THE JACK REACHER FILES: VELOCITY (with bonus thriller CROSSCUT)

by Jude Hardin

  It said To Pete. All my love, Denise.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  At 5:30 someone knocked on my door. I answered. It was Brother John.

  “Why aren’t you ready?” he said.

  I was still wearing the terrycloth bathrobe I’d found in the closet.

  “Who’s Pete?” I said.

  “Who?”

  “And Denise. Who are they?”

  The names sounded familiar, but I couldn’t visualize the people they belonged to. It was frustrating, like having a word on the tip of your tongue and not being able to come up with it.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brother John said.

  I handed him the watch. “Look at the back plate. Look really close.”

  He looked really close. “To Pete. All my love, Denise. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “Yeah. Who are they?”

  “Well, I’m afraid I’m busted,” he said. “You see, the watch wasn’t new. I bought it at a pawnshop.”

  “But those names sound really familiar to me.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. Anyway, we need to get going.”

  “I’ll be ready in five minutes,” I said.

  “Meet me in the lobby.”

  I opened a suitcase and chose a pair of black jeans and a white button-down. I put those on and a pair of loafers and walked to the lobby. I left the hard case behind and carried the Strat in a black vinyl gig bag.

  I followed Brother John to a Mercedes convertible in the parking lot.

  “Where’d this come from?” I said.

  “You didn’t think we were going to ride around in that van the whole time, did you? This is a rental. Pretty nice, don’t you think?”

  “Bitchin,” I said.

  We took Sunset to Vine and turned into a twenty-four-hour lot across the street from the studio. Brother John handed the attendant a voucher. The barrier arm rose and we drove through and found a spot and walked across the street and inside and took the elevator to the eighth floor. When we stepped out there was an overhead sign that said QUIET—RECORDING AREA.

  We were quiet.

  We walked down a hallway with more gold records on the walls and more pictures of bands and solo artists. The RECORDING light over the doorway to studio B wasn’t on, so we walked on in. Bob Watson was sitting on a sofa talking to a guy with long black curly hair. The guy wore a black t-shirt and black leather gloves. He had tattoos on both arms and about a million bangles on his wrists. Apparently he was finished talking with Bob Watson. He got up and punched some numbers into a cell phone and stalked toward the door. He seemed to be in a hurry. He passed by Brother John and me without acknowledging our presence.

  “Hey guys,” Bob said.

  “Was that one of the guys I’m going to be working with?” I said.

  Bob laughed. “That’s a good one, Maddog. So how you feeling? You ready to lay some tracks?”

  I didn’t get the joke.

  “I’m ready,” I said. “But really, where’s the rest of the band?”

  “You’ll get to meet them tomorrow. In the meantime, I got some solid drum tracks down this afternoon, so we can go ahead and lay some guitar on top of those.”

  “Okay.”

  My Marshall stack was set up in the main room. There was a grand piano and a bunch of microphones on stands off to one side. Wood paneling, vaulted ceiling, recessed lights. You could have heard a pin drop in there.

  “I’m going to be in the control room with Brother John and the engineer,” Bob said. “Go ahead and get set up and get tuned and everything, and then just put those cans on when you’re ready.”

  He gestured toward a set of headphones on the stool by my amp.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I tuned my guitar and plugged everything in. There was a cable connected from the Marshall head to a direct box in the wall, and there was a microphone positioned to pick up ambient sound from the speaker cabinets. I put the headphones on and sat on the stool.

  “Can you hear me, Maddog?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Roger Henley. I’m the engineer on the record. Tonight I want to get some rhythm guitar tracks for all ten songs. These are just dummy tracks for the vocals, so they don’t have to be perfect.”

  “Where do you want to start?”

  “Let’s try ‘Need to Know’ first. You’re going to hear four clicks, and then the drums will come in. Ready?”

  “Go for it,” I said.

  I heard four clicks and then started playing chords along with the drums. It was easy. I knew all the songs by heart, and I didn’t make any mistakes. We went through all the songs I’d learned the same way. It was a little after ten when we finished the last song.

  Bob Watson and Brother John and Roger Henley walked from the control room into the main room while I was stowing my gear. Bob introduced me to Roger and we shook hands.

  “Anybody want to go out for a beer?” Bob said.

  “I need to get going,” Roger said. “But nice to meet you, Maddog. You did a great job, man.”

  “My pleasure,” I said.

  Roger left the studio.

  “I’m a little tired myself,” Brother John said. “I think Maddog and I should go on back and get a good night’s sleep. We have another full day tomorrow.”

  “I wouldn’t mind going for a beer,” I said.

  Bob said he would give me a ride back to the hotel. Brother John didn’t seem very happy about it, but he finally said that would be okay. We took the elevator to the first floor and exited the building and parted ways on the sidewalk in front of the building. Brother John headed toward his Mercedes in the parking lot, and Bob Watson and I walked over to the bar across the street.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  There wasn’t much of a crowd, but I reminded myself it was Tuesday and there naturally wouldn’t be. The place was fairly large, with booths and sitting areas and a regulation-size pool table. Wood and leather everywhere. There were maybe twenty stools around the horseshoe-shaped bar, and in one of them sat Alana, the receptionist who had winked at me earlier. She was alone. I followed Bob to the bar. He took the stool next to Alana, and I took the one next to him.

