Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  Eileen Hutton got up from Alex Rodin’s deposition table and shook hands all around. Then she stepped out to the corridor and came face-to-face with a guy she assumed was the cop called Emerson. The one Reacher had warned her about. He confirmed it by handing her a card with his name on it.

  “Can we talk?” he asked.

  “About what?” she asked back.

  “About Jack Reacher,” Emerson said.

  “What about him?”

  “You know him, am I right?”

  “I knew him fourteen years ago.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Fourteen years ago,” she said. “We were in Kuwait together. Then he shipped out somewhere. Or I did. I can’t remember.”

  “You didn’t see him today?”

  “He’s in Indiana?”

  “He’s in town. Right here, right now.”

  “Small world.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “I flew into Indianapolis and rented a car.”

  “Staying overnight?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Where?”

  “The Marriott.”

  “Reacher killed a girl last night.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He’s our only suspect.”

  “That would be very unlike him.”

  “Call me if you see him. The station house number is on my card. And my direct extension. And my cell phone.”

  “Why would I see him?”

  “Like you said, it’s a small world.”

  ______

  A police black-and-white crawled north through the building rush hour traffic. Past the gun store. Past the barbershop. Any Style $7. Then it eased right and turned into the motor court. The cop in the passenger seat got out and walked to the office. Gave the clerk a flyer. Laid it flat on the counter and swiveled it around and slid it across.

  “Call us if this guy shows up, OK?” the cop said.

  “He’s already here,” the clerk said. “But his name’s Heffner, not Reacher. I put him in room eight, last night.”

  The cop stood still. “Is he in there now?”

  “I don’t know. He’s come and gone a few times.”

  “How long did he book for?”

  “He paid one night. But he didn’t give the key back yet.”

  “So he’s planning to be here again tonight.”

  “I guess.”

  “Unless he’s already here.”

  “Unless,” the clerk said.

  The cop stepped back to the office door. Signaled his partner. His partner shut the motor down and locked the car and walked over.

  “Room eight, false name,” the first cop said.

  “In there now?” his partner asked.

  “We don’t know.”

  “So let’s find out.”

  They took the clerk with them. They made him stand well back. They drew their weapons and knocked on room eight’s door.

  No response.

  They knocked again.

  No response.

  “Got a master key?” the first cop asked.

  The clerk handed him a key. The cop put it in the lock gently, one-handed. Turned it slowly. Opened the door a half inch and paused and then smashed it all the way open and stepped inside. His partner stepped in right behind him. Their guns traced left and right and up and down, fast and random and tense.

  The room was empty.

  Nothing in there at all, except a forlorn little sequence of bathroom items lined up on a shelf above the sink. A new pack of throwaway razors, open, one used. A new can of shaving foam, with dried bubbles around the nozzle. A new tube of toothpaste, twice squeezed.

  “This guy travels light,” the first cop said.

  “But he hasn’t checked out,” his partner said. “That’s for sure. Which means he’s coming back.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Reacher was falling asleep on the bed in room 310 at the Marriott Suites. He was on his back, like a dead man. He and Hutton had talked so long in the coffee shop that she had almost been late for her appointment. She had checked her watch at five to four and had thrust her key card at him and asked him to dump her bag in her room. Then she had run straight out to the street. He guessed he was supposed to leave her card at the desk afterward. But he didn’t. He didn’t have anywhere he needed to be. Not right then. So he just parked the bag and stayed inside.

  He wasn’t crazy about room 310, all things considered. It was on the third floor, which made the window a difficult escape route. Room eight at the motor court had been better. Much better. Ground floor, a tangled old neighborhood, it gave a guy a sporting chance. Open the window, step out, look for an alley, or a door, or another window. That was good. This was bad. He was three floors up. A long climb. And he wasn’t even sure if the Marriott’s windows opened at all. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe the main office lawyers had been worried about liability. Maybe they had foreseen a steady deluge of infants raining down on the parking lot blacktop. Or maybe it was a question of economies of scale. Maybe the cost of hinges and handles outweighed a little extra on the air-conditioning bill. Whatever, it wasn’t a great room to be in. Not by any measure. Not for the long term.

  But it was OK for the short term. So he closed his eyes and drifted away. Sleep when you can, because you never know when you’re going to sleep again. That was the old army rule.

  Emerson’s plan was pretty straightforward. He put Donna Bianca in room seven. Told the two patrolmen to stash their car three streets away and walk back and wait in room nine. He put a car two streets behind the motor court, and another four blocks north, where the auto dealers were, and another two blocks south. He told the clerk to stay awake and watch through the window and call Bianca in room seven as soon as he saw the guy he knew as Heffner walk in.

  Eileen Hutton got back to the Marriott at four-thirty. There was no key card waiting for her at the desk. No message. So she went up in the elevator and followed the arrows to room 310 and knocked on the door. There was a short pause and then the door opened and Reacher let her in.

  “How’s my room?” she asked.

  “The bed’s comfortable,” he said.

  “I’m supposed to call Emerson if I see you,” she said.

  “Are you going to?”

  “No.”

