Black Jack

by Diane Capri

  He wondered how long it would take them to find Leonard’s body. Hard to guess. It was well past four o’clock in the morning now. In the sleepy upscale town of Center Line, the cleaning crew might have left for the night before the movie ended. Maybe no one would find him before morning.

  Reed shrugged. Seven years too late for Leonard Kryl’s victims, but justice had finally been served. Better late than never.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Saturday, January 29

  3:05 a.m.

  New York City, New York

  Kim glanced at her watch. She’d burned more time than she’d expected, but she had a few more minutes to kill. She needed an internet connection that might not be noticed immediately.

  Her personal equipment had access to everything she needed, but it was in her room. If she logged on from there, the Boss could easily track her laptop and her cell phone. Which meant he’d know she was awake and active. She wasn’t ready for that just yet. Nor did she want to talk to him at the moment.

  She checked the hotel’s directory in the elevator lobby. The amenities listed on the conference floor included a business center, which would only have access to public information. She shrugged. Better than nothing.

  She followed the map and found the room exactly where the directory indicated. Travelers from all over the world stayed here and might have been connecting across multiple time zones. But she got lucky. Through the glass wall, she saw the business center was unoccupied.

  Two small desks and two chairs snugged against the far wall. Each desk was outfitted with a computer and a house phone. Mounted between the desks were two shelves. One contained a ream of paper, paperclips, a stapler, and a pair of scissors. The other held a multi-function printer, copier, scanner.

  Her key card could be traced through the hotel’s security system. At this hour of the morning, for this particular room that was made available twenty-four-seven for hotel guests to use, only an extremely dedicated security officer would bother to monitor it constantly. The other option was to break in, which was more likely to trigger an alarm. She crossed her fingers for luck and used her key card to enter.

  Inside, she chose the chair at the first computer and touched the spacebar on the keyboard. The black screen came awake. The hotel logo floated around on the display until she hit the spacebar again. A familiar search engine came up.

  She didn’t expect to find much, but all she wanted was a place to start unraveling the mystery of Jodie Jacob. She began with a quick name search for Leon Garber because he had been a public figure, of sorts.

  She found his obituary right away, which contained a long list of professional accomplishments. He’d died at the age of sixty-four. Survived by a daughter, Jodie Garber Jacob.

  Followed by the first solid lead. Jodie Jacob worked as a lawyer with the Spencer Gutman firm in Manhattan. Brice hadn’t mentioned that.

  Kim grinned. She’d caught a break. Jodie Jacob was not only a J.D., but she was also a New York lawyer.

  Lawyers were some of the most heavily regulated humans on the planet. For lawyers with an active legal practice, anonymity was not an option.

  Jacob was admitted to the bar in New York. She should be listed in multiple databases.

  Which meant at a minimum that basic information like business address and phone number, date of birth, law license number, and so forth, should be findable with a few keystrokes. With luck, she’d find some photos, too.

  Her optimism was short-lived.

  She tried two dozen different ways to locate anything current on Jodie Jacob without success. Every result her searches returned was at least five years old. For some reason, current information on Jodie Jacob was simply not where it should be.

  The old entries were puff pieces, mostly. Circulated by her law firm to enhance the firm’s reputation. Jacob’s pro bono work on high profile criminal cases was one of the humble brags that popped up several times.

  The most notorious client she defended was a young nurse accused of neglecting her patient. The baby died. The puff piece made it sound like Jacob was Clarence Darrow and Atticus Finch combined, working against the full power of the government on behalf of the wrongly accused. Jacob tried valiantly to win a not guilty verdict for the nurse, but the best she could do was a reduced sentence, which was touted as a miracle in itself.

  Odd that nothing more recent popped, though. Kim tried a few esoteric searches in public tax records and real estate listings and the like. No luck.

  She checked the time on the computer’s clock and finally gave up. She’d need secure connections and better databases to do the job properly, and she couldn’t reach those sources on a public computer with limited internet access.

