Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  “I won’t do it,” Rosemary said.

  The Zec looked straight at her.

  “You will do it,” he said. “I promise you that. Twenty-four hours from now you’ll be begging to do it. You’ll be insane with fear that we might change our minds and not let you do it.”

  The room went quiet. Rosemary glanced at the Zec as if she had something to say. Then she glanced away. But the Zec answered her anyway. He had heard her message loud and clear.

  “No, we won’t be there with you at the deposition,” he said. “But we will know what you tell them. Within minutes. And don’t think about a little detour to the bus depot. For one thing, we’ll have your brother killed. For another, there’s no country in the world we can’t find you in.”

  Rosemary said nothing.

  “Anyway,” the Zec said. “Let’s not argue. It’s unproductive. And pointless. You’ll tell them what we tell you to tell them. You will, you know. You’ll see. You’ll be desperate to. You’ll be wishing we had arranged an earlier appointment for you. At the courthouse. You’ll spend the waiting time on your knees pleading for a chance to show us how word-perfect you are. That’s how it usually happens. We’re very good at what we do. We learned at the feet of masters.”

  “My brother has Parkinson’s disease,” Rosemary said.

  “Diagnosed when?” the Zec asked, because he knew the answer.

  “It’s been developing.”

  The Zec shook his head. “Too subjective to be helpful. Who’s to say it’s not a similar condition brought on suddenly by his recent injury? If not, then who’s to say such a condition is a true handicap anyway? When shooting from such a close range? If the public defender brings in an expert, then Rodin will bring in three. He’ll find doctors who will swear that Little Annie Oakley was racked with Parkinson’s disease from the very day she was born.”

  “Reacher knows,” Rosemary said.

  “The soldier? The soldier will be dead by morning. Dead, or a runaway.”

  “He won’t run away.”

  “Therefore he’ll be dead. He’ll come for you tonight. We’ll be ready for him.”

  Rosemary said nothing.

  “Men have come for us before in the night,” the Zec said. “Many times, in many places. And yet we’re still here. Da, Linsky?”

  Linsky nodded again.

  “We’re still here,” he said.

  “When will he come?” the Zec asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rosemary said.

  “Four o’clock in the morning,” Linsky said. “He’s an American. They’re trained that four o’clock in the morning is the best time for a surprise attack.”

  “Direction?”

  “From the north would make the most sense. The stone-crushing plant would conceal his staging area and leave him only two hundred yards of open ground to cover. But I think he’ll double-bluff us there. He’ll avoid the north, because he knows it’s best.”

  “Not from the west,” the Zec said.

  Linsky shook his head. “I agree. Not down the driveway. Too straight and open. He’ll come from the south or the east.”

  “Put Vladimir in with Sokolov,” the Zec said to him. “Tell them to watch the south and the east very carefully. But tell them to keep an eye out north and west, too. All four directions must be monitored continuously, just in case. Then put Chenko in the upstairs hallway with his rifle. He can be ready to deploy to whichever window is appropriate. With Chenko, one shot will be enough.”

  Then he turned to Rosemary Barr.

  “Meanwhile we’ll put you somewhere safe,” he told her. “Your tutorials will start as soon as the soldier is buried.”

  The outer western suburbs were bedroom communities for people who worked in the city, so the traffic stayed bad all the way out. The houses were much grander than in the east. They were all two-story, all varied, all well maintained. They all had big lots and pools and ambitious evergreen landscaping. With the last of the sunset behind them they looked like pictures in a brochure.

  “Tight-ass middle class,” Reacher said.

  “What we all aspire to,” Yanni said.

  “They won’t want to talk,” Reacher said. “Not their style.”

  “They’ll talk,” Yanni said. “Everyone talks to me.”

  They drove past the Archer place slowly. There was a cast-metal sign on thin chains under the mailbox: Ted and Oline Archer. Beyond it, across a broad open lawn, the house looked closed-up and dark and silent. It was a big Tudor place. Dull brown beams, cream stucco. Three-car garage. Nobody home, Reacher thought.

  The neighbor they were looking for lived across the street and one lot to the north. Hers was a place about the same size as the Archers’ but done in an Italianate style. Stone accents, little crenellated towers, dark green sun awnings on the south-facing ground-floor windows. The evening light was fading away to darkness and lamps were coming on behind draped windows. The whole street looked warm and rested and quiet and very satisfied with itself. Reacher said, “They sleep safely in their beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do them harm.”

  “You know George Orwell?” Yanni asked.

  “I went to college,” Reacher said. “West Point is technically a college.”

  Yanni said, “The existing social order is a swindle and its cherished beliefs mostly delusions.”

  “It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it,” Reacher said.

  “I’m sure these are perfectly nice people,” Helen said.

  “But will they talk to us?”

  “They’ll talk,” Yanni said. “Everyone talks.”

  Helen pulled into a long limestone driveway and parked about twenty feet behind an imported SUV that had big chrome wheels. The front door of the house was made of ancient gray weathered oak with iron banding that had nail heads as big as golf balls. It felt like you could step through it straight into the Renaissance.

