Die Trying

by Child, Lee

  He handed the remote to McGrath and headed back for the door.

  “You want anything else, you let me know, OK?” he called.

  He got no reply because everybody was staring at the screen as McGrath started inching his way through the tape. Every time he hit the frame-advance button, a broad band of white snow scrolled down the screen and unveiled a new picture, same aspect, same angle, same dim monochrome gray, but with the time code at the bottom jumped ahead ten seconds. The third frame showed a woman behind the counter. Milosevic touched the screen with his finger.

  “That’s the woman I spoke to,” he said.

  McGrath nodded.

  “Wide field of view,” he said. “You can see all the way from behind the counter right out into the street.”

  “Wide-angle lens on the camera,” Brogan said. “Like a fisheye sort of thing. The owner can see everything. He can see the customers coming in and out, and he can see if the help is fiddling the register.”

  McGrath nodded again and trawled through Monday morning, ten seconds at a time. Customers jumped in and out of shot. The woman behind the counter jumped from side to side, fetching and carrying and ringing up the payments. Outside, cars flashed in and out of view.

  “Fast-forward to twelve o’clock,” Milosevic said. “This is taking way too long.”

  McGrath nodded and fiddled with the remote. The tape whirred forward. He pressed stop and play and freeze and came up with four o’clock in the afternoon.

  “Shit,” he said.

  He wound back and forward a couple of times and came up with eleven forty-three and fifty seconds.

  “Close as we’re going to get,” he said.

  He kept his finger hard on the frame-advance button and the white snow scrolled continuously down the screen. One hundred and fifty-seven frames later, he stopped.

  “There she is,” he said.

  Milosevic and Brogan shouldered together for a closer look. The still frame showed Holly Johnson on the far right of the picture. She was outside, on the sidewalk, crutch in one hand, clothes on hangers in the other. She was hauling the door open with a spare finger. The time in the bottom left of the frame was stopped at ten minutes and ten seconds past twelve noon.

  “OK,” McGrath said quietly. “So let’s see.”

  He hit the button and Holly jumped halfway over to the counter. Even frozen on the misty monochrome screen, her awkward posture was plain to see. McGrath hit the button again and the snow rolled over and Holly was at the counter. Ten seconds later the Korean woman was there with her. Ten seconds after that, Holly had folded back a hem on one of her suits and was showing the woman something. Probably the position of a particular stain. The two women stayed like that for a couple of minutes, heads together for twelve frames, jumping slightly from one shot to the next. Then the Korean woman was gone and the clothes were off the counter and Holly was standing alone for five frames. Fifty seconds. Behind her on the left, a car nosed into shot on the second frame and stayed there for the next three, parked at the curb.

  Then the woman was back with an armful of clean clothes in bags. She was frozen in the act of laying them flat on the counter. Ten seconds later she had torn five tags off the hangers. Ten seconds after that, she had another four lined up next to the register.

  “Nine outfits,” McGrath said.

  “That’s about right,” Milosevic said. “Five for work, Monday to Friday, and I guess four for evening wear, right?”

  “What about the weekend?” Brogan said. “Maybe it’s five for work, two for evening wear and two at the weekend?”

  “Probably wears jeans at the weekend,” Milosevic said. “Jeans and a shirt. Just throws them in the machine, maybe.”

  “God’s sake, does it matter?” McGrath said.

  He pressed the button and the Korean woman’s fingers were caught dancing over the register keys. The next two stills showed Holly paying in cash and accepting a couple of dollars change.

  “How much is all that costing her?” Brogan asked out loud.

  “Nine garments?” Milosevic said. “Best part of fifty bucks a week, that’s for damn sure. I saw the price list in there. Specialized processes and gentle chemicals and all.”

  The next frame showed Holly starting toward the exit door on the left of the picture. The top of the Korean woman’s head was visible, on her way through to the back of the store. The time was showing at twelve fifteen exactly. McGrath hitched his chair closer and stuck his face a foot from the glowing monochrome screen.

