by Lee Child
“All yours,” he said. “Key is in the door pocket.”
I got out in the rain and he drove off as soon as I shut my door. But he didn’t get back on Route One. At the end of the lot he made a left. Then an immediate right. I saw him ease the big car through an improvised exit made of lumpy poured concrete that led into the adjoining lot. I pulled my collar up again and watched as he drove slowly through it and then disappeared behind a set of brand-new buildings. They were long low sheds made of bright corrugated metal. Some kind of a business park. There was a network of narrow blacktop roads. They were wet and shiny with rain. They had high concrete curbs, smooth and new. I saw the Lincoln again, through a gap between buildings. It was moving slow and lazy, like it was looking to park somewhere. Then it slid behind another building and I didn’t see it again.
I turned around. The Saab was nose-in to a discount liquor store. Next to the liquor store on one side was a place that sold car stereos and on the other side was a place with a window full of fake crystal chandeliers. I doubted if the maid had been sent out to buy a new ceiling fixture. Or to get a CD player installed in the Saab. So she must have been sent to the liquor store. And then she must have found a whole bunch of people waiting there for her. Four of them, maybe five. At least. After the first moment of surprise she would have changed from a bewildered maid to a trained agent fighting for her life. They would have anticipated that. They would have come mob-handed. I looked up and down the sidewalk. Then I looked at the liquor store. It had a window full of boxes. There was no real view out. But I went in anyway.
The store was full of boxes but empty of people. It felt like it spent most of its time that way. It was cold and dusty. The clerk behind the counter was a gray guy of about fifty. Gray hair, gray shirt, gray skin. He looked like he hadn’t been outside in a decade. He had nothing I wanted to buy as an ice-breaker. So I just went right ahead and asked him my question.
“See that Saab out there?” I said.
He made a big show of lining up his view out front.
“I see it,” he said.
“You see what happened to the driver?”
“No,” he said.
People who say no right away are usually lying. A truthful person is perfectly capable of saying no, but generally they stop and think about it first. And they add sorry or something like that. Maybe they come out with some questions of their own. It’s human nature. They say Sorry, no, why, what happened? I put my hand in my pocket and peeled off a bill from Beck’s wad purely by feel. Took it out. It was a hundred. I folded it in half and held it up between my finger and my thumb.
“Now did you see?” I said.
He glanced to his left. My right. Toward the business park beyond his walls. Just a fast glance, furtive, out and back.
“No,” he said again.
“Black Town Car?” I said. “Drove off that way?”
“I didn’t see,” he said. “I was busy.”
I nodded. “You’re practically rushed off your feet in here. I can see that. It’s a miracle one man can handle the pressure.”
“I was in the back. On the phone, I guess.”
I kept the hundred up there in my hand for another long moment. I guessed a hundred tax-free dollars would represent a healthy slice of his week’s net take. But he looked away from it. That told me plenty, too.
“OK,” I said. I put the money back in my pocket and walked out.
I drove the Saab two hundred yards south on Route One and stopped at the first gas station I saw. Went in and bought a bottle of spring water and two candy bars. I paid four times more for the water than I would have for gasoline, if you calculated it by the gallon. Then I came out and sheltered near the door and peeled a candy bar and started eating it. Used the time to look around. No surveillance. So I stepped over to the pay phones and used my change to call Duffy. I had memorized her motel number. I crouched under the plastic bubble and tried to stay dry. She answered on the second ring.
“Drive north to Saco,” I said. “Right now. Meet me in the big brick mall on the river island in a coffee shop called Café Café. Last one there buys.”
I finished my candy bar as I drove south. The Saab rode hard and it was noisy compared to Beck’s Cadillac or Harley’s Lincoln. It was old and worn. The carpets were thin and loose. It had six figures on the clock. But it got the job done. It had decent tires and the wipers worked. It made it through the rain OK. And it had nice big mirrors. I watched them all the way. Nobody came after me. I got to the coffee shop first. Ordered a tall espresso to wash the taste of chocolate out of my mouth.
Duffy showed up six minutes later. She paused in the doorway and looked around and then headed over toward me and smiled. She was in fresh jeans and another cotton shirt, but it was blue, not white. Over that was her leather jacket and over that was a battered old raincoat that was way too big for her. Maybe it was the old guy’s. Maybe she had borrowed it from him. It wasn’t Eliot’s. That was clear. He was smaller than she was. She must have come north not expecting bad weather.
“Is this place safe?” she said.
I didn’t answer.
“What?” she said.
“You’re buying,” I said. “You got here second. I’ll have another espresso. And you owe me for the first one.”
She looked at me blankly and then went to the counter and came back with an espresso for me and a cappuccino for herself. Her hair was a little wet. She had combed it with her fingers. She must have parked her car on the street and walked in through the rain and checked her reflection in a store window. She counted her change in silence and dealt me bills and coins equal to the price of my first cup. Coffee was another thing way more expensive than gasoline, up here in Maine. But I guessed it was the same everywhere.
