Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  Five to eleven in the evening.

  Twenty-nine hours to go.

  Reacher completed his eighth circuit of the interior perimeter. He saw nothing to get concerned about. Nothing to see from any window except frozen moonlit emptiness. Nothing to hear except the rush of water in the heating pipes and a faint creaking as the ice outside got colder. It was clamping down. The earth was in its grip. He thought back to the sodbusters and the pioneers that Janet Salter had talked about. Why the hell had they stayed?

  He was on his way back down the stairs when she called out.

  She said, ‘Someone’s coming.’

  She spoke loud and clear. But she added no information. No numbers, no location, no direction, no description. He stepped into the parlour and eased past her to the window. Saw a guy approaching on foot in the middle of the road, from the left. He was small, but swaddled in an enormous coat with a hood. He had a ski mask on. Plus a muffler, plus gloves, plus boots. Nothing in his hands. His hands were held out to the sides, for balance, and they were empty.

  The guy moved on, slowly, tentatively, unsure of his footing. He stopped directly opposite the end of Janet Salter’s driveway. Just stood there.

  Reacher asked, ‘Do you know who he is?’

  She said, ‘Wait.’

  The guy turned around, a stiff and ungainly half-circle, and faced the other way. A dog trotted up to him. A big white thing. Lots of fur. The guy turned around again, and man and dog walked on.

  Janet Salter said, ‘A neighbour. A she, actually. Mrs Lowell. But it was hard to be sure, the way she was dressed.’

  Reacher breathed out and said, ‘Is she the cop’s wife?’

  ‘Ex-wife. Officer Lowell moved out a year ago. There was some kind of unpleasantness.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I saw Lowell today. Peterson called him an odd duck. Said he read books.’

  ‘He does. He comes over and borrows some of mine from time to time. My family and his go way back.’

  ‘Do you know his partner?’

  ‘Officer Kapler? I’ve met him, certainly.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He moved here from Florida. Which struck me as odd.’

  ‘Me too,’ Reacher said. He stayed at the window and watched Mrs Lowell and her dog round a curve and move out of sight.

  They didn’t speak again for thirty minutes. The clock in Reacher’s head ticked on towards midnight. He asked, ‘Are you tired?’

  Janet Salter said, ‘I haven’t really thought about it.’

  ‘You could go to bed, if you like. I can take care of things down here.’

  ‘Would you take care of things standing up? So if you fell asleep I would hear you fall down?’

  Reacher smiled. ‘I won’t fall asleep.’

  ‘And I won’t go to bed. This is my responsibility. I shouldn’t be involving you at all.’

  ‘A problem shared is a problem halved.’

  ‘You could be killed.’

  ‘Unlikely.’

  She asked, ‘Are you married?’

  Reacher kept his eyes on the window and said, ‘No.’

  ‘Were you ever?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you an only child?’

  ‘I had a brother two years older. He worked for the Treasury Department. He was killed in the line of duty.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not your fault.’

  ‘Do you always deflect sympathy that way?’

  ‘Usually.’

  ‘So you’re the last of your family’s line.’

  ‘I suppose so. But it wasn’t much of a line in the first place.’

  ‘Just like me. Scoundrels, all of them.’

  ‘Where were your gold mines?’

  ‘The Black Hills. Why?’

  ‘Peterson thinks the army place west of here could be mostly underground. I was wondering if there were old workings they could have used.’

  ‘No mines here. Just prairie topsoil and rock.’

  ‘Were your parents alive when you went off to college?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if they were, they probably wrote you with all the local news. Maybe rumour and gossip, too. They must have told you something about that place. Maybe not exact enough for your scholarly mind to pass on as fact, but you must have heard some little thing.’

  ‘Nothing worth repeating.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘All I know is that it was built and never used. Apparently because its purpose was too revolting. There was a minor scandal about it.’

  ‘What was its purpose?’

  ‘I don’t know. No one spoke of it to me.’

  Five minutes to midnight.

  Twenty-eight hours to go.

  Nobody came.

  A thousand miles away down in Texas two fast cars covered the fifty miles south from Hood in less than forty minutes. Six men in the cars, all warrant officers working for the 110th Special Unit, all currently W3s, all wanting to be W4s, all well aware that this kind of assignment could get them their promotions. They pulled off the main drag south and wheeled through the centre of Georgetown and found the bus depot. It was middle-of-the-night quiet. Cool air, trash, the stink of spilled diesel. Nothing coming in, nothing going out. They parked their cars a block farther on next to pawn shops and bail bond offices and hustled back the way they had come. They counted the motels. The first was a brick place behind a parking lot that was covered with broken blacktop. The second was right next to it, set end-on to the street, made of red wood, twelve rooms, a sign on a pole advertising free cable and free breakfast and no vacancies.

  An office, first door on the left.

  A clerk in the office, half awake.

  A pass key, in the desk drawer.

  The six W3s split up, three to the rear, three to the front. One of the front guys stood back, ready for anything. The other two entered every room, bold as you like, guns drawn, for close-up in-their-face flashlight examinations of the somnolent forms they found.

  All twelve rooms.

  Their man wasn’t there.