  She picked up her cold coffee and headed upstairs in the elevator. She turned off the burner cell and when she arrived on her floor, stashed the phone in the dirt behind a big plant in the elevator lobby.

  Inside her room, she turned the lights down to interfere with any interior surveillance. It was a risk to come back here. But she needed a quick shower and clean clothes.

  Her travel bag and laptop case were in the closet where the porter had left them.

  She retrieved her personal cell phone and the padded manila envelope from her bag and tossed them onto the bed. The envelope wasn’t vibrating yet, which could be a good sign. Maybe the Boss had assumed she was sleeping because both of those phones never left the room after the porter brought them up.

  She glanced at the clock. Finlay would be free soon. She picked up the house phone, called room service, and ordered breakfast.

  She hurried into the bathroom and turned on the shower and ducked into the steamy water. She dressed in jeans and a heavier sweater, and restyled her long, black hair into the usual neat, low chignon at the base of her neck.

  She checked herself in the mirror. The dark circles under her eyes revealed her lack of sleep. She dabbed concealer to cover them as well as possible. Otherwise, she thought, she didn’t look too bad, considering.

  She donned the hotel robe over her clothes and tied the wrap belt in a loose square knot around her waist, just in case anyone could see her. She turned on the television to create background noise.

  A solid knock on the door came ten minutes later. She peered through the peephole. A waiter dressed in a Grand Hyatt uniform, pushing a cart, stood in the hallway. She opened the door, and he came inside.

  “Good morning, Ms. Otto. Here’s your newspaper,” he said quietly as if someone in the room might still be sleeping. He handed her a copy of the thin Saturday edition of The New York Times.

  “Thanks,” she whispered.

  He set up the table and asked her to sign the delivery receipt. She added a generous tip.

  She held the door open for him as he left.

  When he turned the corner at the end of the hallway, Kim slipped out behind him and let the door close softly, but loud enough for listening ears to hear. For a while, at least, the breakfast and the television and the two phones emitting tracking signals should be enough to satisfy watchers that she was still in her room.

  She dodged the hallway surveillance cameras, grabbed the burner phone from the planter, and rode down in the service elevator where she slipped out of the bathrobe and dropped it onto the floor.

  In the kitchen, she slipped through the back door into the alley. She hurried to the street and flagged down a cab.

  She gave the driver the address of Finlay’s hotel and relaxed against the back seat for the short ride.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Saturday, January 29

  5:30 a.m.

  New York City, New York

  Kim waited less than five minutes in a small conference room inside the spacious midtown hotel’s penthouse suite. She heard footsteps in the hallway. Lamont Finlay, Ph.D., Special Assistant to the President for Strategy, pushed the door open and crossed the threshold as if he owned the room and everything in it.

  Even before six o’clock in
the morning, his appearance was impeccably perfect. He stood tall and straight, solid as an oak tree. Clean-shaven. Well dressed. Everything polished to high gloss. She’d seen him several times on a moment’s notice at all hours. Every time, he looked like royalty, and his vibe was intimidating as hell.

  “Good morning, Agent Otto.” His voice was deep and resonant. He’d been raised in Boston and educated at Harvard. The accent was faint after all these years, but she could hear it. “Agent Gaspar still on medical leave, or is he unaware that you’re here?”

  She smiled. Both guesses were dead on. His information sources were always precise. Not for the first time, she wondered why he continued such close watch on her activities. He was a man who kept his own secrets. She hoped that meant he would keep hers. Gaspar disagreed.

  After countless arguments, Gaspar remained wary of Finlay, and Kim remained undecided. Was he friend or foe? Wiser to assume the worst, even though he had proven helpful at several critical moments.

  So far, he’d been willing to assist her when no one else would. For that alone, she took risks with Finlay that Gaspar regularly disapproved.

  Bottom line? Finlay held power she couldn’t otherwise access. His relationship with the Boss was as ambiguous as everything else about him, but her instincts said she was better served with Finlay in her corner. Until he did something to change her mind.