  “Perjury and harboring a fugitive,” he said. “All in one day.”

  She dug in her purse and came out with Emerson’s card. “You’re their only suspect. He gave me three separate phone numbers. They sound pretty serious.”

  He took the card from her. Put it in his back pocket, with the cocktail napkin that had Helen Rodin’s cell number on it. He was turning into a walking phone book.

  “How was the thing with Rodin?” he asked.

  “Straightforward,” she said.

  He said nothing. She moved around, checking the suite. Bathroom, bedroom, living room, kitchenette. She took her bag and stood it neatly against a wall.

  “Want to stay?” she said.

  He shook his head.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “OK,” she said.

  “But I could come back later, if you like.”

  She paused a beat.

  “OK,” she said. “Come back later.”

  Alex Rodin stepped back into his office and closed the door and called Emerson.

  “Have you got him yet?” he asked.

  “Just a matter of time,” Emerson said. “We’re looking for him all over. And we’re watching his room. He’s at the old motor court. Under a false name.”

  “That’s interesting,” Rodin said. “It means he might have used a false name at the Metropole, too.”

  “I’ll check,” Emerson said. “I’ll show the clerk the picture.”

  “We might really be able to nail him,” Rodin said. He clicked off, thinking about two new framed headlines for his office wall. First Barr, and then Reacher.

  Reacher let himself out of Hutton
’s suite and used the stairs instead of the elevator. On the ground floor he turned away from the lobby and found a back corridor with a fire door at the end of it. He pushed the fire door open and held it ajar with his foot. Took Emerson’s card out of his pocket and tore it in half lengthwise and folded the half with the name on it four times. He pressed the tongue into the fire door’s lock with the ball of his thumb and wedged it there with the folded cardboard. He closed the door gently and pushed it flush with the frame with the flat of his hand. Then he walked away, past a Dumpster, through the staff lot, out to the street, heading north. The sidewalks were busy and the traffic lanes were starting to clog. He walked at a normal pace and used his height to scan the middle distance for patrol cars or cops on corners. The day was still warm. There was a weather system somewhere out there. Somewhere near. There was high pressure in the sky, clamping down, trapping the smell of damp earth and nitrogen fertilizer in the air.

  He reached the raised highway and turned west in its shadow. The roadbed strode along on pillars forty feet high. Underneath it were untidy lots, some vacant and full of trash, some with old brick buildings with dark skylights in their roofs, some with new metal sheds housing body shops and spray paint operations. He passed the back of the black glass tower and stayed in the highway’s shadow and turned south, ready to pass behind the library. He stopped suddenly and crouched and fiddled with his shoe. Like he had a stone. Glanced back under his arm and saw nobody behind him. No tail.

  He moved on. After the library he was exposed for forty yards. The plaza was east of him. He stopped momentarily on a spot he judged was directly below where Helen Rodin had parked the day before and where James Barr should have parked on Friday. Forty feet lower down the view was different but the geometry was the same. He could see the wilted tributes propped against the pool’s southern wall. They were small splashes of faded color in the distance. Beyond them was the DMV’s door. People were coming out in ones and twos. He checked his watch. Ten to five.

  He moved on, in the open, and made it across to First Street’s northernmost block. He looped one block south and three blocks east and came up on the parking garage’s entrance from the west. He walked up the ramp and found the security camera’s lens. It was a small circle of dirty glass mounted on a plain black box that was bolted high up in the angle of two concrete beams. He waved at it. It was too high, ideally. It should have been lower, at license plate level. But all the pillars below waist height were scuffed and scraped. A rainbow of different colors. Drivers were careless. Mounted lower, the camera would have lasted a day and a half. Maybe less.

  He walked up the ramps to the second level. Headed north and east, to the far back corner. The garage was still and quiet, but full. The space that James Barr had used was occupied. No room for sentiment in the scramble for downtown parking. No room for reverence.

  The border between the old garage and the new construction was marked by a triple barrier of tape strung between pillars. There was standard yellow-and-black contractor’s Caution Do Not Enter tape and above it and below it were new lengths of blue-and-white Police Line Do Not Cross tape. He used his forearm and stretched all three lines higher and just ducked underneath. No need to drop to one knee. No need to scuff a pair of jeans. No need to leave a mess of fibers. Not even for a guy six inches taller than Barr, and not even with a new line of tape six inches lower than the one Barr had encountered. He was literally going out of his way to leave every last piece of evidence he could.

  Reacher walked on into the gloom. The new construction was rectangular in shape. Maybe forty yards south to north, maybe two hundred east to west. Which meant Reacher arrived at the new northeast corner after thirty-five paces. He stood six feet back from the perimeter wall and looked down and right. He had a perfectly good view. No need to press up against a pillar. No need to squirm around like a horse on its back in a summer meadow.