  Reacher prowled through Janet Salter’s house one more time. By that point he was totally accustomed to its sounds. The creak of the boards, the creak of the stairs, an occluded right-angle joint in a steam pipe that hissed louder than all the others, a window sash that trembled a little in its frame because of the freshening wind. The smell of the air was changing. Tiny eddying draughts were stirring odours out of the rugs and the drapes. They were not unpleasant. Just old. Dyed wool, dusty velvet, mothballs, beeswax furniture polish, cigar smoke, pipe tobacco. Ancient, deep aromas, like an olfactory portrait of how prosperous frontier families used to live. Reacher sensed them behind the local mineral smell from the new oil on the gun he was carrying with him everywhere.

  He came back to the parlour. Janet Salter’s gun was still in her pocket. Her hand was still resting on its butt. He asked her, ‘You still OK?’

  She said with great formality, ‘I have reached the conclusion that I am privileged.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I’m experiencing the chance to live out my principles. I believe that ordinary citizens must confront wickedness. But I believe in due process, too. I believe in an accused’s right to a fair trial and I believe in his right to confront the witnesses against him. But it’s so easy to talk the talk, isn’t it? Not everyone gets the opportunity to walk the walk. But now I am.’

  ‘You’re doing great,’ Reacher said.

  He eased past her to the window.

  Saw the wild bounce of headlight beams on the street.

  A car, coming on fast.

  TWENTY-ONE

  IT WAS PETERSON, LEADING WHAT LOOKED LIKE MOST OF THE BOLTON PD. Six cars, seven, eight. Then a ninth. They jammed and slid and crunched to a stop all over the road. Twelve cops spilled out, then thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. They drew their weapons and formed up for an approach driven partl
y by desperate haste and partly by extreme caution. Because they had no idea what they were going to find.

  Either tranquillity, or a double homicide.

  Reacher stepped out to the hallway and lined up on the hinge side of the front door. He flung it open and stayed well out of sight. He didn’t want to get fired on by mistake. Fifteen nervous cops made for an unpredictable situation.

  He called, ‘Peterson? This is Reacher. We’re all clear.’

  No answer.

  He tried again. ‘Peterson?’

  Icy air flooded in. Peterson’s voice came with it. ‘Reacher?’

  Reacher called back, ‘All clear in here. Holster your weapons and come on in.’

  They came in at a run, all fifteen of them, Peterson first, then the four women, then the three guys from the stake-out cars, then seven more bodies Reacher didn’t know. They brought gusts and billows of freezing air in with them. They all had red, chapped faces. The warm inside air hit them and they all started wrenching open their parkas and pulling the gloves from their hands and the hats from their heads.

  The four women formed up around Janet Salter like a cordon and bustled her off to the kitchen. Peterson ordered the three night watch cars to their positions and sent the remaining seven men back to the station. Reacher watched normality restored from the parlour window. Within five minutes all was as it had been five hours earlier.

  Peterson asked, ‘So what happened here?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Reacher said. ‘What happened there?’

  ‘A riot. Not that we saw much of anything. They shut it down very fast.’

  ‘Because it was phoney. It was a diversion.’

  Peterson nodded. ‘But their guy never came here.’

  ‘And the big question is, why the hell not?’

  ‘Because he saw you.’

  ‘But I didn’t see him. Which begs another big question. If he’s good enough to see me without me seeing him, why didn’t he just go for it?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘I saw a woman with a big white dog.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘A little after eleven.’

  ‘Mrs Lowell. She’s a neighbour. She walks her dog every night.’

  ‘You should have told me that. I might have shot her.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Peterson clamped his palms tight on his nose. It must have been hurting. His skin temperature had vaulted sixty degrees in sixty seconds. Then he ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Bad thing to say, I guess, but I kind of wish the guy had come tonight. I’m not sure we can take another month of this.’

  Reacher said, ‘I don’t think you’ll have to. I think they’re fresh out of diversions.’

  ‘They can start another riot any old time they want to.’

  ‘They can’t. That’s the point. Prison riots need a critical mass. About a third of the population would riot every day of the week, given the chance. Another third never would. It’s the middle third that counts. The swing votes. Like an election. And they’re spent now. Their passion has gone. It will take a year before they’re back in the game.’

  Peterson said nothing.

  Reacher said, ‘And your biker pal can’t organize an escape fast enough. So you’re in the clear now. You’re safe.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘You might never hear that siren again.’

  Five to one in the morning.

  Twenty-seven hours to go.

  At a quarter past one the phone in the hallway rang. Janet Salter came out of the kitchen to answer it. She passed the receiver to Peterson. Peterson listened for a second and went to find Reacher in the parlour.

  ‘It’s the woman from the 110th MP,’ he said. ‘How does she know this number?’

  ‘She has a caller ID system,’ Reacher said. ‘With coordinates. She’s probably watching this house right now, on Google Earth.’

  ‘But it’s dark.’

  ‘Don’t ask me how it works.’ He stepped out to the hallway and sat down in the chair. Picked up the receiver. Asked, ‘You got my answers for me?’

  The voice said, ‘Not yet.’