  “You know Alan Deerfield?”

  Finlay’s face remained impassive. “Assistant Director, FBI New York Field Office. In the line of succession to become Director of the FBI.”

  Kim nodded. “He wants Reacher.”

  “Why?”

  “I was hoping you’d know the answer to that question.”

  “Why would I?” Finlay poured coffee in a china cup from the carafe on the fully stocked sideboard and carried the saucer to the sofa.

  Kim did the same and settled in a chair across from him. “Do you know anything about a woman named Jodie Jacob?”

  “Should I?” Finlay shook his head slowly as if he might be thinking about Kim’s question.

  “How about Leon Garber? U.S. Army General. Five stars. Retired. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “Should it?”

  Her internal lie detector accepted his benign non-answers, and she moved on.

  “Jodie Jacob is Leon Garber’s daughter. Apparently, Garber was a cross between a mentor and a role model for Reacher in the Army.”

  “I’ve never met Garber or Jacob as far as I know,” Finlay said. “Remember, I only met Reacher in Margrave, six months after he left Uncle Sam’s employ.”

  Kim believed him. Mainly because his eye didn’t flick the way it did when he lied to her. “Garber died of a heart attack a few years ago. Deerfield says Reacher and Jodie were lovers after Garber died.”

  “Sounds like Reacher.” Finlay shrugged.

  “How so?”

  “The officer and a gentleman thing.” Finlay relaxed against the sofa, one arm resting across the back. “Reacher would have considered it disrespectful to date a superior officer’s daughter. If he felt any kind of respect for Garber, he definitely wouldn’t have made a move on Garber’s kid.”

  Kim nodded. What he said made sense for the military culture. Whether those cultural norms had motivated Reacher back in the day was a whole different question.

  “Deerfield says Reacher was in love with Jacob. He says Jacob left Reacher to take a job in Europe and Reacher wasn’t okay with that. He says Reacher took the news badly.”

  “Sounds plausible.” Finlay shrugged again. “Couples break up. Happens all the time. I gather this is relevant to why you’re here?”

  She leaned forward to watch carefully for the telltale flick of his right eyelid she’d failed to see when she’d first met him. The flick that revealed his lies. Hadn’t happened so far during this conversation.

  She kept going. “It’s possible that Jodie Jacob is dead. Murdered.”

  He nodded as if the possibility was reasonable. No flick. “What else?”

  Kim took a deep breath. “Deerfield believes that Reacher killed her.”

  “What do you believe?” He never operated from mere curiosity. Finlay’s habit was to ask questions with a purpose. The technique had the effect of suggesting that he knew everything relevant already, even when he didn’t say so. Most of the time, he knew.

  “The body resembles photographs I’ve seen of Jodie Jacob. Could be her. Also, Jacob is missing, Deerfield says. She’s not where she should be, and he can’t find her. But that doesn’t mean this victim is her, or that she’s dead, or that Reacher killed her.” She paused in case he wanted to offer something brilliant. When he didn’t, she said, “The first step is to identify the body, which could take a while.”

  “You’re wondering why Deerfield can’t simply wait for the ID.” Finlay had followed her logic. She didn’t know Reacher, though. Finlay did. “You’re asking whether Deerfield could be right about Reacher killing her. Or, if Reacher loved this woman, and valued his relationship with her father, and she’s been murdered, whether he may want to deal with the killer himself.”

  “Partially,” Kim replied.

  “What else?” Finlay asked.

  “I know this might sound a little crazy.” She took a deep breath and told him what she came here to say. “I suspect Reacher’s being set up. I suspect we’re all being set up. You, me, Gaspar. Maybe even Cooper. But I don’t know why. Or how. Or what to do about it. I believe Reacher’s at the center of this, though. Somehow.”

  Finlay said nothing for a good, long time. Kim couldn’t guess where his mind was going, but she sensed she should let him work his own way through.

