Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

by Lee Child

  “Hub’s disappeared,” she screamed.

  She ran over the gravel. Stood right in front of me.

  “Hub’s gone,” she screamed. “He’s disappeared. I can’t find him.”

  It was just Hubble on his own. They’d taken him and dumped him somewhere. Someone had found the body and called the police. A screaming, gagging phone call. The cluster of cars and ambulances was there. Not here on Beckman. Somewhere else. But it was just Hubble on his own.

  “Something’s wrong,” Charlie wailed. “This prison thing. Something’s gone wrong at the bank. It must be that. Hub’s been so uptight. Now he’s gone. He’s disappeared. Something’s happened, I know it.”

  She screwed her eyes tight shut. Started screaming. She was losing it. Getting more and more hysterical. I didn’t know how to handle her.

  “He got back late last night,” she screamed. “He was still here this morning. I took Ben and Lucy to school. Now he’s gone. He hasn’t gone to work. He got a call from his office telling him to stay home, and his briefcase is still here, his phone is still here, his jacket is still here, his wallet is still here, his credit cards are in it, his driver’s license is in it, his keys are in the kitchen. The front door was standing wide open. He hasn’t gone to work. He’s just disappeared.”

  I stood still. Paralyzed. He’d been dragged out of there by force and killed. Charlie sagged in front of me. Then she started whispering to me. The whispering was worse than the screaming.

  “His car is still here,” she whispered. “He can’t have walked anywhere. He never walks anywhere. He always takes his Bentley.”

  She waved vaguely toward the back of the house.

  “Hub’s Bentley is green,” she said. “It’s still in the garage. I checked. You’ve got to help us. You’ve got to find him. Mr. Reacher, please. I’m asking you to help us. Hub’s in trouble, I know it. He’s vanished. He said you might help. You saved his life. He said you knew how to do things.”

  She was hysterical. She was pleading. But I couldn’t help her. She would know that soon enough. Baker or Finlay would come up to the house very soon. They would tell her the shattering news. Probably Finlay would handle it. Probably he was very good at it. Probably he had done it a thousand times in Boston. He had dignity and gravity. He would break the news, gloss over the details, drive her down to the morgue to identify the body. The morgue people would shroud the corpse with heavy gauze to hide the appalling wounds.

  “Will you help us?” Charlie asked me.

  I decided not to wait with her. I decided to go down to the station house. Find out details like where and when and how. But I’d come back with Finlay. This was my fault, so I should come back.

  “You stay here,” I said. “You’ll have to lend me your car, OK?”

  She rooted in her bag and pulled out a big bunch of keys. Handed them to me. The car key had a big letter B embossed on it. She nodded vaguely and stayed where she was. I stepped over to the Bentley and slid into the driver’s seat. Backed it up and swung it down the curving driveway. Glided down Beckman in silence. Made the left onto Main Street up toward the station house.

  THERE WERE CRUISERS AND UNMARKED UNITS SPRAWLED right across the police parking lot. I left Charlie’s Bentley at the curb and stepped inside. They were all milling around the open area. I saw Baker, Stevenson, Finlay. I saw Roscoe. I recognized the backup team from Friday. Morrison wasn’t there. Nor was the desk guy. The long counter was unattended. Everybody was stunned. They were all vague and staring. Horrified. Distracted. Nobody would talk to me. They looked over bleakly. Didn’t really look away, it was like they didn’t see me at all. There was total silence. Finally Roscoe came over. She’d been crying. She walked up to me. Pressed her face against my chest. She was burning up. She put her arms around me and held on.

  “It was horrible,” she said. Wouldn’t say any more.

  I walked her around to her desk and sat her down. Squeezed her shoulder and stepped over toward Finlay. He was sitting on a desk, looking blank. I nodded him over to the big office in back. I needed to know, and Finlay was the guy who would tell me. He followed me into the office. Sat down in the chair in front of the desk. Where I had sat in handcuffs on Friday. I sat behind the desk. Roles reversed.