  “Hi guys,” Alana said.

  “Hi beautiful,” Bob said. “Have you met my friend Alexander Maddox?”

  “I don’t think we were ever introduced,” she said.

  I stood and offered my hand.

  “My friends call me Maddog,” I said. “Or just Dog.”

  She giggled. “Maddog? Really? You don’t look like a Maddog. Why not just Alexander? It’s a very nice name.”

  “You can call me Alexander if you want to,” I said.

  The young lady behind the bar wore a white knit shirt with the establishment’s logo printed over her left breast. She had olive skin and dark eyes and long silky black hair. She was very beautiful, maybe even more beautiful than Alana. She came over and asked us what we wanted to drink.

  “What do you have on draft?” Bob said.

  She put her hands on her hips and stared at him. It was a joke. There were more brands on tap than I’d ever seen in one place. I counted thirty, and there were more on the other side of the bar.

  Bob laughed. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you can name every one of them without looking.”

  She named every one of them without looking. Bob took a wad of cash out of his pocket and peeled off a hundred dollar bill.

  “Impressive,” he said. “Here you go. You earned it.”

  She took the bill and stuffed it into a pocket on the inside of her skirt.

  “So what’ll it be?” she said.

  “The usual,” Bob said.

  The bartender looked at me. I didn’t know what the usual was, but I told her to make it two. She brought the beers and Bob paid for them. She took the money and said thank you and turned her attention to a couple sitting at the other side of the bar.

 
; Bob asked Alana what she was doing out by herself on a Tuesday.

  “My roommate’s parents are in town this week,” she said. “They’re staying at the house, and I just figured I would make myself as scarce as possible.”

  We sipped our beers. Alana was drinking something clear on ice with a lime in it.

  Bob’s cell phone trilled. He answered, and his expression turned sour when he listened to what the other party had to say. He disconnected and put the phone back in his pocket.

  “I have to go,” he said. “Sorry, Dog. I’ll drop you at the hotel.”

  I didn’t want to go. I wanted to talk with Alana some more.

  “I’ll give him a ride,” Alana said.

  “You sure?” Bob said.

  “I’m sure.”

  Bob looked at me.

  “I would like to finish my beer,” I said.

  Bob said he would see me back in Studio B around ten in the morning. He left the pub with a worried look on his face.

  “So you have a place we can go?” Alana said.

  “A place we can go?”

  She looked at the ice in her drink.

  “I’m not usually this forward,” she said.

  “I’m staying at a hotel not far from here,” I said.

  “So you still want to finish that beer?”

  “Maybe we could just grab a six-pack on the way.”

  We grabbed a six-pack on the way. We started kissing and tearing each other’s clothes off as soon as we got in the room. We fell on the bed together and went at it for a long time and when we were finished we lay there in a tight embrace while the ceiling fan hummed overhead.

  “You want a beer?” I said.

  “Yes. That sounds wonderful.”

  I got up and took two cans out of the refrigerator and opened them and brought them to bed. We propped some pillows against the headboard and sat there and sipped the cold beers and didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I felt what I had done was very wrong, but I didn’t know why.

  “So tell me all about Alexander Maddox,” Alana said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, where you grew up, where you went to school, what kinds of bands you’ve been in, how many times you’ve been married, all that good stuff. Let’s start with that tattoo on your arm. Where did you get that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She leaned against my shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell her those things. I genuinely didn’t know. It was as if my past had been completely erased. It was gone, like pages torn from a book.

  I got up and put my underwear on, opened the drapes and looked out at the big rectangular swimming pool. It was after midnight and there was a guy out there swimming laps.

  “What are you thinking?” Alana said.

  “Don’t you know men hate it when you ask them that?”

  “Why do they hate it? Is it because what they’re thinking is a big profound secret, or because they’re afraid to admit there’s nothing more than football and sex rattling around up there?”

  “Probably the latter,” I said.

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “Let’s put it this way: I don’t know anything about football.”

  “You want to make love some more?”

  “I do, but…”

  “But?”

  “It’s hard to explain. I feel guilty for some reason.”

  “You got a wife or a girlfriend or something?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  She got up and started putting her clothes on.

  “Musicians are so weird,” she said.

  She grabbed her keys and walked out.

  I didn’t try to stop her.

  I tossed and turned and finally gave up on trying to sleep. At six I got dressed and went to the dining area for breakfast. I ate some eggs and toast and drank a few cups of coffee and read the newspaper and then went back to the room and watched television. A little before ten Brother John drove me to the studio in his Mercedes. He dropped me at the curb, said he had some errands to run.

  “I’ll bring you guys some lunch after a while,” he said.

  “I need my shot.”

  He gave me the shot and I went inside and stopped at the desk to sign in. A skinny guy wearing a yellow shirt sat there typing something into the computer. His nametag said Brandon.

