugged. “Seemed reasonable. Sorry for the interruption. Go on.”

  He paused, maybe trying to think up something safe to say. “At this point, we don’t know who the woman is.”

  “But you do have a guess, don’t you?” Kim finished the first mug of coffee and poured a second. “And that’s got something to do with how you knew she was in that bathtub. Also has something to do with why I’m sitting here.”

  “What?” His surprised look was almost comical by now. If she had any chance of getting intel from this guy before she took the situation up with his boss, he’d need to relax a little.

  She softened her tone and explained the simple logic quickly. “You didn’t discover the body accidentally. The house has been abandoned since well before the last half-dozen snow falls. All the windows were covered, so you didn’t just happen to see inside. There were only two sets of tracks on the driveway, identical tires, depth, and so on. Both caused by the two SUVs we drove, which means no one else has been going in and out. That body might have stayed there undiscovered until spring when the temperature warmed up, and someone smelled the decomp. But you found her today, from the way this all went down. Only two ways that could have happened. Either you got a tip and chased it down. Or you already knew she was in there.”

  His eyes had widened as she’d laid it all out as if she was a genius or something. Which made her suspicious. Brice couldn’t possibly be that thick. He’d never have made it into the FBI with a sub-normal IQ unless his grandpa was J. Edgar Hoover or something. Why was he pretending to be a clueless idiot?

  He cleared his throat. “We were watching the house. We saw her go inside ten days ago. We didn’t see her come out. So we got worried.”

  Kim cocked her head. “That’s a lot of budget and personnel. Around the clock surveillance on an empty house in the middle of nowhere for weeks is a big spend. Can’t be authorized by an agent at your level. What’s so important about that house to justify all of that cost to the bean counters?”

  He sat bolt upright. His face turned bright red and then a funky blue. His eyes bulged. His mouth opened and closed like a dying fish.

  His reaction to the question was almost comical. He looked like he’d just swallowed his tongue.

  Kim wasn’t worried. He shouldn’t die of asphyxiation for about three to five minutes, even if he had actually swallowed his tongue. She had plenty of time. Probably.

  The waitress saved him after only a second or two. She brought the food along with a fresh pot of coffee. She didn’t hang around for chitchat.

  The interruption offered Brice a chance to compose himself. When the waitress moved away, he dug into his burger like a man who hadn’t eaten in days.

  Kim’s appetite wasn’t so keen. She ate a couple of bites of the toast, considering the possibilities. Nothing within the realm of standard FBI policy and protocols fit the few facts she knew.

  One possibility remained.

  Brice’s operation at the house could be a black ops assignment. The FBI engaged in plenty of those these days. She should know. Her Reacher case was such a project.

  If this were a black ops assignment, the budget and personnel outlay wouldn’t have gone up the regular chain of command. Bean counters might not have been given the chance to kill it. Means and methods would have little to no supervision or formal consequences attached to them.

  Not many FBI bosses had the power to authorize off budget black ops. She knew of only a handful who could officially approve those.

  But there were black ops so deep that no one ever knew about them. Or where those ops originated or who authorized them. When black ops like that were discovered, usually years or even decades later, the truth was either buried so deep no one could find it, or already destroyed.

  Which was when the connection slipped into place with a jolt to her gut and then traveled up like a Taser charge to her brain. Her personal threat meter rose from a comfortable yellow to full red alert.

  Brice wasn’t the one sitting at the table who was too thick to comprehend the obvious. Kim was. She chuckled wryly to herself, not at all amused.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Friday, January 28

  5:50 p.m.

  Newburgh, New York

  As if he’d noticed her epiphany, Brice swallowed a big mouthful of burger and washed it down with the last of the coffee in his mug. To his credit, he simply picked up where the conversation had left off.

  “Good burgers here. You should try one next time,” he said as if they might have more opportunities to dine together in the future. “As for the stakeout, desperate times call for desperate measures, and all that, I guess. We’ve got a case we can’t solve, and there’s a very old, very tenuous connection to the house. We were hoping for a break, even a thin one.”

  “When she went into the house, that wasn’t the break you were hoping to get.”

  Brice shook his head. “But we weren’t unhappy about it, either. Which is why we didn’t just walk up and ring the doorbell.”

  “I’m not following you.” At least, not exactly.

  “The house once belonged to an Army general. Leon Garber. Died a few years ago.” He thumped the center of his chest with the flat of his fist. “Bad ticker. Did you know him?”

  “Should I have?” Kim shook her head. She hadn’t known Garber, but she’d seen his name several times in the past ninety days. In Reacher’s Army files. But everything to do with the Reacher assignment was strictly under the radar, by orders from the very top of the FBI food chain. Her stomach was acting like a terrified jackrabbit.