  I watched him for a while. He was really shaken up. I went cold inside all over again. Hubble must have been left in a hell of a mess to be getting a reaction like that from Finlay. He was a twenty-year man from a big city. He must have seen all there is to see. But now he was really shaken up. I sat there and burned with shame. Sure, Hubble, I’d said, you look safe enough to me.

  “So what’s the story?” I said.

  He lifted his head up with an effort and looked at me.

  “Why should you care?” he said. “What was he to you?”

  A good question. One I couldn’t answer. Finlay didn’t know what I knew about Hubble. I’d kept quiet about it. So Finlay didn’t see why Hubble was so important to me.

  “Just tell me what happened,” I said.

  “It was pretty bad,” he said. Wouldn’t go on.

  He was worrying me. My brother had been shot in the head. Two big messy exit wounds had removed his face. Then somebody had turned his corpse into a bag of pulp. But Finlay hadn’t fallen apart over that. The other guy had been all gnawed up by rats. There wasn’t a drop of blood left in him. But Finlay hadn’t fallen apart over that, either. Hubble was a local guy, which made it a bit worse, I could see that. But on Friday, Finlay hadn’t even known who Hubble was. And now Finlay was acting like he’d seen a ghost. So it must have been some pretty spectacular work.

  Which meant that there was some kind of a big deal going down in Margrave. Because there’s no point in spectacular work unless it serves a purpose. The threat of it beforehand works on the guy himself. It had certainly worked on Hubble. He had taken a lot of notice of it. That’s the point of a threat. But to actually carry out something like that has a different point. A different purpose. Carrying it out is not about the guy himself. It’s about backing up the threat against the next guy in line. It says, see what we did to that other guy? That’s what we could do to you. So by doing some spectacular work on Hubble, somebody had just revealed there was a high-stakes game going down, with other guys waiting next in line, right there in the locality.

  “Tell me what happened, Finlay,” I said again.

  He leaned forward. Cupped his mouth and nose with his hands and sighed heavily into them.

  “OK,” he said. “It was pretty horrible. One of the worst I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a few, let me tell you. I’ve seen some pretty bad ones, but this was something else. He was naked. They nailed him to the wall. Six or seven big carpentry nails through his hands and up his arms. Through the fleshy parts. They nailed his feet to the floor. Then they sliced his balls off. Just hacked them off. Blood everywhere. Pretty bad, let me tell you. Then they slit his throat. Ear to ear. Bad people, Reacher. These are bad people. As bad as they come.”

  I was numb. Finlay was waiting for a comment. I couldn’t think of anything. I was thinking about Charlie. She would ask if I’d found anything out. Finlay should go up there. He should go up there right now and break the news. It was his job, not mine. I could see why he was reluctant. Difficult news to break. Difficult details to gloss over. But it was his job. I’d go with him. Because it was my fault. No point running away from that.

  “Yes,” I said to him. “It sounds pretty bad.”

  He leaned his head back and looked around. Blew another sigh up at the ceiling. A somber man.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” he said. “You should have seen what they did to his wife.”

  “His wife?” I said. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I mean his wife,” he said. “It was like a butcher’s shop.”

  For a moment I couldn’t speak. The world was spinning backward.

  “But I just saw her,” I said. “Twenty minutes ago. She’s OK. Nothing happened
to her.”

  “You saw who?” Finlay said.

  “Charlie,” I said.

  “Who the hell is Charlie?” he asked.

  “Charlie,” I said blankly. “Charlie Hubble. His wife. She’s OK. They didn’t get her.”

  “What’s Hubble got to do with this?” he said.

  I just stared at him.

  “Who are we talking about?” I said. “Who got killed?”

  Finlay looked at me like I was crazy.

  “I thought you knew,” he said. “Chief Morrison. The chief of police. Morrison. And his wife.”

  12

  I WAS WATCHING FINLAY VERY CAREFULLY, TRYING TO DECIDE how far I should trust him. It was going to be a life or death decision. In the end I figured his answer to one simple question would make up my mind for me.

  “Are they going to make you chief now?” I asked him.