  “Where’s Alana?” I said.

  “Called in sick. You got some ID?”

  “I’m meeting Bob Watson on the eighth floor. Studio B.”

  “You got some ID?”

  “No. My name is Alexander Maddox. My friends call me Maddog. Or just Dog.”

  “I can’t let you go upstairs without a picture ID. I’ll have to call and get you an escort.”

  “Okay.”

  I walked around the lobby and looked at some of the gold records while I waited. I was reading some of the stats when a framed photograph caught my eye. It was a band called Colt .45, and on the left side of the picture stood a very young man, twenty-four or twenty-five, with hair to his shoulders and a full beard. He wore jeans and a denim jacket with the sleeves cut off. He was holding a red hollow-body electric guitar, and there was a white bandana tied around his head.

  I read the caption and a lifetime of memories started swirling through my head like a tornado.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  It all came back to me in an instant. I remembered the way my mother smelled the final time she left for work, minutes before crashing into an oak tree and dying on the way to the hospital. I remembered the day my stepfather taught me how to use a baitcaster reel, and the day he stabbed me in the gut with a steak knife. I remembered my first guitar. First record deal. First trip to Jamaica, where I met my wife Susan. I remembered going through the pregnancy with her and rubbing lotion on her feet and belly every night and being in the delivery room when our baby Harmony was born and cutting the cord. I remembered being the sole survivor of the plane crash that killed Susan and Harmony and everyone in my band. I remembered giving up on music and going through a very dark period and hitting rock bottom and finally deciding to study and get a private investigator’s license. I remembered living in an Airstream camper on lot 27 at Joe’s Fish Camp and the life-changing case three years ago when a young lady named Leitha Ryan hired me to find her fifteen-year-old sister Brittney who had run away from home.

  One thing led to another and I ended up infiltrating a group called Chain of Light, led by a self-proclaimed prophet named Lucius Strychar. Strychar had been keeping a journal called The Holy Record for a lot of years about his experiences as a minister and his personal conversations with Jesus Christ, and I desperately wanted to get my hands on that book. But some strange things started happening and they tried to drug me and I escaped into the woods in a van and I had a hostage named Brother John and he had the angel tattoo on his arm and a burning cross tattooed on his chest and he was one of the most hateful men I’d ever met and I tortured him into giving me information about…

  Brother John. Was the guy I tortured and pistol-whipped and left unconscious in the woods at the Chain of Light Ranch the same guy who brainwashed me and brought me to California?

  I got short of breath and my heart pounded in my temples, and for a minute I felt like I might pass out.

  I went to the restroom and splashed some cold water on my face. It wasn’t him. The guy I was dealing with now didn’t look anything like the Brother John at Chain of Light.

  But he sounded like him.

  Maybe he had gotten some plastic surgery or something to disguise himself. It would have been an extreme thing to do, but the Harvest Angels were an extreme group.

  Thinking about them triggered another memory, one that I hoped was false. I pulled my shirt off and, sure enough, there it was. The angel tattoo. Brother John had tried to make me one of them, but why
? Why me? Was all this part of some sort of elaborate scheme to exact revenge for the pain I inflicted on him at Chain of Light?

  And why did he bring me to California to record an album? That especially didn’t make sense. There had to be more to it.

  Someone knocked on the restroom door.

  “Mr. Maddox, your escort is here.”

  “Be out in a minute,” I said.

  I pulled some paper towels out of the dispenser and dried my hands and face and tried to figure out what to do next.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I was three thousand miles from home with no money and no way of proving my identity. I tried to think of what crimes Brother John had committed, but other than abducting me and drugging me and brainwashing me I couldn’t think of any. If I went to the police, it would be my word against his, and the tattoo on my arm would not work in my favor.

  I figured Derek Wahl had been similarly kidnapped and brainwashed and that Brother John and company had been responsible for the Lamb murders, but I had no way to prove any of it. The only witnesses that might still be alive were Virgil Lamb and his grandson Joe, but I didn’t think that was very likely. They were probably at the bottom of a lake or buried somewhere on the mountain.

  I looked in the mirror at the tattoo on my left arm. Fine work. Amazing detail. I would do whatever it took to have it removed. If necessary, I would scrape it off myself with a cheese grater.

  On the other side of my arm dangled the ports to my PICC line, which reminded me that even though I had my memory back I was still a drug addict.

  As an upper-echelon musician, I had known a lot of guys who had done a lot of drugs. There were the guys like me, who stuck to weed and alcohol and the occasional snort of cocaine, and there were the guys who stuck needles in their arms. Smack. Chiba. Horse. Junk. Skag. Mud. Dope. Scat.

  It all meant the same thing.

  Heroin.

  I knew guys, even guys in my own band, who functioned perfectly well on it for years. They would have a fix in the morning like most people have coffee, and they would go about their daily business. They would go to the bank, the post office, the grocery store. They would stop at Huddle House for a plate of sausage and eggs. They would come to rehearsal and smoke cigarettes and marijuana with the rest of us and maybe drink a beer, and when we took a break they would go off by themselves and shoot that shit into their arms.