  “OK,” he said. “So where did you go now, Holly?”

  She had the nine cleaned garments in her left hand. She was holding them up, awkwardly, so they wouldn’t drag on the floor. Her right elbow was jammed into the curved metal clip of her crutch, but her hand wasn’t gripping the handle. The next frame showed it reaching out to push the door open. McGrath hit the button again.

  “Christ,” he shouted.

  Milosevic gasped out loud and Brogan looked stunned. There was no doubt about what they were seeing. The next frame showed an unknown man attacking Holly Johnson. He was tall and heavy. He was seizing her crutch with one hand and her cleaning with the other. No doubt about it. Both his arms were extended and he was taking her crutch and her cleaning away from her. He was caught in a perfect snapshot through the glass door. The three agents stared at him. There was total silence in the conference room. Then McGrath hit the button again. The time code jumped ahead ten seconds. There was another gasp as they caught their breath simultaneously.

  Holly Johnson was suddenly surrounded by a triangle of three men. The tall guy who had attacked her had been joined by two more. The tall guy had Holly’s cleaning slung up over his shoulder and he had seized Holly’s arm. He was staring straight up into the store window like he knew a camera was in there. The other two guys were facing Holly head-on.

  “They pulled guns on her,” McGrath shouted. “Son of a bitch, look at that.”

  He thumbed the button again until the bar of snow cleared away from the bottom of the frame and the whole picture stabilized into perfect sharpness. The two new guys had their right arms bent at ninety degrees, and there was tension showing in their shoulder muscles.

  “The car,” Milosevic said. “They’re going to put her in the car.”

  Beyond Holly and the triangle of men was the car which had parked up fourteen frames ago. It was just sitting there at the curb. McGrath hit the button again. The bar of white snow scrolled down. The small knot of people on the screen jumped sideways ten feet. The tall guy who had attacked Holly was leading the way into the back of the car. Holly was being pushed in after him by one of the new guys. The other new guy was opening the front passenger door. Inside the car, a fourth man was plainly visible through the side glass, sitting at the wheel.

  McGrath hit the button again. The bar of snow scrolled down. The street was empty. The car was gone. Like it had never been there at all.

  13

  “WE NEED TO talk,” Holly said.

  “So talk,” Reacher replied.

  They were sprawled out on the mattresses in the gloom inside the truck, rocking and bouncing, but not much. It was pretty clear they were heading down a highway. After fifteen minutes of a slow straight road, there had been a deceleration, a momentary stop, and a left turn followed by steady acceleration up a ramp. Then a slight sway as the truck nudged left onto the pavement. Then a steady droning cruise, maybe sixty miles an hour, which had continued ever since and was feeling like it would continue forever.

  The temperature inside the dark space had slowly climbed higher. Now it was pretty warm. Reacher had taken his shirt off. But the truck had started to cool, from the night in the cow barn, and Reacher felt as long as it kept moving through the air, it was going to be tolerable. The problem would come if they stopped for any length of time. Then the truck would heat up like a pizza oven and it would get as bad as it had gotten the day before.

  The twin-sized mattress had been sta
nding upright on its long edge, up against the forward bulkhead, and the queen-size had been flat on the floor, jammed up against it, making a crude sofa. But the ninety-degree angle between the seat and the back had made the whole thing uncomfortable. So Reacher had slid the queen-size backward, with Holly riding on it like a sled, and laid the twin flat next to it. Now they had an eight-foot by six-six flat padded area. They were lying down on their backs, heads together so they could talk, bodies apart in a decorous V shape, rocking gently with the motion of the ride.

  “You should do what I tell you,” Holly said. “You should have gotten out.”

  He made no reply.

  “You’re a burden to me,” she said. “You understand that? I’ve got enough on my hands here without having to worry about you.”

  He didn’t reply. They lay rocking in silence. He could smell yesterday morning’s shampoo in her hair.

  “So you’ve got to do what I tell you from now on,” she said. “Are you listening to me? I just can’t afford to be worrying about you.”

