Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  She opened up. One glance, and the last absurd hope drained from her face. It wasn’t her husband. He hadn’t dropped his keys in the snow. He hadn’t gotten inexplicably drunk and couldn’t find the keyhole.

  She fell down, like a trapdoor had opened under her.

  Caleb Carter took a black four-cell Mag-lite from the rack at the door and checked his radio. It was turned on and working. The Mag-lite gave a decent beam. Batteries were OK. There was a clipboard screwed to the wall. There was a pen tied to it with a ratty piece of string. Caleb pre-signed for the fifth tour. The first four notations were bogus. No one looked up. He left the ready room and headed down the corridor.

  In terms of jurisdiction the county lock-up was entirely separate from the state penitentiary, which in turn was entirely separate from the federal prison. But all three facilities shared the same site and the same architecture. Economy of scale, ease of operation. The lock-up was mostly filled with arrested local folks who either couldn’t get or couldn’t make bail. Pre-trial. Innocent until proven guilty. Caleb knew some of them from high school. About a quarter of the inmates were post-trial, found guilty and sentenced, waiting out a few days until the system moved them to their next destination.

  A sorry bunch.

  There were sixty cells, laid out in a two-storey V, fifteen cells to a section. East wing lower, east wing upper, west wing lower, west wing upper. At the point of the V there was a metal staircase, and beyond it was a single-storey mess hall and rec room, so that the lower floor was actually shaped like a Y.

  All sixty cells had occupants. They always did. The money had come from outside of Bolton, and it was like the politicians in Pierre or Washington or wherever wanted their investment to be well used. It was widely accepted around the town that laws got tighter if there was a vacancy. And vice versa. If there was an empty bed, an ounce of herb in your car would get you hauled in. But if all sixty beds were taken, two ounces would get you nothing more than a smack on the head.

  Law enforcement. Caleb’s chosen career.

  He started at the far end of the east wing lower. Walked all the way to the end wall, turned around, clicked his flashlight on, and came back slower. The cells were on his left. He overhanded the flashlight up on his shoulder, which not only looked cool but put the beam in line with his eyes. The cells had bars at the front, cots on the right, combined sinks and toilets in the back left corner, desks no wider than shelves opposite the cots. The cots had men in them. Most were asleep, rumbling, mumbling, and snoring under thin grey sheets. Some were awake, their narrow furtive eyes reflecting back like rats.

  He turned the corner of the V and checked the west wing lower. Fifteen cells, fifteen cots, fifteen men in them, twelve sleeping, three awake, none in distress.

  He climbed the stairs to the east wing upper. Same result. He didn’t know why they bothered. The place was a warehouse, that was all. A kind of cheap hotel. Did hotel staff check their guests every hour? He didn’t think so.

  Procedure was such bullshit.

  He passed the head of the stairs to the west wing upper. He walked it a little faster than normal. The shadows of the bars moved as his Mag-lite beam passed over them. Cell one, empty space on the left, humped form under the sheet on the right, awake, cell two, empty space on the left, humped form under the sheet on the right, asleep, cell three, the same.

  And so on, and so on, all the way down the row. Cell six had the fat guy in it. The one who wouldn’t talk. Except to the biker in cell seven.

  But the biker wasn’t in cell seven.

  Cell seven, west wing upper, was empty.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  REACHER WAS TOO SLOW TO CATCH KIM PETERSON BEFORE SHE hit the deck. He bent down awkwardly in his big coat and slid an arm under her shoulders and sat her up. She was gone. Fainted clean away. Absurdly his main worry was that the door was open and heat was leaking out of the house. So he jammed his other arm under her knees and lifted her up. He turned away and kicked the door shut behind him and carried her through to the family room and laid her on the battered sofa near the stove.

  He had seen women faint before. He had knocked on plenty of doors after midnight. He knew what to do. Like everything else in the army it had been thoroughly explained. Fainting after a shock was a simple vasovagal reflex. The heart rate drops, the blood vessels dilate, the hydraulic power that forces blood to the brain falls away. There were five points in the treatment plan. First, catch the victim. He had already blown that. Second, lay her down with her feet high and her head low, so that gravity could help her blood get back to her brain. Which he did. He swivelled her so that her feet were up on the sofa arm and her head was below them on the cushion. Third, check her pulse. Which he did, in her wrist. He took off his gloves and touched his fingers to her skin, just like he had with her husband. The result was different. Her pulse was tapping away just fine.

  Fourth point in the treatment plan: stimulate the victim, with loud yells or light slaps. Which had always felt unbearably cruel to him, with new widows. But he gave it a go. He spoke in her ear and touched her cheek and patted her hand gently.

  No response.

  He tried again, a little more firmly. Louder voice, a heavier touch. Nothing happened, except that above his head the floor-boards creaked. One of the boys, turning over in his sleep. He went quiet for a moment. Stayed still. Silence came back. The family room was warm but not hot. The stove was banked. He took off his hat and unzipped his coat. Bent down and spoke again. Touched her cheek, touched her hand.

  Kim Peterson opened her eyes.