  He shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “They’re not going to make me chief.”

  “You sure about that?” I said.

  “I’m sure,” he said.

  “Whose decision is it?” I asked him.

  “The mayor’s,” Finlay said. “Town mayor appoints the chief of police. He’s coming over. Guy named Teale. Some kind of an old Georgia family. Some ancestor was a railroad baron who owned everything in sight around here.”

  “Is that the guy you’ve got statues of?” I said.

  Finlay nodded.

  “Caspar Teale,” he said. “He was the first. They’ve had Teales here ever since. This mayor must be the great-grandson or something.”

  I was in a minefield. I needed to find a clear lane through.

  “What’s the story with this guy Teale?” I asked him.

  Finlay shrugged. Tried to find a way to explain it.

  “He’s just a southern asshole,” he said. “Old Georgia family, probably a long line of southern assholes. They’ve been the mayors around here since the beginning. I dare say this one’s no worse than the others.”

  “Was he upset?” I said. “When you called him about Morrison?”

  “Worried, I think,” Finlay said. “He hates mess.”

  “Why won’t he make you chief?” I said. “You’re the senior guy, right?”

  “He just won’t,” Finlay said. “Why not is my business.”

  I watched him for a moment longer. Life or death.

  “Somewhere we can go to talk?” I said.

  He looked over the desk at me.

  “You thought it was Hubble got killed, right?” he said. “Why?”

  “Hubble did get killed,” I said. “Fact that Morrison got killed as well doesn’t change it.”

  WE WALKED DOWN TO THE CONVENIENCE STORE. SAT SIDE by side at the empty counter, near the window. I sat at the same place the pale Mrs. Kliner had used when I was in there the day before. That seemed like a long time ago. The world had changed since then. We got tall mugs of coffee and a big plate of donuts. Didn’t look at each other directly. We looked at each other in the mirror behind the counter.

  “Why won’t you get the promotion?” I asked him.

  His reflection shrugged in the mirror. He was looking puzzled. He couldn’t see the connection. But he’d see it soon enough.

  “I should get it,” he said. “I’m better qualified than all the others put together. I’ve done twenty years in a big city. A real police department. What the hell have they done? Look at Baker, for instance. He figures himself for a smart boy. But what has he done? Fifteen years in the sticks? In this backwater? What the hell does he know?”

  “So why won’t you get it?” I said.

  “It’s a personal matter,” he said.

  “You think I’m going to sell it to the newspaper?” I asked him.

  “It’s a long story,” he said.

  “So tell it to me,” I said. “I need to know.”

  He looked at me in the mirror. Took a deep breath.

  “I finished in Boston in March,” he said. “Done my twenty years. Unblemished record. Eight commendations. I was one hell of a detective, Reacher. I had retirement on full pension to look forward to. But my wife was going crazy. Since last fall, she was getting agitated. It was so ironic. We were married all through those twenty years. I was working my ass off. Boston PD was a madhouse. We were working seven days a week. All day and all night. All around me guys were seeing their marriages fall apart. They were all getting divorced. One after the other.”

  He stopped for a long pull on his coffee. Took a bite of donut.

  “But not me,” he said. “My wife could take it. Never complained, never once. She was a miracle. Never gave me a hard time.”

  He lapsed back into silence. I thought about twenty years in Boston. Working around the clock in that busy old city. Grimy nineteenth-century precincts. Overloaded facilities. Constant pressure. An endless parade of freaks, villains, politicians, problems. Finlay had done well to survive.

  “It started last fall,” he said again. “We were within six months of the end. It was all going to be over. We were thinking of a cabin somewhere, maybe. Vacations. Plenty of time together. But she started panicking. She didn’t want plenty of time together. She didn’t want me to retire. She didn’t want me at home. She said she woke up to the fact that she didn’t like me. Didn’t love me. Didn’t want me around. She’d loved the twenty years. Didn’t want it to change. I couldn’t believe it. It had been my dream. Twenty years and then retire at forty-five. Then maybe another twenty years enjoying ourselves together before we got too old, you know? It was my dream and I’d worked toward it for twenty years. But she didn’t want it. She ended up saying the thought of twenty more years with me in a cabin in the woods was making her flesh crawl. It got really bitter. We fell apart. I was a total basket case.”