“What’s up?” she said.
I didn’t answer.
“Reacher, what’s the matter?”
“You put another agent in eight weeks ago,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What?”
“What I said.”
“What agent?”
“She died this morning. She underwent a radical double mastectomy without the benefit of anesthetic.”
She stared at me. “Teresa?”
I shook my head.
“Not Teresa,” I said. “The other one.”
“What other one?”
“Don’t bullshit me,” I said.
“What other one?”
I stared at her. Hard. Then softer. There was something about the light in that coffee shop. Maybe it was the way it came off all the blond wood and the brushed metal and the glass and the chrome. It was like X-ray light. Like a truth serum. It had shown me Elizabeth Beck’s genuine uncontrollable blush. Now I was expecting it to show me the exact same thing from Duffy. I was expecting it to show me a deep red blush of shame and embarrassment, because I had found her out. But it showed me total surprise instead. It was right there in her face. She had gone very pale. She had gone stark white with shock. It was like the blood had drained right out of her. And nobody can do that on command, any more than they can blush.
“What other one?” she said again. “There was only Teresa. What? Are you telling me she’s dead?”
“Not Teresa,” I said again. “There was another one. Another woman. She got hired on as a kitchen maid.”
“No,” she said. “There’s only Teresa.”
I shook my head again. “I saw the body. It wasn’t Teresa.”
“A kitchen maid?”
“She had an e-mail thing in her shoe,” I said. “Exactly the same as mine. The heel was scooped out by the same guy. I recognized the handiwork.”
“That’s not possible,” she said.
I looked straight at her.
“I would have told you,” she said. “Of course I would have told you. And I wouldn’t have needed you if I had another agent in there. Don’t you see that?”
I looked away. Looked back. Now I was embarrassed.
“So who the hell was she?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. Just started nudging her cup around and around on her saucer, prodding at the handle with her forefinger, turning it ten degrees at a time. The heavy foam and the chocolate dust stayed still while the cup rotated. She was thinking like crazy.
“Eight weeks ago?” she said.
I nodded.
“What alerted them?” she asked.
“They got into your computer,” I said. “This morning, or maybe last night.”
She looked up from her cup. “That’s what you were asking me about?”
I nodded. Said nothing.
“Teresa isn’t in the computer,” she said. “She’s off the books.”
“Did you check with Eliot?”
“I did better than check,” she said. “I searched the whole of his hard drive. And all of his files on the main server back in D.C. I’ve got total access everywhere. I looked for Teresa, Daniel, Justice, Beck, Maine, and undercover. And he didn’t write any of those words anywhere.”
I said nothing.
“How did it go down?” she asked.
“I’m not really sure,” I said. “I guess at first the computer told them you had somebody in there, and then it told them it was a woman. No name, no details. So they looked for her. And I think it was partly my fault they found her.”
“How?”
“I had a stash,” I said. “Your Glock, and the ammo, and a few other things. She found them. She hid them in the car she was using.”
Duffy was quiet for a second.
“OK,” she said. “And you’re thinking they searched the car and your stuff made her look bad, right?”
“I guess so.”
“But maybe they searched her first and found the shoe.”
I looked away. “I sincerely hope so.”
“Don’t beat up on yourself. It’s not your fault. As soon as they got into the computer it was only a matter of time for the first one they looked at. They both fit the bill. I mean, how many women were there to choose from? Presumably just her and Teresa. They couldn’t miss.”
I nodded. There was Elizabeth, too. And there was the cook. But neither one of them would figure very high on a list of suspicious persons. Elizabeth was the guy’s wife. And the cook had probably been there twenty years.
“But who was she?” I said.
She played with her cup until it was back in its starting position. The unglazed rim on the bottom made a tiny grinding sound.
“It’s obvious, I’m afraid,” she said. “Think of the time line here. Count backward from today. Eleven weeks ago I screwed up with the surveillance photographs. Ten weeks ago they pulled me off the case. But because Beck is a big fish I couldn’t give it up and so nine weeks ago I put Teresa in without their knowledge. But also because Beck is a big fish, and without my knowledge, they must have reassigned the case to someone else and eight weeks ago that someone else put this maid person in, right on top of Teresa. Teresa didn’t know the maid was coming and the maid didn’t know Teresa was already there.”
“Why would she have nosed into my stuff?”
“I guess she wanted to control the situation. Standard procedure. As far as she was concerned, you weren’t anybody kosher. You were just a loose cannon. Some kind of troublemaker. You were a cop-killer, and you were hiding weapons. Maybe she thought you were from a rival operation. She was probably thinking of selling you out to Beck. It would have enhanced her credibility with him. And she needed you out of the way, because she didn’t need extra complications. If she didn’t sell you out to Beck, she would have turned you in to us, as a cop-killer. I’m surprised she didn’t already.”