  Point five in the treatment plan: persuade the victim to lie still for fifteen or twenty minutes. In this case, easy. No persuasion necessary. Kim Peterson didn’t move. She just lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling, inquiringly, speculatively, her eyes moving and narrowing and widening, as if there was something written up there, something complex and difficult to understand.

  He asked, ‘Do you remember me?’

  She said, ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m afraid I have bad news.’

  ‘Andrew’s dead.’

  ‘I’m afraid he is. I’m sorry.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Within the last hour.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He was shot. It was instantaneous.’

  ‘Who shot him?’

  ‘We think the guy they’ve all been looking for.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the head.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘No, I mean whereabouts did it happen?’

  ‘I’m sorry. It was downtown. In a vacant lot.’

  ‘What was he doing there?’

  ‘His duty. He was checking something out.’

  She said, ‘He was a good man, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I have two boys.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What am I going to do?’

  ‘You’re going to take it one step at a time. One day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time. One second at a time.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Starting now.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘First thing is, we need to get someone here. Right now. Someone who can help. Someone who can be with you. Because you shouldn’t be alone. Is there someone I can call?’

  ‘Why didn’t Chief Holland come?’

  ‘He wanted to. But he has a big investigation to start.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘He can’t just let it go.’

  ‘No, I mean I don’t believe he wanted to come.’

  ‘He feels responsible. A good chief always does.’

  ‘He should have come.’

  ‘Who can I call for you?’

  ‘Neighbour.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Alice.’

  ‘What’s her number?’

  ‘Button number three on the telephone.’

  Reacher looked around. There was a phone on the wall a
t the kitchen end of the room. A cordless handset and a black console. All kinds of buttons, and a big red LED zero in a window. No messages. He said, ‘Stay right there, OK?’

  He moved away from her and walked into the kitchen. Picked up the phone. It had a regular keypad, for dialling regular numbers. It had a memory button. Presumably the memory button allowed the keypad to recall speed dials. Presumably buttons one and two were Andrew, office and cell. He pressed memory and three. The phone dialled itself and he heard ring tone. It lasted a good long spell. Then a voice answered. A woman, sleepy but concerned. A little worried. Maybe her husband was on the road. Maybe she had grown kids in another town. Late night phone calls were as bad as knocks on the door.

  Reacher asked, ‘Is this Alice?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Who are you?’

  Reacher said, ‘I’m with Kim Peterson. Your neighbour. She needs you to come right over. Her husband was killed tonight.’

  There was silence on the line. Then Alice spoke. But Reacher didn’t hear what she said. Her words were drowned out by another sound. Sudden. Loud. From outside. Wailing and howling. Screaming and whispering. Rising and falling. The new sound rolled in across the frozen fields like a wave. It smashed against the side of the house and battered against the windows.

  The prison siren.

  Five minutes to one in the morning.

  Three hours to go.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  REACHER SAW A CRAZY DIAGRAM IN HIS MIND, EXPLODING IN four dimensions, time and space and distance: cops all over town, all moving randomly north, south, east, west, all answering Holland’s summons, all heading for the station house, all hearing the siren, all changing direction at once, the seven on duty with Janet Salter rushing straight out into the night, joining the confusion, getting set, heading for the prison, leaving Janet Salter all alone behind them.

  All alone and wide open and vulnerable to a last-ditch swing by the bad guy before he either ran for his life or tried to blend back in.

  I know what to do, Janet Salter had said.

  Reacher hung up the phone and called softly to Kim.

  ‘I got to go,’ he said. ‘Alice is on her way.’

  He got the front door open and stopped. The siren howled on. It was deafening. The ploughed path was right there in front of him. Fifty feet to the split in the Y, fifty more to the street. Then a mile to town and another mile to the Salter house.

  He was on foot.

  No car.

  He closed the door behind him and moved out and slipped and skidded and made the tight turn and headed for the barn. The old Ford pick-up was still in there. With the plough blade.

  No key in it.

  He hustled all the way back to the house. Pounded on the door. A long, long wait. He pounded some more. Then Kim Peterson opened up again. Shock was over. She was deep into her nightmare. She was slouched, vacant, detached. She was crying hard.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But I need the key for the pick-up truck.’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Kim, I’m sorry, but I really need the key.’

  She said, ‘It’s on Andrew’s key ring. In his pocket.’

  ‘Is there a spare?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It’s a very old truck.’

  ‘There has to be a spare.’

  ‘I think it was lost.’ She looked away and turned and walked back down the hallway. She staggered and put out a hand and steadied herself against the wall. Reacher put the door on the latch and stepped outside to wait. For Alice. The neighbour. South Dakota farm country was big and empty. Houses were not adjacent. Not even close together. Alice would drive. He could borrow her vehicle.

  He waited.

  The siren howled on.

  Alice came on foot.

  He saw her a hundred yards away in the moonlight. She was a tall woman, dishevelled after hasty dressing, hurrying, slipping and sliding on the ice, gloved hands out like a tightrope walker, wild hair spilling from under a knitted cap. She came right to left along the road, a pale face glancing anxiously at the Peterson house, arms and legs jerky and uncoordinated by treacherous conditions underfoot. Reacher moved away from the door, into the cold, down the path, to the split in the Y, and on towards the street. He met her at the bottom of the driveway. Asked, ‘Don’t you have a car?’