  “Garber had a daughter. She was divorced at the time he died, different last name. A lawyer. Jodie Jacob. Do you know her?” He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and thumbed through a few photos until he found the one he wanted. He passed the phone over to Kim. “That’s a few years old.”

  Kim studied the photo. Pretty woman. Some men would say beautiful, probably. Blonde, blue-eyed, pale skin, fine bones. Thin enough to make a living on the Paris fashion runways. Which is to say practically death-eating-a-cracker skinny. She looked about thirty years old in the photo. She’d be mid-thirties or so now.

  “Sorry. I don’t know her. Never heard the name before.” All true. Jodie Jacob’s name appeared nowhere in the Reacher files the Boss had provided to her. Nor had she seen the name anywhere else. She shook her head and handed his phone back. “You think she’s the woman in the tub?”

  He shrugged. “Possible. She’s got a connection to the house. And a definite resemblance between that photo of Jaco
b and the body, don’t you think?”

  “Hard to say, even given the minimal level of decomp. All I saw was her head and face. The rest of her body was submerged in green goop. Forensics should be able to answer that, though.” The omelet was way too greasy to eat. Her panicked stomach wouldn’t accept it now. Even the aroma was nauseating.

  Kim pushed the plate aside and munched another piece of toast to soak up the acid in her gut. “If Jodie Jacob’s alive, she’s reachable. Lawyers are generally pretty easy to find.”

  Brice grinned, showing average teeth, probably straightened by orthodontia as a teen. “Yeah. It’s getting rid of lawyers that’s the problem, right?”

  “You know I’m a lawyer, right?” She frowned, just to mess with him.

  The grin fell instantly from his face. “Oh. Uh, no. I didn’t know. Sorry. No offense intended.”

  He’d rolled over. No fight in him. Too easy to win. “Just kidding, Brice.”

  Brice frowned, slightly confused. “You’re not a lawyer?”

  “I am a lawyer. But I’m not offended. No worries.” She smiled and shook her head, for good measure. This guy had no talent for witty repartee. God, he was boring.

  She missed jousting with Gaspar. He had a quick rejoinder for everything she tossed at him. The verbal warfare kept them both alert and focused. She wondered what he’d make of Brice and the whole situation here.

  Gaspar was recovering well, he’d said when she’d called him at home in Miami yesterday. But only thirteen days ago he’d suffered a gunshot wound. A glancing blow, but the injury to his already weak and damaged right leg was healing slower than he’d hoped. He wouldn’t be back on the job for a while yet.

  Which wasn’t much of a problem since the Reacher case had gone quiet right after the Palm Beach situation, anyway. For the past week, she’d been back in Detroit, but the work she’d loved for years before she’d been called out on the hunt for Reacher all of a sudden felt dull and lifeless.

  She’d never thought of herself as an adrenaline junkie, but maybe she was.

  Brice wiped three fries in a pool of ketchup with his fingers before popping them in his mouth. “Jacob was a partner in a big Manhattan law firm. A few years ago, she was transferred to Europe. We haven’t had any luck locating her so far.”

  “Which is one reason you’re thinking that’s her in the tub.”

  “Plus the connection she had to the house at one time. I mean, her father owned the place. If anybody described the body in the tub, that description could match Jacob. Even the Jacob photo I showed you looks like the dead woman. It’s a reasonable hypothesis.” He seemed a bit defensive. Maybe the Jacob theory was something he’d come up with on his own.

  “Why did you go into the house today?”

  “What?” His eyes widened as if the question was startling. This time, the wide-eyed act didn’t fool her. He was stalling.

  “You said you’d been watching the house, and the woman went in ten days ago. You never saw her come out, I gather. So why did you go in there today instead of, say, yesterday or last week or tomorrow?”

  “I’m, uh, not exactly sure. My boss told me to go in and check around. Maybe he was tired of waiting. Or maybe he got a tip or something.” Brice shrugged. “You can ask him. He wants to see us when we’re done here.”

  “Who’s your boss?”

  “Alan Deerfield. Assistant Director of the New York Field Office. Do you know him?”

  “By reputation only.” Kim sat back in the booth and sipped her coffee. “People say he’s a hard-ass. Pugnacious. Should have been promoted years ago, but his attitude held him back. That true?”

  Brice grinned and dipped his head in what she interpreted as tentative acquiescence. “There’s some support for that view, I guess.”

  Well, that’s just swell. The last thing she needed was some jerk in Manhattan on her back. She already had more of those types to deal with than she needed.

  Kim finished the coffee and returned the empty mug to the table. “Why call me in on this? I don’t have any particular expertise that would be helpful here. Could be a suicide or some clever murder. Nothing suggests the body is anything other than a matter for the local PD. Not yet, anyway. Even if it’s an FBI case, New York has one of the most competent teams in the country. Deerfield must know that, and he’s proud of it, too, I’ll bet. So why call me?”