  He turned his head to look at her, close up. She was worrying about him. It came as a big surprise, out of nowhere. A shock. Like being on a train, stopped next to another train in a busy railroad station. Your train begins to move. It picks up speed. And then all of a sudden it’s not your train moving. It’s the other train. Your train was stationary all the time. Your frame of reference was wrong. He thought his train was moving. She thought hers was.

  “I don’t need your help,” she said. “I’ve already got all the help I need. You know how the Bureau works? You know what the biggest crime in the world is? Not bombing, not terrorism, not racketeering. The biggest crime in the world is messing with Bureau personnel. The Bureau looks after its own.”

  Reacher stayed quiet for a spell. Then he smiled.

  “So then we’re both OK,” he said. “We just lay back here, and pretty soon a bunch of agents is going to come bursting in to rescue us.”

  “I trust my people,” Holly said to him.

  There was silence again. The truck droned on for a couple of minutes. Reacher ticked off the distance in his head. About four hundred fifty miles from Chicago, maybe. East, west, north, or south. Holly gasped and used both hands to shift her leg.

  “Hurting?” Reacher said.

  “When it gets out of line,” she said. “When it’s straight, it’s OK.”

  “Which direction are we headed?” he asked.

  “Are you going to do what I tell you?” she asked.

  “Is it getting hotter or colder?” he said. “Or staying the same?”

  She shrugged.

  “Can’t tell,” she said. “Why?”

  “North or south, it should be getting hotter or colder,” he said. “East or west, it should be staying more or less the same.”

  “Feels the same to me,” she said. “But inside here, you can’t really tell.”

  “Highway feels fairly empty,” Reacher said. “We’re not pulling out to pass people. We’re not getting slowed down by anybody. We’re just cruising.”

  “So?” Holly said.

  “Might mean we’re not going east,” he said. “There’s a kind of barrier, right? Cleveland to Pittsburgh to Baltimore. Like a frontier. Gets much busier. We’d be hitting more traffic. What is it, Tuesday? About eleven o’clock in the morning? Roads feel too empty for the East.”

  Holly nodded.

  “So we’re going north or west or south,” she said.

  “In a stolen truck,” he said. “Vulnerable.”

  “Stolen?” she said. “How do you know that?”

  “Because the car was stolen too,” he said.

  “How do you know that?” she repeated.

  “Because they burned it,” he said.

  Holly rolled her head and looked straight at him.

  “Think about it,” he said. “Think about their plan. They came to Chicago in their own vehicle. Maybe some time ago. Could have taken them a couple of weeks to stake you out. Maybe three.”

  “Three weeks?” she said. “You think they were watching me three weeks?”

  “Probably three,” he said. “You went to the cleaners every Monday, right? Once a week? Must have taken them a while to confirm that pattern. But they couldn’t grab you in their own vehicle. Too easy to trace, and it probably had windows and all, not suitable for long-distance transport of a kidnap victim. So I figure they stole this truck, in Chicago, probably yesterday morning. Painted over whatever writing was on the side. You notice the patch of white paint? Fresh, didn’t match the rest? They disguised it, maybe changed the plates. But it was still a hot truck, right?> And it was their getaway vehicle. So they didn’t want to risk it on the street. And people getting into the back of a truck looks weird. A car is better. So they stole the black sedan and used that instead. Switched vehicles in that vacant lot, burned the black car, and they’re away.”

  Holly shrugged. Made a face.

  “Doesn’t prove they stole anything,” she said.

  “Yes it does,” Reacher said. “Who buys a new car with leather seats, knowing they’re going to burn it? They’d have bought some old clunker instead.”

  She nodded, reluctantly.

  “Who are these people?” she said, more to herself than to Reacher.

  “Amateurs,” Reacher said. “They’re making one mistake after another.”

  “Like what?” she said.