  He stood there and watched. People were coming out of the government office in increasing numbers. There was quite a flow. Some paused and lit cigarettes as soon as they were out in the air. Others moved on directly west, some fast, some slow. All of them turned and tracked around the north end of the pool. None of them walked where Barr’s victims had walked. The funeral tributes were a disincentive. A reminder. Therefore it was hard to judge what Friday’s scene had looked like. Hard, but not impossible. Reacher watched the walking people and in his mind made them forgo their respectful right turns. He made them continue straight on. They would be slow entering the bottleneck. But not too slow. And they would be close. The combination of moderate speed and proximity would exaggerate the deflection angles. It would make the job harder. It was a basic principle of long-gun use. A bird traversing the sky a hundred yards away was an easy target. The same bird at the same speed flying six feet in front of your face was an impossible target.

  He pictured the people streaming right-to-left. He closed one eye and extended his arm and pointed his finger. Click, click-click, click-click-click. Six aimed shots. Four seconds. Fast. Tough geometry. Tension, exposure, vulnerability.

  Six hits, including the deliberate miss.

  Exceptional shooting.

  They don’t forget.

  He dropped his arm to his side. It was cold in the gloom. He shivered. The air was clammy and damp and full of the smell of lime. It had been hot in Kuwait City. The air had been shimmering and full of the smell of baked dust and desert sand. Reacher had stood in the parking garage and sweated. The street below him had been blinding. Murderous. Like a blast furnace.

  Hot in Kuwait City.

  Four shots there.

  Six shots here.

  He stood and watched the people coming out the DMV door. There were plenty of them. Ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty. They turned and looped north and then turned again and walked west between the pool and the NBC peacock. They gave each other space. But if they had been in the bottleneck they would have bunched up tight.

  Plenty of them.

  Six shots, in four seconds.

  He looked for anyone not moving. Didn’t see anybody. No cops, no old men in boxy suits. He turned around and retraced his steps. Lifted the tape again and ducked under it and walked back down the ramps. Slipped out to the street and turned west, heading for the shadows under the highway. Heading for the library.

  He crossed the forty yards of open ground and hugged the library’s side wall and went in through a handicapped entrance. He had to walk close to the desk, but he wasn’t worried about that. If Emerson started circulating Wanted notices he would hit the post offices and bars and hotels first. It would be a long time before he started canvassing librarians.

  He made it to the lobby OK and stepped over to the pay phones. Took the cocktail napkin out of his pocket and dialed Helen Rodin’s cell. She picked up on the fifth ring. He pictured her rooting through her purse, squinting at the screen, fumbling with the buttons.

  “Are you alone?” he asked.

  “Reacher?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Are you alone?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But you’re in trouble.”

  “Who called you?”

  “My father.”

  “You believe him?”

  “No.”

  “I’m coming to see you.”

  “There’s a cop in the lobby.”

  “I figured. I’ll come in through the garage.”

  He hung up and walked back past the desk and out the side entrance. Back under the highway. He stayed in its shelter until he was opposite the back of the black glass tower. Opposite the vehicle ramp. He checked left, checked right, and walked straight down. Past the NBC trucks, past the Mustang he figured for Ann Yanni’s, to the elevator. He pressed the call button and waited. Checked his watch. Five-thirty. Most people would be leaving the building. A down elevator was certain to stop at the lobby level. An up elevator, maybe not. He hoped.

  The elevator car arrived in the garage and let three people out. They walked away. Reach
er stepped in. Pressed 4. Stood back. The car rose one floor and stopped. In the lobby. The doors slid back like a theater curtain. The cop was right there, four feet from the elevator, facing away. He had his feet apart and his hands on his hips. He was almost close enough to touch. A man stepped into the elevator. He didn’t speak. Just nodded a two-guys-in-an-elevator greeting. Reacher nodded back. The guy pressed 7. The doors stayed open. The cop watched the street. The new guy jiggled the button. The cop moved. He swiped his cap off his head and ran his fingers through his hair. The doors closed. The elevator moved up.

  Reacher got out on four and walked through a small knot of people on their way home. Helen Rodin had her door open and ready. He stepped inside her suite and she closed up after him. She was wearing a short black skirt and a white blouse. She looked young. Like a schoolgirl. And she looked worried. Like a conflicted person.

  “I should turn you in,” she said.

  “But you won’t,” Reacher said.

  “No,” she said. “I should, but I won’t.”

  “Truth is I liked that girl,” Reacher said. “She was a sweet kid.”

  “She set you up.”

  “I wasn’t offended.”

  “Someone didn’t like her.”

  “We can’t tell. Affection didn’t come into it. She was disposable, that’s all. A means to an end.”

  “The puppet master really doesn’t want you around.”

  Reacher nodded. “That’s for damn sure. But he’s shit out of luck there, because I’m not leaving now. He just guaranteed that for himself.”

  “Is it safe to stay?”

  “It’s safe enough. But this thing with the girl is going to slow me down. So you’re going to have to do most of the work.”

  She led him into the inner office. She sat down at her desk. He stayed well away from the window. He sat on the floor and propped his back against the wall.

  “I already started the work,” Helen said. “I spoke to Rosemary and talked to Barr’s neighbors. Then I went back to the hospital. I think we’re looking for a guy called Charlie. Small guy, bristly black hair. Interested in guns. I got the impression he’s kind of furtive. I think he’s going to be hard to find.”