  “Property is theft,” Reacher said.

  “Proudhon,” Yanni said. “Property is desirable, is a positive good in the world.”

  “Abraham Lincoln,” Reacher said. “In his first State of the Union.”

  There was an iron knocker shaped like a quoit in a lion’s mouth. Helen lifted it and used it to thump on the door. Then she found a discreet electric bell push and pressed that, too. They heard no answering sound inside the house. Heavy door, thick walls. Helen tried again with the bell, and before she got her finger off the button, the door sucked back off copper weatherproofing strips and opened like a vault. A guy was standing there with his hand on the inside handle.

  “Yes?” he said. He was somewhere in his forties, solid, prosperous, probably a golf club member, maybe an Elk, maybe a Rotarian. He was wearing corduroy pants and a patterned sweater. He was the kind of guy who gets home and immediately changes clothes as a matter of routine.

  “Is your wife at home?” Helen asked. “We’d like to speak with her about Oline Archer.”

  “About Oline?” the guy said. He was looking at Ann Yanni.

  “I’m a lawyer,” Helen said.

  “What is there to be said about Oline?”

  “Maybe more than you think,” Yanni said.

  “You’re not a lawyer.”

  “I’m here as a journalist,” Yanni said. “But not on a human interest story. Nothing tacky. There might have been a miscarriage of justice. That’s the issue here.”

  “A miscarriage in what way?”

  “They might have arrested the wrong man for the shootings. That’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re all here.”

  Reacher watched the guy. He was standing there, holding the door, trying to decide. In the end he just sighed and stepped back.

  “You better come in,” he said.

  Everyone talks.

  He led the way through a muted yellow hallway to a living room. It was spacious and immaculate. Velvet furniture, litt
le mahogany tables, a stone fireplace. No television. There was probably a separate room for that. A den, or a home theater. Or perhaps they didn’t watch television. Reacher saw Ann Yanni calculating the odds.

  “I’ll get my wife,” the guy said.

  He came back a minute later with a handsome woman a little younger than himself. She was wearing pressed jeans and a sweatshirt the same yellow as the hallway walls. Penny loafers on her feet. No socks. She had hair that had been expensively styled to look casual and windswept. She was medium height and lean in a way that spoke of diet books and serious time in aerobics classes.

  “What’s this about?” she asked.

  “Ted Archer,” Helen said.

  “Ted? I thought you told my husband it was about Oline.”

  “We think there may be a connection. Between his situation and hers.”

  “How could there be a connection? Surely what happened to Oline was completely out of the blue.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We suspect that Oline might have been a specific target, kind of hidden behind the confusion of the other four victims.”

  “Wouldn’t that be a matter for the police?”

  Helen paused. “At the moment the police seem satisfied with what they’ve got.”

  The woman glanced at her husband.

  “Then I’m not sure we should talk about it,” he said.

  “At all?” Yanni asked. “Or just to me?”

  “I’m not sure if we would want to be on television.”

  Reacher smiled to himself. The other side of the tracks.

  “This is deep background only,” Yanni said. “It’s entirely up to you whether your names are used.”

  The woman sat down on a sofa and her husband sat next to her, very close. Reacher smiled to himself again. They had subconsciously adopted the standard couple-on-a-sofa pose that television interviews used all the time. Two faces close together, ideally framed for a tight camera shot. Yanni took her cue and sat in an armchair facing them, perched right on the edge, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, a frank and open expression on her face. Helen took another chair. Reacher stepped away to the window. Used a finger to move the drapes aside. It was fully dark outside.

  Time ticking away.

  “Tell us about Ted Archer,” Yanni said. “Please.” A simple request, only six words, but her tone said: I think you two are the most interesting people in the world and I would love to be your friend. For a moment Reacher thought Yanni had missed her way. She would have been a great cop.

  “Ted had business problems,” the woman said.

  “Is that why he disappeared?” Yanni asked.

  The woman shrugged. “That was Oline’s initial assumption.”

  “But?”

  “Ultimately she rejected that explanation. And I think she was right to. Ted wasn’t that kind of a man. And his problems weren’t those kind of problems. The fact is, he was getting screwed rotten and he was mad as hell about it and he was fighting. And people who fight don’t just walk away. I mean, do they?”

  “How was he getting screwed?”

  The woman glanced at her husband. He leaned forward. Boy stuff. “His principal customer stopped buying from him. Which happens. Power in the marketplace ebbs and flows. So Ted offered to renegotiate. Offered to drop his price. No dice. So he offered to drop it more. He told me he got to the point where he was giving it away. Still no dice. They just wouldn’t buy.”

  “What do you think was happening?” Yanni asked. Keep talking, sir.

  “Corruption,” the guy said. “Under-the-table inducements. It was completely obvious. One of Ted’s competitors was offering kickbacks. No way for an honest man to compete with that.”

  “When did this start?”