  “He’ll tell you all about that when we see him.”

  Before she had a chance to press further, his phone vibrated on the table beside his plate. He picked up the call. “Uh, huh… I see… Okay. Who is it? Thanks.”

  He disconnected and drained the last of his coffee. “The body’s been found. The local detective assigned to the case is on the scene. The electricity’s turned on.”

  Kim said nothing.

  “Let’s go see what we can find out.” He stood up and tossed two twenty-dollar bills on the table. “Come on. I know you want another look at that crime scene.”

  “You think so? Brice, you don’t know me at all. But trust me when I say that I don’t appreciate being jerked around.” Kim made no move to leave her seat. “Tell me why I’m here. Otherwise, I’m done.”

  He was torn, she could tell. He frowned. He looked down. He cocked his head.

  “I’ll handle Deerfield if you need me to cover for you,” she said. “But I’m going nowhere with you until I know what the hell is going on.”

  He sat down again and cleared his throat, still frowning. He jiggled his leg under the table nervously.

  She could feel the vibrations.

  Brice eventually came to the only possible solution. But he was miserable about it. “It’s complicated.”

  Kim hid her smile behind her hand and coughed to cover her laughter. What a wuss.

  “You been to the DMV lately?” His puzzled expression would have been funny if he wasn’t so dense. Kim shrugged, giving him a mental time limit to make up his mind. She tired of waiting. “Everything is complicated, Brice. We just suck it up and do what we need to do. What’s it going to be? You tell me what’s going on or I’m leaving. Your choice.”

  He cocked his head and frowned, perhaps considering how much trouble he’d be in if she didn’t go back to the Garber house. His bouncing leg jiggled the whole table now.

  After another minute, he’d run out of alternatives, yet continued to resist the only choice available.

  As her mother often said, when there’s only one choice, it’s the right choice.

  Kim fished her phone out of her pocket. She opened an app and ordered a car. It would take a while for the limo service to get here, given the driving conditions. She’d need more coffee. She raised her hand to flag the waitress over.

  “I could simply pick you up and toss you into the SUV,” Brice said like he’d seriously thought that one through.

  “You’d want to make damn sure you succeed on the first attempt,” she said reasonably. Better men than Houston Brice had tried to coerce her. They always regretted the effort.

  He narrowed his eyes and lifted his chin, like a defiant teenager. “You’re every bit as impossible as they say you are.”

  “So I’ve been told,” she replied. The waitress arrived with another pot of coffee, poured two fresh cups, and left again. “Just leave my bags inside the door over there on your way out.”

  He ran a hand through his hair in frustration and finally gave up. He took a deep breath. “We requested you because you have information about a possible witness.”

  “A possible witness in this case? I don’t see how. I didn’t even know the case existed until I walked into that bathroom.” She cocked her head. “Who is this witness, anyway?”

  “Guy’s name is Jack Reacher.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Friday, January 28

  6:40 p.m.

  Newburgh, New York

  Her entire body tensed like a giant bungee cord at the bottom of a free fall. She rapidly processed the known facts.

 
No way Brice could have made the connection from Garber to Reacher and then to her.

  A complete stranger like Brice starting with Garber and possibly connecting him to Reacher and then definitely connecting Reacher to her was a monstrous level of terrifying.

  Because if Brice could do it, others could, too.

  Garber had retired after decades of military service. He had connections to every Army officer that had ever served during those decades.

  Reacher was one officer among thousands.

  Parsing through all those names, locating known associates, even with an entire team of agents, would have taken Brice months, if not years.

  Which meant that Garber’s name alone, even accompanied by a thorough FBI background check, could not have sent Brice or Deerfield searching for her. At least, not so quickly.

  But even if Brice had been lucky and found records suggesting Reacher could somehow be a good lead for whatever he was doing with Garber, the connection to Kim didn’t exist in any records anywhere. Never had.

  Her Special Personnel Task Force background investigation on Reacher was deep black ops. Not an approved undercover operation, which would have produced a paper trail, but totally off the books.

  No eyes on the operation at all. Not even high-security clearance personnel knew about it.

  No one even had a good reason to look at her, the SPTF search, or Reacher.

  She and Gaspar had been running the job independently, supervised only by the Boss, who was several levels above any Assistant Director in any FBI field office, including New York.

  The Boss would never have read anyone at that level into this particular operation.

  Not in a million years.

  Yet, Deerfield knew.

  Because Brice knew, and he could only have been sitting on that house and now across the table from her like a petrified deer caught in the headlights of an eighteen-wheeler, if Deerfield had told him.