  She said, ‘It wouldn’t start.’

  He glanced left, towards the road to town.

  She glanced ahead, at the house.

  She asked, ‘How’s Kim?’

  He said, ‘Bad.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Andrew was shot and killed. Some guy in a vacant lot.’

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘You better go in. It’s going to be a long night.’

  ‘It will be longer than a night.’

  ‘You OK with that?’

  ‘I’ll have to be.’

  ‘Call her dad. She said he sometimes comes to visit.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  She moved on up the driveway.

  He headed left down the street.

  I know what to do, Janet Salter had said.

  A minute later Reacher was a hundred yards short of the corner that would put him on the main east–west county two-lane. To his right, the centre of town. To his left, the boondocks. He wanted a cop to be living way out there. The maximum ten minutes. Someone he could trust. Not Kapler or Lowell or Montgomery. He wanted one of the majority. He wanted the guy at home, off duty, asleep, then waking up, getting dressed, stumbling out into the cold, firing up his cruiser, heading west.

  He wanted to flag the guy down and demand a ride.

  He got part of what he wanted.

  When he was still seventy yards short of the turn he saw lights in the east. Pulsing red and blue strobes, a mile away, coming on fast. The reflectivity of the snow made it look like there was a whole lit-up acre on the move. Like a UFO gliding in to land. A huge bright dancing circle of horizontal light. He hustled hard to meet it. His feet slipped and skated. His arms thrashed and windmilled. His face was already frozen. It felt like it had been beaten with a bat and then anaesthetized by a dentist. The cop car was doing sixty miles an hour, on chains and winter tyres. He was doing three miles an hour, on legs that were stiff and slow and unresponsive. He was slipping and sliding, like running in place. Like a slapstick movie. The corner was still fifty yards away.

  He wasn’t going to make it.

  He didn’t need to make it.

  The cop saw him.

  The car slowed and turned into Peterson’s street and came north towards him. Bright headlights, electric blue flashers, deep red flashers, painful white strobes popping right in his eyes. He came to a stop and planted his feet and stood still and raised his arms and waved. The universal distress semaphore. Big overlapping half circles with each hand.

  The cop car slowed.

  At the last minute he sidestepped and the car slid to a stop alongside him. The driver’s window came down. A woman at the wheel. Her face was pale and swollen with sleep. Her hair was a mess. Her eyes were red. He didn’t know her.

  He said, ‘I have to get to the Salter house.’ His words were unclear. His lips were numb. The upper part of his face was a frozen slab. The lower half was just as bad. The hinge in his jaw was hardly working at all.

  The cop said, ‘What?’

  ‘I need a ride.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Janet Salter’s house.’

  Five miles away the prison siren howled on. There was radio chatter in the car. A dispatcher’s voice, low and fast, trying not to sound urgent. Probably the old guy already back at the police station desk. There was alcohol on the woman’s breath. Maybe bourbon. A nightcap. Maybe two or three of them.

  She asked, ‘Who the hell are you?’

  Reacher said, ‘I’ve been working with Holland and Peterson.’

  ‘Peterson’s de
ad.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Are you the MP?’

  ‘Yes. And I need a ride.’

  She said, ‘Can’t do it.’

  ‘So why did you turn in for me?’

  ‘I didn’t. I’m heading for my position.’

  ‘The prison isn’t this way.’

  ‘We make a perimeter a mile out. I get the northeast corner. This is how I’m supposed to get to it.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The biker escaped. His cell is empty.’

  ‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘What do you mean, no?’

  ‘Not possible. It’s a fake. It’s a decoy.’

  ‘He’s either in there or not, pal. And they say not.’

  ‘He’s hiding out in there. In a broom closet or something. It’s a fake.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘I’ve seen it before. Two problems with escaping. Getting out, and then beating the manhunt. The smart ones hide first. Inside. Until the manhunt dies. Then they go. But this guy isn’t going anywhere. He’s doing the first part only. As a decoy.’

  The cop didn’t answer.

  ‘Think about it,’ Reacher said. ‘Escaping is harder than it looks. I promise you, he’s still in there. Tomorrow he’ll get hungry and come on out from wherever he holed up. Big smile on his face. Because it will be too late by then.’

  ‘You’re nuts.’

  ‘He’s still in there. Believe me. Take a chance. Be the one.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘OK, suppose I am. Suppose the guy really is out. He was gone more than five hours ago. You know that. So what the hell is the point of a one-mile perimeter now?’

  The cop didn’t answer.

  The siren howled on.

  ‘Five minutes,’ Reacher said. ‘Please. That’s all I need from you.’

  The cop didn’t answer. Just hit the button and the gas and her window thumped back up and the car moved off. He leaned towards it and it accelerated and the rear three-quarter panel smacked him in the hip and spun him around and dumped him down hard on his back. He lay breathless in the frozen snow and watched the acre of lights move away into the distance.