“Her battery was dead.”
She nodded. “Eight weeks. I guess kitchen maids don’t have good access to cell phone chargers.”
“Beck said she was out of Boston.”
“Makes sense,” she said. “They probably farmed it out to the Boston field office. That would work, geographically. And it would explain why we didn’t pick up any kind of water-cooler whispers in D.C.”
“He said she was recommended by some friends of his.”
“Plea-bargainers, for sure. We use them all the time. They set each other up quite happily. No code of silence with these people.”
Then I remembered something else Beck had said.
“How was Teresa communicating?” I asked.
“She had an e-mail thing, like yours.”
“In her shoe?”
Duffy nodded. Said nothing. I heard Beck’s voice, loud in my head: I’m going to start searching people’s shoes, that’s for damn sure. You can bet your life on that.
“When did you last hear from her?”
“She fell off the air the second day.”
She went quiet.
“Where was she living?” I asked.
“In Portland. We put her in an apartment. She was an office clerk, not a kitchen maid.”
“You been to the apartment?”
She nodded. “Nobody’s seen her there since the second day.”
“You check her closet?”
“Why?”
“We need to know what shoes she was wearing when she was captured.”
Duffy went pale again.
“Shit,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “What shoes were left in her closet?”
“The wrong ones.”
“Would she think to ditch the e-mail thing?”
“Wouldn’t help her. She’d have to ditch the shoes, too. The hole in the heel would tell the story, wouldn’t it?”
“We need to find her,” I said.
“We sure do,” she said. Then she paused a beat. “She was very lucky today. They went looking for a woman, and they happened to look at the maid first. We can’t count on her staying that lucky much longer.”
I said nothing. Very lucky for Teresa, very unlucky for the maid. Every silver lining has a cloud. Duffy sipped her coffee. Grimaced slightly like the taste was off and put the cup back down again.
“But what gave her away?” she said. “In the first place? That’s what I want to know. I mean, she only lasted two days. And that was nine whole weeks before they broke into the computer.”
“What background story did you give her?”
“The usual, for this kind of work. Unmarried, unattached, no family, no roots. Like you, except you didn’t have to fake it.”
I nodded slowly. A good-looking thirty-year-old woman who would never be missed. A huge temptation for guys like Paulie or Angel Doll. Maybe irresistible. A fun thing to have around. And the rest of their crew might be even worse. Like Harley, for instance. He didn’t strike me as much of an advertisement for the benefits of civilization.
“Maybe nothing gave her away,” I said. “Maybe she just went missing, you know, like women do. Lots of women go missing. Young women especially. Single, unattached women. Happens all the time. Thousands a year.”
“But you found the room they were keeping her in.”
“All those missing women have to be somewhere. They’re only missing as far as the rest of us are concerned. They know where they are, and the men who took them know where they are.”
She looked at me. “You think it’s like that?”
“Could be.”
“Will she be OK?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope so.”
“Will they keep her alive?”
“I think they want to keep her alive. Because they don’t know she’s a federal agent. They think she’s just a woman.”
A fun thing to have around.
“Can you find her before they check her shoes?”
“They might never check them,” I said. “You know, if they’re seeing her in one particular light, as it were, it would be a leap to start seeing her as something else.”
She looked away. Went quiet.
“One particular light,” she repeated. “Why don’t we just say what we mean?�
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“Because we don’t want to,” I said.
She stayed quiet. One minute. Two. Then she looked straight back at me. A brand-new thought.
“What about your shoes?” she said.
I shook my head.
“Same thing,” I said. “They’re getting used to me. It would be a leap to start seeing me as something else.”
“It’s still a big risk.”
I shrugged.
“Beck gave me a Beretta M9,” I said. “So I’ll wait and see. If he bends down to take a look I’ll shoot him through the middle of the forehead.”
“But he’s just a businessman, right? Basically? Would he really do bad stuff to Teresa without knowing she was a threat to his business?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Did he kill the maid?”
I shook my head. “Quinn did.”
“Were you a witness?”
“No.”
“So how do you know?”
I looked away.
“I recognized the handiwork,” I said.
The fourth time I ever saw Sergeant First Class Dominique Kohl was a week after the night we spent in the bar. The weather was still hot. There was talk of a tropical storm blowing in from the direction of Bermuda. I had a million files on my desk. We had rapes, homicides, suicides, weapons thefts, assaults, and there had been a riot the night before because the refrigeration had broken down in the enlisted mess kitchens and the ice cream had turned to water. I had just gotten off the phone with a buddy at Fort Irwin in California who told me it was the same over there whenever the desert winds were blowing.
Kohl came in wearing shorts and a tank top shirt. She still wasn’t sweating. Her skin was still dusty. She was carrying her file, which was then about eight times as thick as when I had first given it to her.