  After a while, he finished his coffee and placed the cup and saucer on the low table. “What is it that you want from me?”

  Good question. “Deerfield had me sent here. He’s assigned me to find Reacher. He’s given me the full resources of the Bureau to do the job. But it feels like he has a hidden agenda, like he’s trying to lure Reacher back to New York.”

  Finlay smiled. “According to Gaspar, I have a hidden agenda where you are concerned. Cooper, too.”

  Kim smiled back. “And Gaspar’s not wrong, is he?”

  “Touché, Agent Otto.” Finlay threw his head back and laughed. But he offered no answer to the question. “Again, what do you want me to do?”

  Still a good question. What could he do?

  The precise nature of Finlay’s job was nowhere described. Which was more than enough to shove her internal threat-level against the top of the red zone and hold it there. But it made him more valuable to her, too.

  He’d been selected by the highest-ranking civilian responsible for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and placed one heartbeat away from the U.S. Commander in Chief. No watchdog kept tabs on him. He reported seldom and only through verbal briefings. No paper trail so much as named the missions he’d undertaken.

  Everything she’d learned about Finlay marked him as dangerous. He deployed unspecified unique skills on unidentified matters with unacknowledged results.

  All of which meant that he could do anything she needed. He could squash Deerfield like a bug, among a long list of possibilities. What did she want him to do?

  No flashes of brilliance popped into her head. She didn’t know how best to proceed, and that was the problem.

  She went with her gut. “Contact Reacher. Tell him what’s going on. Tell him not to take the bait. To stay out of New York until this gets resolved. Whatever it is.”

  Finlay’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s what you want? You’ve been digging around in Reacher’s background for weeks. That’s your one official job. If he shows up, you can ask him your questions. Wrap up your SPTF assignment and tie a bow around it and hand it to Cooper. You can move on. Why don’t you want that to happen now when Deerfield is handing it to you on a silver platter?”

  “That’s not what you want to happen, is it?” Kim narrowed her eyes. “You don’t want
me to find Reacher, and you never have.”

  “We’re not talking about me.” Finlay shrugged, but not even the briefest flick of his right eyelid. “How is Reacher walking into Deerfield’s lair a bad outcome for you?”

  “Call it instinct or whatever you want. I know it sounds lame.” Kim shook her head slowly. “But if Deerfield pulls this off, whatever his agenda is, things won’t turn out well for you or me or Cooper. Probably won’t go well for Reacher, either.”

  “Seems likely,” Finlay said.

  She nodded. “I need time to figure out what’s really going on and deal with it. Before Reacher steps in and makes matters worse.”

  “You know I can’t contact Reacher. I’ve told you that before.” She gave him the side-eye, and Finlay mocked genuine hurt feelings. “You don’t believe me?”

  Kim said nothing. The truth was that she didn’t know whether to believe him or not. The question and the answer were irrelevant. Finlay’s brand of assistance was the only chance she had.

  If the Boss wanted to stop Deerfield, he’d have done it already. He didn’t. Which meant that even with the most powerful player in the FBI on her side, Finlay was her best weapon. He had resources well beyond anything she could muster quietly. Every other option she’d considered would raise all sorts of red flags in several quarters, particularly in the short term.

  “Tell me something about the murder case that would make Reacher back off, assuming I can find him,” Finlay said, clasping his hands together loosely. Still relaxed. Unruffled.

  “Deerfield says Reacher helped the FBI on a serial killer case a few years back. The case had some unusual features, and it went cold after they brought Reacher in.” She still couldn’t believe that story. But she hadn’t debunked it yet, either.

  If Finlay felt any astonishment or even mild curiosity about Reacher working with the FBI, he didn’t show it.

  “Serial killer cases always have unusual features of one kind or another. Serial killers are sick puppies. That’s why they do what they do,” Finlay said with the kind of assurance every cop who’s worked such cases knew. “What kind of twisted behaviors were involved in the old case?”