  ‘So why are you calling so late? I could have been fast asleep.’

  ‘I just wanted to tell you I got my guy.’

  ‘Was I right?’

  ‘I’m not going to answer that question. I’m not going to give you the satisfaction.’

  ‘So I was right.’

  ‘Actually, not quite. He was in the third motel north of the bus depot.’

  ‘Because the first two were close together? He had to go on to the third, for distance?’

  ‘You’re good.’

  ‘I used to do this for a living.’

  ‘I’m duly impressed.’

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  Reacher said, ‘He was awake. He had a loaded firearm and shoes on. His bag was packed and his jacket was on the back of a chair. He struggled for less than ten seconds and then he gave it up.’

  ‘You’re very good.’

  ‘Not good enough to survive the general’s head.’

  ‘I still want to hear that story.’

  ‘Then get me my answers. A fair exchange is no robbery.’

  ‘We’re close. We can see the money coming out of Congress. But we can’t see it arriving at the Department of the Army. It’s dropping out of sight somewhere along the way. We’re narrowing it down. We’ll get there.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Give me the rest of the night. Call me at eight o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘You’re good, too.’

  ‘I try.’

  Reacher said, ‘There’s a local rumour about a scandal. Word on the street is the place was never used because its purpose was too revolting.’

  ‘On the street?’

  ‘In an old lady’s parlour, anyway.’

  ‘OK. But old ladies get revolted by all kinds of things.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘You can search with your Google thing, right?’

  ‘That’s what it’s for.’

  ‘Check a Florida cop called Kapler for me. He left the state two years ago. I want to know why.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I like to know things. He moved from Florida to South Dakota. Who does that?’

  ‘First name?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That’s helpful.’

  ‘How many Florida cops called Kapler can there be?’

  ‘Probably more than ten, and less than a hundred.’

  ‘With employment problems two years ago?’

  ‘Anything else?’

  Reacher asked, ‘What are you wearing?’

  ‘What is this, a dirty phone call now?’

  Reacher smiled. ‘No, I’m just trying to picture the scene. For old times’ sake. I know the desk. Same office?’

  ‘I assume so. Upstairs, third on the left.’

  ‘That’s the one.’ Reacher saw it in his mind. Stone stairs, a metal handrail, a narrow corridor floored with linoleum, lines of doors left and right with fluted glass windows in them, offices behind each one, each office equipped according to some complex DoD protocol. His had had the metal desk, two phones with a total of three lines, a vinyl chair on casters, file cabinets, and two visitor chairs with springy bent-tube legs. Plus a glass light shade shaped like a bowl and hung from the ceiling on three metal chains. Plus an out-of-date map of the United States on the wall, made after Hawaii and Alaska had joined the Union but before the interstate highway system had been completed.

  Made, in fact, around the same time that the strange installation near Bolton, South Dakota, was being put in.

  The voice said, ‘I’m wearing my ACUs with a T-shirt. I’ve got the jacket on, because it’s cold tonight.’

  Reacher said, ‘You’re in Virginia. You don’t know what cold is.’

  ‘Quit whining. You’re still in double figures up there. Negative,
but hey. Minus eleven degrees. But the radar shows colder air moving in from the west.’

  ‘How could it get colder?’

  ‘You’re going to get what Wyoming just had, that’s how.’

  ‘You talking to meteorologists?’

  ‘No, I’m looking at the Weather Channel.’

  ‘What did Wyoming just have?’

  ‘They were thirty below zero.’

  ‘Terrific.’

  ‘You can take it. You’re a big guy. Probably a Norseman way back, by the look of you.’

  ‘What, Google Earth can see through roof tiles now?’

  ‘No, there’s a photo of you in your file.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Yes, there’s a photo of me in my file, too.’

  ‘Not what I meant, smartass. I don’t have your file.’

  ‘I’m a one-eyed fifty-year-old hunchback.’

  ‘I thought so, judging by your voice.’

  ‘Asshole.’

  ‘I’m thinking maybe five-six or five-seven, but thin. Your voice is all in your throat.’

  ‘You saying I’m flat-chested?’

  ‘34A at best.’

  ‘Damn.’

  ‘Blond hair, probably short. Blue eyes. From northern California.’

  She asked, ‘Age?’

  Reacher had been thirty-two years old, the first time he sat behind that battered desk. Which was both old and young for a command of that importance. Young, because he had been something of a star, but old, too, in that he had gotten there a little later than a star should, because he wasn’t an organization man and hadn’t been entirely trusted. He said, ‘You’re thirty or thirty-one,’ because he knew that when it came to a woman’s age it was always better to err on the side of caution.

  She said, ‘Flattery will get you everywhere.’ Then she said, ‘Got to go. Call me later.’

  The household got right back into its settled routine. Peterson left, and the two day watch women went up to bed. Janet Salter showed Reacher to the front upstairs room with the window over the porch roof. In principle the most vulnerable, but he wasn’t worried. Sheer rage would overcome any theoretical tactical disadvantage. He hated to be woken in the night. An intruder came through that window, he would go straight back out like a spear.

  Five to two in the morning.

  Twenty-six hours to go.