  “About two years ago. It was a major problem for them. Financially they went downhill very fast. No cash flow. Ted sold his car. Oline had to go out to work. The DMV thing was all she could find. They made her supervisor after about a month.” He smiled a thin smile, proud of his class. “Another year, she’d have been running the place. She’d have been Commissioner.”

  “What was Ted doing about it? How was he fighting?”

  “He was trying to find out which competitor it was.”

  “Did he find out?”

  “We don’t know. He was trying for a long time, and then he went missing.”

  “Didn’t Oline include this in her report?”

  The guy sat back and his wife leaned forward again. Shook her head. “Oline didn’t want to. Not back then. It was all unproven. All speculation. She didn’t want to throw accusations around. And it wasn’t definitely connected. I guess the way we’re telling it now it sounds more obvious than it was at the time. I mean, Ted wasn’t Sherlock Holmes or anything. He wasn’t on the case twenty-four/ seven. He was still doing normal stuff. He was just talking to people when he could, you know, asking questions, comparing notes, comparing prices, trying to put it all together. It was a two-year period. Occasional conversations, phone calls, inquiries, things like that. It didn’t seem dangerous, certainly.”

  “Did Oline ever go to anyone with this? Later, maybe?”

  The woman nodded. “She stewed for two months after he disappeared. We talked. She was up and down with it. Eventually she decided there had to be a connection. I agreed with her. She didn’t know what to do. I told her she should call the police.”

  “And did she?”

  “She didn’t call. She went personally. She felt they would take her more seriously face-to-face. Not that they did, apparently. Nothing happened. It was like dropping a stone down a well and never hearing the splash.”

  “When did she go?”

  “A week before the thing in the plaza last Friday.”

  Nobody spoke. Then, kindly, gently, Ann Yanni asked the obvious question: “You didn’t suspect a connection?”

  The woman shook her head. “Why would we? It seemed to be a total coincidence. The shootings were random, weren’t they? You said so yourself. On the television news. We heard you say it. Five random victims, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Nobody spoke.

  Reacher turned away from the window.

  “What business was Ted Archer in?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, I assumed you knew,” the husband said. “He owns a quarry. Huge place about forty miles north of here. Cement, concrete, crushed stone. Vertically integrated, very efficient.”

  “And who was the customer who backed off?”

  “The city,” the guy said.

  “Big customer.”

  “As big as they come. All this construction going on right now is manna from heaven for people in that business. The city sold ninety million in tax-free municipals just to cover the first year. Add in the inevitable overruns and it’s a nine-figure bonanza for somebody.”

  “What car did Ted sell?”

  “A Mercedes-Benz.”

  “Then what did he drive?”

  “He used a truck from work.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “Every day for two years.”

  “What was it?”

  “A pickup. A Chevy, I think.”

  “An old brown Silverado? Plain steel wheels?”

  The guy stared. “How did you know that?”

  “One more question,” Reacher said. “For your wife.”

  She looked at him.

  “After Oline went to the cops, did she tell you who it was she talked to? Was it a detective called Emerson?”

  The woman was already shaking her head. “I told Oline if she didn’t want to call she should go to the station house, but she said it was too far, because she never got that long of a lunch hour. She said she’d go to the DA instead. His office is much closer to the DMV. And Oline was like that anyway. She preferred to go straight to the top. So she took it to Alex Rodin himself.”

  Helen Rodin was completely silent on the drive
back to town. So silent she quivered and vibrated and shook with it. Her lips were clamped and her cheeks were sucked in and her eyes were wide-open. Her silence made it impossible for Reacher or Yanni to speak. She drove like a robot, competently, not fast, not slow, displaying a mechanical compliance with lane markers and stoplights and yield signs. She parked on the apron below Franklin’s office and left the motor running and said, “You two go on ahead. I just can’t do this.”

  Ann Yanni got out and walked over to the staircase. Reacher stayed in the car and leaned forward over the seat.

  “It’ll be OK,” he said.

  “It won’t.”

  “Helen, pull the keys and get your ass upstairs. You’re an officer of the court and you’ve got a client in trouble.” Then he opened his door and climbed out of the car and by the time he had walked around the trunk she was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.

  Franklin was in front of his computer, as always. He told Reacher that Cash was on his way up from Kentucky, no questions asked. Told him that Ted Archer hadn’t shown up anywhere else in the databases. Then he noticed the silence and the tension.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “We’re one step away,” Reacher said. “Ted Archer was in the concrete business and he was frozen out of all these new city construction contracts by a competitor who was offering bribes. He tried to prove it and must have been getting very close to succeeding, because the competitor offed him.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “Only by inference. We’ll never find his body without digging up First Street again. But I know where his truck is. It’s in Jeb Oliver’s barn.”

  “Why there?”

  “They used Oliver for things they can’t do themselves. For when they don’t want to show their faces, or for when they can’t. Presumably Archer knew them and wouldn’t have gone near them. But Oliver was just a local kid. Maybe he staged a flat tire or hitched a ride. Archer would have walked right into it. Then the bad guys hid the body and Oliver hid the truck.”