  He trailed off again. We got more coffee. It was a sad story. Stories about wrecked dreams always are.

  “So obviously, we got divorced,” he said. “Nothing else to do. She demanded it. It was terrible. I was totally out of it. Then in my last month in the department I started reading the union vacancy lists again. Saw this job down here. I called an old buddy in Atlanta FBI and asked him about it. He warned me off. He said forget it. He said it was a Mickey Mouse department in a town that wasn’t even on the map. The job was called the chief of detectives, but there was only one detective. The previous guy was a weirdo who hung himself. The department was run by a fat moron. The town was run by some old Georgia type who couldn’t remember slavery had been abolished. My friend up in Atlanta said forget it. But I was so screwed up I wanted it. I thought I could bury myself down here as a punishment, you know? A kind of penance. Also, I needed the money. They were offering top dollar and I was looking at alimony and lawyer bills, you know? So I applied for it and came down. It was Mayor Teale and Morrison who saw me. I was a basket case, Reacher. I was a wreck. I couldn’t string two words together. It had to be the worst job application in the history of the world. I must have come across as an idiot. But they gave me the job. I guess they needed a black guy to look good. I’m the first black cop in Margrave’s history.”

  I turned on the stool and looked straight at him.

  “So you figure you’re just a token?” I said. “That’s why Teale won’t make you chief?”

  “It’s obvious, I guess,” he said. “He’s got me marked down as a token and an idiot. Not to be promoted further. Makes sense in a way. Can’t believe they gave me the job in the first place, token or not.”

  I waved to the counter guy for the check. I was happy with Finlay’s story. He wasn’t going to be chief. So I trusted him. And I trusted Roscoe. It was going to be the three of us, against whoever. I shook my head at him in the mirror.

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “That’s not the real reason. You’re not going to be chief because you’re not a criminal.”

  I PAID THE CHECK WITH A TEN AND GOT ALL QUARTERS FOR change. The guy still had no dollar bills. Then I told Finlay I needed to see the Morris
on place. Told him I needed all the details. He just shrugged and led me outside. We turned and walked south. Passed by the village green and put the town behind us.

  “I was the first one there,” he said. “About ten this morning. I hadn’t seen Morrison since Friday and I needed to update the guy, but I couldn’t get him on the phone. It was middle of the morning on a Monday and we hadn’t done anything worth a damn about a double homicide from last Thursday night. We needed to get our asses in gear. So I went up to his house to start looking for him.”

  He went quiet and walked on. Revisiting in his mind the scene he’d found.

  “Front door was standing open,” he said. “Maybe a half inch. It had a bad feel. I went in, found them upstairs in the master bedroom. It was like a butcher’s shop. Blood everywhere. He was nailed to the wall, sort of hanging off. Both of them sliced up, him and his wife. It was terrible. About twenty-four hours of decomposition. Warm weather. Very unpleasant. So I called in the whole crew and we went over every inch and pieced it all together. Literally, I’m afraid.”

  He trailed off again. Just went quiet.

  “So it happened Sunday morning?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Sunday papers on the kitchen table,” he said. “Couple of sections opened out and the rest untouched. Breakfast things on the table. Medical examiner says about ten o’clock Sunday morning.”

  “Any physical evidence left behind?” I asked him.

  He nodded again. Grimly.

  “Footprints in the blood,” he said. “The place was a lake of blood. Gallons of it. Partly dried up now, of course. They left footprints all over. But they were wearing rubber overshoes, you know? Like you get for the winter up north? No chance of tracing them. They must sell millions every year.”

  They had come prepared. They’d known there was going to be a lot of blood. They’d brought overshoes. They must have brought overalls. Like the nylon bodysuits they wear in the slaughterhouse. On the killing floor. Big white nylon suits, hooded, the white nylon splashed and smeared with bright red blood.