  “Burning is dumb,” he said. “Attracts attention. They think they’ve been smart, but they haven’t. Probability is they burned their original car, as well. I bet they burned it right near where they stole the black sedan.”

  “Sounds smart enough to me,” Holly said.

  “Cops notice burning cars,” Reacher said. “They’ll find the black sedan, they’ll find out where it was stolen from, they’ll go up there and find their original vehicle, probably still smoldering. They’re leaving a trail, Holly. They should have parked both cars in the long-term lot at O’Hare. They would have been there a year before anybody noticed. Or just left them both down on the South Side somewhere, doors open, keys in. Two minutes later, two residents down there got themselves a new motor each. Those cars would never have been seen again. That’s how to cover your tracks. Burning feels good, feels like it’s real final, but it’s dumb as hell.”

  Holly turned her face back and stared up at the hot metal roof. She was asking herself: Just who the hell is this guy?

  14

  THIS TIME, MCGRATH did not make the tech chief come down to the third floor. He led the charge himself up to his lab on the sixth, with the videocassette in his hand. He burst in through the door and cleared a space on the nearest table. Laid the cassette in the space like it was made of solid gold. The guy hurried over and looked at it.

  “I need photographs made,” McGrath told him.

  The guy picked up the cassette and took it across to a bank of video machines in the corner. Flicked a couple of switches. Three screens lit up with white snow.

  “You tell absolutely nobody what you’re seeing, OK?” McGrath said.

  “OK,” the guy said. “What am I looking for?”

  “The last five frames,” McGrath said. “That should just about cover it.”

  The tech chief didn’t use a remote. He stabbed at buttons on the machine’s own control panel. The tape rolled backward and the story of Holly Johnson’s kidnap unfolded in reverse.

  “Christ,” he said.

  He stopped on the frame showing Holly turning away from the counter. Then he inched the tape forward. He jumped Holly to the door, then face-to-face with the tall guy, then into the muzzles of the guns, then to the car. He rolled back and did it for a second time. Then a third.

  “Christ,” he said again.

  “Don’t wear the damn tape out,” McGrath said. “I want big photographs of those five frames. Lots of copies.”

  The tech chief nodded slowly.

  “I can give you laser prints right now,” he said. />
  He punched a couple of buttons and flicked a couple of switches. Then he ducked away and booted up a computer on a desk across the room. The monitor came up with Holly leaving the dry cleaner’s counter. He clicked on a couple of menus.

  “OK,” he said. “I’m copying it to the hard disk. As a graphics file.”

  He darted back to the video bank and nudged the tape forward one frame. Came back to the desk and the computer captured the image of Holly making to push open the exit door. He repeated the process three more times. Then he printed all five graphics files on the fastest laser he had. McGrath stood and caught each sheet as it flopped into the output bin.

  “Not bad,” he said. “I like paper better than video. Like it really exists.”

  The tech chief gave him a look and peered over his shoulder.

  “Definition’s OK,” he said.

  “I want blowups,” McGrath told him.

  “No problem, now it’s in the computer,” the tech said. “That’s why the computer is better than paper.”

  He sat down and opened the fourth file. The picture of Holly and the three kidnappers in a tight knot on the sidewalk scrolled onto the screen. He clicked the mouse and pulled a tight square around the heads. Clicked again. The monitor redrew into a large blowup. The tall guy was staring straight out of the screen. The two new guys were caught at an angle, staring at Holly.

  The tech hit the print button and then he opened the fifth file. He zoomed in with the mouse and put a tight rectangle around the driver, inside the car. He printed that out, too. McGrath picked up the new sheets of paper.

  “Good,” he said. “Good as we’re going to get, anyway. Shame your damn computer can’t make them all look right at the camera.”

  “It can,” the tech chief said.

  “It can?” McGrath said. “How?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” the guy said. He touched the blowup of Holly’s face with his finger. “Suppose we wanted a face-front picture of her, right? We’d ask her to move around right in front of the camera and look right up at it. But suppose for some reason she can’t move at all. What would we do? We could move the camera, right?>